55. Truth and Pain
It's dark out again.
The moon shines down, filling your entrance hall with pearly light. A light wind is drifting past, refreshing the smoke laden, torch-lit miasma of your lair with the scent of pine and crisp snow. A light scudding of cloud is the only thing between you and the stars that glitter light diamonds. You dismissed the guard some time ago, and the next shift won't start for another hour, leaving you alone with your thoughts.
“Feeling poetic tonight Red?”
Mercy's voice comes from nowhere, making you jump. You turn, and see her leaning against the archway that divides the hall form the spring room. She approaches you with long, slow steps and sits next to you. For a long moment she too stares out at the sky.
“Can't say I blame you, on a night like tonight.”
You examine her for a few seconds, before turning your head back to the sky, still silent.
“I've seen that look Red, on more people than I care to remember. What's got you bothered?”
Your jaw works for a moment, but no sound emerges. You turn back to the expanse, marshalling your thoughts. You don't feel... right about failing your first quest. Something about how things have changed lately makes it seem so personal. A quest for you, not for anyone who wondered about whether demon trees were possible. Failing it feels like a big thing. But non of you were able to come up with anything that had a better chance of working than what you've already tried. Not in the time you have left.
Just as you're about to express these thoughts to Mercy, she sighs.
“I'm sorry.”
Her voice is so small that for a moment you're not sure you heard anything at all. You turn towards her, but she isn't looking at you.
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have... I...”
She trails away into silence. The wind sets a low keening as it rolls across the mountain's peak far above you.
Finally, she chuckles. “You're infuriating, you know that right? You pull off the impossible like it's easy. I... It's... I'm sorry.”
You poke her with your tail, keeping the new barbs well out of the way.
“No. You were right. I never meant anything to be more than 'I'll try my best' or 'I'll give it a go' but you're right. That's not how it came across.”
“No, no!” Mercy is back-pedalling now, waving her hands, “I just meant that you've got... there's so many people here now, all dependent on you pulling off these miracles, and I just... I stopped being so sure you could pull off mine.”
You snort. “I've tried to keep the number of people 'dependent on me' to a minimum. So far if I'm wiped away then the only ones who will follow me are Sapphire and Feathers. Everyone else will be free to live out their lives without us.”
Mercy keeps shaking her head. “No, that's...” she pauses and marshals her thoughts. “That's a conversation for another time. No, everyone here is...” Pause. “Or rather, everyone...” She tails off into silence. You're content to keep it that way, returning to your contemplation of the sky.
The silence drags on for several minutes before Mercy speaks again. “That really fucked you up, huh?”
“What?”
“Learning about the power of names.”
This time it's you who doesn't respond for some time. “I don't like the idea of being responsible for this many people. I don't like taking away their choice.”
Mercy snorts at that. “Too late.”
Her retort pulls you from your melancholy like a bucket of ice water. You snap your head around to look at her. She's staring out you with a wistful half smile.
“You think anyone here wants to go back to how things used to be? You've been here what? A fortnight? That's a good twenty or thirty times longer than most of them have ever been alive before. They're learning, they're having fun. Because of you. Another one of your miracles.”
You shake your head, mutely, trying to word your thoughts. Mercy doesn't let you.
“You should give them the choice, at least. Don't decide for them.” She shakes her head. “Look, I got off track. I just wanted to say sorry. I should have trusted you more.”
“I've hardly done what I've said. Let alone what I wanted.”
She gives you an odd look. “You made a fuck-bush. That's... well, a near infinite wellspring of mana that will keep my Succubus powers fuelled for as long as I want, as well as being a lot of fun. You've granted me freedom; you've given me a shield against losing my mind every few days unless I fuck some guy. You've given me a choice. Because of you, I don't have to constantly worry about running out of mana at the wrong time; a situation which could and has in the past put me in mortal danger.”
She places an elegant hand on your shoulder. “You've done more than enough.”
You want to accept her at her words. You do. But a knot of dissatisfaction won't ease. Without a tree, Mercy won't have a reliable way to get nature mana. She'll still be forced – now into only using her succubus side as opportunity for natural meditation is pretty limited in a cave. You haven't granted her freedom. You've just given her a prettier chain. You open your mouth to express this but she beats you too it.
“I never actually let you say what was bothering you, did I? I just assumed it was me. I can... sort of feel your dissatisfaction, you know? How you've disagreed with basically everything I've said tonight.”
She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Is there anything I can do?”
You let your mind drift back to your thoughts before she sat. You shake your head, deciding to let the rest of it go.
“I've never failed a quest before.” You murmur. “Never had one to fail.”
Mercy cracks a smile. “You never forget your first.” Then she winces. “Sorry, sorry. Read the room, I know. But failing a quest isn't disastrous.” she goes silent for a second, and continues in a more subdued tone. “Well. Usually.”
You glance at her. She's rubbing her left wrist, almost unconsciously.
“I know,” you say. “I know it's not... but it feels different. Personal. I feel like I should be able to do this. Like I've missed something. That it's my fault that-” you cut yourself off, realising your voice had been steadily raising in volume. You calm yourself.
