Skill increased You increased your skill: Ice Rune-Mastery [39/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Ice Magic [41/100] Skill increased You increased your skill: Blood Magic [13/100] You have lost consciousness. Time remaining: 8:00:00

The blue windows and a countdown were the only things within a black nothingness, no concept of self, no concept of my body. The vertigo made me log out and take a break for the next hours.

After I did my business in the real world, I logged back into my home-space and checked the time until I'd wake up. You could create an image of the view out of your ingame-avatar's eyes within the home-space, in this case it told me I had two hours left. Now that I had some forced down-time, I could try to find information about those “divides” Sigmir had spoken about. There was only little information, a couple of posts talking about “Heroes, who overcame the first Divide having the strength of ten man” and “Saints, who overcame the second Divide having the valour of a hundred man” but nothing concrete, I guess people were hoarding those information or nobody had thought to ask about the Divides. Or maybe the 'natives' were simply not telling, either way, there was no information to be found. I moved into my training hall, set a timer and simply did slow forms, enjoying the floating feeling I got when totally immersed into the ritualized motions of the forms.

A small eternity later, my timer broke me from my reverie and I logged back into Road to Purgatory.

The last seconds ticked off the countdown and then the world rushed back into me. It felt intense, a lovely, sweet smell tickling my nose, a feeling of softness under my head, soft breaths contrasting the howling wind outside, then, like an intruder a throbbing pain in my back pushed into my mind. I did inventory of my body, the left side of my back was throbbing in pain, but it felt like someone had bandaged the wound. Then I became aware that, yes, my wound was bandaged but that bandage was the only thing covering my upper body. I managed to raise a single arm in order to cast a healing spell over me, without even opening my eyes. I thought we got away but I wanted to be whole before opening my eyes and confronting the reality around me. The healing washed over me and within moments the pain subsided and I was able to move without causing further harm to myself.

With that, it was time to open my eyes and the first thing that greeted me was a well-muscled, bare stomach. Turning my head on the pillows that appeared to be Sigmir's thighs, I looked up and saw that Sigmir's tunic had been reduced to barely more than a sports-bra and further investigation showed that the bandage on my chest used to be the rest of her clothes. I had to fight an intense blush when I realized that the smell I had enjoyed directly after waking up had to come from the place where Sigmir's thighs met each other, as I had almost buried my nose there. But the scent and the thoughts I had when smelling the scent now that I knew what it was sent a heat deep into me. Crawling up, I decided to wake the sleeping princess the only appropriate way, with kisses. But first, I should make sure she is fine, so I used a channelled healing-spell and then started to lightly nibble on her ears, then kissing my way down her jaw-line. A few kisses in, I heard a low moan and drew back to look into her eyes. She was looking at me with smouldering eyes so I decided to go ahead and do a small taste-test, capturing her lips with mine. Her eyes budged out a bit and at first she was hesitant but the first nibbles on her lip drew out her tongue to play. Our kiss grew in intensity, until there was only heat in both of us but far too soon, we had to come up for air.

I pulled back a bit and a small string of saliva connected us, until Sigmir unconsciously licked her lips breaking the string. Now, the fire in her eyes had turned into a blazing inferno. “Wow, I never felt anything like that.” she mumbled in an almost inaudible voice. “Neither have I, my dear. But I'm very willing to see if we can get there again. I do have to thank my rescuing heroine, do I now?” I answered and recaptured her lips. Sadly, after a few minutes of making out, my realistic side staged an uprising. We were in a cave, without fire, without bedding and a look outside told me that night had fallen. Add to that the greatly shortened clothing on Sigmir and my missing clothing and the result was simple, go out to search for wood. And I had to do it, with my better cold-resistance and low-light vision. “Stay here and try to keep warm. We need a source of warmth.” I silenced her rebuttal with another short kiss and stood. A short look around showed me my leather jacket, stained with my blood and with a gaping cut in the back. I pulled it on but just before I did the same with my cloak, I saw Sigmir shiver a bit in the quickly cooling air. Instead of pulling the cloak around me, I went close to her, gave her another sweet kiss and draped the cloak around her torso like a blanket. “I will be back soon, dear. Try to keep warm.” With that I turned and moved swiftly out of the cave but outside, I settled into a stealthy gait, cast my cloak of darkness and used the Dark Magic I had gained yesterday to try to deepen the shadows I moved in, melding myself with the dark of the night.

