Aidan

The Realms

Unknown date (day 3)

Late afternoon

Mistvale Highlands, en route to Ceallach Macht

Once they had their campsite set up, Brighid brought Aidan to a flat stretch of land beside the stream and resumed his fighting exercises. First, she reviewed the previous night's lesson, ensuring that he still remembered how to stand and make basic attacks with the sword. Then, she moved onto more advanced lessons, showing him other stances he could take and the basic attacks from each stance.

Brighid drilled him on the stances she showed him repeatedly until he was covered in sweat and aching all over and then again for good measure. "You have to be able to attack without thinking about where your feet and hands are supposed to be. Even a split second spent thinking instead of acting can get you hurt or killed. The only way to do that is to drill it over and over. You do not have enough time to learn as much as I would prefer you to, but I can at least get you some experience with a handful of attacks. Tomorrow I will show you how to deflect attacks; it is not nearly as simple as I am sure you think it is."

He may have been sweaty and aching, but Brighid's instruction was proving quite worthwhile. He gained two more levels in Swords over the hour or so spent training.

She continued, "Tonight, though, I believe you owe me a good pampering, and it is time to collect. Help me out of my armor, please?"

Aidan's arms felt like limp noodles, and he didn't really want to be lifting heavy Sunsteel plates off of Brighid's back. He helped her anyway because that's just what friends did. A side-benefit that he hadn't considered was that he was quite literally helping Brighid undress for bathing. He was kneeling down in front of her, working on the strap of one of her greaves, when she pulled the padded gambeson off over her head and set her breasts free. When she caught him looking up at her, the redhead smirked and shook her torso from side to side, then gently tilted his head back down.

Once all of Brighid's armor was laid out in careful piles to the side of the stream, she walked around behind him and helped him out of his own armor. Aidan was a little embarrassed; it was one thing for her to help him into his armor once his clothes were on, but it felt much more intimate for her to help him out of it. He was intensely aware of the soft pressure of her hands as she worked at the laces of his armor. Once Aidan was down to just his clothes, she put her hands on his hips and turned him around to face her. He felt the blush hot on his cheeks as she unlaced his shirt and pulled it off over his head, and it grew even more heated as she knelt down in front of him. She deftly untied the laces at his waist and then tugged his pants down.

"I thought I was supposed to be the one pampering you?" Aidan desperately tried to deflect as his erection bobbed in the air, mere inches from his companion's face.

"You are!" She grinned at him. "A girl likes a good show just as much as you men do. Despite being a mage-type, you are not half-bad to look at. Usually, you mages are either scrawny as a stick or fat and flabby. You, though, look like you actually take care of yourself. And," she added, her hand darting out to pat his erection lightly, drawing a gasp from Aidan, "it is nice to feel appreciated from time to time." Brighid heaved herself back up onto her hooves and trotted off towards the stream. "Now come along, you have active pampering to do!"

Aidan wasn't sure how much more teasing he could take, but he dutifully followed along behind the centaur. The water here was shallower than the pond they bathed in last night, only coming up to his knees instead of his chest. The water was cold at first, but Brighid cast a spell, and the area around them heated up to a pleasant temperature. "Because I am being pampered," she told him, "you will be doing all the washing tonight. You may start by brushing my coat, as you did last night." She settled down into the stream, and he got to work. "So tell me, servant, how many women have you pampered in the bath?"

"A gentleman never speaks of such things."

"Oh, come now. I will never meet anyone you have shared time with, nor anyone who knows them, so there is no harm in bragging to me. Or are you trying to hide your inexperience? Am I your first, Aidan?" She asked coquettishly. It's going to be a long night if she keeps this up, he thought to himself. The question is whether engaging with her will make this more tolerable or not.

"You're not my first, in the baths or otherwise." He eventually responded. "I'm not going to give you a number, though. You'll just have to wonder."

"Otherwise? Oh, but you do presume. I was only speaking of bathing, yet here you are, taking it further. Do I need to guard my virtue around you, Aidan?"

It was time to take the offensive in this teasing war. "I assure you, your virtue is as safe as you want it to be."

She hummed deep in her throat and shifted her weight in the water. "I will keep that in mind. Mmm, that feels good. Everyone should have a pet human around to pamper them."

Something about the flippant way she said that tripped a switch in Aidan's mind, and he couldn't keep himself from asking bitterly, "Is that what I am to you? A pet to tease and amuse yourself with? I thought it was the humans who treated others as lesser species around here."

"What? Oh, get over yourself!" She spat back, anger in her voice. "I was teasing you, the same as I have been for the last day and a half! I thought we both understood that, but if something this simple makes you lash out like that, clearly, I was wrong. Give me my brush, I will finish by myself." She rose from the water and held her hand out behind her, palm up.

"Wait, Brighid, I—"

"Give. Me. My. Brush." She interrupted him, turning her head to glare at him. Feeling totally deflated and with a heavy weight in his stomach, Aidan handed her the brush, then watched her gallop off further up the stream and out of sight.

