Chapter Two: A Divine Piñata

The examiner and another wizard, someone important, it seemed, with dragon scale highlights on his robes, sat behind the examiner's desk, and with a wave of a hand, a rather comfortable looking armchair appeared before them. "Take a seat, Zander." Obliging, I found myself relaxing instantly. Probably magic. Eh. "So. We already have a report of your quest today. We'd like to run some tests. Less... orthodox ones."

I nodded, my worries starting to return. "So, what's the test?"

The other wizard scratched his chin and looked through wiry spectacles at a sheet of paper. Meanwhile, the examiner asked, "Zander, what was your mother's name?"

What? "Andromeda, of cou-" Wait. That's... That's not my memory. I can't remember my own? Panicking, I shook my head. "I... That's not right. I can't remember."

The examiner sighed. "I'm guessing the same of your father?"

I wracked my brain, but all I found were false memories. "How?"

"We don't know for certain. It looks like you have few memories of your own past, and much of the rest has been replaced. You have gaps, seemingly random, but looking closely, you have nothing but a few anchoring points from your current memory, and have most of the rest filled in." The other wizard cut in now, in a soft, deep voice. "We get students sometimes, with memory patterns like yours, but without the in-betweens. They tend to be the strongest wizards and have strong 'heroic' drive, and while testing generally shows no divine interaction, it is generally believed they are sent or created for a purpose. After your performance, our current theory with you is that you are one of those, but someone tried to maintain semblance of fullness via memory splicing. But, as is often the case with amateur memory modification, it was unsuccessful, and the anchoring points remained 'you'."

I just stared. "Excuse me, what? I'm some sort of divine piñata now?"

The wizard chuckled. "That's one way to put it. You'll be transferred to a program more fitting your situation. You'll want to pack your things and get... Here." With a quick sketch in the air, a map appeared in arcane lettering, and he prodded a few places. "Here is where we are, and here's where you're going. Good?"

I nodded weakly. "O-okay." Raising myself out of the chair, I turned to leave, but the examiner tapped his finger and said, "Oh, and Zander?"

I stopped. "Yes?"

"Sophia and Alten. Those are your parents names."

"Thank you, examiner." Leaning on my staff, I stumbled up the stairs towards my dorm.

...

Breathing heavily, I nearly collapsed on the door as I made it to my dorm. Leaning against the sturdy oak, I caught my breath and strained to organize my thoughts. Am I more than human? Less? Both? Mind racing, I started to turn to open the door, and... the door was open. Windmilling my arms about, I almost fell, until Gareth put out a hand and steadied me. "Woah there. You look like crap. What the heck happened between the quest office and here?"

I gave a halfhearted grin. "Turns out, I'm a divine piñata. Anyway, why are you back? Weren't you out drinking?"

"Erm... right. Anyway, I was planning on it, but I got a message from one of the higher ups that I was supposed to come back and get an evaluation. Apparently, my 'intellect surpassed average expectations', so I'm getting some free learnin'. Here, it probably means more to you than me." He pulled out a sheet of parchment and handed it to me.

"Holy Boccob, your C-level is five? Most students start at one!"

"Yeah, I saw that. What the heck is a C-level?"

"It's a metric - a measurement of your power, I guess. A long time ago, someone figured out certain aspects of powerful people are tied together, and came up with a measurement for them. It's exponential, which means a C-five is actually twice as powerful as a C-three, and four times as powerful as a C-one. It's not perfect - it usually overvalues physical attributes - but that's pretty strong regardless."

"Huh. Cool. Well, your evaluation's over there too. How'd you do?"

"Well..." I walked past Gareth and over to the table, untying the string around the parchment. Unrolling it with slightly trembling hands, I skimmed the reading, and soon started grinning like mad. "Also C-five! We might even still share a dorm!" Jogging over, I compared the dorm assignments and laughed. "That's awesome. I guess I don't have to meet completely new people!"

Gareth chuckled. "Yeah, and I guess I'm stuck with you. At least you can teach me all this magic stuff, right?"

I nodded. "Of course, I've been studying magic since I was three." Or is it ten? Freakin- Y'know what, whatever. "You'll probably start off with basic magic theory, though the evaluation you got means actually casting the spells shouldn't be too hard."

"Well that's good, I guess. So, you wanna start heading over?"

"Yeah, sure. But jeez, C-five!"

"Yes, we're both very cool. Now get moving." Gareth gave me a light smack on the head, grinning.

...

"Man, all this luggage is actually pretty heavy when you have to lug it up stairs." I was trudging up the fourth and final staircase to our new dorm, beads of sweat starting to appear on my forehead.

"Yeah, well, you're doing better than most mages I've seen. Most of 'em can barely pick up a big spellbook." Gareth was leading the way, and doing better than me, though he was a bit out of breath as well. "Alright, we're here: Room 504. You know procedure better than me, so do the honors, will you?"

