Fateweavers and Folly

The trio had run through two more repeats of the Mall, taking the same route to be safe despite other stores being available, before a knight had come over and spoken with Erica, causing her to call a stop whilst she addressed whatever the knight wanted.

In the meantime, John skimmed over the loot, muttering to himself, “Some more materials, a couple of those acid orbs…”

He startled slightly when Velvet quietly asked, “Is there anything interesting?”

White eyes met brown, and John smiled unbidden. “Not, uh, not really? A few extra bits that are nice, but the best loot was definitely from the boss.”

She nodded. “That makes sense. Higher risk, higher reward, right?”

John hummed slightly, considering. Then, after a moment, he asked, “Velvet, uhm, how- how do you know about video games? What with the whole, uh, y’know…”

“Blindness?” she bluntly finished, grinning at his discomfort. “John, it’s nothing new. You really shouldn’t be so frightened of pointing it out. I’m hardly going to tell you off for it.”

“Yeah, but-” John rubbed the back of his neck. “It just feels bad, you know? Like I’m pointing out a failure or something, without giving any positives or solutions or- You get my point.”

The blind girl blushed, and quietly replied, “Well, you could always point out the good things too…”

Before John had a chance to actually process and respond to that, Erica jogged back to the pair, the knight leaving the courtyard behind her. “That favour I called in is on her way to us here, so we should chill for a minute.” She paused, looking at John like she just remembered something, then said, “Actually, you won’t know that yet, huh. Let’s run through what she can do, being a Fateweaver…”

—

“So… they slow down time?” John asked, confusion visible on his face

Erica sighed a moment, and then gave a wry smile. “Basically. They split the seconds inside of their barrier, and we get extra time because of it. The lady that’s coming out for us isn’t one of the immensely powerful ones, those guys get double or more the time inside, but she’s still great. You be polite, you hear?”

John blushed slightly at the joking tone she used, even as he found himself smiling at her.

Erica seemed about to say something, then she spotted something over his shoulder, and shifted. “Ah! Speak of the devil, and all that. John, this is Fateweaver…”

A soft voice spoke from behind him, “Kalladahn, but please, call me Holly.”

John turned, and began to seriously wonder if there was something in the Abyssal water that made all the women fucking bombshells. She was tall, as tall as John was, and wore a form-fitting black suit and tie, tightly pressed to clean cut lines. Hair as red as Moira’s fell down her back in a neatly kept braid, with two strands falling down the sides of her face to frame the teardrop shape. Most stunning, however, was the shade of amber that shone from her eyes.

She turned those eyes from Erica, to Velvet, and then to John, pausing for a moment, then sweeping over to the blonde babe again. “I assume you are Erica? My colleague was not too specific about this situation. I am here to provide some time dilation, as I understand it?”

Erica nodded, her eyes cutting over to John for a moment. “Yeah, though, it’s a special type of barrier, apparently. That going to be a problem?”

Holly hummed a moment thoughtfully. “Specialised how? An innate ability?”

Erica gave John a look, leaving him to explain his apparent bullshit. “Sort of. My barriers apparently aren’t normal? I create special, uh, dungeons, full of enemies that are scaled to my level.”

Those curious amber eyes sparkled with interest. “Ohh, a special form of Fateweaving designed around personal training? What a remarkable innate ability.”

“Yeah…” John awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, kind of? But it’s more of a side effect. That’s, uh, that’s not really relevant right now though, I don’t think? So, uh, how does this work?”

John saw Erica nod approvingly at his caution, before Holly gently clapped her hands together and began speaking again, “Yes, you are quite right. I shall see how it works upon your entry into one of these barriers regardless. Very well! I will be opening my personal barrier in a moment. If you would join me within…”

With that said, she smiled wide and all three women snapped from his view, leaving an odd sense of presence in the vacuum left behind where Holly had been, as if there was something strongly tugging on his wrist, almost yanking him. It only lasted half a second before the pull overwhelmed him, and he found himself pulled into a different space beside his friends once more.

This time, however, Holly gave him an intense stare, her head tilted slightly as if he were some kind of bug beneath a magnifying glass. It was quite uncomfortable, John had to admit. He was about to say something when she finally spoke, “You are very interesting. What was your name?”

The Gamer barely resisted the deep urge to squirm beneath the intensity in the redhead’s eyes. “J-John Newman.”

