Black Book

Original character: Ense Vardaman

• Age: 13
• Trade: Assistant to his mother, the village hag
• Homeland: Iliesk - small state on the Hieriacca coast of Cerris, tropical climate, very pleasant all-year-round. Pre-industrial age, but magic and gods play a major role in daily life.
• Hometown: Varta (about a day's journey by foot to the nearest port city)
• Background: Always working to help make ends meet for as long as he can recall. No father or other family, just him and his mother. Picked up a lot of basic skills - cooking, herbology, construction, medicine, animal husbandry and tracking. Mother always telling him he was meant for greater things, that he would one day go to Abearanoth and serve the gods directly; when she was killed in a pirate raid, he sold everything they had and tried to make it true.
• Problem-solving approach: Apply grit and determination to see things through. Don't stop fighting, no matter how impossible the odds.
• Medical problems: Various common childhood ailments. Got pneumonia bad one year to they point where they had to get outside magic to fix it; were fortunate to be able to afford it at all. Rather small for his age as a result.
• Travelling experience: Prior to getting passage to Abearanoth on a trade ship, none.
• Weapons: Knife. Semi-capable in a fight, as much as a rather small boy with no real training can be.
• Vices: Pride - does not respond well to slights or insults
• Sociability: Somewhat of a loner, and awkward in social contexts. Good at small talk, but also very to the point, sometimes enough to alienate people. Does not make friends easily, but always remembers who they are.

---

Stand-in replacement: Jennifer Mar

• Age: 28
• Trade: Software engineer and designer, writer, miscellaneous hobbyist
• Homeland: Wyoming. Hot summers, harsh winters, thin air. Wind and grasshoppers possibly the prime inhabitants. Also contains some cities.
• Hometown: Casper (middle of nowhere; has a local airport, but it's tiny and very expensive, and the closest hub is about four hours away by car)
• Background: Degree in software engineering, with studies in psychology. Grew up always reading and making things - drawing, painting, sewing, building little tiny huts for fairies. Had a difficult time getting into the job market due to unusual background - emphasis on open source and volunteer system administration and development, and the fact that as a software designer, she didn't actually have a degree in anything 'design-related'. Would constantly complain about how stupid this was because actual design degrees often didn't cover any of the important stuff - the software itself, or the psychology of the users. Puttered around doing freelance for awhile, then finally actually tried to get an actual job with a mapping firm, got it, and loudly declared her life on track. Most of her spare time spent playing videogames, writing, and surfing the internet.
• Problem-solving approach: Set things in motion and then wait and see what happens. Alternately, just step back and wait and see what happens. Pretty common for the field, where even the smallest changes can have unexpected impacts, and even the most successful propositions begin with essentially a gamble.
• Medical problems: Can't wear shoes unless it's cold. Possibly has various psychological problems, but never bothered to see anyone about it. Terrible memory. Does not eat well - considers root beer floats a perfectly reasonable lunch, and often winds up eating two dinners, one in order to not crash, and a second due to socialising. Has trouble at high altitude getting enough air when doing anything remotely strenuous and has taken this to mean she's horribly out of shape, but is really mostly just fairly average. Often gets colds when travelling.
• Travelling experience: Occasional road trips, a few flights per year to visit friends, mostly in-country, a few in Europe. Ski trips, hiking trips, random trips on trains. Conferences all over the world. Has gone gallivanting off into random other countries just because she had a day to kill and no idea what better to do with it.
• Weapons: Six-foot pole (steel or pvc depending on mood/importance of not breaking anything). Mostly just carries it around using it as a walking stick, balancing aid, thing to poke stuff with. Sometimes has to smack wild animals with it. Also various knives and a sword, but these aren't really used as weapons.
• Vices: Laziness, apathy (somewhere along the way lost the ability to take deadlines and the like seriously and has major struggles with motivation), stories (can't put them down until she sees them through to an end)
• Sociability: Quick to make friends, but even quicker to totally forget who they are. Doesn't much care for normal socialising or small talk and prefers to focus on practical, interesting, or productive things. Very loyal to friends if something does come up, but unlikely to be the one to even ask about personal matters.

---

You Dream.

0

You're you. You've always been you, lived your life, dreamed your Dreams. And yet... when you turned the page, you did not expect it to happen. You did not expect suddenly be... here.

