“Agility is Grace! It is the dance of courts and battlefields, the foundation of motion and precision. Speed and discipline! Those blessed with it flow through their lives, unaffected by obstacles and turbulence while those cursed with its lack stumble on, tripping on every issue. It is not brute force, Agility is Grace! So stop trying to force the dance. This isn’t Body or Will training. Slow it down, think about every tiny motion, until there are no mistakes. If you have to, crawl through the exercise, but by Phirra show some Grace! Speed will come with practice!”

-Traditional opening speech among Kuval noble Dance and Weapon tutors.     

***

The tree was enormous. Utterly impossible and imposing in its defiance of gravity and common sense. It was taller than the lesser skyscrapers of his hometown, thirty, forty stories of pure white leafless branches, covered in fresh snow. And that was just the crown. So white that even in the faint moonlight, it shined like some distant pale bonfire. In the distance, what was supposed to be a wall two men tall looked more like a dark circle made by ants to encompass the massive growth. The caravan still had to descend down the mountain paths and night was upon them. But tomorrow his pilgrimage would finally end, the goal was in sight.

***

They appeared in the ritual room, called, gathered from their homes. Some came from dilapidated hellscapes, some from near heavens. Most were from ordinary lands, or lands ordinary to them. Some knew personal magics, others technical power or godly might. Man or woman, elder or child, the Offer was given without judgment. Their very passing through the Heavens would breathe new life into them. It choose on only one true measure: that each of them had wished with all their heart to leave their home and start somewhere anew. Not for regrets or fear this wish, but rebirth. Of life not yet lived, but already wasted.     

-“The Offer”, an ancient text written by the first Caller, on the summoning of Heroes. The text predates the founding of the Empire. It is rumoured from margin notes transcribed throughout the ages, that the first Caller wasn’t human.   

***

“No wonder my memories are riled.”

That recollection had come out of nowhere. Frank had spent as much time as he could spare in the Academy library, reading about the new world he’d found himself in. How they all got there. Reading about magic.

It was the thing he remembered most, from the early days. Magic had walked right into his heart, and he’d been reaching for it since. It was everywhere here, in everyone. Frank’s old body would never have survived the fires of the damned field.  

“Let it go. It’s behind you.” For all the consequences of it still clung on. 

The Eternal Tree, font of Perseverance, was before him. Frank’s right hand clenched, the burned skin stretching, the pain familiar by now. The wrappings he’d applied helped with the cold, but the fires had burned his arm to the bone. He was lucky to be alive, even with his Lifecord. He called up the memorised page with the ease of long practice:

 

How lightly that word came to Frank. He was becoming one of the natives. He wished he still had his 70 mana. “It’s backwards, that I used to have so much, and no true way to use mana. Now that I can, I can barely hold a few motes of power. At least my Will came out of it unscathed. Improved even.”

He shook his head.

“If that’s the kind of trial it takes to raise Will to five, I don’t want to know what it will take for six.”

The rest of his progress, in Ability and Skill, had burned away under the magical fire. He had to start back from zeros in everything. Soldier was still stuck there, unable to advance while he travelled as a pilgrim.

Frank left the overhang on the side of the mountain, turning back to the forming camp. Spotting a familiar figure siting on one of the food wagons, Frank climbed on and sought shelter from the freezing wind. Mauricius, the guard sitting in the front of the cart had no such luck and had to stay outside on watch.

“Lucky bastard.” Mauricius cursed him with a grin, as he went by.

***

Rain fell as warriors and solders trained in a wide courtyard. “Mage training is reserved for those who have proven their worth. Not even a hero will be allowed to simply attend one of the mage academies.” his assigned advisor told him.

“Not without a powerful patron, you mean.” Frank had asked.

“Just so. If you wish to begin preparing, there are ways. But in the meantime, it would be for the best if you found a more traditional path forward. You can ill afford the enemies insistence in this matter will bring you.”

The warning had sent a chill down his spine. “Magic. Do not touch if not recommended for it. Got it.”

A bit of jealousy fed on the indignation of it. If only he had something more than a bog standard hero Blessing. Of the near hundred called, almost half had some kind of extra gift, or a bloodline, not just the base Blessings.  

