Up until the age of two Ruuz lived with her mother and all of the people that were employed by her. It was sometime between then and the age of three that her mother married and a man who had been one of her customers, who had fallen for her, offered to become her husband. He didn't even mind that she was a working woman and was fine with her keeping her job.

While her father, Vedfi, kept to his work as the local blacksmith, her mother kept an inn as it’s owner. After a few more years, Ruuz would, occasionally, be sent to one of the farmers to buy some herbs for the inn workers to make tea with, but for the most part, her mother and father wanted her to concentrate on her studies.

It wasn't long before Ruuz had been educated beyond anything her parents could teach her, at least in terms of academics. Details of the kingdom and its laws, reading, simplistic mathematics, and various other forms of education had all be taught to her. It got to the point where her parents would pay for travelers to educate her if they were able to or they would buy educational books or documents because nobody who lived there had anything they could teach her that her parents wanted her to learn.

When she asked why she had to keep learning so much, she was told that it was because she didn't know enough. She heard that her father would want her to learn even more once she met him and she needed every advantage she could get before that happened.

This struck Ruuz as odd because, as far as she knew, Vedfi was her father. He had been there as long as she could remember, but eventually, it was explained to her that she was another man's child. She didn't know why it was something to worry about because many of the women who worked for her mom have had a baby and, unless she was remembering wrong, none of them were married.

It was eventually during the most recent winter that Doliy and two men, a dwarf and human, showed up at the inn and talked to her mom. After that, the men went to one of the rooms upstairs but didn't stay the night, which was a common occurrence at her family's inn where people tended to just needed a quick nap before moving on.

After two days had passed Ruuz was called into her mother's office, a room that she never got to see before, and talk with Doliy and her mother, with her father nowhere to be seen.

When she sat across from her mother, looking over the desk as best as she could, she saw that there was a lot of paper, ink, and books of various sizes and colors as well a map with markings on it against the wall behind her.

Thinking back, Ruuz didn't remember a lot about the specifics that her mom told her. In the end, there were just two points that mattered to her.

Ruuz must never be allowed to return home to the inn or her family, and she would be taken to her father by Doliy, but it would be a long trip.

When she left, Ruuz didn't imagine how long the trip would be. This was both in terms of geographic and emotional distance.

The snow melted, the green of nature slowly grew and eventually became the seasons' future harvest as they traveled. Sometimes they were on foot, sometimes in a cart, and once a boat to go over a sizable lake.

Every few days of travel she got to see something she read about or had been told about by someone who had taught her. The types of work people did and the stories told varied greatly. She learned many things that were different between the lessons and the real world (although the properly made books seemed to reflect reality better Ruuz noticed), including how people would interact with each other and she learned, through a traveler eating at the same table as them, that her mothers' inn wasn't an inn but a brothel that he enjoyed visiting. Even if, as he put it, the madam of the house was off-limits to most.

During the travels, she had her magical awakening and was able to figure out many practical applications of magic. She had read and been able to learn a lot about magic before her mana came in. Now while she was able to start to use it she learned some without realizing it. Since she kept carrying things that were heavier and heavier she was subtly teaching herself how to control their weight to an extent, until one day she realized that the weight of her pack was almost nothing. Something she was told to explain away as being part dwarf by Doliy.

She was developing magic that made things lighter when she was interacting with it, instead of giving her extra strength like one might expect, even if it didn’t work on living things. This meant she could carry and move heavy things, but if someone tried to get into a match of strength it offered no aid.

When they were close enough to the capital that some of the travelers might actually live nearby, Doliy had told Ruuz that there was trouble. That someone with a grudge against her father had found out about her. She didn’t tell how it was discovered or any of the other details, but because of that, they left the place they were in and went to the next town, entering it in the dead of night.

Doliy kept Ruuz hidden and did whatever was needed. Losing track of how long she had been hidden under the broken down building, Ruuz started to wonder if it would be better for her to be found out. She also began to think about what her mother was doing and how she might have been better off at the brothel.

Without telling Doliy, Ruuz started a countdown of how many more times she would go to sleep before she would go off on her own. Fifteen nights was what she had decided on. Ten days for the number that her hands would allow her to count and five as a form of thanks for what Doliy had done for her.

