bookworm

[Tips] Treants are technically humanfolk, but at heart they are nearer to spirits. They boast high magical competence as a result, and use their innate ties to nature to bolster their strength.

The bathing places of the Trialist Empire were minor amusement parks, of sorts. They had beds where one could order a massage, benches where friends could sit and chat, and even small exercise areas where patrons could enjoy a bout of wrestling.
Sir Feige and I left the sauna and found a bench near the cold water bath to cool off on. Seeing him in full, the peculiarity of the treant form struck me with renewed intensity. His face and limbs looked like gnarled bark that had happened to twist into the shape of a man. Without the twinkle in his eyes, his features could be written off as the effects of pareidolia manifesting on an old bit of timber.
Silver leaves adorned his crown like a head of hair, and the derricking of his branches evoked the image of an ancient tree. In this way, treants failed to differ from mensch: his body quietly told the tale of his age.
“As I’ve gotten up in years, all the water’s left my body. I come by the bathhouse to soak my dried lumber,” he said, waving over a waterboy—vendors dealing in food and drink were common sights to extend a visitor’s stay.
“Aye, ol’ man,” the waterboy said. “Here ’gain? Y’sure don’t tire o’ the place.”
“Baths’re all’s welcome,” Sir Feige responded. “Be here till I wilt. Ah, pour me yer finest.”
The old treant was apparently acquainted with the waterboy, who dutifully poured out a cup of refreshingly tart-smelling water into a glass.
“Give ’im one too,” Sir Feige added, treating me to a cupful. A bit of citrus and bark had been steeped in the icy beverage. “Feel free to drink up. Water that follows the drowning of steam—”
“—Is sweeter still than nectar?”
I blurted out the end to the familiar poem and took a swig, letting the reinvigorating moisture soak through my dehydrated body.
“Oh?” Sir Feige stroked the gray moss on his chin like a beard. “Familiar with the classics?”
“Bernkastel, yes? The great master of prose poetry?”
The line that we’d quoted came from a pastoralist song dating back to before the foundation of the Empire. This region had a long history of arrhythmic, emotionally muscular poetry, popularized in part thanks to its transmissibility amongst the uneducated. On a night long ago in woods far away, Margit and I had played a game that had evolved from this linguistic tradition.
At one point in my youth, I’d shut myself up in my local church’s library, reading through everything I could get my hands on. Theological works were a given, but the collection amassed by several generations of bishops included many anthologies of poems that spoke to peasant sensibilities. Rural bishops were ultimately rural people, and their tastes naturally reflected this.
“Indeed,” Sir Feige confirmed. “Quite fine work. He doesn’t need to affect some rarefied dialect to achieve elegance. The joy of life glows in every word, and the lingering impressions they leave are marvelous.”
“I completely agree. When I read his songs, they really do make me want to take a bath or go on a walk.”
Bernkastel was shrouded in mystery, and even his pen name was merely his place of birth. The existence of the original manuscripts he’d published—as opposed to mere transcriptions—suggested he wasn’t a commoner, but the passionate affection for prosaic life that pervaded his work was a far cry from the lifestyle enjoyed by the upper class. Modern Rhinian historians suspected him to have been either a lay poet with a noble patron, or a bastard child not wholly abandoned by his family.
As popular as he was, the contemporary sphere of aristocratic literature placed a great deal of worth on the technical mastery of language. Metrical poetry with clearly defined verses made such craftsmanship far more transparent, making them the preferred form for song. I hadn’t expected a master scrivener who’d built his name creating copies of works like these to have a fondness for prose poetry.
“Not many lads your age grasp his genius. I’m impressed.” The treant happily knocked back his water and ordered another glass each for both of us.
I knew exactly how he felt: purse strings were always looser when finding another to share one’s hobby with. I recalled how, when a new recruit who played tabletop games had joined my company, I’d become terribly philanthropic—though I could no longer even remember his name.
“Youths nowadays only talk about Verlaine this and Heinrich that. All they want is to be told the most obvious things as elaborately as possible. What they don’t know is...”
What followed was a lengthy explanation—a rant, really—that I carefully absorbed while we hopped between hot water and steam to not let ourselves get cold.
I now saw why a man of his personality could be called difficult. He was as prideful as he was intelligent, and his craftsmanship was extraordinary enough for him to ascend from the common class. Yet from his long spiel, I gathered that he hadn’t had the talent to birth his own beloved sagas; transcription was merely his attempt to remain close to them, whatever form they might take. To his dismay, those that sought his skills only asked him to copy famous tales or rare tomes, which were the furthest thing from his pure hobbyist’s palate.
Had Sir Feige been an unremarkable scrivener, he would have likely been able to endure his work. Rather, such scribes were almost exclusively charged with manuscripts for disposable sagas and poems, so the man would have been happy to scribble away. It was evident from his rant that he appreciated the subtle differences in the way works affected him when read on different occasions.
