** Amelia **

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. The fucking Witch of Chains was about to pull my brain out, or whatever it was she did. She’d hunted me down and I was going to die a painful death. I thought the NPCs were supposed to be… nicer.

The battle had gone horribly wrong even without her fucking it all up this time. Well, she was probably at one of the battles, but she hadn’t been at mine. I’d been hurt. Jazz was sitting broken in my inventory and a demon from my nightmares was standing in front of me.

I was already mid panic attack I think, my heart and breathing were all over the place, and oh god everything hurt so much. Maybe it would be nice to die, let her finally finish me. She was taking her sweet time about it though. Fuck I was crying. I was crying. I just wanted to the terror to end. And the pain. Just fucking kill me you bitch! Kill me! Kill me!

My shaking — I’d been shaking? — stilled in an instant when I felt something soft touch my cheek. Was that… her hand? It felt small and feminine against my cheek… and then her thumb… it brushed my tears away? What was going on?

“I’m sorry,” she said, her soft voice cracking with emotion.

I jumped slightly at the sound, it felt wrong to talk in this forest. Like the trees were frowning down at us in disapproval for disturbing them. That and like, the Witch wasn’t meant to have a voice.

I opened my eyes slowly, almost afraid of what I’d find on the other side of my lids. Oh shit, there she was! I felt a jolt of panic go through me as I recognised that terrifying face, but up close for the first time. But then… I saw her expression, and it was so compassionate. She looked almost as upset as me, but she was holding herself together better, that was for sure.

“What?” I asked dumbly, my mind throwing the word out so its stupid ass could think of an actual reply.

“I-I’m… I apologise… for… this chase, the hunting.. I…” she faltered, withdrawing her hand, a look of confusion and doubt jumping onto her face like Amano onto a table when he’d had too much to drink. Actually, I think that simile was a little tone deaf to the mood.

“Why are you sorry? You’re… the Witch. It’s what you do…” I coughed, my voice sounding rough.

“I suppose,” she said, looking away. She was backing away from me like it was me who was the terrifying creature of the night.

This was such a crazy turn around. What was even going on? The Witch of motherfucking Chains was looking and acting like a scared little girl.

“Uh, I forgive you?” I asked, mainly to see if she’d take it. Was I about to get some crazy quest to help the Witch girl with something?

“No… I very much doubt that. You’d just say that so I’ll leave you without my awful company. Or possibly so that you can get what you want from me,” she frowned, shaking her head and seeming to almost cringe in on herself. Then she stumbled, her heel striking something under the snow, and she fell on her ass with a thump.

“Look, uh… lady… I don’t want shit from you. You’re basically a force of nature. You don’t ask nature for anything she doesn’t want to give. We learned that… well in a different place,” I said, skirting around the whole, real life global warming thing. NPCs didn’t like it when you talked about real life.

“You don’t want anything from me?” she asked in surprise, staring at me with those impossibly black eyes. Wait, was there mist swirling in the irises?

“Nope, like I said… what could you give me? I mean, I can think of things now that I’m reaching around, but I doubt you have health potions,” I joked, grimacing as my pain flared in reminder.

She bit her lip and nodded like that made sense. That lip bite, oh dear sweet aphrodite. This was so lame, I wanted to be the one biting that lip. I definitely wanted something from her now, but she needed to want it too if it was going to work.

“Well, here then…” she mumbled, opening her hand… and two health potions popped into being in her palm.

“No fucking way,” I breathed, looking up from the potions in awe. “You’ve got to be shitting me… you’re a fucking player?”

“Oh shit…” she winced, then nodded. She tossed the potions to me, letting them land in the snow next to me with a harmless plop. “Please forget that. My life is immeasurably easier when people think I’m an NPC.”

“Yeah…” I nodded distractedly, trying to pop the corks on the potions and finding that my shock was combining with my fucked up arm to make the whole thing kinda hard.

She watched me struggle for a moment, then sighed and rolled her eyes at me. Was that some sass coming out there? She walked over and knelt next to me, seeming a little more at ease now that we’d been talking, and plucked one of the potions from my weak fingers. She popped the cork, and reached out like she was dealing with a dog or something and not a person. She squeezed my jaw in a strange way, causing my mouth to pop open a little. Damn, how did she know how to do that?

Then in one swift movement, she upended the contents of the potion into my mouth without warning. I sputtered as the potion tried to go down the wrong way, and she closed my jaw with a snap and held it there. Presumably so that it all stayed in, but I’d never been so… womanhandled like this before! It was a little bit hot. She was hot. Stupidly hot. Hotter than the sun. However hot that shit was. Dang, she had me thinking with my warm and fuzzies, something chronic!

