I could hear the fight before I even got close to The Sleepy Dragon, so I was ready to duck when a chair was launched out of the window, although it was still a near miss.
I tentatively edged closer and peered through the broken glass shocked at the scene that was unfolding before me.
Brick had another orc in a headlock and was trying to pull him away from Kira, who was slashing vicious claw marks into the back of another orc who had his hands over his face and blood spurting out between his fingers.
Bastion seemed to be totally drunk and was launching empty mugs at a goblin, who was picking the pieces of glass up and flinging them right back at him.
There were at least three other skirmishes happening around the tavern, and several unfinished dinners spilled on the floor that indicated other patrons had fled.
The orc that Brick was holding managed to wrench himself free, stumbled forwards and slammed into the door next to me.
“This ain’t over, ya grindin’ tree huggers,” the orc shouted as he righted himself and shuffled out the door. I only just realized that the other orc had escaped Kira’s claws and fled as well, as the goblin shoved me backwards and out of the way.
“You’re right, this ain’t over! You’ll be paying for all the damage!” Kira hissed angrily, racing to shout out the door at them.
One of the other fighting duos quit punching and tried clamouring out a window, but Kira hauled them back in by the seat of their pants and fleeced them for all the coins they had left on them.
Feliskin could be quite terrifying when angry.
I edged towards Brick, intending to shelter behind his colossal frame until the danger was over. He flashed me an embarrassed smile, then went to assist Bastion, who was stumbling around drunkenly in the broken glass, still looking for the goblin.
“You idiot,” I heard Brick mutter under his breath as he picked his brother up and seated him on a table away from the glass.
Bastion seemed to have immediately forgotten the goblin, and was now trying to eat someone’s unfinished meal, even though the plate was upside down.
Feeling bad for Brick, and a little responsible for leaving Bastion alone after I saw how miserable he had left Lily’s place, I started cleaning up the broken glass and placing it into a large bin.
“Although I’m really glad you came back, it might have been better if you hadn’t. Kira’s fuming,” Brick told me in a hushed tone. “Bastion started it.”
I nodded but didn’t want to add to the problem, so kept quietly and diligently cleaning up the mess. It wasn’t that much worse than a frat party, although there was more blood than vomit.
Finally, Kira had finished evicting the other brawlers and turned to us. I glanced back at Bastion, but he’d curled up and was falling asleep on the tavern table, using a plate of mashed potato as his pillow.
Kira levelled Brick with a panther-like stare that sent shivers down my spine. Despite being half Brick’s size, she looked intimidating as hell.
“I’m sorry Kira,” Brick began, but the cat cut him off with a hiss.
“Do you have any idea how much damage your idiot brother caused? I’ll be cleaning this up for a week! It’ll take me that long at least to get replacement crockery in,” Kira growled, advancing on him with her claws extended. “You know how much this is going to cost me? Five hundred gold at least, not including lost business.”
“I’m really sorry, Kira. You know he’s been having a hard time this past year, I-”
“I don’t care if he’d got a broken heart. I’ll break his head,” Kira hissed, her hair standing on end very much like an angry cat.
“Before anything else is broken, can I just say something?” I stepped in front of Brick, afraid she was really going to lash out at him.
Kira levelled me with a death stare.
“Continuing the fight isn’t going to help anyone,” I said, dumping my current handful of broken glass in the trash. “I’d like to get this cleaned up as much as possible now, then Brick and I can help with whatever else needs to be done in the morning and we can settle the debt with cooler heads.”
Kira growled again, but her hair slicked back, and she took a calming breath.
“Get that idiot out of my sight and clean up after yourselves. We’ll talk in the morning,” she agreed, locked the front door, and stormed off.
“You better get him to our room,” I said, looking over Bastion. “Is he hurt?”
Brick rolled him over and I noticed he had a few cuts, but nothing that looked life threatening.
I grabbed a wet cloth and wiped the mashed potato off his face, then cleaned his cuts and sang softly over him, remembering Lily’s advice to practice as much as I could.
“You’re such an idiot, but you’re growing on me,” I sang, watching his cuts heal over with amazement. “It seems silly, I need you like a cat needs fleas.”
Brick snorted at my lyrics and I offered him a tired grin, which he returned.
“Thanks Emma,” he said when I finished up. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He disappeared with Bastion, and I moved around the room, cleaning up the spilled food and dumping it in the trash then wiping down the table with a generous amount of water. Some of the grime looked well-baked into the wood, so I got it as good as I could before moving on to the next one.
