Aidan
The Realms
Unknown date (day 4)
Mid-afternoon
Mistvale Highlands, en route to Ceallach Macht

Brighid and Aidan spent the rest of the day learning about each other. They discussed everything they could think of, from light-hearted to solemn. Aidan's favorite colors were blue and silver; Brighid's was forest green, and not, somewhat surprisingly to Aidan, any shade of red. "Everyone expects that, but really, I am red enough as it is! I could never wear anything red on top of all this," she explained, gesturing to her hair and fur. Brighid extolled the virtues of glamorry, a salad made from a mix of local vegetables and topped with cheese and thinly-sliced meat; Aidan countered by explaining the clear superiority of pizza, which Brighid made him promise to cook for her. Aidan talked about growing up with a little sister, which had been a delight and an ordeal as they both aged. Brighid, an only child, instead shared her feelings growing up watching her mother become colder and more distant by the year as her responsibilities on the Council weighed on her. That, in turn, prompted Aidan to open up more about the ways depression had affected his life.

The conversation didn't always flow smoothly, and there were periods of silence as they both mentally digested new information and sorted out their thoughts. Still, by the time they made camp for the night, they were chatting easily with each other. They quickly set up their minimal camp, then talked some more while they ate their trail rations.

Aidan was still holding secrets back, and he was reasonably sure Brighid noticed his evasiveness when she asked about his home. What the hell, it's just a game, and I'm supposed to test it anyway. Let's see how she takes this, he thought to himself, then spoke aloud. "You've been very polite not to press too hard about where I'm from, and I appreciate that. I kept it a secret from the scouts who found me and from the Council when they questioned me because I didn't want to complicate things or make myself sound crazy. The truth is, Brighid, I'm not from this world at all."

She nibbled on her food for a few moments before responding thoughtfully. "Not ... from this world? Hmmm." She gave him a piercing look. "And the world you come from, it operates on different rules than here, does it not?"

Aidan blinked in surprise. "Very different. How did you know?"

Brighid smirked and explained, "I have never heard of a level one adult before. Even young children receive quests, level Skills, gain friendship experience, and so on, and level two does not take that much effort to attain. I was quite curious how—and why—you had managed it. This explanation actually makes more sense than you somehow avoiding earning any experience for twenty or more years."

He shook his head ruefully. "I didn't even consider that. Shit, that's obvious enough that Lail, her patrol, and the Council have to be wondering the same thing. I'm surprised none of the Councillors asked me about it."

Brighid grimaced. "I am becoming increasingly sure that there are considerations beyond the obvious involved in the Council's decision. Mother certainly did not overlook or ignore that information. It must have factored into her plan, but I cannot understand how. On the surface, it very much appears that you are being sent to your death, but I will not believe that she has grown so cold as that."

Aidan slipped one arm around Brighid's waist and gave her a hug. She leaned into it, sighing, and Aidan assured her, "I am sure she knows what she is doing. If they just wanted me dead, there were much less complicated ways of accomplishing that, even if they wanted deniability. There must be a purpose to all of this, we simply can't see it yet. And besides, I have no intention of dying. After all, who would indulge you if I did?"

Brighid laughed and pushed him away. Aidan exaggerated his reaction, falling over in a sprawl on the grassy ground and groaning in pretend shock and pain. "Betrayed! By my closest companion! What a world, what a world!"

The centaur giggled at his antics, then gracefully rose to her feet. She bent down, grabbed Aidan, and effortlessly lifted him up and over her shoulder. He yelped in surprise as he suddenly found himself staring at Brighid's coppery fur from above, and his tail instinctively wrapped itself around her waist for balance and support. He was too startled to say anything as she walked over to a level patch of ground. He knew Brighid was stronger than him, but the casual way she picked him up and the complete lack of any sign of exertion made him realize just how big the difference was.

A moment later, she lifted him back up off her shoulder and set him gently on his two feet. "Tonight, we are going to work on your Light Armor and Evasion skills. After all, you have already declared me a traitor, so I may as well rough you up a little," Brighid told him with a smirk and a gleam in her eyes. "Your job," she continued as she put some space between them and pulled out her glaive, "is to make this entertaining for me."

Aidan
The Realms
Unknown date (day 4)
Evening
Mistvale Highlands, en route to Ceallach Macht

An hour and a half later found both of them relaxing in the stream, letting the refreshing water soothe their aches away. Or, at least, Aidan was; Brighid hadn't even been breathing hard by the time she announced the end to the evening's training. She had worked him over almost nonstop, alternating between smacking him with the flat of her blade and pointing out all of the openings he was giving her. She hadn't been cruel, but she was a hard taskmistress, only giving him just enough time to recover most of his breath before resuming the demonstrations.

