Just Another Normal Day in the Abyss

John awoke on his back. The first thing he noticed was that he was back inside the tent. The second was that he wasn’t in any pain. Normally his body ached after taking a beating, even after getting back to full HP. Wounds closed, organs regenerated, and fractures mended, but each injury usually left a reminder in the form of lingering pain. Not this time, however. This time he felt great, better than he had when he’d first woken up. He turned his head to look around, and it was only then that he realized he’d been resting on a warm, firm pillow.

“Oh, you’re awake.” The voice came from above. It was gentle and pleasant, so much so that John could barely recognize it as Moira’s. She was resting in a side-sit with John’s head on her lap and a hand running through his hair. It was, at least, until she pulled it away the moment she had noticed he was awake. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” John answered, casual as if their position was perfectly ordinary. “Great, actually. Your healing is incredible.”

“It’s sufficient,” Moira dismissed the compliment, but John could see her cheeks color a little. “I’m not the best healer in the Order, not by a long shot, let alone the entire Abyss.”

“Well, it’s strong enough to save my ass, so it’s good in my book,” John said. He sighed and looked up to Moira, uncertain what to say next. She was still in her pajamas, despite them being a torn, bloody mess. This close, John noticed for the first time that they had a pattern on them in a slightly lighter shade of pink: Dinosaurs. Ankylosauruses, to be more accurate, if John recalled correctly. Moira didn’t seem to notice John’s puzzled expression, she was looking elsewhere.

What a weirdly specific choice. There’s no way these weren’t custom made..

“Are you well enough to get up?” Moira asked. John tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He understood what she meant. Moira already knew he was feeling fine, she was just being polite about saying ‘Get off.’ He snapped upright as if he’d been shocked with an electric prod and spun on his ass to face Moira again.

“Sorry, Moira, I was ju- oh, shit, your hair!” John’s hand clamped over his mouth. Moira’s once luxurious tresses now only reached her chin at their longest, cut at an uneven angle that left no side of her hair the same length as another. “I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t be,” Moira said. Despite her dismissal, she reached up to finger the rough ends of her hair with a solemn look on her face. Whether due to a lack of care or the removal of weight, her hair displayed a waviness it hadn’t before, replacing some of the length with the appearance of extra volume. Shorter hair might have looked good on her, had it not also looked like it had been cut by a blind monkey. “You did the right thing. Your quick thinking freed me and helped us end the fight. I reject your apology and instead offer you my gratitude.”

John was stunned silent. Sincere praise, from Moira, without any backhanded compliments or negating criticism. More than that, the gentle smile on her face was a completely foreign sight to him, at odds with everything he knew about her and warm like the first rays of sunrise. John felt a fluttering in his chest, followed by his heart rate doubling for reasons that had nothing to do with exertion. He reasoned that the Abyss must truly be a strange place if it could lead to what had just happened.

“Is something wrong?” Moira asked through the silence. John realized he must have been staring like a moron and pulled his jaw shut.

“Uh, no. No, everything’s fine,” he stammered. “I just wasn’t expecting that. You’re, uh, you’re welcome?” Unexpectedly, Moira’s expression soured.

“What do you mean by you weren’t expecting that?” she asked. “Do I come across as the type of person who doesn’t offer gratitude when it is earned?”

Yes.

“No!” John waved his hands defensively. “I just… I’m not used to people thanking me in general, least of all the leader of a holy order of knights.” His words were true, even if they weren’t exactly why he’d said what he did in the first place. People usually spoke to John with the bare minimum of socially expected politeness at best. Being acknowledged for something he did came almost exclusively from his family, Liam, or June.

June...

“You said we were almost out of here, right?” John looked back up with renewed determination. “In any case. we should break camp and get moving. I could not be more done with these stupid caves.” Moira, who had been scrutinizing him as if she wasn’t sure she believed his prior explanation, dropped her scowl and nodded.

“I agree,” she said. “Although, perhaps we might want to clean up.” She gestured beside her, where John saw a pile of napkins soaked with either blood, pasta sauce, or both. It was at that moment that he realized he wasn’t wearing his leather cuirass, only the quilted gambeson that was usually beneath it.