I nodded, then knocked and shouted in, "C-five, Fighter, C-five, Conjurer!"

Locks clicked and the door creaked open a crack, a face popping and taking a look at us. A feminine face, with a ponytail. Huh. The current resident smiled and opened the door, revealing an armored woman, a hefty mace hanging off her belt, with her hand outstretched. "Victoria Battleheart, combat cleric. Apparently you two are good at getting stuff done in combat, so I'm here to keep you alive."

Shaking her hand, I smiled back. "Zander Kol, Conjurer. And that's Gareth Blackblade, Fighter, though he's starting some arcane studies."

"Well, nice to meet you two. Here, let me get some of that…" Grabbing a bag from each of us and walking into the dorm, Victoria walked towards a corner of the room and started placing things down. I found myself continuing to smile as I walked in with her, setting my things down as well, though I was somewhat lost in thought. How does she move like that with armor on all the time? Must be used to it… Is she going to be front-line? Probably, though I'm not sure if Gareth or her would go first. Hmm… Contemplating the tactics, I sat down in a wooden chair somewhere as Gareth and Victoria conversed. I can probably manage third-rank spells if I'm C-five, so probably Stinking Cloud. Though I've already got Cloud of Bewilderment. Should I learn how to Shape spells? Maybe learn some of those efficient-energy pathways I've heard about… Ugh, I'm going to be busy. Well, I should have kno- My thoughts were interrupted as I heard Gareth say "Zander", accompanied by a laugh from Victoria. "What was that? I heard my name."

Gareth smirked at me. "Just telling Victoria about your... condition."

I sighed. "Look, it was the first thing that came to my mind when I heard what was going on, okay?"

Gareth raised an eyebrow. "Actually, what is going on, specifically? All I got was that you were having nightmares, and that you were a piñata." Victoria laughed again, trying to stifle it with her palm.

"Well…" I briefly debated the merits of telling the currently oblivious pair, then shrugged. "Eh, it probably applies to you guys anyway. Gareth, what are your parents names?"

"William and-" Gareth opened his mouth, as if to answer, then closed it, looking half panicked, half confused. "What the-"

"Yeah. That. Apparently, not knowing one or both of your parents is a sign of being a sort of puppet sent by something, though they don't detect divine influence on us. So we have shells of memories, but not an actual full life." Victoria's face had gone from laughter to horror.

Gareth stumbled and fell into a chair. "What the hell, man?"

"Yeah. Now you know why I looked terrible."

Victoria ran a hand through her hair. "I… no. There has to be a logical explanation for this."

I gave a tired smile. "I'm sure there is, but either they're hiding something from us, or the best researchers at the University, and thus pretty much the best in the world, can't solve it. And you know what's the weirdest part is?"

The two stared at me, as if questioning my sanity. Gareth shook his head. "Weirder than that?"

I nodded. "Well, it's related. I have a mostly full life, but the filling-in isn't the same life as the anchoring points. Basically, it's as if I was a puppet, and then someone tried to fill in the gaps to make a real person, and messed up, leaving traces the examiners detected. Thus, divine piñata."

Gareth had his face in his palm. "Damn. Well, sorry for making fun of you for that… but Kord's blade, that's ridiculous! What in the hells?!"

I nodded. "Yeah."

Victoria took a deep breath, gripping a holy symbol that had been under her armor, secured with a steel necklace-chain around her neck. "Okay. You know what, whatever. I can deal with it. Let's take a look at our schedule."

I shrugged. "Sure. Sorry about… that."

She shook her head. "Just… let's not talk about it. I need time to process."

I just started walking towards the board that held our papers. "Yeah, okay."

…

A few minutes later, we were busy trying to figure out our schedules, glad to have something to do. Victoria fiddled with her paper as she underlined classes with a pencil, talking at Gareth as he leaned back in his chair with closed eyes. "I'm taking an accelerated course to become a Mystic Theurge, but I'm just starting, so it looks like we've got some classes toge- Oh, would it kill you to pay attention for at least a minute?"

Gareth smirked. "Maybe! I don't think it's worth the risk to find out, do you?"

Victoria just threw a pencil at him. "Anyway… Zander, you're way ahead of both of us, but you can help, right?"

"Yeah, that works. I might be pretty busy, though - I still can't believe I skipped a C-level…"

"Really? That's pretty impressive! How'd you do that?"

I winced. "Uh… I'll tell you that story later." Gareth just chuckled, and continued to doze.

Sophia inadvertently ran a hand through her hair. "Yeah, sure. So, what class do you have first?"

"Conjuration Metamagic 101 - not particularly interesting, but I'm probably going to test out of it anyway. Looks like it's not far from here, too, which is nice. Practical spellcasting's a little further down the road, but we should be able to walk together."

