I want to become Stranger!

My name is Test Subject.

Usually it's someone else who gives you your street name, but I chose my name myself. It reflects my conviction to become a Stranger.

I recently heard a reliable rumor that a certain weapons merchant called Crystal Pencil carries a Strangers artifact and is willing to use it with other people.

I've heard the name of this merchant of death whispered in taverns before. He's someone who owns a wonderful Strangers item and uses it to write cursed contracts, they say.

I want to hold it. I want to use it.

If I make a magical contract with Crystal Pencil, I might be able to touch that wondrous item myself.

That's why I immediately traveled to the west coast, to the city of Crumbling Shores.

But when I came to the city, I heard that Crystal Pencil had already departed. He had left the city and traveled east or maybe north, they told me.

What a letdown. I felt so empty.

I should follow him... no, I stay in the city and wait for his return. I can't know where he went exactly, but I know he keeps a room here. He has buyers here, so he should come back soon.

I decided to wait.

Crumbling Shores was known for its wealthy nobles and their exuberant jubilations, but it seemed that recently the streets had gained a heavy atmosphere. Numerous High Hats had been assassinated and rumors of all-out war between nobles and crime lords filled the taverns.

I didn't really care about the internal conflicts of aristocracy, so I found out much later that some of the secret leaders of the Syndicate had been exposed by someone who knew too much and knew how to exploit that information.

But at the time, I was more interested in making enough money to stay at the High City side. I didn't want to take a room from the the Low City because then I would have to walk back to High City every day to check if Crystal Pencil had returned.

If you want to catch a caravan, you have to wait at a watering hole.

I offered to make a short-term mercenary contract with a local street gang called Cold Iron Crown, but after demonstrating my fighting skills to the leader of the gang, they said that I must become a full senior member or nothing.

I couldn't understand their reasoning for this, so I declined their offer. I wanted to make a full contract only with Crystal Pencil.

This angered some of the junior gangsters, so I was forced to kill them and live with their money.

I would have preferred to work for my money some other way, maybe simply train the youngsters in the art of combat, but they chose to ignore their senior's advice, which was to let me be. They came at me at night with axes and vials of acid, so I couldn't pull my punches.

I might have been able to avoid all these minor troubles, if I had returned to my previous name and made my past life known openly, but I didn't want to do that.

I am only Test Subject now. That is my credo.

Long ago, I was one of the two hundred battleslaves raised by Cot-Mot-Meg lord Tsirendre Rangi of Dazane.

When I was much younger, there were many, many more of us – thousands of us in huts and caves – but only two hundred were chosen to reach adulthood. We were lord Rangi's private army of elite bodyguards.

We lived a life that was only training and discipline.

One day, lord Rangi suddenly decided to sell all of us to the slavemasters of Huon Dungeon. It was an unexpected decision; to just throw away something he had put so much time and money into cultivating.

Whatever was his reason to sell us, the reason for the slavemasters to buy us was clear as day: they wanted to send a major force in the Huon Dungeon and kill all the deviants who had settled there.

Deviants were monstrous, cannibalistic intruders from No-Lands, or so the slavemasters told us. They didn't call us battleslaves, they called us Volunteers.

But we were just slaves forced to drink rare poison that would kill us in ten days.

The poison we ingested had two functions: if we lose a battle, the deviants will eat our bodies and the poison will then kill the deviants; if we try to run away through the dungeon, we won't get the antidote waiting outside.

We had ten days to kill all the deviants. We had to win to live.

After nine days and nine nights of continuous battles, everyone died except me and my partner Ksiti.

We spent half a day checking every corner of the lowest floor of the dungeon, but we couldn't find anyone else alive.

In the end, we returned outside – two out of two hundred.

But they lied to us. There was no antidote. There never was. They expected us all to die with the deviants.

In desperation and anger, we attacked the laughing slavemasters and their laughing mercenary guards.

I don't remember much of that battle.

When Ksiti took my hand and dragged me out from a pile of corpses, I realized we had won.

But we had only half a day to live.

We wanted to at least die in freedom, so we cut our chains and traveled to west.

We were fully prepared to die together that night. Yet when the morning came, we were still alive.

Was the poison a lie from the start? Was it a cruel joke? Were the slavemasters laughing at us because we thought we would die?

We couldn't know.

Ksiti said she had heard about rare people with strong resistance against death poisons, but I thought it would have been too much of a coincidence for both me and Ksiti to be such rare people.

But, Ksiti said then, maybe such rare things were among the reasons we were chosen by lord Rangi in the first place.

Did lord Rangi knew?

After traveling west for a while, through the burned middle-lands of Ur, we decided to turn south.

We drank rainwater from puddles, but food was a problem. Whenever we saw a skinny lizard or a bushy spider, we ran after it and shared it equally.

We slept in caves curled up like shreds of bark.

When we were too weak to walk, we crawled and pulled each other.

When a group of wandering deviants tried to eat us, we killed them and ate them instead.

When we encountered a war-gang, they gave us food and ordered us to fight against an enemy gang as compensation. So we fought and we won. Then we ran and continued our journey south.

I had no idea what waited us at southern territories, but Ksiti told me that she had heard of forests as green as her eyes and of fields that shone like gold krúricks.

I had never heard of such things.

When we finally reached the brilliant green forests of south, my partner Ksiti suddenly died.

