Published: March 21st 2025, 3:00:08 pm
Moving was hard.
Even though we were keeping our house and everything in it - [Manor] was stupidly strong - there were still all of the connections we had to slowly untangle. Let the community know what was going on, and why.
One aspect in particular surprised me with how difficult it was to finalize.
Favors.
Small communities like Orthus didn’t have a currency for years and years. We all pitched in together, helping a neighbor out one day, knowing they’d help us out another. We looked after their animals one day when they were celebrating the birth of a child, they chopped down a frustrating tree the next to say thank you. The entire community was tied in an intricate web of favors and deals, and dishonoring a deal was a sure way to become a pariah.
We didn’t want people cursing our names as we left. We didn’t want to leave forever, we had some roots here and we planned on swinging by now and then. It meant tracking down every last outstanding favor we owed, and trying to discharge them.
Paradoxically, it also meant getting the favors people owed us discharged. Which was a problem.
Iona was popular. It somehow still surprised me that she managed to be everyone’s best friend. She always had a sympathetic ear, she always had a minute to help. People did vaguely track all the help she did, and we were owed far more than we owed.
It wasn’t just Iona. Titania, and to my mild surprise, Sara, had been busy bees. The little elf threw herself into work, no matter what it was, and was more than happy to help all of her friends out with their chores. We tried to leave a few around the house for her, but our levels combined with our modest living - and Auri’s obsessive ‘part of baking is the cleanup’ - meant there wasn’t much to do. Kid chores barely registered, but she’d done so much for her friend’s places that we had to try.
Which… was a problem, because we didn’t have anything left to DO in the end. We needed no more help. Our fourth pantry was stuffed to bursting. Our fields were immaculate, the path to the cabin up in the mountain had flowers on both sides of the double-wide road. The party we were throwing was fully stocked.
“Prima Nix, are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?” I asked the lady. She waved me off.
“Oh no deary, we’re fine here. Why don’t you spend some more time with Sara? They grow up so quickly, one day you’ll blink and wonder where she vanished off to.”
I delivered this lady, she had no business talking to me like I was a kid. One of the minor downsides of being forever young - people occasionally forgot how old I was, and none of the ‘respect your elders’ energy ever came round.
I knew what Nix was doing. I heard everything. Including the misguided but well-meaning scheming to keep us around longer. It wasn’t out of malice or greed. We were part of the community, and it warmed my heart to hear the old ladies conspiring to keep us around, even if it was for another week.
Their grand scheme? Never cash in the favors we owed. We’d have to stick around then!
It was sweet.
“Thank you, Prima.” I respectfully curtseyed. “I’ll keep that in mind. Have a wonderful day!”
I had to try for myself. I couldn’t just dump all the work on Iona. With that said, I was going to send my wonderful wife to the Nix’s place, and we’d be done within three minutes of her silver tongue being applied.
I shrugged and hopped over to the next house, spotting Auri writing out words in intricate flames, on the same mission I was.
That wasn’t the only problem we’d faced. Finding a buyer for our farm had been impossible from both ends. At first, nobody could reasonably afford to buy the place. Orthus wasn’t exactly swimming in cash, and the only people who could afford it at a lower price didn’t need a seventh farm. Down that path lay rich [Landlords] who collected rent for sitting on their ass. Skye was already eyeing the family in question, trying to work out reasonable legislation that would prevent the issue without creating more down the road.
Once we’d opened it up to ‘we’re giving it away to a deserving young couple’ though, we had the opposite problem. Too much interest.
A lot of couples got married, but didn’t have the resources to branch off and properly start their own family. It was the normal way of things, with a half-dozen sub households living under a single roof, ruled by the patriarch or matriarch. ‘Free farm, fully set up’ had a feeding frenzy of interest, which threatened to turn into an absolute nightmare.
Skye had been very smug, and still owed us two more ‘I told you so’s.’ A lottery had picked the winner, and we were happy to help the new couple move in.
We did leave the basement as-is though. It would be one of their first challenges to make it usable for normal people, as opposed to accessible primarily through skills. Hey, they were getting a free farm, we weren’t going to make it THAT easy for them.
Then there was the library. It had been a passion project of mine, and as much as I’d tried, as much as I’d wanted, nobody had really stepped up to take ownership of the place. Skye was looking into finding a new [Librarian] who’d love the place half as much as I did, but funds were limited, and the entire population of Orthus wasn’t terribly large. We couldn’t delay forever for someone to take over, but Skye promised the books would be alright.
I was willing to leave them behind, on the promise that someone would come. Starting a library from scratch was a difficult proposition. Far easier to take over an existing building and catalog.
