Chapter 71

“Are we actually playing, or can we just go upstairs and fuck?” Elyse asked once we’d said our hellos and kissed. She’d brought her D&D bag, along with an overnight bag, and had dropped them both just inside the door so that she could leap up and wrap her legs around my waist.

I was holding her up with both hands on her butt, massaging her cheeks through the skimpy little shorts she was wearing, and chuckled at the faux-innocent look she was giving me after a question like that. “That depends,” I told her. “I’d be more than happy to fuck you over and over, baby, but then you’d have to explain to the others why you didn’t get the Hastor lore from your solo session.”

She screwed up her face a little, and I fell a little more in love with her. Elyse’s quirkily pretty looks and her mildly Alt style, how different she was from my other lovers physically, and ultimately her playful, energetic personality, all kept building my heavy attraction to her.

Elyse came to a decision. “Fine, we’ll play,” she said. “Since I know I can’t just get it out of you as pillow talk after you rail me into a coma. But, I need you to say that again.”

“Say what again?” I asked, then quickly realised what she meant. “Oh. Would you like me to carry you upstairs and absolutely devour that delicious pussy of yours, baby, or do you want to find out what Renee de l’Ombres learned in the Tomb of the Steel Prince?”

“Mmm, I’m your baby,” she hummed happily, pressing her lips to mine in a firm kiss. Then she pulled back, looking all over my face. “God, having an older guy call me that should not turn me on this much. I should really get a therapist or something to figure that shit out.”

“Do you wanna stop?” I asked with a wry smirk.

“No. Fucking. Way,” she grinned, then kissed me again.

Renee opened the heavy door of Hastor’s Tomb and slipped into the darkness beyond. Shadows were nothing for Renee to fear - unless they were living shadows hungry to steal her life force, in which case she had plenty to fear. Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be the case here. The lack of any light still made it difficult for her to see, however, and she quickly tried to cast a simple light spell but felt the magic dissipate into the darkness around her.

“Well, that’s kind of fucked up...” the sorceress muttered to herself. She generally let Olivia and Jade carry the more mundane equipment when it came to this sort of thing, so she couldn’t just pull a torch, flint and steel out of her pack.

Not being able to see a fucking thing wasn’t exactly going to work for looting an ancient tomb for all it was worth, so after letting out a frustrated huff, Renee turned to slip back out of the tomb and see if Olivia could chuck a torch the length of the room.

Except, when she turned around, she couldn’t see the door. In fact, she couldn’t even see her own hands in front of her face, and when she took the few steps back towards the door, and a few steps more than that, she didn’t touch a wall or the door at all. She didn’t run into anything.

“Great,” Renee said sourly. “Just great.”

Pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes, despite not being able to see anything, Renee took a beat to recentre herself and then cast a Detect Magic spell. For one brief moment, the effects of the spell fell over her blacked-out vision like a veil, and she was assaulted by a swirl of magical auras that were so overwhelmingly bright that she winced and tried to turn away, but the auras were all around her. The only reprieve came from the magic of her spell dissipating as quickly as it had taken effect, leaving her blinking against the sunspots blooming behind her eyelids.

There had been something, though. Amid the auras. A soft spot. A space that was less solid, magical essence.

Steeling herself, Renee strode blindly into the dark, imagining a tunnel ahead of her and choosing to believe that the fucking sphinx hadn’t duped her into stepping into some trap that was just an eternal void.

“Can’t believe I said I’d fuck that fuckin’ guy,” Renee muttered to herself.

Then, on her next step, her foot didn’t find the floor, and she began to tumble forward, and over, and she was falling.

In the dark.

“Shane, I get it, I can’t see,” Elyse snorted, rolling her eyes at me. She was sitting in her usual spot at the game table, and I was in mine, but we’d both angled ourselves more so that we were looking directly towards each other.

“Is it scary yet?” I chuckled.

“Considering we already know I live, I’m not scared,” she said, smirking at me.

She had a point.

Renee was falling, tumbling. When she reached out, there were no walls. There was no wind buffeting her from the sides, just the rush as she plummeted.

And then she stumbled, as if she hadn’t fallen at all and had instead caught the toe of her boot on flagstone, and she blinked and found herself standing in some sort of immense, ancient chamber. It was round, cut like the inside of half a sphere, the sandstone blocks perfectly smooth as they arced away over her head towards the central height. Five thin pillars around the central space held up the ceiling and were studded with a dozen flickering green torches, casting an eerie light across the chamber. The only other feature of the ominous space was a low, rectangular granite plinth, or maybe a table, right in the middle.

Renee paused, peering around in case she’d overlooked someone, or something, hiding in plain sight, and then tried her magic again, casting a Light spell.

It worked, the light flickering on the simple wand she pulled on her belt to fix it to, though its clean white light seemed frail compared to the flickering green of the torches.

She dismissed the spell and slipped the wand back into her belt pouch, took one more look around, and then started walking towards the middle of the chamber. As she approached, the green light felt like it moved with her, swirling in the air like dust or silt in water, and the closer she got, the more it seemed to swirl around, and then above the table. About fifteen feet from it, the green light took shapes, and at ten feet they solidified.

Three green, spectral men, sitting shoulder to shoulder, on the waist-high granite table. The one on the left was dressed in flowery clothing, like a young noble at court attempting to peacock around. The one in the middle wore a suit of fancy, but functional, armour and had a scimitar resting against his knees. The final man on the right wore simple, well-made clothing. Sturdy, but tailored. And he was missing his right hand at the wrist, his left leg just below the knee, and one of his eyes.

Other than the missing eye, they all bore the same face of a man in his middle years, handsome with a bit of scruff on his cheeks and chin, his eyes slightly sunken from exhaustion. And all three were frowning just slightly, like they were disapproving of what they saw as they looked at her.

“Do I recognise it?” Elyse asked. “I’m guessing this is supposed to be Hastor.”

“You haven’t seen any paintings of him that would let you recognise him, but you can still roll a Perception check.”

Elyse rolled. “Um. Seventeen. That’s pretty good?”

“Good enough that while you don’t recognise him, you can see a family resemblance between this face and Lady Eileen,” I said.

Renee hesitated for just a moment as she met the gazes of the three men, then shook her head and approached right up to comfortable speaking distance. “Hastor,” she said, nodding to the one that seemed to be the oldest representation of the man. “Steel Prince,” she then nodded to the middle-aged warrior. And then she smirked a little as she looked at the youngest one. “Shit-head who has no idea what fate had coming for him.”

“What, pray tell, pitiful soul of the living, do you think you are doing, stepping into my tomb?” asked all three of the men at once, each of them sneering just slightly and arching their right eyebrow questioningly.

Elyse paused a moment before replying, and I let her think. The difference between regular group roleplaying and a duet game where there was only one player, there wasn’t anyone else to bounce ideas off of or to come up with a variety of ideas. Considering we were trying to have what was basically a shared delusion of a fantasy world, giving the solo player a chance to consider what they wanted to say in the middle of a conversation was fair.

“OK, um, I don’t know if what I want to do would blow up this whole thing, or break the rules or something,” she eventually said, lips twisted up in a frustrated pout as she looked up from her character sheet to me.

“Well, what rule do you think you’re breaking?” I asked.

“I don’t know if- I have a suspicion about these guys, but I don’t know if Renee would have the same suspicion,” she explained. “So is that meta-playing, or whatever Tori calls it?”

“Meta-knowledge,” I nodded. “I guess it depends - did you go reading a bunch of the monster bestiaries and you think you know something that Renee wouldn’t?”