Moving through the night, I thought about the new feelings I had. All my life, I have had problems categorizing my feelings, making sense of them. At least when it came to positive feelings, lashing out in pain, anger or fear was nothing new to me, nor was the cold, calculated thirst for revenge against past tormentors. I knew the feeling of satisfaction when doing something remarkable, something others could not, that smug feeling of superiority. But that fuzzy feeling I had when looking at Sigmir, that warm glow spreading inside when kissing her, those were new. I was somehow fearful when it came to trying to understand those, fearing that understanding them would make them go away, like mist in the morning sun.

Almost silent, crunching sounds made me stop dead silent in my tracks, trying to find the source of the sounds, as something had to be out here. I slowly looked around, trying to avoid sudden movement when I saw a stag maybe hundred steps away from me, moving slowly in the snow. I drew my concealing cloak of darkness tight around me and let two of my frozen shuttles move slowly, trying to stick to shadows and blind spots, in order to not alert the beast. Then, when I had managed to move them behind it, I used all my strength to accelerate the two blades, striking the stag into both knee-joints at the same time, crippling it's hind-legs and making an escape impossible. Then, I simply slit it's throat and used blood-runes to make the blood drain faster from the carcass. There was a trickle of EXP but not enough to make hunting deer worth doing. While bleeding it, I spotted a downed tree close by, with some relatively dry wood amongst the splintered limbs lying around. I walked over and collected some of it, then turned and used my frozen Shuttles to move the stag carcass back to the cave Sigmir was waiting in.

When I got back, Sigmir was shivering with cold, her lips looking bloodless and pale, making me worry that I had taken too long. I swiftly placed some dry pine-needles together, then used my flint and steel to strike a spark. With little coercion, the needles caught fire, then I placed small pieces of bark and thin sticks over the flames, slowly growing the fire from a small, flickering thing into a nice, dancing camp-fire. A small part of me felt a revulsion when looking at the flames but warmth was currently far more important than strange feelings. Realizing that Sigmir was not reacting, I pulled her a bit closer to the fire and then snuggled up to her back in order to warm her.

It took some time, maybe half an hour, but after she had heavy shivers at first, she warmed back up and became more animated. “Dear, I'm afraid we have to get up, or it will be a cold night. Could you skin the stag while I get some more wood for the fire to last us through the night?” I asked. She turned in my arms and with a shy smile gave me a small kiss, then answered “Of course I will.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “Thank you. For everything.”

I walked back out and easily found the dead tree I had gathered from earlier and gathered enough wood to last for the night. My track back to the cave was slower than before, having gathered much more wood and even some still green branches to use as skewers for meat. Still, the short way only took so long, even with an heavy load. When I got back, I saw that Sigmir had propped the stag up using her Lok'nar as a rack. Currently, she was carefully removing the intestines and similar, inedible organs from it's body cavity. I placed the wood back at the fire and just as I wanted to offer my help, she deftly removed a pile of organs and without turning, asked “Could you please take out the offal and bury it a bit in the snow a bit way? No need to lure scavengers right to our cave.” I had to fight a smile, it was the first time Sigmir had really taken the initiative to ask something of me. The last few days had been far too hectic to calmly think, let alone talk but I think the canyon had been enough to escape from our hunters for some time. Of course, I did as asked, even if I used my Ice Magic to actually carry the bloody mess. I returned and after getting some cut meat from Sigmir, it was my job to start cooking.

Trying to watch Sigmir while turning the meat skewers from time was quite easy and it was impressive how thorough Sigmir was, carefully skinning the pelt off, de-boning the meat then separating every sinew out of the meat and then cutting the meat in thin stripes to cook and dry them next to the fire, making jerky. Soon, the skewers were done and I called Sigmir who sat close next to me but not quite making contact. I had felt good on her lap before so I simply switched over and snuggled into her, happy when she put one arm around me, using the other to eat. After getting some warm food and restocking the fire, the general weariness of the last few days overtook both of us and we slept, still cuddled together, both for warmth and comfort.

Strangely even I, a being who greatly preferred her solitude, felt the cosy feeling of her embrace warm me in ways unknown to me.