Echoes Of The Seven

They say that patience is a virtue. Patience could go fuck itself.

Eris couldn’t help it. Her knee was bouncing, and the sole of her shoe made slight squeaking noises as it scuffed against the tiled floor. The waiting was made worse by the empty room. A featureless white ceiling. Equally white concrete walls. Speckled marble floors. Eris was seated on a bench pressed up against one wall, and two doors looked at each other from opposite ends of the room. One led back outside into the main hall.

Alex would be seated on one of the benches out there, pretending to be casual and confident. Secretly, her stomach would be doing somersaults. Jaxie probably wasn’t even inside. Eris was willing to bet that Jaxie was pacing back and forth in front of the steps to the building and terrorizing the passersby. Jaxie had a resting bitch face that could chisel a stone, but when she was anxious or annoyed?

The world felt a little bit colder just by thinking about it.

Eris had to force her gaze towards the other door. Dark wood the colour of coffee- ebony wood, if she had to take a guess- and a very passive engraved design with no recognizable shapes yet perfect symmetry. However, it was what laid behind the door that made Eris’s heart shudder.

What waited behind that door was nothing less than the single most defining moment of her entire life. She had been waiting for almost two decades. Now, on this fateful morning, the dawn of her eighteenth birthday, it was Eris’s time to participate in the Gifting. Her time to receive her Gift- her class, her very future.

She wondered what it would be like, to finally have a class. Jaxie and Alex both got theirs, on back-to-back days just two months ago. From the moment they stepped back out into the hall, Eris knew they were different. Their postures, the way they looked around the room, even their physiques were changed. Neither had been out of shape in any capacity before receiving their Gift- they trained and worked regularly to hone their athleticism. When they stepped out of that room, their muscles may as well have been chiselled from marble by the world’s greatest sculptor. Even the tiniest shred of fat on their body vanished, and they carried themselves like heroes. 

Which was fair, since that’s what they wanted to be. That’s what a lot of aspiring children wanted to be when they grew up. They wanted to help try and save the world. To help hold off, and maybe even help get the first foothold against the Hollow. It was an honour to become a warrior of the Syndicate.

Eris? She wasn’t interested in honour. 

While Jaxie would sweat from sprinting around a track, Eris sweat from standing next to a forge full of glowing coals. Alex bled when one of the practice swords would hit just a little bit too hard on a sensitive spot of skin as she sparred. Eris bled when she accidentally pricked her thumb with a sewing needle.

Eris already knew what her Gift was going to be. She was going to become an Artisan. A crafter of all trades. If anything needed to be built- she could do it. Certainly not as well as a fully specialized Blacksmith or Alchemist, but Eris would find strength in her versatility. There was no doubt in her mind. Classes were gifted by their relevance to the person and their preferences. Jaxie had always been blunt and confrontational. When things got a little heated with classmates in high school, Jaxie was always the first to start throwing hands. Enough visits to the principal’s office and suspensions for fighting made nobody surprised when her class manifested as a Berserker. 

Alex? Truthfully, Eris thought that she would have gotten a Berserker as well, just like Jaxie the day before. Jaxie may have been the one to start fights if people started being excessively rude, but Alex was never too far behind her. One rude comment directed towards either Eris or Jaxie was all it took for Alex to show that girls could break someone’s nose just as easily as a boy could. It wasn’t too far-fetched that her class ended up being a Knight. A protector, albeit a very aggressive one.

And here Eris was, with two of the most violent people as her beloved friends, anticipating a class that left her as far away from conflict as possible. She was okay with that. She preferred it that way. Alex and Jaxie wanted to get their hands dirty and save the world? Blessings to them. Eris was quite content with staying back in the city, building them gear and equipment to help them be the heroes the world needed.

That was, if Eris became an Artisan. She was well-versed in pretty much every form of crafting. She had enough pieces of practice armour and weapons filling the entirety of the training workshop. She filled the medicine cabinet back at the house with homemade alchemy concoctions to relieve headaches and soothe burns. She sewed their clothes. She cooked their meals. By the gods, she even paid for groceries last week with credits she got by making new cutlery for Mrs. Kerlesh.

