Lady of Silver

He had no idea how much time had passed.

Aaron finally woke from the darkness. Before he even opened his eyes, the young viscount felt something binding him tight. He jolted and tried to sit up, only to find himself inside an open-air structure, lashed to a crude plank bed with several thick ropes.

Damn. Was I captured after all? The viscount struggled, but he could not break free. The ropes around him were thicker than his thumb, and whoever had tied him up clearly knew what they were doing. The tan ropes pinned every point where he could exert force. Weakened as he was, he could barely move. After a few hard attempts, he gave up.

Yet Aaron could faintly sense that being tied up like this was an entirely new kind of thrill. His mind began to buzz again.

More thrills. More, more!

The excitement kept him lucid, and Aaron looked around.

It was a large open-air structure. Great white stone blocks rose amid the forest to form its walls, while lush grass grew between the flagstones underfoot. Sunlight falling through the trees swayed across the steps in the spring breeze. Not far away stood an enormous jade statue with its arms spread wide. Behind it, a carved halo depicted the moon in all its waxing and waning phases.

The statue portrayed a beautiful woman with long, slender legs and a graceful figure. She looked about twenty-three or twenty-four by human standards. Straight hair cascaded down her back, with blunt bangs across her forehead. Emeralds formed the captivating eyes in her perfect face, which gazed ahead with a hint of sorrow.

Whew! Aaron let out a long breath, and his taut muscles relaxed at once.

I'm safe. For now.

This was an open-air altar to the Lady of Silver. If his memory served, he was in Seabury, the only place in the entire kingdom with a large open-air altar to her.

It's all right. At least for now. Aaron closed his eyes and relaxed. The joy of surviving made him smile despite himself.

Volk, whose head was now gone, had been a casual believer. What Aaron himself believed after awakening the memories of his previous life was harder to say. But the Sallyan family was unquestionably devout.

Though the Sallyans sometimes donated to the churches of other deities, they had worshipped the Lady of Silver faithfully for generations. They kept a small shrine to her at home, and the whole family followed her. Whenever they had time, they attended weekly services. Aaron visited this large open-air altar in Seabury at least twice a year, sometimes three times.

At least here, Aaron believed he was safe.

He began to think.

Aaron had heard of all sorts of ways people crossed into other worlds: jumping off buildings, being murdered, getting run over by a truck, being chosen. The methods could be bizarre, but he had never encountered one like his.

He had crossed over while standing in line.

The instant a worker jabbed a cotton swab toward his throat, he crossed over.

In his previous life, he had been an ordinary office clerk. His family was average; both his parents were rank-and-file public employees. They were hardly wealthy, but they were certainly not poor. After graduation, he had passed the civil service exam and settled into a life as placid as still water. He clocked in on time and clocked out on time. If a task was his, he handled it at his own pace. If it was not, he firmly passed it along.

In his spare time, Aaron had a wide range of interests.

So of course he knew who those four gods were. In his previous life, he had been a die-hard Warhammer fan, with no shortage of miniatures at home. Their steep prices had put a fair strain on his finances, though.

Aaron did not know whether to laugh or cry. He had loved Warhammer: playing the games, discussing the lore, talking big and trading memes. That did not mean he actually wanted to visit its universe!

Thankfully, the world he had crossed into was not the Warhammer universe. His memories, together with the black-robed man's references to the "Bhaalspawn" and the "Supreme Dark Sun," made that easy to deduce. This was the equally famous Forgotten Realms.

That was good news.

The problem was that, while Aaron knew the Warhammer universe inside and out, he knew very little about the Forgotten Realms. What little he knew came from a few famous figures and some webnovels full of Chinese-style fan reinterpretations layered upon reinterpretations.

There were Baldur's Gate, Elminster, Charname, Karsus, and plenty of fanfics like Elminster in October, Elminster in Somalia, Elminster at Verdun, and Elminster at Old Trafford.

He had only the tiniest bit of a transmigrator's foreknowledge. The tiniest bit.

Aaron pursed his lips and tried to look on the bright side:

Not ending up as a civilian in the lower levels of a Hive City counts as a win!

