Chapter 10

There were complaints, but they were the kind of complaints that I was used to after a particularly juicy emotional cliffhanger. I honestly felt like I’d outdone myself - if I wasn’t sure that Rhia would be sharing the story of the game with her parents, I would have held onto that first session to use with my regular group in the future.

Tori was a bundle of energy afterwards, already trying to come up with schemes of how they could track down the bandits who wore the symbol they’d found. Elyse had the exact reaction I hoped for, which was that her emotions gave way to energy as she fed off of the others and realised that, first, this was a tragedy in game and not in real life - in real life they had a week to talk it out and plan what they were going to do, and soon she was caught up in rehashing the fight with the warg.

I ended up finishing putting away my DMing gear in its various cubbies in the game room before they’d even stood up from the table, and it was only when Rhia’s stomach grumbled that they realised we were well into the evening.

“The good news,” I said as they started to clean up their stuff, “Is that once you have your long rest in the village, you’ll have levelled up! Rhia, I know you know what you’re doing. Tori, are you good with levelling and helping Elyse out with that during the week?”

“Sure, Shane,” the Indian girl said with a grin, then turned to Elyse. “You’re going to get more hit points, and another spell slot, plus some other stuff,” she said. “The trade-off is that Shane gets to throw harder monsters at us, too.”

“There’s harder than that giant magic wolf?” Elyse asked in surprise.

“Way harder,” Rhia chuckled, looping her arm through Elyse’s and pulling her from the room. “Is it OK if we get changed before we go, Shane?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said, waving them towards the bathroom and my back office.

The girls changed, and when they came back out they were in their regular outfits from when they’d arrived. I was struck again at how ... well, how coed all three of them were. They very much fit the part of ‘pretty and modern college student’ despite having varied styles and looks.

Rhia was the first one to hug me, thanking me for the game, which wasn’t strange at all. But then I found myself getting pulled down into a hug by Tori.

“Thank you so much for running the game for us,” she said. “Even if we scared off the boys. It’s so good to play again and you’re awesome at being a Dungeon Master.”

“You’re very welcome,” I said as I hugged her back lightly, one-armed. I wasn’t shy about hugs usually, but this was the first time I’d met her. And there was no avoiding the fact that she was a full hugger - I was very aware of her curves as she squeezed me tight for a moment.

“Thanks for helping me learn the game,” Elyse said, stepping forward and hugging me as well, squeezing me even tighter than Tori and even pressing her cheek to my chest. “Seriously, this was so much fun and I can’t wait to play again.” She pulled away, grinning, and then slapped a hand on my chest playfully. “Even if you’re a fucking mean bastard for killing a pretty tree!”

I laughed, having hugged her back the same way I had Tori. “Say that back to yourself and consider how mean I really am, or if we’re all just really good at playing imagination.”

She smirked and rolled her eyes. “OK, when you put it like that, maybe I’m overreacting.”

“Fuck no,” Rhia said. “He did that shit on purpose. He is a mean bastard.”

“That’s me, DM Meany Pants,” I chuckled.

Tori and Elyse gave me little waves, grabbing their backpacks and heading out the door, but Rhia said that she needed to talk to me about something quickly and asked them to wait a second, then she closed the door.

“What’s up, Snorey?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’re actually mad about the tree.”

“No,” she said, “Well, yes, I am, but I know that’s the game. I just...” She trailed off and chewed the inside of her cheek for a second as she looked at me. Usually, I could generally tell what was going on in her head, but this time I wasn’t sure what was going to come out of her mouth.

“Rhiannon, just spit it out,” I said. “I promise not to judge, unless you’ve decided to dedicate yourself to being a Mime. Then I will judge you harshly.”

She rolled her eyes at the joke that had gone around my circle of friends for a couple of decades. Then she took a breath and let it out, looking at me seriously. She was always pretty, her youthful features even making it tough to take her seriously sometimes, but in that moment I could tell that what she wanted to say was something she meant. “That was a really fun first session,” she said. “And I think you’ve really hooked Elyse. But I was kind of hoping the game would be a little more like your game with my parents.”

“Well, it takes time for it to be like that,” I said. “Big stories start best from humble beginnings. Just because you’re fighting wolves and bandits now doesn’t mean where we end up at the end of the summer won’t be much bigger and badder, and just as fun a story as what you’ve been hearing all these years.”

“No, Shane,” Rhia said. “I mean ... When I was setting up this game and everything, I was hoping it would be like the one you play with my parents. Um. Content-wise. With the same sort of ... roleplaying.”

I felt the blood run out of my face. I opened my mouth, trying to think of what to say, because what she was insinuating would mean she knew things she shouldn’t. There was no way she could.

“It was a couple of years ago,” Rhia said. “Mom and Dad had asked me to sleep over at Kelly’s house since they were hosting game night, just like I always did, and I was doing that. But I had my driver’s license and had driven myself over, and we got talking and Kelly wanted to watch a movie we had on DVD since she hadn’t seen it before, so I figured I would just scoot back home to grab it and some snacks if you guys had an unopened bag of chips or something.”

“Rhia...” I said, feeling like our world for twenty-three years was crashing down around my ears. Our secret world.

“You guys mustn’t have heard me open the front door. I only saw a bit, but it was enough,” she said. “I saw Aaron and my Dad double-teaming Veronica and I was like ‘what the fuck,’ and then I heard Mom moaning about how good ‘the Count’s’ cock felt in her ass, and I got out of there without anyone seeing me. After that, I put the pieces together and realised that you guys have sex as part of the roleplay in your game.”

I could remember the session that must have been, even if it was two years prior. Count Fiorenzi had been hosting a masquerade ball, but the masks had been cursed by Madame Isabella D’Lorenzo, the player character’s shady benefactor - she wanted them to use the resulting orgy as a cover to steal the Count’s art collection because one of the paintings held a secret map to an ancient shrine. Of course, the way we played, the orgy had to be played out.