Unfortunately, the treant was too skilled. His first mistake had been when he’d accepted a highly paid job to transcribe a novella—a “novel” commentary on a short article, as what constituted a novel on Earth was generally referred to as a story or legend—in an attempt to pay his bills. The requests had then come flooding in for novels and political opinion pieces, evolving into arcane tomes and historical documents. On the rare occasion he received a contract involving poetry, it never failed to conform to the tastes of high society... It was no wonder his clients dubbed him narrow-minded, given how motivationally unfit he was for his work.
The tragedy of Marius von Feige was that he had the skills to sustain his trade. The gulf between that which he excelled in and that which he loved was heartbreaking.
Overbathing had made me thoroughly woozy by the time Sir Feige finished his soliloquy. Not that I regretted hearing out the whole thing, mind you: his depth of knowledge was a thing of beauty, and he’d taught me so many new things that I gained experience just by listening. A dizzy spell was a small price to pay.
“I’m sorry, little one,” Sir Feige said, “I got a bit carried away. Forgive me; it’s an old tree’s bad habit.”
“No need to apologize,” I said. “I was enthralled from start to finish.”
We stepped outside the bathhouse, and the cool autumn breeze restored my mental faculties. Looking up into the sky, the familiar white moon hid behind the sparse clouds as She prepared to emerge in full. On the other hand, the sick black moon was almost entirely out of sight.
“Now then, I don’t recall hearing what you needed me for. What brings you to a withering shrub like me?”
Sir Feige benevolently offered me a chance to complete my main objective, and I decided to oblige. Had I been an adult, I would have followed proper etiquette and visited him in a more becoming manner on another day; however, children were at their best when innocently honest.
“Well, sir, my master has bid me to come and request the Compendium of Forgotten Divine Rites that you once transcribed.”
I bowed as deeply as I could, and the treant’s brow jumped high, revealing that his scarab eyes were now glowing red.
As you can see, Lady Agrippina’s task was not for me to place a new order with this scrivener. Sir Feige had already completed the transcription for the work in question, and had failed to hand it off to his client after a massive falling-out.
I’d done some research in hopes of finding out what I was supposed to procure, but I hadn’t been able to find so much as a summary. “Forgotten” could be taken literally to mean that a god’s name had been lost, but I hadn’t come across the term in any of the theological texts I’d read thus far. Clearly, knowledge on the subject was considered highly forbidden.
If nothing else, I was sure that a book venerating such entities was anything but kosher. In the event that I successfully negotiated for the thing, I would send it straight to Lady Agrippina without so much as opening the cover.
I had no plans of turning back to lose what I held dear, like Orpheus before me. My forefathers had graciously shown what terrible fates could await me; to avoid their footprints was the best way to honor their memory.
“Do you still have the tome in question in your possession?” I asked, still bowing. A discomforting creaking accompanied the sound of flocks of birds flying out of the nearby trees.
“Very well,” he said. “This isn’t something to speak of in public. Come along.”
At the edge of my vision, I saw Sir Feige’s feet turn away. Raising my head, I hurried after him.

[Tips] Throughout the annals of history, some gods have disappeared from a lack of faith or have reinvented themselves as the beliefs of their followers evolved.

Sir Feige led me to the base of a massive, awe-inspiring evergreen near the city walls. He explained that the tree was both his mother as a treant and his current abode.
Birth among treants was rather anomalous relative to the other sentient races: forsaking sexual reproduction, their kind arose from spirits housed in trees that eventually formed a self-concept. Once the treant broke away from their mother tree, they were said to live by its side until the day came that they found someplace they wanted to go.
“Come in.”
“Wow... This is incredible.” The hollow he’d invited me into was far larger than the physical exterior had suggested, and I failed to hold in my amazement when I saw the massive collection of books that decorated the room.
A dignified, caramel-brown work desk presided over the room’s center; its make was every bit as impressive as the treant sitting at it. The dark chair, the back of which towered behind him, sang praises to the majesty of the space.
Bookshelves turned toward this centerpiece from every angle, each carefully lined with countless beautifully bound books. The texts had been meticulously sorted in order of author, and I recognized a handful of titles. Those I found familiar were the kinds of stories handled by cheap libraries—which rented works at a handful of assarii per day per book—and haphazardly bound. Yet here they were, polished with all the same care a dictionary or treatise might receive.
Everything about Sir Feige’s room screamed a hobbyist’s passion: “This is what I like! Have a problem with it?!” I had no doubt that the books on display here had been transcribed by the man himself, with the cost of binding coming out of his own pocket. These were truly made for him, and him alone.
