Bog Standard Isekai

“Strange folk?” asked Lurilan. “In what way?”

[Hunter] Caio had a high-pitched squeaky type voice. He hunched forward and turned his face to the side, looking another direction as he talked, and despite all of this Brin’s gut feeling matched what his [Inspect] told him, that this was an incredibly powerful and dangerous person. “You know that feeling you get when you see someone hiding when they don’t need to? It’s like that. [Warriors] from the Defense Force. Officers from the army and the navy. Second sons of nobles, most of them sneaky types that look around but don’t do anything or talk to anyone. And all of them are hiding their status and staying in the worst hotels. Now, if there was a war going on, then the meaning would be obvious, but last I heard, Arcaena was in the middle of surrendering…”

Caio glanced at Brin, then quickly looked away.

“There is a war going on. Lumina told me the peace talks were a farce, in place while everyone prepares for total war,” said Brin.

Caio nodded. “In that case…”

“Impressment, you think?” asked Lurilan.

“Well, I’ve been known to be wrong before,” Caio said.

“What’s that mean?” asked Zilly.

“It means they’re going to start drafting people for the war. And the five of us are right at the perfect age,” said Brin, worry starting to build as it dawned on him what they were saying.

Lurilan looked at him, confused. “What does age have to do with it? The major point here is Class Rarity. Common Classers can be drafted from cities and towns near the border if necessary, but those with Rare Classes will be plucked from the population throughout the kingdom. The pain point for the kingdom here is that the most useful Rare Classes often have ways of staying hidden when they know they are in danger. They’ll try to take everyone by surprise and recruit them all at the same time, before anyone knows what’s happening.”

“When? How long do we have?” asked Davi.

“No way to know. Once they feel like they have a good bead on as many Rare Classers as possible, they’ll set a time and make the snatch. Well, that’s all I wanted to say. You kids have fun, now,” said Caio. Then without another word, he turned and walked down the hall, his footsteps clomping on the wooden floor until he was out of sight.

Davi stood and started pacing. “Well, all of you are fine, but I–”

“I’m not fine!” said Zilly.

Myra’s face looked like she was sneering, but then Brin realized that was the face of someone trying to hold back sudden tears. “The caravan won’t want to risk losing their guards. They’ll want to leave immediately. Tonight, if not earlier.”

Sion turned to Brin. “You must stay with my family. We don’t have the pull here in Frenaria as we do in our home country, but an impressment gang would never dare storm the halls of the Wogan Mercantile Group. In fact, all of you must come!”

“I’ll take you up on that!” Zilly said quickly.

Davi shook his head slowly. “I don’t think Jeffrey would go for it.”

“No, he won’t.” Myra shook her head, and rubbed a tear away from her cheek. “Jeffrey isn’t the guy who can keep his head down and follow orders, and he’s also not the guy who can stay cooped up in one house all day. He’s going to insist on running all the way back to Hammon’s Bog where you can lay low until it’s over. Don’t you guys get it? This is it! This is where we split ways.”

“What if you didn’t tell your caravan about the impressment?” Brin suggested. “It’s not like we’re actually certain–”

“I have to tell them,” said Myra.

“You don’t have to do anything!”

“They can’t lose their Rare Classers, not after the trouble we ran into on the way here. I won’t do that to them.”

Brin’s stomach sank, his instincts understanding before his head did that he wasn’t going to talk his way out of this. “Ok, tell them, but don’t go! You don’t need a caravan, Myra. Hogg and I can get you anywhere you want. And Davi! You don’t need to run! I can literally…”

Even now, he was struggling to reveal his secrets. Instead of saying that he could literally turn people invisible he finished with, “pull rank. I’ve got Lumina’s ring.”

“I have to go with this caravan. I have a reason. I’m sorry,” said Myra.

Davi hesitated, but then shook his head. “Sorry Brin. We all knew this is where it was going to end. We knew when we got to Blackcliff that we were going to split up.”

Brin sighed. “I thought we’d have more time. We were supposed to have a party! Not scurry away in the middle of the night.”

“It’s not even noon,” said Davi.

“You know what I meant.”

They all stood there, staring at each other in half part sorrow and half part awkwardness, none of them really knowing how to start their goodbyes.

