Gun reintegrated with his Avatar, laughing uproariously. "Ahh, now that *Hic, That, uh that right there was a battle! Ahh damn." He cursed, stumbling slightly as he tried to stand from his Bloodsteel throne, instead tripping and falling on his face.

"What the Hells?" Looking around, Gun saw a Warborn Paladin, fully kitted in Bloodsteel plate mail; the armor glowing and wreathed in an aura of mana from the physical magic laid into the metal. The dark crimson metal gleamed ominously as the Paladin fell to their knee upon noting the attention of their god.

"Glory to the front." the Paladin said, smashing a gauntleted fist into the chest of their armor, the metal's properties causing the sound of metal striking metal to be oddly muffled.

"Yeah, hum, guh." Gun tried to respond, but something between a burp and a hiccup interrupted him. He kept trying to push himself off of the ground, but for some reason, it just wasn't working. Then he looked at his left arm, or rather, the stump where his left arm should be.

"Ahh, right." He said, rolling over onto his back, his own Bloodsteel armor making the same muted clanking that had come from the Paladin. Then, with a surprising level of dexterity and skill compared to his actions so far, he flipped to his feet.

Only to almost fall over again once he was standing.

He managed to catch himself on his throne, collapsing into it heavily, the whole structure ringing faintly with the impact of his twelve-foot frame and nearly four hundred pounds of armor slamming into it.

"Damn, gorging on Prana is great until I have to get mortal again. Hits like a pissed off Behemoth. Damn." He gripped his head. After taking a moment to adjust to being back in his mortal Avatar, Gun glanced back at the Paladin he had noticed earlier, something at the back of his very inebriated mind sparking to life. "Hey, you're from that, ahh… Hmm, out west? Yeah. Where was that?"

"Banue, Bloodlord. In Xescaegro." The Paladin answered, getting the gist of the question.

"Right! Yeah, with those Shogun pricks." Gun said, smashing his hand into the arm of his throne

"Shodenburg, my lord."

"Ehh, Tomato, Tomato." Gun waved his hand, switching his pronunciation. "Failed that quest, did yah?"

"Yes, my lord," The Paladin said calmly, emotionlessly, unmoving. Like they were discussing the weather.

"Hah! Thought I'd get you with that one. Shows them. Try and gut my supply lines. Bet they won't be trying that again." Gun chuckled malevolently. He remembered this particular Paladin. Before she had failed his quest and he had claimed her soul, she had been a very promising Soldier in the service of a very annoying clan that had been at odds with one of Gun's own agents in a rather important trade city.

Apparently, she had been close with the Clan head and his wife. Childhood friends or something. So he sent her a quest with rewards too good to pass up and almost impossible odds of victory. Actually, he had sent her several quests of that nature, but she finally failed one of them. They always did eventually. Now they were his Warborn, and that family knew to very well back off. In fact... Gun could feel an idea coming on. He laughed and cast his divine essence back out into the world. This would be fun!

{}

Gun was not feeling too good right now. This had seemed like a great idea at the time, but hopping out of his Avatar again had given him the mother of all migraines. Still, he figured it would fade in time, and he had had a bit of a hop to where he had wanted to go. Now he was here, and he felt even worse. Still, he was here, might as well continue. It was just tough to think. Trying to focus on the task at hand, Gun turned his attention to the child sleeping in the bed before him. He figured she was somewhere around five or so. He wasn't sure; he wasn't good with kids. They didn't fight in any of his wars after all. Not that it mattered. Gathering up his divine essence, Gun prepared to grant the kid a Calling.

Suddenly, the pain from his migraine spiked massively, and he lost control of his Prana. The divine energy leached into the surroundings before Gun's original working completed, and all the Prana collapsed into the little girl sleeping below his disembodied consciousness with a muted whumph.

Oh shit, that's not good. Gun thought before the backlash from the broken spell knocked him out.

{}

Melody vonShodenburg woke with a start in the middle of the night. She had heard some strange noise right above her head and snapped wide awake. Looking around, she tried to find anything out of place. Her room looked exactly as she remembered it. The wardrobe and desk, their dark wood surfaces gleaming slightly in the low light coming through the window. Looking to her left, The door to her room was still closed, but then she saw there was another source of light coming… from… the mirror.

