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I know most people have things like childhoods, families they love or lost, homes they cherish or are trying to run away from. Lamitt has her clan, Branden his kingdom and all the oaths he swore to its crown, Renda-Rae a little village and the friends she had before us she rarely mentions, Nyelbert his mentors and the friend he lost as a child, possibly forever, Cylva her secrets. Honestly, I wouldn’t have noticed how many she’s got if she wasn’t from Lakeland the way I’m from Kholusia. I’m not too interested in prying there. She and the rest of my friends are my home. As reticent as she is, I think she feels the same. I wouldn’t take that from her, even if there’s nothing she could’ve done in the past that would tarnish all the amazing things I’ve seen her do today. But I feel like whatever her past is, she actually knows what it is and would be able to explain it. I’m not sure I can. But I’ll try.
My first memories are hazy. I would go back and forth on a route through Khoulsia, set on an unchanging path like a talos. I would come back to Eulmore and wordlessly set whatever I got out to market, ignoring the merchants furious at me for, I’m sure sure, undercutting them, I think? I didn’t understand them. I wasn’t, I think, aware enough to understand them. I wasn’t even aware enough to understand myself. I would stand by the aetheryte and shout at people to do… something, or go somewhere and for the most part, they’d ignore me. Some got angry at me, threatened to report me to the guards and kick me out of the city and once again, I wasn’t aware enough to know how to respond to that, except for what I instinctively knew to avoid getting into trouble, but even that wasn’t so much a choice I made because I knew the consequences than just a thing I did in response to an input. If you drop a rock in the ocean, it knows to fall and make a splash, but it doesn’t know why.
Sometimes some poor soul would be interested in my offer, and it would be as if some outside force took hold of me, something that was able to think on its own like I couldn’t, and it would negotiate through me. I don’t know what happened to those people. I’ve heard some unnerving rumors, about people who accept offers of riches and power from Humes shouting in the Eulmore markets with dead eyes and no distinguishing features. Sometimes people mistake me for one of them, since they’re still there, and still look so much like me, but when I can talk with them and all my wits are my own, they quickly apologize and assume that our resemblance is a coincidence.
I hope I never hurt anyone. I know it wasn’t me who hurt them, but that doesn’t help too much. I would never want to hurt anyone. I know now that it would be bad, and I know now that I want nothing more than to use the life I have to help others, but I don’t know if I knew that then. See, this is why I don’t like trying to explain it to people, even to my friends. How am I supposed to justify what I may or may not have done if I don’t know for sure what it is I did?
My first memory, when I first realized that I was me, was when I saw a waterfall and I wanted to stop and look at it. I had never experienced anything like that, despite having gone past it likely hundreds of times. But this was the first time I had been able to stop. The first thing I ever wanted, and it was to see this waterfall. The second was to touch it. I stepped forward, hesitant, placed my hand in the running water and gasped. It was cold! I shook my hand to dry it off, tried it again to see if it would be the same, and it was still cold! I didn’t even know how to respond. Was it good? I had never felt sensation before. Was it bad? It felt uncomfortable. Did it? Or was that how everything felt, when you could feel things? I didn’t even care that it was unpleasant, I wanted to feel more.
Now that I wanted to stop, I realized I wanted to experience more. I wasn’t that far from the Ladder, and I was suddenly gripped with curiosity. So I left the well worn paths behind and asked for a ride up. I somehow had the coin, but the operator seemed a bit nervous. I might’ve passed by him dozens of times before, but I hadn’t ever tried to speak to him. I had so many questions, and he only had a few answers. For all the questions I asked, I must have left the poor fellow with many of his own! But I realized quickly that the best way to get answers was to see them for myself, and so, I gave him his coin and went up the Ladder.
Upon reaching the top of the cliff, I stayed for a while, looking down over what had once been my entire world, looking out on the sea, wondering if the water from the sea was as cold as the water from the falls. I was so lost in thought, now that I was capable of it, that I didn’t notice the screeching of a cliffkite, and discombobulated as I was, I could hardly get my axe out to defend myself. It ripped through my armor, hit me in the head, and all went black. I wasn’t afraid of dying. I was afraid I’d wake up back to Eulmore and find myself yelling at people about how I, or whatever controlled me, could offer them gil and carry them to glory. That at the moment when my world had suddenly become so wonderfully large, it would constrict right back into the same path, and I would lose my chance to break free forever.
That’s when Lamitt found me. I had seen dwarves before, when I would be in their mines, gathering ore from their veins without their permission. They’d run me off with pickaxes and hammers and I would just come back when they were asleep to continue whatever business I had. But Lamitt saw me on the brink of death, and if I had ever done any ill to her clan, she didn’t care. She saved me anyway.
She asked me for my name. Rddfvbrtt is impossible to pronounce. I don’t know how I know that used to be my name. So I tried my best, and told her my name was Ardbert. It’s a word I can hear on the lips of my comrades, a name people can thank after all I’ve done for them, whether it’s getting their chickens back in their pens or unraveling the schemes of the Shadowkeeper.
She asked me if I was an adventurer. I didn’t know, so I just said yes. I had seen those before, and now that I was capable of it, I was filled with envy for them. They got to see so much, experience so many wonderful things. It was impulsive, since I didn’t know what other options were out there or what being an adventurer was about, but it was exactly what I wanted to be. What I still wish to be. I’ve never regretted it.
She asked me where I was from. I had only known here, even if I only recently learned that here had a name, but I couldn’t remember what the elevator operator told me, so I said I was from around “here”. That seemed to satisfy her. I tried to explain to her that she was the second person I had ever talked to and she laughed and said the hit I took on the head must’ve done more damage than she thought. We camped for the night, I slept for the first time, ate for the first time, and knew that no matter what, I never wanted this to end.
Now I’m Ardbert, and each moment I spend as Ardbert is a gift.