“Donum, wake up!”

Blearily, I cracked an eye open. The morning light filtered into my retina like a thick syrup, distorting whatever image I would have gotten beyond all recognition. Squeezing my eye shut again, I blinked rapidly to try to bring it into focus. I was laying on my side next to the sitting rock, my face in the dirt with, I just now noticed, one hell of a crick in my neck. Worse, my mouth felt like it was lined in fur. Had I been snoring?

Slowly, the events of the previous evening started coming back to me. I had been trying to keep watch, afraid that we might be attacked by whatever might be out in those woods — be it monster or man. Apparently, I had lost my battle with drowsiness at some point and slumped to the ground.

I had been having a dream. Something about school? Why was my heart pounding?

“Donum! Please, mate. Give us a hand, here,” the muffled sound came again.

Groaning, I rolled over to my back and gave a long stretch. My back protested mightily at having been so long in that cramped position. Lazily sitting up, my oh-so-warm bedroll fell from around my shoulders. Shivering a bit, I looked around, idly wiping the soil from my cheek. The early morning air had dewed every available surface, making it feel as if it had just rained despite there being not a cloud in the sky. My eyes tracked the light to see that the sun had just risen over the horizon. It was Fall, so that would put it… well, I did not know. But it felt early.

“Donum! I can hear you movin’! Wake up, man!” Whatever it was, it was coming from nearby.

My eyes had been trying to drift closed once more, and I inhaled swiftly to try to fight the sensation. Head wobbling, I turned, hoping to find the source of the noise. Across the fire pit from me, someone’s legs were kicking around from underneath another bedroll.

I blinked a few times as I focused on the motion. Oh, right. Jax.

“W—” my voice popped, and I coughed roughly to clear the phlegm from my throat. “Whajyawan,” I croaked out.

“Donum! Donum! Oh, merciful Maeve. Help us out! I can nay move!” Jax called from underneath his den.

My eyes were still still trying to register what I was looking at, much less understand Jax's plea. Were… were his pants around his ankles? I rubbed at my eyes. Ugh… Why am I so tired? How long did I sleep? Lethargically, the rest of the previous evening began to filter through my sleep addled mind. I began to laugh quietly at the memory, my shoulders shaking in my mirth.

“Fer fuck’s sake, man. Hurry up! I’m stuck!” Jax pleaded.

Confused, yet still trying to contain my inane giggling, I asked, “What… What do you mean ‘you’re stuck’? Just get up.”

“Away you, ya melt! Do ye think I would nay if’n I could’a? Me arms are a tingle, an’ every time I move I rip at me wally!” he yelled.

What? My laugher died a bit as I tried to process Jax's garbled English. “Your arms… oh, your arms are asleep?” I slowly stumbled to my feet, pulling the thick blanket of the bedroll back around my shoulders, and walked to stand over Jax's still kicking form. “Can’t you roll over?”

“Nay, ya fuckin’ barmpot! I told ya! Me knob’s caught on sommat!” I started picking up a panicked edge to his voice from under the roll.

“Your knob…” I said slowly. I knew that one from somewhere. Stepping around to where his head should be, I squatted down and lifted up the thick covering, “Are you saying that your penis is stuck?” As I said the word, a snort of laughter escaped, and I could not help but to smile. Not wanting Jax to see my reaction, I covered my mouth with my hand, but it was too late.

“T’ain’t funny, ya lavvy-headed wankstain!” he growled up at me, squinting at the light. “It hurts!”

Trying not to laugh, which, of course, made it worse, I said, “W-well, what do you want me to do? Try to roll you over?”

“Nay!” he yelled in genuine panic. “Sommat’s got me, I tell yer! Ya gotta get me unstuck first.”

“Ge-get you…” My eyes squeezed shut and tears started leaking out of the corners of my eyes. “You’ve got to be out of your Maiden-cursed mind.”

He looked up at me like a puppy being denied scraps at the dinner table, “Do nay be like that, mate. You’d nay leave yer good lilim in the clutch, would ye? I been good to ya, ain’t I?”

My head tilted back, and I frowned in laughing disgust, “Alright, alright. Don’t beg.”

Shaking my head at what I was about to do, I pulled the bedroll off of him to survey the situation. Jax was lying on the ground as I had left him last night, face down and bare ass to the sky. Both of his arms were tucked under his torso, I saw. That, at least, would explain why he could not feel them.

Looking away and trying to delay, I asked, “So… what do you want me to do here? Reach under and…” I snorted again, “What? Feel around?”

He sighed, “I ain’t happy about it, am I? Just… just do nay think about it, alright?”