The healing potion kicked in with a pleasant tingle that overlaid itself on top of the already present tingle of warmth within my center, and I felt my body beginning to mend. Then she popped the cork on the other potion and started to repeat the procedure.

“Ah, ah, ah!” I squeaked, shaking my head. “I’ve got this one… thanks.”

I did not need to have that happen again. Unless she had some more… interesting intentions. She shrugged and passed the potion to me, allowing me to drink it like a damn human being instead of a goat or whatever. Just because I could jump around and climb shit… honestly!

Once I was feeling a little less like a troll’s plaything, I glanced up at her sideways, “You know, you said your company was awful, right? But you don’t actually seem all that bad. A little odd maybe… yeah actually like, a lot odd. But hey, I’m odd too. We’re basically already friends.”

“I do not do… friends,” she said, chewing on the last word like it was something sour.

“Oh-kay,” I said slowly, a little taken aback by that one. “What about… pals?”

“Pals?” she scoffed, looking at me like I was a lunatic.

“Yeah. Pals! It’s like friends, but you don’t use the word friend. It’s a loophole,” I winked.

“A loophole… you can’t just loophole your way through the english language like that,” she said, scrunching up that cute little nose of hers in derision. That look was followed by one of realisation and disgust. “Now you have me turning loophole into a verb. What are you doing to me?”

“Bitch please, I do what I want,” I grinned, summoning some water from my inventory to deal with this damn rasp. “Fuck the english language! Consensually of course.”

That one seemed to take her for a loop, because she opened her mouth all hauty like, but no words came out. Then closed it and looked away with a pout. A fuckin’ pout! The Witch of motherfucking Chains was fucking… fucking… pouting! The same woman I had watched carve her way through hundreds of soldiers on a battlefield like they were level one god damn bunnies or some shit… was pouting.

If I was writing this out in a text or something, I’d use like, at least seven exclamation points and possibly some of them would mess up and come out as ones. Yeah I was a messy typer, anyway. The pout. It was fuckin’ cute as shit.

“Girl, that pout is straight up adorable,” I blurted, my mouth running with my current train of thought before it got the memo that I was thinking and not talking.

“I don’t pout either,” she mumbled, still very much pouting.

“Uh huh…” I said, unable to keep the disbelief from my voice. “Righto… well… oh Poutless Witch of Chains, what the hell do we do now?”

“I don’t know! I kill people! I don’t talk to them! You seem to be far better suited to this talking thing, so you tell me what happens next!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air.

“You take me back to your place and we fuck?” I asked, again before my mouth got the whole, thoughts, not speaking memo.

She stared at me, stunned… for like, at least five minutes on that one. Well, maybe not that long, but still. The Witch had clearly not been expecting that. I liked her stunned look, it was fun to see the all powerful Witch looking like that.

“I am... Unsure how to respond to that,” she said at last, in a carefully neutral tone.

“Right, uh. Yup,” I said stupidly, still in the process of internally kneecapping the gremlins in charge of my mouth.

We sat there in silence for a few minutes as we both recovered from my ridiculous blunder, and it gave me time to look at her. She was around the same height as me from what I could tell, but I had a little more muscle on my bones. I guess those mist chains didn’t actually weigh much. Or she had scary magic strength. She was almost petite, except petite didn’t have hips like those. Damn girl, they looked nice to grab hold of while I was… anyway.

“Well…” she mused, breaking the silence. Wait, no holy shit, what? Was she... no... hold on?

Clearing her throat, she flicked her eyes up to mine, then quickly away and down to my boots. “I could take you back to my camp. No sexual intentions though! Just… it’s cold out here and the Taeru is on the run. I assume you’re from the Taeru… so you won’t have a place to go back to.”

“Aw fuck, they’ve buggered off? Really?” I groaned, slumping further into the gross, melting snow around me.

This was a problem, mainly because the only way back would be to die. It would be easy, just ask the Witch to send me, but I wasn’t very keen on that, and she didn’t look much more interested in it either. I was not going to let myself freeze to death either. Plus… if I stayed, I’d get to hang out with the Witch of Chains, maybe have an adventure. Also try and woo her, that too.

“Yes, they have… buggered off,” she agreed. “So would you like to take shelter with me then?”

“Yes please, whether that is a euphemism or not!” I said, wholeheartedly done with this cold as fuck forest. Totally, one hundred percent done. I needed a warm fire at least… maybe her warm body too, but I doubted that would happen anywhere other than my dreams.

“It is most definitely not a euphemism,” she said, but there was a tremor there. She might, possibly, not totally, be sure of that? Was she saying there’s a chance?