You're standing in a street in a shadowed region of the city, the overhang of the higher levels glistening wetly in the reflected sunlight. Abearanoth. You'd always imagined it a bit like a layer cake, but here it's more like a deep, echoey cave full of chatter and magelights, the roar of the waterfalls a hollow sound behind it all, with a wide shelf of even more city sticking out into the sun. And if you walked out into the sunlight, you might see the other layers, all stacked on top of each other, lined with trees, the waterfalls crashing down through the middle of it all with misty abandon.

You make your way out of the shade, and the sun hits you in a wall of dripping heat, blinding. Your sunglasses aren't helping, but then you realise you're wearing safety glasses, not sunglasses; your sunglasses are still up on the top of your head. You swap them, and look around. This is it, all right. The next level up hangs out in a tangle of elaborate architecture, buildings sticking out hanging extensions and connecting to the taller buildings from the layer below. Trees poke out seemingly at random. It looks decidedly unsafe.

"Elves," you mutter.

You know this place implicitly. It's your city, your world. You've been writing it for years, always drifting in the shadows of the higher levels as you followed your characters from story to story, loitering about the temples, laughing at the breweries. The whole joke had been that the place really didn't make sense - and it was because of the beer. The ancient elves had built so many breweries that they'd subsequently just gone ahead and made the rest of it like this anyway, sense be damned.

People pass you by, many more humans than elves, some giving you curious looks. You stand out, you realise, in your linux t-shirt and sunglasses and safety glasses and long, layered skirts. And your belt, with sword and purse, done out in a quality unfitting this world. Everything about you is pristine and modern, unnaturally even; everything they're wearing is simple and to the point, loosely-hanging and providing shelter. Even the nobles are wearing fairly simple clothes, making up details in finer fabric and jewellery. They don't double up their seams. They don't use lace as a filler material. They're not wearing relatively warm clothes meant for a brisk spring day in central Wyoming.

The page had been simple enough. A repeat of the index line: You find yourself in the world of your favourite character. Below it, the catch: This character is gone, disappeared. But as long as you are there, the world will know you to be them. How do you proceed? Vardaman had come to mind. Always an interesting one, you never did quite know what was going through his head. So how indeed, you wondered. And then you turned the page...

You regret this already.

You, frankly, have no idea how to proceed. You take stock. You're here, in the world. You're... who are you? Still you, as far as you can tell, still wearing exactly what you were before. Your hands are the same, your hair is the same tangled blob wadded up on top of your head with a pair of collapsible chopsticks...

And Vardaman? Can you believe the Black Book, that he is really gone? Can you risk it if he is? Without him, the whole world might fall... and what else can you do?

So what are you doing here? Or would Vardaman be doing here? You really don't know. Vardaman's early life never factored in that much. He was always the grizzled old man, never someone your age. He never was in your shoes. He wore boots.

You look down. You're not even wearing shoes. You're barefoot. Your toenails glitter in the sun, sparkling in shades of blue.

This isn't working.

But this is your story. Vardaman is your character. What do you know? He was a Deathdealer, a warrior priest of Kyrule, the local god of death. But before all that, perhaps that's why he would have been here: to join the temple in the first place. And the Great Temple of Kyrule is here, in Abearanoth. You could do this.

You're a woman. If you're really going to be a Vardaman, you're going to be a genderbent Vardaman. A very lazy genderbent Vardaman with weird health problems, no coordination, and a general inability to... wear shoes. But on the other hand, you don't really have any other leads as to what you can even do here, do you? None of your own skills are likely to be the least bit valuable. Your skills are weird.

Or you could just go to the temple and see what happens. You turn in the direction you feel like it should be in, to the north; there was always a sense of going in this way, though you never wrote it down. The whole city is north-south, built into the mountainside, jungle all around. It's big, noisy, full of people, with streets winding around under towering buttresses and suspended tarps casting welcome shade from the tropical sun. You never really grasped how big it really was, or how dense, or warm.

You don't know where you're going. The Temple is probably not even on this level.

You stop at the side of the road, trying to get your bearings. None of this makes sense. How is it even possible? How are you here? Your world has no magic, no gods, nothing but the harsh, cold reality of being alone in a vast and uncaring universe. Or so you believed. If this is real, if you're actually here now - and it sure feels real; the humidity alone makes it feel like you're swimming in the air, and the smells are a wonderful combination of leaves and humanity and garbage quite unlike anything you've experienced before - then you were wrong. About everything. Magic was real there, too.

Either you've finally gone totally barking mad and fallen into your own story, or everything you understood about the nature of your own world was wrong... and you've fallen into your own story.

