“We would like to get married,” Dom told the priest.
“Applying to the church for marriage is a serious endeavor, young man,” the officious bag of self-righteous bullshit said as he looked down his pious nose at us. “Marriage is a lifelong commitment that is not to be entered lightly.”
I sat in my most modest dress, my ankles crossed demurely, and recited the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody in my head to keep from jumping the gun on the plan. This was Dom’s big plan, and I would be respectful and let him take the lead like a good little wife. Wait. What was I saying? Dom had decided that pretending that we wanted to get married was a good way to get priests alone. I wasn’t so sure that Dom wasn’t trying to get married for real. I did know that the church was being very Catholic about the whole thing by requiring six months of counseling before one of their priests could deign to perform the ceremony.
Will +2
“We realize that,” Dom sounded very reasonable for a man who was supposed to be killing this priest. “We would like to start the process.”
“Are you sure that you want to consider marriage so young?” the priest continued his pitch, but I have to admit that I wasn’t paying attention. There were two priests outside the little office where we were having this meeting. I was trying to figure out how to get only one of the priests outside to come in the door at a time. The ones outside were levels twenty-five and twenty-six, so I’d rather have taken them on one at a time, but that just might not have been possible.
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 1,512/1,512) (Mana 1,701/1,701) – Blessed
“We’ve actually been married for many years in the jump the broom kinda way and want to solidify it into a permanent reunion,” Dom was saying as I prepped my silence spell in a shape that would block sound from exiting the small square room.
“Why haven’t you gotten married by the church before now?” the priest asked, the programming ignoring the discrepancy of our apparent age now that it no longer fit the script.
“To be honest, we’ve been having some problems,” Dom leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, lacing his fingers together over one knee.
“Wait, what?” I sputtered out, my spell having a jagged edge.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Dom talked over me, ignoring my objecting. “Karma is great, and I love her deeply, but I have some abandonment issues that I think we should address before getting married permanently.”
“Abandonment?” I groped for where the conversation was going and what purpose Dom could have for it.
“These are exactly the concerns that we can address in couples counseling,” the priest leaned forward. Had the nemesis engine binged Frazier?
“What abandonment issues?” I turned to Dom, who acted almost like I wasn’t there at all, not meeting my eyes.
“Karma walked out on our family, disappeared for weeks,” Dom spilled his angst like he was a teenaged girl. “We weren’t even sure she was coming back.”
“Really?” the priest nodded empathetically. “Who is we?”
“Uh,” I cocked my head to the side and stumbled to figure out where this was going.
Intelligence +1
“Our daughter, Karma’s ex-husband and myself,” Dom explained.
“You live together with Karma’s ex-husband?” Monty, the priest, was asking.
“Yes,” Dom frowned, looking down at his boots, boots that I’d made for him and that I wanted to kick his ass with at this moment. “She refused to give up her ex-husband, so he’s been living with us for our whole marriage.”
“This is exactly why couples need counseling before getting married,” Monty nodded. “I think we should set up a counseling schedule. Do Tuesdays and Thursdays in the afternoons work for the two of you?”
“I don’t know,” Dom shook his head. “My wife’s work schedule is so packed tight with projects that it may be hard for her to carve out an hour every Tuesday and Thursday.”
Monty glared at my gaping face like I was a villain with a curling, twisty moustache. I’d had about enough though. “I don’t have enough time for our marriage?!” I demanded, standing up and shoving my chair against the door with my barricade skill. I turned to Dom with my hands on my hips.
Barricade +1
Exp +10 (3,149,194/5,985,462)
“Is she always prone to such a temper?” Monty asked Dom as both men ignored my display. I took that as my cue to knock over a bookcase so that it also helped barricade the door.
“Temper?” and I was starting to feel my temper rise.
“I would have to say that she does have a temper,” Dom admitted in this rational tone that made me want to fireball his ass.
“Abandonment?” I fireballed the priest, which did have a blowback since we were in a relatively small room.
