Darkness surrounded Artoria as she descended into the daunting barrow, the only thing keeping the shadows at bay was a singular torch that was slowly burning out. She wasn't sure who the barrow was made for, any identity that could be found from the design seemed worn away as if the world had been trying to tear away its very existence from reality. It raised her hackles as descended deeper and deeper, it felt like walking somewhere forbidden.
'What am I even doing here? What's the point of any of this if duty looms above me like doom itself?'
Her journey across the country was going well, it was soothing and calming in its own way (The highwaymen were belligerent and numerous as always) but unease fettered her every footstep. She had a duty to uphold and here she was, gallivanting in ancient tombs and far off lands! And yet… and yet she was happier than she had been in years. It was all so confusing, morals, ideals, principals, that's what makes up the core of who she is, it's what makes her strive for a bright future where all may prosper, yet it feels like every step she takes on that path is laden with thorns and when she fights for herself it feels like a betrayal of everything she holds dear while still making her happy. Could you ever reach a point in your life where felt like no matter where you turned all the paths were painful?
'If I fall in some forgotten tomb Camelot will fall to ruin and that bright future will be lost… So why can't I stop?'
She kept walking down, down, down into the deep dark halls. It was growing colder, cold enough that her iron sword began to crack, and her breath turn to mist. She kept walking. The shadows down here seemed to have a life of their own, they slid up and down the walls in and out of sight, she could see them dancing, she could see them fighting, she could see them dying. Everything like some shadow to life that existed above, fitting she supposed. Whispers filled the air like a symphony of the forgotten and the lost, yet they were not the source of disquiet in her heart.
She felt that she was close. Too what she could not say but she could feel it, so she walked on trying to ignore the discordance within her own soul.
The torch was down to an ember as she reached the final chamber. A great dark gate lay at the very back of the room and from what little she could pick out there was Celtic runes upon it, no… some distant ancestor of it, twas far to... savage for lack of a better word. Tombs scattered the chamber and ancient statues littered the foreground.
"Why are you here…" A voice like a grating wind whispered through the shadowed chamber, a gust of wind followed, killing the torch and plunging her into total darkness. She should be terrified, even great knights should be wary so why did she feel a small smile on her face?
"This place was sealed for a reason girl" She couldn't see anything in the pitch black but she could "feel" the area around her, it was already odd enough without the sensation of shadows coalescing into a… woman? A woman with two spears that screamed with bloodlust, yet not as if it was just a copy of someone else.
"I don't know" The tension in the air paused for a moment before a pressure, unlike anything Artoria, had faced before came crashing down upon her.
"Fool" Artoria's head tilted to the side as a spear tried to impale it, she swung up and hit nothing. She ducked barely escaping the shadowy slash with nothing more than a crimson line across the back of her neck, she burst forward and twirled striking behind her. The crack of steel and scattering of metal had told her how well that went. She launched her left fist with a blast wind sending her and her assailant back.
She huffed as she sensed the being race closer, it was a deadly dance of death and she was effectively blind against a skilled opponent born from this darkness, an absolutely terrible engagement for anyone in her circumstances. So why was she grinning?
She backflipped onto a tomb and tore off an ax from a nearby statue swinging it trying to cleave the figure in two only to have it leap on the ax blade and kick her across the face. Landing on her hands Artoria pushed herself upwards spinning through the air landing right before the shadow, glancing the spears off her gauntlets she punched through the shadow to hit… nothing. The shaft of the spear slammed into her side, shattering her left rib cage and driving the air out of her lungs as she slammed hard into the wall.
'Incorporeal. Burning hells if I had- stop it's gone and out of the equation. Need to focus on what's here and now, that's what a knight does, what a king does'
She didn't have a lot of options; the pain would limit her movements until she got used-
'Ah there's the adrenaline kicking in, round 2'
She rolled backwards picking up a pair of ancient daggers neatly missing the spears. The shadow spun towards her only for Artoria to dodge with a grin and take the knife across, it did nothing, but it made her feel better. She ducked and danced across the tombs in an impressive show of resilience and acrobatics as the shadow wrecked tombs and statues chasing her down. Her twin daggers dueled against the spear tips, somehow holding up against the otherworldly weapons.
