Note: This is not the first part of this story but you don't have to read the previous entries to understand this one
"You do know where we're going right?" Asked Aphrodisia, her voice filled with an annoyance that would have made sense if she was the one carrying all their possessions. "We're only a short distance from Hornbarrow hill" responded Alexios suppressing his irritation.
He sat down heavily on a rock, letting go of the backpack which landed behind him with a thud. He had been walking for hours, his feet were blistered and his whole body ached. "We..." Alexios said in between deep breaths "...should make camp here." In addition to being too tired to continue the trek, they were on decent camping grounds. They had left the beaten path some time ago, relying instead on a compass to direct them. With it, they ventured into the untouched vastness of the Southvale forest.
Now they sat in a clearing at the bottom of a hill. In truth a clearing was not an appropriate descriptor, they were simply in a small stretch where the foliage and trees were less thick than anywhere else. Aphrodisia lay down on her back on the dirt floor, placing a hand behind her neck as a pillow.
"Very well," she said with an undeserved sense of superiority. "Get a fire going, I'm going to have a nap." Alexios knew a great many varieties of insults he could throw at her, some vulgar and some more cerebral and may take a few moments to grasp their implications but as he had done for the two weeks they had traveled together he kept them to himself. In his mind, he told himself he was too tired to start an argument but deep down he knew it was because he was intimidated by the larger and stronger woman.
Despite this, he would not start his task until he had rested. The time for a retort to Aphrodisia had already passed as she was now audibly snoring. After five minutes of enduring her bear-like rumbling, Alexios got to his feet and headed off to find firewood. As he scavenged for dry-looking twigs Alexios could not help but reflect on the degrading situation he had found himself in.
His ordeal began a month and a half ago when he stole something from his now-former master, an eccentric old man who claimed to be a practitioner of dark magic. It was a medallion of a crescent moon carved with runes unlike any he had ever seen.
The medallion was said to grant access to a temple in which any wish can be granted to those who enter. Alexios had lived his life in service to one master or another, that was his past and it was to be his future till his death. He didn't agree with that fate and instead stole the medallion and began hunting for the temple himself.
Now his master sent others to find him. He was almost slain by one of the master's minions if it had not been for Aphrodisia. But like all good things in his life, Alexios found that this came with a cost.
Aphrodisia agreed to protect him while he searched the lands for the moonlight temple, in exchange he would carry their equipment and satisfy her in any way she chose. Now he found himself not just her servant but concubine as well, a position he resented greatly.
Alexios sat down under a tree still spent from his exhausting walk. He retrieved the medallion which he wore around his neck but under his gray tunic. Running his hand over the golden moon he wondered what it would be like to live a life where all others served him and he was subservient to no one.
He did also realize there was a sense of irony to his situation. He knew people who would gladly kill for a slight chance to sleep with Aphrodisia. Despite her size, she was far from unappealing. She was tall with a wild beauty to her, she had blonde hair that fell past her shoulders and mischievous green eyes that could steal a man's breath.
The fact that she had a tattoo of a stylized wolf on the outside of each of her log-sized thighs and a tattoo of an ouroboros on each of her biceps did nothing to detract from her stunning beauty but only somehow accentuate it. She had a strength to her that made her seem unattainable and thus all the more desirable.
Most men, and from the stories she had told many women, would gladly throw away any personal liberties in exchange for the opportunity to lay by her side. Alexios on the other hand had had his fill of servitude and found his circumstances as vexing as they were degrading.
She was as lazy as a corpse and seemed to take pleasure in humiliating him, refusing to do even the most basic of tasks. Every single thing around the camp was done by Alexios. From cooking to cleaning to pitching and tearing down the tent to everything in between. The only thing Aphrodisia did was hunt for animals as Alexios had no idea how to even approach the subject. She hunted but he cleaned the hunt and cooked it.
His former master was quite possibly as old as time itself but he was always far more active. He requested Alexio's help frequently but that was simply because he was a very busy old man.
There was one silver lining, the sex which was mandatory for their little partnership was phenomenal. Alexios never had a great interest in women and until he had met Aphrodisia he had no experience with any. But almost every night since they had met he found himself engulfed in carnal ecstasy. But that was small comfort to everything else in his life.
Some hours later he had started a fire and was cooking some soup over a pot. Aphrodisia eventually woke from her dead like slumber to thanklessly eat most of the food available, an event that went uncommented on by Alexios. "Where are we going anyway?" she asked in between shoveling soup into her mouth.
"I told you that we're looking for the witches of Hornbarrow hill," he said, not hiding his annoyance. "They may know where..." He stopped himself "the temple is" He had been economical with the truth about the temple. Alexios had not told his mistress what lay beyond its doors, only that finding it would be a great archaeological discovery.
As far as Aphrodisia was concerned he was a studier of ancient civilizations and she cared for little more about his personal history or motivations. She only had half of the story, Alexios did have a fascination with old civilizations. Even so, he was not used to lying and somehow found it hard to articulate the story every time he brought up the temple, leading to consistent awkward pauses.