[https://www.tanyarochester.com/uploads/5/4/5/5/54553809/grace3_orig.png]

My issues with fire… I’d hoped he had forgotten about that but he just had to bring it up. But maybe talking about it would help?

“I’m not sure exactly when it started. It may have been before that incident, or maybe it was that incident.” Actually, now that I thought about it… “My dad had always been very careful to not have fire anywhere in the house. We didn’t even have real candles, only electric ones. And our house didn’t have a fireplace. He’d always tell me, ‘Fire is dangerous a force of nature. Even if you're careful, one candle left alone in a room could burn down a house. One cigarette in bed could leave a family devastated.’ To be honest, I think he had his own issues with fire.

“When I was twelve I used to always leave my window slightly open. To get some fresh air. That night I saw a shadow outside my window. Then my curtains caught on fire. But that wasn’t the end of it. My dad burst into my room and carried me through our house. I have no idea how it happened but everything was on fire!

“We got outside. But he’d left something important in the house and went back in. Some research or something. I don’t know what was so important he’d risk his life for. Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth it. Not when I had to watch as our house burned down, with him inside it.

“And now, every time I see yellow fire, that fear comes crawling back and I can’t do anything except maybe pass out if it’s large enough and I’m too close to it.”

Lore took my hand in his.

Ah, what a pair we made. One of us had a shit father and the other, a father who died too soon.

“Thank you for telling me. Let’s do our best to overcome our fears.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Are you going to face that pink woman?” His hand tightened on mine.

“Eventually. But first I need to be free so I can start leveling again.”

I nodded. We were both weak level fours. At least I could still level. I opened my menu and noticed that I was only a quarter of the way to 5. Leveling in this system seemed to be more than exponentially harder.

“So, to start, we’ll have to begin with exposing you to a little of what you fear.”

I’d heard of this. “Exposure therapy?” I scoffed. “Does that even work?”

Lore rolled his eyes. “Of course it does.” Then he murmured, “I’ve heard.”

“Then why haven’t you tried it?”

“... It’s a bit more complicated when you’re terrified of a person.”

I sighed. Tingles of fear crawled all along my back at the thought of being anywhere near fire.

“Let’s start with a small fire.”

“What? In here? No! This carriage is made of wood. It could burn down.”

“Mia. This carriage is made to take damage. All kinds of damage. It’s mostly made of metal. And the parts that are wood have an anti-fire magic cast onto them. It’s not going to burn now.”

That didn’t relieve my fear at all.

He pulled out a candle and lit it with some weird elven fire starter. I stared at that little yellow flame and pressed my back into the carriage wall to get as far from it as possible.

“I see. So this is small enough that you can still move while being afraid.”

I glared at him.

“Try touching it.”

After I sent him an ‘Are you insane?’ look he chuckled then he passed his hand through the fire the way I’d seen some crazy people do on the internet.

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“Stop that! You’ll hurt yourself.”

He kept doing it and I grabbed his hand. “I can take, barely, being in this small space with that candle, but if you keep doing that I’m going to leave. I don’t give a shit that this carriage is moving.

Lore rolled his eyes. “Mia, even if I leave my hand in here, at most it will do a couple of percentage points of damage to me which I can heal right away. It’s fine.”

“Lore!”

“Fine, fine. We’ll take this slow. For now, just a candle inside an enclosed space.”

Ah right, we were in an enclosed space. What if it eats up all our oxygen?

My breaths sped up.

“And what are you thinking about that’s making you so upset?”

I glanced away from the flame and up at Lore. “Science. Did you know that fire consumes air. What if we suffocate?”

He narrowed his gorgeous eyes at me as if he were looking at someone incredibly dumb.

“This carriage is not airtight. It has air filtration and air conditioning magic applied to it. I don’t know everything it has since I’m not a carriage builder but, regardless, you’re not going to run out of oxygen.”

I nodded. It did not help my fear in the slightest.

***

We kept up the routine of trying to get me to relax while being in the presence of my greatest fear then taking a break to kill goblins. All the while we ignored our self-proclaimed spies.

