Page 16

“Yes. The worst danger always comes when the inside of us is reflected to the outside. These creatures resonate with the little threads of despair tucked away inside every creature with a sentient mind. They can say the very worst things and make you believe they are true. And once believing they are true, you become vulnerable.”

You are weak. And poor. And ugly. He took you because you were easy pickings. Because you don’t have a father to protect you. He took you because nobody will look for you when you go missing.

“I don’t think I can push them away. I think they’re too strong. I think I’m too weak…”

Ornix hears me whimpering, slides his hands to mine, and looks deep into my eyes. I am on horseback, and he is standing beside me, but we are still somehow almost at eye level.

“You are beautiful. You are wild. You are uncontrollable, sometimes even by yourself. You do not conform to expectations easily, because there is a spirit inside you that burns with a fire that cannot and will not be quenched.”

“What are you doing?”

“Telling you the truth of things so these creatures may be banished back where they belong, to prey on shadows of shadows, not the real minds and hearts of those unfortunate enough to stumble into their domain.” He pauses and flickers a wink at me.

“I would never say such things under ordinary circumstances, you understand. It is in my best interests to try to tame you, but even I know that is a futile task.”

We begin to move again, but this time I do not ride the horse.

This time he picks me up and puts me on his back, letting me wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. I feel his hands steady my thighs, and I feel his voice rumbling through my whole body as he keeps talking, and we keep going.

I can still feel horrifying whispers circling around, but I cannot hear them as well now. There are just snippets in the wind.

Loser…

Gonna eat you…

Mean nothing…

Ornix speaks, drowning them out. “I chose you because you are strong, because the transcripts of your exploits told me that you are able to make decisions that go against the grain. You are someone born to lead, not to follow. You are a light I could not look away from, a jewel I could not help but need to possess. The seal I carry now thrums with power, but it is nothing compared to what you emit. When I punish you, it is not because you are bad, or because I think you are beneath me. I do it because I want you to be mine, always and forever. Because there is nothing more important than you and our future.”

He hikes me up a little as we pick up the pace even more. The path seems to be opening up, and there is the scent of flowers on the air, something from the world beyond the forest, the promise of goodness.

“Do you understand the force of my devotion to you? Already? Within a mere day of knowing you I have abandoned the castle and come on an adventure with you, and I would do it again, and again. You are the center of my universe, the jewel in my crown. You are the embodiment of all that matters. Your beauty is sovereign, your body is territory that will never cease to excite me. You do things to me I did not know were possible. My desire for you makes me feel like a young whelp again, gives me fresh eyes, new needs. You are absolutely and eternally everything for me.”

I cannot hear the voices of the shadows anymore.

All I can hear is the warmth of his voice wrapping around me.

He keeps talking as we move, his deep, resonant voice giving me almost endless praise and hope and devotion.

For a woman who has never had a boy say anything more than the fact that he likes my ‘phat ass’ or that I’m ‘not as boring as he thought I would be,’ it is an experience unlike any other.

He doesn’t mean it… he’s love bombing you. You can’t possibly fall for a man who fucks you four times in one day and tells you you’ll never age again if you let him come in you, you fucking idiot…

The last remnant of the ghostly voices floats to me, as if they made one last significant effort to try to break me down.

Is this love bombing? My social media feed would probably say so, but he is doing this to keep me sane, and moreover, I think he means every word.

I can already tell Ornix is not a man to give praise or show affection he does not feel.

He is an absolutely brutal beast, and I do not think he knows how to lie or manipulate.

Those are tactics that weak men use to try to get women to fall for them so they can be hurt. Ornix is doing this to save me.

Slowly but surely, the moonlight grows brighter as the trees become smaller and less close together, and finally we emerge into a meadow in the middle of the night.

There is a low breeze and a feeling of having escaped something truly terrible.

The heaviness of the darkness behind me makes me quite happy to avoid forests for a good while.

In the distance, the Golden Keep rises from the center of the plain. It is absolutely stunning, shining in the moonlight in such a way it seems ephemeral and closer than it really is. I know we have several hours to go to get back, and in truth I am in no hurry.

“I don’t know if I have ever seen anything this beautiful,” I say.

Ornix sets me down and looks at me. “I certainly have, but only recently.”

I blush. “You don’t have to say that stuff anymore. Those weird shadow creatures are gone.”

“I’m not saying it because of them. I am saying it because it is true. You should know how much I adore you, just as you know how sore you will be when you disobey me.”

I blush furiously. He has absolutely no shame about reminding me of the trouble I can be in when it comes to him. It’s not as if I could forget. Even now, there is an ache between my thighs and in my ass.

“Stop,” I mumble. “I’m being good.”

“Yes. You are. Very good. Thanks to you, I have the fifth seal. If you had not absconded with my horse, I might never have known it was missing.”

“May I see it?”

“Yes,” he says, reaching into his pocket to pull out a hexagonal piece of metal with a lot of muddy daub on it.

“That’s the seal?”

“It usually shines brighter than this, but the kobolds thought it was a decoration.”

“Oh, they upcycled it. Or maybe downcycled it. May I…”

He hands it to me. It only takes up space in his palm, but it requires both of my hands to hold. It has a hefty weight to it, but somehow I know that I am not going to drop it. I almost feel as though I couldn’t let go if I wanted to.

I rub my thumb over the top of it, pushing away some of the kobold paint that is already starting to peel off. What is revealed is something deeper than gold, but shinier than brass. There are deep indentations in the shape of claw marks.

“Bjorn Birna,” I murmur under my breath.

“Yes,” he says.

I know what the seal is, of course. I know that there are seven of them, and that they are artifacts of great power. At least they are in the game. This world is deeper and more dangerous than the pixel world I once played in.

“He’s been hurt. Or captured. Or killed.”

“Do not worry about that, little mate,” he says. “I intend to make sure the matter is looked into.”

I close my fingers around the edge of the seal. I want to keep holding it. It calls to me. I feel its power rippling through me. I am the lake, and it makes energy pulse through me in lazy circles.

“Careful,” Ornix says. He reaches out and takes the seal from me. A whimper escapes my lips as I feel its loss. I want more of that feeling. More of that sweet, sweet energy. “These things can cause trouble in the wrong hands, and you are absolutely the wrong hands, given your tendency to trouble.”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“No, but you wanted to. I saw the way your eyes lit up, I saw the hunger on your face. Be careful. Power is not as exciting as it seems. It is almost always a trap of some kind, and it likes to demand its payment in blood. Whatever has befallen Bjorn is unlikely to be pleasant, and I will not have it happen to you, so keep your fingers far from this trinket from now on, do you understand?”

I nod, hearing the sternness in his voice and knowing he means what he says as he slips the seal into his robes. I can still feel it, more faintly now though. I wonder if I attuned to it when I held it, because I certainly didn’t feel it before he gave it to me.

I decide to keep quiet about that. The look on his face when he was censuring me was enough for me to know he doesn’t want me too closely connected to that thing.