The Gamer Chapter 1694 – Digging and Conjecture (Patreon)

John pushed up against Nahua’s mental defences. The wall was not particularly sturdy, but would be soon enough. “That keeps me from reading your surface thoughts,” he told her.

“Wonderful.” Nahua put one of her pawns forwards and John immediately answered with a move of his own. They had been exchanging details for the better part of three hours. As many questions as John had about the Aztec realm, none of them were as urgent as the various questions Nahua had about the modern world.

The demigoddess was either fully immune to panic or was just coping very well with it all. From what he had seen of her mind, the former seemed more likely. Having lived with the pain of constantly digesting an incredibly aggressive disease from a young age had steeled her in a lot of ways. It also seemed to be the reason why her sex drive was as dead as a fish in a desert.

“I hope you aren’t going to be too mean to me when I try to explore your mind in return now? Just a teeny, tiny little bit?” Nahua asked sweetly.

“Since you’ll learn it in a bit anyhow: your tendency of changing between valley girl and mass murderer is really messing with me.”

“What? Little young me would never hurt anyone even a little bit!” Nahua giggled, which turned progressively from high-pitched and innocent to husky and borderline evil. At the end, she sighed and threw her arm over the backrest of her chair. That simple gesture changed her posture from little lady to aggressively tomboyish. “Every time I came into a town, everyone was always so afraid of me. All I did was cut some stomachs open to pull the disease out of them, that’s hardly an inconvenience, right?”

“I sense sarcasm.”

Nahua smiled like a sunflower in full bloom. “Wow, you’re so smart!” she complimented him, then swung back to the darker voice. “I started to put on the happy face so the people would be disarmed around me. Turned out it was also useful to get underestimated by and confuse various people of importance. Nowadays, I don’t know how to turn it off.” A high-pitched sigh. “You’ll survive it, yeah? You’re big and tough?”

“Far from the weirdest quirk people I know have,” he told her and opened his mind. “Alright, have a look around.”

Nahua ventured forth not like an inexperienced child testing the limits of their reach, but like a warrior chucking a spear at a piece of game. Probing intent pierced right through his surface thoughts, then came to a short halt. She must have sensed she had gone deeper than she meant to. The Gamer surrounded her with mild amusement.

‘Try not to be disrespectful in your eagerness,’ he thought and moved his next chess piece. ‘Here, this will help you learn.’ He nudged her towards the part of his mind where he was calculating his current moves.

‘Much obliged!’ Nahua kept her almost squeakily happy tone even in their mental dialogue.

For a little while, they said nothing, just moved pieces back and forth on the board while she kept a view of his strategy. John let her see everything, his emotions tied to every action of hers and his plans to advance on the board. He squirrelled away no hidden strategy in a hidden corner in his mind. He let her know exactly what he would do, why he would do it, and what he would do in case it did not work.

“Checkmate.”

Nahua stared at the board. All of the intel she had access to, and still John’s side of the chessboard stood victorious, with more than double the pieces still in play.

“Not bad for your first game,” he complimented her and he meant it.

“You’re dangerous,” Nahua mumbled and began to venture deeper into his mind. He folded his hands in front of his chest and let her explore. She plucked memories out of his recollections, viewing them from his perspective, before snapping away when the wave of associated double and triple checks he had for his own actions came over her. She turned to his motivations, to his current senses, then to his likes, dislikes, and so on.

In the end, John had to oust her not because she was being disrespectful, but because she was going in deeper than she could handle. The demigoddess inhaled deeply when her attention returned from the depths of the Gamer’s erudite mind to her own senses. “I am dangerous,” he agreed. “Which is exactly why I can’t just leave this situation alone. I must know what happens next.”

Nahua swallowed. The respect she had for his strength before was now fully manifest. “This contract, this magic that made me metal and delivered me from flesh, you said it offers me boons?”

“That is right, although I am hesitant to give them to you.” At this point, John felt confident in being honest with her. Her primary goal was to end the propagation of the disease. The matter of her people, she left to the capable hands of her father. He did not trust that all was right in the realm of Huitzilopochtli. They may yet end up as enemies. “I would require guarantees that you will not wield this strength against me. You must have sensed my reasonable misgivings with the canon of your people.”

