Storyteller’s words, unsurprisingly, had brought a dozen more questions to Cadence’s mind, but one stood out above the rest. “You mentioned leveling up. How does that work then?”

The sun was inching towards the horizon, and both Storyteller and Cadence knew they’d need to make their way down from the bonfire circle soon, but the experienced adventurer was clearly enjoying teaching Cadence as much as she enjoyed learning.

“Well…” Storyteller started to respond to Cadence’s question, then paused, instead offering her a sly look. “How do you think it works, with what you know about gifts so far?”

Cadence suppressed a little flicker of irritation at man’s tone. If there was one thing she hated, it was being talked down to. But she didn’t think he was doing it intentionally. Normally, when people used that tone with her, it was an effort to just get some peace from her often endless questions, but with Storyteller, it seemed like he was actually interested in her response.

So instead of expressing her initial reaction, Cadence considered the question, and what the Storyteller had told her so far. “Well… if my gifts get stronger, and can even grow new abilities as I level up then it’s like… the magic flowing through the gifts is making them grow, right? LIke, uhm…” Cadence remembered a problem her mother had to deal with a couple years before, and she smiled in understanding. “Like when we had a bunch of rain, and one of the streams in the forest got redirected. The rushing water carved a new part of the river through the earth while it was all loose and soft. The magic is like the water, and my soul is like the ground being shaped by it!”

Storyteller blinked in surprise, and even his eerie, ominous yellow eyes showed shock. “Well… yes. Exactly right. As our gifts channel energy into our soul, those paths become broader and more well-used, allowing them to both deepen and expand. Our attributes grow as our souls become more capable of taking in magic, our abilities expand as the patterns of the gifts become more firmly entrenched into our souls, and new abilities form as the gifts expand within us, just like that river you described.”

Cadence beamed in pride. It took a moment for Storyteller to recover from his surprise, and Cadence eagerly pounced on the opportunity to get in another question. “So how do I do it then? My mom always said leveling up was really dangerous, it’s why it’s so hard for hunters to get to higher levels.”

Storyteller cleared his throat, and Cadence could tell he was still trying to get his balance back. She hid a satisfied smirk - it was rare to see the mysterious man off his groove, and she was proud that her answer had surprised him so much.

“Right, well. For your mother and the other hunters here, I have no doubt that it is,” he acknowledged. “Every gift has its own way of leveling up. For the gift of the hunter, like Ryme and the others have, successfully tracking and defeating increasingly powerful foes is the key to gaining experience. Weaker enemies will work too, but much more slowly - I imagine no small number of hunters test themselves against more powerful monsters too soon, and get hurt or killed for the effort.”

“And relic gifts are a big problem too, right?’ Cadence asked, remembering the conversation she had with Old Man Callahan the week before. “Like my mom’s bear gift, or Brian’s spear.”

Storyteller seemed a little less surprised now, and just quirked a small smile at Cadence to convey his approval. “Relic gifts are a little different. They use the magic in an item as a way to artificially carve a gift into the soul - but that gift is less fluid and powerful than a conventional gift. Instead of growing deeper on its own, it needs to be expanded by adding more and more powerful items to empower it.” He shook his head with a frown. “You’ll find, as you explore the world more, that relic gifts are often looked down on. They’re seen as a shortcut for the wealthy and lazy, or a tool to limit the growth of commoners.

He shook his head more forcefully. “But you’re lucky enough to not be trapped by a relic gift, so we’ll leave that topic aside for now. Most gifts, like those given by the Divine Archetypes, level up in the way we discussed, but in different ways, depending on the nature of the gi-”

“But my echo gift didn’t come from an Archetype,” Cadence cut him off. “Why does it follow the same rules?”

Storyteller huffed with all-too-familiar exasperation. “It’s complicated. Suffice to say that my ability to give you the gift of the echo uses the same principles as an Archetype, okay? Stay with me, I’m trying to talk about how you actually level up your gifts.”

“Sorry.” Cadence squirmed in her seat a little. She had only just started getting the answers to questions she had spent her entire life asking, she didn’t want to upset Storyteller now!

He just chuckled. “Curiosity is a fine thing, Cadence. I think you’ll find it a boon once you get out of this town. But you’ve still got to let me talk too, okay? Believe it or not, I’m going somewhere with all of this.”