Health -90 (23,076/23,166)
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 1,422/1,512) (Mana 1,701/1,701) – Blessed and Burning (-10/5 seconds)
“What?” Dom quipped, but I could see the smirk in his eyes. He chose to cast a water spell on the burning desk as well as a poison with his other hand at Monty, who was now screaming for the guards, something we ignored because my silence spell was pretty potent. “You did leave us without even a note. I’m not entitled to feel something about it?”
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 1,368/1,512) (Mana 1,701/1,701) – Blessed, Burning and Poisoned (-74/5 seconds)
“I was kidnapped!” I argued, casting Ice Spikes at the priest. My look could kill nowadays.
Dual Spell Wielding +1
Ice Spikes +2
Exp +30 (3,149,224/5,985,462)
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 1,276/1,512) (Mana 1,701/1,701) – Blessed, Burning and Poisoned (-74/5 seconds)
“That doesn’t change the fact that I was raising our daughter all by myself while you were off galivanting in your own little world,” Dom sounded reasonable. It was his superpower to be able to say the most outrageous of things and sound perfectly reasonable. At least he was casting an offensive spell at Monty, who had started trying to beat out the fire on his robes while casting a heal.
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 1,184/1,512) (Mana 1,701/1,701) – Blessed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“I could as easily say that you abandoned me by letting me be kidnapped,” I snapped, not amused by Dom’s playfulness. Maybe I did have some issues over the whole thing, but the thought of bringing them to NPC counseling that could not possibly understand the circumstances was ludicrous. I cast a repair spell on the desk with one hand while glaring Ice Spikes at the priest.
Ice Spikes +1
Exp +10 (3,149,234/5,985,462)
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 1,116/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“We may need more counseling,” the priest was saying in a weird way because he also cast Summon Bolt, not that it did more damage than my own fireball, making it something we pretty much ignored. “We should set you up with someone higher level to help you.”
Health -6 (23,070/23,166)
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. When we’d first entered counseling, it had been because I’d found out our whole family was, in some form, autistic and we had no idea how we were supposed to deal with that. Our church had suggested counseling with a woman just starting out as a counselor who was hoping to someday specialize in autism. Maybe she’d been expecting to deal with the cute little kids who were happy all the time but whose parents just didn’t know how to let them zone out. What she’d gotten was a family of crazy-smart autistic folks who had mastered masking so well, they’d fooled themselves into thinking they were neurotypical. She’d passed us off to a more experienced professional too.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Higher level?” I ranted. “Are you saying that I’m too crazy for you?” Okay, maybe I had some issues with that too. I had been patient and understanding until I’d realized that the place we’d gone to had canceled our appointments with the higher professional because we’d started with the lower one. Then the higher one was too busy for six months while my family battled this bombshell on our own. I pumped my frustration into my magic into a lightning bolt that undid all the repair I’d done on the desk even as it made Monty’s hair stand on end.
Lightning +1
Exp +10 (3,149,244/5,985,462)
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 1,012/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
Dom countered with a Charm spell that he cast on the priest, who then seemed to whiplash into a sympathetic figure that looked very insane behind that still smoking desk. “I think we all need to sit down and talk this through,” Monty said.
“What the hell, Dom?” I cast more repair and clean spells.
Basic Build +1
Exp +10 (3,149,254/5,985,462)
“I figured we were both a little strung out,” he shrugged, not quite realizing that I wasn’t in on the joke of it all.
“You do seem tense,” Monty put in and I cast Ice Spikes at him just because his caring face reminded me of the woman that we’d finally gotten for counseling right around the time that Dom really had walked out on us. He’d run off to his mommy who had given him rent money so he could live on his own while we still paid the bills. She had been all about looking at the fact that I’d managed to talk Dom into coming home and wasn’t it better that he walked off his temper than taking it out on me?
Duel Spell Wielding +1
Ice Spikes +2
Exp +30 (3,149,284/5,985,462)
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 920/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“You do,” Dom cast another charm and the priest sat back down.