It felt longer than it was when the ten days she stayed for herself were over, but on the second day that she was staying to thank Doliy, she found herself meeting someone new.

Victor made his first appearance at that time.

Ruuz didn’t trust him, but she didn’t find herself trusting anyone at that time. Not even Doliy or her family who had sent her away after they had, at least by her assumption, trained her into a product to be sold.

Only because they were leaving before her countdown ended did Ruuz decide to stay and continue with them. She didn’t think much of the man at first. He reminded her of many of the clients at her mothers' supposed inn.

There was a lack of confidence in him that she couldn’t ignore. He didn’t seem especially strong and he didn’t look the type to have learned any impressive magics like some of those people who had tried to teach her the mental and physical aspects of magic use while growing up.

Over time, her opinions of him changed. Ruuz found him to be a curious one, unlike those who she had met before, both at home and on her travels. He didn’t seem to like slavery, which was an oddity. While she didn’t like when people treated them horribly, slaves served a purpose.

For a lot of them, it was a way to repay their debt to the king and queen. Breaking the laws would end up needing a punishment and this allowed them to punish them without death, as had been a lot more common form of punishment when someone had wronged the kingdom and its people.

Of course, there were those who chose it because they felt it was better than their current lives and those who were taken as spoils of war.

He even tried to fight when it was obvious, at least to her, that he wouldn’t be of much help.

Ruuz had figured out what it was about Victor that she liked when he said: “There’s always a little logic behind my insanity.”

Most people were just people. Lacking in anything beyond basic knowledge and always going with what the rest of the people around them thought, but Victor wasn't like that. He was an individual.

With everything that she had studied, Ruuz had realized something.

Sure people could teach you a little bit here or there, but they only knew what they knew and most of what they knew was known by many others. They took in what they needed and looked no further. A book or an individual, on the other hand, could teach a lot more. Both could go into the finer details of a subject and often times even beyond what was needed to know the subject. A desire to not only show the facts but understand them more than anyone else.

She thought of what someone told her once. A student and a reader will only pick up so much, but a teacher and a writer must know how to answer any question that might arise to be successful.

During the rest of their travels, Ruuz had found herself wanting to learn more about Victor. Where he came from and if that was what allowed him think so differently, how the fire tool he had worked, what the terms he used that didn’t make sense meant.

She had a mental list of words and phrases that kept growing that she wanted to learn about.

Compyuter, ewe tube, fone, half an hour, pizza, enter net, tell a vision.

The last one she thought had to do with dreams. There were many more on her list, but for some reason, those had been mentioned repeatedly so they stuck in her mind the most.

Then the bright light happened.

Ruuz and everyone else ran to the tree, but Ruuz was the first one there.

In the briefest of moments, she saw a card glowing on Victor’s lap and hid it under his body so the light couldn’t be seen.

She didn’t know why she did this, but looking back she wanted there to be something about him that was between him and her, even if he didn’t know that she knew.

The next day was, as far as she could tell, mental agony for Victor. Except when they had slept everyone had been watching him and it just seemed to be getting worse after sunrise.

Doliy wanted to leave, but Ruuz was insistent that they remain with him. She even told Doliy that if she forced her to leave she would return to this tree the first chance she got. It was the only threat she could think of but found herself blindsided when, in the blink of an eye, Doliy used a length of rope to bind her hands together.

Doliy made it quite clear that, especially this close to the kingdom's capital, she would have no trouble binding her like a beast and taking her to the capital like a package. She even went so far as to show the oversized sack she would use and explain how her magic would ensure that not a single sound would be heard even if she screamed for help.

Eventually, they had a compromise and agreed to stay one day longer than Doliy wanted. This was enough time for Victor to come to his senses.

During the remainder of that day, Ruuz was curious how someone would react to waking up like he did.

She watched him as he did everything, usually from a decent distance so she wouldn’t disturb him, but she found herself getting just a bit closer when he was organizing his things.

There were a few things that she recognized, like the lighter, and some books with amazing covers as well as some she didn’t quite know about, but her eyes were drawn to the card that she had hidden. Especially since it seemed to have lost the glow it once had.

Whatever the card was, it seemed to draw Victor's attention as well as she saw him turning it over in his hand. It looked very simple like a wooden plate one might find next to the doors of empty inn rooms, ready to be taken to the innkeeper to show they wished to stay in it.

