by A. J. Markam
Alaria squealed, clapped, and jumped up and down again, jiggling her boobs in the most alluring way possible.
If that was going to be the way she acted every time I fulfilled her requests, she could ask for just about anything she wanted and I would say yes.
Then she went one better and hugged me.
I felt her breasts press tight against my chest and her arms wrap around my body.
“Thank you,” she whispered in my ear.
Then she backed up a couple of inches and smiled deviously. “Ohhhh, I’m so going to enjoy this.”
If I get thanked like that every time, so am I.
And hopefully I’ll get to level up in the ‘Thanks Department,’ too.
21
We got back into town and headed for the inn.
On impulse, I stopped by the mailbox outside the front entrance. As soon as I touched it, a window appeared with a chiming noise:
You have two messages!
I hurriedly opened them.
The first was from Robert, the Warlock I had met earlier in the town square.
Yo Amigo,
In addition to the email I sent, I told my supervisor about your situation when I logged off. Hopefully they’ve got you all fixed up by the time you get this.
Remember – it’s all about the attitude! You own this! You are the man, the mothereffin’ MAN, so act like it!
And good luck with your own horny little succubus.
Oh Rob… if you only knew how much trouble I was having with Alaria, and how much I am NOT the mothereffin’ man…
I quickly opened the next message and pumped my fist when I saw that it was from an official Westek technical support account.
Unfortunately, I shouldn’t have been quite so quick to celebrate.
Hi Ian,
We are aware of your technical issues and are working rapidly to resolve them. Don’t worry – this is only a minor technical glitch. We will have you sorted out in no time at all.
Translation: we have no idea what the hell is going on, or we would have fixed it by now.
Just keep playing the game, and enjoy all the overtime! We’re very much looking forward to the insights you’ll be providing as a result of your extended period in the game.
John Perkins, Supervisor
My heart sank. They were trying to keep me buoyed up with promises of more money – which might work under ordinary circumstances, if I weren’t posed with the potentially life-threatening issue of being in a coma inside some sort of experimental gaming unit.
What the hell was I going to do?
Was my body going to be in a vegetable state, my mind unable to return to the real world?
Was I going to be trapped inside this damn game forever?
I could feel the panic rising inside me –
“Hey, slowpoke, come on,” Alaria said. “I haven’t slept in a bed for years, and I’m looking forward to getting naked under the sheets.”
Then she turned around and walked up the steps into the inn, with her ass swaying with every step.
On second thought, being trapped in the game a while longer wasn’t so bad. I should probably just enjoy it while it was going on.
I closed the emails and hurriedly followed her inside.
We went up to the front desk. No one was there – but as soon as Alaria rang the bell, someone popped up from behind the desk: my old friend, the curiously sexless grey alien.
“Hi there, and welcome to the – oh, it’s you.” He sniffed the air, then nodded like Not bad. “You definitely smell better this time.”
“No thanks to you,” I grumbled. “We’d like a room for the night.”
The alien winced. “Ooh... yeah... sorry, no can do.”
“What?!” I yelled. “I don’t smell like a skunk anymore!”
“Yes, but the innkeeper was very specific: she does not want to rent you a room.”
I stared at him. “Why not?!”
“You’re a Warlock. And you have a succubus and an imp.”
“So?! We just saved the entire town!”
“Actually, you burned down the church.”
“I – ”
Alright, he did sort of have me there.
“But I talked to the goddess face-to-face!” I said.
He shrugged. “I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t know.”
“Come on,” I pleaded. “The innkeeper won’t know!”
“Ohhhh yes she will.”
“She doesn’t even know my name – you don’t even know my name!”
“I know you have a succubus and an imp, and I know that anybody with a succubus and an imp is absolutely not to be rented a room.”
I turned to Alaria. “Can you do something? Mesmerize him into giving us a room or something?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it has any reproductive organs one way or the other – it definitely hasn’t looked at my tits once during the entire conversation, which is a bad sign.”
“That’s very offensive,” the alien said in a huff. “Even if it happens to be true.”
Alaria held out her palm and summoned a fireball. “I could burn the inn down the same way we did the church,” she suggested.
“Either way,” the alien said in a bored voice, “you’re still not getting a room.”
“We’re not going to save the town and then burn stuff down,” I told Alaria.
“Good to hear!” the alien said. “Please leave now.”
“Can I at least speak to the innkeeper? Or is she conveniently not around again?”
“Oh, she’s here.” The alien turned around, cupped his hand to his mouth, and yelled, “Mistress Weevos!”
“Yes?” a high-pitched, gratingly cheerful voice called out from the next room.
Wait – I knew that voice –
The owner walked around the corner into the main lobby.
Oh no.
It was the fat blonde lady from the church. The one we had mortally offended.
As soon as she saw us, her smiling face turned into a mask of hatred. “You! I knew you weren’t married! And I knew that ugly thing wasn’t a baby!”