Yeah, like that was possible. Tossing my own bedroll over by the sitting rock, I squatted down just next to his backside. Staring at the hairless globes for a moment, I closed my eyes as what I was about to do started sinking in. Was this really better than sitting bored all day at Steg-o-Call? I mean, my life had not been that bad had it? That I would trade it in for… for this? I was arguing like I had a choice in the matter.

“Look, are ya gonna do it or are ya gonna stare at me arse all day?” Jax pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Argh… just… alright. Yell or something if… I dunno.” I grasped my hands together a few times to steel myself and slowly began to worm the fingers of my right hand underneath his warm flesh. For some reason, the heat shocked me, as if I had somehow expected him to be cold like a lizard. Pushing forward, my fingers met something firm yet yielding and soft.

Jax gasped and looked over at me, “Careful! Don’t jostle me wrinkle-bag.”

Shivering, I instantly pulled back, “Ugh, could really do without the euphemisms right now.”

“Could ye now?” he began mildly. “Well, I could really do without the belly-achin’! Cause I can nay feel nothin’ above me waist and me blasted sapling be yanked by the roots!” his voice kept getting louder until he was yelling.

“Oh… you are going to owe me so big after this,” I said, sliding forward once more. Going in a little higher this time, I was soon obstructed by his hands. “Do you want me to try to pull your arms out first?” I asked, yanking lightly at his elbow.

“That would be lovely, aye. Ugh… I’m pins and needles all over,” he moaned.

Giving a firm tug, his left arm came away easily enough. It flopped on the ground like a week-old dead fish, lines and spots of red marking his pale flesh from where it had been mashed against the ground. When I went to remove his right arm, however…

“Ack!” he gave a high-pitched yelp. “No! Yer pullin’ at me!”

I frowned. Quickly, wriggling my hand underneath him again — having set aside my disgust in favor of just wanting to get this over with — I felt around until the problem presented itself. When it did, my eyes tried to escape up into the top of my skull.

“Oh, Bline, give me strength.” So saying, I reached my other hand under him and heaved.

“Ahh! What ‘er ya…” his protest was interrupted as he was rolled over to his back, completely unharmed. Now exposed, his ‘problem’ was quite obvious to the both of us. His own hand had been wrapped around his member, apparently glued tightly by his dried seed.

We looked at each other in horror for a moment, but in a situation like that, something had to give. Slowly, Jax began to break, the corners of his mouth twitching. My lips pursed, and my eyebrows began screwing up into my forehead in response.

A bird flew from the trees, disturbed by a couple of donkeys braying in the early morning air.

I was going about our camp, collecting our various debris from the night before, and preparing us for the next day’s journey. Jax had excused himself to wash up at the stream and had taken his clothes with him. Apparently, his laundry was in a situation of dire need, and given certain puzzle pieces that had recently come to light, I did not blame him in the slightest.

Evidently, Jax had been experiencing episodes of… well… intense sexual pleasure, to put it as politely as possible. This was something that he had been loath to talk about. I hardly blamed him. Here we were, two straight men of rather diverse backgrounds forced together through unusual circumstances, and suddenly, one of us starts uncontrollably spackling their pantaloons? I snorted. There was a certain humor to the whole situation, though I doubted very much that he thought so.

I paused. Was Jax straight? I had assumed he was based on some of our conversations, but he had never explicitly said so. My lips twisted a bit, then I shook my head. It did not really matter. If he leaned a bit bi or whatever, that was fine and really none of my business.

No, the question was, why was this happening? And what was causing it? Unfortunately, the only thing that made any sense was that I was the cause. Somehow. Or my class was. And I was not at all comfortable with that conclusion. I could scarcely imagine Jax's position on the matter.

Thinking back, there had been at least two major catalysts. The first, most obviously, was the Gems of Power, or more specifically, the Core Layer Gain feature. Somehow, the transfer of power between us was causing Jax no end of consternation. I had no idea why. On my end, it was somewhat pleasant but ignorable. I would have to talk to him about it to be certain, however. That, at least, was easily fixable. I could just turn it off again. I was pretty sure that it had not been a problem prior to my having activated it. Then again, my track record for noticing things was looking pretty spotty.

The other cause, and I was much less certain about this one, was my healing spell. Though I had only cast it the once, there were certain significant factors for my including it. My clues here were seemingly threefold. One, after I had cast it, I recalled that he had been quite uncomfortable. By itself, not particularly noteworthy but bearing investigation. Two, he seemed to have more difficulty running to the Dungeon Key than returning. That part had been decidedly odd, but at the time I had thrown it up to the shock of running into a swarm of wasps. It was a reasonable assumption, I argued to myself, even now. The third and most damning piece of evidence, especially now, was the fact that he had needed to change his pants afterward.

