Coye Vol 2 Ch 3

I'll do a RotGM chapter next.

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The Cransmere Adventurer's Guild was in the middle of yet another quiet, reserved day. Its inhabitants were far from the rowdy heroes one might find in many of Karnalle's other Guilds. Both the staff and its adventurers tended to keep to themselves, just like the paranoid townsfolk at large. Smoke bellowed from the hearth, a solemn maid in her forties was doing laundry outside the premises, and a bronze-ranked fighter was taking swings at a practice dummy, but there were scant signs of life outside the three-story building beyond than these few examples.

Coye entered through the front door, ready to turn in his quest. He wasn't excited to deal with the receptionist, he never was, but he found that fortune might be on his side. Tammy was absent from her station, and in her place was a familiar sight resting her head on the front counter. Silently sleeping where anyone could see her was the building's Guild Mistress, Dorothy Whittle.

'Aw, it's this bitch. I was hoping the funny one would be here.' Shayla groaned from within Coye's cap as the adventurer stepped forward, approaching the counter. He didn't dignify her venomous words with a response.

Instead, he looked down at the girl and studied Dorothy's sleeping face in greater detail. Dorothy was in the middle of writing something when she crashed, and as such, her cheek was smeared with black ink from falling on her now smudged paper. Coye wondered how long she'd been like this. The poor girl could fall over at the drop of a hat, so it wouldn't have surprised him if it had been a while.

Under ordinary circumstances, Coye would've felt lucky to get such an adorable glance of the woman he respected, but as he looked at Dorothy, he only felt a recurring pang of doubt and confusion. Just the other day, Shayla pointed out that his Guild Mistress might be taking advantage of both his kindness and his bank account.

It was true, on some level. Dorothy had talked him into buying all sorts of adventuring gadgets that he didn't really need, but Coye thought that she was trying to make sure he stayed safe out there. He never realized that her sales pitches might have just been part of her job and that he was an easy mark. Coye didn't like thinking about this topic. It made him depressed, and he had been avoiding the Guild Mistress ever since.

Even now, Coye was tempted to come back later and turn in his quest whenever Tammy was back 'working' the desk, but he knew he couldn't avoid Dorothy forever. He decided now was as good a time as any to get over it. As confusing as his feelings were for him to deal with, it's not like Coye could manually turn them off. He still had a crush on this slumbering, black-haired, clumsily-dressed, ink-stained mess of a woman.

His emotions were another factor in why his Pixie friend was so mistrusting Dorothy Whittle. Shayla got the overall picture here. Coye had a crush on his boss, which was cute and all, but she felt something was up, and she didn't like it one bit. Shayla was especially getting sick and tired of watching the boy fawn over this narcoleptic wreck like she was the most beautiful thing in all the Realms.

'Come on, are you gonna stare at her like a total creep all day, or are you gonna wake the bitch up? Get a move on!' Shayla demanded as her patience reached a breaking point.

"H-Hey, I'm not staring like a-" Coye looked up and mumbled to his hat, forgetting where he was.

"Mmm... staring? Wha?" The woman at the desk yawned as she began to rise. Her black, unkempt hair was flattened on the side she was sleeping on and spittle pooled in the corner of her lip.

"Where am I? How did I..." Dorothy opened her crusty eyes to find that her glasses had fallen off. She picked them up and rested them on her face, thinking how lucky she was that no one was around to see her. "Oh. Coye." She said, discovering the truth as she looked forward.

Despite the embarrassment she felt in her poorly-groomed state, Dorothy perked up at the sight of the adventurer. A dreamy, half-awake smile overtook her face that seemed to overshadow the massive ink stain on her cheek. "Welcome back."

"Hi, Miss Whittle," Coye answered politely as he stared at his feet. Looking right at her was too much for him right now. She was just too cute. "You got a little something, there..." He said, pulling out a handkerchief from one of his pouches and handing it off to her.

"Mmn, thank you..." Dorothy took it, then wiped her cheek. As she pulled it away from her face, her eyes stared in horror at the massive black splotch on the fabric. The Guild Mistress understood that Coye had seen her in such a shameful condition, and her cheeks turned bright red at the thought.

There was a moment of awkward silence until Coye took pity on her and moved ahead with the conversation, pretending he didn't see a thing. "Where's Tammy?" He asked, scanning the surrounding area for the missing redhead.

