Chapter 19 #2
She takes it from me and does the job for me.
Her hands are calloused and warm as they touch the back of my neck.
When she’s finished, I’m immediately disappointed by her retreat.
I wrap my cloak over the locket, and in mere seconds, there’s a pleasant shift in temperature.
It’s like the Heart of Ares is creating a tiny sauna under there.
“Better?” Cait asks.
I nod. “Better.”
“Good.”
Cait’s smile is bright. Just looking at it makes me feel even warmer.
I think back to yesterday when she went berserk and beat the shit out of those sexist assholes.
Then a breath later she was ordering me around and nagging me to death.
How can she be that person and also one of the kindest people I’ve ever met?
I had been frustrated when my quest to make Dolius believe in love updated to an escort quest. Now I’m fucking elated.
Every day I’ve been in Peripeteia, we’ve had to traipse everywhere on foot.
Since I’m not a fucking hobbit from Lord of the Rings, my feet haven’t been happy at all.
So when Dolius expected us all to get in his carriage to guard his merchandise, I wept with joy.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I thought we were going to have to walk,” I answer.
Dolius grimaces. “Walk? All the way to Dardanus? Hermes preserve us! I’d be cruel to expect that of anyone.”
While Joshua, Cait, and Sylvia help pack Dolius’s merchandise, Cyrus arrives. He’s got his own carriage, which he’d already packed himself. After the two men exchange greetings, they discuss logistics.
“Perhaps half of our guardians should sit in your carriage and half in mine,” Dolius suggests.
Cyrus strokes his short-cropped beard. “There’s an odd number of them, though.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “There are six of us.”
Cyrus squints. “I see seven.”
“There’s Cait, Guy, Joshua, Sylvia, Tara, and me,” I say, demonstrating by putting up a finger with each name. “That’s six.”
“And him,” Cyrus says pointing behind me. “That’s seven.”
I turn and see Alexander. Because he’s always out of the way, I often forget about him.
It’s so odd knowing that a couple of weeks ago, I’d practically been obsessed with this perfect but fictional hottie.
Now, he’s a sort of accessory. Yeah, he’s lent an occasional hand and given us details on major quests, but mostly he’s been useless.
“So weird,” Tara mutters. “He should have said goodbye and returned to wherever the Alexander copies go by now.”
“This is the end of his quest chain?” I ask Tara and she nods.
“Maybe he just needs you to tell him you’re heading to Thrace.”
That makes as much sense as anything. So far, he’s needed me to be very direct, or else he just stands there staring into the middle distance.
“I’ll go take care of it,” I tell Tara and leave her behind.
As I approach Alexander, he turns his attention from the pair of carriages to look at me. This is strange, of course, because NPCs aren’t supposed to notice you unless you initiate contact vocally. However, the unusual is becoming the usual.
“Hey, Alexander,” I say like I’m about to give bad news to a child. “We’re all about to head to Thrace. So, you know, you can do whatever now.”
“I shall accompany you,” he responds.
I guess I broke him, too. “You don’t have to,” I tell him. “It’s not part of your quest chain.”
“My quest is to help you with your quests,” he says.
Oh, I see. “Did Aphrodite assign that to you?”
Alexander squints. “No, this is what I want. You helped me, and now I will help you.”
Help me? How does he think he’s been helping me? I mean, he hasn’t been a burden. He doesn’t eat or drink. He doesn’t even require company or protection. But he hasn’t exactly been an asset.
“We’re fine, really,” I say.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “In the mountain pass ahead, we will encounter a monster, and I must fight at your side.”
I shouldn’t feel frustrated with an NPC, but this makes me groan. “Really, Alexander? You’ve never once fought by my side. You can’t, remember? The gods won’t let you. You’ve given the occasional tip and pointed us toward our next location, but we’ve all pretty much had to do things on our own.”
To my surprise, Alexander looks down in shame and says, “You’re right. I must make up for that. The gods have cursed me to never again lift a blade, but there’s more I could do.”
“Like what?” I ask.
Then Alexander looks at me. I mean he really looks at me. His gaze lands directly on mine as he considers his response. “I will throw my body in front of yours if I have to. I will pull the enemy’s attention away from you so that you can attack him from behind.”
“That’s suicide!” I shout. “Alexander, if you can’t fight back, you’ll die!”
“It would be worth it to protect you,” he says. His voice is low and breathy, like he’s admitting a secret. His responses have been formulaic the entire time I’ve interacted with him. Now he seems genuine.