I closed my eyes and lightly rapped my knuckles on my forehead. I am so dense.

Bline’s Blue Boxes had not been exceptionally informative on that front, either. She had flat out refused to answer me when I had asked why this was happening, and the only clue that I had been given was when I had finally asked if I could even affect the problem in any way. Her reply had been… abstruse.

Feature unlockable at Core Layer Boundary.

The Watcher knew what that had meant. Since when did Layers have boundaries? Or maybe…

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

My reverie was interrupted by a slew of new notices from my menu. For whatever reason, She had decided that now would be a good time to inform me of all of the skill ups that I had achieved since… well, I did not know. The last time I had leveled up? When had that been? Two? Three days ago? The inconsistent nature of these announcements was really starting to hammer home that there was some form of imperfect sentience behind them, no matter that they so closely resembled RPG menus. Despite Jax having repeatedly claimed it was a goddess responsible, somehow I could never mentally reconcile what I was seeing with the idea of some deity communicating with me.

I had to wonder at the implications. Did this goddess require some form of appeasement, like the gods of old? If I started slaughtering goats in Her name, would I start getting my messages more regularly? Could I unlock cheat abilities if I pledged myself in service to her church? I certainly hoped not. That would be massively unfair to everyone out of the loop. I would need to be on the lookout for her clerics until I knew for sure.

Idly scrolling through them, they were mostly mundane things like another point in [Walking], a smattering of points into [Poetry: Interpretation], and even [Puzzle Solving]. I had even gained four whole points into [Resistance: Indigestion]. I rolled my eyes. Gee, thanks. What really caught my attention, though, was the notice that I had improved my [Loyalty] standing with Jax by a whole ten points. I could only wonder what could have caused that.

“…did not, ye fetid cow!” I heard in the distance.

I blinked rapidly. It sounded like my companion had just gotten a few notices of his own. The man had not been getting on with the Lady very much lately. I needed to add that to the list of things we needed to discuss.

“I ain’t talkin’ dirty to ye, neither, ye fannybaws!” he was yelling as he strode into the clearing. He stopped abruptly when he saw me staring at him. Averting his eyes, he walked past me, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I smirked, “That bad, huh?”

He started pacing, agitatedly. “Who does She think She be, eh? Talkin’ like that?” he continued, obviously talking about something else entirely.

“She probably thinks She’s a goddess,” I said, innocently.

He jabbed his finger at me, “That be beside the point. It be improper.” He continued pacing, “As if I…” He stopped suddenly, blushing. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Naturally.”

He bent over to grab his helmet off of the ground. I had already cleaned it but had not yet packed it away. He looked at it for a moment, and then tapping it in his hand, he distractedly started pacing again. “…and can ye imagine?” he said, like he’d never left off, “actually giving me a skill point in it! Damnable cow! An’ the way She talks, ye’d think I actually wanted ter…” He scoffed, “The very idea!”

“Scandalous,” I agreed, affably.

“That be what I said!” he gestured expansively. “An’ then She goes on like the whole thing has got ‘er fanny wet!” He roughly shoved the helmet in his bag, “Watcher take Her! I think She likes that it pisses me off, too!”

“What a bitch,” I said, mildly.

He slung his pack over his shoulder and stared at the ground for a few breaths, then he looked up at me, “Well? Are ya goin’ to sit on yer duff all day? Let’s go.”

And with that, he started marching away down the road.

We had been traveling for two days now. Whatever resistance I thought I had built up to long distance hiking had been laughingly surpassed by the end of the first. One simply did not walk places in the U.S. It was a leisure activity for people with too much time on their hands and had perverse interests like… nature. The only saving grace to the whole thing was that, at the very least, the weather was rather pleasant. It had not rained so far, though I noticed that the clouds were building up again, and the air was cool and faintly breezy. If one actually wanted to go hiking, you could not ask for a better day for it.

I rubbed at my backside. Was that a thing? Can a person get so sore from walking that their butt starts to hurt? Or was something just wrong with me in particular?

And we were still in the Allenwood. How big was this forest, anyway? And who the hell was maintaining this road? Even after days of travel, we had not seen anyone the entire time. It was starting to freak me out a little. I mean, to be fair, it was less a road and more of a dirt track with wheel ruts, and it was fairly overgrown in a lot of places. Maybe they hired a work crew to clear it out every couple of years? That seemed improbable, though. It would take a modern crew with heavy machinery over a month just to clear out the distance that we had walked alone. I really could not see how… or no… magic was a thing here.