"Annoying pest" the daggers were flicked out of her hands, so she leapt through her opponent to grab a stone leg and use it as a pole vault to the gate. She screamed out in pain once she landed, frost covered her back, and her temperature was quickly dropping from the sheer proximity of that gate and whatever lies beyond. She shook off the pain and pushed onwards but even with this rising sense of almost perverse joy she couldn't make her match the skill of this shadow, she couldn't match anything about, yet still, she kept on fighting.
'I'm in agony'
She overextended with a dagger earning a swift punch in the stomach voiding what was left of her meal.
'I'm heavily wounded'
She took a slash into her right shoulder as the stone claymore in her hands shattered.
'I'm about to die, in a futile little scuffle because I sought something other than duty'
Artoria tumbled across the ground, her body covered in gashes and her hair matted with blood, her core within was beating fast as she glanced the spear across her back and slid to her knees.
'So why can't I stop smiling?'
She rushed forward with nothing, but a joyful grin and the remnants of a shattered sword held by the blade. She was no longer even trying to fight honorably as instinct and killing intent drove her forward, her strikes were savage and violent, striking nothing but continuing nonetheless, it was pointless, it was futile, it was… fun.
"I've had enough" For a moment the shadows broke, and she saw a flash of crimson thorns, then it was over. Artoria was impaled by twin spears being held in the air before being unceremoniously thrown to the side like a bag of rotten potatoes. Her spine finally shattered as the tomb beneath her collapsing at her impact
"It's over little fool, join the shadows trapped here, it's all you deserve" The shadow was drawing nearer as slow and inevitable as death, her face clenched in pain she thrashed her right arm about the coffin looking for some weapon, any weapon at all. Pointless but a certain defiance filled her heart at this moment, that kind of defiance that makes you unwilling to just lay down and die. Her hand wrapped around a bulky hilt, she could barely wrap her fingers around but it was the only thing she could possibly use so she swung a lot more effortlessly and with a lot more strength than she expected she should have.
"AACKGH!" The shadow went flying with a gash of light? upon its chest. Her head snapped to the blade in her hands to see exactly what she grabbed, a giant greatsword of black ice, there was no ornamentations on it not even on the hilt or cross-guard but there was something wrong with the metal like if there was something beyond the metal? She grinned; it didn't matter what the metal was right now she had a way to hurt the thing. She jumped to her feet, blade in hand she felt like there was something wrong with what she just did but the twin spears howling for her death gave her no time to think of anything beyond battle.
CLANG!
She swatted the spears aside with far more strength than she thought she ever had. The shadow growled and twirled undoing the imbalance created striking back quickly, the dark blade turned aside it easily and she sent a brutal punch right in its stomach somehow making contact now and doubling the shadow over, she quickly kicked the being away grinning like a loon. Whatever this blade was it felt amazing.
She burst forward, the blade almost guiding her not by urging or whispers but rather memories of battles past. The red thorns and Black ice clashed again and again increasing in tempo and force but this time the knight wasn't being slaughtered. Wounded as she was, she flipped and twisted through the air like they didn't exist at all. Perhaps in her mind, there wasn't anything else but the here and now; she had been never closer to death and she had never been more alive.
The hilt slammed in the shadows' face sending it to the other side of the room, it roared in response and stomped upon the ground cracking the floor. Hatred was palpable in the air as her opponent prepared itself for some sort of final technique as light streamed from its chest. Artoria knelt down in a stance of her own, her blade across her shoulders ready to swing out in a vertical cleave, no one had ever taught it to her, no one had ever told what it's meant to do yet somehow she knew, she knew how to stand, she knew how to move and right now that was enough for her.