“I know this saga!” I exclaimed. “Wait, I’ve seen this author’s romances performed at the festival! There’s a whole collection of his poems?!”
In some ways, this was a treasure trove. Although it was invaluable to a lover of legend, anyone more interested in power or rarity wouldn’t so much as glance its way. Wow, I guess fanatics really do exist everywhere.
“Oh, you like them, do you? Would you like to take one home?”
“Really?!” I reflexively leapt at the scrivener’s unexpected offer, only to immediately blush at my own shallow nature. Using my childishness as a weapon was fine, but I didn’t actually want to be a kid. “E-Excuse my rudeness. I couldn’t take something so valuable.”
“No, I rarely have any visitors as excited about my collection as you are. Everything they bring me is downright boring, and they refuse anytime I suggest a saga, like they’re too good for these tales. I got so sick of it that I left my workshop in the capital to come home. Leaving those nuisances behind and surrounding myself with my favorite legends is so refreshing.” Sir Feige seemed at peace. “Still...there is a stain on my sanctuary.”
The man unlocked a drawer on his desk and pulled out a single tome, which he tossed onto the table. Bound in black leather and extravagant bone ornamentation, one look was enough to know that it was one of those items. Specifically, a brainless attempt to open it was the kind of action that prompted a 1D100 roll and a wicked, wicked smile lurking behind the GM’s screen.
Unconsciously, I’d taken a step back. Its appearance was imposing on its own, and I was further unnerved that I could plainly see an ominous power seep from it with my own novice second sight. I didn’t want to so much as touch the thing.
Don’t just leave this thing sitting around like a normal book! Seriously, chain it up or something. At the very least, add a lock so no one can open it!
“This is the Compendium of Forgotten Divine Rites your master seeks.”
I swallowed back the nausea that accompanied my unspeakable discomfort, unable to break my gaze from the book’s event horizon. This was not the same gruesome urge that compelled one to watch a horror movie through: I didn’t want to look because it was scary, or because I needed to know what came next. The impulse was more malicious, more evil.
“The original request asked me to translate the ancient text to Rhinian as faithfully as I could. It’s full of annotations to make sure that the original intent remains clear.”
Which means I can read the thing if I open it. As soon as I made the connection, something in the back of my brain whispered, read it.
No, no, no, no way, absolutely not. While I was almost guaranteed to unlock some new skill for doing so, it was certainly the kind of skill I was meant to never touch. Any contact was sure to leave me equally touched in the head.
The presence of such a transparently foreign idea in my train of thought was proof enough that I was facing a malign relic. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if this would begin a long campaign that would only end when the thing was tossed into a volcano.
Branchy fingers slid across the cover, but there was no affection in Sir Feige’s touch. As the creator of this terror, he knew how profoundly dangerous it was; contact was his way of confirming that it had yet to lose its awesome power.
“Little one, how much do you know about the divine?”
“The divine?” I repeated. “I was a regular churchgoer back home; I know the gods they bother to talk about in the lay texts, the sermons, and folklore.”
“Then I’m sure you know that the gods we worship are at war with other deities.”
I nodded. From what I understood, gods on this planet only held power here, and fought amongst themselves to secure mortal followers. History books explained that at some point, the divine abandoned direct combat, ending the Age of Gods. The Age of Antiquity that followed saw proxy wars waged via the faithful. Whether in the past or present, those that lost both battle and believers had a handful of possible fates ahead of them.
“Do you know what happens to a fallen god?” Sir Feige asked.
“I do. Any defeated god robbed of their followers...”
First, they could quietly be forgotten, melting into the void.
Second, they could be appropriated by whatever pantheon stripped them of their power. Reduced to a lesser divine entity or mythical beast, their eventual demise would come at the hands of mortals.
This method was easy to digest: the famously successful Abrahamic religions of my past world employed the same tactic. Alien gods had been converted into messengers of the devil trying to corrupt pious souls, and the occasional triumph of their foreign cultures attributed to fictitious saints. Holy wars varied little between worlds, it seemed.
Third and last, the conquered god could join another pantheon and reinvent themselves as a new being. This hit close to home, as the Trialist Empire’s large flock of deities had been built over a long history of following this route. In fact, some of the main pillars of our faith had originally been heretical gods.
Prior to the Empire’s founding, the Day God and Night Goddess ruled the pantheon native to this region. They moved their respective celestial bodies to rule over the concept of time.
When it came to our creation myth—all competing groups of deities claimed to have given shape to the world, though we would never know who was telling the truth—it posited that the world was originally in flux, with but a single god that embodied all that was good.
God wandered the boundless expanse of idle sand that covered the planet for eons. A long eternity later, it came to the edge of the world—the threshold of nothingness. What awaited it was another god: the embodiment of all that was evil.