"Excuse me," you say to a passerby, except it doesn't come out right, and you realise you're trying to speak a language you only half know. But half is... something, at least. You'd forgotten the language barriers, and yet somehow you do seem to know at least a little bit of Desh. A quirk in the magic, teach you the languages Vardaman would have known?

The woman pauses and looks at you curiously.

"Directions?" you ask.

After a bit of finaggling, you manage to communicate what you're after, and she points you in a direction, and up a level. You try to thank her, and go on to get a little lost, and a little confused at the teleporters, before someone else just activates it for you.

And then you see it. The Great Temple of Kyrule - it turns out to be a partially walled-off complex of similar, but not quite congruous, architecture to the rest of Abearanoth. A grand archway frames the road as it continues into the complex itself. Embedded into either side, in some grey metal, is the insignia of Kyrule: the mask and skull that you had managed, once, to put onto a disappointingly low-resolution raster image of a coin. Writing in a script you don't recognise at all is engraved down the stone. A couple of guards, wearing the same insignia, are loitering beneath it. They regard you, and a few others also headed in, disinterestedly as you approach.

You stop beneath the arch, looking up, and then around. One of your other characters had been unable to pass this after being turned into a vampire, and now you're curious - where would that point have been? How did that work, exactly? You poke at the ground with your foot. One of the guards asks what you're doing, and you almost freeze up trying to come up with the words before managing to just force yourself to try, and ask him where the edge of all this is. He comes over and shows you, indicating the outward side of the walls and archway. You step out and nudge at the space in the air with your hand.

"Interesting," you say.

"What is?" he asks, almost laughing.

You shake your head, and resist the urge to squee. "Really big story," you say. This is real. You're here. So many of your stories converged at this temple. Began here, ended, waypointed. You could take a lifetime exploring it, retracing all your characters' steps, and for the first time, you think you understand how the pilgrims in Jerusalem felt, remembering as you'd walked among them in the shadowed temples, the open sun. Touching the wall, the rock, the altar. This is it. This whole world is your Jerusalem....

But you can't afford to just go pure fangirl here. You have a role to fulfil, a part to play. You're Vardman. You're... a kid in a strange and unfamiliar place, with nothing, having left home for the first time in your life in order to begin anew. This is all new to you. You're not at home at all, and you've certainly never seen anything like it.

...you're a bloody writer who's travelled the world over. You've spent your whole life exploring new places and cultures, first in books and film, and later on, even in person, with friends from even stranger places along as your companions. And now you're in an ancient elven city on the mountainous coast of the equivalent of the godsdamn Amazon. You're at a temple to a god you made up. It has featured in your dreams, in your stories, showing up time and again in all the different fragments, becoming a fixture in your imagination. And it's right here.

You squee, just a little, and run off, grinning, almost giggling, into the courtyard beyond.

"Right, then," the guard says.

You force yourself to slow to a walk, to pretend you're normal, calm, just like all the other people here. Most of them seem to be headed for the main temple building just ahead, so you go that way too, passing other courtyards mostly walled off, and myriad buildings of sundry function. You find yourself wanting to comment, wishing you had people with you to talk to, a group of friends, with all the in-jokes. The ones who would understand the comparison you really want to make about all this being like walking into a big damn furry convention. When you're the biggest furry of them all.

The threshold is a wall of coolness, the thick stone blocking out the tropical heat, and inside, in the entryway, is a statue of a shrouded, kneeling figure, holding before it a tattered cloth. Some of the folks ahead of you touch the cloth, a couple whispering prayers, and you brush your fingers across it as you pass as well. Your fingertips tingle with a strange warmth as they come away, but you hardly notice. You've stopped. You're staring at the mural on the far wall, a vast painted relief depicting what looks like the entire abbreviated history of Kyrule - including quite a few things that definitely haven't happened yet.

At least... not if the year is what you think it is.

You go over, getting close enough that there's noone in the way, and read it like a story, piecing together the ideas and events - the old gods, the ascension, the fall, the slaying of Eapherod, the breaking of magic, the Exodus. You're guessing, but it's a fun game. Winged cats following a masked figure - Kyrule when he tried to shoo them out of Eapherod's garden, most likely. The Guardians kneeling around one, who's sacrificed - you're not sure who it is, but you have a worrying feeling it might be you, or perhaps the other character, Coraline. A dragon, spreading its shadow across the world. A Dead soul in chains held up as judgement is passed - definitely Coraline. The return of Eapherod. The Keepers, speaking, telling the stories. Something you are absolutely convinced is a hovercraft full of eels and badgers, though it looks more like a sailboat and the figures aboard appear more elven than badger. Worlds breaking. Tendrils seeping. The final battle where all the gods gather and face the dragon with their armies before them, and above it, almost hidden in the clouds, two robed figures before an enormous throne, guiding them. At the end of the battle, and the mural, more winged cats are practically falling off the edge.

