Abstract Arcana: The Gathering

Abstract Arcana

The Gathering

Niels Strating

Copyright Niels Strating 2022

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people without consent of the original author. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase a new copy. If you’re reading this book and it was not distributed for your use only, then please contact the author for your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 – A Single Coin and a Kind Smile

Chapter 2 – The Adventuring Trade

Chapter 3 – Quest: Dethrone the King of Dragons

Chapter 4 – News from Afar

Chapter 5 – Quest: The Gathering

Chapter 6 – Side-Quest: Escorting the Aguizes

Chapter 7 – Knowledge Beyond Your Rank

Chapter 8 – A Place of History and Mischief

Interlude 1 – Man, Fox and Giant

Chapter 9 – A Thousand Springs

Chapter 10 – The Kitsune Divided

Chapter 11 – Rarest Kind of All

Chapter 12 – Fate of a Mercenary

Chapter 13 – An Island in a Day

Interlude 2 – The Reeve of Isica

Chapter 14 – Adventuring Spirit

Chapter 15 - Dark Days, Dark Beasts, Dark Fates

Chapter 16 – Crossed Paths

Chapter 17 – A Bitter Children’s Tale

Chapter 18 – The Cliff a Kingdom Apart

Chapter 19 – Semi-Mythical Semi-Regicide

Interlude 3 - Naramro

Chapter 20 – A Visage of Destiny

Chapter 21 – A Quest Worth a Thousand Words

Chapter 22 – Quest… Complete?

Interlude 4 – Dethroning the King of Dragons

Chapter 23 – Peacekeeper, Adventurer, Hero for Life

Epilogue

PROLOGUE

The world of Borra is no ordinary one. Many would say it is run by man, but elves of the southern kingdom of Reycine would disagree. Endless battles at the borders slaughter man, elf and since recently, orc. The orcs of united Gujarek, who tend to poke their noses into their own business only, have joined a war for what started as territory, but has evolved into pride and custom. However, not all beings of Borra have found themselves at war. The giantfolk have kept to the northern human territories of Ithron, and some have moved to the south-west continents, but they did not do so alone.

For there is one other creature of high intelligence, though just on the brink of being left out of this category, that roams all the continents of Borra: foxfolk. They may look like humans at first glance, but their sharp canines, fluffy, fox-like tails and ears and orange feline eyes give them away. And if that doesn’t get noticed, their playful behaviour will.

Foxfolk can be either a great companion or a great hindrance, depending on who you’d ask. Unfortunately for them, lords and mayors only ever see the latter, and many citizens agree. Foxfolk are often unwelcome in cities and towns run by humans or elves. That’s why they mostly keep to the wilds, hunting for food instead of working for it. They sometimes refer to themselves as foxes, but don’t always like it when others do it as it is often used condescendingly.

One such foxperson is Maple, a red foxwoman with only a single tail. One can tell a lot by a foxperson’s tail. For instance, the number of tails a foxperson has determines the number of seasons it will live. Maple doesn’t care that her life may seem small or insignificant to most people, but it hurts her deeply when they think less of her when they know they’re wrong.

She’s an excellent hunter, sneaking up on her prey, be it man or animal, and striking it down without ever revealing her presence. However, she can’t live off just hunting. When a caravan or cart of food comes by on the road to the nearby town Caildurrow, a small human town in the middle of the kingdom of the Ginoan Greathills, she sneaks in and steals an apple or two. Occasionally, she ventures into Caildurrow and tries to take something, though people often try to chase her away before she even makes a move, forcing her to retreat into the surrounding pine forest, the Alanian forest.

She doesn’t know the names of any of these places. Despite there being signposts at crossroads telling the names of nearby cities and towns, she can’t read them. It’s tradition for humans to be taught to read and write by parents, and elves have schools where the children learn specific things, but foxfolk have to be lucky if they want to know how to read. Maple has but one tail, and thus not a lot of time to live. Learning to read can take time, and someone with as little as fifteen winters to live would see it as a waste of time.

One sunny morning, Maple was too tired to go hunting for rabbits. She waited by the road until a carriage came along. She lured in the bushes as an unfamiliar cart rode by. Two horses pulled a cart stocked full of apples. The man on top wore a green peasant’s shirt, and looked young and friendly, but Maple knew better than to trust a lovely appearance. She silently jumped on as the cart drove by, and pulled up a white sheet to uncover a barrel full of apples.

She wanted to take as many as she could, and started stuffing them in her pockets. Her clothes were old and ragged, and her pockets were the weight of an apple away from tearing. She was being as sneaky as she could when her pocket gave in. The apple fell onto the wood of the carriage with a thump, and Maple gasped, thinking the game was up. The man looked behind himself, looked her in the eyes, and with a gentle voice he genuinely asked.

‘What are you doing?’