Brin shook his head. “I always thought we were going to be adventurers together. I honestly expected it to take longer for us to get out of town, but when we did I figured we’d go off and have adventures that would shake the world.”

Myra sniffed, and Davi shook his head, and even Zilly couldn’t summon a sardonic smile or inappropriate comment.

Brin said, “Let’s still do it. We’ll meet again. Someday, we’re all going to meet again, and when we do, we’ll be a team again. We’ll all be high level and important by then, but we’ll put it all aside and go on amazing adventures.”

“This occasion calls for something. Allow me,” Lurilan said, and scooted out of the door. He returned a moment later with a wine bottle and glasses. He poured and handed them to each of them, though Marksi hissed in displeasure when he didn’t get one.

“You can share mine,” said Brin.

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Without hesitation, Marksi plunged his scaly face straight into the glass and started lapping.

Zilly raised her glass first. “Next time you guys see me I’ll be the most badass warrior anyone’s ever heard of!”

Myra went next. “You better watch out. Next time we meet, I’ll be a hundred times scarier than my mother.”

Interesting that she would bring up Tawna. They still didn’t know if she was alive. Of course, if Myra had been contacted by Tawna, she would never have told Brin about it.

“I’ll be the type of [Bard] that can tell your stories, and the kind of [Skald] that can make my stories end the way I want them to,” said Davi.

“[Mage],” said Brin after a moment of deliberation. “One way or another, I’m going to master the magic of the world. And for Marksi, he’s going to be what he’s always been. The coolest dragon ever!”

The others gave a faint cheer. Marksi lifted his head long enough to chirp in agreement, but then he went back to loudly slurping and gulping the wine, sloshing it in the cup.

Then they looked at Sion. At first, he seemed surprised, then he grinned when he realized they meant to include him. “All I can offer is money! But when we’re together again, I expect to finance voyages to the furthest islands or expeditions into the deepest of dungeons.”

With that, there was nothing to do but make a toast. “Until next time!” Davi said, and the rest echoed it and drank. Brin only took a tiny sip, because it was kind of gross to drink out of the same glass that Marksi was making out with.

Then it was over. Myra turned away and left first. Her threads rose up to grow a bonnet over her head to hide her face, and she walked quickly enough that she must’ve been using thread magic to pull herself forward.

Davi went next, and the others had no reason to stay.

“What will you do?” Brin asked Lurilan as he was walking out the door.

“Not much has changed for me. I’ll keep to the forest for a time, and see if I can find that Mud Slider for Marksi. Perhaps in town they might have had a chance, but I’ll be safe in the forest.”

“If they wanted to catch [Hunters] the only people they could have asked would be you,” said Brin.

“Life has a way of providing such funny little paradoxes,” Lurilan agreed.

Out of the Hunter’s Lodge, it seemed that Lurilan was going to walk Brin to the edge of the grounds, but he walked quickly so Brin had to strain to keep up, putting them ahead of the others.

“It’s too bad about this. I was hoping your little love triangle would collapse before circumstances drove you apart. It’s quite agitating! Don’t partings like this usually elicit a big confession of some kind?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” said Brin. “See you later, Lurilan.”

Brin hung back until he was even with Zilly and Sion, who were talking about their living situation. Hogg had paid for Zilly to live in a hospice while she recovered from her injuries after the monster swarm on the beach. Not everyone had Brin’s [Scarred, but Healing] Title, but it had taken him by surprise when Zilly recovered slowly over the course of weeks. He’d slept it off in two nights.

After the hospice, she’d had some trouble finding enough money to live in a rented room, but pride still made her pretend to be hesitant to take up Sion’s generosity.

“Are you sure it’s ok? I’d be imposing,” said Zilly.

“Can’t you see? You would truly be doing me a favor. Another [Warrior] in the house would make us all feel much more secure!”

“Sion, you… you know I’m not a real [Warrior],” Zilly admitted.

“Even better! We have no real need for physical protection. But your special senses would be invaluable, trust me. We’d all sleep better knowing that you could sniff out any spies or infiltrators.”

Brin found that he couldn’t pay attention to the conversation, though he was a little surprised to hear Zilly confess her secret Class like that. Were [Rogues] not as paranoid as [Illusionists]?

Damnit! Lurilan was right.

Brin made a conscious thread to take care of it and… found he was the thread.