Ruuz suddenly felt a hand pat on her shoulder as Doliy walked past her and walked up to Victor.

She hated how Doliy was able approach so silently behind her.

Shortly after that, finally, Ruuz found herself being brought into the capital that would be her new home. Her father, uncle, guardian, whatever she would have to call him was here and she was curious to see who he was.

Ruuz didn’t like going through the tunnels in and under the wall. It was too dark and too long and she felt like it was hard to breathe as the unknown assaulted her every sense. She tried to not make it obvious that she was feeling panicked, but she felt everyone could tell.

Only once she was out of the darkness and past the guards, who apparently knew about what was going on, did they walk out into the capital proper and the size of it finally started to make itself known to her and bear down upon her mentally.

There were buildings all over that were taller than any she remembered from back when she was being raised by her mother and first father. The wall that they had passed through towered over the buildings nearest to it, but she still saw many buildings that were farther away from it had a view that would let them see beyond the wall.

She wanted to wait for Victor but was pulled away by Doliy.

“He got paid for what he did and he will not be someone we need to deal with again. I want to get you home to your Uncle as soon as we can so I can collect my pay.”

“Can’t we walk there with him,” Ruuz asked as she was pulled through the road, " So he can visit if he wants?"

“I want to talk to him more and what if dad doesn’t want me to meet him? We can at least have some food and say goodbye properly right?”

Doliy’s voice became flat as she spoke, giving no hint of emotion in any regard as she kept up the pace she had set.

“I have no reason to care. He and his slaves served their purpose. I had to hide you more than I expected this last leg of the trip and we used him as a place to hide. The fool was not completely incompetent but was not anyone to fear. Just enough skill to be a sacrifice if we needed one.”

“When he bought slaves that helped because we could hide better in a larger group. If you want to hide a sheep you keep it in the herd instead of in your home.”

Ruuz didn’t fight it as she was brought through the roads, but did ask occasionally what certain things were as they traveled through better parts of the capital, eventually seeing buildings with walls and gates of their own.

“We’re almost there,” Doliy said as they turned down another road, “We’re going in through the servants' entrance for now. Your uncle and you will call him uncle, doesn’t want people seeing you until you’re presentable. Luckily your mom taught you well enough that it should be ten or twenty days instead of several years.”

Turning into a backroad, there were smaller doors and a much less impressive gate that was still large enough for a wagon to move through.

The stone was uniform and smooth as well as clean, possibly through a stone polish of some sort, but Ruuz wasn’t sure.

Doliy knocked on the door that was built into the wall, causing a small section of it to be slid to the side and a pair of eyes, red with some swirling grey, peered through at the pair of them.

“There are no deliveries expected so please sta… Is that you Doliy?”

The voice from behind the door was sweet, almost like audible honey that didn’t seem to match the fire the eyes seemed to provoke.

“Yes is it. Would you let us in?”

The opened section of the door closed right after the voice said to wait there.

Before much time had passed, the slit opened up again and a small vial was held out, about halfway full with a soft pink liquid.

“If you’re Doliy use this to prove it.”

Without a word, Doliy took the vial and opened it up. She moved her hair away from her ear and poured the liquid over it, letting it drip down. After a short moment passed a slaves earring appeared, marking her as one for life.

Ruuz had never seen an earring on Doliy before and wondered what else she had kept from her as the vial was tossed away.

“My ring. Is that good enough or do you want me to use my magic to make sure you never say another word the rest of your life?”

Ruuz didn’t think that Doliy could keep her magic up forever, mostly because that was a skill that was normally only able to be done by those who had enchanting magic learned, but at the same time she knew a threat with enough confidence could circumvent logic.

“No. One moment please.”

Four clicks could be heard from the other side of the door as it slowly opened revealing a beastkin woman that's neither young nor old.. Her fur was pure white and her skin was even paler, but her eyes were an eye-catching crimson that distracted from the rest of her with their intensity.

Ruuz thought she knew what this person was, but had never heard anything except for some travelers comments about it so she wasn’t completely confident.

She didn’t remember the proper term, but it was something that prevented the body from holding in color. Beyond that, she couldn’t be sure what was true with all the contrary stories she had heard from people who saw one.

