“Ah, sorry. I got careless. I died.” Mordred typed into his terminal. After the no response he got he added a little smiley face with tongue sticking out.

Brooks: Are you KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?

Lector: WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS.

Mordred stared at the messages in the out of game messaging app and sighed deeply. It had seemed like a good idea to have a real world messaging chat channel before. Mistakes were made.

He needed to sleep. He would confront all the anger tomorrow when everyone had forgiven him.

After turning everything off and crawling into bed he put his head on the pillow and closed his eyes. After a moment he laid face down and screamed into his pillow.

“GOUDA? AHHHHHHH. THAT FREAKING GUY.”

-------------------

First Catalogued Storied Hero: Epsilon

Mana Cost: 0

Storied Heroes Allowed: 1

Storied Hero Rank: 1+

Storied Hero Experience Gained: 1380/3000

Your Storied Hero Will Increase in Power at: 3000 Experience.

Current Level Adjusted Based Upon Job, Class, and Story Level: 699

Story Hero Rating Based Upon Tales Within: Powerful

Abilities: [Watch Me], [We Don’t Let Them Die], [Bard Gang Sign]+

Satisfied, Amelia closed the window. She wasn’t all that sure how to add more abilities because the skill itself didn’t allow for a lot of interaction. It was possible that subtleties would reveal themselves with continued use, or actual level increase. For now, Epsilon had gone from Rank 0 to Rank 1, the merman having been useful at least in providing a buffet of small if numerous experience.

What was the different between Rank 0 and 1 Epsilon? It was hard to determine but Amelia thought she detected a bit more fluidity in the deadly doll’s actions. The merman had been dangerous from a monster perspective in that there were a lot of them and they had used weapons, both ranged and martial. Epsilon with their weird movements and high statistics dodged practically everything and murdered them with ease, proving that they were a direct counter to monsters that relied on swarming. The abilities seemed based on the stories that Amelia had in her book, which was interesting. The newly acquired [Bard Gang Sign] actually made Amelia wince. The skill in question was not the problem, just the name. There was something about the way Raven named things that just seemed to unavoidable.

Amelia asked Epsilon to use [Bard Gang Sign], ugggh, and then tried not to let the horror show on her face as Epsilon broke out into a perfect rendition of a song about lonely bards banding together on a fateful night, sharing experiences they’d had while they waited for a storm to pass. The song itself was beautiful, haunting, a recording without the tinny sound of speakers.

It was just like the song Raven had absent-mindedly sung one night on Wurlandia, something that came to her head while they were camped out that she’d used to entertain them. It even gave a beneficial bonus to Amelia as she listened that increased will and magic potency.

The song and the effect was not the problem. Epsilon with her emotionless face belting out a song full of emotion was the fuel of nightmares.

“Okay, enough of that, please stop.” Amelia said nervously.

Amelia checked the time, noting that she had about forty minutes left in this now empty sea-shore testing room before she was evicted by the door that liked to swallow people and then spit them right back out.

“Enough time to check my latest spoils.”

“Examine [Story Fragment: Perfidelia, Order of the Black Research]. Part I of II”

Amelia tried not to get ahead of herself but she held some pretty high expectations for this.

Expectations, it would seem, that wouldn’t go unsatisfied.

The seashore dissolved and vanished much the same way the scenery did whenever she shared an entry in her Chronicler. Resolving into reality around her was a large room. Warm wooden floors that were shinier in some parts than others from the movement of feet. Wooden walls that cast off a charming glow, brightened by a number of candles burning gently on tables, shelves, and a small workbench.

It was every fairy tale cottage and workshop that Amelia had ever imagined for herself. Shelves with thick leatherbound tomes. Strange glass apparatus stuffed into chair cushions and atop wooden stands, sitting under tables, crammed into nooks and crannies. A large comfy chair by a window that overlooked some blurry wilderness scenery. Books scattered and opened everywhere, but not forgotten, just left and waiting for their reader to pick them up once again.

A woman, Perfidelia one would surmise, materialized near one of the workbenches. Older, but striking. Silver lines of fine hair mixed in with the darkest black. She stood with a glass of crystal in one hand, caught in the motion of pouring a dark liquid that looked suspiciously like wine from a decanter.

Staring directly at Amelia with two golden eyes. “What took you so long?”

Amelia’s mind immediately blanked, and she even squeaked a bit. “What?”

Perfidelia stared for a moment longer and then turned to put down the decanter and the glass. She paused, as if realizing the small workbench she stood at had no room atop it. Helplessly she sighed, turning and moving to another table nearby and setting both down.

“I’m sorry. I have to admit I’ve been avoiding you,” a woman’s voice, rich in timbre, came from behind Amelia causing her to jump practically a foot in the air.