“Like what?” He’d asked, wondering what kind of work would give him the needed connections and funds to be able to study what he really wanted. Magic.

“Well, you’ve a mind for numbers on you, and the Gods given Presence of a true Hero. Perhaps leadership as an officer might best suit you.” the man advised.  

“Must your every advice and suggestion be related to war?” Frank had complained.

“But of course. What else is the business of Empire?” His partner and guide responded, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

*** 

“Oi! You get lost in your head again?”

“Yes.”

Not that he gave Rio the satisfaction of telling him that.

Frank shook his head. He’d been a bit spoiled, spending so much time among other Heroes. Somewhat disconnected from the world around him. With so many of them as standouts with something special.

When the truth was, he was the special one, compared to just about anyone else. Mauricious, Rio, might spend his whole life without reaching a five, in just one Ability.   

“Even months after it, some mornings I still wake up thinking I’m in the afterlife. That the fire got me and all this has been some delusion.”

Frank allowed none of it to show on his face.

“I’ve rented my workshop with my own coin Rio, luck was hardly involved.” He replied with relief, happy to be out of the cold winds. And away from the memories. They had troubled him in the weeks since the fire.

It wasn’t much warmer in the trade cart, but at least it was covered against the wind. In a few minutes his fingers would recover enough feeling to get to work. Absentmindedly his hand slipped into a pocket and brought out a small stone with a thin string through it. Frank hung it by the beam, running a soft touch over the carved surface.     

“You know damn well it wasn’t your scratches that was the luck, it was the flames! Well, surviving with a touch of the Gift. I don’t envy your face, not at all.” The watchmen jibed.

“Now, I’ll concede you have to work at it with your trinkets, but you can’t tell me it wasn’t the angels own luck you lived in the first place!” Rio argued.   

Mauricius always sounded like he was chewing on something. Talking to the man face to face could quickly get unpleasant. His one love was singing and his voice had long since gone hoarse from it. Unlike a reasonable person, he’d decided to fix the problem by trying harder, instead of taking a break to let his voice recover. The result was a hoarse shout that just about made for regular volume, but with lots of spray.

Frank had struck an odd friendship with the watchman, probably thanks to long hours spent carving away in the cart every evening. With a thin wall to protect him from the other man’s quirk, and hours to build up a tolerance, Frank had come to the surprising conclusion that Mauricius actually sang fairly well.

“You’ve your own luck. I tell you again, if you but let your pipes rest between villages, you’d make a killing as a Bard when we are in town,” Frank told him.

“Me, a Bard? Now that’s a joke! You tryin to wear me down Franky boy, but it is not going to work. Bards are pretty folk, comely lasses and roguish men. Me own mother loves me face, and I’ve roped in Barbra somehow, but ain’t nobody else gonna tolerate this mug up close, let alone on a table!” He cheerfully rebutted, retreading familiar grounds. 

Frank kept a distracted eye on the bickering, but after two months in his company, keeping up with Rio didn’t take much effort. He was a deft hand with spear and bow, with a good memory and difficult to make laugh. But Mauricius was a simple man, with few interests. His family, songs, the trade routes and rumours, that was the whole of him. Frank didn’t need much to keep up.

He needed to get to work.

***

The sky was on fire. Beautiful, deadly rainbow fire that glowed and pulsed with beats of light like some heavenly musical orchestra, entrancing to see. Colourful flames flowing, falling from the sky like fluffy clouds descending into mist. In that moment when the enemy mercenary company had pulled out their trump card, he’d been distracted. Frank and his men had fought long and hard, winning more than losing. They still took casualties. A lot of the enemy were low and retreating already. But there was no running from this, not on foot.

He’d heard of such a thing. There was a reason why so many had warned him not to get too close to the common solders. The “rabble” who were all replaceable. Officers all over the mercenary company his patron ran huddled up in small lumps and disappeared in thunderclaps of recall. Each with their assigned Mageling, teleporting out of danger with no regard for the common foot soldier.  