Melody looked at her reflection.

She was glowing.

A dull red light was radiating from every inch of her. It made her normally deep blue eyes take on a disturbing purple color, and her hair looked much closer to auburn than its normal chocolate color. Her skin was the scariest part, though, since she was so pale. With no other colors to play off of, her skin just looked red. She looked like she had been dipped in blood. Looking at her hand, Melody saw that it was glowing, but her nightgown wasn't, so whatever this was only affected her. Reaching up, she gently touched her face, wondering if it was some sort of substance, but all she felt was normal skin.

Looking wildly around, hoping to find whatever was causing her to glow, her eyes settled on her nightstand. On it were a series of small armored figurines her uncle had gifted her for her seventh birthday. They had swiftly become her favorite toys, as they were actually part of a game her uncle said was popular in Cathor. You had to manage miniature armies against each other.

These figures were her favorites because she had never lost whenever she used them. They were supposed to represent Cathor's Armored Immortals and were covered in massive suits of plate mail, far larger than any armor Melody had seen any of the house guards wearing. Her uncle had told her the armor was so heavy and dense, they had to use physical magic so that the people wearing it could move, and it was attached to the wearer's body, making the armor almost alive itself. She had always thought that was amazing.

They were glowing too.

Before she could register anything beyond the same red light, it winked out. Like it had never been there. The room went completely dark, causing Melody to start to wonder if she had imagined it. Or maybe she was dreaming. Then a tiny white dot started blinking in the corner of her vision, followed by words scrolling across her vision. Words she could see, even in the dark of her room.

System error.

Object {Assign Calling} has experienced a fatal error.

Booting to relevant authority.

…

…

…

Divine entity {Gun} Unresponsive.

Booting to higher authority.

…

…

…

System Originator {Fulcrum} Unresponsive.

Booting to System Overseer

…

Contact with {Argentia} Established.

Hello, little one! Oh, this is exciting. Grey always gets so mad if I mess with his test universes. Now I can mess around, and he can't even be mad!

"... Um, hello?" Melody asked, very confused. "What's happening? Are you real?"

Mmm, yup. I'm very real. I'm… let's see. You know what a World Spirit is, yeah? Well, I'm that, but for the whole universe. Well, multiverse. Multiverses. Anyway, I'm here to make sure things don't break, which is a good thing for you since that silly Gun almost managed to make you explode. Really, he is just too careless. I mean, no child can hold this much Prana. Not even close. It even got all polluted with mana from the surroundings. Just sloppy.

The words just scrawled on without so much as a pause. Like the… person? Writing them wasn't used to holding a conversation. Melody understood nothing except the part about her almost exploding.

"Umm, thanks for making me not explode? Who are you again? Where are you? Or are you just, like, disembodied words or something?" Melody felt weird about just talking into the air.

Oh, I suppose there's no harm in me coming to you.

A woman appeared sitting cross-legged on Melody's bed, facing her. She was unlike anyone Melody had ever seen, which was saying something since her parents knew some odd-looking people. The stranger's most striking feature was her long, red hair. It was all shades of red and seemed to shift colors as it moved. It also appeared to be made of some kind of crystal but moved like normal hair. She had golden-brown skin, with patterns like the wood of Melody's desk running all over. The part that was a little scary were her eyes. They were a black abyss, with tiny, almost unnoticeable white dots in the middle, and they looked like they saw through everything.

Like they were looking into Melody's soul.

But the lady was smiling, so whatever she saw in Melody, she must have liked it. The little girl found that mildly comforting. Even if having people appear out of nowhere in your own bedroom was pretty creepy.

"Oh, you are precious! Don't worry, I'm not scary, promise." The lady said with a little bounce, smile blazing like the sun. Melody couldn't help but return the expression. The happy lady's smile was infectious. Especially when her movement pulled Melody's eyes to her shirt. The woman was, well, rather large in the chest, and it was covered in a tight blue shirt with the words 'I paused my game for you?' on the front.

"I like your shirt."

"Why, thank you! Do you want one?" The blazing smile somehow got wider.

"Really? I'd love one!"

"Lovely. Do you like blue or want a different color?"

Melody shrugged. She liked it more for the words. The color wasn't that important. Her mom probably wouldn't let her wear it anywhere but in the house anyway.

