“Hey, asshole?”

I furrowed my brow and opened my eyes. Confused, I was completely disorientated. Dim light gave no clue as to my whereabouts. Maybe dead.

The elf moved over my vision, blocking out the drab shapes around me. Perhaps not dead, then.

“Blerf,” I managed. Just as my consciousness had returned, the ascending throb of a headache made its introduction.

“About time.” She sighed and moved away. “If you tell me which part of you controls your reckless attitude toward your own life, I’ll reach in and pull it out of you.”

The past moments of my waking existence were being slotted back into place, and I remembered what had occurred. To avoid bleeding to death, I had shuffled away the debuff and replaced it without something that… did something else. Didn’t kill me - although I wasn’t entirely convinced this was reality yet.

With a groan, I writhed on aching muscles and tried to push myself up. I was on something soft, and covered with a thin sheet. A bed. In just my underwear - which seemed like a strange curse to have. The surrounding space now coalesced into a small room, sparsely furnished with basic furniture.

“What happened?” I asked, turning to the elf in her nightshirt, as if I couldn’t put two and two together.

She tilted her head and some of the ire melted away. “Some sort of temporary coma. We made sure the blood was destroyed and bundled you up on Wolf. Went to the safe village, as previously discussed.”

I nodded slowly. Mostly because my head might burst from the change in pressure. Swapping an internal rupture for a forced nap wasn’t the worst thing, but I could have easily killed myself with being so careless.

“Sorry for making you worry, Ren.”

The elf sighed and brought up a hand to grasp at my face. “Final warning, put yourself in unnecessary danger again and... we'll have problems. Forgiven, dickbag. Before you ask - Wolf is downstairs in the living room. Quinn and Tanya are in a different house. And no, it’s not like that. They both assured me.”

I smiled and shuffled myself a little closer to her. A soft kiss, before I slowly collapsed back onto the bed. “Feeling low energy. Aches across most of my body. Headache. Emotionally fragmented.”

Ren smiled and laid down beside me, putting an arm across my chest. “I appreciate the full disclosure, trickster. Tanya left an idol. It’s an active one rather than passive, but will help with the pain.”

“And for my fragile heart?”

“That’s why you have me, isn’t it?” She sat back up to retrieve the gray idol from the side table.

In some ways, it was. Over time, she had worked me into something that she wanted. Decisive leader, pragmatic and assertive. In return, I had the adoration and companionship that my previous lives were near devoid of. I oft repeated the phrase that we had come to meet in the middle, just as we had agreed all that time ago, but a lot of it had come naturally.

“Sometimes I feel as though we spend the whole day together, yet it is still not enough.”

She turned back to me and handed over the idol, a soft smile on her face. “That’s love, Max. We haven’t had the most conventional courtship, but… I honestly couldn’t see myself being apart from you.”

It didn’t take the dimly lit lanterns and soft darkness beyond the windows to know that it was nighttime, that was for certain. Although, the fact that the sun wasn’t out made it obvious even before Ren was open with me.

“Can I tell you a secret?” I activated the idol, and a warmth ran through me, softening the aches.

“Of course.”

I looked up at her and raised my hand, softly running my thumb across her eyebrow. “Sometimes I miss your grumpy scowl.”

She smiled and her hand came up to hold mine there. With a sigh, she nuzzled her face into my palm. “You like it when I’m a hardass bitch, huh?”

“If I wrote upon each star something that I adored about you, I would still be bereft of space before finishing.”

Her eyes closed, and the smile widened. “Fucking poetic asshole. I love you.”

“And I you, moonflower. Now lay beside me once more and let’s discuss how we’re going to take over the world together.”

Generally speaking, we had shied away from being too overt with our feelings, just in case the System found a narrative way to split us apart. I cared no longer, even if it made it that much more likely to happen. Tanya had told me to fight for love, and that’s what we’d do. Any assailants or obstacle in our way, we would overcome with overwhelming force. Our hearts may be vulnerable, but in being out in the open it caused them to be stronger.

After all, we had allowed the two new Party members into our collection of oddities. It was hard to deny that we had enough drive and competency to try to bring a ‘fix’ to the System. We’d turn the world into somewhere a love like ours could bloom in total safety, and the looming trauma of being mass-murders was something unthinkable.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

“Let’s talk Wolf first,” I began, as she pulled the cover up and shuffled herself beside me.

“It hurts to think that he could be getting old already.”

“Agreed. He assures me he has plenty of life in him, but our current schedule has been draining on our dear brother. Earlier he even turned his Hunger debuff off.”

Ren sighed. “I thought the eating and sleeping was just a fun bear thing. But we’ve just been running him ragged.”

That wasn’t entirely correct. It was hard to judge, as the bear himself would assure us he was fine if questioned - and being a sentient animal, he might not have the same kind of handle on how much stress and hardship he could really take. “I think it’s the same as his diet. He doesn’t know any better, so will rush headlong into whatever is required of him. We’ll need to manage him better to ensure he has proper rest.”

She nodded. “Unless we are tracked, it should be an easy day of farming Monsters tomorrow.”

Good. We needed a little break. Well, in saying that - the time at the cottage was our break. Fighting System-created was more of a… low stakes work environment. With the five of us now, I had no doubt we could chew through any group with little issue. Another level and a few more tokens, and I’d feel ready for the true test of our accomplishments.

The necromancer’s group.