Finishing my third table, I looked up to find Brick staring at me with an odd expression on his face.
“What?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious.
“Nothing,” he shook his head, then looked back at me again. “I like the new look. It fits you.”
I shrugged. “It still doesn’t feel like me, but I’ll take what I can get at the moment. Could you help me lift that table up?”
Brick moved to one of the tables that had been tipped onto its side and made to heave it up before grunting and stumbling to the side.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“What’s wrong?” I gasped, noticing suddenly the dark green ooze coming from a wound on his back. “Oh! Oh! Is that your blood?”
“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “If you’ve got any more of that scabby-grow it’ll do the trick.”
“I can do you one better than that,” I said, rummaging in my satchel for my vial of slime. “I mean, if you don’t mind? I’ve never used it before.”
“Course I don’t mind,” Brick said, stunned. “Although I’m surprised you want to waste that on my sorry hide.”
“Don’t say that,” I chided him, then poured a small amount on my finger. It still glistened pearlescent white, shimmering in the firelight. I was equally intrigued by its properties and grossed out, but tried not to think about where it came from as I smeared it over the cut, watching it heal at a much faster rate than my song had done. I noticed then that he was covered in tiny cuts as well. They were much less serious than his other wounds, but they still must hurt. I went to treat them as well, but he grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t waste that on me,” he said. “They’ll heal up okay. Or… or you could sing a song for me.”
I met his eyes, noticing how close we’d come again, and with a shaky breath I pushed the cork back into the neck of my vial and returned it to my satchel. Then I turned back to him and placed my hands on his chest, watching the goose pimples rise under my touch.
I shook my head, thinking about how my plans had been derailed. I’d intended to come back and say a possible goodbye, before trying to exit this place, but I was well and truly sucked in now. I couldn’t leave with things like this.
“Silly orc, did you think I wouldn’t come home?
Silly orc, don’t you know how much I missed you?
Truth is, I’ve not been able to stop thinking of you,
Ever since I kissed you…”
The cuts had healed over, and his skin was flawless once again, other than the older scars which remained scattered in raised lines all over his torso. I traced one with my fingertip, but before I got to the end of it, Brick captured my mouth in a kiss.
When he finally withdrew, I was left gasping for breath.
“Brick,” I gasped. “I… I’m seeing stars.”
No, wait.
I furrowed my brow in confusion.
LEVEL UP!
Mitsy
Race: Succubus
Class: Healer
Level Two
Health: 120
Mana: 120
“I’m seeing… I’m seeing…” I clamped my eyes shut and focused.
“I levelled up?” I blinked, looking at Brick in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“You did just heal me,” Brick shrugged.
“But it was… it was during the kiss,” I insisted. “Is there a way to see where I got my experience?”
“Close your eyes and look under your stats,” Brick instructed.
I closed my eyes and focused until could see my details again.
Mitsy
Race: Succubus
Class: Healer
Level Two
Health: 120
Mana: 120
I kept looking a little lower and came across some more stats. It felt weird, like scrolling down a list using a VR headset.
Abilities: Healing Song, Succubus Slime, Persuasion, Seduction
Intelligence: 5
Charisma: 18
Stamina: 15
Strength: 5
Magic: 16
Dexterity: 15
“Um, what do the numbers mean?” I asked, a little concerned and offended at how low my intelligence appeared to be. “And what are they out of?”
“The maximum is twenty. Why do you ask?”
“Uh, no reason,” I blushed.
“You should be looking right under that. The most recent should be on the top.”
EXPERIENCE LOG
LEVEL UP! Mitsy = Level Two
Seduction: 5 points
Healing: 5 points
Healing: 5 points
Healing: 5 points
Persuasion: 5 Points
I felt sick. I’d gotten points for seduction? Was this the pheromone trick Lily had mentioned?
I scooted away from Brick, who was looking at me with an expression of concern.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I got points. For seduction,” I said, backing further away from him. “I don’t want you to like me because of magic. That’s like… like a love potion or something.”
Brick looked unconcerned. “You can’t help what you are. As a warrior class, I get a couple points every time I smack something, even if it’s as small as a bug. I’m not surprised if you get points for kissing or flirting.”
“But I don’t want to be like Lily. I don’t want to do to you what she did to Bastion. I just… I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to think you only like me because of pheromones or magic or whatever.”