“Um,” he looked around, “where’s my armor and why am I not in it?”

“It’s here!” Moira blushed and swiftly reached behind herself and presented John’s missing equipment. “I had to take it off to clean you up. You were still covered in hot sauce and I needed to know where your wounds were to heal them!” Moira’s words were delivered hastily, as if she would die if she didn’t finish speaking in one breath. “I don’t know where you keep the towel I gave you, so I had to improvise,” she said, once again looking at the pile of soiled napkins. John sighed.

“Why do you have so many napkins in- nevermind.” John shook his head. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

“You’re welcome,” Moira said pointedly, as if instructing John on the proper way to respond to gratitude. “I suppose I’ll gather the trash while you don your armor.”

“No need,” John said. The cuirass disappeared as he stored it in his inventory and reappeared on his body after equipping it again. He handled the mess as well, adding nearly two dozen dirty napkins to his inventory. “Ta daa!”

“How convenient,” Moira remarked.

“Isn’t it though?” John grinned. “It’s like your shield, but it’s always with me and intangible. All I have to do is move my hands a little.” By that he meant navigate his menus, but as far as Moira was concerned, he was merely performing minor gestures required for a spell. “But, now that I think of it, I don’t know how much can fit inside. I know there’s a limit, I just don’t know what that limit is.” On paper, he had 24 inventory slots, so his space wasn’t infinite, but the capacity of a single slot varied wildly. One wallet took up the same ‘space’ as seven textbooks. Even assuming that stacks of items stopped at 99, there was no knowing the limit without first finding out how big a single item was allowed to be.

Liam would love to experiment with this, I’m sure. Oh man, he’s gonna be so mad that I fought Florida Man and he wasn’t around to see it.

Soon enough, John and Moira broke down the tent and stored it safely back in her shield. If his cell phone was still right, it was just past noon. They set out later than usual, but John still had hours worth of mind numbing walking to look forward to. After discreetly taking care of the business he’d meant to address before their false start, the pair recovened to get going.

“Hang on a second,” John took only a single step before stopping, “what’s that?”

A misshapen lump of red fabric lay on the ground not far from where the tent had been. In fact, John realized, it was where they had finally defeated the infamous Floridian. The body was no longer there; a smear of blood suggested that some scavenger had dragged it off to parts unknown. Still, the red what-ever-it-was remained. John felt it warranted an Observe.

-
Red Cap of Ma'Gaat
Equipment - Headgear [CURSED]
-Common?-
Made to look like an ordinary red ballcap, this hat is one of many worn by followers of Ma'Gaat the Bitter, Minor Demon Lord of Tantrums, to display their devotion.
Fills the wearer's mind with violent psychosis, rendering them immune to all other mind altering effects.
Curse of Avarice: This item cannot be removed by anyone but it's bearer, who is cursed with the urge to wear it at all times.
-

“Uhh…”

“What is it?” Moira asked.

“It’s a hat,” John said. “Must’ve been dropped by that asshole this morning.”

“That doesn’t explain your caution,” Moira said. She looked a little antsy herself.

“It’s magic. Also cursed,” John said. “It makes you immune to mind control, which is awesome, but it also makes you a raving lunatic, which sucks. Oh, and it won’t come off. It has something to do with some Minor Demon Lord of Tantrums?”

“Never heard of him,” Moira sighed. “Best we leave it alone and carry on.”

“Yeah.” Although he agreed, he wasn’t entirely convinced. “Isn’t it dangerous, though? If someone finds it and puts it on, they’ll go on a rampage, probably until they die.”

“True,” Moira said. “But it’s unlikely that anyone but a Gnoll would find it, and they’re already savage creatures.” John frowned.

“Unlikely isn’t great,” he said, with a little more snap to his voice than intended. “What if one of the Knights finds it?”

“They would know better than to-” Moira cut herself off and rubbed her temples, strangely squeezing her legs together and letting out a tiny whine at the same time. “No, you’re right. Forgive me, I haven’t been thinking very clearly since our encounter with that… ‘man.’ We should take it for safekeeping until it can be destroyed.”

John’s concern was evident on his face. It was unlike Moira to struggle like this. Whatever was going on ran deep, otherwise how could it break through her carefully cultivated air of austerity?

