Collide Gamer

‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

Moira grabbed a pillow, slamming it down on her face before the scream inside her mind could flee into the room. Muffled by the expensive fluff, the redhead shouted out her confusion until the moisture on the cotton became too uncomfortable. The pillow was tossed to the side, the screams replaced with miserable squeaking.

A tall, athletic woman, a sculpted perfection of a knightess, rolled left to right on the enormous bed like a teenager that had only just discovered that she even could have a crush on someone. Her legs kicked the air. She grabbed another pillow, squished it against her chest, and tried to exorcise every bit of panic inside her through physical exhaustion.

At the end of it all, she laid on her back, lungs pumping, heart thumping, thoughts happening. ‘Alright… alright… I am in control… I am in control…’ “I AM IN CONTROL!” Moira shouted the words to try and truly believe their meaning. An adage of the Order made its way to the top of her mind.

“The louder the words, the less weight to the truth.”

‘I’m not in control at all!’ Moira snapped upwards and tossed the pillow in her arms across the room. It hit the wall next to a fully body mirror, just one of many pieces of the elaborate design of the room. “GAH!”

Moira jumped to her feet. Nervously, she paced up and down the room. The bounce of her ponytail annoyed the hell out of her. She tore through the elastic band without a thought and tossed it to the ground. The bounce of her open hair was no better. Everything was frustrating and annoying and just the worst!

She threw herself back on the bed. The fluffy mattress made her bounce. She pounded the accursedly comfortable thing with her fist, rolled onto her back, then clawed at her own hair. “Why did you say that, you daft cunt!” she cursed at herself, then grabbed the first pillow again for another round of futile screams.

After all of that, she felt a tiny bit better.

‘Why did I say that?’ she asked her own mind. Hugging the pillow with arms and legs, she rolled onto her side. Her eyes stared at the wallpaper, following the decorative, golden swirls. ‘Was I just joking? I was… right?’ she tried to convince herself, but that fell totally short. ‘…I can say I was on my period! Guys believe that girls do weird stuff on their period, he’ll just swallow it… right?’

Moira rolled onto her other side. She stared at her own reflection in the full-body mirror. Most of her, including half her face, was covered by the pillow.

There she was, the Shield Warden of the Order of the Golden Rose, hugging a pillow because she had made a joke about getting pregnant. The idea of becoming a mother filled her with a… strange duality of emotions. That one, at least, she was accustomed to.

The line of Wardens was not a straightforward one. Though it was typical that the power was passed down from mother to daughter, there were contingencies that had been triggered through the ages. Sometimes a Warden perished before she had a child. In that case, the Golden Rose would either leap through her lover to his next child or, in the more likely case, it travelled to the next of kin that was not yet born.

Because there was that failsafe, Moira technically did not have to become a mother. She desired it. She also desired to do her part in protecting the Lady’s creation. It was a horrific prospect to end up diminished, even less capable at smiting the wicked than she currently was. It was a wondrous prospect to become a mother, one who could cherish her little one.

‘Unless I die like mine did,’ Moira thought.

A smile that she hadn’t known was there died on her lips. Her mind quieted, collapsing into a pit beneath her own self-control. She sat upright, put the pillow down, then retrieved the other one and placed it back on the bed. Then, she inspected herself in the mirror.

She believed she looked a lot like her mother. She couldn’t recall much of her. What few memories there were had more of her warmth than her features. Moira cherished them. She held no bitterness for her mother. Duty had demanded that she fought. No one had expected the pyromancer to have enough power in them to overpower even a former Warden and her retinue.

Pride for descending from one so dutiful was what she felt about her mother. There was no blame in her heart, though there was yearning for a childhood lost. Yearning, not craving, not grieving, but yearning – a controlled emotion, a lingering remnant of a terrible thing that had happened to her and that she just had to live with.

Moira picked up the torn hairband. She shook her head in disappointment at her own impulsiveness. The hairband was thrown into the trash. She went to the bathroom to grab a new one. The bag she had brought with her contained a last resort to tie up her curly tresses. She did so quietly, her mind silent and yet racing.

“Why did I say that?” she muttered to herself.

The answer to that was fairly simple, if she was being honest to herself: because this could give her everything she wanted. A child, a man that could protect her, many friends that could help her, and her own strength to exceed even what the Blessing currently gave her – in raw power, at least. If there was a way to assure that she wouldn’t end up leaving her child, then it was this one.

So, there was another, better question she had to ask herself: “What have I been doing?”

The past 17 days blurred together in her mind. It was a constant stream of warm memories. Most of it she spent frustrated – the good kind of it. Though this was the most perverse, indulgent, undisciplined, co-dependent lot that she had ever come across, it was also the most competent, controlled and respectful of individual limits.

Moira had been constantly pushed. In combat, they kept her at the edge of her ability, always coaxing her a bit further. In conversation, they teased and challenged her in ways no one else had ever done. Though Moira had gone through extensive schooling in the trivium and advanced forms of thinking, it had all been done in the frame of the Order. A frame she believed in wholeheartedly and one that was open to challenges. One did not craft an armour against wicked temptations from unrefined ore.