You realise you're gaping at it and quickly shut your mouth. How did this thing go from 'dragon!' to 'entire damn story written in stone from the start'?! The only way it could be more accurate is if the sphinxes - the cats - at the ending had formed a giant ball. Suddenly this whole thing isn't fun at all, and you don't know what to make of it.

It was just supposed to be a mural. Ambience. Plot contrivance.

You sidle off into the main chamber, now almost afraid to see what you'll notice there.

It's a vast hall, with more reliefs on the walls, and elaborate decor on the pillars. At the far end is an immense shrine with statues and altars and candles and all the things, with much smaller shrines around the hall as well. The place is packed, in particular around the main shrine, and people pushing toward it even as others squeeze their way out, but you stop closer to the middle of the room, looking up. The ceiling is oddly plain, but with shapes of circles forming an unusual architecture of their own. It almost matches the rest of the hall. Almost, but not quite. The real ceiling is higher up.

In your mind, you picture it - a couple of the circles just crashing down out of the ceiling in a shower of masonry, two elves falling down with it and scrambling away. Neither of them are terribly concerned about the damage. Both are total nerds. All the other non-nerds they crash down into the midst of, however, are understandably far more concerned, because they don't know what's going on or why the ceiling would even have been breakable...

"This isn't the usual attraction," someone comments. You glance over and find a priest standing next to you, and he gives you a curious look. "Whatcha looking at?" he asks.

"The..." you say, pointing up. You motion circles with your finger. "The thing." On the plus side, you probably don't need to worry about blurting out spoilers when you can't even explain a circle.

"What... thing?" he asks, peering up at the ceiling.

"It is a piece of history," you reply. "I... think."

He gives you a somewhat more confused look, and you just shrug. Your stomach growls, and you drop a hand to your purse - it's a small one, just an extra pocket on your belt, really, but you find half a protein bar amidst some random tools and a thing of glue.

You take a bite and immediately recall why you didn't just eat it all in the first place.

"So, er," you say to the priest, "If I want to join the temple, how do I do that?"

"Oh, is that why you're here?" he asks.

"Yes." You try to look convincing, but you're dressed like a weirdo and holding a protein bar.

He seems to buy it. "Follow me," he says.

He takes you to a room with a mish-mash of other random folk in it. A woman is in front giving some sort of speech, prattling along about the temple and great things and purpose or whatever, with some other priests also around. "Just pretend you were here all along," he tells you, winks, and slips back out.

You nod, and turn to the front, vaguely listening as you unhappily finish the protein bar, trying not to crinkle the wrapper too much, though you can only really understand some of it. So you look to the people, instead - there's 20-some of you here, mostly random younger folk, kids, really, mostly peasant-looking, with a couple who might have been tradesfolk, or failed tradesfolk, and in the back, next to you, three much better-dressed guys of rather varying heights who look more like nobles of some kind, and have swords. Some of the folk seem enthusiastic, others fearful, though it's hard to tell exactly from behind. There's a bit of shuffling about. The sword guys seem downright disinterested, and talk quietly in covered whispers.

The woman finishes and one of the other priests starts talking instead, saying something about glory and service and something about a tree, but his thick accent makes him almost impossible for you to follow. The sword guys, however, actually start listening to this. One of them notices you looking at them and gives you a slight salute.

Later, when the priests are done orientating, or whatever it was they were even doing, they ask if anyone has any questions. You have many, of course, not the least of which is if anyone here speaks a language you actually know. But asking that doesn't strike you as likely to be particularly useful in practice. The sword guys, meanwhile, start nudging each other, telling each other, 'you ask', 'no, you', 'go on, ask', even as most of the room turns to eye them.

"We can hear you, you know," one of the priests says. "If you have something to ask, ask it."

They stop. They exchange glances. "When can we pledge our swords to Kyrule?" the tallest one asks.

The priest sighs. "In time. Does anyone have any more... immediate questions?" he asks.

"Is there food?" you ask. A sword guy sniggers.

The priest turns away, throwing his hands in the air, but the woman who had been speaking earlier puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and steps forward. "All who serve the Eternal will be fed and clothed. We look after our own."