Those were just three facets on the many-faced gem called moving.
The largest, most devastating loss would be my mango trees. Again. They were too big and heavy to carry, and space on the Island was limited and regulated, nevermind that most of it was empty lots with markers. There wasn’t the room for a vanity orchard. I couldn’t stick them in a stasis field, we didn’t have the arcanite for it. Even if we did, the amount of arcanite needed to hold a stasis field large enough in the open environment was obscene, and I couldn’t justify the cost. Maybe in my next evolution [Manor] would gain some significant grounds, and I could transplant soil and trees in.
No, until then, people would look after the trees for us, leaving a few behind, and I’d swing by now and then to collect a small tribute. Om nom nom.
Oh hey! I should make a map of all the mango trees in the world. Then I’d always know when I could pop down for a tasty, delicious treat. Yes, yes… I needed projects to keep myself busy, and could there be a better project than fueling my insatiable lust for mangos?
No!
After spending nearly a year extracting ourselves from Orthus, we were ready. One last party saw us off.
“Auri! Status?” I asked the chef, conducting two dozen instruments of cooking in a glorious symphony to create the best feast. Auri loved having a little ring of glowing Lava in a bunch of different colors slowly rotating around her. Over time, she’d slowly gotten more clever with it. Instead of plain rocks, right now Auri had all the different recipes she was working on engraved in molten rock, slowly rotating around her. They were a reminder of everything she was working on, with little tickmarks showing where in the process she was.
“BRRPT!” She reported with a one-winged salute, her ‘wand’ of Inferno pausing a moment.
“Excellent! Keep it up!” I told her. Sara darted in underfoot.
“Sorry! Excuse me!” She yelled, dashing over to a finished dish, grabbing it, then running back out full-tilt.
“Kids.” I muttered with an entertained shake of my head. I followed Sara, making sure she didn’t take a bad fall and spill food everywhere. Her dexterity helped, but it wasn’t nearly enough if she caught the lip of the door and took a bad fall. She had every reason to be excited. As soon as she got to the School, her education could begin in earnest. It was one thing to be taught by me, personally. The potency effect was powerful. But a single good teacher wasn’t good enough. At the School, surrounded by people with a similar mindset, if not age? Filled with experts in every subject, eager to teach? That was a whole different experience. A better experience.
Most importantly, to have peers and friends. I didn’t miss that Sara was on a different wavelength from nearly all the other children in Orthus. She was Immortal, and planning a long life as a [Healer]. Most everyone here had short plans that entirely revolved around Orthus.
She also had a bit of an unfair advantage, starting with stats some people would end their life with. At the same time, they had skills designed to help them pick weeds, while Sara had to do it all manually. Studying medicine was no excuse to get out of the endless work needed to keep things running around here, and if this Immortal cycle was any indication, no matter how much Sara was griping, one day she’d be growing her own food in the wake of another war.
My healing was at full blast, which was needed for the next part I was checking in on. Fenrir had set up an Ice-water park, and the words ‘safety regulations’ had never managed to penetrate his thick skull.
The cabin was near the middle of the mountain. The primary piece of his midsummer winter wonderland was a steep slide from the top of the mountain, all the way to the bottom, where it terminated in a launching ramp. There was a perfunctory bale of hay at the end. I was fairly certain the injuries would be lethal even when the kids managed to land on it, which was a rare occurrence.
The screams were all of delight and joy, not terror, pain, and loss, and my healing was responsible. I was assuming the heady mixture of adrenaline and fun was preventing anyone from feeling the moment of pain, before their mangled limbs snapped back together. A trio of kids in a stack whizzed by as I left, and even more were enjoying the rest of the rides on Fenrir’s winter wonderland.
“For you!” A four year old boy thrust a poorly made crown of icicles into my hands.
“Thank you.” I politely told him, then put it on my head. I spotted Iona in the middle of the crowd, the social center of the party and arguably of Orthus itself.
She was talking, laughing, shaking hands and hugging people. Sara dropped off her goodies and dashed back to the kitchen for more.
I saw everyone. Skye and Raccoon were socializing. Varuna was giving rides to kids. Nina had swung by a few months ago and was sticking around. Artemis was gesturing wildly as she told a story, uncaring that she was holding a wine cup and it was going everywhere. Even Amber had found her way to the party, cackling quietly to herself like she knew some great secret. The entire Nix clan had arrived in style, along with nearly everyone else from Orthus. Work didn’t end just because there was a party, and some people couldn’t make it.
The years of close contact with the goblin tribes had borne fruit, and the little green menaces were everywhere, wearing the same clothes as us and eating the same food.