“It feels important.” you finish, somewhat lamely.
Mercy blinks a single, slow blink.
“There's just...” you tail off, looking for the words. “There's a lot going on. It's been a busy couple of days. And of everything that might grab my attention at the minute... It's not the horror cave that I made. It's not Amanda's player menu coming back. It's not the escaped giant spider, nor the fact that I'm a different species than I was a week ago, nor my promise to burn the kobold village at the top of this mountain to the ground. Not continued diplomacy with the goblins and kobolds of the forest, or investigating that tavern that's sprung up out of nowhere which implies a high level player who had enough materials and stats to throw up an entire, functioning building, in a week. It's not my worries about the fact I have a 'nemesis' or even that there is a group of players at least eight strong headed this way to perform a 'teardown' whatever that means.”
You take a deep, shuddering breath as the stresses of your new life pour out of you.
“It's not that there is a deadly plague out there that I am pretty sure we're meant to be combatting in some way because if I give sanctuary the rewards are immense. It's not that, as you have pointed out to me, I have made a lot of promises that I really want to keep but am growing to fear that I will be unable to. It's not the fact that for some reason, some idiot of a god gave me the ability to bind monster's souls to my own with an offhand comment! It's not even the fact that I am growing to the conclusion that I was created to be a niche fucktoy because female drakes do not have tits and I have a frankly disturbing amount of knowledge about human, female anatomy.”
Mercy lets you rant, an unreadable expression on her face. You take another breath, and force yourself to stop shouting.
“Finally, it's not that, given a few comments from others, especially you, my loss of memory with each update is not normal. Something I always accepted as an annoying, but necessary part of life may well be something inherently wrong with me. I don't know why, and I really hope that it's nothing to do with the aforementioned being of a sextoy.”
You breath again. Your mussels slowly loosen as you feel tension drain away from you. You turn to look Mercy in the eyes.
“It's that I was so sure that this was doable.”
You stand and stretch.
“Now I believe it may be my turn to apologise” you say. “That got somewhat away from me. There has been a lot going on lately.”
“Why haven't you said anything Red?” Mercy asks, her voice low. “We're here to help with things like that. Even just talking helps.”
You shake your head. “I... don't think I realised how much I have to keep an eye on until it started spilling out. Even the stuff I was aware of... well, what would be the point?”
You hold up a claw, forestalling her objections. “Yes, I know it would have made me feel better. But at the expense of making everyone else deal with it too.”
She sighs at your response.
“You're such a guy, Red.”
“Thanks?”
“It wasn't a compliment you obstinate ass. This may surprise you to learn, but you're pretty well liked around here. We'd be fine dealing with it with you.”
“Oh.”
You're not quite sure what the right thing to say is. Mercy lets out a snort of laughter.
“Yeah. So what's the plan, wonder-lizard?” As she talks, Mercy stands too, stretching just as you did.
“I should...”
“Yes?” she asks, looking expectantly at you.
“talk... to... people?” you ask, uncertain. She nods smiling.
“Good job.”
You blow a raspberry at her. The logistics of which, with the shape of your jaw, would give a career mathematician conniptions.
“I do need to talk to everyone, actually. Those adventurers are going to get here on the full moon and we really need to prepare some strategies for dealing with them and get some drills working together in. I don't fancy our chances unless we do some serious planning.”
“God damn it!”
The voice is unexpected, and quiet. It sounds like its coming from some distance away, from outside. You swallow.
No. No no no no no.
Mercy and you stare at each other.
Slowly rising in volume, the sound of running feet on stone follows. As the source gets closer, you start picking up on heavy breathing too.
Mercy takes a hesitant step towards the door and calls out.
“Hello?”
“Mercy, get away. Get away and go and wake the others.” you order her, your voice low.
The voice from outside sounds again.
“One minute! Sorry! Don't...” heavy gasping interrupts the voice for a few seconds. “Don't move! I'll be with you in a second!”
Mercy turns to look at you, confusion writ large on her face, but you shake your head. You pull her away from the door, fighting down bile.
No no no no no
The voice sounds again, close now.
“Do the... the line again! The one about needing time to prepare!”
You can make out more noise now. Armour clanking and unhurried footsteps a way away. Quiet, exasperated voices.
The first set of footsteps reaches the doorway, and Mhæri Flickervin comes pelting into your lair. She strikes a pose, probably one meant to be heroic, for a second, before bending over gasping for breath.
“Gods damn! Knew I should have invested more in endurance! Wheeeew!”
She waves a hand at you while she pants.
“The line, do the line.”
Instead you turn to look deeper into the lair, take a deep breath and bellow as loud as you can.
“ADVENTURE PARTY!”
Mhæri's voice lacks heat. “You're no fun.”
Seven figures walk out of the night behind her.
A little shorter than I like but it just seemed like a good, not too cliffhangery place to end the chapter.
You all know about the discord by this point, I'll stop posting it every week. This week we talked about video games.
A big thank you to my patreons: Austin Beck, NA and Dem1kles