Some other folks have more normal questions, and these are quickly addressed as well. Then you're all escorted to a dormitory of sorts, given bundles of clothes and such, and told to report to the initiation chambers in half an hour.

The others start divvying up beds and arguing about who gets what. A few stand around timidly, unsure what to do. You ignore them for the moment, and instead eyeball the folded grey bundle in your hands uncertainly. You shake it out and a pair of trousers and some other random things flop out onto the ground. You scoop them up, realising maybe randomly in the middle of the room wasn't the best place for that.

"You. You're with us." One of the sword guys, who is very short, is looking up at you expectantly.

"What?" you say.

"We've got the corner," he says. "We saved a bed for you."

"Why?" you say.

"Because you're cool," he says.

You glance down at your linux shirt and only barely manage to avoid giving him a very dubious look. Linux, it says. Under-priced and overqualified (as am I). Not exactly the shirt you would have chosen to wear to another planet, and in light of your current predicament, you're sort of glad nobody is likely to be able to read it, let alone understand it.

"Oh," you say. "How many years are you?"

"Sixteen," he says proudly.

You try to remember when you were sixteen. First you draw a blank, but then a bit of math tells you that would have been mid-high-school, and you vaguely recall being a total nerd, sleeping through calculus, wearing a cloak, and painting in every class but art, at which point you put away the entire set of paints you'd been hauling around... and pulled out a history book. You weren't exactly a rebel, but you certainly didn't do what anyone said, or what made sense, or that fit in, in any way whatsoever, with what everyone else was doing, either.

"Oh," you say. The sad thing is, you haven't really come that far since, either. Also you're almost twice that age now.

"What?" he asks.

"What year it is?" you ask.

"Screaming leopard, wasn't it?"

You stare at him blankly, not even recognising the words as words, before you remember that all the years had weird animal names for some reason. "Ah, the number?" you ask.

"1864," he replies. "And that I am actually certain of."

You have him repeat it just to be sure you're understanding the number correctly, and try to remember. The story began around the year 2000-ish, after the Exodus. And Vardaman was pretty old, which means... this could actually be around when Vardaman's journey would have begun. Maybe? You're not sure.

"I know, I know, the names are so weird," the guy is saying. "And random. And they give no context at all! How is anyone supposed to work with a dilapidated badger or seventeen muskoxen or the grey blight? It's nonsense."

You nod blankly. "They are... really not good when you do not know the language," you point out.

"Ah! Yes, I can see why that might be a problem, too," he says. "So... will you join us? We'll teach you the language."

You shrug and follow him over.

The other two sword guys are getting into their robes, but they nod at you as come over.

"You're not much like these other folks, either, are you?" the tall one says, putting his sword back on over the whole ensemble. "I'm Juane of Atkis, that's Kerka, and he's Leifos da Nereimen." He indicates the 16-year-old who had been sent to fetch you last.

"Leifos," you say to him.

"Yeah," Leifos says, and then starts stripping off his town clothes right there. He's the shortest of the lot, and very lanky. Juane is the tallest, and rather well-built as well, whereas Kerka is more just wide, and about the same height as you. Their brown hair and similar features, however, suggest they might all be related.

"Vardaman," you say. You dump the bundle onto a bed, shaking it out for real this time, and find a tunic and an outer robe among a bunch of other various sundries. You put them on over the clothes you're already wearing.

"You know, aside from the colours, that almost works," Juane says.

You switch which skirt is on top, tucking the bright green-blue-purple one into the black one underneath, and then put your belt on again over the tunic. It's a wide circle chain belt, and it stands out, terribly bright and shiny, against the very plain robes, but the belt that had come with the bundle was too simple to clip anything to. You give it an annoyed look.

Juane gives it an amused look. "That does work," he says.

You really want to loudly exclaim 'Fashion!' in response, but have no idea how to actually say it. The guys, meanwhile, move to regard the rest of the room. Everyone else is also changing, and even the more timid stragglers seem to have found spaces to call their own at this point.

"So what do you make of them?" Kerka asks.

"They lack purpose," Juane says.

"They'll get it," Leifos says, trying to get his tunic to stop bunching up. You give him a hand, straightening it out so it at least hangs better, but it's at least three sizes too big for him.

"You are really small," you tell him.

Leifos bats you away and pulls on his robe. "Well, we're doing this," he says.

"Yes," Juane says.

"They are also," you say.

"As well," Leifos corrects.

"Right."

