I appreciated the picture-perfect cinnamon roll in my hands for a moment before eating it. Unlike in the real world, where what you ordered would probably be a squished and soggy version of whatever was advertised, every single one of the rolls at the stall Bruiser had taken me to were identical in their perfection.
Along with potential homeownership and Brick, this was one of my new favourite things about this world. It was just a shame about all the ridiculous junk James had filled the world up with.
“Have you got an ambition, Emma?” Bruiser asked me around his mouthful of food. He had a streak of buttery cinnamon along his cheek. I licked my thumb and wiped it off, feeling more comfortable with him than I had that morning. It helped that he wasn’t naked, he’d taken me shopping and bought me food. Three ingredients to a pleasant date.
I withdrew my hand quickly and returned my focus to my roll. I shouldn’t think about dating him, especially when Brick had only been gone for just over a week.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Is that something you can select?”
I hadn’t seen a place I could select an ambition, but maybe this was like Crusader Kings 2 – a game of James’ I’d tried to figure out but kept finding hidden menus all over the place. I’d played more games when I was younger, but it had been a frustrating experience. I was always outnumbered by guys, and whenever I’d not known how to do something, they’d just laugh at me and say derogatory things about me being a wannabe gamer girl instead of just telling me what I needed to know. Somehow, my gender always came back into it, although I never understood why. Maybe they thought I was trying to operate games with a joystick using my va-jay-jay.
“It’s not something you can select in a menu,” Bruiser answered me patiently. “It’s something internal, a goal that you have for yourself. Something to guide you.”
I guess this was where my personality failed at this kind of game. I’d never completed a single RPG. I’d always get waylaid by the side quests and then give up when it failed to capture my attention. I much preferred games like The Sims, where you just mucked around making people and watching them make messes of their lives. It made me feel so much better about the mess I’d made of my own. Settling for an accounting job because it was steadier income than trying to find something that engaged me more. Moving in with James despite not really being at the place in our relationship where I wanted to, because it was cheaper to pay rent as a couple than it was to be single. It was no wonder we weren’t happy. I didn’t even know if I could blame James for obsessing over this world over the last few months. One of his friends from his course had died a few months back, just as he’d been getting into it and then he’d been glued to the screen, operating on energy drinks and sugar for longer than I had patience for.
But sitting here, I wondered if it had been his escape. There was a lot to love about this world, and probably more for James to love than I did, since he was the one to invent all the crap that I hated. I wondered if he’d found his way inside this world as well, if he’d ever figured out the transition that I’d accidentally stumbled into. If we’d ever find each other.
“What’s your ambition?” I asked Bruiser.
“I want to avenge Elise,” he said grimly. “I want to wipe out the last necromancer.”
“There’s only one left?” I asked in surprise. “I thought there was like, a whole bunch of them over near the Necromancer Heights or something.”
Bruiser gave me a long look. “I’ve been sniffing out information for years now. The Necromancer Wars ended with a few large bangs and then sort of… fizzled out. There might be more than one, but the rumour from the crows is that there’s only one left. Sits locked away in his tower and disappears for long periods of time between sightings. Sounds very suspicious to me.”
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“I see.” I rubbed my jaw thoughtfully. “That’s a pretty serious goal.”
“And?” Bruiser prompted. “What’s yours? What do you want?”
I’d never had an ambition before. I’d had small goals like ‘get my accounting diploma’ and ‘save money to buy a house’ but never a long-term over-arching goal that had to do with my personality or my desires. They were all just… practical things. Maybe I’d just needed some evil necromancers in my world to give me some motivation.
“I guess I… I don’t know,” I frowned. “I kind of wanted to just get a house and live quietly. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, I think. A place to feel safe and at home. When we heard that there was a little property in Market Town, it just sounded perfect. The three of us were going in together, but I thought I could open a little apothecary and have a place like Lily.”
“Do you know how to make potions?” Bruiser quirked an eyebrow at me.
“I’d hoped I would be able to learn from books, but I haven’t been having much luck,” I shrugged. “Maybe I can actually read them now with my new glasses.”
“You’d be better off going to university and completing a degree. That’ll give you a decent start. Another three points plus your dorky glasses and you’ll get to 10/20. That might make it easier to run a store. You’ll be struggling to make a decent variety of potions otherwise.”
I finished my roll and licked the cinnamon off my fingers, then lay back on the grass and looked at the shifting sky.
“I really don’t want to go back to university,” I said after a moment. “I barely made it out with my diploma last time.”
I turned my head to see Bruiser watching me with a strange intensity.
“Where do you come from, Emma?”
I swallowed. Every time I’d mentioned it around others, they’d skirted around the idea that I came from another reality like they couldn’t comprehend it. But Bruiser was looking directly at me. I sat back up and looked deep into his eyes. They burned with a ferocious curiosity. I felt like he was staring through the avatar – the horns and the tail and the body I’d fallen into – and was looking directly at me.
“This may sound crazy…” I whispered, hoping beyond anything he would understand and believe me. “But I think… I think this world is a story, or a… a world that my boyfriend from my world wrote. You probably don’t have computers here, but you’ve got machines, right? He made something with the help of machines, and I kind of… fell into it by accident. I don’t belong here.”
Bruiser stared at me for a long moment before saying anything. “You’re saying that the god of this world is your boyfriend?”
I sorted. “I suppose, but don’t call him that. He’s a total dork. His name is James.”
His expression turned thoughtful, and I asked him what he was thinking, but he shook his head. “I’m not sure you want to know.”
“Please?”
“It might spoil your dream of a quiet life with Brick at your side.”
My stomach dropped, but I persevered. “It sounds like the kind of thing that I should know then.”
He sighed. “If your boyfriend created this world – a world where there is great evil and necromancers have killed off most of the succubus, yet you are a succubus, I can only think of two possible scenarios. Either you are in very grave danger, or he is ignorant of your presence here and you will be in grave danger when you are discovered. If you are a person of such great importance, I imagine you will not be safe until the last necromancers are gone from this world and your ‘James’ is found and interrogated about his intentions: both for yourself and this world.”
My stomach churned. “Then what should I do?”
“Level Up,” Bruiser said, shifting closer to me and grabbing my shoulder. “Level Up with urgency. Do not wait for Brick to come home. If you are found, you should be ready.”
I chewed on my lip with anxiety. I’d never been good at these games. If James was here, he was probably stupidly overpowered. Although I’d love to find him and give him a piece of my mind, I didn’t particularly want to do it as a Level Four succubus.
“I guess that should be my new ambition then,” I whispered.
“I will stay by your side and help you,” Bruiser swore, squeezing my shoulder gently with his large hand. “I won’t let you meet the same fate as Elise.”
I guessed this was the main plot. Or my main plot, if this was like one of those big sandbox game worlds where multiple people could be doing different things.
And I’d spent a week fucking around in the Tutorial. Typical.