Speed dating was an expensive affair that cost a silver to sign up. I hoped I still had enough coin left for the inn and for some change of clothes. Though I had traded away the prestons, I still had the other fruits that I picked up along the way. I wouldn’t be starving at least.

  Cayla had recommended an inn for the night, but a tug of wisdom prompted me to stay far away from any of her suggestions. I trusted ‘pops’ to suggest a safer place and started towards the town gate. I went back the same way I came, except when I had to cut through back-alleys and narrow side-streets to avoid scary fruit-sellers. They weren’t as well lit as the main street, but with so many soldiers stationed next to the town gate, the back alleys were safe enough.

  Fortunately, the guard captain was as much of a doting father even without the effects of the backstory. “Young lady, are you already in trouble?”, he asked, as soon as my face came into view. That was uncalled for — as if I was a walking trouble magnet. Okay, I was perhaps banned from trading in the fruit market ever again and it was possible there was a city-wide search going on for a rogue mage, but that's beside the point.

  “The southside inn is a decent establishment and costs around a silver for a night”, he told me, after I enquired him about places to stay. A bit lacking in the naming sense, but I hoped the rooms made up for it.

  “That place is a bit too fancy for my liking”, his deputy expressed his disapproval, but I paid him no mind.

  After getting directions for the place, I was back inside the town gates a second time. On my way to the inn, I spotted my next destination. It was a store that stocked practical clothing and gear aimed at adventurers. That meant no flowing gowns or fancy footwear. They also had no smithy, but carried some light and medium armour. An armour was out of the question if I needed a roof over my head tonight. I found myself an inexpensive tunic, some well-fitting breeches and other essentials. I completed the set with a stylish blue cloak. That was when my eyes settled on a full length mirror.

  This was the first time that I saw my reflection in a mirror. What stared me back was a dishevelled, silver-haired woman. But once you got past the blood and gore, and the green herbal paste on her shoulders, and perhaps once she was free of all the mud and dirt, there was an ethereal beauty down there somewhere. It would perhaps take a lot of scrubbing and cleaning, but there was no mistaking the delicate features and the graceful countenance. Her striking blue eyes would have gone well with her robes, which were once almost of the same shade. The short silver hair had leaves and small twigs sticking out of it, but that just made her appear more down-to-earth.

  I had to part with three silver and twenty bronze coins for all the clothes. A ‘basic room’ at the inn was seventy bronze for a day. A ‘fancy room’ at the inn cost a silver and ten, and was almost the same room, but with a bath and a bar of soap. I went with the fancy one. After a bath, I collapsed onto the bed and the fatigue put me to blissful sleep. The rabbits had kept me up most of last night, and the long walk and vexing receptionists did the rest.

  I woke up to the sound of distant bells. Cayla had told me to come to the guild office by the ninth bell. The innkeeper told me I still had a couple of hours, so I went back to my room to wash my old robes, and hung it by the window to dry.

  Seeing Palomp in broad daylight, I could see that it was closer to a city than a town. The guild hall was packed to the brim and was used as a staging area, from where everyone was directed to several smaller rooms. I was handed a piece of paper which had my name, a room number, and a list of thirteen table numbers and corresponding time slots.

  The sorting hat, or the clustering algorithm, which in this case was probably a fickle guild receptionist, put me in the meeting room Egli — along with all the other data points that it deemed similar to me. I studied the piece of paper again. Next to the room number was a crudely drawn picture of a flower that oddly looked like a gramophone horn, probably the mysteriously named Egli.

  I walked along the hallway looking for a room with a drawing of the strange flower. Most rooms had a picture next to its name on the signboard. Now that I thought about it, so did most places in town. That told me everything I needed to know about the state of education in this country. I finally found my room, almost at the end of the hallway.

  Just as I entered, I was suddenly tackled into a hug. “Lady Alysa, you are here. I’m the host for your debutante ball”, my least favorite guild receptionist spoke. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that she was the one in charge of my room.

  “It appears there are more people in this room than I expected”, I replied, as my eyes darted around the room.

  “You can attend as individual adventurers, or if you already have a skeletal party in place, you can do so as teams — provided you have no one in the party who joined the guild before two years.”

  That made sense. The event matched adventurers to parties after all. If you had a glaring hole in your party to fill, this was the best place to look for that makeshift square peg.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Lady Alysa, may I say that you look absolutely radiant today. We might find a match for you after all.”

  Of course, we both had different ideas of what qualified as a match — mine was a big walking shield to keep me alive, while hers was someone to sweep me off my feet.

  Eyes full of mirth, she added, “Quite an improvement on the hair today, my lady. Such lovely silver hair needs no further accessories”.