"Don't care? Well, we can match then." And suddenly, she was holding out an identical shirt. The only difference being the size. Melody immediately slipped it on over her nightgown, and it fit perfectly.

"I made it so that it'll change size with you, so don't worry about growing out of it."

"Cool!"

"Well, now that we're comfy and acquainted, time for some serious talk." In spite of that comment, her smile didn't drop a bit. "I wasn't kidding about the exploding bit. You got pumped so full of divine energy you're ready to pop. The only reason you haven't is that both Gun and my husband didn't receive notice of the error. I'm sure neither of them would have done anything, so you lucked out."

"Right, thanks." Melody felt much more comfortable with her surprise visitor, knowing she had saved her life.

"Don't worry about it. Like I said earlier, it means I get to mess around with one of my husband's little worlds. He doesn't let me mess with them normally since they're supposed to be 'sterile' or whatever. But! But this time, it's his own fault for not checking the error log. He even had me make it kick the errors to him first, and then he ignores them!" She pouted briefly before her smile returned in full force.

"So, I'm gonna give you a totally awesome class and have you mess up whatever it is he's up to here. That way, he'll remember to check the logs."

"That's nice, I think? But what's a class?"

"Ah, it's like the Callings you all have here, but it's not hooked to a god. Instead, it's managed by yours truly," She gestured extravagantly toward herself. 'That means all the little gods here can't take it from you. Pretty neat, right?"

Melody was ecstatic. Her parents had said they wouldn't let her get a Calling until she was much, much older. Ever since Auntie Aria left, they had been such downers.

"So what Calling do I get? Can I fight?"

"It's a class, not a Calling."

"What's the difference? Besides no gods?"

"Well, first of all, you won't get quests like Callings do. That means you can't get skills and abilities the same way. Although I have to work with the World Spirit some… Actually, let's do this." She clapped her hands, and words showed up in front of Melody's eyes.

Assigned class: Machine Soldier

"Now, I can't let you pick your class, sorry. If it was just me giving you a class cause I wanted to, that would be fine, but I'm trying to use up all the Prana floating around inside you. That means it got some flavor from that war god."

"That's fine. Machine Soldier sounds cool. Like something from Warlord 5000." Melody smiled, referring to the game she played with her uncle.

"Yeah, basically. Still, you have some more Prana going on. Not enough to be a problem, but enough for me to nudge it into something more. So I'll let you give your class some flavor since you're probably gonna get stuck in some problems from all this mess." She snapped her fingers.

Energy Construct

Steam Force

Nano-Swarm

Bioweapon

Magi-tech

Stoneworks

Original Creation

Digiform

"There. Pick one, and it'll change your class a bit to match."

Melody didn't have to think about it for even a minute. After all, the items on the list were weapon types in the game, and she already had a favorite.

Nano-Swarm Selected

Class Change to Nanomachine Soldier

"Great! Well, I better leave before Grey catches on. I'll keep an eye on you, so have fun!"

"Wait!" Melody cried out as her mysterious visitor tried to leave as fast as she came.

"Hmm?"

Melody jumped forward and wrapped the redhead in a hug as tight as her little seven-year-old arms could manage.

"Thankyouthankyouthankyou! This is exactly what I wanted! What's your name? You never said."

The lady laughed and placed a little kiss on Melody's brow. "Aw, you are precious. Didn't you see the message? My name's Argentia. But you can call me Tia."

"Will you come to visit?" Melody felt a kinship with Tia, even though she hadn't known her for even an hour. She had saved her life after all! She didn't want her to just disappear.

"Well, probably not, unless something else goes terribly wrong. But," She added quickly, seeing Melody's expression drop. "Tell you what. You," She poked Melody's nose. "Can come to visit me. I'll let you know when you can. Sounds good?"

Melody smiled and nodded.

"Great, now it's time to get back to sleep. You can figure out your class after you've rested." She snapped her fingers again, and Melody found herself back under her blankets, drifting off comfortably. When she looked across her bed. Tia was gone.

Drifting to sleep, Melody smiled at the last little message in her vision that had shown up when Tia kissed her forehead.

You have received a minor blessing from {Argentia: Mother of Reality, Original Tree}