“I’m not having this discussion with you,” I threw up my hands.
“We should just sit down and talk about this,” Monty was saying.
“Talk about what?” I screamed, fed up with this whole farce. “He walked out on me, and I was kidnapped away and still somehow this is all MY fault?”
“You do seem to be the one most upset,” Monty of the Don King hair that was still quite singed from the lightning was sitting calmly trying to tell me to be calm.
“Nothing good comes from bottling it up,” Dom reasoned, and I cast another lightning just because I was mad and could. I cast it at the priest, really I did. I might have missed. No, I didn’t miss. I hit the priest. I’m a good fucking wife, damn it.
Lightning +1
Exp +10 (3,149,294/5,985,462)
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 816/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“How’s that for uncorking this bottle?” I put my hands out to Dom. “Do you want a taste of it too?”
“Take your shot,” Dom’s eyes narrowed, even as he cast charm again. “You’re not the only one with issues.”
“You left me first!” I raged, and I’ll admit I wasn’t really thinking straight. Dom was one of the only people who could do that to me. I was normally a very reasonable person. Dom and his reasonable-sounding absurdities were the epitome of unfairness in that autistic part of my lizard brain that just could not deal with the injustice of life itself.
“We can talk about this,” the priest stuttered out, his poor little NPC mind quivering between attacking and counseling us.
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 724/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“You can’t out psych me!” I yelled at Dom. “I’m the one with the psych degree!”
“And you didn’t have enough time for us while you were getting it,” Dom crossed his arms over his chest and stood toe to toe with me. He loomed over me by about a foot and we both knew how I hated that. “And yet I put up with late nights of studying and helped you get that degree while you didn’t have time for date night months at a time.”
Intelligence +1
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 740/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“We just had a month of date nights!” I stepped back, getting out from under his loom, grabbing a stack of thick religious tomes and stacking them. What? It made sense to me. “How can you be upset so soon after the honeymoon? It’s like I can’t do anything but date night or you feel like I don’t love you!”
“Do you think maybe the abandonment issues are more deeply seated than that?” Monty suggested, seated again on a chair that Dom repaired before it collapsed under Monty. “Tell me about your childhood, Dom.”
Ice Spikes +1
Exp +10 (3,149,304/5,985,462)
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 632/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“It was great, Monty,” Dom insisted through grit teeth. “I was a typical gen-x kid with parents who were more interested in their careers than raising their kids.”
“Yeah, but they did leave you,” I calmed myself enough to say, stepping up on the books so that I was eye level with Dom. “Your senior year, during the divorce, you wanted to live with your mom, but she wanted to move out of state. Then both your mom and dad left you with church members for your senior year.”
Will +1
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 540/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“You want to go there?” Dom eyed me. At least he gave me the stink eye once those same eyes had stopped their epic-level eye roll-ercoaster at my stack of books.
“That sounds like a valid issue,” Monty was saying, and we pretty much ignored him. Well, except that I was still casting Ice Spikes and Dom was recharming Monty after each strike. Monty wasn’t doing so well on health, but he didn’t seem to notice that fact.
Perception +1
Ice Spikes +1
Exp +10 (3,149,314/5,985,462)
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 448/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“Yes, I want to go there,” I insisted, refusing to get off my stack of books even when Dom sat back down. “I’m not the cause of your abandonment issues and I have plenty of them on my own without your help because I was a latchkey kid too. My dad chased his own dick halfway across the country on a midlife crisis that turned him from a history teacher into a truck driver.”
“Your dad walked on water,” Dom protested, crossing his arms again. “You say it so much that I am absolutely certain I’m a terrible father in comparison.”
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 356/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“I don’t compare you to my dad,” I protested, now stepping off my perch. I leaned against the desk, but stayed just a little higher than Dom. What? I really hate that looming thing. I wasn’t short, but Dom was tall. Most of the time I liked it. I didn’t like it when we were fighting.
