System integration beginning.

Calculating comparative traits…error. Historic data missing.

Collecting data from short term memory…Complete.

Integration of average historic physical and mental state complete. Permanence assigned.

Sensation suddenly intruded onto the empty surface of my mind, jolting me awake like a hot cup of coffee splashed directly into my face. I screamed pathetically and flailed my arms in reflex before I could look about properly.

Three figures loomed above me, staring down with varied expressions, a mostly empty bucket of what I fervently hoped was water rolling on the ground near their feet.

The first was the woman I'd already met; the broad-bladed killer with forearms reminding me of nothing so much as a slightly smaller gorilla. Or a baker. It was bizarre to put them in the same sentence, but I'd never met a baker who hadn't looked like they could bend a steel pipe in one hand.

The other two were already familiar as well; the old man, short and stocky, with grey streaking his long hair and goatee, and the much younger, much taller man that had appeared just before I had passed out.

What was new to the scene were the bodies. Five by my count, though one had been cut in half so cleanly it almost looked like two separate corpses. There was surprisingly little blood for such a gruesome scene, but as I staggered to my feet, I caught the glassy eyed stare of one of the dead women, and it made me nauseous all over again.

"Wha?" I said, swaying in place like a drunkard. I tried again; "Wha?"

It wasn't any more cogent the second time around, and the three killers – for they all had weapons drawn and dripping with blood – looked at me blankly.

"He's addled," the woman said, wiping down her broadsword on a cloth conjured from nothing, and then sheathing her weapon. The weapon, sheathe and all, then disappeared from sight.

"He's overwhelmed, Vera," said the grey-haired man in that calm voice of his, "give him a minute."

"We don't have minutes to spare, Jorge" said the third and least familiar of the group. He wore armour as well, but over long robes rather than shirt and trousers like the other two, and he had a frantic manner about him, looking like he wanted to pace and twitch and had stilled himself only through force of will.

"Aye, we're in a bind, lad," the old man – presumably Jorge – said with a sigh. "True enough."

I had managed to find my balance by then and was working on deciphering the message I'd received just before I'd lost consciousness. They were not so much words scrawled across my vision as information injected directly into my mind, and I understood them perfectly, though that didn't give me the context to know what they truly meant yet.

"Well," Jorge declared, clapping his hands together to get my attention. "You're clearly not having a great time, right lad?"

I laughed. "I woke up hogtied by strangers, had a bag put over my head and escorted 'bare-arse naked' through the forest, as you so eloquently put it, and then my captors were murdered by even more scary captors!"

I hadn't meant to ramble, but I was nervous, scared, confused… a whole host of negative emotions swirling around to combine into a delightful soup of precarity that kept my body and mind as on edge as they'd ever been. A small part of my mind helpfully let me know that the touch of hysteria I'd shown earlier was becoming more of a punch behind each word, but I couldn't stop the tirade now that I'd begun.

"As far as things go, it's looking pretty fucking bleak. I don't know where the fuck I am, I can't remember a fucking thing, and now I've got words searing themselves directly into my brain and I'm left to wonder if I've lost what's left of my mind already. Nothing is making sense, but I can't even tell which parts of the nonsensical world I need to focus my attention on right now."

I threw up my arms, fear of the strangers temporarily forgotten in service of my melodrama. "Hell! I've likely completely lost my mind and I'm just talking to random objects on a street somewhere. You're probably just a traffic cone, and she's likely some sort of big fuck-off bin or something."

I had pointed at Jorge and Vera respectively as I ended my rant, and both shared looks of apprehension at my outburst.

"He's so tall he's probably a lamppost," I groused, waving half-heartedly at the gangly man that had arrived last.

We all stood in silence for a few moments before Jorge clapped his hands once more. "Well, that was bracing, and I'm not sure any of us fully understood it all, but it sounds like you're in a bit of a fix, and no denying."

I took a few careful breaths, willing myself to calm and try to approach things rationally. Once I opened my eyes, I found Jorge looking at me intently, his brown eyes open and honest, and he seemed to be waiting patiently, as if expecting words to come spilling from my lips that could help this whole situation.

Surprisingly, they did. "Look, cards on the table," I started. "I'm scared. I'm completely out of my depth and I have absolutely no idea why people are killing each other or-"

I cut myself off with an effort of will, preventing the spiral of thoughts that would spill from my lips if I kept going. I reset and continued. "I can't even think of all the things I don't know right now, so just tell me what you want, and I will do whatever I can to not be killed. Please."

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I must have cut a pitiful sight indeed, for even Vera had a twist of sympathy to her features, blocky though they were. Jorge shared a look with his companion, and the robed man nodded, splaying a couple of fingers in some unknown gesture.

"See, the problem you have, lad," he replied, "is that we can't help you much right now. Me and my fair companions are in a bit of a hurry. There's half a hundred of these red-cloaked bastards crawling all over the hills and they're just desperate to get a piece of my friend over there."

He pointed over his shoulder at Vera, and the large woman sneered slightly, though it was less directed at me than at the words themselves. She clearly had a history with whatever organisation these people belonged to.