Polar opposites, the deities instantly recognized their incompatibility and attempted to end the other. They exchanged blows, strangled one another, and picked up wayside rocks with which to arm themselves. As time went on, they fashioned swords and spears to use in their feverish battle.
Their struggle continued for what we temporal beings would consider forever; to the powers above, it was no longer than the fluttering of an eyelid. Spilt blood, severed flesh, broken weapons, and the sparks that flew from their clashing blades colored the landscape with new divinity who would join the front line of battle.
Amidst their never-ending quarrel, the god of good and the god of evil had an epiphany: neither infallible good nor unerring evil could sustain the world alone. The two of them had yearned for one another all along.
Upon realizing their inseparable nature, the gods each dealt themselves a fatal wound, splitting their souls in two. Taking a half from each of the original beings, the Day God and Night Goddess were born; from two perfect yet isolated beings came the flawed harmony that gave birth to the world as we knew it.
Thus the Day God lit the midday sky with the warmth to cultivate food, only to torture those beneath Him with sweltering drought. And although the Night Goddess heralded the unbearable chill of dark, She brought a time of sleep and respite with Her.
While the cycle of life and death gave rise to the world full of Their children, some gods arising from the mythical battle had been blown to the far reaches of the planet. Distant kin forgot their origins and carved out a place for themselves as gods in their own right.
It followed that there were various sects and cults dotting the globe: they were lost lambs, ignorant of their true selves. Yet the Mother and Father never forgot, and always accepted Their wayward children after a crusade; Her tender embrace and His unwavering hand were where they were meant to be.
Now that I’d neatly reorganized the whole thing with a cynical eye—knowing that things existed beyond this planet and all—it was clearly just less hassle to peacefully tweak conquered objects of worship to fit the greater values of a pantheon. Romans and Greeks had done the same. To uproot a faith entirely was a mountainous task, so reconciling heathen beliefs with the canon without an uprising was far more preferable.
“Impressive,” Sir Feige said. “You’re well learned.”
“I’m delighted to please you, sir.” I bowed at his undue praise.
“However,” he said, lifting the accursed book with a furrowed brow, “what would you say if I told you there is a fourth possibility?”
Another one? I cocked my head in confusion. The treant turned his chair to the side and crossed his legs, staring off into space.
“There were gods who experienced a different fate. Those whom man had deemed unfit to be part of Creation and buried under the mortal hands of will.”
I had trouble believing him, considering we lived in a world with observable higher beings, wherein those higher beings enjoyed verifiable authority over reality. For the sentient races to consign a heavenly power to the grave was a radical idea.
Of course, the fictional works of the twenty-first century had been full of god-slayers freeing the universe from divine grips. Some TRPGs had included stats for them to be bested in combat, giving rise to a favorite phrase modeled after a famous series with a garden full of sinners: I’ll kill God if the numbers say I can.
But information-era Earth had seen a relative decline in the preeminence of religion; I would have never expected to hear a similar sentiment in a world so dominated by godly reverence.
I hadn’t been familiar with every cultural tradition, so there was a chance I’d missed some counterexamples, but even the most cruel gods of ancient Earth had been punished only by their peers... At the very least, I’d never heard of a mythmaker so brazen as to suggest a pure-blooded human could judge the heavens.
Tales of god-slayers existed, but they were either demigods themselves or chosen heroes equipped with the arms and blessings of competing deities. My original homeland had produced a tale of a mortal retribution for a god, but only with the caveat that the hero’s ancestors had descended from the heavens themselves.
Even the infamous messiah who’d given his life to shoulder all the sins of humanity hadn’t experienced a true death. His had been a part of the miracles he’d wrought, and even the final centurion had been a predestined part of salvation—far from the essence of deicide.
Although twenty-first-century fiction had reduced the heavens to no more than a final boss to be conquered, the denizens of more faithful eras balked at the hubris needed to claim superiority over the gods.
Yet here I was, in a world with real, confirmed deities whom we’d robbed of their names—of their very being. The weight of this action was unknowable.
An awful shiver ran down my spine, much like the one that had accompanied my first look at the tome. It bore only a passing resemblance to the pleasant tingle my cute childhood friend gave me and left a lingering discomfort that I couldn’t shake off. Once again, I was faced with knowledge that threatened to rob me of the sanity needed to continue living in this world.
“Now that you know...” Sir Feige fiddled with the fate of the world with all the gravitas of someone turning over a pebble. “What price does your master name for this volume?”
Gods dammit, that monster in methuselah skin! One drachma to ferry this thing around?! I would’ve refused for double! Lady Agrippina had known exactly what awaited me, and I could already imagine her infuriatingly perfect smile as she laughed at my despair. How the hell can you live with making someone deal with this sort of thing for fun?! Curse you!Despite just having taken a bath, I was frozen to my core. Sir Feige lifted the chilling item and turned to me, his face utterly grim.