Dorothy's lower eyelid twitched at the mention of her lazy receptionist. "Tammy called in sick..." She said with a pitiful sigh.

'A likely story,' Shayla snickered, grateful to the receptionist for causing Dorothy additional stress.

Coye was feeling the opposite. When he saw how annoyed Dorothy got just from the sound of Tammy's name, it made him forget his confusion regarding the Guild Mistress's ulterior motives and replaced it with sympathy. "I'm sorry,"

"Oh, it's fine..." Dorothy laughed an unconvincing laugh, then followed it up with an insincere smile. "I don't mind working the desk when I have to." Even someone as dumb as Coye could pick up the less-than-subtle 'please help me' vibes radiating off of her.

Dorothy then closed her eyes and lamented her state of affairs, resting her elbows on the desk and leaning forward. When she did, Coye found his attention seized. Her breasts were pushing against the countertop, and he never noticed how much her green top hid the size of her breasts. They looked big, but exactly how big was up in the air.

'Stop staring at her tits, or she's gonna notice you, dumbass.' Shayla warned.

He snapped out of it before Dorothy could notice his wandering eyes, and when he did, the Guild Mistress was about to address him. "Hey, Coye? I'm guessing you've got a quest to turn in, but... I was hoping we could maybe talk for a moment if you didn't mind?"

The Pixie saw an opportunity for her foe to manipulate Coye, and she became more guarded at once. 'If she tries to get you to buy something, I swear I'm gonna sneak into her room at night and bite the shit out of her.'

Shayla had warned him of the perils of a Pixie bite before, and while he still didn't know the specifics, it wasn't a fate he wished to befall Dorothy. Coye frowned and shifted his hat, jostling Shayla into behaving. 'Okay, okay, just don't let her talk you into anything is all I'm saying!'

Coye covered up his hat movement by scratching his scalp and returning it back to place. "Um, I guess so, yeah. What's up?"

Dorothy frowned, as it was a difficult topic for her to broach. While she wasn't close to any of her adventurers, if there was one she was close to being close to, then it was Coye. She was sitting on the uncomfortable precipice of 'not knowing him' and 'sort of knowing him', which made things awkward when asking personal questions.

The awkward Guild Mistress figured it would be best if she got on with it, so she spoke from the heart. "I've just been worried about you the last couple of days. You've only been taking bronze-ranked quests, and whenever you're home, you shut yourself in the dorms. I also understand that the room you're staying in has a lock now, apparently? Tampering with the Guild's property is against the Association's code of conduct, although considering you aren't hogging the room for yourself, I'm willing to look past your desire for privacy, but..."

"But?"

"More than one of the maids have reported hearing girly- er... hearing crying from your room. I just wanted you to know that... um... if you need someone to talk to, then I could maybe find some time for that, if you wouldn't mind letting me know what's wrong."

Coye's face burned bright red, and he grew short of breath. Apparently, the housekeeping staff had heard him having sex with Shayla and interpreted it as him crying alone in a dark room. He shouldn't have been surprised, but he was.

'Told you we need to get you your own place,' Shayla snickered, loving how it felt to be proven right yet again.

"N-No, you've got it wrong, I-"

Dorothy looked for an excuse to make this personal line of questioning less awkward, eventually saying, "You're usually such a hard worker, so..." which led Coye to misconstrue her intentions.

Because he was actively looking for signs that Dorothy was trying to manipulate him, he soured upon spotting what he thought was a possible attempt. "Are you worried I'm not making the Guild enough money or something...?"

Shayla was proud of him for picking up on it because that's what she heard, too. 'My thoughts exactly,' she nodded.

Dorothy was confused at this accusation. "W-What? No! Coye, I'm worried about you. That's it. Not even as your boss or anything, just, you know... as your... acquaintance, I guess? I couldn't live with myself if I didn't at least offer to hear you out."

'Uh,' Shayla felt conflicted. She wasn't as dense as her partner was, so she could tell that the Guild Mistress was full of genuine concern for Coye. Even so, that didn't mean she had to like her. 'Well, whatever... just cause she cares now doesn't mean she won't still try and shake you down later.'

Coye wasn't so sure. When looking at the sincere anxiety plastered all over Dorothy's face, Coye was reminded of why he developed a crush on her in the first place. "I'm sorry, Miss Whittle... I didn't mean to bother you..."

