Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Lorekeeper Nessa is annoying. Whenever we stop for even a moment, she says the same thing: “We must get to the king.” Not a “hurry up” or nagging so much as a reminder that we have a mission.
It was incredibly grating when we sat to eat lunch.
For an hour, every other minute, she’d parrot that line.
The good thing about it, though, is that she’s behaving like an NPC. I don’t have to worry about whether she has feelings. The woman is robotic and predictable. I want to throttle her, but at least my heart isn’t weeping at the sight of her.
“We must get to the king,” Nessa says as I take off my shoe to shake a rock out.
“I know!” I shout and groan.
“See why I hate escort missions?” Cait asks.
“They’re a pain in the butt on video games,” I say, “and even worse like this.”
“Yes!” Cait responds. “Like we get it, Nessa! We have a quest!”
“It’s the fucking worst,” I say, nodding.
Cait frowns and squints at me.
I hold up my hands defensively. “Sorry, it slipped. Swearing is my mother tongue.”
With a sigh, Cait says, “I’ll try to ignore it, but you really should clean up your language.”
“Can I ask why it bothers you so much?” I ask. “They’re only words.”
“Taking the Lord’s name in vain breaks a commandment,” she answers.
“Wait, are you, like, a hardcore Christian or something?”
Cait crosses her arms. “Would that be so surprising? It’s not like we’re an endangered species.”
“But you’re fulfilling a quest for a Greek god! Surely that’s shaken your faith a little.”
“Ares?” Cait laughs. “You believe he’s an actual god? That any of them are? We’re in a video game. They’re NPCs like the others. They’re part of the end game so that we can go home.”
I wonder how she can hold on to her religion so tightly and so flippantly disregard our tangible reality.
Nothing here makes sense, and the whole situation is beyond surreal, but we’re walking through Peripeteia.
I just had to take off my shoe because a real rock was bothering me.
There’s a stitch in my side from the jog we had to make to get past a pride of lions before they spotted us.
This certainly feels more real to me than a God who has a problem with people saying “fuck.”
“Well, agree to disagree on that,” I say. “I hope we can still be friends even if I don’t live in a way that’s Christian-approved.”
Cait cocks an amused brow. “If I couldn’t get along with non-Christians, would I hang out with this group? I mean, look at Joshua. He’s constantly breaking some commandment, and we’re friends.”
“You’re friends?” I ask.
“Of course we are!” she answers. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
“I’ve always thought of you as simply tolerating him. You’re always getting on to him about being a perv.”
“Just like I’m always getting on to you about your language,” she says, which is a great point.
“I nag because I see the best in you. Joshua is a perv, but he’s also the first person to lift our spirits.
I know he acts like a fool sometimes. It’s easy to write him off as an annoyance at first. Yet he’ll put off taking care of himself to play us music or tell a bunch of jokes when we’ve had a hard day because deep down, he cares about his friends. ”
That was all true. I recalled those moments he showed a sincere side as well. Maybe he acted like a weirdo, but who am I to judge? I’m sure I’m annoying as hell to some people, too.
“Well, I’m glad we’re friends,” I respond and then put my shoe back on.
“We must get to the king,” Nessa says.
“We know!” Cait and I shout in unison.
Then we both laugh and share a look. Maybe Cait actually likes having me in the group. She’s been grumpy with me so much in the past, but that could just be her personality. And right now, she’s looking at me like…
Is that admiration? That can’t be right.
While we’ve been chatting, everyone else has continued marching toward our quest objective. However, the moment I’m ready to catch up with them, I see Guy up ahead with his hand up to indicate everyone should halt.
“Looks like the sun is going to set any minute now,” he says. “I think I recall there being an ambush area not far from here. We need to rest before we get there.”
“We must get to the king,” Nessa says.
“How can we rest when she’s constantly popping off like that?” I ask.
Cait, who had moments ago shown some level of softness, shrugs and says, “Deal with it or don’t. Better to try for a rest now than get ambushed while worn out.”
Guess she’s back to being a grump.
Though I’m grumbling aloud about how annoying our guest is, I’m a little more worried about something else.
I didn’t hear the voice last night. I don’t know that I expected to level up or anything, but I hoped I’d at least get something for saving an entire village and establishing negotiations between Arachne’s children and the humans that lived there.
Did I do something wrong? Did I break the system, and the consequence is that the game didn’t recognize my accomplishment?