His own did not wait for him. Frank had thinned the guards around his Mageling, thinking him safe behind the lines. But a sniper had picked the mage out through the tinned lines in the moment the fires started falling. The first arrow already endangered him, a second might exhaust his Health and disable him. His depleted bodyguard unable to shield their charge because Frank had called some of them away to use as a reserve for his breakthrough. His eyes focused on victory, not retreat.

His Mageling and those nearby disappeared in a flash of light, followed a few seconds later by the officers of the opposing unit, along with the sniper attached to it. Already near broken, the enemy fled, but there was nowhere to run to.

Frank didn’t know if they’d come for him personally as assassins. Come for all his refusals of deals and patrons meant to entrap and enmesh him in the Imperial Court. Or if the opposing band of mercenaries were simply trying to deny his patron a potent asset before it could grow. It didn’t matter. They were all dead anyway. 

The sky was fire, and the sky fell.

***

The familiar feeling, that moment of agony, in heat and light, with eternal empty cold just on the other side; it was his source, Frank’s way of calling out to the fire in him. Memory and feeling mixed, as Frank couldn’t tell if he was imagining it or if it was real, as a burning sensation gripped him. From the right knee, across most of his right side, his face, his whole arm, it rose.

Frank pushed against the burning, grappled with the flames, but it was useless. After a moment of panic, one that still came every time he called on the Gift, that moment, that fear of burning flesh that was etched into his mind threatened to overwhelm Frank, only for the pain to never come.

Then wonder replaced terror, as the warmth and the fire flowed through and over him, not feeding on him, but growing from his own motes of power as he carefully fed them into the flames in a pattern. Instead of a wild fire that burned him, the pattern channelled the flames, guided and led them where he needed the heat to go.  

Frank built them in his mind’s eye, laying out trails for the fire to follow. The simplest of constructs, a single Rune. Liquid heat poured out of his palm into the runestone and light filled the wagon from the now glowing stone. Fingers defrosted from the passing heat, Frank got to work.

He pulled out a number of polished stones, some delicate chisels, and a pair of magnifying glasses. His tools had cost him a fortune, at least for a poor pilgrim, but they were worth every silver. The bigger the rune, the more power it needed, and he had little to give these days.

“And little skill in applying it to risk greater workings.”  

Keeping up the banter with Rio, Frank earned his keep. For hours, while others set up camp, gathered firewood, cooked, and talked, he carved runestones. Heat and light.

In the dark, cold north? Sight and life.

The couple who left the fires and came near the night watchman for safety in the dark were distracting with their whispers, grunts and noise, but he and Rio were used to it. Only about a third of the stones would be usable. Only a tenth made well enough to last, as the slightest imperfection would serve as a crack which the magic would work on, until it grew and the rune broke.

But that was alright. Even when his wounds wept and his whole body was wracked with pain, Frank would remember these long hours. For all the cruelty and pain, this world was filled with wonders as well. The stone in his hand glowed with an inner light, warmth from the runestone spilling into his tired muscles. A wonder he’d made, with his own hands, power and Will.

A wonder of the world like it would hopefully help with his recovery, if one, much larger in scope.  

“Seek the roof of the world on Ir-karlak’s path. Walk it clad in naught but the robes of a pilgrim, and stray not from his path in the walking. Only then, will the White Tree bloom for thee. Or if lesser miracles thou seekst, but touch the bark and know his benevolence.”

What was not a very informative Quest description, was helpfully a long since established, repeatable quest. With known tricks and twists. For the full boon, wear only the clothes of a Pilgrim. Set out from beyond the Ilvir mountain range, and go on foot the whole way. One could travel with a caravan, but not ride horse or wagon.

Frank was careful to only get in the cart after it stopped, for shelter and carving. Otherwise, he walked the whole way.  

Bring no coin nor wealth with you. Earn your way to the tree, enduring night out in the open and the cold as needed and able. Endure either the wilds with their beasts and monsters, or the demands of the gruff and hostile northerners, with nothing but yourself to count on. Reach the Eternal Tree, font of Perseverance as the pilgrims of old did, and its God would gift you a Boon.   

