This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

Verity had been an exceptional musician from a young age, in part because her parents had pushed her into it. She’d tried three other instruments before settling on the lute, though she had a particular affection for singing to accompany herself, something that her instructors had reluctantly indulged. She was perhaps twelve years old when she first realized that she was being groomed for something. Her musical instructors began talking to her about parties and guilds and the ways in which bardic magic was used to boost the powers of everyone involved.

It was clear to Verity that for her parents, this wasn’t simply about wealth, though a bard of her predicted caliber would make a fair amount of money with the right placement. It also wasn’t simply a matter of public service, though there was some element of that, as though she had some obligation to do the thing she was good at, above and beyond the ability of others to pay her for it. But no, the overriding concern seemed to be that of status, the nebulous quality that her mother had a keen eye for. Some of this was with designs toward finding a good match for her, but some of it was simply to make sure she reflected well on ‘the family’ in terms of whom she was playing with, what she was playing, and what awards or accolades she’d achieved.

All that had been miserable enough, as though it was an attempt to deliberately destroy her love of music, but everything had changed when she was fifteen.

She had been Chosen.

Six was a magical number. It was the number of sides of a hexagon, the number of strings on her lute, and the number of gods. Each of the six gods had a Holy City, and each of them had six sets of six sets of six Chosen. Two hundred and sixteen for each god sometimes seemed like an enormous amount and other times seemed like barely any at all.

Verity had been waiting on a market street for her mother, who was looking for more decorations for their house, this time with an eye toward coating the Dungeon Room with all kinds of nicely evocative henlings. The store promised ‘Notions from Elsewhere’, and Verity had stepped out, in part to get some air and in part to have a break from her mother’s verbalizations about what might look good in which location, which the shopkeeper seemed happy to listen to and offer opinions on.

Verity had been humming a tune to herself when she felt her hands suddenly clasped by a man in fine clothes. She pulled back at once, but his eyes were glowing, and she found herself transfixed. Besides, he was much stronger than she was. He pulled her close and spoke in a language that Verity didn’t understand, his warm breath on her face as the words spilled out of him. Then, almost as soon as it began, it was over, and the man had released her. He was blinking, his eyes no longer glowing, and he seemed a bit taken aback that there was a young girl in front of him looking at him with wide eyes. He mumbled an apology, then took off down the street, moving at a jog and occasionally looking back at her before disappearing around a corner.

She hadn’t said anything when her mother had come out of the store with a paper bag filled with curiosities. By that time, her hands had stopped shaking, and while the image of the glowing eyes had remained, the encounter was starting to fade.

The second time it happened, Verity had been in one of the conservatory’s practice rooms. A small woman had burst in, interrupting the music, and again said something in that same alien language. This time though, as Verity watched the glowing eyes, she heard a phrase she recognized, or rather, a name: Xuphin, one of the six gods, the God of Infinity. Again, the glowing eyes faded, and the woman seemed confused about where she was and why, but unlike the man, she didn’t seem frightened and afraid. Instead, she was angry, and having nothing else to do with that anger, she directed it toward Verity. The matter escalated up the conservatory, until eventually it was brought to the attention of a cleric, who recognized it for what it was.

This, the Choosing, happened four more times. Two of them had been public, one of them at a conservatory, the other at a temple of Qymmos, and word had spread, to the delight of Verity’s parents. Chosen were rare. Chosen were special. Sometimes, anyway.