She was pregnant and our child died with her.

I buried her under the first green tree I touched in my life.

I was alone.

I don't remember what I did in those weeks and months after her death. The next thing I remember... I was in the City of Sighs when I heard news that lord Tsirendre Rangi was dead too. He sold us away and let himself open to his enemies, and got assassinated in broad daylight.

I wasn't sad about his death, yet I felt even more alone.

I was the last battleslave of lord Tsirendre Rangi.

Everything from my past was gone.

I was sixteen years old.

The first name I chose for myself was Green Free. I built a small house in a green forest outside the gates of City of Sighs.

It was the kind of life Ksiti dreamed of: sleep in a house, drink from a well, eat from a forest, and walk around in peace.

I felt I could finally live without fighting.

But then bandits and deviants came, and I had to kill them.

Then came Suleiman's soldiers, and I had to kill them.

Then High Hats sent soldiers to destroy my house, and I had to kill them and run away.

I had to leave City of Sighs. I moved deeper south to Crater City.

I thought I could start a new life there.

But war followed me everywhere I went.

I learned more about Caliph Tze and Suleiman, the high lords of war. Those two seemed to fight over everything in the world.

They didn't fight over the east coast, but I couldn't return to the east coast because I was still an escaped slave.

I fought against Caliph's soldiers and I fought again Suleiman's soldiers. The only reason was that I was there.

At the age of nineteen, I was tired of being accidental part of a war so complicated I couldn't understand even part of it.

I wanted to find something else.

I wanted something beyond battlefields, something greater than all this death and destruction.

Something strong and permanent.

That desire grew and grew over years, until I finally touched a Strangers artifact called Sleep Crown at the merchant hall of Crater City. I didn't know what the Sleep Crown did or why it was displayed in the merchant hall, but I instantly knew that Strangers, the original slavemasters who went away, were not that bad.

Someone who can create such a beautiful artifact cannot be an evil person.

Human slavemasters were thieves, liars and destroyers. Strangers were builders of wonderful fortresses and creators of magical machines.

I realized I liked Strangers.

I wanted to be like Strangers.

I wanted to become one.

I waited Crystal Pencil's return at the Crumbling Shores.

My daily routine was simple: eat breakfast, go see if Crystal Pencil has returned to the city, go to tavern for a drink and listen the latest news, go to work and get into fights, eat supper and drink lot of wine, go check again if Crystal Pencil has returned, visit a brothel or get into more fights, and then sleep.

Sometimes, after punching some nameless street rats in a alley, it occurred to me that fighting had become such a natural thing that I couldn't differentiate it from not fighting.

I had walked through an alley and fought with someone, yet it felt like I had only walked through an alley.

Did they start the fight, or was it me? Did I threw the first punch? I didn't know.

Strangers, please come back and turn me into a peaceful man.

Before going to sleep, I prayed: Strangers, please turn this ugly body of mine into a beautiful artifact.

Crystal Pencil, please come back, I want to write a contract with your wonderful artifact.

...One morning, a letter arrived.

The innkeeper's son Frickley was quite chatty and stepped into my room without knocking.

“Lodger Test Subject.” (Frickley)

“That's what I told to your esteemed father when I signed myself in. Do you have a problem with my name? Or is this about the money again? I told your father I will pay tomorrow.” (Test Subject)

“A letter came for you. It was delivered to the merchant guild a while back, but they didn't know you were staying with us until now.” (Frickley)

“Oh, that's a bit of a blunder on my part. I haven't made my name famous enough among merchants still. What does the letter say?” (Test Subject)

“I don't know, it's your letter.” (Frickley)

“You and your father read all letters delivered. Do you think I'm blind? The seal is clearly broken.” (Test Subject)

“I don't want to fight. Father said you don't have to pay for the room, if you leave tonight.” (Frickley)

“...Then, I'll read it myself. You should learn some manners, young man.” (Test Subject)

When the innkeeper's son left, I opened the letter.

...

Greetings, Test Subject!

Now this is a story of all about how I was a battleslave #188 and my partner was battleslave #187, who called herself Ksiti Six-Fingers because she had two thumbs in both hands. Do you want to live in a house built by Strangers, full of Strangers artifacts? That's a yes, ain't it? Forget going to Reignland, we're coming back to Crumbling Shores. Wait us in the Clocksmith's Inn. Our messenger will find you, s/he will use the name Robbing Hood. You will know when s/he airrives and don't be shipprised how s/he arrives. Get it? Excelsior! After reading and memorizing the content of this letter, burn it with fire. It's the only way to make sure. Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down.

Vers libre,

The Mgt.

…

I had to sit down and read the letter several times.

Who wrote this letter? The Mgt? How did they know these things about me? I've never told anyone about my past nor about my late partner Ksiti.

How did they know I was planning on crossing the ocean to Reignland, if my hands can't touch Strangers artifacts on this continent? To know even such a thing...

Ah, I have to hurry up and go to Clocksmith's Inn. The letter was sent a while ago.

As I watched the flame of the candle eat the ink and the paper, my confusion had already waned and I felt only gratitude in my heart.

I would surely get answers to all my questions when they arrive.

Strangers, you have finally answered my prayers.

The sender of this letter cannot be normal.

They are coming to pick me up.

They are coming back.