Trailblazer Read online

  Trailblazer

  Adventure by Association Book 1: The Everternia Saga

  Zen DiPietro

  Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Message from the author

  About the Author

  Other Works by Zen DiPietro

  Dragonfire Station Universe

  Copyright

  TRAILBLAZER (ADVENTURE BY ASSOCIATION Book 1, AN EVERTERNIA SERIES)

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY ZEN DIPIETRO

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without express written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations for the purpose of review.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions. Distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  ASIN B07T2W7311

  ISBN 978-1-943931-36-1

  Cover Art by Zen DiPietro

  Published in the United States of America by Parallel Worlds Press

  Foreword

  If you haven’t yet read Sally’s origin story, be sure to pick up The Heart-Shaped Chest on Amazon for free.

  You could read this short story before or after Trailblazer, but I’d recommend reading it before, because Trailblazer picks up right where The Heart-Shaped Chest leaves off.

  I hope you enjoy Sally’s adventures!

  1

  Sally Streetmonger stared up at the sky. A ball of bright light dangled directly overhead, swaddled among cottony clouds within a jewel-hued sky. She’d never seen anything so beautiful. If magic existed, surely it would look like this.

  She had to fight the urge to point at the wonders above, but drawing attention to herself wasn’t a good idea. She needed to blend in.

  Besides, her companions Essley and Darthrok were already accustomed to seeing the world. Frustratingly, they seemed entirely unimpressed by it.

  She wasn’t supposed to be out here. She was supposed to serve adventurers, not be one. The wonders of life weren’t meant to be enjoyed by someone like her.

  She was going to enjoy them anyway. In fact, she’d enjoy them more, because she wouldn’t take the good stuff for granted like everyone else did.

  In all the ways that mattered, her life had just begun. From now on, she too would be an adventurer. She’d make choices and see the world. No longer trapped inside her store, she could now go to all the exciting places she’d heard of.

  Even now, just steps outside her shop, there were so many new smells, sights, sensations that she felt giddy with possibility.

  Who knew that just a short distance from her cash register, which had been the center of her existence up until now, literally everything could be so different? Even silence was different. The faint hiss of her store’s steam power had been so deeply ingrained in her existence that its absence now felt jarring.

  So many new sensations threatened to overwhelm her, but she fought against it. She steeled herself to focus only on the amazement of her new existence. The unfamiliar would only be unfamiliar until she experienced it.

  Yes. Anything unknown was just an opportunity revealing itself to her.

  She’d see and experience everything, starting with her home town of Pivot.

  How many years had she spent driving her store from place to place as part of this uniquely mobile town? How many adventurers had come to her for sundry items like clothing, metal-cutters, or weapons? How many puzzles had she helped them solve?

  Puzzle days had always been her favorite because they promised something new.

  Now, all of Everternia was her puzzle.

  Essley lightly touched Sally’s forearm. “Are you okay?”

  Sally’s attention shifted to the novelty of having someone touching her. Her new friend was the first—and only, so far—to ever do so.

  No one had ever tried it before Essley. Had it always been possible? Sally had no answers yet about what had woken her from her narrow existence as a CM. She had nothing but questions.

  However the mechanics of it had worked, touching Sally’s hand had joined her to Essley, creating a group. Consequently, when she and Essley had solved a puzzle, rather than Essley receiving all the reward as she normally would, Sally had suddenly felt more alert. Smarter. It was as if her vision had cleared, and things she’d always thought were fuzzy and inconsequential had come into sharp focus.

  What did it mean? How was this possible? And was it dangerous for her?

  “Yes. Okay,” Sally assured her, wishing she had more words to express herself with.

  Her dialogue loops had always been predetermined. She interacted with adventurers in expected ways, using the same phrases over and over. It had been enough back then, but now, she wanted more. No, she needed more. She was so full of excitement that she felt like she might burst if didn’t find a way to express it.

  She hoped that wasn’t an actual possibility.

  “You sure about this?” Darthrok asked, not of Sally but of Essley.

  Sally liked Essley, but could she trust Darthrok? Essley had said he was a longtime friend of hers and general good guy, but he didn’t treat Sally the same way he treated Essley. Sometimes he talked about Sally as if she weren’t there, or acted as if she were simply a piece of scenery.

  Maybe in some strange way, she had been, before. How awful, if that was true!

  Before Essley could answer Darthrok, Sally insisted, “I can do this.”

  She could. She could do this. She just needed to work harder at breaking her previously set-in-stone phrases down to their individual words. Then she could move those words into new combinations that would create new sentences. With tremendous effort, she found the pieces to build a new phrase.