Before he could think further about his situation, he heard several people discussing him outside. From their voices, they sounded like two young women and several older women.

That was hardly surprising for the Church of the Silver Mother.

The Lady of Silver, also known as the Silver Moon Lady, the Maiden of the Moon, the Lady of the White Night, and the Guide, was the goddess Selûne. She was one of the Realms' two primordial goddesses. Most of her followers were women, especially adult women, and her Church held many symbols of womanhood—even human breast milk—to be sacred.

She was a benevolent goddess who asked little of her followers and always welcomed any mortal willing to worship her. She rarely imposed demands on them, and it was widely believed that she had bestowed freedom upon mortals as her gift and blessing.

Her teachings held that all beings were equal. They encouraged mutual love, solidarity among believers, respect for life, and aid to those in need whenever possible. They resembled the original ideals of most religions and many schools of thought from Aaron's previous life.

Aaron quickly closed his eyes. He still needed to be cautious.

"How is Viscount Sallyan?" asked a mature, maternal voice. It was very gentle. "He seems to have been hit by a spell. The way he was raving earlier was frightening."

"He's badly hurt. It may have been a mind-affecting spell," replied a cool, refined voice, clear as a mountain stream. "Raun and the others found the remains of Hicks, the War Wizard apprentice, in King's Forest. They were scattered everywhere, and most had already been eaten. They recovered less than a third of him. The two of them were attacked."

"Hey, our viscount managed to escape even after getting hit by a mind-affecting spell. That's impressive!" A rough-voiced woman laughed without a care. "I thought the kid wasn't much to speak of, but who knew he had it in him? Not bad. Not bad at all!"

"In any case, it's fortunate Asha and I happened to pass by and save him." The mountain-stream voice remained perfectly calm. "He shouldn't die like that. It would be unfair to him and his family."

"Yes. We all know he's the last Sallyan," the mature woman agreed. "Let's see how he's doing, Eleanor, Asha."

Tied to the bed, Aaron had gathered enough information.

They knew who he was. Of course they did; they had known each other for years.

Eleanor and Asha had saved him.

He must have gone berserk earlier and been subdued. That was why the Clerics of the Church of the Silver Mother had tied him up here and treated him as a patient.

As for why he had gone berserk, Aaron knew. He knew all too well.

Why had he retained no memories of receiving the blessings of four deities, instead being born into an ordinary noble family and living to eighteen?

The reason was simple: mortals could not bear the blessings of four deities so easily!

That power was too great. No mortal could withstand the divine authority of four powerful deities!

The old Aaron could not have controlled it. It would have been like asking a pony to haul dozens of train cars, running a Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer on an i9 CPU, or fueling an interstellar spacecraft with coal.

It could not be done.

The human body had ways of protecting itself. To protect Aaron's fragile body, it had instinctively sealed those powers away to keep itself from collapsing.

That created a paradox: to wield the mighty authority of four deities, he needed great power!

But to gain great power, he needed to awaken the divine authority of those four deities!

From birth until the age of eighteen, Aaron's self-preservation instinct had allowed him to live as an ordinary person.

He might never have escaped that paradox.

Then came the skirmish: his first kill, Volk's severed head flying toward him, and the fear and thrill of brushing against death. At last, they had activated one deity's authority. The immense energy generated by extreme emotion broke through the seal and awakened him.

That deity had a particular fondness for thrills.

No wonder a tiny, adorable creature in an anime he had watched in his previous life had wanted to use human emotional energy to combat the universe's rising entropy and stave off heat death.

Emotional energy surged quickly and faded just as fast. That was why he had gone berserk without realizing it—another way his body protected itself.

As Aaron pieced it all together, two sets of footsteps, one light and one heavy, reached his bedside.

"Wake up, Lord Sallyan." A rough hand clapped down on Aaron's shoulder, and the coarse voice blared beside his ear like a tuba. "Come on, wake up!"

Aaron felt as though a cannon had gone off inside his head. Stars flashed before his eyes. He pretended to have just woken and stared blankly at the two people by the bed.