It wasn’t until she noticed his more casual language that Cadence realized Storyteller’s eyes had shifted back to brown. How was he jumping back and forth like that? It had to be some product of the echo gift, right?

Cadence had to physically bite her bottom lip to keep the question from bursting out of her. Instead, she nodded silently.

“Thank you,” Storyteller told her with a chuckle. “As I was saying, you’re fortunate in that your gifts don’t actually require combat to level up. The gift of the wanderer just wants you to explore - the more new places you see and new experiences you have, the faster your gift will level up. The gift of the echo is similar, but for your soul. As you find new ways to use Gift Reflection and Soul Surge, you’ll find your gift getting stronger.”

Cadence smiled at that, her previous questions forgotten for the moment. “Really? No fighting? I just have to use my gifts and explore, and I’ll get to level up?”

Storyteller lifted a hand up, holding it flat and tilting it back and forth. “In some ways. I find, for an adventurer, combat is more or less an inevitability. It’s a big part of what we do, and we’re gonna spend a lot of our training time getting you used to your new abilities and attributes. But unlike someone with a more direct combat-related gift, you won't find yourself chasing more and more dangerous fights just to level up.”

“I like that,” Cadence admitted, her eyes darting back down to her brands. She bit her lip again as she realized, not for the first time, that she was growing more and more excited to leave Felisen. To see the world, to explore. To be free.

She just hated that the thought always came coupled with the image of her mother, alone.

“So,” Cadence asked, trying to distract herself from the unpleasant thought, “you and my mom talked about getting a third gift. That’s at Initiate level, right? How does that work?”

Storyteller considered the question, then turned towards the horizon. The sun was truly setting now. “This is the last topic for the night, okay? I know you have a lot of questions, but I’m supposed to entertain at the Honeyed Pear tonight.”

Cadence brightened. “Really? Can I come?” 

“Ask your mother,” Storyteller told her with a grin. “And stay focused, remember?”

“Right! New gifts!”

“Yes, new gifts. Leveling up comes in a few phases. First, at Novice level, you get your first two gifts. This opens your soul to the flow of magic, but the abilities you have are still rudimentary, and the boosts you have to your attributes are small. Once each of your gifts reach Apprentice, you’ll find your abilities growing in complexity and power, as your soul grows used to the magic being channeled through it.” Storyteller paused, and added, “I should clarify. While your gifts level up independently of each other, you’re not truly considered to have reached the next level until all your gifts are at that level. So even if your wanderer gift reaches Apprentice before your echo gift, you’d still be considered a Novice.”

Cadence nodded brightly, and Storyteller continued. “After Apprentice comes Initiate. At this level, your soul has been reinforced enough by magic that not only will you find your attributes boosts improving, your soul will have sufficient strength to accept another gift. It will need it, in fact - your gifts can’t advance past Initiate without a third gift at the same level. So you’ll need to find and accept a third gift, and raise that gift from Novice to Apprentice, then to Initiate. Once you do so, all three of your gifts will be able to make the jump to Adept. Generally, Adept is seen as the beginning of true power for gift bearers. It’s where your boosts will begin truly surpassing what a normal person could do, and when your gifts will unlock a third ability.”

“And what’s after that? You have four gifts, right? How high level do you need to be for that?”

Storyteller held up his hand. “That’ll be enough for now, Cadence,” he told her. “It’s getting late, and it’ll be at least a few years before the second tier of levels is relevant to you. I think I’ve dumped enough information on you today.”

Cadence frowned, but only for a moment. Storyteller wasn’t going anywhere, not any time soon. And once he did leave, she’d have the chance to follow him. There was no need to get all of her answers today.

“Okay.” She accepted reluctantly. “But tonight’s story better be a good one!”

“It will be,” Storyteller reassured her. It wasn’t a brag on his part, it was simply a statement of well-founded fact. “And you’d better enjoy it - tomorrow, we start your physical training. I’m gonna start with having you join the hunters for their practice sessions.”

Cadence blanched. Sure, she had teased Brian about that, but she didn’t actually think... “You’re kidding, right?” 

Storyteller had already turned to walk down the hill, and didn’t turn around to respond.

