"So, tomorrow's not gonna have much in the way of scenery," I said, setting a big tray on the table. "We're gonna wake up bright and early, refit the van with tracks instead of wheels, and then we're gonna drive through the Black Desert until we get to the other side."
"Can we stop in the middle so I can look at the scenery?" Talia asked as she grabbed the biggest bread roll- I hadn't divided up the dough super precisely, because while I was a machinist, that just meant that I understood just how much of a pain in the ass chasing precision was and relished opportunities where I could just shrug and eyeball things and it'd work out fine.
"I mean, sure, but we won't stop for very long, because you're gonna get bored real fuckin' quick," I said with a shrug, sitting down and grabbing some food for myself. Dinner tonight was a big pot of beef stew, which I did not anticipate we would finish tonight; the idea here was, once we'd eaten all we could, we'd then put it in the refrigerator to keep it fresh, and tomorrow, whenever we got hungry, we'd just put the pot back on the stove and eat some more stew. "It's the world's most desolate desert. Black sands, very rare plant life, and hardly any animals. There's more life in a single public toilet than there is in the entire Black Desert."
"Ew," Faith said primly.
"It's kinda like the ocean, except even more boring, honestly," I said idly. "There's this one exchange from one of Uncle Frederick's books that's always stuck with me- this guy is trying to become a sailor because he wants to see the world, and the captain tells him to go look over the side of the ship and tell him what he sees. The guy says it's nothing but water, all the way to the horizon, and the captain said..." I cleared my throat. "'Aye, you'll find all the world looks that way from the deck of a sailing ship. Now that you've seen the world, lad, do you find yourself still drawn to sailing?'"
"That was a stupid conversation," Talia said. "The whole rest of the book was all about a bunch of interesting things happening at sea."
"Well, yes but no," I said. "And it definitely doesn't scuttle my point. For one, most of the interesting things came from the people on the ship interacting with each other- the sea itself was just the reason why all these large personalities were, essentially, locked in a room together. And two... The interesting parts that did come from the sea were in the form of storms and a sea monster or three, depending on how you count. And I said the Black Desert was even less interesting than the ocean, and the lack of meaningful weather and desert monsters are definitely why."
"What about sandworms?" Faith asked.
"Sandwhat?" Emily asked.
"Sandworms," Faith said. "They're these giant predatory worms that crawl beneath the sand and excrete a magical spice. They're blind, but they can sense vibrations in the ground from miles away. You gotta walk without rhythm, or you'll attract the worm."
"Those aren't real," I said dryly. "Uncle Frederick made them up for a story he published a hundred and fifty years ago."
"...Oh," Faith said quietly.
"Ugh, that story pissed me off so much," Talia muttered. "Desert-adapted creatures are smaller than normal, because bigger creatures are at a bigger risk of overheating, and they take more food to stay alive. Now, there are snakes in the desert, and a lot of them are ambush predators who hide beneath the sand, so you've gotta watch your step, but it's not a 'walk without rhythm' type thing, either."
"How many snakes do you expect to see in the Black Desert?" I asked.
"...Maybe one, if we're lucky," Talia admitted.
"More if we aren't?" Emily asked.
"No, zero if we aren't," Talia said. "Desert snakes aren't adapted for taking down prey as big as a human- getting bitten by one is gonna hurt, but between you, me, Faith, and Joseph's little regeneration amulet, we should be fine."
"Regeneration amulet?" Emily asked.
"It's a long story, but..." I hummed. "...Well, hell, we've got time."
---
By the time I finished relating the events of the statue hunt to Emily, with a few interjections from Talia and Emily for the parts I wasn't there for or had simply left out for reasons they disagreed with, we had finished our meal, and were now sitting on the couches around our little coffee table. Each couch was sized for three people, or one person laying down across them, and we also had two armchairs, making for a total of eight seats.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Across from me, Talia was laid out on the other couch, with Faith sprawled atop her, the two of them casually cuddling in a way that told me, even if I really wanted to get rid of Faith, it would be very hard.
And sitting next to me on our own couch was Emily, who was fidgeting a little.
"And then the next day," I said, "I got a letter from your mom, walked up to the palace, and you were there for the rest of it." Aside from the part where Duchess Melody cheated on her husband with an elf the same age as her own daughter, but I wasn't going to say that out loud.
"I see," Emily said, nodding slowly.