Maple had never been caught red-handed before and didn’t know what to do. She growled at the man and showed her teeth, then ran away, carrying an apple in her hand. She ran into the Alanian forest, but she was being followed. The young man got off his cart and chased her. He called her a few times and asked her to come back. She only turned around once he told her he wasn’t mad. She stopped running, stood up straight and asked him why not, nervously clamping to the apple she had stolen.

He told her everybody who steals has a reason, whether it'd be for survival, money, or a contract of sorts. He then asked her why she did it. She told him calmly that she gets bored of hunting, and wants to do some more dangerous and risky things. She can’t possibly afford adventuring gear to travel the world and hunt new kinds of game, so thievery is her easiest route to a cure for boredom.

The man smiled, but Maple couldn’t look him in the eye. He told her it was okay. He wanted to help her get on the right track, and told her she could have some of the money he would get from the shipment of apples he was about to deliver. Her face filled with joy as she couldn’t keep herself from smiling. She wasn't used to such kindness from humans. She thanked him, but couldn't finish her sentence.

‘Thank you... er, I don't know your name.’ She spoke.

‘Call me Jacob. And you?’ Said the man.

‘I’m Maple.’

‘Nice to meet you, Maple. Hop on!’ Jacob pointed to the cart with his thumb. She decided to ride at the back instead of at the front, next to Jacob. The seat didn't allow much room for a fluffy tail anyway.

Maple was still weary of Jacob's actions. Humans of the eastern continent rarely empathise with foxfolk, and in Maple’s experience, they never have. A plump bird flying through the trees caught her eye, and distracted her from Jacob just as he asked her a question.

‘Maple, if you were to have a hundred flurs, do you know anything you’d want to buy?’ A flur is a Ginoan type of currency. It’s worth as much as a single Jerboan Gold Piece, the world’s standard currency. A single JGP could buy you a hundred apples.

She was slightly startled by his sudden move, but knew immediately she was going to buy a new dress, because her current dress is barely warm enough for this autumn, let alone the cold winter nights that were approaching. If she had any money left, she would buy adventuring gear, travel the world and go on amazing adventures with a friend of hers. Jacob gets excited and tells her he’s wanted to be an adventurer ever since he was a kid, but adventuring on your own is no fun. He’s been struggling to find a partner. He then asked her about her friend.

Maple told him this friend was no ordinary foxperson. Her friend, Kiyomi, was a rare occurrence of when a foxperson melds with one of the elements of power at birth. These foxfolk are known as Kitsune. They are the only foxfolk to be born with 9 tails, and their hair, fur and eyes are coloured to the representative element. A Kitsune is born with adept knowledge of their element, and can utilise their magical knowledge with ease. To see one is rare enough in itself, but to be friends with one is even more so.

Kiyomi, the Kitsune of the element of nature, has already familiarised herself in the world of adventuring, so she can’t be around Maple much. Maple wants to go adventuring together, but before she can do so, she needs the money to buy proper equipment. Jacob asks if he could join her. She says she’s not sure if Kiyomi would allow it, but Maple would be happy to join him on his adventures. She somewhat regretted it afterwards, as she knew she had no real reason to trust Jacob. She asked where they were headed, and Jacob told her to wait a moment.

He mentioned that he needed to deliver these apples to a client in Caildurrow. She didn’t know where that was, but it was close by. He said that if he came in with a foxwoman in tow, his reputation might go down and the apples might not sell as well. He holds nothing against foxfolk, he says, but they’d both be better off if she wouldn’t enter the town with him. Maple agreed. She didn’t feel like having eyes prying at her anyway.

She’d wait here for his return. When she got off his cart, she sneakily nicked another apple from the uncovered barrel. She waited by a roadside rock as she watched Jacob ride off behind the trees. Suddenly, when she took a bite out of the first stolen apple, she got very suspicious of Jacob. She looked around, looking for bandits or highwaymen in bushes and trees. She thought she might have been too quick to trust Jacob, that he might have tried to gain her trust so he could shank her and sell her tail on the black market. She found nothing, and no one. No traps, no shankers.

It wasn’t until she had eaten both apples to the core that her fox ears picked up wheels rolling on dirt and the cantering of two horses in the distance. Once it came into view, she noticed the barrels and crates were without wares, and Jacob with a big smile on his face and a large pouch on his lap. He waved at Maple, and invited her to hop back on if she wanted. She jumped back onto the back of the cart, and noticed Jacob wasn’t hiding the pouch of money from her. She thought he might be tempting her, but in reality, he was testing her. This pouch was filled with fake money, a precaution he always takes in case he should run into a robber.