The woman shaking him was a barbarian. She was tall and powerfully built, with thick, knotted muscles as hard as great loaves of dark bread. Two furred mantles hung beneath her massive pauldrons, and her rough leather glove pressed against his shoulder. The breastplate fitted to her full, solid figure was scarred by blades, spears, and clubs.

Thick paint covered her face. With the light behind her, Aaron could not see her clearly, but he could make out her features: brown skin, a broad, flat nose with a low bridge, and a large mouth with full, protruding lips.

He knew her: Asha the barbarian, a musclebound woman with a perverse taste for violence, and a worshipper of Selûne, the Lady of Silver.

"Hey, Lord Sallyan, snap out of it." The barbarian was still shaking him when the other young woman hurriedly stopped her. "Gently, Asha. You'll shake his head right off."

Aaron turned his gaze to the second woman.

She was a young woman, probably about his age. Compared with the barbarian, her figure was perfectly proportioned. A white Cleric's robe embroidered with silver thread showed off her slender waist. Her splendid golden hair had been carefully trimmed short around her forehead and temples, while the long hair at the back was gathered into a large ponytail secured with a simple ribbon.

Beneath her robe, he could just make out a silver breastplate and blue lining. A necklace bearing an angel-wing design hung at her chest. She had a delicate, oval face. The only pity was the mask bearing the Lady of Silver's Holy Symbol: it left only her fine, pale-pink lips visible.

Aaron knew her too. She was Eleanor Dinefleur, a Cleric of the Church of the Silver Mother, the Half-elf known as the Flower of the Sunken Sea. He had dealt with her several times.

Seeing Lord Sallyan open his eyes and stare at her in confusion, Eleanor paused. "You're awake? Do you remember who you are?"

"I think so. Then again, maybe not." Aaron feigned bewilderment.

"At least your basic awareness is intact." Eleanor held a finger before his eyes. "Come on, repeat after me: one, two, three; three, two, one; ah→ah↑ah↑. Faster."

"One-one-four, five-one-four, hm~ hm~ hm~ aaaaah!" A memory surged into Aaron's mind, and he shouted the words that followed it.

"...Looks like you're fine." Seeing how lively he was, the faint concern vanished from Eleanor's voice. "If you're fine, get up. Asha, untie him."

"Sure thing." The barbarian went straight to work.

"Miss Eleanor, am I not welcome as a patient?" Aaron knew he had overdone it and hurriedly forced a smile. "The Church of the Silver Mother should treat everyone fairly."

"Your presence uses up medical resources that ought to go to people who need them more." Eleanor watched the barbarian undo his bonds. "You're a Sallyan. You can return to Suzail for better care instead of taking a bed from someone penniless or in urgent need of treatment."

"Yes, I know." The ropes came off, but Aaron remained where he was. "Right now, though, I really need something to eat. I'm starving, my lady."

Asha's eyes flashed with anger. Aaron immediately added, "My ladies."

Only then did Asha withdraw her fierce glare and spit to the side.

She hated it when people failed to treat her as a woman.

The Half-elf Cleric beside her, meanwhile, hated it when people saw her as "a beautiful woman." That was why she always wore a mask.

Aaron had not been lying. He really was hungry.

As everyone knew, humans had three great desires: food, reputation, and sleep.

Eleanor soon brought over the classic adventurer's trio for the road: salted jerky, black bread, and thin, sour ale. "This is all we have."

Aaron said nothing. He devoured it.

Once he had something in his stomach, Aaron spoke without hesitation. "I have a matter to discuss with the altar's chief priestess. Please take me to her."

"What matter requires you to see her? I think what you should do now is return to Suzail immediately and report what happened," Eleanor asked calmly, waiting for his answer.

"I want to seek the great Lady of Silver's help!" Aaron said, enunciating every word.

The energy born of extreme emotion was slowly ebbing.

At this rate, his body would soon fall apart. The sealed authority of the four Chaos Gods would leak out and destroy him!

He had to find a way to save himself!

"...Come with me."

Updated! I worked myself to the bone writing a second update today. Please show your support!

(End of chapter)