“Inconsistencies are natural between the tales passed on from the lips of one historian to another,” Nahua told him, then raised her hand. “Spare yourself the arguments, I know this train of logic. Either my father has reasons you understand, in which case we will not be enemies, or he has been playing our people for fools for generations, in which case I would not stand in your way to destroy him.”

“You are confident my suspicions will be proven wrong,” John noted.

Nahua put her chess figures back into order on the magnetized board. “You won’t blame a girl for trusting her father, right?” she chatted. “You just don’t know what’s going on. You’re from a totally different culture and place in time, no offense and all that, but you probably just don’t really get it?”

“Did you work with Montezuma because you totally trusted your father?”

The question froze Nahua’s casual smirk. “You really are dangerous,” she growled. “I believed my father may have been possessed by the Ahuiateteos.”

“The five gods of sin,” John said. “You already mentioned gluttony earlier. Are they real?”

“You are asking if they are manifest on this plane,” Nahua corrected him.

“I do not regard your cosmology as a sensical one,” the Gamer told her flat-out. “That is a matter for another time though. What do you mean when you say your fathers gets possessed by them?”

“All those that dwell above the thirteen hells must contend with what may rise to the top and the Ahuiateteos are the closest to the material plane.” Nahua picked up the white king from her side of the field, then surrounded him with five of the black pieces. “Gambling, drunkenness, absurdity, tyranny, and gluttony, the five spirits of excess. All men must fight these and my father was no different. Heavy is the burden he bears.”

A peculiar selection of sins, but the same could be said about the western seven deadly variety. “As the god of sacrifice, he was tempted to indulge himself at times,” John theorized.

“And sometimes even the greatest of men will fall to temptation,” Nahua confessed. “The stress upon my father cannot be understated. All sacrificed to him, so that he may keep our civilization alive. Through him, the god-warriors were born, which kept the Aztecs ahead of their rivals. I, myself, am the child of one such misstep by my father. He took the offer of a mortal woman to love. My birth, then, was a lucky coincidence. A great rival to the order could have been created.” Nahua yawned, giving John one of her ‘malevolent’ smirks (she just had that face shape). “I can sense your doubts even without this soul bond.”

“Less doubts and more alternatives,” John answered. “It could be that your father was a great but fallible man, but to my paranoid brain that feels like too easy an answer.”

“You insinuate he had us tricked from the start.”

“I entertain it as a possibility – and it does not help that my ability has your ability to absorb poison named as ‘Plague Glutton’.”

Nahua grabbed the edge of the chessboard and glared at him. Purple pulsed in the corners of her eyes, flowing from her tear ducts in rivers of pestilence. “I was born under misfortunate stars,” she hissed. “I am the fruit of a god’s sins. I swallowed the torture of a thousand souls every year for a hundred years and you dare suggest that I did it in the name of the vulture?”

Leaned back in his chair, John weighed his answer. The circumstantial evidence he had at this point painted an answer too terrible for anyone within the civilization to admit to or survive knowing. That being said, he did not have actual evidence yet, just his brain drawing connections based on aesthetics and names.

He went for the diplomatic route. “I consider it an option, but I do not know everything.”

Nahua grit her sharp teeth and most likely would have either lunged at him or ordered someone to tear his guts out had this been the world before he had pulled her out of her hole. Here she could only wipe the poison off her face and suck it off her thumb. “Exactly, you don’t know everything…” she muttered. “In all cases, the ants must be destroyed. There have always been tensions since the day of the maize but they overstep.”

“Mind telling me what that is about?” the Gamer asked, too curious not to ask.

“In the old days of the realm, after the calamity, there was a great, great famine,” Nahua told him. “All crops planted would be gnawed raw by swarms of insects. The plague knew no end. Great and terrible sacrifices were offered to Huitzilopochtli, so that he may deliver his people, at this point not yet the Aztecs, from the great hunter. From their sacrifice he formed the first god-warriors. Tezcatlipoca found great schools of fish. Xipe-Totec…” Nahua sighed. “…had the men eat each other. Huitzilopochtli calmed the ravaging insects. It was, however, Quetzalcoatl that truly found the end of our suffering.

