Forums

Of course there was more. Not only is there not enough room for a full story, nobody would even pay attention if a no-name write put out something that seemed like wild fantasy.

I’ll assume you mean the story I have of her, since my own story is extremely boring and not relevant to anything here.

Finding a reasonable place to start is a bit difficult, since I only know it in bits and pieces and it’s always been hard for me to try and piece it together in chronological order, so I’ll start with what I think are three of the more interesting parts. They’re the most fantastical bits, coincidentally, and although everything I’m saying here is just what I was told I never got the impression that she was making this up. She didn’t seem the type, really, even though I doubt you’ll believe at least half of what I’m going to say.

So, here you go. She has personally met the Goddess, has died at least once defending that very entity, and has devoted her existence to maintaining the proper soul transfer of the people of this world.

Now, the actual story in as much of an order as I can give you. I don’t know where she’s from or where she was born. All she would tell me was that she “isn’t a native”. Whether that means of the country, continent, or the area in which I got to talk to her, I can’t say. She was fairly tight-lipped on how long ago she showed up here, too, although that was another interesting aspect.

I figured that meeting the Goddess was something from a long, long time ago, but the way she spoke and the events she mentioned seemed to say that she has only been around here for, at maximum, a hundred years or so. Granted, that’s still an impossibly long time, and I’m still not quite sure what to think of it.

I digress, though. Something she talked about in great detail was actually the founding of the Guild. Supposedly it was made at the suggestion of the group she is part of, as a means to combat the overly aggressive manhandling of the citizenry by the Noble class and the mercenary groups they had employed at the time. Before you ask, no, I don’t know the name of her organization. That was something else she was fairly tight-lipped about, but it seems obvious to me that they are not anyone that operates in the foreground of events. She tried to assure me that their actions are for the benefit of those on the continent, but, as a writer of those kinds of stories, it seems to me that anyone that doesn’t operate out in the light has something to hide. Still, if that’s the case, I can’t argue with the effectiveness of the decision. It gave the citizens another line of protection against both their oppressors and the monsters outside the cities that had been largely ignored by the Nobles.

As for her work...well, it’s hard to fully make sense of it. I know that at this point it’s common knowledge to anyone who looks around for information that she’s been part of several intrusions that’ve resulted in Artifact thefts. What she told me back then, before a lot of them had happened, was that anything she was doing was related to a singular goal, and any artifacts she was trying to get had something to do with that. Like I said, her claim is that her life is devoted to maintaining the proper soul transfer for the people of this world.

When I asked what that meant, she told me that it meant exactly what it sounded like, that the souls that were no longer tethered to this world need to be properly shepherded, and that her life is devoted to maintaining the proper operation of that. It’s...unclear, to say the least, but I got the impression that she meant every word of it. The woman is either crazy or has a purpose that’s on a different level from what a normal individual can hope to achieve.

The strangest thing about her, though, was the way she looked. I’m sure you’ve seen a description, but I can assure you that what she looked like was a bit...stranger. What she’s got on her face doesn’t look like a tattoo or something painted on. It looks as though someone took a brand and burned away half the skin on the side of her face, but that whatever they did it with made it look like the mark is...alive. I don’t know how else to describe it. What was the creepiest thing, though, was that...well, she looked like me. Like my face with the marks etched on it. I don’t know what she can do, but whatever it is it was like looking into a mirror that could speak back to me in something extremely similar to my voice.

Now, there’s a lot more I can say, but since I’m probably getting boring at this point I might as well see if you’ve got any comments or questions so far.