They both rushed forward in one last clash, the shadow, and the king. And at once this dance has come to its end. The shadow fell to its knees not quite hitting the ground but almost floating above it.
"That… blade… you… know not… what it is…" It grasped at the blade lodged in its chest staring back at Artoria, the shadows began to disappear as she then sighed and faded into nothingness. Artoria grasped her head in confusion as a vision appeared in her head.
A violet haired woman in a tight bodysuit danced across a plain of shadows, her crimson spears slaying great beasts of shadows and even beings of something… more. She looked to the spot where she dissipated and closed her eyes.
'Nothing more than a lingering memory. The real thing would have slaughtered me even with this blade?'
She collapsed as the adrenaline left her body, her armor in tatters, her honor sullied by her actions and yet she couldn't stop smiling, for the first time in forever she fought for herself and she had a wonderful time. She pushed herself to her feet. She knew there was something wrong with this scenario, but she felt better than she had in years, emotionally at least. Despite the miraculous (Or perhaps aberrant) healing of her wounds and spine, she suspected the scars she gained would stay with her to her dying day.
She tried to take a step to the stairs but had to stop when she collapsed against a wall.
'I'll rest here for a while then'
Holding the blade up she stared into the metal, the moves she used in her fight were the swords weren't it? She huffed at how ridiculous it sounded but it rang accord with something within her.
'Merlin can tell me what you are when he gets back but, in the meantime, you need a name. Hmm, Reqquan, Request, Regator. Something with an Req, oddly enough that just seems to fit it, Reqial, Requiem. Requiem, yes that sounds right, sounds French though. Heh, no matter. Though strangely I feel like that word will mean something someday. Odd
She smiled in the dark, no one was there to see it, but it was there all the same. Things were getting better, weren't they? Weren't they?
(Line Break)
The nail flung by intentionally missing his head but leaving a red line across his face, Harker closed his mouth.
"Such a rude thing to say to a lady" Her voice sent chills down his spine, well it was one of the things she was doing that caused his spine to shudder in fear.
'Sadistic and cheerful, wonderful' She zoomed in close enough to bite his throat, and despite the danger, he had to admit she certainly was a sight, her eyes were bound by a dark leather bandage, but he felt them as if they were staring right into his own.
"Thinking bad things about me aren't you" She purred and dragged a fingernail up his chin. He looked to the side seeing Olga trying to think of something, but it was clear that even in her head she was drawing straws.
"Can you really blame me" His head was tilted to the side lazily, his flippant attitude coming out in full force. She twirled backwards content to play along for a little while.
"You are going to kill us in a few moments so forgive me if I'm a little miffed" She grinned a lot wider than what should've been humanly possible to and pushed him so he would land on his ass.
"I think I like you" She swooned dramatically as she walked back and forth across the roof complaining. "Ughh you have no idea how many people just begged on their knees weeping for their lives as I ate them and their families. Just how many offered everything they had, be it money possessions, or loved ones. Pathetic." She sneered in disgust before looking at him straight in the eyes and leaning down to trace her fingernail down his nose "But You though... you almost have your own head run through by one of my nails and tell me off even when I'm close enough that it'd just take a tiny nip-" Her head lunged forward mimicking tearing off a chunk of meat with her teeth only stopping when their noses were touching. "And you'd be just another piece of meat. You will be a lot more fun than the usual gnats that I had to deal with before now"
'Really selling the horrifying danger here aren't you God?' He slumped his shoulders and sighed, not much he could do but he still had his life which meant he still had time. Time to think. Luckily, he didn't need to, Olga had just popped up with her own idea.
"Well if we are so interesting you might as well keep this going for a little longer after all who knows when you'll get a chance to deal with anything other than the dregs of whatever sorry-soul that remains out there" She grinned proudly and arrogantly, a front. Even he could see that, but the servant was amused enough to let it pass, turning toward Olga she bowed mockingly deep.
"What do you have in mind then?" Olga grinned.