That’s how it felt. He knew he was both the thread and the main body, but it never felt like that. It felt like The Prestige, where he never knew if he’d wake up as the real person or the copy.

Before he could settle in with the realization that he couldn’t control his own body any more, he got to work. He created a directed thread, ordering it to find Myra. It quickly fell into place, and he watched through [Memories In Glass] as it zoomed forward to find her. She’d made it pretty far, but his illusory eye was quicker and he found her just as she hit the edge of the [Hunters’] grounds.

He went around a corner and created a Mirror Image, and ordered the Invisible Eye to stay attached to it so that he could see and hear. Then, piloting the Mirror Image like it was his own body, he turned the corner to walk along beside her.

She jumped. “Oh! Brin! You scared me. What are you doing? I’m not changing my mind.”

“I know. I just didn’t want you to leave before I told you,” said Brin. He felt a wild, powerful instinct to follow that up with “I love you,” as a distraction from what he came here for, but no. He was not going to let this Class screw with him like this. He was going to say what he came here to say, and nothing else.

He called a sphere of silence around him and Myra. Despite Hogg giving him the spell for it, his silence bubbles weren’t as perfect as the ones Hogg could make, and it muted all the outside sounds of the city.

Myra’s cheeks were wet and her eyes were red, but she’d calmed her face. She noticed the dampening of sound around them and looked at him with mild interest. “What did you just do?”

“I’m an [Illusionist],” said Brin.

Her eyes went wide. “Oh! Yeah, I knew about that.”

“What?”

“I guessed. Then I asked Davi and he told me.”

“How?”

“Lumina spent a nonsensical amount of time teaching us words in the Language for light. I thought maybe it would help your glass somehow, but then you never seemed to use it,” said Myra.

“Does everyone know?”

Myra smiled in delight. “No. Zilly doesn’t. And let me tell you, that has been a delight to watch. You keep beating her in your spars and she has no idea how you’re doing it! It’s driving her crazy!”

Brin shook his head. “I’m not cheating to beat Zilly. I really am that good!”

Myra covered her smile with her hand. “Ok.”

“Why are you laughing? It’s true!”

“I believe you,” she said, though Brin honestly didn’t know if she did or not.

“Look, can you keep this a secret? You guys deserve to know, but even telling my closest friends is giving me a heart attack.”

“I promise,” she said with an amused smile. Then she sighed, “Is that what you came to tell me? That you’re an [Illusionist]?”

What a loaded question. Of course he knew what she’d meant, he wasn’t oblivious even if he pretended to be sometimes. He thought about telling her that when they were older things might be different, but that would sound too much like a promise. Besides, Tawna had read his resolve not to date until twenty in his fate, and he would bet she’d told Myra already. He thought about apologizing, explaining that Hammon’s Bog had been a dark place for him, but anything he could think of saying would just give her false hope.

In the end, he played the fool. “Yeah. Like I said, I thought you deserved to know.”

“I see. Goodbye, Brin.”

She leaned in and reached up to lay a hand on his cheek, but of course it was an illusion so the tips of her fingers passed straight through. He jolted in alarm and took a quick step back. Random objects passing through his illusions tended to dispel them; he was only able to keep the Mirror Image intact through extreme focus of concentration.

What was she thinking? If the sleeve of her dress had brushed against his illusion, it would’ve dispelled for her and his secret would’ve been exposed right there in the middle of town. In a panic, he dashed away towards an alleyway that looked empty.

He took a look both directions, and as soon as he saw there was no one around, he dispelled the mirror image.

The panic faded with the illusion. It’d been a close call, but his secret was safe. It had been a good idea to tell Myra. She’d already known, and he’d been able to extract a promise to keep his secret.

His directed thread with the Invisible Eye was still in place, and without the Mirror Image it reverted to its previous order. It turned around and moved to follow Myra.

Her head was held high, her back straight as she took confident steps down the street towards her future. Should he make another Mirror Image, and give her a better good-bye? He honestly didn’t know if it would help, and even if it did help, he didn’t think it would be for the best.

The best thing for her now would be to meet some nice, normal teenager and forget all about the weird, cursed, scarred freak with a child’s body and an adult’s memories. When they met again, and he truly hoped they would, she’d remember him as an ill-advised crush and only the first of many.

He watched her for only a moment longer.