“Uh, did you–” She trailed off, after blinking a few times. Had she been imagining a small glow from the scroll?

  “Was it something I said?” Clarke asked as he removed the foil that kept the paper loosely wound. She pondered if he’d seen what she’d seen. Or maybe it was the morning sun, flickering in? She swore she saw the paper glow for a split second.

  “I–never mind.” With magic practically everywhere in this world, maybe people just treated it as mundane.

  “So, you’ll be adding merchant to your existing classes?” Clarke asked as he unfurled the paper, and pulled out a small metal case from the desk. The paper was blank, except for a single word written on it, in a language she couldn’t read. But she knew what the word was.

  CLASS.

  “Class?” she echoed. A cold sweat broke out. Greg had been asking about her class like she knew what it was, and now she was wondering if she didn’t. Greg had said his class was ‘Analyst’, but had she missed something?

  Something else was bothering her, too. She could hear a ringing sound in the room, now. Clarke raised an eyebrow. “You have selected a class before, correct?”

  “O-oh, of course! I chose to be a businesswoman before! Well, that’s what they call it where I came from, a career,” she added hastily. She wasn’t sure what the significance was–class meant career, maybe? Something strange was afoot here, but Clarke continued as if this was routine. He opened the case and pulled out a silver quill.

  The quill point was unremarkable, but the feather showed to be every color imaginable, depending on what angle she viewed it. It was a level of iridescence she’d never seen before “It’s just been a while, you know?” Okay, Fiona don’t freak out, people get classes here all the time, and so can you. She’d heard a few mentions of classes, but they also had some unusual sayings. It was an entirely different world from Earth, after all. Why hadn’t she been paying attention? Was it like classes from all her role-playing games?

  “I’ll never forget my signing. Few do,” Clarke said with a contented sigh. “Everyone gets a class, if they don’t pick one. I picked mine to be a scribe. I loved the feel of paperwork, being the important cog that no one else sees. I get paid decently, but visibility is low. They wanted to make me an administrator. So, I agreed to pick it up. I’m not a high-ranked one, but it means I get to do stuff like this on occasion.”

  “Wait, your career is picked at birth? Man, that sounds lame! people had free will to pick what they wanted, where I grew up!” She pouted at this idea, and Clarke chuckled in response. She kept trying to ignore that feeling of unease, in the form of stomach butterflies and tensed nerves. I think I’m just going to play along with this one. They seem to be steeping this one in some routine. I’m just going to get this thing signed, and then, I get to go sell stuff and finish setting up that shop. That’s all I need to do! She vowed internally.

  Clark let out a soft laugh. “Come now, that’s not true! We have a destined one from birth if we don’t choose, so no one is left out. It’s like a destiny of the gods,” he added with a smile. With a swift motion, he pricked his finger with the quill.

  Her eyes widened and she wanted to say, ‘Don’t stab yourself with metal quills’, but he took the bead of blood on the quill and started writing. With his blood. Oh no, this is the moment I find out this candy-coated kingdom is a cesspool of darkness. I’ve had this moment coming, living in lah-lah land, she thought as she tapped her foot at an increasingly rapid rate.

  “Uh–okay.” She continued to stare at this arcane spectacle, that he was treating as mundanely as a regular office routine. His cursive was legible and elegant; more strangely the blood seemed to seep into the page–and disappear? No, it was very faint. The gold trim also glowed slightly in response.

  “When did you know what you wanted to be?” he asked her as he continued to write.

  “I dunno. I still wonder about my choice of career,” she shrugged. “What was the uh, class that was your default?”

  “Ah, no one can ever truly know. Some people roll the numerically marked cubes on it, so to speak, and hope for something better than their lot in life,” he added with a pause. “I thought you would know that.”

  “Oh! I mean, the career that stood out to you!” she lightly deflected. She didn’t want poor Clarke to realize that her ‘not from around here’ spin was a gross understatement.

  “I wanted to be an investigator, beforehand. Ah, I tried, but the exam wasn't for me. Or, the Administrator of the exam was raising the bar just a little higher that day,” he answered with a shake of his head and pursed lips. “Failing an exam is an utter failure. You’re locked out of pursuing that class ever again. What about you? Businesswoman sounds like a bolder version of a merchant.”

  “I figured it out late. it was a career of necessity,” she deflected lightly. “You really should get some rubbing alcohol to clean that, you know, that isn’t sanitary. Also, we have this thing called ‘ink’ that everyone else uses. Or pens.”

  “Miss Swiftheart, I can assure you, nothing has changed since you picked your class. It’s still the same process,” he offered assuringly, and dipped the quill tip into a bottle marked ‘antiseptic’. He wiped it clean with cloth, also in the case. He offered it to her. “Just sign your class, for ‘merchant’. You might feel a little woozy If it's been a while since your last class. It’s perfectly normal.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Uh, sure!” she replied with an anxious smile. Her ears were twitching, this now seemed like a monumentally bad idea. Great, Fiona. While you were being Indra Janes and running monster population control, did you miss the people doing weird voodoo rituals? Great. I hope this is just a formality, and not me about to dive into something I’m in no way prepared for.

  Then again, if she didn’t do this, she’d be dead at breakfast time in under a year, with that smug prick likely grinning from ear to ear about it, as if he’d finally settled an ancient score. She was determined to beat him at his stupid task, no matter what it took. If she had her plan all set up correctly, she would make sure a lot of this loot went to good use, and not sit in a vault with some rich dude in a fancy overcoat.