“It should be fine as long as I don’t wear it,” he said, kneeling down to stow the crumpled hat in his inventory. “But are you okay? I haven’t seen anything bother you in, like, ever.”

“I’m fine,” Moira insisted, straightening her posture and setting her emotion back to stony. “I’m anxious to get back, that’s all. The longer we’re gone, the more I worry my father might do something drastic.”

“I don’t want to know what your dad’s idea of ‘drastic’ is.” John grimaced. “Let’s go.”

“With haste,” Moira agreed.

A few minutes of silent speed walking followed until, eventually, John spoke up.

“You know, there’s still one thing I don’t get about this morning,” he said. Moira looked his way to indicate she was listening. “Weirdly enough, the whole thing with ‘collective **** this’, and ‘Abyssal manifestations that’ I get. What I don’t understand is… why was he here? Of all places, why Abyssal Springfield and not Florida?”

“I couldn’t tell you even if I understood the nature of what spawned him,” Moira answered. “What seems like it should be reasonable in the Abyss oft isn’t.”

“You could say the same for our world,” John griped. Moira’s eyes took on the appearance of assessing John again, as she did, then set her eyes forward and groaned her agreement.

Another long day of nothing passed by. Their journey had come to the end of the faux forest of stone and brought them back to a more enclosed cavern with much better lighting. John had been grateful for the first few hours of peace. After the morning’s events he felt he could use a break, but the boredom set in eventually and he found himself craving some sort of dangerous happenstance to shake things up. Nothing life-threatening, just enough of an obstacle to punctuate the hours. No such relief came, and Moira wasn’t much help either. She had gone back to being dead weight in a conversation. The only difference was that, while their initial travels were filled with deliberate silence, this time Moira was attempting to engage, but failing. She offered only stilted and curt responses without much substance, and would occasionally groan at a volume John assumed he was not meant to hear. Whatever was bothering her hadn’t gone away. If anything, it seemed to John like it was getting worse, but he knew better than to question her on it. With any luck, they’d be home soon, and she could figure it out on her own.

Still, she was practically sweating while they assembled the tent together. She was simultaneously shooting John looks on a regular basis and keeping her distance from him. Their hands touched once, briefly, because she snapped hers back as if John had been on fire, then swiftly walked away to work on something else without a word. John’s concern was beginning to overcome his respect for both her privacy and authority, but he couldn’t summon up the guts to ask. Instead, he politely pretended not to notice, and stopped trying to talk. Every now and again, he’d pick up on a hint of relief in her eyes when John did something to leave her alone. It never lasted long.

Moira’s breathing was labored by the time they turned in for the night. She wasn’t outright panting or gasping for air, but he could tell from the sound alone that she was putting effort into keeping it under control. It wasn’t easy for John to ignore the presence of a hot, breathy girl right next to him while he tried to sleep, let alone one that would let out the occasional whine of distress. He tried, but it wasn’t easy. Whether he could or not ultimately didn’t matter because, roughly fifteen minutes in, Moira pounded a fist on the ground, sat bolt upright, and left the tent with a frustrated huff. With no audience to pretend to be asleep for, John sat up as well.

Five minutes, for real this time. If she’s not back in five minutes, I’ll find her and make her tell me what’s going on.

In his trepidation, John waited nearly ten before finally getting up and exiting the tent. Finding Moira wasn’t difficult, all he had to do was listen. Her voice carried from around a bend in the cave, coming in bursts of shaky moaning and long, drawn out whines. Was she in pain? No, something felt off. He had to check. As he rushed around the corner, all John could think about was that it almost sounded like she was…

Moira gasped in panic as John came into view and they both froze completely solid. There on the floor, only a few feet away, was Moira Brighton, bereft of pants and with her pajama top fully opened. She was covered in sweat, her face was completely red, and she had one hand under her top, groping her chest. The other was between her legs, clawing at her inner thigh hard enough to leave marks on her otherwise flawless skin. She had wedged a small stalagmite against her pelvis, pressed hard against what looked like metallic, golden panties. John was prepared to die. However, when their eyes met, he saw not rage, but desperation.