"A simple game. We ask a question, then you do. Does that sound fair?" The servant played with her chain for a bit before throwing it right above Harker's head. He was trying to get up. "Be a good lad and stay seated will you" Harker growled and flipped her the bird yet still he stayed seated against the wall, and of course the ruin in his body was starting up, hooray for coughing blood. She chuckled. "Good boy. As for that game you have two people while there's only little old me, how is that fair?" Her voice kept up a sarcastic tone though neither wanted to push it.
"Very well my subordinate shall keep his mouth shut while we play the game" Harker moved to protest but a look from Olga cut that off with a quick glare.
"Very well then, I will be going first" She smiled pleasantly or at least tried which was honestly more disturbing "What are your names?"
"I am Olga Marie Aminusphere, the boy glowering against the wall is Alva Aldain" He glared at them both before barking out "Harker, call me Harker" Olga threw a rock at him.
"Ignore him(sigh) for my question. I ask that you extend the same courtesy, your name" The violet haired servant gave a cheeky smile that made the two of them shudder.
"I am Rider" Olga cursed, rookie mistake. "Now then, how did you two get here?" Harker raised his hand and Olga reluctantly nodded. "One of her malfunctioning inventions sent us here after a massive explosion" She scoffed
"It wasn't my invention, Atlas did most of the work" Harker stayed in shock. "I thought those eggheads killed anyone who tried to take their little babies?" Olga rubbed her brow
"My father made a deal with them, the details aren't important" She tried to dismiss it but the idea of Atlas, Atlas! letting anyone leave with one of their inventions was beyond ridiculous
"What kind of deal would they even accept?!" She stared at him with a dead glare.
"It. Isn't. Important" He got the message.
"My apologies for this disturbance" They both looked to Rider who just seemed greatly amused by all this. "What happened to this city?"
Rider walked to the edge of the roof watching the fires with reverie and horror?
'Must be my imagination'
"A side effect" Olga raised a brow.
"Of what?"
"Uh-uh-uh, it isn't your turn" Harker turned away from the scene as the servant laughed at Olga's frustration. no matter what questions were asked they were going to die if they didn't figure out how the hell to get out of here.
'Overpowering is laughable, outsmarting unlikely, escape would be extremely difficult even without an opening gambit but would be the only reliable way hmm…'
He examined the surroundings as Rider asked her questions, something about how long they've been here. Surprisingly pylon wire went alongside the roof so they could swing down but the landing would likely hurt like hell, he looked around further but there wasn't anything that could be of use due to the height and precarious situation.
'Alright method down now we need an opportunity' he looked to the two of them to see how it was going.
"Who were the other servants of the grail war and to be specific their real names" Rider pouted but relented "King Arthur, Cu Chulainn, Benkei, Hassan, Heracles, and some strange Archer"
'They are all like her, aren't they. Shit okay focus Harker you didn't give up back when we first went through the spirit journeys and we aren't giving up now'
He ignored the little voice at the back of his head saying that this wasn't anything like that, the trials were focused on getting a spirit to accept you rather than face a legendary hero in a fistfight and took a deep breath and began to think. ("What are your magical practices?")
Concussive force? Possible but unlikely to have any effect. Trickery? I suck at lying. Mental torment? Need to know anything at all about her first. Blinding flash? …. Right stupid suggestion. magic seems to be the only option but I'm not going to be able to contact Olga for her to do something, hell even talking to her in the first place would alert Rider'
He looked at his hands and imagined the blood vessels bursting, the bones snapping, the muscles ripping. The old familiar sensation of drawing too deep. He clenched his fists and stood up.
'I hate this. I hate this. I hate this… Damnit. Okay Let's do this'
The game was reaching the end of the very fragile string, Rider had begun twitching and jerking, she had grown too bored and the desire to tear into their flesh was growing too strong
"What did you say" Olga smirked, stupid and arrogant, probably wanting at least one victory before death. Good on her, now he just wished he knew what the hell she said
"It isn't your turn yet Rider or have you forgotten the rules?" The servant's hair started to flail about like snakes… Rider's rage rising and yet she did not quail but rather looked Harker in the eye with something akin to trust and nodded.
