Morning crept over the plains like a battered wife, gradually warming them up, apologetically, to avoid any backlash.

Faux peeked at Walter while he walked. Her heart fluttered while she lapped up the sight of an angry player. She wanted to beg for sex.

Walter said nothing. Except when he prepared to attack her again, he refused to acknowledge her presence. Every time Faux drifted close, Walter's muscles coiled, like the cocked hammer of a revolver, so she backed off.

For now, she contented herself to looking without touching. In a way, it made it more real. Nostalgic, even. Players and their characters do not walk side-by-side because one was a controller and was merely a toy, or, at best, a tool if they were awarded the recognition. If Walter turned on Faux and killed her, she would not complain since her life as a video game character would be finalized. Game over. The smile on her face pinched her cheeks until they cramped. No, this was better. Walter turned coat: he unleashed his inner villain.

Well, almost. Not quite there yet.

"What are you looking for?" Faux asked, "Perhaps I can find it and bring it to you?"

"Shut the fuck up." The timing of his words smashed together like he couldn't wait to spit them out and silence her.

A few short months ago, Faux would have slaughtered the Duke of the Rotting Garden, again, for kidnapping Walter away from her. Now? She would thank him and promised herself to do so. The nosferatu noticed something, or ignited something, inside of Walter she overlooked. Delicious despair. Faux planned to play the villain to Walter's hero, and the Duke of the Rotting Garden teased out his true colors. Sure, he failed, Elin, the paladin-bitch interrupted the existential education, but Walter's cesspit of self-loathing surfaced. Faux wanted to thank paladin-bitch as well. After all, she's the one that twisted him.

Though, Faux couldn't fathom paladin-bitch's angle. What could she possibly get out of this? With a flutter of her eyelashes, every available suitor would trample each other. So it couldn't be a relationship or sex. Some of the men would agree to share, even. Power? Maybe? Though, her actions to sequester the two of them away in an isolated house didn't add up. For whatever reason, paladin-bitch struck an unknown bargain with Ouroboros, jettisoned her principles, and entered into quite the steamy affair with a summoned whatever-Walter-is.

Hero? Player? Villain? Monster? Did anyone one label apply? God? No. Not that. Faux wished but couldn't force that train of thought. In time? Who knows.

Why did paladin-bitch do it?

They crossed paths with a higher-level boss monster. Swearing and cursing, under his breath, spilled, angry and barbed, from Watler's mouth. No fear. Faux's thighs quivered. How would he kill it?

The creature's, some sort of ape thing, limbs and parts of its torso exploded. One of its arms severed in a mess of stretched tendons, splattering blood and muscle. It was standing there, threatened them, and then it flew apart and died. How? Could he simply smite monsters with a mere thought now? Faux squinted, then her jaw dropped. The thought occurred to her that Walter's Magic Missile could be summoned anywhere, so he chose to create them inside the monster's body. How gruesome. Compressed as they were, the blasts did increased damage. Ruthlessly efficient. Walter could snap and do that to Faux at any moment, and she relished the thought. Well, he wouldn't, she was sure.

"I'm looking for a dungeon," Walter stated.

Faux swallowed back her subtle panting. "What? Why?"

"Do you know where one is, or not?"

"Oh, I most certainly do. It's quite famous and extensive. Follow me."

Pope Althonbright sat at the long dining table, with roasted meat, fruits, and wines arranged before him. He entertained no guests, yet a dozen servants and slaves moved, sometimes in complicated paths and patterns, to remove an empty tray or refill a glass. Every day he prayed to Alune and thanked her for her generosity. The people of the theocracy belonged to her, and, after that, to him. His rightful property. Without someone to judge his behavior, his manners relaxed, and he chewed open-mouthed. When he found unwanted gristle, he spitted it, from a distance, onto the silver plates. He often missed.

Masked servants rushed forward to scrub the disorder away, and they permitted no display of his mistake. Each servant wore an identical mask and dark grey uniform. The men were issued a suit, women short skirts with lace-exposing stockings. None of the servants spoke, except to answer questions, and none of them hesitated to obey.

Althonbright agreed, deeply, with the overtly sexual style the heroes once shared. His eye rested on a nearby servant, one that bent over to lift an empty tray, and his loins stirred. He recently acquired the elf from raiding the northern peninsula, dragged her, kicking and screaming to the Temple of Alune, and filled her with the light of love. Washed clean of her past, she now looked forward to the pope's ministrations.

It was an unfortunate business that Lord Walter performed a coup for the elves. Prime Minister Asibridel tightened down the borders, and raiders from the theocracy returned dead, filled with arrows. The slave trade trickled to a stop. One day, the pope vowed, she would kneel before him and spend the rest of her days instructed to her lowly station. It had to wait. Walter was a hero. The pope, while desirous of more pious women, could not argue. Not openly. Not yet. Others moved against him, slowly, carefully.

The prime minister's breasts filled his imagination. How would he teach her? Painfully, at first, of course, before filling her with the light. The errors she committed, denying him, must be rectified before proper submission to Alune, to himself.

"You."

The servant stepped forward. Her pointed ears stabbed from between strands of hair, and they were her only identity. This elf Pope Althonbright ordered to stay close at all times. Her body, the very definition of the heroic qualm of lust, matched the prime minister's body type, and tempted even the most chaste, and, according to reputation, led even some women astray. It lacked, just enough to irritate. Still, he owned it, a fortunate lost soul found and cared for by the Obsessor Alune, so he cared for it, in all ways.

"Is it not right that as a pope eats, through his alms, he shares his bounty with his followers?"

She bowed, "Yes, your holiness. It is true. Thank you for your generosity. I am well-fed, and thank you for this body."

The pope smiled. "No, girl, you are not. Not yet. I feel you haven't licked from the tap in some time. Come, it is your turn to lap up these gifts, through me."

The elf slave moved to her hands and knees, and she shifted to the side of his chair. Before her hands could reach his robes, to unbutton them, he stopped her.

"You are not fit to eat at the table," he reminded her, "You're an elf."

Her head decanted. When her hesitation, brought on by the insult, faded, she raised the table cloth and crawled under it. Soon, his sighs of a full belly drifted to sighs of a more instinctual satisfaction.

"Is this not better? A slave in her place?"

She didn't answer, she couldn't, for her mouth was busy.

"Your holiness," a servant entered the room, "A visitor approaches."

"I am tending to a lost soul." The scene continued, despite the breach of privacy.

The man bowed. "Yes, of course, and I am remiss to interfere, for you have brought light to my eyes, but the visitor is the Black Mage of Eovamund. According to our scouts, he'll arrive at the theocracy within the day."

Pope Althonbright's mouth dropped, his perpetual smile eradicated, and his eyes bulged. He stood and quickly reassembled his opened clothing.

"To what end?" the pope demanded.

"We do not know, but we do know he is not in a good mood."