One Was Worthy (Book Two Complete)

Stories

### Chapter 1: 1 Elmerina

1 – Elmerina

Appeasing the masses is a simple art. All you have to do is convince them to hate someone else more than you.

- Duchess Denarla

***

“Mera! Check the stove!”

“Yes, Mom!” I called out as I ran to the kitchen. It wasn’t a long run. Our house was only three rooms, after all.

I glanced over the small pan to find the bread almost finished.

It was simple.

Everything was simple about this place, but sometimes that felt nice. Boring, especially when I compared it to the place I saw in my dreams, but it was pleasantly unburdened as well. No constant need to check a phone. No pressing desire to catch up on anything. No fear of missing out. No trends to follow.

Peaceful.

It probably would’ve driven me insane had I been forced to watch all of her life at once. Fortunately, that hadn’t happened. Dreams of a little girl about towers that scraped the sky and vehicles powered by fire that traversed the land faster than the birds.

Just stories. Daydreams. Not real life .

Unlike most girls and boys in the village, my dreams didn’t fade away under the harsh reality we all shared. Instead, they began to solidify. By the time I was nine, I could read a language no one else knew. By twelve, I learned english numbers, though there wasn’t much paper.

By fifteen, I knew enough to be horrified by what this life said I should be proud of. A husband. A farm. Simple expectations for a simple livelihood. I’d live, love, and die, all within miles of where I’d been born. If not for the dreams reminding me of another girl who’d once been called April, I’d have probably been content with that.

Now though… I wanted more.

I grabbed the breadpan and slid it under the little pot before pulling it off the open flame. The bread was done, and I was sure it would be Mom’s best batch yet.

New Item Crafted

Rye Bread

Your Cooking skill has improved!

“ Yes! Mom, I got a point!” I exclaimed. The bread must’ve been exceptional quality or maybe even higher.

“That’s great, Mera!” Mom called from outside. “I bet if we work hard, we can get you at least one more before tomorrow! Get those apples on the stove, quick! I have them set out for you!”

I beamed, still inordinately excited. There wasn’t much to get excited about in this life, and I still hadn’t come up with a way to tell my parents that I had no intention of marrying or staying here… even though Reid was kind of cute.

It was so painfully obvious how much our parents—hell the whole village— expected the two of us to get married that it still amazed me that no one had come out and said it.

My eighteenth Nameday was tomorrow. It wasn’t my birthday. They didn’t seem to celebrate those here. Instead, they celebrated the anniversary of the day I’d been named . In Enora, or at least here in my sleepy little village, babies died as often as not and weren’t named until they survived two months after birth when it could be reasonably assumed that they would reach adolescence.

Like clockwork, two months after I’d been born, I’d been given the name Elmerina, but everyone in the village just called me Mera. The system was apparently culturally cognizant, as it also recognized the Nameday, not the birthday.

That was relevant because the day I turned eighteen, I would get my talent.

Theoretically, everything would change then.

I never really dreamed the same dreams as the other kids in town. I couldn’t be enthralled by the idea of getting an Elite ranked talent, and getting whisked out of my quiet village life to become somebody.

I wanted that of course. But even nobles here didn’t feel rich to me.

I’d seen the life of a middle class American once. I’d witnessed a shower . April had known luxury that I wasn’t even sure nobles in this world could fathom. My dream… I guess it was to improve this world somehow. Or at least, to get to the point where I had indoor plumbing.

But doing that from this tiny little town? How could I even start? I could, at least, dream of getting out of here . Even so… where would I go?

I supposed that depended, at least a little, on whatever talent I got tomorrow.

The pervading theory was that talents were based on the breadth and depth of the skills a person had gained by the time they reached eighteen. There were opportunities to change and upgrade them depending on what you did in the intervening years, but the first one set the tone.

I had significantly more skills than any eighteen-year-old in Enora should possibly be able to have. That was the only thing that made me sure my dreams of April Halligan’s life weren’t just products of my overactive imagination. The skills April had learned, that I’d never accomplished while awake, had been been quantified in my status screen.