"How did your master die?" They could feel the hatred in the air, Olga grinned and twisted the knife. "It was you wasn't it, what did you? cu-'' The purple serpent furiously rushed toward Olga intending to turn her into a red paste, she was powerful, she was terrifying, she was open.
"Bippity boppity boom" A hammer of air slammed into the servant and sent her flying off the roof, it didn't hurt her, the very idea that it would be laughable but it was still a powerful spell. Shamanistic magic is strange and more than a little terrifying for in a sense you are inviting spirits of Gaia into your soul so you can harness their powers and increase your own, that kind of thing leaves a mark even when the contract is annulled, a boost perhaps or maybe an easier road. Still, that power wouldn't be much against a servant especially without a spirit, yet this was him and he had one thing perhaps no other mage had, Overflow.
'This is perhaps the first time I can actually be thankful for this crappy element, silver linings'
He ran towards Olga hacking blood all over her, there was no time to rest, there wasn't even any time to acknowledge her sputtering, the servant would be back soon and she would positively pissed.
"Hold on tight" He leapt off the roof and swung. If he had enough air in his lungs he'd probably be cursing up a storm as once again life proved that he was an absolutely terrible acrobat (Even Goredolf, Goredolf! was better at this shit than he). His spine screamed, his shoulder was almost pulled out of its socket, he could feel the wire cutting into his hand as they swung down into the street and he knew the landing was going to hurt like hell.
'I swear another candidate gets to deal with this shit next time'
A scream of rage was heard on the roof and he heard the rattling of chains. Yep, she was pissed.
'Brace!'
He let go of the wire and turned his body to shield Olga right before slamming into a wall. It hurt. A lot. Olga was groaning on the ground; it had been a rather fast impact after all. Harker himself was in the midst of his body screaming at him to quit but he ignored it and pushed himself to his feet, scooping up Olga and running like all hell was after him which was probably closer to the truth than he'd like.
'Still better than my first date'
He snorted and remembered that strange woman from long ago. He never learned her name, each time he asked she blew it off with a joke and a story. Strange, forgetting her was easy, he had never wanted anything to do with that flute toting woman yet twice in a day he began to think of her and those stories he heard nowhere else. Those strange stories that seemed to come alive around you and forced you to think about yourself and the world, he hated it, he hated her, and yet...
'Run until the wind, at last, catches up to you, it won't matter that you die because you would have run for all you had, shouldn't that be the way you'd rather die?'
He couldn't help but remember that bloody cougar fondly, and he couldn't help but remember those stories with nostalgia.
'Well then, lets see how long we can run before the wind catches us'
(Linebreak)
She probably shouldn't have expected too much from him. Yes, they had limited options but surely there had to be a better idea than jumping off a damn building and from the looks of it he didn't have a plan beyond "Run like hell". It wasn't going well so far and again that was to be expected, a race between a human and a servant is as even as a sloth racing a horse. Yet while he lacked the speed or strength of Rider, he did have one thing she didn't, a mostly clear mind and an extremely spiteful will to live. He dashed through buildings and jumped out windows, he dodged patrols of skeletons and came up with tricks and traps on the fly only briefly stopping to hack up blood. And what was she doing as he pushed his body far past its limits? Weighing him down, hanging off his neck, slowly choking him, dragging him to the floor. It was infuriating, to be able to do nothing but listen to his ever more ragged breaths and watch as the servant began to close in
'Is there really any point to this?' "Please tell me you have a plan of some sorts"
He dropped to his knees and slid beneath a fallen building. Rider burst through it like it was nothing as her chains barely missed Olga's head
"Shut your mouth before you bite your tongue" He tripped briefly and recovered just as quickly; he ran through a building before doubling back out a window. A skeletal scream came in a thunderous cry, they looked up to see the army of skeletons they'd been dodging coming down the street in a massive hoard.