“Well, starting out crippled and with nothing but some salvaged rags should count for that.”

Some quests had additional twists, for the wealthy, the worthy or the immoral. His had none. Every person could only make the Pilgrimage to one of the Primordial Shrines of the Gods but once, pass or fail. Frank knew what the usual rewards were for success. Among them, assistance with weakening or removing one’s Curse was a rather famous one.

It was not the one he was after. He wanted the boon of an improved Body, to have one that could recover and adapt again as it reached three. He did not want to lose his curse, for fear the magic would go with it.

No, he would make this curse his own, for as he had come to understand with one in him? Wellsprings of magic, useable sources of it, were the true bottleneck. To be even a Mageling, those who merely had a one in Magic, you had to have one. That’s what the Magic aspect was, the quality, depth, number and type of wellsprings one could access. A description only revealed to him after he had one.    

It still hovered there, when he’d looked at his traits, under Scorched (Creational Curse). Below the burns and his ruined face:

-Banked Еmbers I (Scorched): In truth, the embers of the scintillating fire you willingly took into yourself. It is why it burned so badly inside you, burning away all your aspect and skill progress for fuel while absorbing some of the flames assaulting your skin. If not for the Celestial energies lingering in your flesh, they would have burned you from the inside out, as any other fool who tried to swallow mage fire. They linger now, in the depths of your soul. Hissing, waiting to catch alight again, only the slightest sparks escaping. But feed them, and they will grow. +1 Magic – Fire
…

No one had forced him here. They’d asked when he was at a low point, true, but no one had lied or made him come. His world was dying. Everyone knew trouble was coming, they’d known it for decades. But his generation was the one that passed the tipping point. Frank had graduated his Practical Ecological Engineering studies a year before the news broke. His friends would tease him that he was just a fancy farmer. They weren’t wholly wrong, but there was a lot more to it.

That hardly mattered, in the end. He was just starting to live his life, when the world gave up on itself. The comprehensive five year report came out, with contributors from all over the globe. Too many delays. Too much posturing and brinkmanship and politics. Too many runaway feedback loops on a global scale. Too much strife between nations as fresh water supplies dwindled. Oh, the end could still be stopped. If the world was united. If everyone agreed who to sacrifice and how.

Obviously, that was not what was going to happen, and governments were waking up to the coming of a new world. Instead, they started building underground shelters. Or massive city Arcologies for those who had the know-how and funds to afford them, based around first generation fusion generators. Wonders of clean energy, progress and a victory of human ingenuity. Ones that arrived too late to stop a runaway reaction on a global scale. There would be lotteries, bribes, corruption. Wars, as clean water dwindled, and the air turned to poison.

Not deadly poison, not right away, but it was coming.

The slow boil of a frog would take those stuck outside. More deformed births, more poison in the air, rising sea levels. Floods, storms, hail, droughts. Famine and war.

Lowered intelligence due to breathing in toxic air, lowered oxygen blood levels making it harder to think clearly. What was the point of having children or a family in a world where they would be stuck, packed in living as sardines in coffins, or chocking on air?

No point at all. Frank wasn’t the type. The type to rage against a battle already lost. The Arcologies, the bunkers? They’d never make it. Not without generations of slaughter and war, because everyone stuck outside would want in. And they’d have all the abandoned industry, mines and resources of the outside world, to force the issue.

It was easier to take from others or destroy, then to build. He wondered what destruction and sabotage, what horrific traps or crimes against nature those sealing themselves in would leave for those outside, to stop them from breaking in?  

Maybe someone, somewhere would survive. But his world was heading back into the second coming of the Dark Ages. And Frank, with his visions of saving the world through a united humanity performing global geo-engineering projects? Of humanity finally waking up and facing up to the crisis?

Those dreams died with every month spent in trade wars and border skirmishes.

In martial laws imposed, and drafts enacted. With every rich asshole that bought his way in, not caring about the rest of them, when they and their selfishness and greed caused it all in the first place. They’d had sixty years since Kyoto, and wasted so many of them. Too many. All in the name of profit for the corps and political victories for the politicians. Nations competing with each other, deluded in thinking the Earth cared about them.   