"...So, what's up?" I asked.
"I, um..." Emily trailed off, blushing a little and looking away... and, coincidentally, looking at Talia and Faith, who were just casually cuddling.
"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you want a hug, or some other kind of affection, but you're not sure how to ask for that," I said. "Well, congratulations, Emily: you live with elves, and we tend to be pretty casual and open with physical affection."
"...thank you," she all but whispered, before turning and latching onto me like a pleasantly well-padded limpet.
I hummed quietly to myself as I returned the hug, turning to face her and swinging my legs up and onto the couch for the optimally comfortable cuddling position. Perhaps I was just letting my libido get ahead of me, here, but... Was there any chance of me talking Emily into my bed? And, well, if there was, why would I do that? I mean, okay, obviously Emily is already a very attractive and curvaceous woman, and therefore almost precisely my type physically, and given what her mother looks like, I'm optimistic that she's only going to get even hotter for the next few decades, but even with all that, there was more to a long-term relationship than 'you make my dick hard; can I touch your boobs?' There was also the question of personality, and...
...Well, so far Emily seemed like she was still in her 'shy around new people' phase of our acquaintance. Just because we were more-or-less stuck in a house with each other for the better part of a week doesn't mean I'd already gotten to know her, what with me spending most of our waking hours up front in the cab, driving the fucking van rather than hanging out with Emily and talking.
I sighed, which Emily did not even remotely understand the cause of.
"Is something wrong?" Emily asked.
"Hm? No, no, don't worry about it," I said, shaking my head. "Just realizing that this roadtrip isn't giving me as much time to hang out and get to know you as I'd like, but... Well, we're gonna be at Mount Fate soon enough, and we can just spend the next two months sitting around doing nothing but talk all day if we want to. It's no big deal; I can be patient."
"I could sit up front with you in the cabin tomorrow?" Emily suggested. "We could talk then, if driving doesn't require too much of your attention?"
"Should be fine," I said, nodding. "The Black Desert isn't exactly a hugely complicated terrain, driving-wise; I pretty much just have to check the compass every once in a while to make sure we're still going north. And... thank you. I appreciate that."
---
Thankfully, smart design choices when designing the van were paying off here; using a touch of telekinesis and a bunch of mundane, metal jack-stands to lift the van high enough I could work on the undercarriage took all of five minutes, because I'd managed to forget where exactly I'd put the jacks in my workshop. From there, I did spend about an hour removing the wheels, folding back some of the bodywork- which was slitted and hinged to allow exactly this- and installing new wheels that the tracks would ride on, but that was still pretty fast for something that would take all week to retrofit to a different enchanted caravan that wasn't designed with this in mind.
So, about two hours after dawn, I handed in my parking ticket to the valet, and began to drive my van straight north towards the Black Desert.
"So... I've been wondering," Emily said. "How do we know Demon King Paimon's cult is still destroyed?"
"Well, we don't," I said. "There's always someone stupid and greedy enough to try rolling the devil's dice, and while Demon Kings have sharply limited resources due to Hell being so depleted, the fact of the matter is that five hundred years is a long enough time for Paimon to have accrued enough resources to kickstart a new cult."
"Oh," Emily said.
"However," I continued, "we can be reasonably certain that Paimon's cult is still destroyed, simply because we probably would've heard about it by now if it wasn't. Demonic magic is destructive stuff- literally, powered by the negative side of vital essence, the one that causes decay and death. Wherever demonic magic is being practiced regularly, people get sick, plants wither, and animals start dying. There's only a small window of time between when a demon cult can form and when they get noticed by an adventuring party and then immediately slaughtered."
"...Oh," Emily repeated.
"So, we should be fine," I continued. "Right now, we should be worried about the fact that these tracks are making us go only twenty miles an hour, and we've got a lot of desert to cross today. Anyhow, what do you do for fun?"
"Oh, well, um..."
"Right, Healer training," I said mildly, nodding gently. "Well, what've you been doing to occupy yourself for these past two days?"
"Reading a lot of books, mostly. Thank you for bringing such a comprehensive library, by the way."
"It wasn't any trouble at all. My uncle was the one who made sure I brought it, really. So what're you reading currently?"
"A book he wrote, actually," Emily said. "This one is about... giant lizards on the moon?"
She continued talking, and I simply listened, soaking up her voice.
It was nice, and the time began to fly by.