Temptation had hit her over and over again. Bit by bit she had been nudged by the environment, forsaking her clothes, her discipline and her decency. What had she been doing? Especially these last couple of days?

She had been showering with the harem. She had been eating breakfast with the harem. She had been training with the harem. She had even been around doing most of the orgies of the harem, be it with him around or not. She had even participated in it all as a voyeur, assured that they could live like that, so certainly she could live like them as well.

‘I’ve basically lived as a member of the harem.’ The realization made new embarrassment rise up from her core. By now, the sensation of her cheeks burning was familiar, pleasant even. ‘No, no, no, you have to have sex with John all the time… but Lorelei doesn’t… but she would if he asked, so… I am totally different…?’

Moira’s thoughts petered out. The hammering of her heart rose all the way up to her throat. Her vision was blurry, unfocused. She forced it back, only to realize that she was… smirking. She looked like an idiot and it did not even bother her.

It was horrifying!

Moira stumbled back to the bed, sat down on the edge of it, and grabbed her comfort pillow again. The pleasant tingles that were crawling all over her mixed with so much confusion. By now, there was something she had to admit to herself.

‘I fell in love with John Newman.’

Forming these words in her mind had surprisingly little impact. She could practically hear her subconscious mimicking Jane’s mocking tone to say: “Duh?”.

‘Yeah, well, it’s a bloody surprise to me!’ Moira argued back at her phantom and pulled her knees to her chest. ‘What do I even do with that? What kind of woman would this make me? What would Father think?’

The question surfaced in her mind the scowl of the parent she had left. She knew her dad had all kinds of troubles. He was prideful and hated the sinner every bit as much as the sin. Regardless, he was her father and she would never let anyone claim that he did anything but the best with the situation that he had been given. He had lost his wife, had to lead the Order alone through turbulent times and raise his daughter. He had performed well in all of his duties. Not once had she seen him break.

Her father loathed John Newman. Some of that was blown out of proportion, an emotional outburst in the face of a man every bit as prideful as himself. Other parts were perfectly justifiable. Could she really do this to her father? To become part of the harem of a man he so intensely disliked? Could she tarnish the reputation of the Warden like that? What kind of example would she be setting?

‘Who do I want to be?’ Moira asked herself.

She wanted to be the paragon of virtue for her people. The Lady’s faithful were growing more numerous in this era, a development that had taken the Order centuries of preparation and lost opportunities. Finally, there was a window where they could convince the people to worship Gaia not just as a vague force of nature but as the true Lady that was and governed creation.

She also wanted to be a woman, to enjoy the spoils of the safe world she had helped create. Was it too selfish to want to pass the vigil onto someone else? Had she not been made in the Lady’s image to conceive the next generation? Could she not hang up the hammer and the armour and dig up the soil of her own home?

The wall or an occupant of the garden therein, were these her only two choices?

Try as she might, she could not mentally combine the two. Lorelei’s offer rang in her head, the exception carved out for the Warden being part of the harem of one who was clearly blessed by the Lady to have one. Just as she was ready to accept it, her father’s head surfaced in her thoughts, frowning and shaking his head. For more chapters visıt novｅlfire.net

She HAD to make a choice between the two. She just HAD to.

Between bliss and toil, between submission and responsibility, between being a woman and being the Warden, a choice to be made. Already she had drifted so much from being a paragon. She had been strolling around nudely, toys jammed in her bits like she was some kind of display doll. What was just a little more indulgence into what she wanted…?

It was everything.

Moira pressed her lips together and hardened her heart. She glanced at the harness and the toys she had been using. They were right there by her bedside, a clear sign of her sinful nymphomania. She grabbed them all and shoved them into an empty drawer, to be lost when this barrier closed. She went to her wardrobe and pulled out the most conservative clothes she had. The long sleeves and loose pants felt like an armour around her body, though uncomfortable in this hot house.

“I’m the Shield Warden of the Order of the Golden Rose,” she spoke in a low hymn. “Lady, I am tested by the desires you imbued upon your Blessing. I shall not fail. I shall be the guiding light of all, the protector from evil, the defender of humanity.”

That was her choice. That was who she was, who she was supposed to be. She had almost fallen to honeyed words and their displays of balance. Moira was not going to accuse them of being false. Perhaps they could truly live that way. For her, this life was impossible to unify with her duty. Too many expectations were upon her shoulders.

She dropped to her knees for the willpower to resist her love. For the good of the Order, for the peace of her father, she could not be a woman who gave herself to a man like John Newman. He may have been dutiful and strong and handsome and rich and cute and dedicated to raising everyone around him up as far as they could go… but he was not who could lead the Order. He just wasn’t. He just couldn’t be.

‘I will have to distance myself from him as best I can,’ she thought. ‘Forge walls of will around my mind that no word nor hand may break. I am the Warden. I protect humanity from the wicked. I will place an armour around my heart.’

She closed her eyes and clutched the pendant of the shield. The divine metal was cool in her hand, unpleasantly so. No doubt it was chiding her for almost falling to her desires.

“This is the only way!” she said loudly to herself, repeating it to reinforce what she had to believe.

It was the only way.