  Concentrating intently, she managed to say, “Today is the best.”

  Darthrok grinned. “Is she saying something along the lines of, today’s the first day of the rest of her life?”

  Essley smiled and checked her pocket watch. “Maybe.”

  Sally’s attention returned to her surroundings. Pivot had settled itself in a field this time, which revealed a boring, flat landscape. She studied everything from the nearby shops to the wild grasses and weeds that were already beginning to show signs of trampling.

  When adventurers first struck out in Everternia, their first quest was to find Pivot. From this initial task, they learned critical skills and how to use necessary technologies like sextants and compasses. Most importantly, they learned resiliency and persistence, how to keep working at figuring something out. Without those abilities, a person could never strike out on a life of adventure.

  Sally had always liked helping adventurers. As a community member, or CM, she served a critical role in their lives. She equipped them with the things they’d need to get started in their new professions, so that they could find their fortunes.

  Many thousands of people had left Sally’s store with their eyes full of daring and hope. Every day they came in, then left again with renewed ambition.

  Yet, before today, she’d
never even thought about leaving her store.

  Why hadn’t she?

  How could she have missed something so obvious?

  How had Essley taking her hand changed everything?

  Before that, no one had ever had ever treated her the way adventurers treated each other. She’d thought it normal. Now, she realized that being treated like an inanimate object kind of sucked.

  She wouldn’t allow it ever again.

  Had it been Essley’s offer of friendship that had changed her perspective, or had the puzzle served as her big epiphany? Or perhaps it was a combination of the two.

  “Do you want to go hunt some clickers?” Darthrok asked her. “It would give you a chance to gain some weapons experience, as well as practicing your defensive skills. Plus, we’d get money from the scrap metal and parts we salvage from them.”

  Sally didn’t have the words to explain to him that money was not an issue for her. Her cash register never ran out. She had never cared about profits.

  Darthrok and Essley were exchanging a look, and Sally realized she’d struggled too long with her missing words and her wandering thoughts. She wanted to reflect on all the new thoughts that were coming to her, but she needed to focus on the current moment. She was as much a novelty to them, somehow, as all of this was to her. She had to keep that in mind.

  In answer to his question about hunting clickers, she shook her head and pointed across the wide, grassy lane. “There.”

  They turned their gazes in the direction of her point.

  “The bank?” Essley wore a look of puzzlement. “Do you need to withdraw money?”

  How could she explain to them that she yearned to see everything she’d never seen, starting with the closest thing? She’d directed new adventurers to the bank thousands of thousands of times, but had never seen it for herself.

  “Only to go,” she said with great effort. Making new word combinations felt like trying to bend metal with her bare hands.

  Essley pursed her lips in thought. “You…you just want to see it?”

  Sally nodded, pleased that she’d managed to convey her wishes.

  Essley’s pinched expression suddenly expanded into a look of understanding. “Oh, I get it. You’ve never been outside of your store, and you want to explore.”

  Sally smiled in agreement and the relief of being understood.

  “All right,” Darthrok said, “to the bank we go.”

  He led their group across the street, and Sally admired the bank as they approached. Compared to her store, it looked…well…she didn’t know.

  She’d been too overwhelmed with everything else to get a good look at her own store. She turned and focused on it for the first time.

  “It’s fancy!” she exclaimed. Its wooden-planked walls and front-mounted cowcatcher gave it a retro look that she found delightful. The cowcatcher never actually caught cows, but it did occasionally bump a drunk adventurer out of the way to avoid turning them under the wheels. Jaunty sousaphone-shaped steam vents curved upward from the roof, making her store downright adorable. It looked as fun and homey as it had always felt, and somehow, the four large wheels that made it mobile only added to its charm.

  Even Darthrok, who often seemed impatient, paused and smiled.

  “Your store has always been my favorite in Pivot,” Essley said.

  Sally beamed at Essley and turned back toward the bank. Compared to her own homey little domicile/business, the bank seemed to be a proper institution, albeit one mounted upon eight wheels. From its design, Sally guessed that it was much heavier but more maneuverable than her own shop. It had been painted a blinding white, though, causing Sally to squint against the glare.

  No, it definitely wasn’t nearly as good as her store. She felt decidedly happy about that.

  She, Essley, and Darthrok approached the huge, heavy doors, and she prepared her muscles for a big push. Darthrok got there before her and applied a light touch. The doors, rather than swinging open toward her, cantilevered neatly sideways, disappearing into the structure itself with a modest hiss.

