Thankfully, Oryore’s visit was relatively brief. Not that I disliked her by any means, mind you. The whole thing was feeling super awkward to me, for some reason. Well, I say ‘some reason’, but the root of the issue was pretty obvious: the gold icon hovering over Oryore’s head the entire time with Jasmine sitting right next to me. Taunting me. It was like trying to have a diplomatic meeting with The System flipping the double-fisted bird right in my face. Luckily, I knew most of the story that both women were sharing with one another so all I was there to do was basically fill in the gaps. I suppose I was acting as a sort of buffer or bridge between the two as well, but mostly I was just spending the majority of my time sweating.
We learned that Oryore’s daughter, Dera, had been sneaking off during the night for the past month or so. Oryore, being naturally worried over her daughter’s behavior, had one of her stealthier guards follow the girl to see what she was up to. Turns out, she’d been meeting up with one particular orc nearly every night.
“Normally, I would have thought this nothing more than the infatuation of youth. However, Dera has been coming to me recently with ideas of ‘strengthening our position’ among the enlightened races. Again, taken on its own, this would have surprised me but not been overly worrisome. Dera is ambitious…but she’s never been expansionist. I cannot help but feel that these issues are connected and she is being led down a dark path.”
“Was your guard able to provide a description of the orc?” Jasmine asked.
“Yes. Sadly, the description she gave could be applied to almost any male orc. Tall, muscular, a warrior type – the only detail that stood out is that she found the orc to be aggressively handsome.”
I groaned.
“Sounds like Brakk, alright,” I grumbled. Why did Jasmine’s stalker have to be the goddamn orc version of Brad Pitt? I’m talking prime Brad, here too. Like Legends of the Fall Brad. Achilles Brad. Except with the body of an eight-foot-tall Mr. Olympia. Meanwhile, I was sitting there looking like a post-apocalyptic version of the chef from Ratatouille. Ok, maybe that was being a little too harsh on myself. The point is, if I were Jasmine I know who I would have picked and it wouldn’t be the scrawny, underleveled human. Jasmine being Jasmine, however, made me feel a little better almost immediately.
“He’s vile. The man is a decorative vase filled with rotting fish guts. His only use is to be looked at…preferably from far enough a distance that the aroma doesn’t overwhelm you.”
“I didn’t think he smelled that bad,” I said.
“It’s a metaphor, dear,” she said, patting me on the leg. “Try to keep up.”
“Ah. Yeah. I knew that.”
“In any event, I would do what you can to dissuade your daughter from involving herself with Brakk. The man is obsessed with me. Has been for decades. If he’s filling her head with love stories, he has some ulterior motive in mind that will not end well for Dera.”
Oryore nodded.
“Well. I thank you for this meeting, Jasmine. And Rockland, I thank you for facilitating. This has been…educational. I think we’ve reached the end of what we are likely to deduce at the moment, however, and I should be returning to my Volary before I raise any suspicions.”
The three of us exchanged contacts, and we saw Oryore off as she took flight from the roof of my headquarters. As we watched her soar off into the distance, I took Jasmine’s hand in mine.
“I really did miss you, you know,” I said.
She looked at me and smiled, softly.
“I know. You told me more than once in the messages.”
“Hey, I’m a romantic, what can I say?”
She laughed and I realized in that moment that her laugh might actually be my favorite sound in the world. I loved her laugh the night we met, and now I wasn’t sure how long I could live without it. But luxuriating in the warmth of her laughter was as much a procrastination tactic as anything else. I knew that. We had things to discuss and I was very much not looking forward to what was likely to be the most difficult and potentially life-threatening discussion I’d ever have. I was about to deliver some rather unfortunate news to a very powerful woman…and if she didn’t like what I had to say, there was nothing stopping her from wringing me out like a dirty dish rag right then and there.
“Jasmine…I have to talk to you about something.”
“Regarding Oryore, I assume,” she said, calmly.
“How did you know?”
She laughed again.
“Please, Rocky. You were squirming and shifting around in your seat from the moment you sat down until the moment she left. It was pretty obvious that something was eating at you.”
“Huh. I thought I was hiding it pretty well.”
“That just means you need practice, dear. Especially given your class.”
“Fair. A little hurtful, but fair.”
I sighed. How in the world was I supposed to tell her what I needed to say? That The System had royally screwed me with a subclass and quest that required me to go around seducing my rivals’ mothers? A quest, by the way, that was apparently non-optional as far as I could tell. It was too much.
“Spit it out, Rocky. Stop standing there chewing on it, for the gods’ sakes.”
And, I did. I told her everything. How I came into this world with what would undoubtedly be the most infamous last words anyone had ever heard. How I had repeated those words to Shrek in a defiant fit of pettiness. How I’d been led to her quarters by a mysterious golden icon…the same icon which was even now flying north back toward the Volary. She didn’t interrupt. Didn’t break eye contact or show any emotions as I spoke. She simply stood there and allowed me to say what I needed to say. When I had finished talking, she continued to stand there in stoic silence for a few moments before taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly.
“And you say that you did not know about this subclass before we met.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t even know it was your quarters I was sneaking into. I was an idiot following The System’s dangling carrot.”
“What?”
“The icon. I was only following the icon, hoping there was some loot to be found.”
She snorted.
“You did come away with a prize, I’d say.”
“I definitely did. So, you aren’t mad?”
“Oh, Rocky. I’m furious. But not with you, necessarily. Do you swear that you had no idea about the subclass before we…you know?”
