"Why aren't you taking this more seriously?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andy stopped working on his latest creation and looked up, "I am taking 'this' more seriously." He pointed at what he was working on, "See? Mister." He was in his apothecary’s first-floor workroom, with Mir hovering nearby. He widened his eye, letting the jeweler's loupe drop into his hand. "On the other hand, it’s been over a week since he showed up, and nothing has happened." He turned back to his metal contraption, giving it a shake to check for loose parts.

 

Mir rolled her eyes, "Really? I told you-"

 

"He knew your name and you didn't give it to him. Yes yes yes, unless someone at the gate told him our names when they referred him to us." Andy banged the mister on the table a few times, "Should hold up."

 

Mir landed on the table, "So what's your plan? If he tries something, you're going to squirt him with water? When he inevitably tries to assassinate you, he'll be annoyingly moist?"

 

Andy sighed, picked up an acid capsule—one of many types of alchemy ammunition he made for his contraptions—and loaded it into the mister’s ammo chamber. "No..." He walked out the back door to his backyard, where he had several targets set up for testing. Standing ten feet from the nearest target, he aimed the mister and pulled the trigger. A burst of mist shot out in a ten-foot-long cone, coating the target in acidic mist and causing it to sizzle.

 

 

Mir had followed Andy outside and was mildly impressed, "Okay... that might buy you some time."

 

Andy shook his head, "Don't be silly. I'm just testing. The real ammo is too valuable to waste on a test fire."

 

Mir squinted, "What's the real ammo?"

 

Andy looked around, then went back inside before continuing. He lowered his voice. "While Andrew was here, I had him prepare about half a dozen doses of Miriam’s sleep poison infused with chronoplasm."

 

"Infused with what-o-plasm?"

 

Andy sighed, "Ectoplasmic Time? Chronoplasm." He opened up his cabinet and pulled out an alchemy capsule with a tiny hourglass on the side next to three Z's, "Miriam is legendary, which means her poison can still affect anyone under epic level, even if they have immunity, but all poison has one major weak point. The spell slow poison."

 

Mir thought for a second, "Uh... all that spell does is delay the effects of-" She cut herself off, "Oh."

 

"Yeah. Slow poison lasts for hours, so you cast it before combat, get hit with twenty different types of poison, and as long as you get a Neutralize Poison spell before slow poison wears off, you're fine." Andy tapped the capsule, "Unless you infuse your poison with Chronoplasm. That makes the poison realign itself to the time frame of the target, thus ignoring slow poison." Andy picked up the mister, "This little doohicky, a leftover from third edition, allows you to take injury poison and turn it into inhalation poison." He paused then added, "Assuming you can get within ten feet, of course."

 

Mir settled down on the table, "Okay... good plan. So when do we take him out?"

 

Andy sighed and sat heavily in his chair. "We’re not. We’ll act normal until he tries something. If we ignore him, maybe he’ll think he has the wrong guy and leave. If we take him out and he’s a real threat, his boss will send someone to investigate, causing more problems."

 

Mir rolled her eyes and turned away, "I don't DO sitting around and waiting very well."

 

Andy sighed, loaded the poison into his mister, clicked on the safety then set it aside, "Look. I get it, but this is our job. We're the decoys, remember?"

 

Mir looked over her shoulder at Andy, "Yeah, well... I don't want anything to happen to you." She pointed at herself, "I'm half Miriam's level that's to the update, remember? That makes me twentieth." She pointed at Andy, "You're a squishy fourth. I..." She stopped looking at Andy to stare at the far wall, "I'd miss you if something happened."

 

Andy took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He gently scooped Mir up, holding her in his hand. She let out a little squeak but didn’t complain. Smiling, he held her up to his face. "I like you, too."

 

Mir sat in his palm for several seconds before bopping him on the nose. "IF YOU CARE ABOUT ME, DON’T GET HURT!"