  Wow! She looked to her companions to share her admiration, but they seemed entirely unmoved by the technological wonder of the doors.

  They were much more worldly than she was. The realization chaffed. Here she was, a CM of Everternia, with the ability to assess adventurers and see far more about them than they could even see for themselves, and yet she was ignorant of how doors worked.

  She needed to study up.

  A tour of the bank revealed nothing surprising: a row of ten teller windows, a line of adventurers, and a vault in the back with its own, much slower-moving line of just a few people.

  Sally pointed to the slow, short line and whispered to Essley, “What’s that?”

  She wasn’t sure why she whispered, other than the fact that the place had a certain official feeling to it, like very important things were being done. Everyone else, too, seemed to be whispering and behaving with perfect decorum.

  Essley leaned closer and replied in a hushed voice. “That’s for large deposits. Takes time to do checks on where that money came from. Trying to deposit ill-gotten funds can get a person in big trouble.”

  Sally nodded with understanding. As a community member of Pivot, she, too, took precautions to try to prevent thieves from prospering.

  Though the bank itself was interesting, she found the people within it far more so. Adventurers of all types hurried in and out, and sometimes stopped to converse with one another. Tellers stood at the windows with a certain perky politeness that Sally found familiar and likeable. Every now and then a bank official strode stiffly by, wearing fine, formal business attire.

  Fascinating. But Essley and Darthrok looked bored, so Sally guessed that these events were too mundane to interest them. She wanted to get a closer look at the vault mechanism, but suspected that undue curiosity about the bank’s security measures might make her appear suspicious.

  She didn’t want people to catch on to the fact that she’d changed, so they should probably move on. “Let’s go.”

  They moved toward the exit but before Sally could leave, a short, bespectacled man glanced up, caught sight of her, and stopped.

  “Sally!” he exclaimed, surprised. “How nice to see you here!”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Barrowman,” Sally replied politely. The familiar phrases popped out of her mouth effortlessly. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  “How long has it been?” he asked. “I can’t remember the last time you were here.”

  In fact, Sally had never set foot in the bank before, and she’d never met Mr. Barrowman, either. Nonetheless, he knew her.

  Oh.

  Right.

  He must have assessed her, and was using the information he’d gathered to formulate his standard dialogue.

  Funny that he acted like he knew her. Had she ever done that with the customers of her store? No, not really. Their behavior loops must have some differences built in.

  Interesting.

  “I don’t recall,” Sally answered him. Her words came easily, surprising her. “I suppose it has been a while. My store keeps me busy.”

  She glanced around nervously. He was responding to her according to his automation, but what if an adventurer noticed her? Could her being out of her store cause trouble?

  The banker chuckled. “Yes, such is the life of an entrepreneur, eh?”

  She smiled and nodded. “Indeed. I came to deposit money, but I should get back before anyone misses me.”

  “Oh, I’ve held you up.” He grimaced. “My apologies. Please, go right ahead, but come back again soon! We can have tea.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.” She smiled and turned away.

  Mr. Barrowman hurried off, disappearing through a door marked Employees Only.

  Sally paused and looked to Essley and Darthrok. Her brief ease of speech disappeared as she struggled to manufacture a new string of words. “I said I came to deposit money. I should probably
do that, yes?”

  “I don’t know,” Essley said, looking puzzled. “Do you think you should?”

  Sally thought about it. “I should be like other adventurers.”

  “Then you probably should do a deposit,” Darthrok agreed. “Do you have an account?”

  “No.” Sally frowned. “How?”

  Essley activated a private conversation bubble, so that only Sally and Darthrok could hear her. “All you do to open an account is deposit something. At least, that’s how it works for us. That banker, Barrowman, said all the same things he randomly says to adventurers, so I’d be willing to bet that deposits will work for you, too.”

  Before she could change her mind, Sally hurried to the line for small deposits, got called up to a window almost immediately by a young blond teller, and quickly handed him four gold coins.

  The teller laughed. “What do you want me to do with that?”

  The words, so similar to one of Sally’s own phrases for when she interacted with customers, startled her.

  She mimicked the way her customers spoke when they visited her store. “Deposit four gold coins.”

  “Very good!” The teller chirped. “I’ve added this to your account, which gives you a total of four gold coins. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No,” Sally said. Then she added, “Thank you,” she because she knew how much it meant for someone to treat her politely.

  She rejoined her companions and they left the bank.

  2

  “Nobody knows me,” Sally observed as she walked with Essley and Darthrok past the bank.

  “What do you mean?” Darthrok asked. “Are you being, like, existential, or more literal?”