Aidan mentally kicked himself. He knew she was only teasing, exactly like she said, but the intimacy of the bath changed the impact of her words. They had become surprisingly close over the short time they had traveled together, so the thought of Brighid thinking of him as a mere pet felt like a dagger to his gut, and Aidan reacted without thinking. If he'd taken half a second to consider before acting, he could have turned her teasing back on her. Instead, he might have ruined everything. Brighid sounded angrier with his overreaction than she had when he promised to pay her back for standing up to the Council.

Morosely, he rinsed the sweat off, then waded out of the stream, collected his armor, and returned to the campsite. He ate one of the centaur trail rations while waiting for Brighid to come back so he could apologize, but after half an hour, there was no sign of her. Cold, wet, and feeling more alone than he had since arriving in the Realms, Aidan curled up on the grass, laid his head on his backpack, and thought, System: Log Out. Confirm. Blackness enveloped him.

Daniel Stewart

Earth

Friday, March 10th, 2062

Approximately 2:00 AM

The Atlanta metropolis, USA

Daniel's eyes popped open as the lid of his Immersion VR rig hissed and began to open. He was starving. He quickly checked the time and date and realized that he had spent a day and a half straight in The Realms. That put the time compression at roughly 2:1, which meant that, if he didn't decide to start over on a new character, his lunch with Eve would come just before Aidan and Brighid arrived at Ceallach Macht.

After carefully disengaging himself from all of the safety restraints, nozzles, and tubes, he climbed out of the VR rig and made his way to his modest kitchen. Rummaging around in the pantry for a moment, Daniel grabbed a box of cheap stovetop mac-and-cheese and set a pot of water to boiling. While he grated some genuine cheese—cheddar and Monterey Jack—to add to the package of neon orange powder, he pulled up his emails on the kitchen monitor.

Unsurprisingly, his inbox was full of spam. After deleting all the phishing scams and ads for "male enhancement" products, though, he was surprised to find he actually had a real email for once, from his sister.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: New game!

Hey bro! This game is soooo cool! I took like an hour to make my character but I love her, she's like a super stealthy ninja assassin. And the game world is so amazing! It feels so real! I've already completed two quests and gotten to level 4. I can't wait to unlock my real class and Talents! How is your game going? Really looking forward to our lunch on Saturday!

Love,

Eve

"Well, at least Eve is enjoying herself," Daniel said to himself as he dumped imitation pasta noodles into the boiling water. He stirred the pot to prevent the noodles from sticking to the bottom, then poured himself a glass of ice-cold water. The VR rig had a drip-feed system to keep the user hydrated through long sessions, but that didn't completely eliminate the need to drink. He continued scraping the macaroni off the bottom of the pot every couple of minutes, then turned the heat off and poured the water and noodles into a colander in his sink. He allowed most of the water to drip out, then dumped them back into the pot along with the "cheese" packet and a little whole milk. He stirred that mixture for a few seconds to combine it, then dumped in the shredded cheese a few clumps at a time as he continued to mix. Voila: sticky, gooey, yummy pseudo-food.

Daniel quickly chopped up a couple hot dogs and nuked them in the microwave, then added them to the mac-and-cheese and gave it another quick stir before scooping out the terribly unhealthy concoction onto his plate. Every time he ate this probably chopped a day off of his life, but it was quick, easy, tasted great, and, most importantly at the moment, was quite filling.

As he ate, Daniel turned the argument with Brighid over and over in his mind. "I can't believe I got into an argument with an NPC because she hurt my feelings. How did I even get so invested in her so quickly? It's like when I walked out of that canyon and saw the landscape for the first time. I just feel a connection to her. That's so incredibly weird. When I'm playing, I almost forget it's just a video game, even when it throws those video game prompts at me. And the NPCs definitely don't seem like NPCs. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was an MMO. Those VIs seem more like AIs. Skynet, anyone?"

"Fuck it," he decided, "I'm not going to restart. I don't know what's going on between Brighid and me, but I refuse to let it end like that, and I refuse to run away. I'll apologize to her in the morning—God, apologizing to an NPC—and if she doesn't want to hear it, I'll make her listen. I've always backed down from conflict in the game so far, but I won't let this develop into a grudge."

With his belly now full and determination burning away the depression which had driven him from the Realms, Daniel quickly cleaned up the kitchen. Then he took a quick shower, double-checked his emails to make sure his boss hadn't tried to cancel his "sick leave," then restarted The Realms and climbed back into the Immersion VR apparatus. He re-affixed everything with practiced ease, then set his head into the cradle and closed his eyes.

Aidan

The Realms

Unknown date (day 4)

Early morning

Mistvale Highlands, en route to Ceallach Macht

Aidan’s eyes sprang open. The red-gold sunrise greeted him as he sat up. Good, he thought, so the game automatically advanced time to the morning. He looked around and saw that Brighid did, in fact, return to the camp, although she was resting considerably farther from him than she had the night before. That might be partly because they were out in the open instead of being inside a cramped cave, but it also was probably a reflection of how upset she was with him. Well, no time like the present to start apologizing.