"Oh shit" She said that out, loud didn't she? He dashed down another street just before they started to charge.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" Crude as it was, it pretty much summed up her feelings right now too. Bone arrows missed them by narrow margins as she began to feel like a fox being hunted by hounds.
"Faster, must go faster!"
"What do you think I'm doing woman!"
She really wished she spent more time with combat spells, at least then she wouldn't feel so useless. It wasn't a new feeling and somehow that just made it feel worse.
They turned another corner, and he trips, she hears a snap.
"Gaaah!" They tumbled down a flight of stairs Harker taking the worst of it as he shields her with his body. If she had time to think maybe she'd think it out of character, maybe she'd think it was kind, it was neither, he was barely aware he was doing it in the first place. They reach to the bottom bleeding, bruised and in pain.
"(Groan) Get off woman, you're not helping"
She opened her eyes to see herself staring into his chest, she blushed briefly before giving a squawk of surprise as unceremoniously she was thrown off.
"Asshole, the hell are you-" She stopped as she saw what lay before her, the very edge of the singularity, a sea of flame rolling across what should've been a great river.
"Shit we need to- GAAH!" He tried to get up but collapsed to the ground.
"Aldain!" She crawled over but he tried to wave her off.
"I'm fine, I just Acgkh!" He tried to move again but his leg wasn't having it.
"You're not fine imbecile your ankle is broken" She went to look at it before realizing that she had no idea how in hell to treat something like that, she had no idea how to treat any physical wound at all, there was always someone else that would do it. She looked down in shame and sighed.
"Who are you calling…" His voice grew weak as his eyes widened in horror. "Fuck" She looked to where his eyes were looking to see a purple comet crashing down before them.
"End of the line" Rider had arrived. Whatever amusement that was there when they met was replaced by fury. And to make a horrible situation worse the horde of skeleton warriors they were running from were pouring out of the street they left, surrounding them and cutting off from any chance of escape. Harker shook his head and growled.
"It ain't over till it's over" He pushed himself up with a piece of the stair railing, he hissed in pain yet this time he did not fall. She reached for him to stop but he was out of reach, walking and stumbling towards his death. An army of monsters and a self-proclaimed man-eater stood before him and yet he looked at best annoyed and tired (Though this scene was undercut by her thinking 'Ain't is not a real word')
"What are you going to do with that little bar boy" The army of bones stood still as the furious serpent walked towards the fool that challenged her, the fool in question gave a bloody smirk and lunged toward her swinging.
"Why to swing it at you of course" Rider caught the bar and slammed a fist in his stomach, not enough to puncture but enough to make him vomit all over her and make the air leave his lungs. She gave him a look of revulsion and threw him down the stairs
"Humans, always so difficult, always so stupid" She walked over to the groaning Harker and prepared to tear out his heart.
Desperately Olga tried a random idea. "What would your master have thought?" It wasn't the best one. Rider looked at her with a glare that promised death and slowly walked towards her, whatever her Master was to her it was clear that they meant something special.
(POV shift)
Harker's body was on the verge of shutting down, he had used prana multiple times in a period of five hours, fallen from great heights, and had taken hit, after hit, after hit. Now a servant had slammed a fist in the stomach, he'd been through some serious punishment through the years, but this? this was something else. Still, he pushed himself upright and then to his feet. Olga was going to die and so was he, and the odds were that it was going to be done painfully and nothing he could do could change that, but he could make this Rider remember him as more than just a slightly interesting gnat. He somehow broke out running and lunged forward with a punch and the world seemed to freeze as he realized exactly what he just hit
He punched her in the ass. It bounced. He hated everything about that moment. Strange, he could've sworn he heard a man laugh in the distance. He didn't have time to focus on that as in rage she snatched his head and slammed him into the floor, her hand clenching around his skull.
"Little shit!"