[Tips] Among arcane tomes, there are many that have effects on any that view them—some even influence their surroundings just by existing. The College’s deepest book vaults are considered forbidden for good reason.

Staring at the obviously heinous tome, I could feel the armor of my sanity being whittled away, revealing an underlying urge to flee. I was well acquainted with tabletop systems that included confounded texts like these. The heroes of those games had been even frailer than mensch, and the scenarios they were made for littered with mental landmines that would ruin a psyche with one misstep. My dubiously helpful comrades and I had spent many an hour discussing whether we ought to pick up the occasional mind-rotting spell or one-trick wonder weapon.
While our tales in those worlds had been just as entertaining as any other, most had ended with exactly zero hope of salvation. Anything that resembled a happy end came with the asterisk of a mountain of NPC corpses.
Systems like those categorized mere death as a lucky fate, and the book in Sir Feige’s hand was surely the greater implied evil. It was pure bane, questioning the insolence of those who’d sought to surmount the gods.
I didn’t know where it originally came from, or if it involved outer gods from beyond our realm, but I was positive nothing good would come of it. At best it would annihilate a person’s psyche, and at worst I could see it bringing our very world to its knees.
It went without saying that the apocalypse would be an inconvenient development, but I’d also personally experienced the frustration of having my character sheet confiscated to walk back into the scene as an NPC. I hardly wanted to look at the damned book, let alone involve myself with it; Lady Agrippina wanted me to take it home? Please, this is no time for jokes.
“Hm... A tad too provocative for a young soul.”
Sir Feige did me the favor of shutting the dread thing away. My oppressive desire to flee the scene released me as soon as it left my view. Either the book’s power wasn’t actually all that notable, or the desk was a special containment unit. Of course, classic story beats demanded the truth be the latter.
“Now then,” he resumed, “what price has your master named in exchange for this tome?”
My heart throbbed to the point of pain, but I threw myself into negotiations. I took a few deep breaths, desperately recollecting my frayed thoughts. The horrid sensation of having my brain sanded down refused to leave me, but I needed to power through for Elisa’s future.
Get a hold of yourself. Stop trembling, and don’t let your spirit crumble. Who do you think you are? You’re the cool brother that’s going to save the day, aren’t you?
I reminded myself of my inalienable purpose, dragging up my sunken spirits to ready myself for a round of bartering. As with purpose, bargaining also revolved around the nonnegotiable values that bookended a deal. If the other party’s offer was far from my absolute maximum, I could just let things ride out, but I would need to push back if the final price veered too close to my upper limit. Keeping this one detail in mind was the key to successful negotiation.
However, there was a slight—nay, a gargantuan problem with this line of thinking: my client had told me to buy the item for “whatever the asking price may be.” Sure, I’d wished for my corporate overlords of the past to give me a budget with more leeway, but not this much.
Lady Agrippina making that offer in person would have been fine. Trusting the seller’s discretion with a blank check was a bold move, but she was the one supplying the money. But when all of the decision-making laid with me, it suddenly turned into a test of my business acumen.
Turning off the lights upstairs and blurting out, “Whatever price you ask for!” would be all too easy. Yet that would reduce this to a literal child’s errand. The GM was sure to scribble down a neutered experience number on my character sheet with a disappointed grimace, if he bothered giving me any at all.
I couldn’t throw my smarts out the window just because I’d been given the freedom to do as I pleased. With my authority came the expectation of equal effort.
Thus, I readied myself to give Lady Agrippina a real shock. The methuselah topped my People I Want to Get Even With list, and exceeding her expectations was a sure sign that I was growing closer to my goals—and with them, my independence.
“We are prepared to offer equitable compensation in return for the good,” I said. “Whether it be money or alternative payment, we are ready to meet any needs you may have.”
“Hm...”
Giving someone a blank check invariably encouraged them to add extra zeros on the end of whatever price they initially thought was fair. The move here was to first goad Sir Feige into giving me an estimate of what he valued the book at. I could accept a fair price on the spot, and anything unreasonably high would still make for a foothold I could use in our discussion.
What was more, he was the one in the seller’s seat, not me. As a buyer, I had the privilege of asking what it would take for him to part with it. Any attempt to put the onus back on me implied he didn’t value it very highly, and I could justify offering a low price.
“Frankly,” he said, “I’d be fine with using the blasted thing to fuel a fireplace. The book bored me even more than the other rarities coming through my doors, and I have no interest in an account of a god the clergymen of ancient times considered blasphemous. My devotion to the gods of today doesn’t amount to much, anyhow.”
The treant snapped his fingers, causing a chair to float up from the corner of the room. Apparently, he employed Unseen Hands for common chores too. The chair came down in the middle of the room, signaling that he was ready for a proper discussion.
“Take a seat. You seem drained.”