In fairness to her methods, Aidan gained several Skill levels in that short time (three each in Evasion and Light Armor), and while his muscles ached, he didn't think he would be bruised come the morning. At the very least, his status screen didn't display any Wounds and only a handful of lost Health. He shook his head and, groaning, stood up to make his way over to where Brighid was washing her hair. He paused for a moment to admire her profile, then coughed to draw her attention and asked, "Would you like some help scrubbing your back again, Brighid?"

She twisted towards him and smiled. Aidan had to wrangle his tired brain into keeping his eyes on her face, and quipped, "I thought you weren't going to tease me with your body anymore?"

"I am not," Brighid said primly. "You are teasing you with my body. I am just enabling you." She was right, he had to admit to himself. "And yes, thank you, Aidan. Remember our agreement, though; keep those magic hands to yourself." She paused for half a breath, then added with a teasing lilt, "Your eyes can roam wherever they would like, though."

"Of course, milady, only a mild pampering tonight. We wouldn't want you to grow too spoiled just yet." He teased back and fetched the brush from a nearby flat-topped rock. Despite the teasing, however, they were mentally exhausted from the stressful day, and their bathing went by without further incident.

Once they returned to camp and Brighid set up her warming and warding spells, though, she surprised him by asking, "Would you like to sleep with me tonight?" Seeing his startled reaction, she snorted and clarified, "Sleep, Aidan. Surely you find neither your backpack nor the hard ground comfortable. Why not rest your back and head against my flank? I promise not to molest you in your sleep. Much."

"Frankly, I'm so tired right now that you probably wouldn't get anywhere even if you did," Aidan replied wryly. "Anyway, thank you. As long as it doesn't make you uncomfortable, I would love to sleep with you."

It took them a few moments of shifting around to find a position that made them both comfortable, but eventually, they settled in for the night with Aidan propped up against Brighid's side just behind her foreleg. He stuffed his rolled-up backpack behind the small of his back, then sought out Brighid's hand and tangled his fingers with hers. He looked up at the star-filled sky for a long, peaceful moment, then closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Aidan
The Realms
Unknown date (day 5)
Morning
Mistvale Highlands, en route to Ceallach Macht

The next day progressed in much the same vein as the afternoon before it. Now that Brighid was read in on Aidan's extraterrestrial origin, he pumped her for information on the world in general and the system that characterized people in The Realms.

"I am not even sure where to start," Brighid admitted to him. "Normally, children learn all of this as they grow up and are not proficient in all of the intricacies of the system until they are ten or so. Part of that is that they are maturing and learning other things at the same time, of course, but it is still a lot of information to convey in a short time."

"I understand," Aidan soothed. "I'm not expecting you to work miracles here. Here, maybe it'll be more manageable if I ask specific questions. I think the most important thing to start with is: how do Skills work? What does affinity measure, what does a single Skill level mean, what's the difference between Unskilled and Novice, that sort of thing."

"Skills are the very cornerstone of how the Realms function; you will never do something really well without levels in an appropriate Skill. We can sort of make do without them, at least for fundamental everyday tasks, but if you want to do more than just barely get by, you need to use a Skill. To reach even level 1 in a Skill, you must have a non-zero affinity for that Skill. There is no way to know for sure what your affinity is until you actually have that first level, which can make trying to learn new Skills frustrating.

"The average person with no special Traits or other sources of bonus affinity only has any affinity at all for a few dozen Skills at most, and only one or two of those Skills will have an affinity above 50%. Of the Skills they do have an affinity for, some will be ones they never have an opportunity to learn in their entire lifetime. The vast majority will go through life with levels in no more than twenty or thirty Skills, and only reach Apprentice or Journeyman rank in one or two."

"But what is affinity?" Aidan broke in, causing Brighid to wag her finger at him.

"Patience! I was getting there. What affinity does is modify the amount of work you needed to get to the next level. With a low affinity, you need to put in more work than with a high affinity, but regardless, both can reach the next level of the Skill with enough effort. The trick is that affinity always, always decreases as your level in a Skill increases. It isn't necessarily a noticeable amount, and it does not fall at the same rate for every person. Still, it is inevitable that eventually, somewhere down the line, you will hit 0% affinity and no longer be able to advance that Skill any further."

Ohhhhhhhhhh, came Aidan's realization. If everyone else is lucky to get 50% affinity in their best Skills and it drops off over time, I absolutely need to keep quiet about having permanent 100% affinity with everything. That is beyond broken compared to the NPCs. "Okay, that makes sense," Aidan said aloud. "What about Unskilled versus Novice?"