'Heh more than a gnat at least'
He threw a punch towards her face this time but it was easily blocked. Olga tried throwing a rock but ended up hitting him instead of the servant, touching that she tried he supposed. She raised her nail before thinking of another way to kill him.
With a cruel grin spreading on her face she spoke "You wished to know my name, didn't you?" Her hand slowly reached to the wrap across her eyes. Harker struggled in her grasp as a very primal part of his brain screamed for him to run. "I am the serpent of the shapeless isle, I am the monster that turns life to stone, I am Medusa" The pressure in the air surged with this announcement.
The blindfold was almost off, and he could see the glowing light beneath, he could hear Olga screaming along with his own mind to close his eyes. He didn't, he refused, death was here to claim him and even if he did close them she'd find another way to kill him, so he would look her into the eye, better ways to die but at least he'd do it defiant and impudent to his last.
"FOU!" A white blur slammed into Medusa's face launching her away somehow. He heard the roar of burning wood as a flaming colossus destroyed the army of skeletons. A massive shield came into his field of vision as a girl dropped down to protect them from any stray flames.
"Director!"
'The walking eggplant?'
"I'd say what you did was stupid but I'm pretty sure I don't have any right to judge" A man in a blue fur coat carrying a wooden staff walking out of the bone ashes
'The hell are you?'
He had enough for the day and his eyes grew too heavy to keep them open.
"Wake me when... it's over... will you" he closed his eyes and let blessed sleep overtake him. He heard one last thing before everything went silent for him though.
"You flaming idiot!" Olga?
Thwack
'Did something hit my head'
I'm really sorry about the lateness of this update but in my defense, it had been a stressful couple of weeks what with tests and the election. But there shouldn't be anything that worrying for a while so things should no longer have such a long wait. Originally planned for this to be longer but due to the already long delay I decided to leave Mash's POV for next time. As another note I'm going to be phasing out the titles due to the fact that coming up with unique titles for each one is going to get old real fast
On shamanism: There isn't much about it in the fate wiki's or even if it is than its really obscure with the only mention I could find was Geronimo's skill which gave no information about it at all. So basically I've got free reign on how it works(If one of you find anything please tell me and I'll see if I can fit it in), so in this AU Shamanism is very similar to Pathfinder's version with spirits giving a good array of abilities you can use but is also not as limited as Shamans can learn other spells if they have magic circuits(I'm going to say that Shamanism is technically available to mundanes due to the fact that a good portion of one's power may lie with the spirits rather than yourself) it's just harder depending how far you go down that path Harker who pretty much is just a beginner with only three (severed)contracts to his name (and they were rather minor spirits as well) can learn most spells of the traditional style easier than most other shamans. There is also good amount of Druidism concepts from the Iron Druid series as well(I highly recommend it, expert blend of myths and how they would work in real life plus a "talking" hound that wants to become the next Genghis Khan and have a harem of poodles. It's great). As a final note Shamanism is regarded rather strangely in the clocktower, on one hand it's a very ancient practice with very real power. On the other you are letting Gaia into your heart so suspicion on those who do the practice is… high.
King0fP0wers
Crap, all right in my defense I could not find the ages for anyone. I checked and just could not find it but that doesn't matter, but that isn't an excuse. Here's the explanation, Goredolf is going to be about 27 when he comes into the story which is about two years off from now so currently he's eight years older than Harker who's currently 17(in other words he's 25 right now). There was a bit of a disconnect between the two when they first met but it wasn't enough to keep them from becoming friends(Eventually, it took a good deal of time to move past Harker's prickliness and Goredolf's pride), how they met will be covered later. As for Ophelia I'm going to say she's 21 at the beginning. As for why they were thrown together in the first place? That will be covered more after the events in Fuyuki, it really isn't the time for Harker to start thinking about something he has pushed to the back of his mind even when they first met. Anyways he's the youngest of the three and the two would sometimes tease him well Goredolf did, Ophelia was never good at expressing herself. Part of his problem with her.