Book 1, Prologue

Do you know what it means to be loyal?

Loyalty unto death is what I need.

But worry not, child of man, it is not your death that I want.

***

Feronie was dying. By starts and fits.

She had seen plenty of the mortal children on her blessed lands move on from their mortal coil. She had seen the signs and often provided the very remedies that would allow them to cling to life a little longer.

In herself, the signs were clear. A stilling of her growth, a grasp around her core, like dark clouds clinging to a mortal’s lungs.

The world bled the black smoke of industry. Progress was pressing on across great pastures, plowing through ancient forests, and dredging up the oceans of the world.

She had tried to combat it, tried to fight back, but she had discovered that her progress was hampered by a great idea. New gods, reveling in their new power, pressing on and giving great boons to their followers.

Initially, she saw some benefit in the new ideas. The peoples of the world were becoming as one. Elves and orcs and humans and dwarves, working shoulder to shoulder.

It all turned to ash, though. The beauty of the unique and precious, tarnished by…she could not understand it.

It was too different, too new, too sacrilegious.

She needed a new method to fight this evil.

She was an ancient one, weakened, certainly, but not without a few small tricks left to her.

Chapter 1: Remembrance of a Distant Dream

I could remember a dream.

A life lived well. Or at least, I hoped so. A happy family, though I couldn’t remember their faces—years of study and learning, always more curiosity than I could satisfy.

Then I grew, and something happened? I couldn’t remember it all. It was a dream, and dreams did as they were wont. They faded and became abstract against the realities of the waking mind.

There was something else I remembered. A conversation with a great being, a woman who seemed at once sad, sickly, and yet still so strong. She cupped me in her hands and whispered a question in my ear: “Do you know what it means to be loyal?”

I squirmed and moved, my vision an unfocused mess. I wasn’t able to think clearly, and my body moved poorly. Everything felt wrong, and tiring.

I slept, awoke, and slept again. The dreams always returned. Flashes of time spent camping. That embarrassing time Leo Johnson had asked me out in front of all of his friends in middle school.

The lady was always there, always speaking that same recitation. “Loyalty unto death is what I need,” she’d say. Her voice was honey, so sweet and pure and…and I’d wake up again, squirm some more, and then protest.

My words were cries, but cries that were heeded. I was fed, I was spoken to, and I returned to my slumber.

The dreams continued, of course, as confusing and disjointed as any dream. My mom, hugging me close, but then it wasn’t her; it was another woman, with black hair and a face stained by a bit of soot. Then the pretty lady would return, smiling at me once more. “But worry not, child of man, it is not your death that I want,” she whispered.

It took me some time to realize that I was an infant. It was embarrassing, really. Wasn’t I meant to be observant?

Being a child, a baby, wasn’t ideal. A persistent hunger gnawed at me, but was rarely sated, and while I could move some, it was never enough. I was constantly tired, and my breathing was…wrong. I couldn’t remember it ever being so hard to take a good, deep lungful. Maybe when I had spent too much time next to the campfire?

None of that made any sense, of course. I was an adult, a grown-ass woman! I was…mostly independent and able to take care of myself and my three cats just fine, thank-you-very-much.

Every time I slept, I had the same dream. Not just snatches of my old life, but that lady—she was not a mere woman; I don’t know why, but that was too small a title for her. Female, yes, but more than that. I couldn’t put it into words, but it was an important distinction, somehow—and her request. No real explanation, only a request.

Loyalty and death. The one for the other.

I aged, I guess. My vision cleared a fair bit, my squirming grew more powerful, and I grew just a little less tired. The hunger remained.

My world was a box. Not a cradle or a crib, but a wooden box, with one corner poorly joined in place. My only toys were a pair of wooden blocks with softened edges and a thin blanket, stained on the bottom.

I was rarely clothed, which was deeply uncomfortable.

I don’t think that was my parents’ fault.

There were two of them, as is the norm, I imagine. My mother was a reedy-thin woman with gaunt features, premature wrinkles, and so much love in her eyes it hurt to meet them. She’d feed me when she could, swaddle me in a different blanket at times, and bounce me on her lap under the flickering light of the only bulb illuminating our home.

The man, my father, was built a little better. He has some muscle to him, though strangely, one arm was clearly built better than the other. He was a jovial man, with a grin whenever I saw him, and a bit of a pep in his step. His hair was shockingly orange, and I hoped I inherited that at least.

So, once more born with parents that loved me. That was a lot, I think. The house though…

When my mom finally placed me on the floor to crawl and explore, I got to see the true state of it: a floor of rotting boards, old stains showing where water once rested, a single small cot against one wall, my box against the other, and a door leading out with a rack for work boots next to it.