If you could get a class as a farmer, then certainly lumberjacks were in the picture. It might even be a fairly profitable venture. With all the noise cutting back the vegetation would make, it would surely attract a few monsters. I wondered how many you would have to take out before you would be in the black. Would you need to hire warriors to protect the laborers? How many would you need? Then you would need to pay them, as well.

I shook my head. I was falling into a thought spiral again.

We had actually been pretty lucky with the whole ‘dangerous monsters lurking in the shadows’ thing. So far, we had only had one real encounter. Around noon of our first day of travel, we had been ambushed by another small group of Gobs. Jax had later explained that they were pretty common around here, especially this close to the road. Fortunately, they were total shit at the whole ‘ambush’ thing. Their plan had been… elaborately childish.

We had been coming round a bend in the road at the time when we caught sight of it. In the middle of the track, just under the shade of a particularly large tree, was a small handful of berries neatly piled on top of a large leaf. Directly underneath it, the soil was noticeably disturbed out to a distance of about three or four feet in radius. At the edges of this disturbance were four vines, conspicuous in their even placement.

The look we traded was almost, what you might call, disappointed. Without a word, Jax simply walked over to one of the vines and gave it a hard yank. I honestly had not expected a Gob to be attached to the thing. With a shriek, the naked little creature fell to the ground, landing awkwardly, shoulder first and with the vine tied firmly around its waist. The fall from the tree almost killed it outright, but any chance at its continued survival was rudely interrupted by Jax’s axe staving in its skull.

What followed was a bit of a screaming mess. Three other Gobs rappelled out of the tree by their own vines, disturbing the crude net they had buried, and attacked us en masse while hollering unintelligible Gobish battle cries. Jax managed to hack one of them down before it even made it to the ground. I noticed very quickly that he had devised an interesting way of fighting with the thing. Any time it would stick in a foe’s body, he would merely let go of it, causing it to flash away, and then he would just resummon the axe like nothing had happened. It looked pretty cool, I decided, despite the hokey spell effect.

For my part, I had taken my recent Dungeon experience to heart, and immediately unslung my pack to defend myself. I managed to harry one of the little critters long enough with my half spear for Jax to come from behind and decapitate it. It had been swatting at me with an improvised hardwood club it had picked up from somewhere, and my pack was now tinkling with the sound of broken crockery. Fortunately, most of the pemmican jars were already empty by this point, so it was no big loss. Honestly, even if they had been full…

We took a moment to scout for any reinforcements, but finding none, we took stock of ourselves. I had come out completely unharmed, though my heart was pounding like crazy. Gobs were not the most threatening of monsters, to be sure, but they had definitely been trying to kill us. Jax, I noticed, had managed to pick up a fairly severe gouge to his thigh while fighting the third one. I had not seen it happen. I must have been too busy fending off the final Gob.

We gave each other a look.

“Well?” I asked, finally.

“I’d rather ye didn’t,” he replied.

“I’ll bet,” I snorted. “But it would need stitches at the least, otherwise. And you’re bleeding pretty badly.”

He looked away, not replying.

“I won’t do it unless you ask me to,” I continued. “We can try it at the lowest setting this time. Maybe full power is too much?”

He looked back at me, “And if I…” he gestured to his crotch, “again?” He seemed almost vulnerable.

I nodded, understanding. “Just turn away and pull your pants down, then. I won’t look,” I said softly. “We’ll just look at this as an unwanted side-effect, okay?”

He took a shuddering breath before finally giving me the go ahead, “Do it gentle this time.”

I gave him a half smile. This could not be easy for him. “Okay… here we go…” I closed my eyes to…

“SHUT UP, YA WHORE!”

My eyes flew open. “W-what?” I looked around frantically for a moment in confusion. “Jax, what…”

“Never you mind!” he said loudly. “Just hurry up afore I lose me nerve.”

Nonplussed, I struggled to find my concentration again. What on Vrekfren had set him off this time?

He was standing with his arms crossed and muttering, “’Innocent Seduction’ be it? Me puckered arsehole! Why y’eighth-an-hour trollop! I…” He looked at me, slowly realizing what he had just said aloud. The three solid seconds of silence that followed were more than enough to see his face turn beet red.

I could hardly help the smirk. “Innocent… Seduction?”

He punched me square in the jaw for that one. I might have deserved it, too.

I rubbed my chin at the memory. He had refused to talk to me for several hours after that, although he had submitted to the healing spell. Necessity won over all else, after all. It turned out that the magnitude of the spell did, in fact, affect the degree of the ‘phenomenon’. At the lowest setting, it was quite tolerable, although it did cause the man to bite his lower lip and moan a bit. I had decided that it was in my best interest to studiously ignore that slip.