“Far to the east, in the tall mountains of the Andeans, the feathered serpent discovered a great hole and in it great ants. Transforming into one of them, he scouted out the area, and found in their little-large realm a great mountain of food. He stole some, brought it back, then the god-warriors banded together to get more. Although all god-warriors together fought this war, it was Quetzalcoatl who the ants blamed the most.”

‘A Kingdom gate?’ John wondered. ‘Or just a massive Natural Barrier? If it’s the latter, it would be a wonder if no one stumbled over them in the meantime… it also doesn’t quite make sense that they would be here.’ “Why would they make their way here at this time if their home is in the Andeans?”

“The ants were always eager to strike us. They must have employed seers.”

“No, that definitely can’t be it… this realm is covered in the most thorough anti-scrying network that I have ever seen.”

“You underestimate the ants, especially if they have pledged themselves to the Vulture.”

John did not want to restart the topic of his ‘heresy’ so he steered the conversation back to safer waters. “Whatever else happens, I got enough of a view into your pretty head that I know you’re moral enough to be trusted with power that I can offer you.”

“Aww, are you flirting with me, big man?” Nahua snapped back to her cutesy tone. “You’ll find me sexually disinterested. I do not feel the urges.”

Somewhere else, his second body saw Momo suddenly give him a seriously warning glare. The gesture of intuition was spot-on – and too late. “I could change that.”

“Yeah, I heard that one before,” Nahua laughed, then stopped. “Wait, are you actually serious?”

“Yes.” Elsewhere, Momo was pulling his ears.

“I can’t even be there and ask her questions about her civilization and you are flirting with her!” the fairy maid complained. “Tell her it’s not an option right now or I am going to make you regret it! I will! I don’t know how, Master, but by G I will!”

“However, it would not be wise right now,” the Gamer said. “We have other issues and you should probably consider if you even want that.”

That was good enough for Momo to lay off him for the moment. It was also good enough for Nahua. “Then I understand that you offer me another boon?”

“I owe you for saving my women.”

“Much as I enjoy additional power, I’ll say that you already gave me a lot.” The upbeat demigoddess gestured at her brown curves. “I am owed no further payment.”

“You underestimate how much I value my women.” The Gamer picked up the queen from the chessboard and turned the piece between two fingers. “Would it even be worth playing without this piece?” he mused out loud, then shook his head. “Giving you a body was a means to an end. It cost me a lot, but I did not do it for you and I have learned much about you because of it.”

“Alright, alright,” Nahua chatted. “You had me at ‘my women’. Sure, I’ll take whatever else you’ll give me, if you’re so eager to hand it out. Who says no to a free meal, hm?”

“Right… so, remember what I told you about the way this contract works? I can increase your raw powers or I can grant you specific boons.” That had been a more digestible way to explain Stats and Perks to her. “I am willing to grant you the boons at this time.”

Perks were usually the stronger side of what he granted his Artificial or Natural Spirits, so he was being gracious. Having this mental connection open for the past day just gave him the confidence that she would, at least, not wield it against him. If he was right about Huitzilopochtli being a duplicitous bastard rather than a flawed ruler, then she would need the means to defend herself. Courtesy of her already absurd Endurance, John did not feel the need to also increase her Stats. That was something he would keep for now so he could either not be punished too hard for being wrong about her or bargain later-on.

There was still the outcome, little as John believed in it, that Huitzilopochtli was actually just a man in a very complicated set of circumstances and that he was ultimately good for this area of the Abyss. In that case, John would have to retreat and Nahua would stay here and making her too powerful if she became the asset of someone else also was not wise.

So, giving her the Perks was the generous decision.

On a purely emotional level, John also was getting sick and tired of the subconscious alerts he kept getting because he still had windows open.

Nahua did not have to think long about this. “Alright then, go ahead and grant me power! I’ll totally not use it for anything bad, I promise.” She winked, completely aware of how that came across with that dangerous side she hid in plain sight.

It was dangerously alluring to John, that was for sure.