There was a wardrobe, sitting at an angle with a few bits of wood wedged under one leg to keep it upright. The front had no doors. I could see a few books, though. I wanted them, but reaching them, let alone reading them, was beyond me still.

The house’s only other room was a tiny bathroom, with only a wooden box for a toilet and a tiny sink.

A cast metal stove sat in the corner of the room, with two chairs next to it. Mom was over it, cooking something in a pan.

Coal fire.

That would perhaps explain the issues with my breathing.

When the door opened and my father swept me off my feet, I caught my first glimpse of the world outside. Past the door was a narrow road, dimly lit, and a wall of homes across from it, with what might have been a catwalk above the doorways.

I would need to investigate it more later, when I wasn’t being spun around at dizzying speeds. I couldn’t help the gurgle of a laugh that escaped me. Sure, it was childish, but I had always loved a good thrill ride, and at my size, the spin might as well have been a rollercoaster.

I was returned to my box, but from that day on, I was allowed out every so often.

My world was tiny, and it was cold at times, but it was filled with an easy warmth as well. There was love here.

It wasn’t perfect, but maybe it was enough?

I crawled near the cabinet one morning and winced as I found black stains all across the walls in rounded patterns—black mold. Stachybotrys chartarum. The name came to me in a flash, and I sat my little butt down on the floor to stare at it.

Technically, it was toxic, but I wasn’t overly worried. The ambient humidity in the house was probably just barely strong enough to allow the mold to survive.

I smiled, if only to myself. That had been my thing once: fungi, molds, and the wonderful world of mushrooms.

My mom scooped me off the floor eventually, and I was returned to my box to fret and be bored with myself, finally falling asleep once more.

Another dream, the lady holding me close. She was crying.

I tried to ask her why, but in that way so common to dreams, I had no voice.

A single tear rolled down her cheek. It hovered above me for a moment. I felt the tear collide with my head, a wash of warm water, a soothing press against my…not my mind, not my body. Maybe my soul, if I dared to believe in something like that.

Time passed in jumps and starts. The hunger continued, but I didn’t complain. I took the little cloth bags my father returned with, the bits of bread covered in a thin layer of black webs (Aspergillus niger, also called black mold, ironically enough). Sometimes there was cheese, occasionally some hardy vegetables, like carrots or potatoes. And, of course, the ever trustworthy mushroom.

Agaricus bisporus, the world’s most common ’shroom.

When they started weaning me (a bit early? Was Mom unable to continue?) I was often given a few chunks to chew on.

Not the healthiest food out there, but nourishing all the same, and I don’t think my parents knew better.

For the moment, I didn’t know what I would do. Grow up and…try to make a life for myself, perhaps?

By the looks of it, I wouldn’t have a choice but to make it a humble life.

Time passed in fits and starts. I listened as my parents talked. It wasn’t English, but I was able to make out sounds well enough.

Then my mom started leaving the house in the morning, along with my father. I wasn’t left alone, though. Mom swaddled me up and brought me out of the house for the first time I could remember. We climbed up a rickety metal staircase, and I tried to take in as much of the world as I could.

All I got from it were grey skies and rust-clad buildings before I was brought to an old woman’s home. She fretted with me, her hands ancient and gnarled. I was placed on the floor of a house smaller than our own.

The woman sat in a rocking chair and fiddled with yarn and knitting needles, the gentle clack-clack accompanied by the creak of her chair as she sat next to a soot-stained window and focused on her work.

I was all alone for hours on end, with nothing to do but wait and sleep on a pile of blankets. I could crawl around, but there was little to do.

The boredom almost got to me.

Nothing to do, nothing to practice. I was going to lose my mind.

Then, one fine day, perhaps a month into my daily stays at the old woman’s place, I crawled next to her pantry. She had never cleaned the bottom-most shelf; too low for old knees to manage, I imagined.

A few things had been forgotten there: dust, mostly, as well as some small wooden boxes, but growing out of a heap of natural compost at the very back was a single mushroom.

I knew my ’shrooms. At least, I did back home. What if this wasn’t Earth? Nothing indicated as much, I could simply be in some poorer country, or another time…but if I wasn’t on Earth, did my knowledge of mycology translate?

The mushroom seemed harmless, so I reached out with grubby baby hands and tugged the mushroom out. Were I older, it would have been a snap (literally) to pull the stem apart to examine the mushroom closer. As it was, it took all of my strength and leverage to tug the mushroom out.

[You have unlocked the [Mycological Harvester {Uncommon}] Skill!]

[Do you want to add the [Mycological Harvester {Uncommon}] Skill to your known repertoire of General Skills?]

“Wha?” I blabbered.

Oh hey, my first almost word!