Of course, Perfidelia hadn’t been speaking to her, haha. Amelia was still a bit startled but felt a flush of relief pass over her body when she realized that the book entry hadn’t actually tried to talk to her like a ghost or something equally scary. Amelia wasn’t prepared for jump scares and didn’t like them as a rule. She stepped to the side and turned, eyeing the newcomer who had scared the crap out of her moments before.

The first impression was that she was dashing. There was no other way around it. The black robe that clung to and fell from her figure like the finest ball gown sparkled slightly in the light, as if the candlelight encountered the cloth and never quite escaped from it. Long black hair fell over a high cheekbones, shadowing mysterious brown eyes. The resemblance was there. Perfidelia and this woman were related. Mother and daughter?

“Why is that?” Perfidelia steepled her hands in front of her, expression betraying nothing. There was no suspicion or urgency in her tone, but the hands trembled slightly. Like someone who knew, in their heart, they were about to receive bad news.

“The obelisk has opened, and Rayne and I were selected to enter as champions.” The woman maintained the awkward distance from Perfidelia, and a hint of uncertainty clouded her expression. “I thought you should know.”

“Champions.” Perfidelia nodded, looking down and away for a moment. Nodding again, smoothing her unrumpled dress like it needed it. “My daughter and her husband. Champions.”

“Mother,” the bitterness in the last word, champions, seemed to break something inside of the younger woman. “I--.”

“SACRIFICES.” Perfidelia spat, all composure lost. She moved forward with an uncanny swiftness and took her daughter’s hands in her own. “Listen to me well. Take Rayne and Ellie and leave, at once! At once May!”

May looked down at the hands holding her own, staring as if at a loss at the tensed bones that shone though the flesh as they held her own like claws. She turned hers gently upward and clasped them around the older womans hands. When she looked up there was sadness in her eyes. She squeezed Perfidelia’s hands and then took a deep and calming breath. She tilted her head and smiled, pressing thin lips together in a long suffering way. She shook her head.

“You’ve Ellie to think about, and there’s no shortage of other fools to go to the obelisk and seek trinkets and honors and nobility!” Perfidelia’s face was starting to turn like thunder. Amelia recognized the expression as one that her own mother wore when she was trying to talk her out of something. The expression of someone with knowledge trying to reason with someone who wouldn’t be swayed.

“Rayne and I are the strongest of white and black now.” May said brightly.

“The strength of youth fettered to the self-same folly.” Perfidelia leaned slightly as May started to pull away, making it so the other couldn’t avoid looking her in the eye. “The obelisk is described as this wonderful boon. A place that opens infrequently and offers rewards and false promises of adventure. A place that the nobility and the rulers describe as an optional sentence instead of mandatory. A gullet that sometimes spits out what it swallows. Increase your strength? Gain relics? Come back to acclaim the grateful buffoons that would feed you to the maw? Testing? There is no amount of strength, or cleverness, or strategy involved. Sometimes when you are lost at sea you simply wake up on the shore, but more often than not you drown.”

What. Amelia frowned. That sounded kind of familiar.

“I do not seek your permission,” May said carefully. “Just your counsel.”

“Counsel?” Perfidelia’s voice started to raise, and then she visibly checked herself. She nodded, dropping May’s hands. She started wringing her own for a moment, nodded once again to herself, and turned away.

Amelia stared in amazement as Perfidelia traversed the room more quickly by walking than she would have thought possible. Some sort of movement skill? She reached a shelf and pulled a large book off it. She turned around and held it out.

The moment Amelia saw the book a terrible hunger cried out in her soul. The book was unmistakable. It was a Chronicler three times the size of her own. It looked like the ancient wyrm version of her own. That book had SEEN things. It had done things. It could probably use a weapon and fight on its own.

Amelia almost shouted at the scene that was playing before her when Perfidelia casually chucked it at May without a single word of warning. Amelia started to step forward, panic and horror mixing, putting her own hands out to try and catch it, as foolish as that was.

Fortunately, May seemed to share a similar admiration for the book because she moved forward lightning quick and caught the book in a gentle underhand catch, anger and frustration immediately flashing across her face for the first time. “What are you doing?”

“Go on! You have read it! You have seen! What could I say to you? What counsel could I give that hasn’t already been seared into your brain the first time you asked me about the obelisk? The first time I saw that telltale glint that my daughter might be an idiot? Oh I tried. I tried to crush that spark. I tried with my entire soul.” Perfidelia was shaking now.

“We are going.” May said, her voice trembling. “Shall I go to someone else in the Order? Someone who isn’t as strong as we are? Ignore the looks of their families if they do not return?”

“Yes!” Perfidelia threw her hands up in the air. “Let someone weaker go! They will likely have a better chance than you! Strong? Pah.” Perfidelia stopped and then looked up, a knowing look in her eye. “Ah. You’re going because of shame. You’re being shamed to die for them; what right do they have to judge you, if you choose to live.”

