By the time I went down to the tavern, I was feeling totally relaxed and drained of tension. Brick had disappeared after kissing me senseless, and I’d only scrambled to put myself back together when I’d heard Bastion’s breathing shift, signaling my sleeping spell had worn off and he was due to wake up shortly.

He seemed cagey around me, probably still embarrassed from the night before, so I left him to get dressed and sought out some breakfast.

“Hey, succubus!” Jackal greeted me cheerfully. “Have you changed your mind about me yet?”

“Nope,” I said, ordering a bowl of porridge and taking a seat next to him. “Is Bruiser up yet?”

“Left in the night,” Jackal said. “Gone when I woke up. Not unusual for him though.”

“Oh,” I said, a little disappointed. It would have been nice to be able to say a proper goodbye.

“You done with your learning?” Jackal asked, but I shook my head and he sighed. “Damn. I don’t like it here. I wanna go smash something.”

“Jackal,” I said slowly, hoping he wouldn’t take my question the wrong way. “Can I ask you something?”

“You got a quest for me?” he asked, perking up. “I hope its fighting something and not like what Nightfall makes me do.”

“No, not a quest. I just had a question, if you don’t mind me asking,” I explained. “Just a… getting to know you kind of question.”

“You want to get to know me?” he repeated, before sitting up slightly. “This mean you wanna date me? Are we dating?”

“No,” I shook my head, frustrated, but he was already looking between our bowls of porridge.

“We’re eating together. This is a date!” he beamed at me. “I knew the accessories would work! You do like me!”

“To hell with it,” I sighed. “Jackal, what number is your intelligence?”

“Huh? It’s 2/20. Why?”

“No reason. Just getting to know you,” I shook my head. That explained a lot. He was basically a himbo – the big-muscle/tiny-brain masculine version of a bimbo.

“Are you my girlfriend now?” he asked excitedly. Lawd, he was like a golden retriever.

“No, she’s not,” Nightfall said sternly from over my shoulder. “Leave her alone, Jackal. Why don’t you go find the job board and look for some errands to do.”

Jackal snarled at Nightfall, but I pushed my empty bowl away and stood, putting a calming hand on the minotaur-merman’s shoulder.

“I’ve got an appointment with Nightfall. You should definitely go check out the jobs board. Keep out of trouble.”

His snarl faded back into a goofy grin. “Yeah! I’ll go earn some more money and I can take you out for food again!”

I extracted myself and made a hurried exit with Nightfall, keen to get out before I gave Jackal further ideas about us.

“Maybe we should try get him through some university classes. Might have to cheat a bit, but he could do with the extra intelligence points,” I said to Nightfall.

He snorted next to me. “Might make him more tolerable. He’s only really good for brawn or following simple orders. Bruiser has a soft spot for him so I look out for him when I can.”

“You’re a really loyal friend, aren’t you?” I commented, and Nightfall came to a halt by the large gate that led out of the Citadel.

“To Bruiser?” Nightfall asked. “Sure. Although I wouldn’t call it friendship as such. We are allies, and I owe him a lot. More than I can ever repay.”

“I doubt Bruiser thinks of it that way,” I said softly. He was the big-hearted kind of guy that would just help because it was the right thing to do, not because it would make others indebted to him.

“Regardless, I owe him all the same. Now, the first herb we need to find is Bloodroot.”

Bloodroot happened to be one of the main ingredients for blood replenisher and was to be found along the riverbank. We walked along the path until we reached the water’s edge, then wandered along the riverbank until we found sizable clumps of red reeds.

I noticed Nightfall looking at the water distastefully, so I waded in and yanked the reeds out, revealing the bloodroot rhizomes at the base of the stems.

“I see why people just buy the blasted potion,” Nightfall muttered distastefully.

“Here, I got enough for both of us. What’s next?”

It took us about three hours wandering around looking for ingredients, but we finally got all the items on the list that could be found by the river. Exhausted, I invited Nightfall to sit down so we could have lunch. We would follow the edge of the Citadel’s walled perimeter up to the mountains to find the next lot of ingredients.

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I sat down in the shade under a tree, having worked up a sweat, while Nightfall chose a seat in the sun.

“You don’t like water?” I asked him, pulling out a plate, several cinnamon rolls, and some cheese sandwiches from my bag.

“I don’t like the cold,” he said, taking a sandwich and giving me a curious look. “I appreciate that you’re willing to go in there and get it for both of us. Not everyone would.”

“I imagine Bruiser would have sent you in,” I smiled in amusement, thinking of his lessons in the road with me. “He’s definitely one for the hands-on approach.”

He nodded, and finished his sandwich, watching me with his cool gaze the whole time.

“I thought it strange that he would want to commit himself again, but I can see now why he has,” he said thoughtfully. “You’re very unusual."

“Is that what you say to all the girls?” I chuckled.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” I swear if he could have blushed, he would have.

“I’m just teasing. We’re friends now, aren’t we?” I nudged him.

He took another cheese sandwich and considered it for a moment.

“I suppose we are. I do not have many people I would call friends,” he frowned at me as though trying to decipher something. “Emma, as my friend will you tell me… where are you from?”