“I promise.”
“Then, I believe you,” she said. She had watched my face as I gave my answer, seeming to evaluate whether or not I was being fully truthful.
“I will need some time to reflect on this. Orc culture is not necessarily rigid about these kinds of things…but this is a surprise.”
“Of course. But…” I cringed a bit, dreading this part in particular, “Oryore isn’t going to be the last.”
Her eyes narrowed at that.
“How many?”
“Six? That I know of, anyway. When I got the achievement after our first night together, I—”
“You got an ACHIEVEMENT??”
“I…yeah,” I hung my head. “It’s not like I asked for it. I was there because a beautiful woman asked me to be there. I didn’t plan any of this.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and gestured for me to continue.
“So…yeah. After I got the achievement, a new quest arrived that read 1 of 6 completed.”
“Completed,” she said, angrily.
“Again…not my wording. That’s verbatim from The System,” I said, quickly, holding my hands up in surrender. “Look, Jasmine, I’m sorry about all this. I really am. If you want, I will use one of my prayer beads right now to call down Seredh and see if he can undo all of this.” I reached for my wrist, where the beaded bracelet lay, but Jasmine grabbed my hand.
“No. Don’t do that. For one, I wouldn’t be able to withstand the presence of a god. No one in this entire region could. We’d all die from exposure to his aura. Second, those beads are too precious. You need to hold on to them for a true emergency. And third, we have no idea what it would do to you if he were to strip you of a subclass you’ve already had integrated into you by The System. Better if we just…figure this out on our own.”
“I like the sound of that. Much better than accidentally doing a genocide.”
Suddenly, a message arrived and a big smile crept up onto my face.
“So, I just got word that your little backyard project has been completed. Would you like to go see it?”
She looked out into the evening sky. The sunset was decorating the heavens with its orange and red reflections lining the white, fluffy clouds. Jasmine appeared to think for a moment before agreeing to go have a peek at the project I’d been hiding from her for the past few weeks. Everyone in her Outpost had been doing their damnedest to keep her from ruining the secret. That in and of itself was no small feat – Jasmine had rightfully been extremely curious as to what all the commotion had been in her own backyard. The fact that they were able to convince a matriarch to let them work on her property unbidden and sight-unseen said a lot about the relationship she’d built with the people in her outpost.
It took us a while to walk from my headquarters to her villa in the outpost. We talked more, as we made our way over The Plains, across the river to the foothills. She had many questions and I could supply very few answers. I didn’t know what the quest I’d been given was meant to accomplish. It could have tied to Seredh’s quest for me to save the world, or it could have been nothing more than The System getting a kick out of humiliating me. There was no way to know for sure.
When we reached her villa, I took off my duster and draped it over the back of a chair. Scorch wriggled out of my pocket and Jasmine chuckled lightly. We’d been so caught up in the drama of the day that we’d completely forgot about the little weasel, as terrible as that felt to admit. For her part, Scorch didn’t seem to care much. She’d had her nap and now she was going to go hunting. You know…weasel stuff.
With Scorch gone, I led Jasmine to her back yard. She’d promised to keep her eyes closed, which was good because I was entirely too short to cover them with my hands. We stepped out of the back door onto what used to be a simple patio and a small astounded “OH…” escaped me before I could bite it back. Jasmine took that as her cue to open her eyes. She echoed my sentiment.
“Oh. Oh, wow…” she said. “Rocky…what is this?”
“This,” I said proudly, “Is a bath house. Urz helped me to design it when I told him what I wanted to do, here. It’s basically the same system as my shower. Water runs in from the Ancestral River and is heated by runes before being pumped into this little lagoon area, here.”
Urz had really outdone himself. The place was spectacular. There were lanterns strategically placed around the high-walled perimeter. The entire yard was decorated with large stones, especially around the ‘lagoon’ area, creating the illusion that the entire water feature had been there all along. A natural hot spring that was just waiting to be uncovered. There were large pillars that stood about waist-high to me, with equally large wax candles burning atop them. Several strands of rope had been strung zig zagging over the yard that they’d somehow enchanted to emit a sparkling light at seemingly random intervals along its length. The place looked like it would have fit right in at a swanky upstate version of Nordic resort.
Jasmine walked around quietly taking in the scene, occasionally touching an object that caught her eye. I smiled as I watched her – the sun was nearly fully set, and the combination of the day’s last light and the flickering candle flames were the perfect contrast to her soft green skin. She finished her self-guided tour of the bath house and walked back over to me, looking at me curiously.
“When did you come up with this? And why?”
“It was shortly after you first told me about Brakk. Before that, I didn’t know it was an orcish custom to bring a token gift when you intend to court someone. I felt bad that I hadn’t given you something like that. So…this is my attempt to make up for it. Do you like it?”
“I may never leave,” she said wistfully. “It’s gorgeous. Thank you, Rocky.”
“No need to thank me. Like I said, I felt bad. I kind of got caught up in a whirlwind when we got together and now that things have settle at least a little bit, I wanted to make sure you had a proper courtship.”
She looked at me for a long moment and then grinned almost imperceptibly.
“This doesn’t get you out of hot water, you know.”
“That’s not what I—”
“IT. DOESN’T. GET. YOU. OUT OF. HOT. WATER,” she said firmly, as she began to undress. She removed every bit of her ceremonial armor, and every piece of underclothes she had beneath it. Then she leaned in, gave me a small kiss and added softly, “But it may get you into it.”
And with that, she dragged me into the water, clothes and all.