Alaria smirked. “No, I’m pretty sure we got you on the baby part.”
“Get out of my establishment!” the fat woman yelled. “You’re not welcome here!”
“Didn’t you see us save the town?” I argued. “We should we get some credit for that!”
“All I saw you do was kill Father Jastoth!”
My face scrunched up in complete disbelief. “Didn’t you see the goddess?!”
“Yes, and she thoroughly disapproved of what you did,” the woman sniffed haughtily.
“Disapproved?!” I yelled. “Did you even hear what she said at the end? ‘Stop following assholes and be nice to each other’?!”
“I think the problem is, she’s one of the assholes,” Alaria muttered.
“All I know is you killed a godly man, and I will not have murderers stay in my inn. Out!” she cried, “Out – before I call the town watch and have you all thrown into the stocks!”
“For what, obeying the commands of your goddess?!” I snapped.
“You sure you don’t want me to burn down the inn?” Alaria asked.
“I’m thinking about it.”
“I knew it!” the fat woman yelled, and waddled as fast as she could out the front door. “Night Watch! Night Watch, help! Deviants are threatening to burn down my inn!”
I groaned and looked over at Alaria. “Let’s go. I don’t think we’re getting a room here tonight.”
“I could’ve told you that,” the sexless grey alien said.
22
Luckily we didn’t encounter the Night Watch or anyone else on our way out of town. Our luck was apparently changing.
If you could call being out in the middle of the forest at night changing your luck, that is.
We found a clearing, and I had Stig gather some dried branches. Alaria set them on fire with a fireball, and within
minutes we were warming ourselves around a blazing campfire.
“Well, this isn’t exactly a feather bed, but it will do,” she said as she laid out on her side, one arm extended under her head like a pillow.
The view – with her breasts pressed together by gravity, and the valley of her tiny waist and the edge of her hip forming a jaw-dropping topography – was mesmerizing.
“So tell me more about your masters,” I said as I tried not to stare at the alluring contours of her body. Well… not stare too openly.
“You’re a few inches taller than me, with a mop of brown hair, a little on the skinny side – ”
“Your EX-masters, smartass.”
She grinned, then smacked her ass with her hand. “Ah,” she sighed in pleasure. “You’re right – that smarts.”
I just stared and blushed and tried to surreptitiously adjust my growing erection.
If she noticed, she didn’t comment. Instead she sat back up and stared at the fire. “There’s not much to tell. I mean, I could give you details about them… the lechers... the brutes… the evil bastards… but they all start to blur together.”
“Evil?” I asked.
“What would you call it when you put a chain on another living being and lead her around, making her do your bidding without any regard for her feelings?”
I couldn’t help but note the obvious point: she was more or less describing what I was doing to her.
“So you’re saying I’m evil?”
“You’re actually one of the best masters I’ve ever had.” Then she gave me a wry look. “Although you should be aware that the bar is incredibly, abysmally low.”
“I mean, people do that to animals all the time,” I pointed out. “Put chains on them and lead them around and make them do work.”
She glared at me. “Exactly. I’m not a farm animal.”
I didn’t have a lot to say to that. However, I had another point to make.
“Not to be indelicate, but…”
“Go right ahead, I’m not delicate at all,” she smirked.
“Aren’t you evil? I mean, you are a demoness, after all. A lot of people would say that binding a demon and then making it work for you isn’t necessarily evil – especially if you’re achieving some sort of good out of it.”
‘A lot of people’ basically being just other gamers, since having a servant demon was nothing more than a hypothetical in the real world.
“So if a person is evil, then it’s okay to enslave them?” she asked. “That’s what you’re saying?”
“No – ”
“If you believe that, then you can justify anything as long as you can convince yourself that the person you’re doing it to is worth less than you.”
“You have sex with men while they sleep,” I snapped.
“What’s so bad about that?” she asked as she yawned and stretched, arching her back and jutting out her breasts.
I stared at her. At the moment, I couldn’t come up with anything bad to say about it at all.
“In fact,” she murmured seductively, “I think you might enjoy it if I slept with you while you sleep.”
“I would rather be awake,” I said without even thinking.
She laughed uproariously, and I blushed.
“I’m sure you would.” Then she stopped laughing and said, “So tell me to.”
I was actually about to – and then Admiral Akbar yelled in my head, It’s a trap!
“…do you want me to tell you to do it?” I asked.
“Are you asking me if I want to sleep with you?”
“Yes.”
Stig looked back and forth between us like he was watching a tennis game, but he didn’t say a word the entire time.
“And do you want the truth?”
Not if it’s not what I want to hear.
“…yes,” I sighed.
“Then no, I don’t. But what does that matter? You’re the master, I’m the slave. I have to do what you want. After all, I’m just a farm animal to be led around on a chain – right?”
I looked at her angrily. “I’m not like that.”
“Then free me,” she challenged me.