Brighid’s armor wasn’t next to her in the camp, so she must have been too upset to want to lug it back from the stream. The least he could do for having upset her was to fix that. Fortunately, their campsite was only a dozen or so yards from the water, so he didn’t have far to go. He carefully and quietly gathered everything up and set it down near her in the same piles Brighid had sorted it into. He, unfortunately, wasn’t quiet enough, as when he returned with the chainmail, he saw her watching him with a stony expression. He carefully laid out the mail on the top of the pile with her breastplate, then walked over to his backpack.

Reaching inside, he pulled out the Chest of Holding, then fished out a shamburger. Closing everything back up, Aidan walked back over to Brighid and held the burger out towards her. “Here,” he said, “these taste better than trail rations, and the box keeps them hot. I don’t have many of them, they’re a food from my homeland, but I think you’ll like it. Please, go ahead and eat it while I talk. I owe you an apology.”

Brighid eyed the burger warily, and Aidan saw her nostrils flare as she smelled it, but she did reach out and take it from him. He turned to the side, so he wasn’t watching her eat, and began to talk. “I have always had problems making friends. I don’t open up to people readily, and I get uncomfortable around large groups of people. Where I come from, that’s a recipe for a lonely life. To add to that, I have a family history of depression. I don’t know if you know what that is, and you almost certainly don't call it that. Basically, my mind sometimes decides that I’m too happy and tries to ruin everything. I’ll grow sad or lonely or both, with absolutely no reason for it, and if it comes on suddenly when I’m with other people, it can cause me to lash out to protect myself. After all, clearly, those people are who are making me sad, not my stupid brain.”

He paused a minute, ordering his thoughts, then continued, “I enjoyed myself last night, right up until I went stupid on you. I kind of dread your teasing, but only because you’re so good at it. You frustrate and fascinate me. I can’t quite get a handle on what I am to you. When you teased me about being a pet last night, somehow, my head took that as the gospel truth even though any fucking idiot could tell you were joking. It hurt, so I reacted before I had a chance to think, and I said something awful about you that you in no way deserved. I’m sorry, Brighid. I can usually control the depression, but it ambushed me last night. I’m not the easiest person to get along with, I’m afraid. I hope I didn’t ruin everything between us.”

He didn’t look over at her; there was still a tiny bit of depression lurking in his head, and it wanted him to run away. It was a struggle merely to tell her what he had and to stay still for her response. He heard her shift her weight and steeled himself for rejection, so when she embraced him from behind and rested her chin on his shoulder, he stiffened in surprise. “We call it the drowning-thought disease, because those who suffer from it feel like they are being dragged down into the darkest depths of their minds. Most of those who suffer from it end up killing themselves when they become lost in those dark thoughts. Is it the same in your homeland?" She asked softly, her breath whispering past his ear.

He nodded jerkily, tears coming to his eyes. "Yes. Thankfully none among my family, but it's very common. I have occasional thoughts that way, but so far, I've always managed to fight it off, and I've never seriously considered it."

Brighid squeezed him tightly, then pressed her lips to his shoulder at the base of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine. "Do not let those thoughts take you with them, Aidan." She murmured. He felt her lips, still pressed against his skin, curl into a smile. "As you are my pet, I forbid it." Completely unexpectedly, two prompts blinked into existence.

Congratulations! Your relationship with Brighid Fireheart has advanced from Neutral to Friendly.

She now views you as someone she can relate to and expect to treat her with fairness and respect. Congratulations! For earning a new Friendly relationship, you have received 550 experience.

Honor thy friends and they will honor you!

He choked out a laugh, which turned into sobs as the emotions he had been bottling up poured out of him. He turned around in Brighid's embrace, burying his head against her neck and hugging her back just as tightly as she hugged him. Brighid continued to hold him and stroke his hair tenderly until his tears dried and he got his breathing under control. Aidan took a half step back, and Brighid slid her hands from his back to his waist to give him room. He looked up at her and saw that her eyes were reddened and her cheeks wet. Then he saw that the upper slopes of her bare breasts, which hadn't even registered to him until now, were covered in tears and snot. His gaze returned to hers, and he said wryly, "I'm afraid it looks like I've made a mess all over you."

Her eyes sparkled with mischief as she responded, "You coated my breasts with slime, and neither of us had a good time making it happen. I do not know that I will be able to recommend you to my girlfriends if you keep that up."

Aidan thought about responding, What if I'm only interested in you? but shied away from it at the last moment. Instead, he suggested, "How about we both go to the stream, and I give you the pampering that I still owe you? I made the mess, so I should be the one to clean it up."

"If only other men shared that particular thought!" She laughed. "I will take you up on your kind offer. Pray, lead the way. I want to have a chance to watch your behind for once." She laughed again at the startled expression that drew from him. "Go on, I will fetch the soap and brush and meet you down by the water. I promise to ogle you only as much as you have me."

"Well, that isn't much of a restriction," Aidan admitted with a chuckle. He caught her hand as she let it fall from his waist and gave it a squeeze, then turned and walked towards the stream. He did his best to put an extra wiggle in his step for her.

"Exactly!" Came Brighid's giggling reply.