1

Initiation happens. Half the initiates are late, apparently because they couldn't find the room, and arrive in a big gaggle while the rest of you stand around waiting, with the head priestess woman standing by an altar of sorts, looking very disappointed.

Then they show up. Things get on with. She makes another speech. Everyone sort of queues up in front of the altar, and somehow your group winds up in front, possibly because all of the others shrank away, and you lot didn't.

You glance at the sword guys enquiringly, and Juane gestures for you to go first with an elaborate flourish. You give him a dubious look, but step up to the altar.

"Name?" the priestess asks.

"Vardaman," you reply.

"Place your hands on the altar," she says. When you do, she continues, "Do you now leave behind all you possessed, to begin anew in the Light of the Eternal?"

"Er... what?" you say uncertainly, trying to buy time to parse her words.

"Is there a problem?" she asks.

"Not my shoes. These are good shoes," you say, and then immediately regret not just admitting what the real problem is.

She gives you a quick look, and says, "You're not wearing any shoes."

"Yes."

"Why are you here?" she asks flatly.

For a moment, you panic, trying to come up with the right words, and then even doubting the ones you think should be right. The priestess frowns. So you just start talking anyway, hoping it's right, hoping it even makes sense. "To give my life and soul at the Eternal," you reply. You don't want to say it. You don't like what it means, how it feels, the finality, the certainty of it. But it's something.

"And if the Eternal doesn't want it?" she asks.

"I will serve him no... so much as I can," you say, surprised. You think you got it right, at least, but that feeling. That strange flutter in your heart, that feeling is Vardaman, to you. But why? What is it? You don't even know. It feels a bit like dying.

There's a long pause. The priestess eyes you consideringly, before finally giving a slight not. "You are witnessed, Vardaman," she says, and places a small metal disc with a cord on the altar in front of you. "Welcome."

You pick it up and back away. It seems to be some sort of necklace, and you realise she's wearing the same, though with several more discs under the top one, each one a different colour and larger than the previous. The other priests also have them, but where they all have two or three, she has five.

Juane claps you reassuringly on the shoulder as he goes up.

"Name?" the priestess says.

"Juane of Atkis," he replies, and places his hands on the altar.

"Do you now leave behind all that you possessed, to begin anew in the Light of the Eternal?"

"Yes," Juane says.

"You are witnessed, Juane of Atkis," she says, and passes him his disc. "Welcome."

"Easy," he tells you as Kerka goes up, and puts on his disc.

You just shake your head, and tie the cord of your own around your neck, putting it on over the ankh you're already wearing.

Once Leifos is also done, the four of you squeeze your way back and spill out into the corridor. As soon as the door shuts behind you, Leifos turns on you with his face shaped half in incredulity and half wonder. "What was that?!" he asks.

"I..." You try to find the words to even express your exasperation. "I wish they do not talk so... proper!" you say. "It's difficult to understand. You are... easier."

"Ah!" Leifos says. "Right, maaaaybe you shouldn't have gone first."

"Well, not everyone here is from Deshland," Kerka says. "Just... mostly, from the look of it."

"Right," you say.

"You'll get there," Leifos says. "And she seemed happy once you explained yourself."

You look away, embarrassed.

"So apparently our indoctrination starts tomorrow," Juane says. "We've got all evening to... I dunno, eat food? Explore? Get hopelessly lost and have to be inevitably rescued by the local constabulary?"

"Except for that last bit," Kerka says, "sounds like a fine night out."

Nobody disagrees, so you all head off in a direction. The light coming in the various windows is rosy and angled, and supplemented now by soft blue magelights glowing slightly out from the wall. You wave a hand through one as you pass, and your fingers go right through it.

"And you, Vardaman," Juane says, "where are you from, anyway?"

"Iliesk," you reply. That's where Vardaman was from, at least, but it's an easier sell than central Wyoming.

"That's a long way to come," Juane says, "but you're doing well enough. You just need to talk more. And hear more. So we'll talk. And hear things. Go on, say something."

"Something," you say.

Leifos snorts.

"I walked right into that one," Juane says.

"Yes, you did," Kerka says.

You amble along, talking, clarifying phrases, peering into random rooms. They explain their situation a bit, saying they're from up north, a region of Deshland called Seldarch. They had a bit of a complication in which their family was ousted in some manner that doesn't really make sense to you, and they were supposed to be exiled and leave Deshland outright, but they decided, naw, let's make trouble with the temples instead. And they like Kyrule well enough, so here they are.

You find this all pretty funny, frankly. Religion out of spite. A good cause if you ever heard one.