“Thank you kindly.” Sitting in the presence of a nobleman was improper, but so was refusing his hospitality. My legs were still trembling no matter how much energy I tried to muster, so I took him up on his offer.
Sir Feige nodded, seemingly pleased with how I hadn’t put up a front. He continued, “Most importantly, nothing about the book sits right with me. I’ll admit that some of the rhetorical devices piqued a tiny bit of literary interest, but I can’t understand why anyone would want to dive deeper into such appalling history. Not only that, but the original buyer was so obnoxious about the make of its bindings that we’d been a hair’s breadth away from all-out battle before I canceled his accounts and sent him away.”
I couldn’t help but feel like I’d heard something incredibly unpalatable. I had a sinking feeling that the make involved resources of human origin: the cosmic horror settings I knew of tossed around long pig dust jackets like they were A4 sheets of paper, after all...
From Sir Feige’s wording, I surmised that he hadn’t used such materials to craft the black book of terror he’d shown me, but who was to say what the original had been like? Just thinking about it gave me the jitters.
The concepts I was dealing with were undoubtedly fantasy, but my wish had been for gleaming, heroic dreams, not the dealings of Kadath and Yuggoth. I very much would have preferred if my encounters didn’t skirt the dividing line between these subgenres.
“With all that said, let me make you a deal,” Sir Feige said. “I don’t want to negotiate with your master...but with you. What do you say?”
My mind was still stuck in a slog of unhappy realities, so it took me a moment to process his proposal. I logically knew what he’d said: he was willing to trade the book not for a monetary sum supplied by Lady Agrippina, but for something that I could produce. Since I would be completing my task either way, it had no real bearing on my quest. Still, that meant his interest in me outweighed the deep pockets of an active magus in his mind.
“From what I can see, you have quite the intriguing...presence about you.”
“Ah... Yes, I suppose.” He wasn’t wrong. A black and green alf each and an irredeemably demented wraith haunted my being.
“I happen to love stories from young travelers like you. I might not have had the talent to write my own tales, but hearing those of others will never get old.”
The treant’s love of his hobby was painfully evident from the overflowing bookshelves littering the room. There were more legends of slain dragons than I could count, and sensual romances lined up beside them. Anthologies of tragedies befalling young leads were placed at convenient heights too; it was fairly easy to get a grasp of the man’s taste.
“And so,” he said, “I’d like to send you on a little adventure.”
“What?” I said, perplexed. “An adventure?”
“You heard me right,” he said with a meaningful nod.
Sir Feige pulled out a map of the local area. The precise topographical lines that outlined the contour of the region meant this chart had to be some kind of military secret. He’d opened it up without any fanfare, but in a foreign land, this diagram of the middle of nowhere would be worth a small mountain of the largest coins in circulation—the kind that only big merchants and state diplomats used.
“Well, when you get to my standing, these sorts of things find their way to you.”
He spoke playfully, but this wasn’t a laughing matter. Capital punishment would be a light sentence if this ever fell into foreign hands. Casually making a copy for personal use was absolutely not okay, but the scrivener didn’t seem to notice my trembling as he pointed his branchy finger to a forest north of Wustrow.
“These woods don’t have much in them, save for an occasional bear.”
Uh, that’s pretty major. Bears were less dangerous than demibeasts and the like, but they could still manhandle a person. Forget crossbow bolts, the things could shrug off 5.56mm rounds to the dome; facing one armed with a stick of sharpened metal was a bloodcurdling idea. I preferred my odds of downing a tank with a single molotov cocktail.
“It’s about a day’s walk,” he said.
“...A long way on a child’s legs,” I said.
“Hah, but no challenge to the sort of boy to be sent all this way on his master’s order, I’m sure?”
I didn’t have any real counterpoint, so the conversation carried on. Had my subconscious recognition of the bandits as a wandering encounter caused a climax to spawn for this session? I know there are certain plot beats you’ve got to hit, but wasn’t this a bit too soon?
“You see,” he went on, “an eccentric adventurer built a hideaway in these woods, but...”
“But there hasn’t been any word from him?”
“That’s right. I remember hearing he’d moved in a while before I left for the capital, so I’m sure he either left or died long ago.”
Sir Feige seemed rather nonchalant about all this, but how long ago was he talking about? Personally, it felt like a past so distant that thinking about it would overwhelm my mensch senses. I hadn’t ever come across any estimates for treant life spans, but that couldn’t be because no one had ever seen one die...right?
“At any rate,” he said, “I want you to go there and find me a certain book.”
Despite calling it a “book,” what Sir Feige wanted wasn’t a shady tome or rare historical account. To begin with, something of the sort would have never piqued this man’s interest; had he been the type to enjoy such things, he would still be servicing long lines of aristocrats in the capital.
