Chapter 322: Hunted Existence

My disappointment was immeasurable and my day ruined. I’d met someone that spoke English for the first time ever since arriving at Pallos, and by my System status, that had been 22 years ago. 22 years of wondering. Doubting. Wondering if my prior life was simply an artifact of a vivid imagination.

It had been so long.

Then came Iona, casually speaking words in a tongue I’d nearly forgotten I had. Hope had exploded at that. Was she from Earth as well? Could she… well, I had a thousand things I’d wanted to know and ask. Confirm. Catch up on mundane, boring stuff, make references that nobody here would understand.

But no.

It was “only” a divine blessing, like priest Demos’s.

Still, we were in my room together with Amber.

“Ok! [Confidential Negotiations], go!” She said. “Oh! Almost forgot. You need to be vaguely somewhat working towards some sort of deal for it to work.”

Iona and I traded amused looks in surprising unison.

“Information in exchange for your prior healing of me?” She offered a hand with the agreement.

“Deal!” I happily shook her hand, feeling her rough calluses.

“What? Argh! That’s NOT HOW IT WORKS!” Amber stormed off in a huff.

We both laughed at that. My laugh was closer to a giggle, while Iona had one of those deep laughs.

“English?” I proposed. “Nobody else speaks it.”

“Sure.” Iona agreed.

“Testing. Testing. You can hear this, right?” Iona whispered, so quietly I could barely hear it.

I nodded, enjoying the subterfuge. For once, I was happy that [Mantle of the Stars] lacked its privacy aspect - this was a little fun!

“It’s my skill, right?” I whispered back, not quite able to modulate my voice as well as Iona had. She knew exactly how much vitality I had. I had no idea on hers.

“That’s only part of it.” She said. “It’s - argh, it’s hard to explain. Let me try from the start, even though you’re at the end.”

She flexed her hand, making a fist and releasing it.

“Immortals are… not well liked.” She delicately put, and even I could tell that she disliked them. I felt my heart fall just the tiniest bit, but stayed focused. This was important.

“When people wage wars, soldiers die. Cities are sacked, ransom is traded.” Iona continued on, and I really hoped that she never ended up as a teacher of mine. “When Immortals go to war? They…”

She shook her head at it, missing the words.

“Create tornados, earthquakes, icy meteors, summon creatures of flame and stars, whip up sandstorms, and generally have too much power?” I suggested, thinking about the Guardians’s fight with Lun’Kat.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Yes! Exactly! The scale is different.” Iona said, and I remembered a dragon pulling down the sky.

“Does it really matter to someone living in a city if an army sacks the city, or if they’re swallowed by a tsunami?” I asked the warrior.

“Uh.” She paused, the look on her face making it clear she’d never thought of it before. How could I read her so well? It was weird. I was never this good at reading people.

“Doesn’t matter.” Iona concluded. “The end result is people hate Immortals. There’s a big thing - the Treaty of Kyowa - which makes a ton of rules around Immortals living in mortal lands. It tries to regulate things somewhat.”

“How do mortals stop elves and the like from taking everything over, if they’re that much stronger? Why bother?”

“I don’t know!” Iona threw her hands up in frustration. “That wasn’t part of my lessons! I was taught how to draw a bow, not geopolitics of a place far away!”

Fair point.

“Well, I’m not Immortal, so I should be ok, right?”

Iona shook her head.

“Ok. I suck at explaining things.” Well, at least she had some self reflection, which was a point in her favor. “Healers tend to get Immortality skills earlier than anyone else, and get the ability to grant it to others. Not all healers get the ability, it’s rare. But nobody else does.” She shot me a significant look.

“I’m… aware?” I ventured.

“Right. Nearly every country, just like they require combat classers to be sworn to somebody past 256, stops healers at 256. Healers with the [Healer’s Oath] are generally strong enough at that point where it doesn’t matter. When the rules are broken though? Most people will hunt the healer down, because they don’t want to invite a war to their doorstep. The local [Lord] would rather order a swift execution for keeping the peace, or else they face a riot.”

“A riot!?”

Iona nodded.

“As much as people claim to hate Immortals, who isn’t going to jump at the chance to live forever? Not many people can resist the lure.” Her voice was filled with utter disdain and contempt. “Healers need patients to level, and the thinking goes like this. If a healer’s openly permitted to level up past that point? They’re obviously going for Immortality. Once they get it? Everyone wants them. It’s a sparkpoint for a war. There was one last year over it. A nice excuse for the nobility to flex their muscles, conquer somebody else’s shit, ransom prisoners, the whole lot.”

It was nice to see that Iona hated nobles more than she disliked Immortals.