Eventually you find food. It is, in fact, a disturbingly ordinary-looking cafeteria. There's tables and chairs and people eating, and even a great big window in the wall with a counter with trays of food laid out, complete with a very irate-looking fat woman on the other side now glaring very pointedly at your group.

You all go over to her.

"Hello!" Kerka says brightly.

The woman makes a disgusted noise and withdraws back into the room on the other side of the counter.

Kerka give her backside a wounded look, and you grab some trays and sit down. The others proceed to dig in, but after struggling a bit with your fork, which seems to be solely useful for poking things, you suddenly remember you actually do have a pair of chopsticks and pull them out of your hair. It falls down in a total mess.

You shake your hair out a bit and then start properly shovelling food into your mouth.

Kerka is watching you dubiously.

"Is that proper?" Leifos asks.

You pause, holding up a giant wad of meat and potatoes. "Yes," you say, and shove it into your face. After a bit, you manage to swallow it all, and add, "It's fast. Can... eat without seeing."

"But you're... picking your food up like with tweezers," Leifos says.

"That's fairly typical in some areas," Juane says. "They're chopsticks. Even some groups around here use them."

"Yes, chopsticks," you say. "Good."

Kerka bursts out laughing.

You finish eating far more quickly than any of the others as the conversation shifts to swords. You follow along, noting the different words. Many are totally new, but you piece quite a few of them together from context. Deathdealers come up, and you particularly follow this discussion, but it turns out to be mostly just speculation on how they're actually formed. You tell them it's water. They make Deathdealers with water.

"Vardaman?" a woman says next to you. You look up - it's the priestess from before, looking down at you with piercing blue eyes, her discs dangling over what, from this angle, you realise is a very large bosom. You don't even know what to call that cup-size. Videogame? Fanart?

You realise you're staring and attempt to stop. It only sort of works. "Er... yes?" you reply.

"I feel we should speak about your initiation," she says. "Your response was... unusual."

"Sorry," you reply. She's still standing over you. You wonder if you should maybe get up, or she should sit down, or something should actually happen, but she's given no indication one way or the other what she seems to expect of the situation either, at least as far as you can tell.

"Why didn't you simply answer directly?" she asks.

"I... I don't understand," you begin, but then Juane answers for you.

"She's not from Deshland," Juane says. "She's still a bit new to the language, and had a hard time figuring it out right away."

"Yes," you say, "that."

"And where do you come from?" she asks, staring at you, piercingly.

"Iliesk," you reply. "I arrived to today."

"Then perhaps this will be easier?" she says, except now she's speaking a language you understand perfectly. Lesk, all neatly tucked into your brain like you've known it your whole life.

"Aye," you say, surprised, slipping into the same. "Much, thank you."

She nods. "Why come here?" she asks. "All this way, when there are temples closer to home, surely."

...and that's the problem. You don't actually know. You're here because of a magic book you found in a thrift shop. But Vardaman? Why would he be here? He would have needed to be here at some point because this was where they trained the Deathdealers, but why did he actually come here in the first place? Because his mother told him to? Because it seemed like a good idea at the time? Because talking pigeons tricked him into it?

On the other hand, you're a writer. And you don't just write fiction - you also write grants, which are a whole other level of combined bullshit promises and qualified prognostication. You always had this saying about writers, that they didn't need to be the smartest one in the room, just the biggest bullshitter, and you are very good at bullshit.

You open your mouth, and lies come out.

"I came via Ord," you tell her. "I was lost, and some folks helped me, but I... I didn't really fit in there. Everything was so big and... I don't know." You stumble a bit, putting on a sort of confused face for emphasis, but in this language you have no worry at all that the words, at least, are exactly what you mean them to be. "Anyway, they got me to a Gateway and I... came here."

"Why not go home?" she asks.

"I... don't really have a home to go back to," you reply, looking a bit embarrassed. "Not anymore. But here, maybe I can be of use. Do something good. For once."

She gives you an appraising look. The sword guys are watching intently, leaning over, waiting to see what she'll do as well. You eye her uncertainly.

"You meant what you said," she says. It's almost a question, but not quite.

"Aye."

She stares down at you for a long moment, and you stare up at her and her enormous bosom. Then she simply turns away without another word and leaves.

You give the sword guys a confused look.

"Well?" Leifos asks. "What'd she say? What'd you say? That sounded really interesting."