Jacob lives in the countryside of a large town known as Alanis. Alanis was dubbed the capital of the province of Alania, but it is not its largest in terms of population. This town, like many other towns on the eastern continent, is full of people who dislike foxfolk. Jacob used to be one such person, but he had begun to convince himself otherwise. This was to be his final turning point. If Maple took the pouch, he would return to placing foxfolk below him, as nothing more than thieves and common bandits. If she would leave it, he would reconsider every mention of a foxperson and try to convince others that the foxfolk stereotype is wrong. He knows only one other person who already believes so, but they’re not a human themselves.

Maple didn’t even dare to look at the pouch. She thought that if she looked at it for too long, she'd be tempted to take it. She knew she wasn't some kid who couldn't control herself, especially when it mattered, but she was also afraid that if she’d reach out, Jacob would cut off her hand. She already found Jacob to be far too nice to her. But this same fact got her morbidly curious to see what he might do – if his good will was genuine, or just a façade. She poked her head over the backrest and spoke.

‘You shouldn’t leave something valuable out in the open. Someone might steal it.’

‘Good point.’ Said Jacob. He picked it up from his lap and handed it to Maple. ‘Could you put this in one of the crates please?’

Maple slid open the top of a small, willow wooden crate. She placed the pouch inside, closed the lid, then wondered why. She found it incredibly alienating, to have a human trust her – a total stranger, and a foxperson at that – with their money.

The forest became thinner and slowly became a field as they travelled the dirt road to Alanis. Maple kept silent for most of the journey, until they crossed a river. Maple's mother, also a single-tailed red foxwoman, didn’t allow her to cross this river, and she never had. She asked Jacob to stop when they were right on top of the curved cobblestone bridge. She said she’d rather stay behind instead of crossing the river. Jacob held nothing against it, but asked her to wait a moment before heading back into the forest. He reached into his pocket and grabbed a single flur from it. He flipped the square, silver coin behind him with his thumb. Maple caught it in the grasp of both her hands.

‘Spend it wisely.’ He spoke. He then rode off into the fields east of the river Wirna, while Maple returned to the Alanian forest on foot, clutching to the first bit of money she had ever gotten without stealing.

Chapter 1

A SINGLE COIN AND A KIND SMILE

Jacob didn’t tell his family about his encounter with Maple. They wouldn’t judge him differently if he did, but he thinks that if Maple was a human, and she had joined him on his journey, his family wouldn’t have cared what happened on the way. He wished for foxfolk to be equal to humans, so by not telling it, his family also wouldn’t care what happened on the journey.

He didn’t have any apples to deliver the next day, or anything to do at all, really. On such days, he tends to spend his time in his books, reading about adventurers and their accomplishments, studying on creatures that roam the world, or pondering maps, listing locations he’d one day visit. Whether his bookworm nature was a cause or effect of his dream to become an adventurer was lost to history, but one thing was certain: someday, he would head into the centre of Alanis' town, visit the centremost building called the Alanian Adventurer's Guild, and sign up. The only issue was finding a partner.

Suddenly, he came to a realisation. He put his books back on their shelf and folded the maps back up perfectly. He took with him a single black cloak and hood, but didn’t wear it. He then saddled a horse and set off for the Alanian forest at full speed. After an hour or so – much sooner than with a cart at the back – he reached the roadside rock upon which he had left Maple when delivering apples to Caildurrow. There, once again, she sat, holding the flur in her hands, pondering what to do with it. Whether to spend it, and on what, or to just keep it as a memento.

‘Hello again.’ Said Jacob.

Maple was worried he'd be disappointed when he saw that she hadn't yet spent the flur, but then reminded herself that this was hers now, and it was no business of his what she wanted to do with it.

‘No apples today?’ She asked.

‘Not today, I'm afraid. Saving for something special, I see?’

‘Maybe. Just don’t know what. I’ve always wanted to try pancakes, but there’s no tavern that’ll serve me. Can’t buy a dress either, because I’m a fox, and they don’t make dresses with holes in the back.’

‘I might know someone who could help you with that. A friend of mine – a dishonoured orc, if you’d believe it – can set you up with some proper adventurer’s gear, if you like.’

Maple didn't believe him. She believed that this blacksmith may be an orc, which, to a human, would be the least believable part, but didn’t believe she could pay this orc with just one flur. Orcs don’t often leave Gujarek. Orcish code dictates that orcs must do three things, or be dishonoured and outcast. First is to fight, be it in the endless war, or wars with other clans. Second is to hunt. If you have nothing to do, you go hunting. Third, is to never leave Gujarek, unless doing the aforementioned two. Jacob’s friend doesn't like to talk about his past, so nobody knows which of the three he had violated.

Jacob noticed she didn't respond, so he decided to tell her exactly what he was doing.

‘I’ve been wanting to sign up as an adventurer for a very long time now. I’ve got gear, a sword, a lot of motivation... The only thing I’m missing, is a partner. Would you like to come with me?’

Glad he finally told her his intentions outright, she agreed. She didn’t know exactly why she did. They were about to head into a small part