Faux failed to suss Walter's heroic qualm.

When men and women gathered power in Eovamund, when they climbed above the moral conventions, they tended towards one of three paths: tyranny, ravishment, or violence. History books overflowed with horrific examples from the Third Crusade, better known as the Bloody Crusade, the time of the mass summonings. Indulgences escalated from enlightened dictatorships to crushing despotism, joyful harems to mass rapes, and honorable duels to genocides. The heroes stopped because they annihilated each other, each competing to take their share of Eovamund.

Faux knew this well. She experienced the allure. Tyranny and violence meant little to her, a means to an end. The goal was to enjoy sensations. Even now, standing next to Walter's ridiculously suffocating mana shadow, like a lover's hand clamped around her throat, her hips throbbed, and her crotch ached. If not for that, then she would have lost interest and slinked off. She wouldn't be his first in Eovamund, Elin, the paladin-bitch greedily soaked up that honor. Faux desired to be the first he pinned down and robbed from if Walter ever lost his composure.

Again, the problem was Walter's apparent lack of qualm. He had little trouble hurting her or barking commands, even if he refused to touch her, let alone look at her. His behavior did not originate from desire. Instead, he acted as the situation demanded to achieve something.

It dawned on Faux that three qualms weren't enough; Walter possessed a fourth. According to legend, the First Four Heroes, Galvarino the Fighter, Aristo the Thief, Minvra the Healer, and Viktordromos the Mage, faced their own flaws. Authority, violence, and lust for the first three, respectively. The idea that Minvra the Healer, the Gaiatic Temple's icon for dutiful motherhood, Idrun's wife and founder of the Temple of the Witness, struggled not to be a 'healslut' made Faux giggle. She, and the paladin-bitch, both healers, fit the bill. What did the mage overcome? She couldn't remember a single story about it, but now she knew there must have been a difficulty.

"What's so funny?" Walter eyed her. He might as well be looking at a pest.

"Ah! Nothing!" Faux choked back the laugh and smoothed out her face.

He snorted through his nose and teleported further ahead. Faux sprinted the steep hill to catch up, and she scrambled over loose shale.

"Fuck," she grumbled.

It was a punishment. For the most part, Walter hiked and allowed her to stay close, so long as she kept her mouth shut and navigated. The closer they got to the Alune Theocracy and the promised dungeon, the steeper the hills became. Hills gave way to barren mountains, and Faux's breathing labored, despite her enhanced strength, from exertion. Faux's clothing, from last night's attack and the rigorous travel today, tattered.

Walter waited for her to take the lead. "Hurry up."

No breaks, no rest. Faux's stomach growled. She glanced at Walter, fearful he might teleport again. He sighed, instead, and moved to a flat area on the mountain's spur.

"We'll camp here for a bit."

"I'm going to hunt," Faux's tentative voice floated, "You'll be here when I get back?"

"Yeah."

With a renewed sense of urgency, Faux bounded up the hill. Did he intend to wait long? Mountain lions moved with less grace and speed. A white dot on her HUD identified neutral entities, in this case, a horned goat, and she slammed into it with enough force both of them tumbled. It didn't have the time to spook; Faux broke its neck. Ideally, she wanted to cook it but couldn't risk the delay. Disease or food poisoning meant nothing to Faux because she could simply cast a spell and remove it, and it wasn't the first time she resorted to these measures.

"Goddamn it," Walter muttered when she returned.

Blood covered Faux's mouth, cheeks, cleavage, and it soaked into her clothes. Embarrassment, the last time she experienced it she couldn't even remember, crept up the back of her neck and warmed her ears. Walter sat next to a fire with a roasting bird. Nice and civilized.

"Sit."

She did. Act like an animal, get treated like one, she guessed.

"Do you," her words faltered before she captured them again, "Have any water?"

"None to waste on cleaning," he muttered before passing his canteen. "Wipe your mouth and face first, moron."

She lowered the canteen and cleaned up with the back of her sleeve. When she took her swig, she returned it.

"You said, 'Goddamn.' Do players have their own gods?"

He peeled off a bit of bird flesh and chewed, "Yeah. Well, the one, now, I guess? There are others. I thought you knew about that."

What kind of creature could possibly lord over a player in their home domain? "My information isn't complete. I only know from the communications between players when they used my mouth to speak. I put together a picture of sorts, but it's lacking."

"Used your mouth to speak? You mean, like, with text chat?"

"Yes." Faux cleared her throat. "Which god do you worship? What are they like?" It never occurred to her that her creators were also creations. She intended to learn his motives through his beliefs.

"I don't. I'm an atheist. Well, agnostic would be a better term. I never met any, and I'm not even sure they're real." He tossed aside a stripped bone.

"They never showed up? Did they even talk to you or send letters?"

"No."