Coye saw little reason not to just tell the truth. At least the parts of it that wouldn't embarrass him. He scratched the back of his head as he spoke, "I'm okay. I've been going through some things, and I don't want to take on any big jobs until I feel better. You know how the woods get to people, right?"

"Oh," Dorothy blinked. "Oh! You should have told me, Coye." She slumped her shoulders and exhaled a sigh of relief. "I would've told you to take it easy for a while, too, if only I'd known. Maybe you should-"

She stopped mid-sentence. Dorothy was on the verge of recommending he go and see the Guild's healer, but then she remembered that Coye had reacted negatively to that suggestion the last time she brought it up. Dorothy didn't want to upset the boy any more than she already had.

"Miss Whittle?"

"Ah! It's nothing. I was just thinking to myself... ahaha... ahem. Just remember my offer, alright? I live here, so it's not like I can't make the time to talk to you if you really, really need it."

Shayla rolled her eyes at the Guild Mistress, feeling she was laying it on a little thick. 'Ask her to take you up to her room so you can 'talk', Coye. That'd solve allll your problems.'

Lewd thoughts washed over his mind like the ocean hitting swallowing the shore. It took all he had to force them from his mind and keep his arousal from acting up more than it already was. In the end, he ignored the Pixie's teasing.

"Thanks, that means a lot." He said, smiling a crooked, sweaty smile.

"Of course. It's my job to look after all of you, even if I'm not that good at it... besides, you've always been there for me when I needed it, so it's only fair to offer up the same."

Coye didn't think he'd done all that much for Miss Whittle, so he was at a loss to hear this. As far as he knew, the only thing he ever did for her was take on emergency quests that no one else wanted to deal with. That sort of situation did come up somewhat often, he guessed, but at the time, Coye had no idea how much his eagerness meant to Dorothy.

'Coye, I'm getting bored up here. Bored, bored, bored! Turn the damned quest in, already!' Shayla demanded. The Pixie didn't want to admit it, but sitting here watching Dorothy be unintentionally cute towards Coye was getting on her nerves.

"Right, by the way," Coye snapped out of his daze and unfastened two of the bags from his belt. "Here's the stuff for the quest I accepted- the one for the Vine Viper eggs." He offered the bag of eggs to her, and after she took it, he produced the monster's head from the other bag.

While any ordinary girl might've been frightened at the sight of a decapitated snake head, Dorothy was ecstatic. She wasn't any ordinary girl, she was a Guild Mistress, and her fondness for monsters was well known around these parts. Most were unsettled by Dorothy's bizarre fascinations, but Coye loved to see the look on her face while indulging her passions.

Dorothy lit up as she saw the proof of kill, all of the tiredness leaving her body as soon as she laid eyes on it. "Ah! It's so cute! No one's brought in any Vine Vipers lately, so it's been a while since I've gotten my hands on one of these. May I?" She extended her palms outward toward Coye the same way a child might when asking for candy.

"Mhmm," Coye muttered, admiring her cuteness while trying to not be obvious about it. He gave her what she wanted, passing on the head that was almost half as big as her own.

Dorothy smiled from ear to ear, losing her overwhelmed and meek personality as her brain entered monster appreciation mode. She turned the snake head over in her hands, studying and inspecting it from every angle. "This one has such nice scales, doesn't it, Coye?" Dorothy giggled as she started to unhinge the monster's jaws open and closed like it were a puppet.

'Is this chick for real?' Shayla was getting weird vibes from the Guild Mistress, but Coye was only getting warm ones.

"Yeah, isn't she great?" He thoughtlessly mumbled in response to the Pixie hidden in his hat.

"Huh?" Dorothy looked up from the trophy and tilted her head, thinking she might have misheard Coye.

"Er-"

She looked back down at the opened snake head and then nodded in recognition. "Oh, you're right! This one was a female. You can tell by the size of the fangs. Nice catch."

'Dumbass,' Shayla giggled at his slip-up.

"Y-yeah," Coye agreed with both girls at the same time.

"It's such a shame that I have to send this little cutie to the Association," Dorothy let out a wistful sigh as she shut the snake's jaws and slid it into an envelope on the desk. "Maybe I'll put out a quest for you to bring me one of their heads for myself sometime, huh, Coye?" She smirked.

It was an odd proposition, but it came from such a pure place that he was compelled to offer up his services on the spot, "Any time." Coye declared with an eager smile.