“Storyteller!? Please tell me you’re kidding!”

#

The Honeyed Pear was packed. Normally, the tavern primarily catered to the town’s dozen or so bachelors - mostly loggers who went into the forest to fell magical and mundane trees, as well as a few of the single hunters. On holidays and weekends, it was normal for the taproom to host a larger number of the townsfolk, but Cadence had never seen the pub so full on a weekday.

Word had gotten out that Storyteller wasn’t just a title - it was an apt descriptor of the man, who had proven himself a skilled orator with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of legends, myths, tales, and adventurer stories. Cadence suspected that many of his stories were actually accounts of his own journeys, with the edges sanded down to make them easier for the people of Felisen to digest, but he had an equal number talking about fantastical beings, like elves and dwarves, that everyone knew didn’t exist outside stories.It had apparently gotten to the point that even families were patronizing the Pear, complete with a large number of the village’s children.

Cadence sat at a table with Denning, and Ryme arrived not long afterwards. Even Old Man Callahan had shown up this time. The Pear’s serving girls hustled around, pouring drinks, serving up bowls of steaming stew with hunks of bread, and collecting copper rings for their work. The tavern bustled with jovial conversations, gentle chatter, and even the occasional bawl of a baby, but all of that stopped as Storyteller took his place by the mantle. Quickly, the cacophony dropped to a susurrus of excited whispers, and even that faded soon after.

The Honeyed Pear didn’t boast a performer often enough to merit a true stage, but Storyteller’s height still made him easy to see from across the room, and the seats had been subtly arranged to face towards the cheery fireplace.

When Storyteller spoke, his voice was a smooth, gentle baritone that effortlessly rolled through the room. From where she sat, with the fire behind him, even Cadence’s improved awareness wasn’t enough to make out the color of Storyteller’s eyes, but she was sure that this was another one of his faces. Maybe, given his name, it was the most genuine of them all.

“Hello, friends,” Storyteller greeted the gathered crowd. “Thus far, I have entertained you all with stories of heroism and derring-do, great deeds, felled monsters, and rescued innocents.” Storyteller’s face was sober and remote, and as his gaze panned over the room, Cadence was sure his eyes paused on her a moment. “Tonight’s story is different. But despite that, it is important, and I hope you all will hear it well.”

The entire audience seemed to lean in imperceptibly, like an indrawn breath, and Storyteller began his tale.

#

In a time before the bastion cities, the Wastes, or even the Realm, there stood a grand and glorious fortress. The fortress was built for a purpose we all know well - to protect those who lived inside. But this was a fortress unlike any other, before or since. It was massive, a labor of generations, large enough to fit an entire city within its stout walls. Terraced roofs bore great gardens, courtyards acted as city squares, and every block boasted a library. The fortress was strong, and its people lived happy lives.

Over the fortress city stood the palace of its king. The strength of the fortress was the king’s duty, and so he ruled from his throne room at the top of the highest tower. From this high perch, he could survey the surrounding lands like a great map spread out before him. His army stood tall, and though the threats that charged the fortress seemed endless, they never broke through the adamant walls, ensuring that the people of the city below lived lives of peace. 

But we all know that peace is something to be cherished when we have it, for it is a gift more fleeting than any other, and in time, even the peace of the fortress was doomed to one day end.

As the king watched from his perch in the tallest tower, he was always the first to see any threat approach the fortress. And so his eyes were the first to gaze upon the terrible monster that stalked towards the high walls that safeguarded his people. The fortress had faced many monsters in its years, and the king and his men had stood against them all without fear in their hearts. But none had been as terrible as the being that now bore down upon their haven.

Despite the terror the beast inspired, the king’s duty was to find some way to fell it, as he always did. But as he looked over the massive monster, his heart began to sink. Its skin was lined with scales of blackest night, and its teeth were sharp as swords. The mere swipe of its tail could reshape mountains, and its every step flattened entire forests. It was to the monsters that came before it as the fortress was to the simple towns its people had once lived in - it was an apex, a pinnacle, and the king could only hope that the strength of the fortress would prove enough to slay the monster.

The king called to his banners, the three greatest heroes of his city, and he told them of what he had seen. The only advantage he could provide them was the monster’s speed. Though it was inexorable, the king claimed it would yet take three more days for the doom to reach the fortress - three days that they had to slay it.

