The Gamer Chapter 1288 – Nightingale 3 – Three Places, Three Pledges (Patreon)

“Really, dude?” Lee asked, while they walked into the remarkably bland negotiation room inside the Nightfall headquarters. There were two long couches for opposite parties, an armchair for a moderator, and otherwise nothing. Nothing, aside from the clean, grey, deep blue, and black luxury befitting of the secret service organization of a modern fantasy environment. Being able to spawn materials into existence had led to some decadent displays on Fusion’s part. All in all, John felt he was still doing better than some real-life leaders, particularly those that were at the helm of the more oppressive, extractionist regimes.

“It’s a place of a rather important memory between the two of us.” John’s hand travelled over the back of the leather couch. He had no intention of sitting down. “Not particularly romantic though, I agree. I just came here to say something, to whoever will listen.”

“…Ah,” Lee made an understanding sound, likely understanding what conclusion John had come to earlier. “Let me hear it then,” she said, waving Delicia’s core around. “I enjoy your corny pledges, if nothing else.”

“Ya gotta enjoy that ya know he means them for all of us.” With a smile, Rave threw herself on one of the couches. Legs crossed, she gazed lovingly at her boyfriend. He forgot to breathe, so much was he taken by her beauty. “No special favours in the harem, only priority lists. Everyone gets what they want eventually. Right, tiger?”

The question reminded him to take a breath, if only to answer. “Right.” He nodded firmly and reminded himself of the words he wanted to say. “I want to pledge to Nightingale – and to my entire harem – that I will always keep what I promised. I will do whatever I can do and discover whatever I can’t do yet.”

The words hung in the air for less than two seconds, before Lee giggled and loudly said, “Hey, John, Delicia is asking for a portable device that can do all 49 basic alchemical processes with an output of up to ten litres.”

“Tell her that she’s not part of my harem – and to consider it done anyway,” John answered confidently. “That shouldn’t be too hard, as long as she works with me on it.”

Lee smirked. At his confidence, John hoped, not at something Delicia said in response. Which one was correct, the young Fateweaver revealed with a single sentence. “You’d think she’d know better than to doubt you after the last stunt you pulled for her.”

“Well, it’s the saying: ‘Everyone is conservative about what they know best’,” John told her.

“Ya gotta explain that one to me, tiger,” Rave asked.

“If I told you that I discovered a way to shoot a rocket that could reach Mars in under 60 minutes by using revolutionary magical fuels, would you believe me?” John asked. His girlfriend shrugged and nodded. “If I told you that the average time of putting together a successful infrastructure project in its entirety can be pushed down to twenty minutes with a few select communication reforms, would you believe that?”

“Imma have to say no on that one,” Rave answered. “Which is the point, I guess?”

“When you don’t know a lot of the details of what goes into something, then it’s easier to accept that it can be made absurdly more efficient with a few tweaks or breakthroughs. However, on topics of expertise, where you are certain that no amount of reform can make a process that efficient, you look at it with innate scepticism. Must be something similar here. When the Gamer…” he stopped to beat his chest, “…tells you he’ll go to a different world to beat down a tyrant to retrieve a soul crystalizing item, then you just accept that as his average afternoon. When he tells you he can do something that’s considered impossible in alchemy, then that’s a different matter.”

“I suppose I get that.” Rave uncrossed her legs and got up. “Anyhowzels…”

“I recall forbidding you from violating English like that.”

“…any-how-zels,” Rave repeated slower, “let’s not get stuck here. Where to next?”

“To Newman Shire,” John told them.

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From the Nightfall HQ to Newman Shire was a relatively short trek. The Military District and that particular patch of ‘natural’ greenery in the Guild Hall were situated right next to each other. As three and a half, Delicia tucked in Lee’s pocket, they wandered down the dirt road.

“Mind telling what the significance here is?” Lee investigated. “I vaguely recall something about you having a walk out here last week.”

“Nightingale and I were indeed having a walk sometime last week. We talked about her personal views on justice, among other things.” They advanced through the woods, occasionally coming across couples. It was daytime, still, and so the woods were being used by all sorts of people who preferred the feeling of forest soil under their feet to the controlled beauty of the Park to the south-east. That, or the privacy the expanse of dense trees could offer when stepping off the beaten paths.

It’d also been where he had chased Lee. That was neither here nor there though.

They eventually stopped by the lake that was located in the shire’s southern half. Its name, John’s Pond, had once been rather apt. Now it was clearly outdated for a body of water that had its own notable sand strip attached. ‘Well, if we can call the Atlantic a pond, I think this qualifies too,’ John justified.

“Anything corny ya want to get out here, tiger?”

The Gamer hummed. Strictly speaking, the conversation he had with Nightingale had been further north. For what he wanted to say, this worked better. “I just want her and you to know that I’ll do my best to listen and talk whenever you need me to. I’ll be a shoulder to cry on, a mouth to kiss, or an ear to fill with babble, whatever the mood demands. That much I promise to anyone in my harem.”

This time it took Lee ten seconds to ruin the mood with a deliberate question, of her own design. “Hey, John, I read this article that Teemo may actually be beneficial for game bala-“

“Shut up,” John interrupted her. “You didn’t.”

“Wow, dude, really?” Her dry tone poked fun at everything he let her.

“Well, maybe I’d be more respectful of things you ‘totally’ want to talk about if you were just a little bit more reverent to my heartfelt pledges.”

“Lee can’t even respect her dad, what makes ya think she can respect you.” Rave gave the gamer girl a pat on the back.

“My dad deserves some disrespect, he wanted to marry me off!”