“If things go well enough, they get to capture the healer, coerce Immortality from them, then either play hot potato and trade them around for favors and wealth, or execute them to mark the end of the war, and stop everyone attacking them.”

“I’m a walking casus belli.”

“Exactly.” Iona said. “I joined in last year’s one, trying to help end it quickly, stop some of the worst from happening. Saw her body and a head on two separate pikes, along with her friends. They’d taken her alive.” She said the last part extra-quietly, and I felt my skin crawl at the implications of “coerce skill use” and “taken alive” together.

“Everyone who wanted to joined in on the fighting, burned fields, sacked a city, and went back home once the excuse was dead. Of course, some of the retreating armies plundered their way back home.” Iona was practically spitting.

“Short version. Don’t tell anybody about my skill - believe me, I learned my lesson on telling people and getting gently coerced already - and keep my ring displaying me at 256 at the max. That it?” I said.

“That would be it if hiding a level wasn’t an uncommon skill. It’s not as rare as granting Immortality, but it’s not unheard of. It’ll fool most people, but some people can see through it. You’re in trouble then.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked, figuring that Iona knew the world better than I did.

“Go to one of the Immortal countries. Modu’s pretty empty and cold, and I’m not sure you’d get along with the frost giants. Draakveld is… weird. They only have villages, disdain any sort of power of leadership, and dislike non-demons, thinking they can’t work with the system they’ve got going. Jurcor is an option, although you need to read the fine print. Carefully. Six times. Even then you’ll get screwed, although gently, in a more legal sense than anything else. It’s probably safe. Urwa… no. They’d enslave you in a heartbeat, and you might end up being the main attraction of one of their auctions. Exterreri’s an option. There’s a significant human population there already, although your take on vampires will be important.”

Vampires! I had a lead on Night! There was no way he was dead.

“Oh! How far away is that?” I jumped in.

“Errrr. Half the planet…?” Iona hedged, and my face fell. “Don’t worry! They’re all that far away. Roughly. Kind of. Maybe less…? They can’t all be halfway around the world…” Iona muttered to herself.

“Doesn’t matter?” I suggested.

“You’re right, looking at a map would work better.”

I looked at her hopefully, and she smiled ruefully at me.

“You wish. I don’t carry a world map around in my back pocket, and I just don’t know it well enough to draw it out.”

Drat.

“Bhutai could work well if you like a quiet existence. Bunch of meditating giants, although there’s no big drive for wealth or luxury. Then there’s the Tympestshard Council, and The Golden Courts. Bunch of elves.”

The Tympestshard Council rang a distant bell, but I didn’t quite have the time to jump down memory lane and try to figure out why. Perfect memory didn’t mean instant recall. It just meant that I could find it, if I worked at it a bit, and that my memories would never degrade.

Awarthril had probably mentioned it at some point? It might’ve been their home…?

“All of that sounds far away. Is there an easy way to get there?”

“No, everything nearby’s hostile to Immortals and healers.” Iona promptly replied, then frowned.

“Wait, the School is coming by soon.” She said.

“School?”

“School of Sorcery and Spellcraft.” Iona said, and my jaw practically dropped open.

“Like Artemis’s school!” I exclaimed, only to get a doubtful look from Iona.

“Errr. Artemis founded a school with that name. Although, I guess it was a long time ago…” I said.

“Rumors have it that it’s a neutral ground. Immortals and mortals both welcomed. One of the best places in the world for teaching and learning. I’m heading there myself!”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Sigrun wants me to be an officer! I got a scholarship.” Iona straightened her back and rolled her shoulders, clearly proud of her accomplishment.

“Do they have a library?” I asked.

“Yeah, although maybe we should talk with everyone else? I told you the parts I needed to.”

That sounded good.

We made our way back downstairs, where everyone else was just hanging out. Except Auri and Fenrir. Auri was riding Fenrir’s head, brrrpting charges as Fenrir acted as a most noble steed for her.

“Healy-bug! What’s up? How’d it go?” Artemis asked me.

“Well, from the sound of it, my life would be easier if I was Hesoid.” I gave Artemis a significant look, and Julius looked alarmed.

“That bad?” He asked.

I glanced back at Iona.

“Maybe not? Iona hasn’t tried to murder me.” I sat back down at the table, the Valkyrie in question sitting down next to me.

“Frankly. If you hadn’t saved my life, if I wasn’t indebted, there’s a good chance I would’ve tried to.” Iona got a round of glares for that, and she shrugged.

“I dunno who Hesoid is, but from the sound of it he was bad. Would you kill a Hesoid if you saw him again?”