They died easily but were nearly immortal. They were mindless beasts and academics beyond compare. They couldn’t ever do magic, but had the most amazing spell mastery you could hope to see.

There was no way that they could all be true, so she made a mental note to observe the lady over time, even though the eyes freaked her out a bit.

“Doliy, I am sure the master of the house will be glad to hear you were successful. He was starting to say that if you were not back before the tournament started then your reward was going to be reduced.”

The beastkin woman lowered herself a bit, after closing the door behind the two, “And you must be Lady Ruuz. You look quite filthy. We will have to do something about that before your uncle returns. Come let us be off.”

Suddenly Ruuz was being led off by a new woman as Doliy came from behind, “Oh and Doliy you may wait in the maid chambers for the master of the house to request you. I am sure he will be pleased you survived the job.”

Seeing Doliy, her only constant companion for almost half a year, moving away from her as she was taken into a different room, Ruuz wasn’t quite sure how to react.

It was in this new room that the beastkin woman pulled on a few ropes that were shortly after discovered to be the reason that three new women came into the room in matching outfits of soft blue with purple trim, unlike the beastkin woman's black outfit.

The beastkin woman clapped her hands lightly, “Alright ladies this is Lady Ruuz. I need to go back to my station so I would like the rest of you to take care of making her presentable for her uncle before he returns home.”

“Since only three of you were available I suggest two of you wash her while the third tells those who would need to know about her arrival about it and gets her something fitting to wear. I suggest keeping her current clothing only until the master of the house verifies if it should be burned or given away to someone on the street. If he wants my opinion tell him it's better to destroy it.”

The beastkin woman left and suddenly Ruuz felt like she was swarmed and the next section of time was like a blur to her.

She found herself stripped down to nothing and washed by two women for much longer then she had bathed at any other point in her life.

One of the women seemed to spend a lot of time on her hair, using a lot of flower scented oils repeatedly while the other woman took care of the rest of her body, even under her feet and between her fingers and toes, both of them commenting how filthy she was the entire time.

When she made a word of protest at the comments both of them women acted as if she hadn’t said anything, choosing instead to speak over her towards each other about the filth that the new lady of the house brought in with her. One even made note of some bruising on her and verbally wondered if Doliy had even done her job properly. The other was just glad they hadn’t used the front door.

“Doliy protected me very well. Even when we had to hide she did it really well.”

The woman working on her hair started to run a brush through it and caught on more than one tangle, causing Ruuz to let out several small screeches of pain.

“Can’t you be more gentle?”

The woman who had been brushing her hair was slightly younger than her mother but had a more determined look on her face than Ruuz recalled ever seeing.

“I apologize Lady Ruuz, but this must be done. Doliy should have taken the time to care for your hair so it wouldn’t have gotten this bad. Of course, with her, I’m not surprised she let it get this bad.”

Once again Ruuz tried to stop the women from speaking badly of Doliy, only to have her words interrupted by the sharp pain of the hairbrush as quickly as if Doliy used her magic to accomplish the same silence.

After, at least in Ruuz’s opinion, seven baths worth of washing had passed she was finally taken out of the washing room and provided new clothing.

Three different outfits were brought down, or to be more precise three copies of the same outfit of slightly different sizes.

“Forgive me lady Ruuz, but we didn’t have your exact measurements ahead of time so I brought what I thought would be most likely to fit your body.”

The new woman, like the two who had washed her, was a human, but this one was slightly scarred on her hands in a way that, Ruuz assumed, meant there was a story about her life that could be told. She just hoped that the story about how the scars were obtained didn’t relate to her father uncle.

It wasn’t long before Ruuz had been dressed by the women in the smallest of the three outfits that had been brought in.

She now wore, instead of her usual travel clothing that would let her blend into a crowd and cover her face with a hooded cloak, a sharp red dress that stopped shortly above her ankles and provided no sleeves to cover her arms. This, unfortunately, revealed some of the bruises she had gotten on the travels, although those ones were mostly gone.

The rest of the day, until the sun was setting over the horizon, Ruuz had been kept in the sitting room. She had been allowed to read any book she desired within the room and was brought food and drink anytime she asked. One of the servants, a human man this time, had shown her where the bathroom was when she needed it.