May cradled the book, staring down at it with a loving look in her eye. A long moment seemed to pass, the kind of moment where you wish you could be a fly on the wall of someone’s mind so you could see what they were thinking. Finally, she passed a loving hand over the book, and walked over to Perfidelia, offering it to her like a precious thing.

“Seeking information is still one of the primary tenets,” May said calmly. When Perfidelia didn’t reach out for the book May gently shoved it toward her in a more persistent way until she finally, regretfully, took it back into her hands.

Amelia mourned for a moment. She could hold it, if they didn’t want it.

“This book is like one of my oldest beloved friends. I didn’t, however, come here for this book. I came to ask my mother what her advice would be, as someone who once washed ashore.” May stepped away, presumably to show her resolve. The result was unexpectedly hard for Amelia to watch. The distance between them seemed much greater now. Family drama wasn’t Amelia’s favorite genre.

Perfidelia must have sensed the distance as well. She returned to the shelf, much slower this time, and shelved the miraculous tome. She didn’t turn around for a long time. So long that May started to show a bit of impatience, and started to turn to leave.

“In the beginning, everything will seem to be in your control.” Perfidelia finally spoke without turning around, causing May to halt. A rattling intake of air before Perfidelia exhaled in resignation.

“It is not. Control in that place is an illusion. Treasures beyond your wildest dreams will fall into your lap like raindrops. You say you and Rayne are the most powerful, and that will be a comfort to you in the beginning. When these boons fall from the heavens and increase your power, it will be heady. I urge you to understand though. If your power increases greatly because of the gifts that you are presented through the testing, you mustn’t let it cloud your judgment. Nothing in that place, none of those treasures, none of that knowledge, nor any of the power that is handed out freely comes from the obelisk originally. It is taken there, and falls from the dead hands of those who stepped in the very same place you do. Those things, many of which you will stare at in open-mouthed astonishment for how rare and precious they are, none saved their previous owners.”

Amelia frowned, feeling a little nervous now. The obelisk was sounding all the more familiar to her, and she really didn’t like where this entry was headed if she was right.

“Everything that falls into your lap is from a graveyard, and you would do well to remember that. Each step you take into the graveyard will have more miraculous and wondrous items, true! Each step further into the graveyard you will see the veneer slip a little more around the edges. Wallpaper that has been left wet, and peels and frays, revealing the rot within. You will encounter allies and foes, and not all of them will reveal which they are to you. All who enter the obelisk by choice or by force have different pieces of the puzzle of the place itself, each their own theory on how it works or what it wants. You will sometimes be forced to face off against travelers from other places. Fight, and win. You will more often than not be fighting against the husks of those that have fallen before you. Admire their strength, and cautiously remind yourself that if they were so powerful and fell, so too could you.”

Perfidelia finally turned around and moved toward May, bridging the distance between them. She hugged May to her, cradling her head with a hand and putting her chin on May’s shoulder.

May was frozen at first, rigid, but gently encircled the older woman with her own arms.

“My personal opinion is that the obelisk testing will continue to pit you against foes and challenges slightly above your past performance. If you do extremely well the testing will become immediately more robust. Dangerous, unpredictable, savage beyond belief.” Perfidelia turned her head slightly so that her mouth was pointed toward May’s ear and whispered, “you want to know how I survived? It was because I was weak, and I did not whet the beasts appetite sufficiently fast enough. It is my personal belief that if you want to survive, you must fail as magnificently and gracefully as you possibly can no matter how the demon that appears before you praises you for the task you have performed, no matter the trinket or bit of knowledge they seduce you with. They are only lures into deeper water.”

May stood hugging her mother for a long time but Perfidelia didn’t let her go and didn’t continue talking. May laughed without mirth after a moment. “Consider me sufficiently terrified. Anything else?”

Perfidelia started rocking back and forth slightly, leaning back to beam at May and spinning her slightly like they were slow dancing. A moment later she once again hugged May to her and put her chin on her shoulder, her eyes closed.

Perfidelia opened her eyes a moment later and was staring directly into Amelia’s eyes now. Amelia froze in place, once again having the weirdest sensation that Perfidelia knew she was there and was making sure she was paying attention to this next bit. As an experiment, Amelia shuffled quietly to the left half a step and was immediately horrified when Perfidelia’s eyes followed her movement.

“Testing will continue for an indeterminable amount of time and then you will be offered a chance to leave. Take it! The only other thing I can tell you is that you must never, ever, ever, give in to the demons and say the magic words.”

“What magic words?” May asked.

Perfidelia continued staring directly into Amelia’s eyes.

“I surrender to the Quester Race.”