What you seek is closer than you think…

Roxanne Martin - the Oracle - Advice to a Beastmaster searching for his lost pet Cluckers, the very one Roxanne had sacrificed the day before.

____

The darkness shifted and revealed a room made of marble. It was brightly lit, but there was no light source. She turned over her hands and looked at her palms, then over again. Her skin was caramel-brown and her hands lean and wiry. She glanced past them and saw that she was sitting naked on the floor, her dusky legs providing striking contrast with the bright ivory.

Who was she?

She tried to speak, but she had no voice. What would she say, anyway? She stayed seated for a minute, or maybe it was an hour or a year, when a slow trickle of memories seeped into her head. Groaning softly, she tried to speed up its flow but it kept to its restrained pace. Although her memories started interesting, she quickly realised they were nothing she didn’t already know as her psyche resurfaced. She was Meera Campbell, a loving wife, a proud mother, and an Olympic level archer.

Before she could investigate her current situation, a cutting pain dug into her shoulders and she cried out. Glimpsing back, she saw nothing there but the sensation continued, almost as if someone was rubbing into her wounds. Wounds? Was she injured? Carrying out a double take at her shoulders, she noted that although her skin lay unblemished, the sight instinctively felt wrong. This was a dream of some sort, she decided, and as she did the surrounding marble gradually dimmed into nothing. Looking down, she noticed she was also fading away, the inky blackness bleeding into her arms until they too vanished.

Her eyes tore open, and she immediately bit down, clenching her teeth in the hope the pain would subside. It didn’t. Bleary-eyed, she could hear an odd collection of grunts, shrieks, and murmurs nearby, but nothing she could make sense of. It was several minutes before her body adapted to her new reality and allowed her use of her mind again.

She lay on the ground and over her crouched a bulky figure dressed in black, his skin pale from where it peeked through. He was waving his hand over her face, and she recognised him from her most recent memories. “Silas?”

“Yeah, hey. You alright?” came the reply.

“No, I feel like complete crap.”

“Oh,” he said lamely. His pale face shifted into a hazy brown, so she figured he had turned around. “You guys have any idea on what to do?”

There was no response, so she called out again. “Who’s with you?” she asked, her voice strained with worry.

“Uh, friends,” he said, then clarified, “Bandit and Olivia. They’re a decent crowd.” A hoot answered him and she winced back, feebly trying to claw herself away but failing miserably due to her diminished strength. “Do you remember what happened?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, I remember.” She thought back to all the nonsensical drivel she had been force-fed while struggling to survive in that abrupt tutorial. At the time, she had thought the entire thing had been some super unethical government project, but little had she known the worst of it was yet to come. On arriving on Idroa, she had wandered for some time before coming across the wicked woman. Meera had made the mistake of letting down her guard at finally finding a human, and that had come to bite her in the back when it turned out Raven was wholly inhumane. The memories that followed were hers but at the same time those of a pitiful robot forced into indefinite servitude.

As Silas had yet to mention her name, Meera felt the need to check. “Is Raven there?” With her vision slowly improving, she saw Silas’s form tensing. She recalled the violence this unassuming young man was capable of and suddenly felt vulnerable under his stare.

“No, she’s dead,” he eventually answered. “I killed her. Why?”

Meera exhaled in relief, and she noted Silas relaxing at her response too. “Good,” she said, her eyes tearing up slightly as she realised she was finally free of the demented woman.

Silas moved out of her vision, and she heard him talking to the friends he had mentioned. “I reckon we’re in the safe. Seems the mind control went away with her death.” He paused. “Hey, Bandit, you were saying you found me by scouring over the land, right? Did you spot any other settlements in the region?”

A hoot and a whistle later, he continued, “Yeah? Well, could you check if there are any humans there? We’re looking for my brother now, and I heard he’s in the region, so it might be that’s the village we want.”

****

Some time had passed since Meera's wakening, and she had since gained enough strength to rise and walk but not much else. She sat nibbling on the rations Silas had shared out, her eyes glazed in deep thought. The Duellist himself stood some strides away, training Olivia in the art of combat as Aengus had done for him.

He blocked her thrust with ease and twisted his spear, catching hers by its shaft and yanking it out of her hands. “You have to strike with the conviction to kill,” he said, chucking it back at her. “Don’t hold it delicately and make feeble attacks as that could give your enemies the opening they’re looking for.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “But you sometimes attack like that,” she said in what she hoped wasn’t an accusatory tone.

He drew back somewhat, then chuckled. “Oh, right. That’s because I have an ability that goes well with that style. You’re not far off level 20 now, so I’m sure you’ll adapt your fighting style then as well to better fit your class.”

“What do you think I should choose?” she asked, stabbing her spear into the ground and using it as a post to support herself. Her leg had healed somewhat but hadn’t made a full recovery yet.

“Honestly, no clue. I mean, you won’t even have to go down a combat route if you don’t want to,” he answered. “I know some people who got classes to do with other things they were good at, and they seem pretty happy with those choices.”

“But there’s not anything I’m good at,” she replied, dejected.

“Well,” he started, thinking of stuff she used to be good at in the past. Then, he thought better of it and tipped his spear towards her. “There’s no point in worrying about that. The System will offer you three suitable classes either way, so best you practise now so it can recognise your skills then.”

Resolve flashed across her face and she gripped her spear again, lowering into a steady stance. However, she shrank back the next second with anxious eyes glued to the sky.

Silas noted the growing shadow drifting towards them and guessed what had startled her. Tilting his head up, he spotted Bandit coasting down towards them. Similar to Olivia, Meera also stood at attention and fearfully backed away from where the owl landed. Although she had only the briefest of memories involving Bandit, the salve-smeared cuts on her shoulders were enough to keep her wary.

“So, what you saying, Bandit?” Silas called out.

The owl nodded.

“You sure?”

It hooted with indignation, and he rolled his eyes. “Calm down, I’m just checking.” He turned to Meera. “You good to walk around now?”

She glanced between the curious owl and the commanding man. “Yeah, but I still feel weak to do much else though. In case a fight breaks out—”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Silas cut in with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Bandit will take care of them.” Another hoot came, and he chuckled. “Let’s get going then.”

____

Volkan Burch, the Pyromancer, was originally a street vendor from Switzerland. He passed the extreme tutorial with ease due to his grouping with Vivienne Durant, the Beastmaster, and Kasim Taylan, the Jester. Positioned near a volcano on his initial placement on Idroa, he travelled to it with the mind to test how far his class had increased his fire resistance. However, a band of magma trolls had come before him and claimed it as their new base.

He was caught snooping, and they punished him for his crime by dousing him with lava, expecting the man to be scorched alive like their usual victims. Instead, they discovered, to their amusement, that he underwent a moment of euphoria and came out healthier than before. From here, they accepted him into their family and Volkan proceeded to live with these magma trolls until almost a month later when a group of humans came upon the volcano.

Many had come before and died under the magma trolls hands, supposedly unbeknownst to Volkan, but this group was different in the fact that they were led by Kuraim Jaffer, the Necromancer. The trolls were mercilessly slaughtered and raised again while Volkan barely escaped with his life. He wandered aimlessly for some time before hearing Vivienne had set up a settlement, after which he headed for Léonois…

Stefan Sommer - the Chronicler - Heroes and Villains of the First Age