Of course, Eris wouldn’t be completely disappointed if she got a particular specialization, like a Weaver or Culinarian, but she prided herself on her versatility. Having her class only cover one aspect of crafting would make those objects much more powerful, but cut down on the options available. Artisan would make Eris equally good at everything. 

But then, the more dangerous thoughts swam through her head like sharks. What if Eris got a combat-oriented class like Jaxie or Alex? She didn’t want to fight. She couldn’t fight. She wanted to help, to do her part. But she wasn’t a warrior. The only time Eris had ever swung a sword was to test the weight distribution. She didn’t know magic at all, and since neither Jaxie or Alex did either, they wouldn’t be able to help her at all in learning. If Eris became some kind of mage, she would be less than useless. She would die immediately and drag everyone else down with her.

No. Eris gritted her teeth. She was going to become an Artisan. Her, Alex and Jaxie were going to go to Marrix to hone their skills, and they were going to become heroes. Well, Alex and Jaxie were going to be heroes. Eris was going to be their crafter.

Somehow, that reassurance didn’t help her nerves. Eris nearly jumped out of her skin when the dark door opened and a wheezy, frail voice piped through. “Eris Kadell, let us commence your Gifting.”

Father Marrel stood in the doorframe, hands clasped behind his back. He was the overseer of Giftings for the town, and the one who organized and performed the rituals. He was also fucking old. 

His body hung off his bones like loose curtains, and liver spots decorated nearly every visible inch of skin. His bald head was wrinkled like a pile of unfolded laundry had gained sentience and started speaking, but still- somehow- his gaze was kind and reassuring. His smile eased Eris’s heart into a pace that only had a slight chance of causing cardiac arrest.

Eris wiped the sweat from her palms onto her jeans and stood on unsteady legs. Father Marrel started speaking about the procedure for the ritual, but her mind had gone completely blank. She didn’t even remember stepping into the room until she was kneeled on a plush black cushion at the edge of the Basin. It was a circular ring of black granite, built into the white marble of the floor, with a diameter of about five feet. It only lifted six or so inches from the floor, creating a retaining wall for the completely still pool of water contained inside. It was full to the point where Eris could see that the surface tension was the only thing keeping the water from dripping outside the ring. If even one drop was added, it would overflow.

The room itself was fairly small, smaller even than the little waiting room Eris was just in. This was barely larger than a tool shed, with only enough space for Father Marrel to kneel on a cushion similar to Eris’s, on the other side of the Basin. A single candle built onto both of the walls to the sides were the only sources of light, but the room was so tiny that the illumination was more than enough.

“Do you understand?” Father Marrel asked.

“What?” Eris looked up, dazed. Father Marrel smiled through his soft, brown eyes.

“Do not be worried, dear. Everyone gets nervous during the Gifting. Would you like me to repeat the instructions? They are very simple.”

She nodded.

“When I tell you to, you are going to place your hands on the edge of the Basin, repeat the words I say to you, and lower your face down into the water. Then, the Gifting will begin and I will leave the room.”

“Why?” Eris asked.

“The Gifting can often be… violent. Interference in such will only make the process more taxing. By removing myself from the room, it prevents my own temptations to try and assist.”

Eris paused tentatively. She had read up on the Gifting a hundred times over and heard a few details from her friends, but it was like all of that information in her head had completely vanished under the nerves. “What do you mean by violent?”

Father Marrel looked at the water between them. “Everyone has a different experience. The Gifting draws upon everything about you. Your ideals. Your wishes. Your flaws, and your faults. The way in which the Gifting shapes afterwards depends on what it sees in you. It prepares multiple different classes best suited to you. Then, it will test you to see which of those classes you deserve.”

“Test me?”

“The Gifting will force you to make choices. Those choices then flesh out and shape the nature of your resulting class, making it unique even among others with an identically-named class. You will have different skills, different ways to use your abilities, and different outcomes based on your decisions.”

Okay, so I just have to make a bunch of choices, Eris thought. She could assume that the choices would probably be something related to crafting. Would it force her to choose between different specialties, like which she would prefer more- Smithing or Leatherworking? Eris would just have to try and make the choices that split everything evenly, with no combat or conflict, so the Gifting had to make her an Artisan.