Faux played the revelation over in her head several times until the meaning grabbed hold. Laughter bubbled up, first tiny bubbles, and then it progressed into a rolling boil. She grabbed her side, fell over, and kicked against the rocky ground to force herself to breathe between each spasm. Her diaphragm burned, and lightheadedness threatened to pass her out, but Faux couldn't stop. Finally, her lungs exhausted, she flopped against the ground with tears soaking her face.

"What the fuck is so funny?"

"The irony! All that priceless freedom, yet you act caged. You're literally everything I want to be, but you can't take advantage of it because of a hang-up! Still, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, even though I was discarded. Why not worship one of the gods in Eovamund?"

Walter sneered. "What? Like Ouroboros?"

"Well, Ouroboros doesn't accept worshippers because she rejects anthropomorphization. You either follow her principles, or you don't. Think of her kind of like the evolutionary process at work or survival of the fittest. She's a force of nature. People tend to get her wrong, that she's evil, or the Goddess of Chaos, or a sea of sin, or some bullshit, but, really, she's just a concept moving through the world. You survive, or you don't. People react negatively to her because they hate suffering. If you embrace the pain, then she removes your inhibitions. Gaia's the same way, really."

"The hell does that mean?"

"It's nature versus nurture, Ouroboros versus Gaia. They're twins. C'mon, that big brain of yours should have seen that coming." A residual giggle hiccuped out of Faux. "I would suggest Aratron, but that's a dead religion. Fitting, I suppose, since he's the God of Magic and mages intend to increase their own supernatural power instead of begging for it. Why would anyone pray to him when they could just copy him? Guess what happened to him?"

Walter rolled his eyes.

While he looked away, she could tell his attention remained fixed on gathering new knowledge. For the first time since they started the trip, she could share something.

Faux continued with a dramatic finger in the air. "He was sealed. Gaia and Ouroboros did it. I bet no one told you that, huh? No one wanted to offend you, least of all that bitch-paladin, I bet.

The first age, if you follow the timeline by some of the pompous priests, was the Age of Miracles, and, during that time, Gaia and Ouroboros fought. Monsters versus the Enlightened Races. They had avatars then, you see. To prevent the world's destruction, Aratron put his foot down, slapped those two uppity bitches, and broke pure mana into chromatic mana. This destroyed the god's avatars because they needed pure mana to maintain their bodies, the world's saved, everyone clap.

Now, the second age. Gaia, still seething, discovered a loophole: summoning heroes. Ouroboros, not to be outdone, created the dungeons. Aratron, once again, rose up to stop their reckless misuse of magic. Now, here's the plot twist: Aratron's, or Prometheus as the elves call him, wife, Hera, betrayed him, and she stole his grimoire, the physical manifestation of his power. Gaia, Ouroboros, and Hera forced him into a four-way marriage ceremony, consummated it against his will, then chained Aratron to the book. They backstabbed Hera and banished her. Since then, the twins have been hijacking his power."

"Sounds like a load of crap," Walter said.

Faux clenched her teeth to repress her laughter again. After clearing her throat, she said, "Yes! It sure does. Hear me out, though, as an agent of the Cult of the Circle, I've encountered plenty of other religious beliefs. This thread runs through all of them with little variation, even for the druids. You have to admit, too, the state of the world seems to support it. If only that pointy-horned god of magic could have kept his wife in check, none of this would have happened."

"Pointy-horned?"

"Oh, right, Aratron was the first demon in Eovamund. I thought you knew? Is it not common knowledge for players? I remember seeing some chats about summoning him through the Book of Solomon or something. Sounds kind of kinky, doesn't it? Being married to a demon."

Walter closed his eyes and hung his head. When he looked up again, he calmly stood, walked to her side of the fire, and looked down on her. Faux looked up. Without warning, he clasped her face, palm over her eyes, and his fingers locked onto her temples.

"Wait! What?! I thought you would want to know!"

Walter dragged her through the camp, her kicking legs scattered their fire's embers, and stopped at the edge of the hill. "Stupid bitch." He tossed her.

The sky and ground traded places while she spun through the air. Each collision, on some random side of her body, rattled her. The slope of the hill accelerated the fall. When she sprawled out, catching shrub and dirt to slow down, patches of skin scraped away. Faux broke her fingernails after desperately digging into the cracks of the rock for purchase. Her leg hung over space, over the precipice of a cliff. They climbed high enough that, if she missed the grab, then she could have died falling, even with her HP. Thankfully, her shoulders and forearms strained, and she stopped. Rocks clacked against the cliff and ground below.

"I don't understand! What did I do wrong?!"

"This entire story was a lead-in to proposition me for sex. Lie to me again, and I'll chuck you even further."

Faux's mouth worked like a dying fish on dry land.

But I didn't lie!