I remind myself again that this is just a game.
I don’t actually even need to level up or whatever to accomplish my goal of getting home.
Mom needs me. That’s so much more important than a gold star for my efforts.
But if I broke the game, seeing Mom might not be possible.
Tara and Sylvia wander off into the woods to hunt and forage before it gets too dark. Cait and Joshua work together to set up camp. That leaves Guy and me to keep watch over Nessa. We obviously have the hardest job out of all of them.
“We must get to the king,” Nessa says, looking at the horizon.
I groan, and Guy laughs. “Just think of her as a parrot,” he says. “Her words are meaningless. Plus, by the time we’re done with dinner, she’ll be asleep. Even the NPCs have a power saving mode.”
“I just wish your silencing spell could work on her.”
“Sorry, any NPC we escort is temporarily part of our party. That’s how it works.”
This reminds me of what’s been bothering me about the village we just left. “Did you notice that there wasn’t any wordless background chatter when we were searching for supplies?”
Guy nods. He has a gentle smile, but I can see the seriousness in his eyes. “That’s unusual, but I’m thinking it’s probably because you unlocked a rare achievement. Consider it as opening up a storyline, maybe. Like a prize for accomplishing what so many others couldn’t.”
I think about the haunted eyes and tearful, trembling conversations. If that’s a prize, I wish I’d lost.
“I’d rather level up or get any kind of spell, skill, or favor out of what I did yesterday,” I respond.
“You didn’t?” Guy asks.
I shake my head.
“Well, it gets harder the higher up you go,” he continues. “I’ve been level thirty-one for twenty-four days now.”
“Yeah, but nothing?” I ask. “Not even a skill about mediation or something?”
“We must get to the king,” Nessa says.
I imagine her following that up with a caw, a whistle, and a “Polly wants a cracker.” That makes me giggle. Guy is right. If I just think about her as a parrot, she’s not so bad. This is enough to put my worries on the back burner. I’d like to enjoy the moments we have in between quests.
The smell of the campfire reaches me, and I’m already salivating. My Pavlovian response makes me impatient for Sylvia and Tara to return.
“We haven’t been the best guides for you on this journey,” Guy says out of nowhere. “There’s so much we haven’t told you yet. I think we just keep forgetting stuff from this early on until you’re already there.”
I respond with a dismissive wave. “That’s okay. Without you, I would have had to learn all this on my own. I’d also be running around mostly naked and starving so…”
“The mostly naked part wasn’t so bad,” Guy says with a chuckle.
I smack his arm. “Joshua’s a bad influence on you.”
Guy gives me a crooked smile that I’m sure he means to look rakish, but it leans more on the shy side. “You’re a Cleric of Aphrodite,” he says. “Surely, you’ve picked up that I’m attracted to you.”
Even though I didn’t believe it at first, it doesn’t take Aphrodite to clue me in on that.
Guy has blushed so often and given me so many admiring glances, I’d have to be clueless not to notice.
I don’t know what to make of it, though.
He’s sweet and attractive, so I should probably hop on him right now.
But the last time a guy liked me, I wasted more than a decade of my life on someone who didn’t really love me.
If I wasn’t good enough for Doug, what makes me think Guy won’t get tired of me in a few days? Things would be so weird in the group.
Besides, I need to get back to Mom. I was so eager in the real world for a distraction from my pain over her imminent death. Now that my life is full of distractions, I don’t want them. They could be the difference between seeing Mom one last time and not.
I look at Alexander, who’s staring off at the burning orange line narrowly separating the horizon from the starry sky.
When I first booted up Legends of Sacrifice on my computer, I was immediately besotted with him.
I was far from his only fan girl, but I think it was more than his purposefully designed heart-throbbiness.
Yes, I was the one who broke up with Doug, but it still broke my heart.
The dream of love died when I realized it was only going to get worse for the two of us, so real relationships scare the hell out of me now.
Guy is real; Alexander is not. While my attraction to an NPC is laughable and depressing, it’s risk-free.
I can leave this game and Alexander without regrets.
I can go back to Mom without breaking anyone’s heart, including mine.
Someone like Guy could devastate me, especially with how fragile I am right now.
I need to be honest with him. Though not too honest. As much as I like everyone in my party, I’m not ready to divulge what’s going on with Mom right now. It’s too…vulnerable. I decide to just tell him about Doug.