“Why?” I ask. “We’ve barely spoken a word to each other in days.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “Not when you’re my savior.” He gestures at Cyrus and Dolius and then at the NPCs walking up and down the road. “Our savior.”
What does he mean by that? For a moment I wonder if he’s cognizant of my personal motivation to free NPCs of their programming. That kind of realization seems like too much to believe from any NPC. No, this must be some “You are the Chosen One” quest line I unlocked somehow.
“Well, okay,” I say. “But you gotta talk to Cyrus and Dolius to see which carriage you’re riding in.”
“It shall be done,” he says and walks over to the two merchants.
“What was that about?” I hear Cait ask from behind.
I turn to face her. “Not sure what you heard, but Alexander has insisted on staying with us.”
“No, he’s staying with you,” she says. “Yesterday, you said that it felt like you just had to be around NPCs for them to break. What if you were right?”
I shake my head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, listen,” she continues. “What if when you broke the quest with Arachne’s children, you created some kinda…I don’t want to call it a virus, but that’s the best I can come up with. And now you’re walking around, carrying it wherever you go.”
Thinking of myself as the Typhoid Mary of Peripeteia wasn’t all that flattering, but what Cait suggested made more sense than anything else I’ve thought of. That would make it incredibly easy for us to undo all the programming keeping the NPCs stuck in the same patterns day in and day out.
I’m about to ask Cait how she thinks that might influence future quests, when a trio of players walks by. They’re venting to each other with raised voices.
“Every quest, every single one has been broken!” a curly haired halfling man exclaims as he comes around the corner. “How am I supposed to level up if there’s no wedding for me to collect flowers for?”
“Tell me about it!” an orc player responds. “I’m supposed to fight off some thieves coming after a street food vendor. But the vendor’s not even there! Some NPC said he’d run off with a priestess!”
A human woman walking with them wipes at her teary eyes. “How am I supposed to get home if I can’t even do Demeter’s quests? I just want to see my friends again!”
The orc puts his arm over her shoulders. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure out whatever’s causing this and stop it.”
When the three are out of earshot, Cait and I stare at each other in horror. We’re fucking up the game. Yes, we’re helping the NPCs, but we’re screwing over the players. And if they figure out it’s because of me…
“Load in!” Tara calls out to us. We walk over to the carriages, and Tara continues, “Cait, you’re in Cyrus’s carriage with Sylvia, Joshua, and me. Lauren, you’re in Dolius’s carriage with Guy. And Alexander for some reason.”
Cait and I nod at each other before parting. Guy’s as excited as a Labrador puppy to have me in the carriage with him and Alexander. “Finally,” he says. “Just the two of us.”
I nod in Alexander’s direction. “And him.”
Guy laughs. “An NPC hardly counts.” He bites his bottom lip. “He’s not going to care what we do.”
He pulls me to sit next to him and strokes my cheek before he rests his forehead against mine. “I know you want to take it slow, and I’m fine with that. I just need time alone with you. For us to get to know each other, for me to look at you as long as I want.”
Guy’s words are so sweet and sincere that I feel myself blushing from my scalp to my toes. I truly believe he would wait forever if he had to. We don’t have forever, though. I need to get back to Mom, and that means leaving him behind.
I’m too much of a pussy to bring that up.
We’ve only dabbled with our physical connection.
I can’t stop thinking about how it feels when he touches my ear to silence everyone outside of our party.
My lips still tingle from the kiss we shared in the rain a couple of days ago.
We haven’t had any alone time since then.
Once everyone’s loaded in their carriages, my lips brush against Guy’s as soft as slipping on a silk dress. He moans against it, and I feel a pulse of lust between my legs. Yes, this can’t last forever, but wouldn’t it be nice if there was hot sex in the meantime?
Guy weaves his fingers into the hair on the back of my head and kisses me back. It’s a little firmer than mine, but he’s not getting carried away. “God, if we weren’t in this carriage…” he whispers.
I chuckle. “I just bet.”
The carriage hits a bump, and we knock into each other. Somehow in the bustle, Guy’s hand reaches my breast, and he pulls it back immediately. “Sorry, sorry…”
“It’s okay,” I say, but then my eyes flicker to the person I’d forgotten about in our carriage. Alexander is blushing, like he’s embarrassed. No. I shake that notion away. He’s an NPC with more extensive dialogue options.
But this isn’t that game. This is Peripeteia, and I’m changing it with every choice I make.