“Quinn next,” I prompted. “He seems to have calmed a little now that we are a full Party. While combat isn’t his strong suit, I feel he greases the wheels of our overall existence.”

“I was a bit of a shit to him when we were cooking today. He tries to help, but I feel he is like a lost puppy at times.” Ren pouted. “That said, he means well. Compared to the first day we met him, I actually trust him now.”

“You think he is up to the trials ahead of us?”

She was quiet for a moment as she considered this. “Hmm. He said he will jump on the sword for you, and I fully believe he would. It’s stupid, but for that reason alone, he would follow us into hell.”

My thought’s exactly. Even if he wasn’t the powerhouse in battle that Ren and I were, as long as he held things together behind the scenes, then I would allow him to take the backseat. We needed him to keep us… stable. Or at least, I felt like less of a mercenary hit squad with him around.

“So the new girl then, Tanya?”

“She spoke to me earlier, while you were out.” Ren turned to me, moving onto her side. “Told me about the chat you had, and what caused her to join with the Lady.”

“I feel for her. She’s conflicted that she wants nothing more to be back with her family, but also doesn’t believe she deserves them back. That she is uncomfortable with how much happier part of her is in this world.”

The elf grunted. “In her heart, she wants to go back. Whatever you told her, she’s made some peace with being here.”

I furrowed my brow. “Really?”

“At least… she wants to fix the world to be somewhere safe. She told me she will worry about going back not only when the world is better, but when she is, too.”

A silence filled the room as I contemplated this. I was pretty sure that I had just allowed her to speak her mind and open up about herself. There wasn’t any guidance intended, even from the start I told her that her destiny was her own to decide on. I raised my eyebrow to see that Ren was watching me intently, as if trying to read the thoughts straight from my brain.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

She shook her head lightly. “Sometimes I just like looking at you. Seeing all the different angles and shapes that make Max. Trying to… pick out what makes you different from everyone else.”

I smiled. “And the verdict?”

“Beats me.” She leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “You’re just stuck with my grumpy ass until some bullshit kills us, I’m afraid.”

“An acceptable fate.” I closed my eyes. There were certainly worse death penalties. “But Tanya has a personal stake in fighting the Lady, and is kind of a rod for the rest of us. As a full Party we need a clearer path than whatever mania you can dissuade me from.”

“I’m surprised, really, that she fits in so well.” Ren returned to laying back down. “Not suspicious, just… we aren’t the most normal group. I’m tired of thinking up ways in which we can be betrayed, however. I trust her because the alternative is exhausting.”

Grunted my agreement, and we fell into another comfortable silence. It was nice to get all of this out into the open with her. Between kissing and violence, we were in danger of losing sight of the reins. That we were on the same page on near everything was expected and soothed my soul. Still, ripples always remained in the calmest of ponds.

“Your demon-killer arrow doesn’t really do that, does it?”

The bed shifted slightly as she tensed up. “No… not really.”

I ran my tongue across dry lips. Probably too late in the night for coffee now. Instead, I just took a deep breath in. “Something I should worry about?”

“I…” She shuffled back up to an elbow to look down at me and I met her gaze. “This is a judgement free zone, right?”

Although I nodded, my breath was still held. Ready for… well, I wasn’t even sure what.

The elf deflated and looked off to the side. “The culture I come from, and my family especially… they’re all very xenophobic. Especially with humans.” Her eyes came back to me. “Part of the reason Flynn and I wanted to do a run from it was we didn’t believe in the ‘old ways’.”

“Oh?” I wasn’t too sure what more I could add at this stage, but I allowed myself to exhale.

“There was a human merchant that used to come by at the start of spring every year. My parents would turn up their nose and bite their tongue to do the trading… but once he left, they were horrid. He probably knew. One of the nicest people I met in my old world.” She shook her head. “Never let the drama change how friendly he was with us as kids.”

I wasn’t too sure what the difference between an elf and a human actually was, aside from a couple of cosmetic changes. Out of all the odd humanoids we had come across in our travels, she was probably the closest to being mistaken for a human. Assuming you hid her ears and didn’t think about her radiant hair or piercing light blue eyes, anyway. More the fool me, because I thought about them all the time.

“So…” I drew my brain back to the matter at hand. “The arrow doesn’t kill demons.”

“It’s for killing humans, yes.”

“Can’t most of your arrows do that?”

She gave me a dull glare. “I haven’t used it on prior occasions because it feels… gross. It’s not a part of my heritage I care to bring into this world.”

“Understandable. No further questions.” I gave her a smile that seemed to relax her once more.

“I figured you’d be accepting. I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up before.” She moved over and rested across my chest.

My fingers went up, and I ran them through her hair. Either the action prompted her to sigh and deflate, or perhaps she had let some weight off her shoulders by laying bare that murky part of something she held in her past. Maybe both. I enjoyed the process too, and as I played with her hair, she made the outlines of shapes or letters on my torso with her fingertips.

I preferred to think it was some kind of unsaid love letter she was writing to me, but it could also be some kind of curse. Willing to accept the worst-case scenario, my eyes went back out to the window to see that it was still night. A decent chat about our Party, and some living with the love we shared, and I was ready to turn in for the day.

“Shall we sleep, moonflower?”

She moved up to look me in the face. Her eyes were tired, but some spark bloomed within them. “I wanted to try something first, if that’s okay?”

“Oh?” My eyebrow practically rocketed off my face with how quickly it rose.

“How many oranges do you have?”