Chapter 8: New Friends

“So Harper,” she says once we’re out of earshot, “how much time and money did you just save me?”

“He wasn’t going to offer to swap out the leather unless you flashed him at least some silver, maybe even gold,” I tell her. “Aside from that, getting the meat spiced for him was obviously worth a full four pieces of leather.”

“I don’t know how much I’m going to need to get my gear fixed,” she says. She has the legs of the deer artfully covering the hole in her shirt, but I could look down if I wanted to. She seems pleased by the fact that I don’t.

“Two,” I say. “And a piece of steel.”

“Steel I have,” she says. “Do you want the rest of the leather?”

I smile at that.

“Petra,” I say, “this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

“What do you mean?” she asks. Obviously, she’s never seen that movie. I should have expected that.

“I just mean that I happen to need six pieces of leather to get something made at the smithy, so we’ll be going there together, too. And meaning that you, it seems, are lacking in an adventuring party. Or are they somewhere else waiting for you to get your armor fixed?”

Since I can’t really keep my eyes off her anyway, I let the focus tell me what she does and what level she is. Near as I can tell, she’s a few levels higher than me, and she’s definitely some kind of warrior. But not a Knight or a Defender. She’d have way more than the leather and chain armor she has if she were one of those two.

She gives me a sideways glance. “No adventuring party. Just started out, actually. Was heading to the dungeon when I got ambushed and some pig faced monster tore my armor. You said you’re a local?”

“For now,” I say. “I’m actually hoping to go to the dungeon myself.”

She looks at me more full on. “Bit young for that, aren’t you?” she asks.

“I’m old for my age,” I say.

“What level are you?”

That’s rude. And blunt. But I have no reason to lie. “Eighteen. Nineteen soon. How about you?”

“Twenty-three,” she says, giving me another once over. “You talk good.”

“Thank you,” I decide better than to correct her grammar. “I’m a Bard. Talking is most of what I do.”

“Does that mean I’ll have to protect you in combat?” she asks. She doesn’t seem particularly pleased by that. Further proof that she is not a defense based class.

“I have some combat skills,” I tell her. “Mostly daggers and axes.”

“An axe?” she laughs at that, giving me a sidelong glance with a smirk. “That’ll do you some good at least.”

“I prefer to fight from range with my throwing daggers. Which, incidentally, is what I need the leather for.”

“Leather for daggers?”

“Bandolier,” I say.

I take the antlers from the deer carcass before we leave the butcher, and then I lead her back to the forge. Inga gives her a judgemental once over. “And what have you brought me today, little brother?” she asks.

Before I have a chance to introduce her, Petra steps forward. “I am Petra, priestess of battle. My armor has been damaged, and Harper here tells me that this is the best place to get it repaired.”

“Do you have another shirt?” my sister asks, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I can’t fix it while you’re wearing it.”

Now it’s Petra’s turn to look uncomfortable. “I don’t,” she says, looking more embarrassed than I would have expected. “When I was in battle, my pack was stolen. All I have is what I have on me.”

Impressive that she could kill two deer with just what she has on her. Looks like aside from the two blades I’ve already seen, there’s a dagger in her boot. She may have thrown it.

“I have to bring some meat to mom to get spiced,” I say. “I’ll give you a shirt you can wear.”

Petra nods.

I smile. “We’ll be back,” I say to Inga.

***

It’s not hard to convince Mom to make the jerky. I actually brought up the possibility because she had been talking about wanting to work on her jerking skill, so this was as much an opportunity for her as a favor for me. She gives me a bit of side eye when I hand Petra an old shirt, and she does ask me what’s going on when Petra goes to change.

“That’s Petra. She’s a new friend,” I tell her. “Inga’s going to repair her armor.”

“New friend?” Mom asks, in that way that all moms can ask, to see how I feel about her.

I haven’t expressed any sexual interest in anyone my whole life. Well, this whole life. But there’s a reason for that. These people aren’t real. I sometimes forget that my mother, my father, my sisters, and my brother are all just computer programs and not actual people. They’re autonomous enough, but they’re all artificial intelligence. And I know too much about how they work for me to believe they are truly consenting. And that’s kind of a big thing for me.

“Yes Mother,” I say, chuckling. “Just a friend.”

“She’s pretty.”

I roll my eyes. “She’s a priestess,” I say. Mom scoffs. “She is. She said she was a priestess of war.”

“Oh, I see,” Mom says. “She’s one of THOSE.”

“One of what?” My parents have never been particularly religious, and also have never really been judgemental of other religions, so this seems odd to me.

“Battle priests. They’re not really priests, in the sense that they don’t have healing magic or anything like that. They just believe that they need to throw themselves into battle after battle to prove their faith that the gods of war and battle won’t take them while they continue to fight with bravery.”

“Does that mean they don’t have magic?” I’ll be honest; I didn’t go to ALL of the class creation meetings, and I never much cared about the core combat classes.

“They have magic,” Mom tells me. “But it’s all personal enhancement, stat boosting, that kind of thing.”

That might be useful, if she can teach it to me. And that question gets into the very large field of things I DON’T know. Technically, we’re both NPCs. Non-player characters. I don’t know how NPCs interact, how their skill progression works, or how they learn spells. I know how it’s supposed to work for a player, but I don’t know if the rules are going to be the same or not.

“I need to learn some magic,” I say, partially under my breath, hoping that mom will hear me and at least let me know if it’s possible for me to learn from them.

“I can teach you some if you like,” she says. “But my spells are very specifically oriented toward my class. As are everyone’s. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, at your party. The whole family, Harper. I promise.”

I smile. “I’ll hold you to that, Mom.”