You tell them, only leaving out the bit where you made it all up. You make up a couple of other bits - Vardaman's mother might have been a hag of some sort, so you just go with that as your general background - but it's all a bit mangled because you don't really know the words. You figure that's how you'll get away with this, however: if you contradict yourself later, you can just blame a miscommunication.

All in all, they're not really sure what to make of her response either, but they think it's really cool that you've been to Ord. You haven't really, of course; Ord is a part of this universe that just happens to be more sci-fi, which makes it a good excuse to explain your clothes and whatnot, whereas Abearanoth is on the fantasy planet.

Later, when you all get back to the dormitory, a tired-looking old man is arguing with one of the other initiates. He turns to you as you approach.

"You four," he says, "you missed the chores assignment, so you get what's left after everyone else picked. You're on roof duty." He almost sounds gleeful as he says it, like some secret victory has taken place here.

"Interesting," Juane says.

"Roof duty?" you ask.

"Yup," the man says.

You turn to the others. "What?" you say.

They briefly explain the words, in particular 'roof' and what 'duty' actually probably means in this context, with the old man confirming/clarifying. Apparently you need to report to some guy tomorrow afternoon and... repair the roof. Or something. Even the clarification doesn't seem particularly clear.

"Oh," you say. You're still a bit confused, frankly. "Should... not somebody with experience do this?" you ask.

"Of course you've got experience," the old man says. "Only a team with experience would choose this task."

"But..." Leifos starts, but the old man just ambles off, humming to himself.

"Yup," Kerka says. "We've pissed them off already and now they're trying to kill us."

"I'm sure we'll manage," Juane says.

"Maybe," you say. "Roofing is... simple, mostly. Need to... not fall?"

Juane gives you a worried look, and you realise that probably came out more worried than you'd intended.

"I have... small experience," you tell them. "Sufficient to worry." You'd been on a few rooftops before. Generally just running around for the hell of it, occasionally actually doing some shingling or even putting in the rafters in the first place, but whatever they use here is probably totally different from what you're familiar with. Not that you'd been paying much attention to the rooftops.

"How worried should we be?" Juane asks.

"Know when we see it," you reply.

Only as you're getting to sleep, using your blankets as extra pillows, does it occur to you that if the priestess was a Keeper, she probably would have known you were lying. And she almost certainly was a Keeper, one of the high-ranking priests who serve as the mortal bearers of Kyrule's knowledge and power. That many of those discs, the way she called Kyrule 'the Eternal'... it wasn't even a word you'd known in that language before you heard her say it, but as soon as she had you realised what she meant.

You finger your own disc uncertainly. It's very simple, a single large symbol pressed into it, and beneath it, a single word in a script you don't know.

The symbol, though, you know. A circle with a line through it, like a ϕ. A symbole for Kyrule.

2

The next day starts fiendishly early. You get out of bed, comb your hair at some point, put on the rest of your clothes, and refuse to really wake up until you walk into a bed, two tables, a wall, five random other people, and the same door twice in a row.

Somehow you got all the way to a cafeteria and are in fact holding a bowl of some kind of porridge in the middle of eating it. The door isn't even closed, but instead propped open sticking out from the wall and doorway, such that you apparently got stuck behind it somehow.

Kerka is watching you, head cocked.

"Are you okay?" he asks, looking rather amused.

"Yes," you reply. "I... need sleep. More?"

"Uhuh," he says, taking your arm and steering you out. "Sure. We're sitting over there."

You sit down with Juane and Leifos, also eating their porridge, and glare at them, daring them to comment.

"No comment," Juane says.

"So what were you saying when we were reciting the tenants earlier?" Leifos asks you.

You give him a blank look and then add, for emphasis, "Huh?"

"After we got up, we washed, we went to one of the shrines and they had us go through the tenants?" Leifos says.

"I... what?" you say. You don't remember any of that. You don't even know how to say the word for 'remember'.

"You don't remember any of that?" Leifos asks.

You shake your head, but now you probably know what word to use if this happens again.

"Wow," Kerka says.

"Well, you were mumbling something along with the rest of us," Leifos says. "Sounded pretty strange, too. Very... I don't know."

"I don't as well," you say.

"Either," Juane corrects. "You don't either."

"I don't either," you say after him. You're starting to think you don't much care for this language, nor having to learn it on the fly like this. And this is with an apparent friend group willing to help you through all of it. Did Vardaman have this? What was he thinking, coming here? Why did he do this? Why couldn't he have been lazy like you and just seek out the path of least resistance?

On the other hand, your brain seems to be working better than usual. You seem to be remembering the words with little difficulty. That's... different. Isn't it?