“Your plotting will not help you,” Father Marrel said. Eris looked up confused, and he simply bowed his head. 

“Everyone believes that they can try to plan out their Gifting to get the choice they want. The Gifting does not allow bias. It will only allow the purest, rawest decisions of the recipient.”

Eris was going to ask what he meant by that, but Father Marrel held out one hand and gestured downwards. “Now, dear Eris, let us begin. Place your hands on the Basin and repeat after me.”

Eris bit her tongue and nodded, rolling up the sleeves of her hoodie before bracing hands on the edge of the black granite ring. The stone was cold, and Father Marrel’s voice was almost haunting as he spoke. It echoed around the chamber in a way that it didn’t before, one line at a time.

“I kneel here and request a trial.

I give myself to serve worthwhile.

Through my oath,

Allow my growth,

To give me strength and ease my vile.

Among the strength of You I wallow,

Drink deep and feel, Your pain I swallow.

Take my breath,

My life, my death,

And claim my soul to cleanse the Hollow.”

He paused after each phrase, allowing Eris to repeat his words. Oddly enough, it wasn’t necessary. The words leapt into her mind as she spoke them- the oath pulling itself into her from some unseen force with a power that was beyond comprehension. By the time the last words escaped Eris’s lips, her fingers were vibrating against the edge of the Basin. Her face was hot, her eyes were welled with tears, and a bitter taste crept down her tongue to lick away at her throat. Eris’s vision was going black at the edges. She wanted to collapse, but somehow she found the strength to stay kneeling.

Father Marrel gestured his hands down to the pool, and Eris took a shaky, scared breath. She lowered her head, leaning forward to inch her face closer. This was it. In the perfectly still water, she saw her own reflection against the marble floor, just three or so inches below the surface. Eris looked better than she felt. Lips were turning blue. Deep sockets formed underneath her eyes, which could barely register the green irises among the severe bloodshot that deepened to a darker and more intense red by the second. Even her veins were beginning to poke out from her skin- lines filling with black that crawled up Eris’s neck as power threatened to consume her entirely.

Eris touched her nose to the surface of the water and lost all balance. Her entire equilibrium was thrown to the wind and she toppled forward into the pool, but her face didn’t smash into the marble floor beneath it. Instead, the pool went deeper and deeper, sucking her into darkness that pressed in on every side like blocks of ice. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Every part of her was being wiped from existence.

Eris was dying.

Eris stood in her workshop. Thirty long years of work lined the walls. Countless tools, all of which were hand-crafted, dangled from hooks in a cluttered mess of organized chaos. Half-finished projects littered tables and the floor, hung from ropes attached to the ceiling, and even more spare parts were scattered in a hurricane of metal, wood, cloth, and various organic ingredients. Eris stared up at her newest commission- a pair of leather wings that looked like they were torn straight off the back of a manticore. However, the reinforced-but-lightweight wooden braces, steel wires and linen flaps made obvious its crafted nature.

The group that requested it wasn’t returning for another week at least, so Eris had plenty of time to double-triple-and-quadruple-check every fitting, every measurement, and run limited, very small-scale tests to ensure success. She already passed every metric and goal they requested. The wings were perfect, despite being little more than a prototype that the group wanted to experiment with before finding something more permanent. Nobody could have done better.

But they weren’t enough. Eris knew some flaws right off the top of her head- the harness was adjustable, but that meant that it wasn’t as stable. If she could get that archer’s measurements, Eris could make a perfect fit, one that would have no risk of instability during flight. Moreover, the leather wasn’t the right type. Hydra leather was all she had on hand- it was tougher than pretty much anything but heavy as sin. Getting gryphon hide or even roc feathers could allow the wings to be ultralight and cut through the air like a blade. If she did that, the archer could get so much faster.

Still, other flaws would be presented when the wings were used. However, Eris couldn’t analyze those flaws to do better if that group took the wings across the country to fight. Eris needed to know those flaws now, so she had another week to fix every single one of them. To make these wings the best they could possibly be.