"I'm not sure how you're caught up in all of this, and honestly, it sounds like you ain't either." He waited a moment to see if I would correct him, but I had no more information to offer, and so he carried on with a shrug. "I'd love to stick around and show you the ropes – quite frankly, it looks like you need it – but while my friends and I should have no problem clearing this little infestation from the Unclaimed Peaks, I doubt very much our ability to do it while keeping you alive. You understand?"

I nodded warily, worried about where this might be going.

"Here's my proposal, lad. We get you to the top o' that col over there," he said, gesturing behind me to a confluence where two peaks met. "And then we'll be leaving you to your own devices. We'll be setting a false trail and drawing ideally all of the Lions after us, and if there are any stragglers that decide to come after you, perhaps you'll be far enough away that they leave you alone, aye?"

I shrugged. Didn't have much of a say in things from what I could tell, but it didn't sound like they planned to kill me so I'd take what I could get. Silver linings, after all.

"Best get to it, then," he said with a satisfied nod, and the three abruptly set-off along the goat-track I had been led up earlier. I followed along behind them, doing my best to keep up with their impressive speed. It was if they flew over the steep terrain, and I found myself running in parts just to stay apace with them, despite their no doubt heavy armour.

The young man with the look of a scholar stole a few glances at me as we hiked, and I sensed suspicion in his gaze, though I made an effort not to return his probing stares.

"We should kill him," the scholar said in another new language. I jerked my head up, concerned, to find the man watching me intently.

"What?" Jorge asked in surprise. "What are you talking about, lad?"

"He will betray us the moment we turn our backs," the man continued, words no longer lyrical and flowing, but sharp, punctuated by glottal stops as he once more switched languages. "Even now he reaches for Vera's dagger."

I jerked my hands into the air. I'd been doing no such thing, and opened my mouth to say so, when Jorge stopped and turned to address the scholar.

"What's going on, Nathlan?" he asked, curious rather than frustrated as I had expected.

Nathlan just turned back to me again. "You can understand me."

It wasn't a question, and I looked from Nathlan to Jorge and back again. "Uhh… Yes?" I replied, and Jorge widened his eyes.

The tall man then cycled through a series of other languages; some gentle and sibilant, others harsh and guttural. After he'd demonstrated his impressive command over linguistics, and I'd tried my best to answer his strange barrage of questions, he turned to Jorge in triumph.

"He is God-Touched," he said with a nod, as if confirming the truth of his own statement.

Vera frowned from her position at the head of our little column. "You're sure? How?"

"He understands at least seven distinct languages without issue based on his reactions. He clearly speaks a few of them fluently too, though he has no distinguishing accent and does not pick up dialectical shifts at all. That is the mark of Scholar's Tongue, and he does not seem the type to have studied it."

His analysis was delivered in clipped tones and without preamble, as if the man was summarising a research proposal. Jorge scratched his chin in thought.

"Aye, makes sense. Only way to get such a skill at his level would be a bestowal, and language comprehension is a big one if it's universal. Any way we can test its scale?" he asked.

"I have only the seven I have already demonstrated," Nathlan replied, turning to look at me. "Ashkanian is understandable, and perhaps the Western Trader's Tongue, but the Mer-Tongue?" He shook his head. "I think it likely that he has all languages in that Skill, without exception."

Jorge and Vera exchanged glances, and then the silver-haired man turned my way once more.

"Well, I'm convinced," he said. "Nathlan here says you're God-Touched, lad. And given that he's one of the smartest men this side of the North Wall, I'm inclined to trust him on that."

He stepped closer and clapped me on the shoulder in a strangely fatherly manner. "Some of your words make a fair bit more sense now, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry about how this has all played out. I know you're scared and nothing makes sense, but sometimes that's just life, aye?"

He turned and gestured the others on up the path and pushed me along in front of him. His breath was even and deep despite the steep incline we trekked up.

"I know it's tempting at a time like this to check your status and all, but I need you to focus… aaaand I lost him. I'm never going to learn that lesson, am I?" he asked the sky above.

I missed everything he said after 'check your status' though, because as soon as I wondered what that could possibly mean, a message scrawled itself along my mind, seared indelibly into my consciousness.

Status:

Ancestry: Human (unevolved)

Level: 1

Class: None

Titles: God-touched

Attribute allocation:

Strength: 7

Agility: 5

Endurance: 9

Perception: 9

Cognition: 8

Available attributes: 0

Skills: None

Once again, my world was overtaken by new information. It seemed that Nathlan was right about the God-Touched thing, though I still didn't know what it meant. It was a nice title though, if a bit dramatic.

I'd not passed out this time, but there was an element of my focus slipping, drawn inexorably inwards by the new information. Luckily, it appeared I'd only missed a few seconds, as I returned to the present to see Jorge throw his hands in the air and mutter to the other two about 'kids these days'.

Vera stopped and turned, interrupting Jorge's complaining; "Should we tell him?"

But the old man just shook his head. "No, leave the lad with what little he has for now. If he survives, he'll need the comfort of home."

I pretended to come back to myself then, as if I hadn't heard those ominous words, and Jorge started and turned to me. "Ah, good to see you're back with us, lad. I'll explain as we climb. Come!"

And with that, he started striding up the steep track ahead of me. Overhead the open sky beckoned, in contrast to my mind, which felt as crowded and overwhelmed as a thorn-thicketed forest.

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