Jax had ended up converting all of the little monsters to Gems while I looked over the trap in more detail. The net was little more than a series of vines that had been attached together with bits of fibrous plant leaves. I had some real doubts as to whether the thing would even support the weight of one of us, much less both. And what had been their plan, anyway? From the way they had tied the vines to themselves, it seemed like they were planning on using their body weight to cinch the net… but then what? With just the four of them, how were they going to tie it off or finish us?

Right about then, Jax wordlessly handed me the four minor Gems he had gotten from the corpses and jerked his head in the direction of the path ahead. It would seem we were done here.

I looked down at the four little beads in my palm, each no bigger than a grain of sand. I, naturally, had wanted to eat mine immediately, but Jax had not wanted to discuss the matter at the time. Of course, that was yesterday.

“You want your share now?” I asked.

He looked down at my proffered palm, “You turn that shite off, yet?”

I grinned, good naturedly, “Of course!”

He gave me a suspicious glare, “Y’ain’t tryin’ ta pull a fast one, are ye?”

I made a face, “Jax, are you implying that I want to watch you spooge in your britches again?”

“How do I know,” he snorted, “I hear lots o’ little lordlings get up t’all sorts o’ mischief.” He laughed to himself, “Actually, me mates…” He glanced at me, “me old mates would’a thought it quite the knee-slapper.”

I dipped my head a bit at the thought, “Actually, I know quite a few guys who would, too. If they were drunk enough, anyway.”

He laughed loudly, “Aye, that! The drink do help.”

My stomach gurgled loudly. We had finished off the last jar of our supplies that morning. I had panicked a bit at the knowledge, but Jax seemed unconcerned. We were only a day and a half from our destination, and a fast as short as that was hardly a thing to be worried about. Now, if I could just convince my protesting gut of that.

“Alright, hand ‘em over,” Jax gestured to the Gems. I passed him his share, obligingly. “Only one at a time, though. We don’t wanna pass out again if we hit the next Layer.”

I frowned, “How would we even know if we were getting close.” The last time it had sort of blind-sided us, as I recalled.

“That be a good question, now’n I think on it.” He looked at me, “Why not wait ‘til we hit town, just in case?”

I really did not like that idea of that. Even if they were only minor Gems. “You’re not concerned about pickpockets?” I asked.

He scoffed, “An’ risk the curse? None’d be…” He stopped. Neither of us needed to say anything.

“Tonight then? When we bed down?” I asked.

Despite all the build-up, it turned out we were getting excited over nothing. Just before we tucked in, we had popped our Gems in anticipation. Jax had shown me how to get the fire going on my own, and we were huddled around my first ever flint-started campfire. Of course, neither of us hit the next level that night, although I had an inkling that I was close. I could have been wrong, though. Given my recent track record. It would be nice if there was some sort of experience counter we could get access to. Maybe…

“Is there a way to tell how much… uh…” How should I put this? “Can I purchase a skill or something to let me see how many Gems I need before the next le… layer?”

Feature unlocks automatically at Core Layer Boundary.

This again? “What is the Core Layer Boundary?” It was worth trying.

Apologize, first.

…

I was stunned for a long while at that message. I stammered, “W-wha…?”

I said, apologize, and maybe then I’ll answer your precious questions.

“O-okay…” I had no clue what I was supposed to be apologizing for, to say nothing of the fact that suddenly the menu was talking to me like an actual person for once. “I’m… I’m sorry? I guess?”

You guess? You guess?!

Abruptly, a hand punched its way through the menu. Squawking in surprise, I flailed backward, sprawling on my backside. The hand, dainty and feminine in appearance, ripped through reality like so much tissue paper. The other side of it was the black of the void, the black of the Word space. The hand gripped my ankle and dragged me toward it. I screamed in terror.

“No! I don’t want to go back there again!” I yelled.

Surging forward, that delicate and fragile looking hand gripped me by my shirt and hauled me up like I was a children’s doll. I came face to face with a woman of stunning beauty. Her face was near unimaginable, glowing with an inner radiance, and framed by lightly curled brunette hair which hung well past her shoulders. For some reason… she seemed familiar. Currently, though, that face was curled up into a snarl.

“I cannot believe you kissed that floozy!” she yelled in my face. “And then you have the audacity to ask me question after question as if nothing…”

I jerked awake. Disoriented, I looked around, my heart even yet pounding. I was still sitting beside the campfire, my bedroll snugly tucked around my shoulders. Jax had just thrown another log on the fire. The sound of it must have startled me out of my slumber. I shook my head rapidly and rubbed at my eyes. I had been having weird dreams lately.