A moment longer, the Fateweaver examined him, and then she blinked and the pressure behind the amber vanished, replaced by a small yet curious smile once more. “Well, now that you’re within this space, the time dilation is in effect. I believe we are currently at…” She paused, looking into the empty air, then at her wrist where a watch rested, before returning to John. “...around a rate of an additional twenty minutes to every hour? A 33% dilation, or thereabouts. Provided I am allowed adequate rest during the nights, I should be able to maintain this for at least the requested week.” After finishing, the woman snapped her finger, then sat down into the suddenly appearing armchair, and pulled a small book out of an inner pocket of her suit jacket, raising the question to John’s perpetually horny mind of how exactly that jacket clung so tightly to her chest if she was keeping things in the pockets.

He shook his head to clear away those thoughts and questions. He’d noticed himself doing that a lot more recently. Erica turned to him, and raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Well? Get on with it’. He blushed lightly and looked over at Holly once more. “Uhm, a-am I good to just…?” He raised his hand in the air tentatively.

“What?” The woman gave him a quizzical glance, then seemed to realise what he was asking. “Oh! Of course, yes. You could just open that here, sure, but it would be easier and far less painful for the both of us if you went and used one of the entry circles over there.” She gestured vaguely in a direction, and John could just barely see an inscribed circle of some kind on the ground. He nodded at her, quickly thanking her, and then walked over before he could embarrass himself further.

The trio reached the indicated circles, and John took a moment to Observe one.

It was, as the description said, more or less just a circle with a few special symbols drawn on it that John absolutely didn’t recognise in the slightest. He stepped into it, then waited a moment for Velvet and Erica to join him on the circle, and raised his hand to open the fourth dungeon of the day.

‘Well,’ John thought idly to himself, ‘at least I get some good levelling from this. I’m even starting to feel like I can use this axe.’

—

“Wow, you have no fucking idea how to use that axe.”

The trio popped back out, having run through a slightly different route of the Mall this time. Eion had been around to collect Velvet when evening rolled around, citing some incident or another to do with the PKs, so after a rushed and **** goodbye, John had continued with just Erica. The pair had entered the barrier in the same place, and after every single combat encounter, Erica had given the Gamer half a dozen pointers and tips for how he should be fighting. It seemed she had only just realised that he didn’t actually understand what most of those pointers meant, since he had no idea what he was doing.

John sighed, “Maybe it was a bit too optimistic of me to choose an axe. Something like a bat, or- well, anything normal probably would have been a better starting point.”

“Did you pick it because it was cool?” she asked him, blunt and straightforward.

The Gamer hefted the weapon, and stared at the reflective silvery surface thoughtfully. A minute or two passed like this, before he slowly, measuredly, replied to his tutor, “No… I chose it because it… it felt right? It just felt like the weapon that would… be comfortable, I guess.”

She tilted her head, a small smile playing on her lips. “Damn, your powers are interesting.”

He raised his eyes to look at her, the unspoken question clear.

“Most berserkers are drawn to big weapons like greataxes, claymores, that kinda thing. People debate whether it’s because of convenience, since we can actually use them far easier than most, or whether it’s some kinda, like, instinctual thing,” she explained, then pointed at John. “You’re suggesting that it’s instinct, despite being an artificial berserker, but then you have no instinctual knowledge of how to use the weapon.”

John looked back at the axe, then willed his Character Sheet into being, so that he could stare at it for a moment as well. After that moment, he reached an answer, “...It might be because I don’t have a skill for how to use it?”

Erica thought about it, then nodded slowly. “That’d make sense… So, how do you get skills? How’d you get your current ones?”

John scanned them for a moment. The combat ones were earned from the berserker class, Observe, the Gamer’s Body and Spirit, and Masturbation were all there from before he left home the first day, which only left Kissing. He had to stop a second to **** his mind to push away the welcome memories of Velvet’s touch, taste, scent- No, focus. He got kissing when he actually got kissed for the first time, and then, not that he had yet, but he could presumably improve it by practising, right?

“...So if I-” John muttered, then remembered he was talking to Erica and looked at her. “I think I know? I got two of my skills for actually doing the skill successfully first, and then I level it by repeating it, right? Just like in an MMO or something. So, maybe-”

“-If you learn the basics of how to use the axe for real, then your powers will take over the rest?” Erica finished eagerly, coming to the same conclusion in half the time.

“Y-Yeah,” John replied, rubbing the back of his neck. “So…can you, uh, can you show me how?”

Erica grinned, and then said, “Damn, I’m impressed you actually asked, but…