The idea was ludicrous on its face. Nobody ever freed a demon in the game – it wasn’t even an option, so far as I knew. And there was nothing to say she wouldn’t turn on me and kill me like she had the last guy.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “I’ll help you kill your other ex-masters… you’ll help me in combat on any other quests I run… but other than that, you’re free to do as you like.”
She considered that for a couple of seconds. “Okay, that’s not a bad deal.”
Stig asked incredulously, “What about me, boss?”
Jeez, now I had an insurrection on my hand.
“No,” I snapped.
“Sorry, Stiggy-wiggy, you’re not a hot chick,” Alaria said drily.
“Thanks,” I told her in irritation. “You’re going to make me into a Warlock without any demons to help me.”
“Which means you’ll be the first halfway decent Warlock who ever existed.”
I sat there grumpily, staring at the fire, not saying anything.
After a minute she said, “I’m sorry, master. I was speaking out of turn.”
I looked up, surprised. Her face was blank.
Which was a tell-tale sign on her – sort of like Stig nodding his head when he was telling you ‘no.’
“You don’t really mean that,” I said.
“I have to admit, I’m a little afraid you’re going to punish me.”
She didn’t say it seductively – she said it with a flat voice and no expression.
I sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t mean that. You might not help me kill the others, and that would be punishment enough.”
I was impressed by the honesty in her voice. She wasn’t playing games.
Either that, or she was playing them at a completely different level, and manipulating me in ways even more powerful than her sex appeal.
I looked at how she was dressed and remembered her comments about chains, and my mind automatically wandered to another beautiful woman who had been enslaved.
“I’m trying to be the good guy, okay?” I said. “I’m trying to be Luke Skywalker, not Jabba the Hutt.”
She frowned. “Luke Skywalker? Jabba the Hutt? Who are they?”
Crap – I’d used another reference from the real world that she couldn’t possibly know.
“Never mind. It’s just a story.”
“What kind of story?”
I paused, then grinned. If my friends know anything about me, it’s that I’m a huge Star Wars nerd – second only to my being an OtherWorld geek.
“It’s the story of a farm boy who goes off to fight the overlord of an evil empire.”
She frowned slightly – but not in annoyance. More like intense interest. “The farm boy was Luke Skywalker?”
“That’s right – how did you guess?”
“He has a heroic name,” she murmured, and I almost felt jealous at the kind of reverence she showed.
Which was pretty freaking ridiculous, seeing as I was getting jealous of a movie character.
“Was the evil overlord Jabba the Hutt?” she asked.
“No, he was sort of a secondary villain – a gangster.”
“Why did you mention him?”
“Because he enslaved Princess Leia… sort of like what you said I’m doing,” I mumbled.
“Princess Leia?”
Oh, it was on now. She was totally enthralled at this point.
“Yeah – she was the princess who sent word to Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Je... a, uh, old knight who lived near Luke.” I grinned, recalling one of my favorite lines from the original movie. “‘Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi – you’re my only hope.’”
“She said that?”
“Yeah. And then Obi-Wan and Luke left the desert land to go rescue her.”
(Actuall
y, they left to take the Death Star plans to Alderaan, but… too complicated for what I was trying to get across.)
For the first time in several minutes, Alaria smirked. “So you want to be my Luke Skywalker?”
I winced. “Actually, no – they turned out to be long-lost brothers and sisters separated at birth.”
“Oooh, kinky,” she purred, then laughed. “So I guess you’re my Obi-Wan Kenobi, then. My IAN-Wan Kenobi.”
“Ha ha,” I said without laughing. “No, if I wanted to be anybody, it would be Han Solo.”
“Who is he?”
“Are you really interested in this, or are you just buttering me up?” I asked.
“Of course I’m interested,” she said, deeply offended. “I love stories – why wouldn’t I be interested?”
“Oh. Well, it just used to annoy Amy to no end when I would talk about...”
I trailed off as a sharp pang of sadness stabbed deep in my heart.
I guess it showed on my face, because Alaria asked quietly, “Who was she?”
“My girlfriend.”
“Did she die?”
“What? No! She just... she left.”
“And that makes you sad?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“I miss her.”
“Did you love her?”
“...yes.”
She nodded. “I can see it in your face. But it’s a good thing you let her go, master.”
I frowned. “Why’s that?”
“Because you should never keep chains on the ones you love.”
Her words stung me deeply. I was about to ask, ‘What do you mean?’ when an entire platoon of armored soldiers stepped out of the trees around us.
23
Alaria, Stig, and I all leapt to our feet – but froze as 20 swords flashed in front of our faces.
“Hold!” the captain of the guard yelled at us.
“I think we can take them,” Alaria whispered.
“No,” I whispered back at her.
“Phew,” Stig breathed out.
“Oh, come on – I can bake them in those suits of armor, no problem – ”
“No.”
“What you are whispering about?” the captain asked angrily.
“Just wondering why you’re bothering us out here in the middle of the night,” I said.