By the time we reached the inn where we’d stop for the night we were both mentally exhausted. Lore once again agreed to a midnight watch in exchange for a reduced price but promised me that this one wouldn’t be nearly as bad as the last one since there weren’t two major roads intersecting like there was back at the Ruined City. Apparently, the road we were currently traveling down was called Blue Crane Flies in the Gray Sky Road. Which would eventually intersect Blue Crane Sea Road.

This made me realize why everyone was so uptight about saying the full name of a place. In Elven culture, instead of having nice numbered highways that intersect with similarly numbered highways, there were names that were reminiscent of major locations that the highways connected to.

The night passed relatively peacefully and we were soon on our way again with another round of never-ending terror… I mean exposure therapy and fighting. By the end of the second day, I noticed that my fear of small flames had decreased significantly. Lore didn’t mention it, but I had a bad feeling.

Once again Lore proved that healers in games were universally welcomed as he managed to snag a spot in the night’s defense in exchange for a lower room rate. Mage Whitedove and Rion Cho, on the other hand, had to share a room and pay the exorbitant fee, although it was only 500 PMk for this particular inn.

I was still treated as a useless meat shield, but by this point, I was used to it. Apparently, people tended to ignore me when I stood near Lore. It wasn’t just Whitedove, though she was the worst offender.

***

The next morning, we started our journey before Whitedove and Cho woke.

As our carriage drove us closer to our destination, I stared gloomily at Lore.

“What is that look for?”

I didn’t think I needed to say anything.

Lore grinned and took out what was essentially an elven road flare. Or, at least that’s what I discovered when the asshole lit it up, right in front of me. My mind practically went blank, then the edges of my vision turned black.

Lore put out the flare then grabbed my arm. I glared at him so hard to express to him just how much I needed to kick his ass.

“Calm down. I just wanted to see where you were apparently, you aren't exactly ready for this yet.”

“Ya fucking think?!”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“No. I need a break!”

He sighed. “Mia. If you don’t get over your fear it will affect how well you can survive in this sim.”

“That doesn’t matter right now. Just let me be scared of fire. I’ll deal with it in my own way.”

The corners of his lips turned down, and I could practically feel the disappointment radiating off him but I didn’t really give a shit at this point. He shouldn’t have brought the flare on like that. Not when I could barely handle being in the same small room as a candle. I crossed my hands over my chest and turned away from him. Fuck this! Fuck all this.

“We’re meeting our contact at the next inn and we’ll travel with him to the quest location tomorrow.”

I didn’t respond to him, merely nodded my head to let him know that I heard. Seriously, fuck him.

***

I didn’t say a word to him for most of the day. We were about two hours out from our next stop for the night when I saw something in the sky. A giant dark cloud in the shape of a butterfly, moved fast, coming closer and closer. I didn’t really mind it at first since it was just fluffy clouds... but then it started to drop. And it’s wings flapped.

I jumped up and practically plastered my forehead to the window. “The fuck is that?”

Lore peered out the glass and his eyes widened.

“That is the mount of a really powerful player. I don’t even know how powerful, or how it managed to get into this low-level area. There are usually barriers that prevent that. It could be that it’s dying. A dying high-level mount can sometimes briefly bypass a barrier. Wait, if it's dying then that trajectory.”

His eyes widened and I knew we were fucked. Lore pounded on the wall in front of us and called out. “Faster!”

The carriages jerked. This whole time, due to whatever magic was built into this carriage, we'd had a smooth ride, but it quickly turned from staking on ice to an uneven dirt road.

The other carriages behind us sped up as well. I wasn’t sure if they noticed the dying cloud butterfly or if they were just worried that we were finally bolting, but they did their best to catch up.

A loud boom sounded and our carriage shook.

“Holy fuck. Can we take a look? I think it flattened a whole acre of forest back there.”

He shook his head. “Better not. We need to hurry to the inn while we still can. This mount might cause the monsters in the forest to riot. Our watch tonight… will be difficult.”