Cold Comfort

**Hax.**

## Synopsis

Juniper, Amaryllis, and Poul consider ways of leaving Comfort, but Amaryllis's soulcycle only has room for two people. Amaryllis questions Juniper and Poul as she decides who to take with her. When Poul reveals himself to have committed rape—and attempts to betray Juniper—Amaryllis kills him, reasoning that he was likely to similarly betray her to the Fuchsia Coterie. She collects his soul, completing the ***Seven Bells for Seven Hells*** quest. She then takes Juniper along, affording him a small measure of trust due to him returning with the souls in the first place.

Disturbed by the killing committed by himself and Amaryllis, Juniper discusses gods, religion and the afterlife with Amaryllis. Over the course of the conversation, it is revealed that Aerb has five gods and nine thousand hells. The first hell is approximately as awful as Comfort and successive hells are progressively worse, so destruction of the soul is generally seen as a better fate than being sent there.

Juniper and Amaryllis plan to leave Comfort on the soulcycle and head towards Silmar City, beginning the ***"Out of the Frying Pan"*** quest, even though Juniper doesn't know why Amaryllis wants to go there. His trust in Amaryllis, which she believes is misplaced, is due to her being listed as his companion in his character sheet. He informs her of this, and proves the existence of the game layer to her by putting the two points from the last level up into the PHY stat, causing his body to change instantaneously. This constitutes proof of godlike powers—beyond those of a simple blood or bone magus—to Amaryllis, who had only seen something like that once before from Invreizen, the God of Sea and Ice. The ensuing conversation starts the ***"God Botherer"*** quest.

The ***Comfort Zone*** quest begins as they gather their weapons and void mines and prepare to set off. Juniper looks for a coin to put into Poul's mouth. Joking about the extremely dangerous void bombs made by Amaryllis earns Juniper a skill increase in ***Comedy*** to level 1, and handling one of them unlocks his ***"Thrown weapons"*** skill, while handling the void rifle unlocks his ***"Rifles"*** skill.

Juniper and Amaryllis escape the garage they are in on the soulcycle, picking off undead that get too close, but after half a block the Fuchsia Coterie begin firing at them. Eventually, the two of them see three members of the Coterie on a rooftop. A lucky ***Critical hit*** by Juniper—a 'natural 20' from the metaphorical dice roll—defeats a ***Fuchsia Coterie sniper***, who falls off and becomes incorporated into a Zombie Voltron, and brings ***Rifles*** to level one.

*On Earth, Juniper, Arthur, and Reimer discuss the narrative impact of the extremely fortunate 'natural 20' dice rolls, which guarantee hits no matter the disparity between fighters. Juniper improvises a story of a crippled peasant named Moxit in a poor, out-of-the-way village, who lands a lucky hit with an arrow on the warrior Kerland who had come to take advantage of the helpless village. The narrative importance of such a shot is that “underneath a small kingdom’s worth of magic items and a body that would make the God of Might green with envy, Kerland is still just a man.”*

The Zombie Voltron begins to chase after Juniper and Amaryllis, and the two use void bombs on the beast, gaining a skill level for Juniper. A second Zombie Voltron appears, and the two undead conglomerates merge ten of their least damaged bodies to produce a smaller, more efficient "Death Hound" that can match the speed of the soulcycle.

The Death Hound, called a ***"Greater Umbral Zombie"*** by the game layer, is defeated in the nick of time with a void bomb. This completes the ***Comfort Zone*** quest—***Level Up!***

## Featured characters

* Juniper Smith
* Amaryllis Penndraig
* Poul
* Arthur Blum *(flashback only)*
* Invreizen *(mentioned only)*
* Arthur Reimer *(flashback only)*

## Quotes

“Well then. Juniper, is there any good reason that I should keep him alive?”

—**Amaryllis**, after hearing that Poul was convicted of rape.

“What the fuck? You can’t just - you can’t just *do* that!”

—**Juniper**, after watching Amaryllis shoot Poul.

“Trust is a complex thing. I do trust you though, at least to an extent, and hope that you continue to trust me too. You wouldn’t have done as I asked and returned here if you didn’t trust me. On some level you had considered the worst case option, where I killed you as soon as you came through the door.”
I hadn’t thought of that at all.

—**Amaryllis** grossly overestimates **Juniper'**s competence.

“We know what awaits us after death. Destruction of the soul is a mercy.”

—**Amaryllis**, on the hells.

“Hax. And the commoner could have just as easily rolled a 1. And the epic level fighter goes and straight up murders him with a single swing of his sword, and cleaves into someone standing next to the commoner just to make a point.”
“In which case it would be a different story, one about the futility of fighting, or about ego, or something like that. There are so many *paths,* the dice roll just shifts you from one path to another, from one *story* to another.”

—**Reimer** and **Arthur** discuss fortunate and unfortunate dice rolls in relation to Juniper's tale of Moxit and Kerland.

“You. We’re going to figure out what you are.”

—**Amaryllis**, having just seen Joon level up.
## Notes

* Starting with this chapter, the time between chapter releases begins to creep upwards; the first five had been released on a daily basis. Of course, chapter length also begins to increase...

### Real-world references

* Juniper describes his conception of gods as being that they are "Lovecraftian in nature", specifically mentioning Cthulhu. Cthulhu was a creation of famous horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.
* "Out of the Frying Pan" is a shortened version of the idiom "out of the frying pan into the fire"
* "God botherer" is British slang for someone seen as being excessively religious, particularly in that they promote their religion to others.