He wanted the diary he was sure the late adventurer had kept. The fellow had made quite a name for himself in Sir Feige’s youth, and was famed for keeping a detailed log of all his journeys.
“And if that journal is still there,” the treant said with a weighty pause, “wouldn’t that make your heart dance?”
“Well...” It seemed I had a great deal in common with this woody gentleman. “Yes, it certainly would.”
Come on, it sounded like so much fun. The diary of a notorious adventurer was basically a TRPG player’s replay. No fan of both adventure and tabletop games could ever hope to contain their excitement in a situation like this.
“Personally,” Sir Feige said, “I will be happy if you bring me the diary. If it isn’t there, I would also be content with hearing the tale of your own journey.”
Basically, he wanted to say that there was no reason not to try. I wasn’t about to refuse or anything, but couldn’t help but wonder why all the long-lived beings of this world were so adamant on using the rushed lives of mensch as story fodder.
Of course, this gentleman’s tasteful quest was so thoroughly reasonable that it would be an offense to compare his interests to the debauchery I’d already witnessed. Taking a trip to the woods was far, far more agreeable than having my sister taken hostage for household chores or engaging in a barely consensual cosplay event.
“Besides,” he added, “in any event, I can’t let go of this bedeviled book without preparing it for travel.”
I felt like Sir Feige had seen through my eagerness as he anxiously stroked his mossy beard. I definitely didn’t want to touch that cursed tome with my bare hands, and haphazardly throwing it into a knapsack felt like playing with fire. The offer to ready some means of containment was a very welcome one.
“It will take two or three days for this hollowed-out old log to get everything together without my workshop and connections. Think of this as a way to kill some time.”
While his quest was a tad hazardous for an idle amusement, the occasional bear could be avoided with proper precautions. If the adventurer had lived in some ancient ruin, I would gear up and call my fey friends to prepare for a full session of hacking and slashing, but a residence in the woods’ shallow reaches was perfect for a subquest.
“But if going out is too much of a bother, I’ll sell you the book for twenty-five drachmae.”
Twenty-five drachmae... That was as much as the large gold coins that merchants used for dealings between companies, and would take an average farming household five years of starvation and tax evasion to earn. To use that money on a single book was luxury itself. Elisa could pay for room, board, and tuition for a full year and then some with that kind of cash.
“I don’t intend to take more than the cost of production. I’ve been meaning to use this drawer for something else, anyhow.”
I nearly fell out of my chair. Hold on, it took twenty-five drachmae to make the thing? What the hell is it made from?!
If my earlier hypothesis refuting the possibility of “manmade” materials was correct, then that only made me more concerned as to how the book had been crafted. Was I going to be okay? Leaving all the cosmic mumbo jumbo aside, I felt like the gods would smite me for daring to touch the thing with my dirty plebeian hands.
Seeing me and my rural values thrown into disarray made Sir Feige chuckle, his majestic shoulders bouncing up and down. Why did every single surprise have to come with two or three friends hidden just out of view?

[Tips] Adventurers regularly demand extra pay from their employers to account for various complications encountered on any given job. Those who roll dice for these drifters seem to feel no remorse even when negotiations turn to bloodshed.

After receiving a much more adventure-like quest than my original cursed errand, I headed back to the inn under the veil of night. I entered the motel still dazed from the attack on my fiscal values to find that my travel buddy had already dozed off.
I’d forgotten all about the (approximate) taste of home he’d had, and how he’d told me he was going to bed. We’d been cutting corners on travel expenses—he had been as eager to earn an extra dime as I’d been—so his first night in a bed in days was sure to blend with our meal for a wonderful dream.
Inviting him along for this woodland adventure would have to wait for morning. We weren’t in a rush; I saw no need to wake him up.
Getting to my own bed, I noticed that Mika had already cast Clean on it. Magic was a wonderful way of ridding bedding of pesky lice and fleas, though it admittedly did nothing to thicken the paltry sheets. Regardless, it was orders of magnitude better than sleeping on the ground.
I silently thanked my thoughtful friend and opened the covers. As an aside, his hair looked comparable in health to mine, even though I’d taken a bath earlier in the day. He’d warned me not to tell any women about my neglected follicular health, but he was no less a scoundrel on this front.
Thin as my blanket was, a long day of travel, a nice warm bath, and post-combat fatigue made my mattress feel like the clouds dotting the heavens. I didn’t have any pajamas—which were only a thing in certain upper class circles anyway—so I crawled into bed in my travel clothes and instantly clocked out.
I slept so soundly that I didn’t even dream, but out of the blue, a strange discomfort grabbed hold of me. My ego slowly drifted from sleep to wakefulness, and in a surreal state of half awareness, I realized the source of my annoyance came from my lower half. I knew this feeling all too well...I’d wet the bed.
