Cavya and Heather peered at a magigraphic representation of the lay of land, their faces telling me it's not anywhere good. I sat beside Ahrian and Yaora—two people who initially wanted nothing to do with me—and did my best to keep my foot from tapping against the room's marble tiles. We've been here for quite some time and nothing of significance has happened yet.
After the brief meeting inside Raventhone, Cavya instructed everyone to move-out, to come to one of the outposts on the edge of the Northern Tower. "Best be near the place for the briefing," Cavya reasoned when he caught me giving him an incredulous look for his decision to not stay in Suprana for the night.
That way, we've spent the night on air, flying from the east back to the north. If we could have, from the start, traveled from the Central Empire towards the Northern territory to meet the scouting party there, we could have saved so much time.
But no. Heather, the over-eager dragonkin leader of the scouting party, seemed too keen to hold out on the details of the mission until she's sure the adventurers taking it were able to deal with it and score them some points.
It took me a few weeks to grasp the guild system in Solarlume. Adventurers and scouts were considered part of the joint army initiative of all territories to deal with the threat of the netherside. From what Valren told me, it's an unknown realm filled with thick shadows which could birth strange and deadly creatures. These creatures, ranging from miniature to gigantic to leviathan classes, would infest the towns. When the local soldiers and mages couldn't handle it anymore, they called the adventurers.
Sometimes, these creatures proliferate and take over a certain place entirely, usually cave systems, old ruins, or spots of untouched forests, and that's where the concept of dungeons came from. When a place was overrun by nether beasts—as Nazran insisted on calling them—it's the adventurers' job to cleanse the place and perform purification rituals to prevent future infestations.
"If you say they're starting from this point up to this point, then we're talking about at least twenty prinks," Cavya nodded to whatever Heather said. "That's a bit of a stretch."
Heather tapped a curved claw against her chin. A frown pulled down the corners of her lips. She could be serious about something, it seemed. "When we scouted it one and a half months ago, they were just up to this point," she circled her shorted finger over the magigraph. The spot she pointed at was at least a handbreadth from the point she initially marked. "The twenty prinks was just my prediction. I could be wrong, though."
Cavya rested his gloved paws on the table. "Thank you, Heather," he said. The dragonkin's uneven locks bobbed with the motion of acknowledgement on her way to take her seat. "Everybody, listen up."
All chatter around me ceased. Even the dog-headed langkoor, who I could vaguely remember as Trink, snapped to attention, a grim expression on his face. What was he discussing with the blue-haired spiria?
"From the scouts' report, I say we are dealing with a mid-range to large-range mission," Cavya said. "Colonies of jjangkai have been found amassing numbers deep in the forest five prinks from Gleamare, where we are."
A large-scale mission as my first one? That's nowhere near my expectations when I first landed inside this world. I turned to the other knights to catch the thoughts spilling out of their expressions. Instead, a sliver of purple burned in my periphery. I stole a glance at the spiria whose special ability was still not disclosed to us.
From the way she leaned forward, letting her hair fall over her shoulder to the passive stare of focus she was giving Cavya, there's no denying it. She was Hye-jin.
"Tomorrow, we will do a preliminary assessment of the space, just to confirm the scouting report and arm ourselves with further knowledge on how expansive the nest has become," Cavya was saying.
The spiria clicked her tongue and flicked her silver hair behind her. Then, she ran her thumb behind her earlobe. It was just so...Hye-jin, apart from the look of bewilderment that followed. It's like she was reminded of something about her ears, something that she's still getting used to.
Of course. Duh. She's just like me—transported into a world we only saw as a game. For some reason, she got spiria ears and was now having a blast. That's great.
"What are the guild ranks of your members?" Cavya turned to Heather, the break in the monotone of the words snapping my attention back to the briefing at hand.
Heather glanced at her companions. "Trink, our rear guard, is a Lower Classman, same as Revery," she pointed to the dog-headed langkoor and the blue-haired spiria. "And...Seline, here, is our initiate. But I believe if we train her properly, she'll sail straight to Noble."
Seline? Something was shaken out of my memory. It's when I first met Hye-jin and we got to talking about the new release of The Legends of Solarlume and the names we would be picking for our characters. She said something about Seline back then. Seline what?
And to think she was an initiate like me. This could only mean we joined our respective guilds and parties at almost the same time. It might just be an extreme and cruel coincidence, it might just be my confirmation bias playing me, but the details were lining up so precisely that I couldn't ignore them. Not anymore.
Somehow, Hye-jin was sitting in the same room as me, just with a different face, a different voice, and perhaps, a different disposition.
Cavya hummed, a hand playing with his whiskers. "Still too low to be of help in missions," he muttered under his breath. It was loud enough to send the scouting party bristling.
"Forgive me for speaking out of turn," Arzo, the teal-haired spiria, raised a hand. Just from the defensive tone of his first statement, what would follow wouldn't smell like flowers. "But can you tell me what your ranks are?"