"Sounds good. I guess all the newbies get classes there?"

"Yeah, it's pretty standard. I expect you'll go to the second class right away though, since you said you were on an accelerated course?"

"Yep. Well, classes start for us in fifteen minutes, so do you guys want to do anything?"

"Jeez, they don't give anyone a break here. We should probably just get to classes, it's a ten minute walk to your building."

Victoria looked a little put out, but nodded. "Alright, that's probably a good idea. Gareth, you heard that right?"

Groaning, Gareth slowly got to his feet. "Man, I almost liked this place better when I was hired muscle. It's barely been an hour since we got back and we're already in class?"

I jabbed him with my staff. "Yeah, what did you expect? It's one of the best universities in the world, and you don't produce results like that without effort."

"Yeah, but… can't someone else do the whole effort thing?"

"No. Come on, let's get going."

Victoria just laughed.

…

A few minutes later, we figured out where we were going, and without the arcane maps to pore over, conversation inevitably restarted with Victoria's questioning. "So, Zander, where are you from?"

"Little township a hundred miles south. My parents pretty much run the place."

Gareth scratched his chin and looked at me. "Actually, you never told me, what sort of noble are you? You handle yourself pretty well, and you've got a decent set of muscles. Wouldn't expect that of most softies."

I shrugged. "My parents were both battle mages, and got made minor nobles for their actions in combat. They made sure I was just as fit as them for fighting." Wait. How do I know that, but not... I looked at Gareth and Victoria, but they didn't seem to notice anything wrong. Deciding to test things, I asked, "What about you two?"

Victoria spoke first, fiddling with her holy symbol. "This city, actually. My parents basically had the same job as me, keeping people alive on the battlefield, but I'm the first in our family to be accepted for Theurge training, so there's a bit of pressure." She laughed a little nervously and nudged Gareth. "So..."

"Yeah, I'm more ordinary than you two. Born in a little town, somewhere vaguely west of here, somewhere along the mountains. My family's always been traveling folk - every generation, the first son takes the family name somewhere new. It's something of a tradition, I guess. I wound up here since it had room and board, plus a bit of pay."

I tried to observe their reactions without staring, but luckily, they didn't seem to notice or react. In fact, it was almost as if they really had just forgotten about the whole situation. Spotting my approaching classroom as an escape so I could jot down notes, I pointed out the street number. "Well, this is my building, so I guess I'll see you guys later. We meet back up at sunset for 'dinner', right?"

"Well, actually, they give us somewhat real food, though we probably want to cook it into something more edible. But yeah, see you later!" Victoria smiled and waved goodbye as Gareth just chuckled and mumbled a farewell. After briefly waving back, I made my way to my classroom, pulling out a notebook from my pack as I placed a palm on the runed stone door. As it silently swung open, I peeked in, and seeing a few scattered students and the professor, I picked an aisle seat, sat down, and got to thinking. Hm. From their reactions earlier, they're both like me, but hollow. But they don't seem to have as much of a grasp on the situation - almost like they forgot. It's probably my additional "filling", but…

Searching my "foreign" memories for the first time, I let them rush through barriers I had built, allowing them to course through my brain, rapidly and systematically being marked and discarded or held. Hm. There's a lot of overlap here - some things are abbreviated or altered, like C-levels to levels, but a lot of this information… Could we really be part of a story? Or a game? Perhaps something the gods play… Jotting down notes so that I could count the false memories as new, compartmentalized true ones, I wrote down as much data as I could, from the interactions between attributes and casting - strange how they can be cut down to six - to details on every "level appropriate" monster I might expect to face.

...

At some point, more people filed in, and the teacher started lecturing, but I found that while this class was technically mandatory, I already knew nearly all of the information. That was fine - my plan was, after all, to test out of it and catch up with my C-level. By the time an arcane timer chimed and the class filed out an hour later, I had gotten down most of what I considered immediately relevant to my future, as well as some decent notes on a Shape Spell energy pathway that I found was interesting enough. Satisfied, I walked out of the empty room and into the hallways while paying just enough attention to not run into anyone, but then… something stepped into my way. A rather bulky, humanoid something. What now… I halted just in time not to run into the new presence, carefully saying, "Hello…"

The bulky teen, a good three inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier before his studded leather, grinned maliciously. "Hey. I heard you skipped a level."

I nodded slowly, mentally readying a Cloud of Bewilderment and taking out the material component from my pouch as he stepped towards me. "Yeah. Why?"

"Well. A certain someone didn't like the way you got off scot free in class because of that, while he got told off by the teacher. So he decided to… even things up." The thug pulled out a crude wooden club, smacking it into his palm.

I just sighed.

Author's Note: Yep, he leveled twice. His updated character sheet's ID is 199089.