  She reached for the quill and held it hesitantly over her index finger on her right hand. And then, hesitated a little more. “It’s quite alright, Miss Swiftheart–”

  “I hate needles and sharp things–ironic, considering the number of monsters I’ve made into armor and weird fashion trends. So this is fine, it’s fine, we’re all fine,” she added with a nervous laugh. She jabbed down before she lost her nerve to do this.

  She drove the quill tip deep into her finger and let out a strained whimper while still trying to keep a smile. Clarke went wide-eyed, and his mouth gaped for a second. “Uh–haha–is that good enough?”

  “I don’t think you needed to do it quite that hard, it’s usually painless–”

  “Nope, it’s fine, give me the paper, before I get blood over everything. Do I need to write neatly?” She winced when she pulled out the quill, but the blood pooled on the tip of her finger and sat there; none of it dripped at all. Clarke quickly slid the paper to her, and she started signing her name.

  Fiona Swiftheart.

  The only thing I brought from my world. The last thing that’s mine. She narrowed her eyes and ignored the throbbing pain in her finger. Why had she kept it? Was it because she wanted to keep that connection to Earth? She could have picked any name. No one would have ever known.

  But she kept it. No one was going to take it from her. Her mother had picked it well.

  She winced as she wrote with her blood, and it faded into neat strokes on the paper. Stranger still, that ringing sound was getting louder. Was she about to faint from one little pinprick? That would be lame. She traced her name in elegant strokes, and Clarke stared at the paper.

  “Don’t forget to write the–”

  “Class, yep, got it, not my first rodeo,” she answered with a laugh bordering on panic. Why was that ringing getting louder? Did Barry totally own her, and was she signing her soul to him? Barry’s a wizard from Florida. An overpowered wizard, who head-gamed me into my own death, signing cursed contracts.

  She focused on the task at hand. She wrote ‘MERCHANT’ on the paper, and finished with a quick flourish. Then, deciding that wasn’t dramatic enough, she added ‘OF FORTUNE’, and gave the quill a twirl. The gold traces on the paper glowed–as did the traced blood, and a low breeze built up in the room. “Okay, all done! So, does this go to a wizard?”

  Clarke shook his head and tapped the page gently. “No, the contract is self-actuating, I believe everything is in order.” He took the quill back after sanitizing it. Then, he offered her a cloth. “Nothing to worry about, it should activate in a few seconds, sometimes there’s a delay. I once had to sit for five minutes with someone who thought the contract was rejected.”

  “Wait. I thought you said that only Administrators can reject it,” Fiona countered. She ignored that throbbing pain in her finger that seemed to radiate through her whole hand now. Great. I got heavy metal poisoning from whatever exotic material that quill point was made from.

  Clarke shrugged lightly. “Eh, you know sometimes, the gods will override the Administrators. Doesn’t happen very oft–” he halted his words and his gaze was drawn back to the contract sitting on the desk.

  Something was wrong. Something was horribly, world-endingly wrong. Even Clarke knew it, the way he fearfully looked at the fluttering contract on his desk. The breeze built into a gale, inside a building. She felt her hand almost being pulled in magnetically to the paper, which was glowing visibly now, and ringing like a choir of angelic voices. She tried to resist the pull, and found that it was like trying to move the whole earth–her body wanted to go in that inconvenient direction of the glowing, probably ominous piece of paper.

  “Um, I know the fanfare is a little cool, but tone it down a bit! I mean it’s just taking a job as a merchant, right?!” she called out. This was so not cool to haze a newly made merchant.

  “No, it is not! Miss Swiftheart, what was your first class?!” Clarke shouted out, and had to grip the desk to keep from being jostled by the wind.

  “I told you, businesswoman!” Her voice sounded a little muffled from the miniature hurricane building in this room, and Clarke shook his head in disbelief.

  “Before that!” he yelled out over the gale. She braced herself against the desk, and errant papers were now floating around this one scrap of demon paper that was glowing bright white now.

  “I was–a warrior!” she answered. Technically. It was the truth–if you counted the National Guard, fresh out of high school, as anything resembling warriorly.

  “No, Miss Swiftheart, what was the class given to you at birth?!” She frantically tried to claw at his meaning–everyone had a class? Did that mean that she–

  “You said no one ever knows what it is!”

  “Not true! Once your class is picked, you do learn what the gods had in store for you, which is why I need to know!” Clarke was looking fearful now. Not a good sign, while they were sitting in the middle of a hurricane of papers, inside a wooden and glass snow globe. The realization hit her harder than the oil tanker that killed her.

  I was supposed to have a class? Am I the only one without one?!

  “I–I didn’t have one!” she shouted out, trying to hold her hand away from the paper. “I wasn’t born here! I died on another world six months ago, and ended up here!”

  If there was ever a sign to indicate someone soiled themselves, it was etched on Clarke's terror-struck face, and his eye practically twitched at this statement. Or, maybe it was the hurricane brewing in the room. Either way, it spoke of bad news of the worst kind.

  “Oh, dear gods.” His words of dread were uttered the second she touched that blinding paper, and scratchy whispers filled her ears, indistinct, but strangely comforting.

  The world exploded into burning bright white light, and then instantly clicked to darkness.

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