Melody woke up, remembering the crazy night she had, glowing and magic ladies and all. For a minute, she wondered whether or not she had dreamed it all up until she looked down at herself. There it was, the shirt Tia had given her. Undeniable proof she hadn't been dreaming. Immediately, she bolted out of bed, running full tilt for her parent's bedroom. She couldn't wait to tell them about her night!

Sliding her bare feet across the tiles of the hallway, Melody nearly fell over but managed to catch herself against her parent's door. Flinging it open, she took a running jump toward her parents' bed, right into the mass of feathers that was her mother's hair.

"Mom, wake up! You won't believe what happened last night!"

"Wahh? Melody dear, what time is it? What has you up so early?" Came a sleepy but lovely and musical voice.

"I got a Calling!" Melody yelled, clinging to her mother's back through the blanket and her feather hair.

"What?" The question came in stereo from both her parents.

"I don't know what time it is. I just woke up."

Her father sat up with a concerned look. "Mel, what do you mean you have a Calling?"

"I got you last night. A nice lady came and gave it to me."

Duke vonShodenburg looked at his wife lying under his daughter. "A lady?"

"Yup. She also gave me this shirt." Melody rolled over her mother's prone form until she was in between her parents and pointed at her new shirt.

"Ahh," Duke was at a loss.

"That's a lovely shirt, dear," Arianell told her daughter, sitting up herself. "Who was this lady?"

"Her name was Tia! She had red hair. It was really pretty. I like your feathers more, though." Melody said, staring at her mother.

"Thank you, little bird," Arainell ran a hand through her feathers. They were beautiful to look at, being primarily the same rich brown as her daughter's hair; they were also interspersed with the occasional deep purple or royal blue. They were also incredibly soft and voluminous.

"Let's focus back on the point here," Duke said, realizing that the conversation was rapidly drifting off-topic. If he didn't step in now, the two of them would completely run over any attempt he made to bring up the Calling. "Mel, what exactly happened last night?"

"Oh, um. So, I woke up, and I was glowing red, and so were my Immortals-"

"Those toys Rudolf gave you?" Duke interrupted.

"Yeah, the ones for Warlord. Anyway, I was glowing, and they were glowing. But then we all stopped glowing, and there were words about an error or something. Then Tia started making the words appear. I didn't know it was her then, though. But I asked her to show up, and she did! So she said that Gun tried to make me explode or did something wrong, so I was going to explode. So she gave me a Calling instead!"

"That's…good, I suppose," Arianell said cautiously.

Duke sighed. "You were going to explode? This Tia woman said that?"

"Yup. She said that I would've, but Gun and her husband didn't read something they should have, so she was giving me a Calling."

"Do you…" Duke looked to his wife.

She shook her head.

He let out another sigh. "I'll look into it. In the meantime, Little bird, what Calling did you get?"

"Oh, it's like in Warlord! Tia let me pick which weapon type I wanted, so I picked Nano-Swarm." Melody gushed.

"That's nice," Duke said, fully accepting that this was going to be an absurd conversation. "What can you do?"

"O-oh." Melody frowned. "I don't know. Tia didn't tell me."

"Well, suppose we'll just have to get your Portfolio checked later,"

Whoops, sorry about that, dear. I forgot to show you the basics. Consider this a freebie.

Please designate Assimilation Target.

The two messages appeared before Melody as soon as her father mentioned her Portfolio. "Never mind. I guess it's just like in the game too. I need to Assimilate something to start."

"What do you mean, dear?" Her mother asked.

"In the game, you could use the Nano-Swarm to absorb materials and turn them into weapons really fast. The downside was that you had to give up some of the materials to make more of the Nano-Swarm, and it was really slow at the start. Plus, the durability of the weapons was less than other types."

"Ok, so anything will do?"

Melody nodded. If it was like the game, the material type didn't matter for Assimilation. Following her answer, her father got out of the bed and slipped on the robe hanging from a hook next to the bed over his sleeping shorts. He then walked over to a desk and picked up his city interface tablet. It was a small sheet of clear glass that allowed the property owner to modify it through the city's magic. Melody's loved the thing ever since her father had used it to make a pool in the backyard before her eyes.

"Here, use this," He offered the slate to her.

"For what?"

"Absorb it."

"Don't you need it? And it's Assimilate, Dad. Absorb is a different thing."

"The city automatically replaces it if it's destroyed, so I can't think of anything better to try it on. They'll just charge my account for the cost."

"Okaaay," Melody said slowly, unsure about this. She took the slate from her father. "Um, Assimilate?" She felt it then, as soon as she spoke. Nothing visibly happened, but she felt the Nanites go to work. She must have only had one to start or something. She could almost feel a timer running in the back of her mind, telling her how long it would take to Assimilate the slate.

"Dear? Did it work?" Her mother interrupted her thoughts.