 

Andy winced at the blow but made no effort to pull away. It was as if this was some sort of well-practiced ritual known to each of them. Mir acts like a tsundere. Andy takes it on the chin and responds in a way that indicates he finds it all mildly amusing. The two argued for another twenty minutes before noticing that the day was waning as the daylight leaking in around the curtain vanished.

 

At which point Andy would talk about dinner. The two would talk about food. Something would be cooked. A meal would be shared. Finally, the two would retire upstairs for some sort of entertainment the two would discuss and agree upon. They no longer did the illusionary TV shows, for fear that Noel might be spying on them. Usually, they wound up playing a board game that Andy had recreated, But tonight was different.

 

An adventurer had paid for part of his equipment with books he had acquired. Andy loved listening to Mir's voice, and so this night, she would read the book aloud while Andy sat by a low fire and listened. While on the outside, he had a well-practiced smile and didn't show any outward signs of concern.

 

Inside he was a nervous wreck.

 

While he listened to Mir, it occurred to him for the thousandth time just how wonderful his life had become. While nowhere nearly as driven as Andrew, Andy shared one particular trait with Andrew. He didn't like being alone and thus valued what few friends he had very much.

 

 

As Andy sat there, listening to Mir, he found himself distracted by thoughts of the many things he needed to do to protect his little slice of heaven.

 

 

 

May the gods have mercy on anyone who tries harm Mir.

 

 

 

 

 

Because Andy would show none.

 

---

 

Andrew had made a false assumption.

 

 

 

 

When he arrived in his new world, he assumed it was just like in the game. This was true back when the world was first created. The world was now several centuries old and far from the unchanging, static world Andrew had thought it was. In those intervening years, things had changed and the world evolved. New spells were created. New classes developed. Yes, what Andrew knew about the game was extensive and he was the most knowledgable person on the planet in regards to 'the rules', but he didn't know everything. For example, He didn't know that Elyin was part of an order of paladins who had a customized class specifically designed to hunt down and kill infernalists because such a thing didn't exist in the original game.

 

Homebrew: Andrew's Greatest Blindspot.

 

Elyin's class gave up Detect Evil for a special ability, Detect True Form. This ability tells the user the race, class, and general power level of the target. It was used to sniff out infernalists, but it also was good for finding polymorphed spies, so the class had become rather important to the elven justice system. It was this ability that allowed her to know that Miriam was not a faerie, but an imp, the first time they met.

 

The ability was also what told her that Andrew was trustworthy. For whatever reason, he did not detect as infernal. She assumed his story of turning down the cheat ability had to be true, for this reason. This is why she wanted to get him on her side. If she could convince him to help her, he might be able to infiltrate the infernalist's ranks. With his help, she might be able to finally break into the infernal inner circle, rather than just pick at the edges of their society.

 

It was also how she knew that Andy and Mir were not Andrew and Miriam.

 

Andy detected as a Human and Mir was a Mirror imp, but both also had the additional template of Living Construct. That sort of thing is normally undetectable unless you have a special ability like Elyin. With her extensive training, She put two and two together and figured out there was only one thing these two could be.

 

Simulacrums.

 

It didn't take long for Elyin to put two and two together and figure out these two must be decoys. Andrew was off somewhere else, doing something else and she had no hope of finding him. She was supposed to find these two and settle on capturing them. For now, her best bet was to wait for Andrew to check back in. With any luck, she'll have made friends with Andy by then, and maybe he can get Andrew to calm down long enough to talk. In the meantime, she would make a name for herself among the locals.

 

Andy was friendly enough, but it was obvious Elyin screwed up with Mir. Mir was not buying Elyin's Noel disguise and was always giving Elyin the side eye. However, if Andy suspected something, he didn't let on. With no other choice, Elyin focused on making friends with the local adventurers and working hard to become an upstanding member of the community. To this end, she spent a great deal of time performing low-level quests for the guild and spending her free time in the local guild hall hanging out and getting to know people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So it wasn't that much of a coincidence that she happened to be playing cards with the other low-ranking adventurers when an infernalist came strolling in through the front door of the Guild Hall.