Name: Elmerina Farmer

Age: 17

Status: Peasant

Level: 14

Health: 160

Mana: 320

Attributes:

Strength: 9

Dexterity: 11

Vitality: 8

Intelligence: 16

Wisdom: 14

Charisma: 19

Skills:

Acting: 61

Alchemy: 39

Arithmetic: 14

Bartering: 9

Blacksmithing: 16

Bluffing: 47

Carpentry: 49

Cartography (Atrophied): 7

Chemical Resilience: 13

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Cleaning: 49

Cooking: 44

Crafting: 87

Deception: 51

Disguise (Atrophied): 39

Drawing: 14

Driving (Atrophied): 51

Endurance: 23

Etiquette (Atrophied): 18

Event Planning: 29

Farming: 67

First Aid: 26

Fletching: 3

Household Magic: 21

Improvisation: 38

Language (English): 29

Language (Tacurian): 19

Leatherworking: 28

Manipulation: 42

Marketing (Atrophied): 24

Masonry: 17

Multitasking: 19

Networking: 45

Observe: 67

Persuasion: 55

Photography (Atrophied): 30

Plumbing: 7

Pottery: 55

Propaganda: 30

Public Speaking: 60

Running: 41

Sewing: 7

Singing: 55

Storytelling: 72

Technology (Atrophied): 13

Videography (Atrophied): 51

Weaving: 17

Writing (Atrophied): 51

April had dreamed of being an actor. Those dreams never really amounted to anything, for her, but she’d learned all the necessary skills that she hoped would let her land it big. She’d spent time as a makeup specialist, an advisor, a public speaking coach, a sitcom writer, and even had a short gig as a personal trainer.

When she couldn’t get a job in acting, she tried YouTube. Her channel never had more than thirty thousand subscribers. That wasn’t nothing! But not anything amazing, either. She plateaued and there she stayed, to her endless frustration.

And then… well.

Then she died.

I shuddered and tried to put the memory out of my mind, even as my hand drifted to my throat.

It hadn’t been me, but I’d been pretty traumatized at the time. The girl in my dreams, the one I spent all of my nights watching, and learning from, suddenly died, and then there were no more dreams.

I was sixteen when I woke screaming, and dreaded sleep for a long while after that.

I was safe, though. The only dangers here in this sleepy little village came from the ever war at the rift, and that was a long way away. I was fine.

I put April’s life out of my mind, and turned my thoughts in a happier direction. My talent should be pretty good , considering all the skills I’d gained. Good enough to get me noticed by the duchess. Maybe even get a noble title. At least it should be enough to give me a better option than to settle down two houses away from where I’d been born.

“Mera!” came a sudden shout from outside, and I beamed.

Ilhadira, or Hadra as everyone called her, was my best friend and she’d gotten her talent just last month.

“In here, Hadra! I’m just trying to get a final few points out of my cooking before tomorrow!” I exclaimed.

“Careful, or you might get a cooking talent,” she teased from outside.

I scowled. “Don’t even joke about that!”

I didn’t want a cooking talent, but unless I had a ridiculous overbalance of points in one particular skill, that wouldn’t be a problem. Talents were usually generalized to a particular subset of skills. Even the lowliest of Common talents was still an ability that allowed the user to be supernaturally effective in… whatever area they had devoted themselves to before getting the talent.

I had no idea what mine would be but I highly doubted it would be “Cooking Savant” or something like that. My cooking skill was only barely above the average of all of my skills. I’d checked.

Not that there was anything wrong with a cooking talent. The rank was what really mattered. It just wasn’t what I wanted to spend my life doing. Talents would only pigeon hole a person into a specific profession if that was what they’d always wanted . Each one was a customized experience, and even if the rank ended up being common, most people were pretty attached them.

Hadra knew exactly what she had wanted, and now she was the talk of the town. Her talent was “Elite,” making it the highest-ranked talent in all of Pemolar’s Hill, tied only with the Bartender.

Pemolar’s Hill was somewhat locally famous for its bar and exceptional ale. Elite talents were incredibly rare, but there was one odd exception. In a world where a distant, endless war was constantly claiming the lives of family members, a lot of people liked alcohol.

Go figure.

Of course, if someone claimed their talent was elite, they had to be able to back that up. And Hadra had not lied. The moment she stepped into our house, I dropped my jaw in amazement.

Exquisite Silken Dress

Effect 1: Charisma is improved by ten points.