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 264/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701)) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“I do,” Dom almost sulked, deflating my anger the rest of the way.
“You’re a great dad,” I told him. “Tons better than your dad. He was an abusive asshole!”
“You were abused?” Monty asked. The engine had to have binge-watched Frasier. It sounded just like an old sit-com version of a shrink.
Perception +1
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 172/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“Sure,” I answered for Dom. “His dad would take out the belt anytime dad was upset whether the kids deserved it or not, and that doesn’t even take into consideration that he chased the skirts of half his foster kids, all of which were little girls.” I didn’t pull punches with Dom’s dad. Dom’s preacher dad had been an abusive jerk, and we’d spent so much time trying to make sure that Dom didn’t follow in his dad’s footsteps.
Lower Priest Montgomery level 21 (Health 80/1,512) (Mana 1,541/1,701) – Blessed, Charmed and Poisoned (-64/5 seconds)
“Dad didn’t call it abuse,” Dom hedged, and I sat and pulled my repaired chair back to face Dom. Oh yeah, Monty had died. That was okay. I’d rather have this discussion in private anyway, not that NPCs would remember much.
You have killed Lower Priest Montgomery – Exp +851 (3,150,165/5,985,462)
“You broke the chain, babe,” I pulled his arms off his chest and held his hands clasped in mine over his knees. “That took so much strength.” Inside every man was a broken child. The same could be said about women and me.
“You weren’t there for so long,” Dom muttered, and he didn’t do it in that whiny way of sulk, but rather in that honest way that a man speaks only to his wife. “I had to be you, and I can’t be you.”
“You did fine,” I assured him, refreshing the silence spell on the room. “She’s healthy and happy.”
“She wasn’t when I left,” Dom leaned back, his admission reluctant. “Then she joined the circus! What the hell?”
“We left her, like our parents deserted us,” I finally realized what this was really about.
“We’d been trying so hard to break the chains,” Dom put his hands through his hair, and all I could do was lay my head on his lap.
“We did our best, just like our stupid parents did their best,” I blew out a breath. “All we can do is hope it was enough.”
“A circus,” Dom muttered, his gentle hand on my head belying the anger in his tone.
“You acted okay with it,” I told him, crawling into his lap to wrap my arms around his head. This was the way that Dom did things. It was all about someone else until I beat him back to his own issues. “I thought you were okay.”
“The circus?!?” he lamented, and I gave a little laugh that was muffled by his hair.
“You got to kill Cliff,” I tried to console him, understanding from our experience with each other that his angst was pretty much over.
“It wasn’t the same,” Dom grumped, finally wrapping his arms around me. “He was a girl.”
“Poor baby,” I teased him, patting his head. “Should I hit the restart button so we can summon him as himself and kill him that way?”
“Yes,” Dom stated.
“How about we just kill those priest guards instead,” I suggested, knowing that a restart wasn’t the answer.
“It isn’t the same,” Dom shook his head, and I was pretty sure he knew the restart wasn’t the answer either. Still, I’d have done it for Dom. There wasn’t much either of us wouldn’t do for the other.
“I’ll disguise one of them to look like Cliff,” I promised, my face trying to smile even as I tried to look sincere.
“Okay, I’ll try it,” Dom agreed.
Dom’s crows are very good at mockery now, so he used Spite to mimic Monty’s voice to call in only one of the guards at a time, where we dispatched their Cliff-like faces with prejudice. It was easy enough that I almost thought we could take out the high priest without trickery, at least until I remembered the smite spell. It was just too risky to try to get enough heals off before the final stroke and I still remembered Dom dying.
“Shall I make an appointment for Thursday?” Dom asked as we looted the last corpse.
“Why wait?” I bantered back to him. “Tomorrow night.”
Comedy +1
Exp +10 (3,150,175/5,985,462)
“I’ll see what I can do but they may try to shunt us off on another plebe on such short notice,” he warned me seriously.
“I think I can handle that if you can,” I nodded sagely.