"I'll hold you to it, then..." Dorothy's enthusiasm diminished as a yawn escaped her. Her sudden uptick in energy came with as formidable of a crash to match, her head wobbling in place as she fought to remain upright. "Anyways, I'll make sure the gold gets deposited in your account. Are you planning to take the rest of the day off and rest some more?"

"Yeah, but I might head out later after I've had some lunch and changed."

'Wonder what she would think if she knew you were going out cruising for pussy?' Shayla pondered.

"Ah, I'm glad to hear it. I know Cransmere isn't the nicest of towns, but some time away from the Guild would do anyone good... not that I would, well... it is what it is." Dorothy shrugged her shoulders, res.

"We'll see how it goes," Coye mumbled, dwelling on the daunting task ahead of him that Shayla saw to remind him of. It soon triggered the memory of Britni and the others, which prompted him to ask an off-the-cuff question before leaving Dorothy to her work. "Before I forget... I was wondering if you had any idea how much longer it'll be till Britni's party comes back?"

Dorothy was on the verge of slumber for the second time just as he was turning to go, but upon hearing Britni's name, the Guild Mistress jolted in her seat and looked around as if making sure the girl in question wasn't here already causing trouble. She looked to Coye and felt sympathy, knowing how much that girl and her cohorts liked to mess with him. He was probably asking for his own safety, Dorothy thought.

"...Difficult to say, but I doubt it'll be much longer. They only went out onto the northwestern plains to take on a horde of roving Cordyceppers, which shouldn't pose a problem for those four. They've been gone for a bit over a week now, so I imagine they'll be home any day now." Dorothy hesitated to ask, but if it meant helping Coye, she forced herself to ask a follow-up question. "Why? Are you worried about running into them?"

Coye was, but it was for a reason which Dorothy would never have imagined. Given his new condition, he was concerned about how he might react to how the Baddest Bitches typically teased him. They were very hands-on and tended to say all sorts of lewd things meant to rile him up. Before his sexual awakening, all he ever felt toward this was confusion, but he knew things would be very different the next time around.

Dorothy took his delayed silence as an indication she was correct. "Damn, those girls... listen, if they're harassing you t-then... just... um..." What exactly was it that she would do, she wondered? She had already tried telling Britni off about bullying Coye, multiple times, at that. All she and her cohorts ever did was laugh Dorothy off and dismiss her like a nosy maid.

Coye stepped in, seeing how flustered the Guild Mistress was becoming as she racked her brain for Britni solutions. "Don't worry about it, Miss Whittle. I was just curious." He would hate it if Dorothy stressed herself out worrying over him, so he gave as reassuring a smile as he could to stop her in her tracks.

It didn't entirely relieve her of her concern, but it did lighten the load enough for her to accept his words. "Alright, if you say so... Goddesses know I've got plenty to do without having to give those girls a time out." Dorothy groaned, hanging her head and taking a side glance at a stack of paperwork with her name on it. She groaned a second time when she remembered the five identical piles waiting for her back in her office.

For a moment, she wished that Coye would stay and keep talking to her just so she wouldn't have to do her job, but alas, he was already turning for the dining room. She couldn't let him go without stressing the matter one last time, though. "Hey, um... Coye?"

'Oh, for fuck's sake, when will this end?!'

"Yeah?"

"For what it's worth... I really do hope you feel better soon." The smile on her made Coye's heart flutter, but Dorothy continued on to add a little joke. "After all, who knows when I'll need your help again?"

'Typical, thinking of how she wants to use you again whenever it's convenient for her...' Shayla made her thoughts known, even as she realized she was purposefully clinging onto her first impression of the Guild Mistress out of spite.

Coye wasn't convinced Shayla was right about Dorothy anymore, himself. While he wouldn't keep spending large sums of gold on random adventuring trinkets anymore, he didn't see a reason not to continue supporting his Guild Mistress the way he'd always done.

He said, "Thanks, Miss Whittle," and exited the room with a humble smile.

Right after he did, he heard a loud thump. Upon poking his head back in, he saw that Dorothy fell over directly following his departure mere moments ago. She slammed her head on the desk and tipped over a bottle of ink, ruining her sleeve.

Shayla laughed at Dorothy's misfortune as Coye looked back in pity. He wrestled with the idea of waking her but knew that all which awaited her was work. Coye decided it was in her best interest to resume the power nap that he interrupted in the first place, and he left for real this time.