“…Well, yeah, he said that… but did he do it?” Given the whole situation around him and Lee getting together and the stance the High Fateweaver and his wife had towards harems, it was most likely that had been a rare case of hyperbole from the worried father. “Give your old man some credit, he wants what is best for you.”

“Ya definitely didn’t roll bad with your parents.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lee waved off, not interested in munching this topic through another time. “How about we stay in motion here and move to the last destination you had in mind, John?”

“Sure, but let’s take the scenic route.”

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They walked and bantered, as was common for them, all the way back to the Palace. They ascended through the regular walkways, over a bridge and up the stairs inside the white walls. Soon, they emerged on top of the star fort, then they reached the Palace proper and took one of the elevators to the second roof, on top of which the Statue of Liberty stood. They ascended all the way to the roundabout of the torch.

“Usually, I’m up here when it’s dark.” John gazed out over the landscape. It had been impressive from the window downstairs, it was even impressive from the top of the starfort, but standing at the highest point in the entire Guild Hall truly was something else. Because of the sheer size of the pocket dimension, it was visibly affected by the curvature of the Earth. They were surrounded by water on all sides. The Hudson Barrier beyond it was difficult to see in some directions.

There was lush green in every direction. John had spent his early life in that interesting, middle American climate of forests, steppes, plains, and all else the flats had to offer. That his Guild Hall consisted mostly of green woods was a reflection of what he preferred. He wasn’t sure what it was about the trees that spoke to him. Maybe the shade. The way the leaves whispered in the wind. The natural walls they created.

Most likely, it was because they embodied an environment that was both friendly and natural. One that he hadn’t spent a lot of time in, growing up. Quite entertaining, considering he had been considering, more seriously in recent times, to buy a homestead as a vacation spot.

“Let me guess, you wanted it to be dark by the time you came here too?” Lee asked, shaking him out of his thoughts.

“Not quite,” John smiled and looked up into the baby blue sky. In the far-off distance, clouds were pulled from existence at the edge of the Guild Hall’s barrier. “That would make this next part less impressive.” Pulling in as much air as he could, he raised his voice as loud as his lungs allowed. He knew that none would hear him, they were hundreds of metres away from the activities, but he still tried to make himself heard. “NIGHTINGALE! I SWEAR, BY ALL THAT I HAVE, THAT I WILL UPEND THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE WORLD TO MAKE YOU HAPPY! PEOPLE, GUILDS, NATIONS, COMMON SENSE, LET THEM ALL BE SUGGESTIONS BEFORE OUR DESIRES!” In a grand gesture, he raised his hand to the sky.

Everything dimmed.

The blue rapidly transitioned into purple, which grew deeper and deeper in colour. The sun, the sole interruption of the flawless clear heaven, dissolved around the edges. Pieces of its empyreal light journeyed as streaks over the horizon, gold that turned to silver once it rested at a desired position. Piece by piece, the sun was removed. The world fell into twilight, then a nightly darkness.

As purple went to midnight blue, the titanic forces John had enlisted for this favour became visible in their personalized might. The Father of Light and the Mother of Shadows were visible as outlines, one of starlight, the other of absolute black. Together, they redistributed the light of the sun, wove the darkness of this sudden night, and placed the stars just as John had asked.

John couldn’t help but wonder how exactly this worked. In real terms, the sky was an assortment of objects so incredibly far away that the limited visual information that made it all the way to Earth looked practically flat. Regardless, it was all still from sources somewhere in the cosmos. Were these other skies illusions? No, that couldn’t be it, John had seen things in those skies that no illusion could replicate. Were they views of the empyrean of other Kingdoms, perhaps? That seemed more likely, but how did a personalized sky like this fit in then? Was it magic so distant that his naked eye interpreted the same way as stars? If he flew up far enough, would he eventually find spheres of magical light?

‘Questions upon questions,’ John thought as the last of the stars were carefully placed in position. Wylus and Fade nodded to the world below, leaving above them a sky with no moon and no known constellations. To find new ones would not be difficult, for all were connected in the form that John had desired.

Above Lady Liberty were the six diamond shapes in a hexagon that made up Fusion’s simplified emblem. Each of the outlines sparkled in the respective elemental colour, the colour palette of this sky not limited to what nature made common, rare, or impossible. Beyond that core expanded massive wings. Their size almost too vast to even be comprehended as one connected image. Slowly, ever so slowly, the stars drifted, showing those vast wings close.

“I think I deserve an answer now, don’t I?” John asked, his back resting against the railing. He looked past the crystal that had replaced Lady Liberty’s stylistic torch with one that could actually be set aflame. Currently, it was off. Just an impressive chunk of an enchanted gem. “I could visit a myriad of other places. I could invite you to the Sex Dungeon, to pledge myself to never leaving you unsatisfied. I could invite you to my quarters, to pledge that my roost will be yours. I could shout my love for you out down in the Commercial District, to let it be heard by all. I will do it all and more, if that is what you desire.”

John kept gazing into the sky. Bit for bit, that nervous feeling set in again. Had he been wrong? Had he misunderstood all of this? Just when that paranoid voice started to gain a bit of traction, she appeared.

The darkness that veiled her was washed away in a few seconds. Fading into his view, the black-feathered harpy sat atop the torch, like a bird perched at the side of a cliff. She too stared into the sky, as the massive wings of starlight took their first beat. A few of the silver dots were left behind. Directly above them, the Fusion emblem was joined at the south-side by the combination of heart and womb shape that identified the Lover’s Will sigils.

“I anticipated you would figure it out.” Nightingale turned to him, the lower half of her face hidden by her right wing. “Still, I saw what I needed to see. From you and from your women. I have complicated matters greatly. Let me reimburse you, before we continue, under this sky of your choosing.”

And the goddess of the night sang for them.