“I don’t like you just because of magic,” Brick insisted. “I like you, and you happen to be magic. There’s a difference.”
“It just feels weird to get points for something like that,” I said, chewing on my lip. “I don’t want to feel like I’m tricking you or something. If I want love, I want it to be real. I… I think I want to go home now.”
I slammed my eyes shut and searched for an exit. A big X or an ESC key or something, but when I finally gave up, Brick was still sitting in front of me, patiently waiting for my breakdown to finish.
“Do you want to head up to bed?” Brick offered. “I can finish up here. It’s not really your mess, anyway.”
“No, I… let me help. I could use something to do.”
We worked in companionable silence, sweeping up the last of the glass and wiping the drying blood off the barstools until we’d run out of things to do.
I watched Brick out of the corner of my eye and began to wonder at his existence again. I was sure this world was James’ fanfiction now, because it used a levelling system like this, and I was sure I wasn’t familiar enough with it for my subconscious to create it.
But that story was based on another universe that other people had made, and then I knew James had also been using AI generators to make characters and story elements for him for months as well.
I didn’t understand how any of it really worked, or how it could come to life, but for the first time, I began to wonder which parts of this world were designed by whom.
Who came up with Brick? He was everything I liked in a guy: patient, calm, steady, strong and muscular, and super sweet. The fact he was an orc was almost a non-event when I thought about the way I felt about him. We had such chemistry, more than I’d felt with James in recent months. But had James created Brick, or was he a pre-existing character, or something created by an AI robot?
I thought in stunned silence about that weird conspiracy theory that the whole world was some AI program and we all lived inside of it. It seemed suddenly less weird now. Could I have glitched and gone from one computer program into another?
My head was starting to hurt, and I felt like I had run my 5/20 intelligence to its limit.
“Come on,” Brick approached me, grasping me firmly by the shoulders. “We’ve done enough. The rest can wait until morning. Kira’s probably going to send us on some crazy quest after that to pay our debts. Gotta do it though, as I don’t fancy trying to find another tavern that’ll put up with us as well as Kira does.”
“And you’ll want me to come with you?” I asked unsteadily.
“If you’re willing,” Brick said. “You’ve already seen just how useful you can be. I wasn’t kidding when I said we could do with a Healer.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “You’re not going to get me killed though, right?”
“Not if I can help it,” Brick grinned, then realized that wasn’t as encouraging as he had intended. “Hey, don’t look so worried. If it starts looking dicey, we’ll run and abandon the quest. I’m not one to push on if I think my teammates can’t handle it. And I won’t let Bastion get you killed either.”
“Okay.”
We reached the bedroom, and I looked at Bastion’s sleeping form with growing fondness. He was annoying as heck, but I felt like I was starting to get to know him now.
“Brick?”
He turned to me and listened attentively as soon as I’d said his name.
“What do you think about the potions that use body parts in them?” I asked cautiously.
“Do you mean necromancer’s potions?” he asked, looking thoughtful.
“No, like… like succubus slime,” I bit my lip. “Are you ever grossed out or concerned about where it comes from?”
“Oh,” Brick shrugged. “Not really. Once it becomes a potion, it’s kind of its own thing. I mean, if you ever have a strengthening potion, there’s a possibility there’s some of my toenails in it. And Bastion sometimes gives up strands of his hair for invisibility solutions. It’s best not to think about it. Why?”
“I was just wondering,” I blushed. “It feels kind of weird to give it away.”
“Bastion’s got a theory succubus are venomous, and they excrete it from glands in their mouths,” Brick ventured.
“I’m not venomous,” I laughed. “But Lily said it needs to be kept a secret, and… I can kind of see why. I don’t like some of the things about her life, but I agree with that, at least.”
“I won’t ask then.”
“We should get some sleep,” I yawned. “Tomorrow sounds like a big day.”
“Hmm,” Brick nodded. “If I invited you to share my bed, would it count as me seducing you and not the other way around?”
I blinked at his bluntness, then laughed.
“I meant it when I said we should sleep, you know.”
“No funny business, I promise,” he grinned at me.
“All right,” I yawned, and followed him to his bed. It creaked under his weight, and I slid in under the covers and nestled under his shoulder. His other arm draped over my body and made me feel enclosed and safe. I felt my tail twine itself around one of his legs as I let out a final yawn and fell into a deep sleep.