This was rather embarrassing to admit, but from the time I’d awoken in this body at age five, it had taken me a whole two years to get over my bed-wetting troubles. This had little to do with my habits, as I’d made an effort to take care of my needs and refuse water at night; I couldn’t have done anything about the physical state of my bladder.
I hurriedly sat up and the dismayingly familiar cold dampness made itself known downstairs.
“Gods, I know I made fun of you today, but isn’t this a bit much?”
Perhaps this was my punishment for mocking the divine in a world where they were active participants. I shed a single tear at how unfathomably petty their retribution was.
Alternatively, this could have been caused by the lingering stress I’d taken on from seeing the traumatic tome and listening to an uncalled-for cosmological history lecture. Whatever the case, the shame made me want to go dig a grave for myself—I was physically thirteen, and this was just a miserable state of affairs.
I eyed the other bed anxiously to find that Mika was not there. His belongings had been left behind, so I took it that he’dmanaged to get up in time. Lucky him.
At any rate, I needed to clean up after myself. I slipped out of bed, using my incomplete mana reserves to cast Clean on the bed—which hadn’t been stained, but this was a matter of principle—and taking off my soiled pants.
The first order of business was—hm? Oh... I see.
After undressing myself, I realized that my blunder had been of a different variety. As tasteless as the comparison was, had I been a girl, this incident would have introduced me to a whole new realm of hygiene products.
“Ah... Well, I guess I am thirteen now. Shouldn’t be a surprise...”
It seemed I was even more pathetic than I’d thought...but I supposed this sort of bed-wetting was also in the cards in the wake of life-threatening danger.
Having gone through the ropes of reaching male adulthood once before, I had a solid grasp of this side of life in both theory and practice. However, such urges got in the way of other endeavors, and I hadn’t bothered proactively pursuing them when I’d reincarnated in a prepubescent body.
Of course, some of the skills and traits available to me had been the likes found only in eroge, and I recognized the fact that I might one day waste resources on them. Still, without the physical drivers needed to pull me in, I’d been perfectly content to ignore fleshly pleasures. The mind was, without exception, tied to the body that housed it.
All that said, this was just pitiful. I couldn’t remember having any dreams of the sort, so this was the result of my own failed management. I’m such a moron.
Even worse, I could hardly bear the thought of repeating my teenage years, so swayed by hormonal impulses. Having to endure the idiocy of youth for a second time was nothing to look forward to.
My first time around had been full of stupid episodes: attempting five shots in succession, spending my limited funds on worthless things—I could go on at length outlining my ill-advised efforts in pursuit of Cool Guy status. No one in this world knew of my dark past, but it clung to my brain with an unshakable grip. I swore to not repeat my mistakes again.
Anyway, that was enough negativity; there were some positives to this situation. This was observable proof of my hormonal shift, meaning my body would soon begin to grow into the strength of an adult man; I’d be ready to sell my might as a proper adventurer.
I got myself together and headed out to the well behind our inn to get clean before Mika returned. Naturally, I’d cast Clean on myself, but the feeling of filth was far from gone. I wouldn’t dare to question the almighty Clean after using it for months, but there was something to be said about the psychological effects of real washing.
Concealing my presence, I made my way to the backyard. The penniless used the well here to wash themselves, so it was sandwiched between the inn, the outer wall, and a grove of trees for privacy’s sake.
There, I stumbled across something that truly caught me off guard: my friend, bathing. Quite some time ago, he’d explained that he wasn’t fond of sharing baths with other people; perhaps that was why he’d gone through the trouble of magically boiling well water just to clean himself at night.
I opened my mouth to greet him...only to stop in disbelief. He was missing some anatomy I’d expected—but not in the classic, “You were a girl?!” way that I’d mused about so long ago.
Mika didn’t have anything. The concepts of man and woman were distinctions derived mainly from the one organ that Mika completely lacked. Shimmering moonlight lit his snow-white body: the contour of his featureless chest continued unbroken to his lower half.
Mika didn’t have anything: the reproductive features that life as we knew it took for granted were simply absent. Yet his form was far from disturbing; under the lunar spotlight, he was more akin to some chaste figure carved from marble, standing confidently in a museum hall long after doors closed for the day. He needed not another’s praise, nor did he pride himself for his appearance—his very being laid bare that beauty existed all for its own sake...
“Who’s there?!”
Oops.
I’d made sure to minimize my presence, but hadn’t expected anyone to be at the well. I’d marched right into the grove without any pretense of stealth—a fact I only realized when Mika shouted at me. He’d been washing his hair, but spotted me instantly after he rinsed off and looked up.
“E-Erich?”
Mika’s vicious glare shifted into a distressed frown as soon as he realized the voyeur he’d imagined was me. His wretched expression was exactly that of someone who had something to hide.