“She’s got a point.” Artemis said.

I kicked her under the table as Julius gave her a dirty look.

“You’re all lying to yourselves if you say you’d let Hesoid run around free if you saw him again.” Artemis darkly muttered to herself, then zapped me.

I half jumped at that.

“Brrrpt!” Auri shrieked her protest as she flew up to Artemis’s head.

“Wait, no, not-” Was all Artemis got out, before her hair went up in smoke and flames.

We got kicked out of the inn a minute later.

===============================================

“Walk and talk?” Julius proposed. “Not much sense in hanging around.”

“We might end up going back the way we just came.” Artemis pointed out.

“Yeah, but we can’t hold up Iona too much longer. She’s already done so much for us. We don’t have a direction, might as well go with her.”

We started heading north along the road with Iona, Amber’s limp setting our pace. We didn’t mind - Julius could grab her and run in an emergency.

“I’m dead curious. Why is everyone saying my name?” I asked Iona.

“What do you mean?”

“People keep calling me Elaine. Which isn’t wrong.” I said. “Except we can’t figure out a skill to get names, and nobody else’s name is mentioned.”

Iona started laughing.

“Because the sound ‘Elaine’ means ‘healer’ in most languages!” She chuckled.

My face fell.

“No. You’re pranking me.”

Iona just roared with laughter.

“You don’t even have a last name to go off of!”

Artemis elbowed me, and with that grin I knew I was in trouble.

“May I introduce you to the amazing healer Healer!” She flourished, getting amused noises from Auri and Julius.

Amber had a wicked look on her face, and I pointed a finger at her.

“Don’t you dare.”

She pouted.

To get everyone off of teasing me, I filled them in on the talk I had with Iona, the woman looking uncomfortable as I spilled deadly secrets in the middle of the road.

“What do we want to do?” Julius asked.

“I like the idea of joining the School.” I said. “It’s a safe place. I’ve been wrestling with my third class for a while. It has archives, maybe I can find something about what happened. Get a feel for the world around us. Learn cool magic.”

Artemis smirked at me.

“I think it’s more of the last one than anything else. For me though? That sounds great, but I can’t imagine myself as a student. Teacher, yes. But not at a place with the same name. I just… don’t know what to do with myself right now.”

My heart fell. I didn’t want to get separated from Artemis. She clearly read my face.

“Hey! You’ll be at a school. That means we can find you whenever we want. I’m curious what happened, I’ll swing by once you figure it out.”

Julius threw an arm around Artemis’s shoulder.

“I’m sticking with you. Whatever we decide.”

“Love you too.” She quickly kissed him.

“Amber?” I asked my apprentice.

“I left on this adventure to bargain with the fae. Strike out on my own a bit. I didn’t… I didn’t think I’d lose everyone. Money’s not worth it without people.” She was tearing up, something we’d all spent a lot of time in Artemis’s tunnel doing.

She spent a moment struggling with herself, before sniffing and wiping away the tears.

“Anyways. I did it. Got a powerful class. Priceless gifts from the fae. Now I’m going to use them, and make the biggest, baddest, richest trading house the world’s ever seen.”

“Careful with that.” Iona advised.

“Why?” Amber’s voice was surprisingly bitter. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because individuals with too much personal wealth tend to attract the attention of crowned heads, and not in a positive way.” Iona frankly told her. “When a war’s going badly, and the coffers are empty, rich merchants with poor connections are an easy one-stop shop to fix all their monetary needs. Declare them to have committed some crime, seize their wealth, and boom! Done.”

Amber opened her mouth at the sheer outrageous unfairness of it, but nothing came out.

“Why does it feel like there are rules designed to screw all of us over.” Amber complained.

“It’s not like they’re targeted at you.” Iona said.

“Still.” Amber whined. “Rules for healers. Fighters. Merchants. It’s not fair.”

“I imagined you weren’t interested in knowing that if a [Baker] shorts their bread it’s a hanging offense.” Iona drily observed. “That [Tailors] need to be careful when taking orders from nobles, because half the time fashion changes and they’re not interested in the expensive outfit they ordered. That [Farmers] need to coordinate their crops in peculiar ways that I studied and have no idea about. That [Butchers]-”

“Ok, ok, I get it, I get it. Rules for everyone.” Amber muttered, thinking hard.

“Well. I’ll just have to get well connected then.” She brightened up. “Still, if it means I never have to crawl through another stone tunnel, never see or smell someone shit five steps away from me, never get in a creepy forest full of spiders, or gods forbid, never have to be near one of those vorler-things Elaine killed, it’ll be worth it.”

Iona froze.

“Did you say vorler?”