Eris wiped some sweat off her forehead with a grimy hand, smearing her face more in the process, and reached to the chain beside her. The wings lowered down to hang level with Eris’s torso and she stepped forward to begin strapping herself into the harness.

Eris wiped the need for sleep from her eyes and blinked against the harsh light of the oil lamp. Particles of sawdust floated in the air as she dragged her rasp against the handle of the greataxe. Jaxie couldn’t buy Eris a new forge, and Alex couldn’t buy her a new loom if Eris made enough money to buy both items herself. She couldn’t let them do that. They were the ones actually taking initiative and training to fight back the Hollow. 

Even back in high school, every time they got into a fight, it was because someone started picking on her. They were protecting her, and Eris could never do anything to pay that back. Or anyone, for that matter. Everyone deserved better from her, and Eris intended to give what was owed.

Eris didn’t need sleep. She just needed to help in the only way she knew how. 

She blew off some more sawdust and took another pass with the rasp.

Eris stood on the roof, looking out over the line where the grey clouds turned black- where the sun vanished from the sky and the land curled and twisted with the darkness of the Hollow. She lowered her binoculars, but could still clearly see the shadows shifting as an ocean of monsters crossed the horizon. They already destroyed the Syndicate and slaughtered every single member. They had stomped over the entire world, and all that was left was her.

Everything was already lost. There wasn’t any reason to fight anymore. Eris would be fighting for a memory that died when she did. She gritted her teeth and stared out at the darkness before raising a fist-sized onyx gemstone with an intricate silver rune on the front. She pressed her thumb right into the middle of it. The rune turned red.

The horizon erupted with light, smoke and dust curling like a mushroom the size of a mountain. Eris blinked through the flash, and blinked again for the second flash. And the third. And the fifth. And the eighth.

By the twelfth flash, the world in every visible direction was engulfed in the last of humanity’s will for vengeance.

If the world was going to die, Eris would make damned sure that the Hollow did, too.

Eris fell backwards, coughing what felt like smoke and ash out of her lungs as her back impacted hard against smooth floors. She blinked images of wings, sawdust, and explosions out of her mind. It was dark, like the candles in the room had gone out. Eris looked up and her eyes widened.

She wasn’t in the chapel anymore.

That much was for certain. The chapel didn’t stretch on as a black abyss for eternity, where the line between the infinite darkness of the sky blended perfectly with the horizon of a featureless land. The ground was nothing more than a glossy black material almost like obsidian glass, but with no imperfections whatsoever. Everything was so dark that the only confirmation Eris had that her eyes were even open was when she looked down at her pale self- standing bright amidst the darkness.

Wait a minute, Eris thought. She wasn’t standing out because she was pale- she was glowing. Her skin seemed to give off a soft luminescence, shining even through her hoodie and jeans.

Such a pretty name.

The voice made Eris jump. Twisting her head revealed no source among the darkness. It appeared again- vaguely humanoid yet entirely alien. Perhaps feminine, but that was hard to guess. Everything about it sounded… off. Like it was underwater, yet completely unmuffled from the fact.

“What… what is this? Who’s there?”

Soul of Light and Hope. Not just a name, but a promise. A wish.

“Who are you? What did you do to me?!” Eris looked around frantically. Jaxie and Alex may have been fairly tight-lipped about their Giftings, but nothing that Eris ever read about the process mentioned something like this. The participant would go through a series of artificial scenarios and then pop back into the real world with a class. Getting sent to an abyss with a weird voice that seemed to emerge from everywhere at the same time? That wasn’t on the job listing.

Simple questions, but ones that do not have simple answers. An attempt will be made regardless.

Though nothing seemed to change immediately, Eris knew something was happening. The disembodied voice started to feel less like an environmental whisper and more of a singular presence. Still all-encompassing, but more like an individual figure was speaking rather than the world itself. Goosebumps rose on Eris’s skin. She turned around.

Sitting on the ground, one leg tucked underneath the other, was a figure. It might have been female, but it was difficult to tell. That was because they didn’t seem all… there. It was a sheen of iridescent fog with a featureless face that turned up towards Eris.

I am what once was, left behind to ensure what could be. You, Hope, have been chosen.

“Uhh, what?”