"Oh? Yeah! It'll take… an hour? That's so slooow! Ugh, maybe I should have picked Energy Construct; they start so fast. But you can do really cool stuff with Nano-Swarm. Ugh, I should have thought about it more." Melody pouted.

Arianell laughed. "Patience, little bird. What's done is done. Plus, it's not so bad; look, it's already working." She pointed to a corner of the slate, which was slowly turning from its normal transparent state to a metallic grey. "That's your Nano-Swarm, yes?"

"Yup! Oh, I can't wait to see what all I can do!" Melody smiled, her mood flipping.

"Alright, since we're all awake, and apparently we have an hour to see what more you can do with that Assimilated, let's get breakfast."

"Yeah!" Came back an enthusiastic answer in stereo.

{}

Melody was digging her way through a second helping of pancakes when she felt the timer end. It was followed by a grey cloud floating over to her and landing in a pile next to her plate.

"Well, that's one way to know it's done," Duke commented. "What now, Mel?"

"Um," She stared at the Nano-Swarm. She wasn't sure what to do. It's not like Warlord had instructions for how to use the thing. It was all made up.

Luckily, it seemed she didn't need to know what to do; the Nano-Swarm did. As if it had noticed her attention, it shifted into a grey replica of the slate that it had been made from only an hour ago. However, there were now words on it, formed from indents on the surface. In the upper right, it read 'Experience:0,' and then there were what looked like tabs running across the whole thing. From left to right, it read Shop, Interface, Nano-Swarm, and Resources. The one open now looked to be the shop. There was a list of seven items with a price in experience attached to it. Along the bottom were what looked like page numbers.

"Ok, how do I get experience then?" She reached out and tapped on the counter. A little message showed up, the indents shifting fluidly to form a new image.

Experience is acquired from living creatures.

Total gain calculated from Power total.

"Ok," Melody said, idly clicking through the shop as she talked. "It says I need experience to get stuff. Apparently, that comes from killing things. Can I go with Loghain on one of the Harvester expeditions?"

"What? No!"

"C'mon, Dad! Why not?" Melody whined.

"It's dangerous! Plus, you're seven! No killing anything till you're at least fifteen, young lady!"

"Mom killed stuff when she was younger than me!"

"That's… That's different. Having to kill to survive is not the same as killing for an advantage. One must be done; the other can be done. No killing unless you have to."

"Mooom."

"Well…"

"Nell, you can't be serious."

"She is my heir. I know that doesn't mean the same thing since she's human, but she has a lot of me in her. A lot of Beast. Besides, with what's been going on and what she said, it might not be the worst thing if she could defend herself. It's not like we can get rid of the Calling."

Duke stared at his wife. She looked serious. "It's dangerous for her to go out. We need to know what her primary abilities are now that she's Called. Then we can talk about this more."

"That's fair."

"Well," Duke clapped his hands and stood. "I'm done. I guess the next stop is a temple."

He looked to his daughter, who still had cheeks full of pancake.

"After you finish eating."

Melody nodded, chewing furiously.

{}

Melody was pouting. She had been for almost an hour.

"I'm sorry little bird." Her mother was sitting next to her in the backseat of the car, running soothing fingers through her hair. She had been doing that the whole drive home. "I'm sure it'll make sense if you look through some more of the information from the Nano-Swarm."

Melody sighed. With a thought, the grey cloud manifested out of the air. As far as she could tell, when she didn't need it, the Nano-Swarm dispersed into the air around her until she told it to manifest. Which was super cool, and she loved it. Her slate dropped into her hands, and she started poking around at the other taps, starting with the Interface tab.

There were a lot of options here, various ways to change the information displayed on this slate. How it was displayed, the medium, what information it had. There was even an option that would let her see her Portfolio from it. The downside was that the requirements were more than just experience. Sometimes it just listed resources she needed, some required other things to be purchased from the shop first.

"I've just never heard of a Calling that had no increases in primary abilities. The Priest couldn't even see the Calling. It's almost like it's not a Calling at all." Duke muttered frustratedly from where he sat across from his daughter.

That sparked a memory in Melody's head. She looked up sharply, staring at her father.

"What is it, Mel?"

"It's not a Calling!"

"What? But you said-"

"No, no, I mean, I did. But I just forgot what Tia told me. She said it wasn't a Calling. She called it a class. She never told me what was different, except that she was in charge of it instead of one of the gods, so I just…forgot." Her pout returned. "Maybe that's why my abilities didn't go up. Not that that helps."

"It's fine, dear. You can still go out with Loghain." Arainell said, a far-off look in her eye.

"I don't-"

"She can because I'll go with her. We can visit my family." Arainell locked eyes with her husband. The look he saw there promised they would talk later. And that she wasn't changing her mind.

"If you're going, then that's fine."

Arianell smiled. "Of course it is."