Only once the sun was barely visible in the household, at the same time that some of the servants were lighting some lights, did the front door open and a larger man enter, walking on a false left leg. The leg looked like polished wood but acted with more flexibility that would normally allow.

Ruuz saw the man about the same time she heard him, thanks only to the fact she had been standing to retrieve something new to read.

“Where is she?” the voice bellowed in a way that sounded like it could be carried, not just through this large home, but through the neighbors as well.

One of the people who were closest to the man likely told him the answer he sought and he was quickly within the sitting room.

As the man entered the room, he looked at Ruuz appraisingly, “So you are the bastard. I suppose you clean up properly at least.”

“That will happen when two women bathe you repeatedly without a moment to realize what is happening,” Ruuz said sardonically.

The man stopped and looked at her, “In this house, we act as if we are nobles instead of the common folk. As you have been one of the common folk your whole life I imagine that will be an adjustment for you.”

He leaned down and looked at her, causing Ruuz to notice the scars on his face and enough facial hair to indicate it hadn’t been removed for a few days.

“From this day on you will have a family name. We are as close to nobility as we can be without being nobles and the fact we aren't is only because of your father's actions that stripped away the legacy of our family and what it allowed us. Especially mine.”

Ruuz bit her tongue. Doliy had let slip the truth of this situation. She was being used like an archer uses a tower in the game oporem.

This man, a retired war general who had accomplished much had earned enough renown to have been able to gain nobility even though he was already noble. This was, in part, accomplished by saving the life of a royal who came to observe a battlefield, but his brother, her real uncle as this man was her real father, had caused the family to lose its noble status.

Her true uncle was a man of the cloth who had been someone who knew three different holy texts by heart. Someone who made a point of studying every religion beyond his own that he could as a way to show the flaws in all but his own.

In truth he used it as a way to get connections to people from other countries and, just over a year prior, had gotten caught, along with many others, trying to remove the chains holding the castle above the capital. A grave crime that resulted in his death, as well as the death or slavery of anyone who had been directly connected to the crime. Which was dependent on if it could be proven and what they actually had done.

If Doliy had told her correctly it was discovered because one of the would be criminals reported the attempt the day before in exchange for a reward and having their participation overlooked.

While her father had a history of loyalty and there was nothing to indicate he had any knowledge of this crime, the family's status as nobles had been stripped away because of this stain upon their family name.

Sampa suspected it was because he was the head of the family and was seen as weak if his brother could do such things without him knowing.

Her father was a man who had gotten used to a high social station and the admiration of those he saw as below him and, if he could help it, he wouldn’t allow himself to fall without fighting back.

That was why he wanted Ruuz. To help him look good for taking in the bastard daughter of his brother. A poor girl whose mother was tricked by the horrible man so long ago and taught in a way that would ensure she would grow properly into a true young lady.

It didn’t matter that she was his actual daughter as long as the story was believed. She would be given the part in this mans public exhibition to build himself up and she would use him as a way to get the life her mother wanted for her.

“Of course uncle,” Ruuz said doing what she had learned was a proper ladies curtsy, “It is my honor to be allowed to share the family name.”

The man put a hand on Ruuz shoulder, it was larger than it seemed at first, or perhaps it was his very presence that seemed larger than he seemed.

“You are now my adoptive daughter. Ruuz Vinulette, but you will still call me by Uncle. I assume you understand why?”

Unsure what her father, or uncle as he would be called, wanted her to say Ruuz decided to hedge her bets with a middle of the ground statement.

“I am unsure why Uncle, but if there is a reason I am sure it is a good one even before being told what it is.”

Her father uncle smiled at her, “A good response Ruuz. If you end up half as good as your mother promised it will have been worth what I had to give up to bring you here.”

Taking his hand from her shoulder, he looked her up and down briefly, “I’ll have one of the housekeepers get you a full assortment of clothing. Its full selection won’t be needed until you are allowed to leave the house, but I don’t know when that will be so we will prepare early.”

“Of course uncle. If I may though could you tell me your name as well so I may call you uncle and then your name instead of just uncle.”

Her father looked at her a moment, “Sampa. Now the help will take care of you for tonight. I need to talk to the one who brought you here. We can talk tomorrow.”