Ahrian spared Arzo a glance, turning her head to one side like how our neighbor's cockatoo did when we nudged him with sunflower seeds. Instead of shying away from her literal hawk-like gaze, Arzo straightened his back. Heather's eyes flitted back and forth between her teammate and Cavya, the muscles on her shoulders tensing and her scales rising. Like her, Valren and Yaora were doing the same.
The air turned electric.
I turned to Cavya, noting how Hye-jin—I mean, Seline—watched the whole shift of mood with narrowed eyes and a disapproving curve of her lips. Instead of going ballistic and murdering everyone, Cavya's eyes pinched up when he smiled. "It's nothing sort of a sin against the Divines, scout," he said. "Let us introduce ourselves, formally this time."
He gestured to his left. "This is Mirani, a Grand Artisan," he said, to which Mirani bobbed her blond head. "Nazran, Major Veteran. Valren, Chief Veteran."
"This is Ahrian, Vice Artisan," Cavya continued, despite the deflating opposition around him. My knowledge was next to nothing about these ranks, but apparently, Arzo has already been proven wrong before Cavya even reached me. "Yaora, Major Artisan."
I raised an eyebrow. Why did Cavya skip me? "Lastly, we have Kora," he said. I knew what he's going to say. Initiate. Would probably generate a few laughs and we'd move on. Clearly, these people were powerful, and if my previous training sessions with some of them didn't prove it, I didn't know what would.
"Grand Noble," came Cavya's announcement of my rank.
I whirled to him, not bothering to hide the question from my gaze. Cavya subtly shook his head and faced the scouts. "Judging from the range of this mission, we have no option but to include the scouting party who reported it," Cavya continued. He gave Arzo a nod. "I have to thank you for reminding me to establish the hierarchy of this assignment."
From my periphery, I saw Seline scoff and roll her eyes, earning a pointed glare from Heather. Ha, that's Hye-jin all the way through. Always thinking she was right and viewed all sorts of authority and hierarchy as absurd and petty.
To Cavya's discredit, though, what he said was not the best way to deal with the issue, but it's not like the scouting party didn't scratch the flint first. Either way, there's nothing to be gained from this meeting if they're going to dissolve into offhand remarks and passive jabs.
"I would like to remind you that the chain of command will start from me," Cavya tapped a hand against his fluffed scarf, then gestured at the dragonkin with yellow scales to his left. "Then to Valren and Nazran, being in the veteran rank."
Cavya flashed a calm smile in Heather's direction. "We will treat the Artisans, Noble, Classes, and Initiate as equal," he said. "We will be pairing you at my and Heather's discretion. It will be your duty to protect your pair and to make sure they return home alive and in one piece. Understood?"
A resounding agreement rang from the others. Meanwhile, my brain was caught up in the words "pairing" and "duty to protect". I sneaked a glance at Seline, seeing a sliver of Hye-jin with every move and every shift in her expression. I massaged my temples and averted my eyes. Cavya was saying something about the packing and preparation for our trip starting tomorrow, but nothing registered.
This just wouldn't do. I resolved to forget her and the life I lived and left in the real world. When I get out of here, my plan was to move on. Without her and any traces of her. So, why, out of all the scouting parties to report to Dragnasand, would we end up with one that had a woman who talked, acted, and was like her?
I couldn't wrap my head around it. Somehow, it was harder to accept than the fact about me pushing a button and being stuck—body and soul—inside a game.
But I wasn't making the same mistake I made in my youth. I was given a chance to start over, to reinvent my life even if it was as bonkers as the real world beyond it. I wasn't going to waste it tangling myself with someone who had already ruined everything once.
Whether it was Hye-jin or not, I wouldn't ever have anything to do with her ever again.
"That's all," Cavya had said. Whatever was being discussed leading up to this moment was lost on me. Did they fix the pairing already? I hoped I wasn't with Seline or whatever her name was. I'd rather get eaten by a jjangkai than endure a whole mission with her. "You are free to do your own preparations before we depart at dawn. Have a good night's rest and we'll see each other by then. Divine Blessings."
"Be unto us!" answered the rest of the people inside the meeting room. Cavya strode out of the room, yanking the wooden door whose hinges screamed with gusto. This room must not have been used in so long. The dust on the table's surface and the cobwebs on the walls and ceilings were atrocious.
As soon as Cavya was gone, the rest followed suit. Seline moved towards me, as per my periphery, and I turned to Mirani and smiled at her. Confused, she smiled right back. "Are we given rooms here?" I asked, as if what happened during the one and only sparring session with her was lost in my memory.
Mirani hummed. It took every drop of my willpower to not glance back at Seline. Who cared if she was moving towards me? I didn't see her.
Don't look. Don't look.
"I think they're down the hall?" Mirani said. "I haven't actually been in this outpost before."
I grabbed Mirani's arm. "That's great!" I said a little too loudly and began yanking her out of the room. She sputtered in confusion but let me drag her unceremoniously. Together, we weaved past the trickle of people. My steps couldn't have been wider. At some point, I let go of Mirani and resolved to go at it on my own.
Don't look. Don't look. It's the only way I'd be sure to never lose my marbles. Because if I see her again, if I hear her voice again...
I wouldn't know what I'd do.