I chewed my lip. I’d known he was perceptive, and this would come up eventually. I’d hoped we would be a little further through our courses in case he went AWOL on me, but I couldn’t exactly lie now that he’d asked in the name of our budding friendship.

“I used to live in a different world. One without orcs and elves and magic… I tripped and hit my head and I’m not entirely sure how but… I turned up here,” she said. “In my world I’m not a succubus. There are no succubi. Just humans… and… I think this might be the world my boyfriend created using his own dreadful creative skills and a generation kind of… machine.”

Nightfall had crushed his sandwich in his hand rather than eaten it, but his eyes were alight with that fire that seemed to burn in them every time his research came up. I swallowed nervously.

“That spiral bound notebook I found; it had his handwriting in it. He used to write stories about… creatures and worlds like this. I don’t really understand how everything exists but… I think there’s like, some big glaring plot holes and those things like Prindous’ hands, our weird lectures, all the odd things are like… like maybe he left blanks, and the machine filled it in with whatever it thought was best. Or made glitches. Like my bottomless bag. I don’t know. I’m hoping it’ll make more sense when I have more intelligence.”

“You think this story, this machine, created our world?” His voice was dangerously quiet.

“And everything in it,” I nodded. “Including the flaws. I… I see his personality all over the place. With some of the decisions and preferences. And the shortcuts he’s taken. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve wanted to punch him if only I knew how to find him. I’m kind of lost in this world. Bruiser and Brick think he might be a threat to me as well, since I ended up as a hunted species in his world… So, they wanted me to level up a bunch before we go looking for him."

“Do you think he wrote me? My story?” Nightfall asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

I reached out and touched his hand. It was still mildly cold, even though he’d been sitting in bright sunlight all this time.

“He may have written some of the lore of the dark elves, or even done some basic work on your design or your race’s design, but he couldn’t make you, Nightfall. He’s not that talented, trust me. And no matter what created you, your choices are your own. I’m sure of that. I’ve come across a lot of people in this world now, and there’s a big difference between the ones who are sentient and the ones who aren’t.”

He weighed my words, then gave me a small smile.

“Thank you. For telling me all of this.”

“I’m just glad you believed me,” I sighed in relief. He was taking it extraordinarily well. “I hope this won’t change your plans to finish your studies with me.”

“Of course not,” he said, a grim determination lacing his voice. “If anything, it confirms the necessity I stay with you. You… I knew on some level that you were the key I had been waiting for. Come, we should finish up here and go look for the lichen.”

We needed three different types of lichen to finish our list, and it took us a long time walking to find them all. We’d had to start climbing rocks on the north edge of the Citadel to get to the final one.

I was climbing a little above Nightfall, looking for a patch large enough to peel off in one piece when my foot slipped, and I began to fall. Nightfall caught me with surprising strength for his lean frame and pulled me in close to him so I could share his narrow ledge until I caught my breath.

“Thank you,” I gasped, trying to calm my racing heart.

“Not at all,” he said, his voice barely a whisper that I felt on my skin, as close as we were.

He kept his hands firmly on my waist, and had leaned in towards the rock face, but all my mind was processing was his hands on me as mine lay flat in his chest.

I looked up into his face and found him looking at me again with that strange expression. I felt the urge to kiss him, but I couldn’t do that. Not without knowing how he felt. After my whole spiel on how he had free will, I didn’t want to ruin things by accidentally seducing him with my succubus abilities.

His face slowly twisted into a warm smile and for a moment I thought he was going to save me the internal debate and kiss me, but then he whispered into my ear.

“I see our lichen. A few feet down there,” he nodded in just past me and I turned to look. He was right, I could see it thick and red like a carpet, growing in a dip in the rocks that hadn’t been visible on the way up.

The way he was holding me, pulling me into him, my cheek came to rest in his chest, and I felt his heart beating, slow and steady. I found now I was here I didn’t want to let go, even though our objective lay a short distance away.

He was so different. Like a mystery I couldn’t quite figure out, but I knew I wanted to know the answer to. I wondered if this was how he felt about me as well. If his desire to unravel me had become a literal want as well as a figurative idea.

I felt that familiar hum of arousal that plagued my succubus body whenever something started my engine, so I took some deep, calming breaths to try and steady myself. This was not the time to lose my head.

“We should go down and get it,” I whispered, not moving.

“When you’re ready. I’m in no rush.” His hands flexed on my waist, and I felt another rush of desire run through me.

Clearly my succubus sex drive had well and truly recovered since my activities with Brick that morning.

But just like I’d told Nightfall, I believed we had a choice that was stronger than whatever our coding was. Just because my libido was rising, I didn’t have to obey it. If anything was to become of us, I didn’t want it to be a spur of the moment lack of control in the mountains.

I regretfully peeled myself away from him and lowered my body to sit on the ledge, carefully climbing down to where the lichen was. I peeled it off in two large sheets, rolled it up and stuffed it into my bag.

Nightfall helped me climb down the rest of the way, and we returned to the ground with no further accidents, and I kept my eyes trained on the Citadel so they wouldn’t be tempted to trace his elegant elven features.