Brighid responded, "Those are Skill ranks. They do not do anything in and of themselves, they simply denote when you receive Knacks and, for magic school Skills, a new spell. They also serve to obscure your exact Skill levels from people with Abilities that let them look at your status screen—most such Abilities can only see your Skills' ranks, not their precise levels."

Aidan nodded, then asked, "Knacks? Is the extra fire resistance I got at Novice Fire Magic the Knack, then? Is it the same for everyone at that rank?"

His friend laughed to herself and shot Aidan an amused glance. "I swear, every time I answer a question, you ask three more. Yes, that is likely your Novice Fire Magic Knack. No, everyone does not receive the same Knacks; my Novice Fire Magic Knack is an increased temperature tolerance, for example. Some are more common than others. Resistances are very common Knacks for the early ranks of most magic school Skills, though. Knacks tend to relate to the ways the Skill is used, so low-rank Knacks are mostly the same handful for each Skill. Once you have a chance to develop a Skill personality, so to speak, your Knacks will become more focused and less predictable."

"Thank you," Aidan said. "That's actually really helpful. Now, for something completely different, I think it's time to talk about time. I've been counting days, but I have no idea past that. So here's my question: how many seconds per minute, minutes per hour, hours per day, days per week and month, and months in a year are there here in the Realms?"

Brighid started to giggle. "You need to work on your Mathematics Skill, Aidan. That was six questions, not one!"

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I'd still like to know when I am."

It took a little while, and a couple of false starts, for Brighid to get her laughter under control. Still, eventually, she responds, "There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, and twenty-four hours in a day, roughly speaking. There are magical items and spells which can track time precisely, but those are diversions for scholars and people with too much time on their hands. Weeks are made up of seven days, and there are either four or five weeks in each month. There are twelve months in the year, for a total of fifty-four weeks in the year. The first and last days of the year are not part of any week or month, so there are a total of three hundred and eighty days in each year.

"The days of the week are named simply: Firstday, Secondday, Thirdday, and so on up to Seventhday. Months are much more varied, and there are at least three different names for each month just in the Wildlands and nearby human nations. Again, you really should not need to worry about them for now.

"I can see you about to ask, so I will go ahead and answer." Brighid said with a smug grin, "The current date is Thirdday of the third week of the month of Siobhan the Slayer in the year 597 of the Godless Age. That is the seventh month of the year by our reckoning, and we are in early fall."

"Godless Age? I'm not so sure of that..." Aidan mused, remembering his encounter with his Patron.

Brighid squinted at him, but let that pass. Instead, she said, "It is a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. The Gods still exist as Powers of the Realms, but their ability to interact with mortals is minimal, and few give them any thought. Long, long ago, the Gods walked among us and granted miraculous gifts to those who found their favor, but eventually, Gods came into active conflict with each other. The Realms were nearly torn apart by their power. Ultimately, the mightiest heroes from all across the Realms gathered together and took the battle to the Gods, one at a time, and banished them to the Outer Realms, sealing most of their power.

"That was the end of the Age of Living Gods and the start of the Age of Withdrawal. The human nations flourished without the Gods of the wilder people to hold them back. Just under six hundred years ago, the great High Elven fortress-capital Haedirn Laer-gilarn was conquered and sacked by an army of humans and the cathedral of Faendair, their chief deity, was torn stone from stone and all the priests were slain. When no divine reprisal was visited on the humans, the Age changed to the Godless Age."

"Alright," Aidan conceded, "I can see why it's called that now. But you said 'the Age changed,' not' scholars decided to declare that the start of the new Age' or anything like that. Is there a reason for that, or am I just running into linguistic traps?"

"My understanding," Brighid responded, "is that everyone in the Realms received a notification that the Age of Withdrawal was ended and the Godless Age had begun. I did not witness it myself, of course, but all of the histories of the time mention it and agree on the name of the Age."

"Hmmm." Aidan considered that for a while. "So Ages have significance beyond just a way of categorizing history. Good to know, but not really relevant to a worthless level 2 human."

The centaur turned her head towards him, and Aidan could see disapproval in her emerald eyes. "Do not denigrate yourself so. Someone thought you were interesting or useful enough to bring you here, and I know for a fact that you are useful for at least one thing." Her eyes turned mischievous, and her lips parted to allow her pink tongue to emerge as she blew a raspberry at him.

"Ah, yes," Aidan laughed, "all shall learn my name as the Age of Pampered Prancers begins!" Brighid's laughter joined his.

Zurai

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