  Hair..accessories ? This backstabbing guild receptionist! Was she referring to the twigs and leaves that were sticking out from my hair yesterday?

  “I’m sure your old style will be all the rage in the capital in no time, but this looks lovely”. she twisted the knife further.

  How long did I have them on me yesterday? Did I meet all those knights and soldiers looking like that? Aargh! I didn’t even want to think about that.

  I had a secondary goal for today’s event. These meetings were a treasure trove of valuable information. It was a setup that encouraged conversation. If I had to make a fool of myself for scraps of information, then a room full of passing strangers wasn’t a bad place to start.

  “Everyone, please take your seats. We are about to start. That piece of paper you were given has the table numbers for you. You will be changing seats at the end of each round. Good luck, everyone”, the enthusiastic voice of the guild receptionist announced.

  My first table came with a free cup of ale and a bespectacled young man with raven-black hair. He stared at me wide-eyed. I had not looked in a mirror since the clothing store, but I suspected the ethereal beauty was no longer in hiding. I sat down and took a sip of the free ale.

  He was the first to speak, “I’m Dust. I have a basic warrior class and a weapon skill for hammers.”

  “ I'm Alysa. I have a light primer”. We got the basic introductions out of the way.

  He looked at me in awe. “Lady Alysa, I take it that you have a mage class then, or is it something even better?”

  “I do not have a class…yet”, I replied, before quickly adding, “But I am working on it”. He looked disappointed.

  “Lady Alysa, I do not want a slacker for a teammate.”

  Ah! He was the earnest type. Earnest to a fault. Too much of a fault.

  “A s-slacker? Hardly fair to assume that about someone you just met”, I protested.

  “I’ve known people like you all my life. I could recite your life back to you in riveting detail”, he replied, adjusting his glasses that had come down to sit low on his nose.

  Fine, if he considered himself an amateur investigator, I was happy to play along.

  He rubbed his palms together and settled into his narrating voice. “You are from a noble household, born in some rundown manor in a backwater province — held by a noble of middling rank.”

  I made the noise of a buzzer going off. “Wrong. I have no noble bloodline”.

  He paused, then with renewed conviction continued, “That’s right. You weren’t born a noble. You were forcefully adopted by one at a young age, once the word got around that you possessed a primer.”

  Now I was adopted? That’s quite the twist.

  He grew more and more animated. “When you turned seventeen and unlocked your system fully, your adoptive father hired for you a personal instructor — a once renowned magic practitioner. Perhaps his hair had just started to grey, perhaps he had racked up a gambling debt and his only choice was to teach a noble brat new party tricks. But your mind wasn’t in the studies. You lazed around all day and slept through your classes, as your father threw more and more money at your teachers.”

  “Unusually detailed for something so blatantly wrong, but do go on”, I replied, leaning back into my chair with folded arms. ‘System, can I hire him to write backstories for me?’. No response came for my musings.

  “You showed no desire to improve, perfectly complacent with your cushy life , much to the frustrations of your adoptive parents, who finally disowned you, which brings you to your current situation”.

  “Couldn’t be further away from the truth. A symptom of too much imagination or perhaps too little intuition?", I asked.

  My question seemed to have offended him. He slammed his cup of ale and stood up, while kicking his chair back with the trailing foot. Then, he stormed out of there without another word. I was unceremoniously dumped on my first date, just short of having that drink thrown at my face. I sat there shell-shocked, trying to make sense of what happened. I concluded that dating was scary and certainly not for everyone. How did humans sit through so many of these? There was no telling what the other person was thinking! One moment they were asking you about your class, and the next moment they were narrating your fictional backstory to you.

  My first date had caused quite the commotion and was drawing too much attention towards me. I had twelve more of these to look forward to. Soon, the bell chimed and I moved to the next table. It was a friendly archer this time, who I hit it off with immediately, but agreed that we both needed a meat shield more. At the next table, I ruled out a sneaky rogue, who was method-acting the role too close to perfection, with no cliche spared. I had enough people in my life backstabbing me as it is.

  By this point, the word had gotten around that I had a primer. The next couple of dates told me that they would rather die than party up with a noble, entirely convinced that I was one. There was still some time left on the clock, so we had to sit around awkwardly after that admission, waiting for the bell to chime. I glared at Cayla who was watching from the other corner of the room. ‘Perhaps you should’ve asked them that in your silly questionnaire’, I muttered. That seemed a more pertinent matter than stolen lunch. Cayla beamed at me, entirely oblivious to my thoughts. She pointed to the man sitting in front of me and then gave a thumbs up gesture, which was quickly followed by a gesture of her sliding a ring down her ring finger. This woman!