It was bittersweet. I’d worked hand in hand with almost everyone here. I knew their names. I knew their hopes and dreams. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel detached from the entire event. Like Sara, they had their life, and I had mine, and it was inevitable that our lives would go in different directions.
I was being melancholic, but it didn’t stop the feeling of detachment from everything. Of sorrow and loss.
This day was always going to come, and it would come again. It didn’t mean I had to feel good about it.
“I’m sorry.” I wiped a tear away as I talked with Raccoon. “It’s just…”
The goblin hugged me. How was she almost as tall as I was!? Being short was totally unfair at times.
“You changed my life.” She said seriously. “I would’ve died without you. Thank you.”
I sniffed, and hugged her back.
“You’re welcome.” I said.
What more was there to say?
There were a dozen, a hundred, a thousand stories that went the same way. A broken arm went from catastrophic injury to ‘thank goodness Elaine’s here.’ A lamb’s broken leg being healed saved him from the cookpot, and turned into one of the more productive sheep. I was wearing a tunic partially made from his wool. A mother saved in childbirth went on to have seven more children. Instead of a grieving widower, there was a thriving and happy clan.
On and on it went, everyone wanting to tell me how I’d touched their lives, most of the time without me being aware of it. My healing reached far and wide, saving people while I slept.
[Persistent Casting] was the best.
“Healy-bug, keep a spot warm for me, yeah? I’m going to join you lot just as soon as I can trust these newbies to look after themselves.” Artemis said. I snorted.
“Artemis, those ‘newbies’ have been Rangers longer than most Team Leaders in Remus.” I pointed out. “Your team has more than twice the experience than an entire Ranger team in Remus, combined.”
She sniffed, and pointed her nose up.
“Standards change and improve.” She said airily. “You might notice there’s significantly fewer monsters and problems. One year of Remus experience is, like, five Orthus years.”
“Artemis.” I said with my hands on my hips, a smile on my lips. “You can’t baby them forever.”
She sniffed and looked away.
“Yeah, but they’ll die if I’m not here, and it’ll be my fault.”
I hugged the woman, not having the right words. I elegantly changed the subject.
“There’s whole generations of kids up at the School that need their Professor Artemis.” I told her.
“One day.” She promised.
Artemis was too good of a liar for me to know if she was telling the truth.
“One day.” I agreed.
People came and went, and Nina was a pleasant surprise.
“Hey! Iona said it was fine if I moved in with you guys at the School if it was fine with you. Is-”
She never got the chance to finish her question as I hugged her.
“You’re family, of course you can come with us. We have a room set aside for you already.” I told the kitsune, who was busy blushing.
Honestly. I’m pretty sure Iona told Nina to ask me just to be able to tell me ‘hey look Nina’s moving back in’.
The party lasted from a little before lunch until long past midnight. The cleanup lasted a few more hours, with Sara snoring in her bed as the rest of us helped make the place pristine.
“Well.” I said, looking around one last time. “I guess this is it.”
I triple checked everything, then closed [Portcullis] with everyone inside.
I could just fly off, but the morning sun was coming up, the usual time for my daily meditation. I grabbed my quarterstaff out of the armory, and slowly went through the motions, settling my mind and thoughts one last time.
The wheel of time was merciless. Nothing was the same, everything changed, leaving behind only sweet memories.
I took off in the direction I knew the School would be. Calculating the position of the School was one thing… getting a list of times and locations was a much easier way.
The two hour trip was long enough for some meditative reflection. Over a century ago we’d left the School in search of Night and a place to belong, to find our footing in the world.
And here we returned, once again.
The once-comprehensive barriers on the School were practically non-existent. It just hadn’t had the time to develop defenses, nor the need. It wasn’t big, and most people were more concerned with beating back the ever-encroaching nature at their door and making sure they were fed, instead of planning invasions of well-defended mobile real estate. Real estate that had been claimed by a powerful dragon.
We’d been in communication with the School board over the last year. It wasn’t like I was showing up and saying ‘please give me a job and enroll Sara, thanks.’ [Couriers] that could deliver to the School were expensive, and it mostly consisted of me rapidly penning a reply before the delivering [Courier] left.
I double checked the address I was given and the layout of the School that I could see. Same split - town on half the Island, School on the other half, and we had a prime spot in the town, one row away from the School, nearly half a block large. There wasn’t much there yet, but that would change over the coming years. Four pillars marking the boundaries and a single wall.
Welp, wasn’t anywhere else to put [Portcullis] yet. I landed and opened up the gates.
“We’re here!”
Moving was easy.