“Well, congratulations you stupid fucks. You won your battles, for position, for power. For decades you fought, plundered and won. And lost us all the war for the entire world. Great job, guys.”   

In a way what happened wasn’t really, fully their fault. It’s just how regular people are. They don’t deal with threats decades in the making when there are real concerns in the present and tomorrow. People aren’t made for it. That’s why people were supposed to listen to scientists. But once science became a business, when reports, research and researchers could be bought…

“Our parents simply failed to rise above it. Fix the corruption in the system. Science was already riddled with compromise and “studies” sold to the highest bidder, when I was born. And now, we were in the shit. An entire generation born to an end that would come in our lifetimes. Born into debt not to each other or people, but to the planet itself. And Earth did not take credit or cash.”

Generation after generation had failed to address the problems properly, and now it was too late. They’d looked at the trends from the latest research, and given up. If they couldn’t make everyone cooperate, and no one could, the best survival strategy was to get ready for what was coming. The great and the powerful would come out ahead. But even their best would live worse lives than ordinary middle class had in the generation of his parents. It was like the Middle Ages all over again, but in reverse.

He had no place in that world. Not in the endless lines trimming down essential employees and skills for the shelters, nor in a militia arming up for the collapse. He wanted no part of any of it.

When the Offer came, he said yes. He wasn’t the only one. Not that he knew any of the others from his world, before they arrived on this one.

***     

As he came out of the cart a few hours later to collect some leftovers from dinner, Frank left with one rune he’d be willing to sell, and a couple he wouldn’t trust to another.

Magic, real magic, at the palm of his hand, flowing through his veins. Or at least, skin deep. After everything, he wasn’t sure it was worth it. Not yet. But the only way to find out was to keep living it. He may have dearly paid for this chance, but he had his Gift and he was free of the trapped maze that made up the Empire’s Noble politics.   

A simpler life, without those strings. The people of the Ilvir Confederacy cared little for bloodlines, only Deeds. The Ilvir mountain range bred tough, for survival. If one could wait out the winter, most would consider that enough. Winters this far up and north were long and harsh. And this one was nearly upon him.

His only obligations were to himself. Tomorrow, he had a date with a tree about Destiny. So long as he recovered from his ordeal before the curse could truly solidify, he should be able to manage or remove it. Without losing his Gift. Otherwise, he’d be a cripple for life. He had no intention of becoming one for real. These past few months had been more than enough for a lifetime.

After his business in town was done, he was running south on the first caravan out of there. The last thing Frank wanted was to be stuck in the snows with no roof over his head, surrounded by locals. Hospitable, they were not. Most of the traders and pilgrims in the caravan shared his thoughts and plans.  

Frank carefully made his way to his spot, crawling into the sleeping bag. They were far from the fire, but this was far better than sleeping alone. Wedged into the pile of servants, with a tarp over their little corner of the woods to keep out the harshest winds, Katri the Windblown grumbled at the intrusion, but soon settled down.

The camp cook was a dour, humourless woman in her early twenties. Blonde, gruff and muscled enough for a guard, she lugged her heavy iron cookware on foot through the mountains without complaint. She’d been unconcerned enough of strange outsiders to share her bedroll in trade for one of the two permanent heat stones he’d managed to make. And perfectly willing to warn him she’ll break fingers if his wandered. 

The heat stone had turned her fortunes upside down overnight. Where before, she was ostracised among the servants as a recent addition, friendless, now they piled around her bag to share in her bounty. Frank didn’t mind. He’d come out ahead in that trade. Other warm bodies, a tarp, a stone still nearby? This was a much better sleeping arrangement than cradling around the stone with but a few thin blankets for cover. Even if his companion had troubled sleep, she wasn’t the kind to toss about.        

He could still do without all the sympathising the other servants did, over Katri having to share a bedroll with something like him for the prize. None of them had been willing to entertain the same offer.

It was nothing like that. Frank was just happy to wake up in the morning with feeling in his toes. Warm nights made the endless days of marching through the cold snows bearable.

 

***