The first of the banners was a bold champion, beloved of the Warrior. With bright steel and unflinching courage, he had long led the king’s armies, and he volunteered to take the fight to the monster. One the first day, he led the collected armies of the fortress, thousands strong - but he quickly found that the same strength that had bested a thousand thousand foes since the fortress’s walls rose was insufficient to fight the great monster before them. 

Their strongest weapons shattered against its scales, while its very breath sapped the life of the brave men and women who fought it. With every step the beast took, hundreds of soldiers died. In the end, the armies of the fortress were decimated before the champion himself made it to the head of the beast. He struck with his legendary sword and impaled the monster’s eye itself, where no scale could protect it.

The beast let out a resounding roar at the wound - and the sheer sound of the monster’s pain killed the few soldiers who still faced it. The fortress’s armies had failed, and its champion never returned.

On the second day, the king turned to the next of his banners, a wise and learned archmage, who had mastered each of the five magical arts and who knew deep and arcane secrets forgotten by the rest of the world. The archmage assured the king that, though he did not know the identity of the monster, there was no way it could withstand his greatest magics.

The archmage enchanted the weapons along the fortress’s wall. Magical ballista bolts and balls of flaming stone sailed from the fortress to assail the monster - but the archmage found its scales as impenetrable as the champion had. Next, he conjured assassin spirits and deadly sendings, seeking to destroy the monster’s soul and siphon away the magic that kept it alive. But the spirits withered and faded as they approached the great destroyer, unable to sustain themselves in the face of its fell soul, and the archemage’s sendings found themselves unable to take hold.

For the entire second day, the archmage released every spell in his arsenal upon the monster, and saw each fail in turn. Finally, as the sun set on the second day, the archmage threw himself from the wall of the fortress in despair, unable to face the failure of his magic.

By the second night, the peace the fortress had once known was nowhere to be seen. Now, its people knew fear. They knew that two of the king’s banners had gone to fight the monster and not returned. They knew that the armies that had kept them safe had fallen. In their peace and comfort, they had grown complacent, and unless the monster was stopped on the third day, their world would end.

Desperate, the king pled with the last of his banners, an ancient adherent of the Primal. He begged her to save the fortress and his people, but the ancient one refused. She told him that the nature of the world was cyclical, and that nothing, not the fortress, not its people, not the king, and certainly not peace, were eternal. All things had their end, and that end had come for the fortress. 

Desperate, the king claimed that even if that were the case, surely the monster could not be immortal either. Though it had proven resistant to all attacks so far, if the wisdom of the Primal was true, then even the destroyer could meet its end. The ancient one finally told the king that she could destroy the beast, but only at the cost of the fortress itself. 

On the dawn of the third day, the king acquiesced. If his people were to die, he decided, let them die with purpose.

The ancient one went to the wall, to the same point that the archmage had fallen from. The monster was now close enough that she could meet its eye, and see the scars left by the champion. It breathed the foul breath that had rotted away the armies of the fortress, but the winds swirled around the ancient one and blew them away. It focused the fell presence that had corroded the archmage's spirits, but the ancient one’s soul was as bedrock, and would not be worn away by the destroyer’s will.

The ancient one finally raised her hands, and the called to the Primal - and eldest archetype answered.

The king watched from his tower as the earth split and the sky opened. Stone turned to fire poured out around the monster's feet - and began to wear away at the wall of the fortress even as it melted through the beast’s scales. Lightning fell from the heavens like raindrops, striking great furrows in the beast’s revealed skin and in the fortress’s ramparts at the same with every moment that passed. Nature itself, the Primal’s domain, turned against the monster, and though the fortress paid the price, the rest of the world was spared the beast’s rage. 

The fortress fell centuries before the Realm would rise, but we remember its lessons. We remember that nothing is eternal, that peace is to be cherished but never hoarded, and that when the worst comes, heroes will rise to face it. 

#

As the story ended, the audience sagged back in their seats like a long held breath exhaled. Not a sound could be heard from the assembled people of Felisen. Even Ryme seemed speechless.

Silence reigned in the Honeyed Pear as Storyteller surveyed the room, nodded to Cadence, and left without another word.