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Goodbye, she thinks. Goodbye, kuye lam. I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood.
The tide comes in. The throne’s man watches her, waiting for her to lift her eyes and make a census of the birds.
—
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Oathsfire howled, shaking his fists in outrage. “You were still working for them the whole fucking time!?”
Lyxaxu rolled his eyes at his roommate’s reaction. He was used to seeing Oathsfire riled up over games, witnessing him ragequit and throw his controller over World of Warcraft many a time. “I told you so. This is why I hate playing games with economics majors.”
“Says the philosophy major,” Unuxekome said, elbowing Lyxaxu. “At least she didn’t spout shit about John Stuart Mills or Socrates during sessions.”
Ilhuake pointed a finger at Unuxekome accusingly. “The only reason you’re not throwing a tantrum is that your character got to die an honorable death in battle! Mine didn’t even see her assassination coming!”
“You could have,” Xate Yawa, their game master cut in, “if you had a higher score in perception, instead of dumping all your stats into charisma.”
Ilhuake stuck her tongue out in response. Even though Xate Yawa had advised her to distribute her stats differently, she was stubborn and refused to listen to her.
“Wait - Tain Hu, did you know about this?” Oathsfire asked, leaning across the table.
Tain Hu, sitting next to her wife Baru, had been stony-faced and silent the entire time. “No,” she said. Although her voice was quiet, it still seemed to echo throughout the basement. “I did not.”
“But your lines were so good!” Unuxekome cried, nearly falling out of his chair. “You’re telling me that was all improv?”
“I was just as shocked as you were,” Baru said, speaking for the first time since she refused to spare her wife’s character. “I had been hoping she would have succeeded the stealth check when the Masquerade went after her. But…”
Xate Yawa shook her head. “I told you, Hu, to be careful when you used your hero point this session.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to be rolling for my fucking life after we won the battle!” Tain Hu wasn’t raising her voice, but it was obvious to everyone that she was genuinely upset by the outcome of their campaign.
Baru laid a hand on her wife’s shoulder, rubbing reassuringly. “I’m sorry, love. I should have told you.”
“I just -” Tain Hu groaned and buried her face in her hands. “I should have seen it coming! But I had no idea. I thought we really managed to persuade you to join us.”
“Baru, you need to come to poker night,” Ilhuake said. “You have zero tells. And you’re so good with numbers, you can probably count cards.”
Lyxaxu frowned. “I don’t think you can count cards in poker, Ilhuake.”
“I bet Baru could.”
Ignoring them, Baru pushed her chair closer to Tain Hu’s and wrapped her arms around her. “Those lines at the end? They were really good. I had to have most of my dialogue planned out weeks ahead of time, but you just came up with that on the spot.”
Despite her distress, Tain Hu allowed herself a small moment of pride. “It was easy, honestly. I just said exactly what I knew would hurt you the most.”
Baru squeezed her tighter. “I had it coming, didn’t I?”
Tain Hu kissed the top of her head. “Yes, yes you did, love.”
“Soooooo,” Ilhuake drawled, “what do we do now? Do we do another campaign in this same universe and make new characters, or like, what?”
Lyxaxu raised his hand. “I vote we start a new campaign in a fantasy world that isn’t depressingly homophobic and racist.”
Oathsfire nodded in agreement. “I second that. This was fun, but it was super dark. I don’t know if I could handle more of this.”
“I’d love to hear more about Falcrest and its politics,” Unuxekome admitted, “but I don’t think playing another campaign in this setting would be all that enjoyable.”
Xate Yawa looked disappointed, giving Unuxekome the same crestfallen expression she wore when he got less than an A on an assignment she had given him. “I actually have three campaigns worth of material drafted.”
“And I’m sure it’s great, aunt!” Tain Hu said. “But this is heavy stuff. The world we live in right now is fucked up enough as it is, and I want to play games to escape it, not get bombarded with even more of it.”
“I agree too,” Baru added. “I don’t think I could even keep playing as a character who had to survive all of that. It’s too much. I’d just spend all my free actions drinking and wishing I was dead.”
Xate Yawa rested her chin in her hand, deep in thought. “Hm… You’re right. We should do something more lighthearted. Then, if you all feel up to it, we can go back to this universe down the road.”
Lyxaxu breathed a sigh of relief. “Sounds good to me.”
“Wait, can I make a rule for the next campaign?” Tain Hu interjected. After everyone motioned for her to speak, she said, “nobody can flirt with Baru’s character but mine.”
The entire group burst into laughter.
“There’s only two of us here that like girls,” Oathsfire snorted, “and we both have girlfriends.”
“So?” Tain Hu grumbled, her face red. “She’s mine!”
Giggling, Baru lifted her head to kiss her wife on the lips. “She’s right, I’m always hers. None of your characters had a chance with mine. Not even if you rolled three crit successes in a row.”
“Oh, we’re well aware,” Unuxekome smirked. “We only did it to annoy Hu.”
Ilhuake flicked him on his nose. “You guys are so mean, give her a break.” She turned to Tain Hu. “See, I never flirted with her character, because I’m a good person, unlike these monsters.”
Xate Yawa cleared her throat. “Okay, I’ll make it a rule, no more flirting with characters if their player doesn’t want to be courted by them.”
“Can we romance NPC’s next time?” Oathsfire asked.
“I’m your professor,” Xate Yawa reminded them. “So no, absolutely no flirting with NPC’s, because I’m not going to pretend to seduce any of you.”
“Okay, yeah, that would be weird.”
Unuxekome gestured to grab everyone’s attention. “I really hate to call it a night, because I want to keep talking about how absolutely insane this campaign was, but I have homework due on Tuesday that I really need to get working on.”
Everyone booed him, Ilhuake and Oathsfire also giving him a thumbs down.
“Unuxekome, this better not be homework for my class, that I’ve given you weeks to work on,” Xate Yawa warned.
“It’s not,” Unuxekome said a little too quickly. “It’s for a different class, with a totally different professor, that’s way less cool than you.”
Xate Yawa smiled, accepting his obvious lie. “That’s what I thought.”
“Hey, Lyxaxu, we should head back too,” Oathsfire said. “I kind of promised my girlfriend I’d watch her stream on Twitch in an hour.”
Lyxaxu wasn’t particularly happy about this, but he got up and grabbed his coat anyway. “Yeah, as much as I don’t want to head home, I have a club meeting at eight in the morning for some godforsaken reason.”
“Hah! Sucks to be you!” Ilhuake teased. “I told you joining the film geeks was a bad idea.” Lyxaxu flipped her off.
After all the boys left, Baru, Tain Hu, Ilhuake, and Xate Yawa talked for a bit, discussing what they did and didn’t like about the campaign, and how Ilhuake’s first time role-playing went. But before long, it was getting late, and Ilhuake had to leave too.
She winked at Tain Hu before she walked upstairs. “I’m sure Baru’s gonna make up for betraying you tonight.”
Now Tain Hu flipped her off, while Baru laughed, Xate Yawa feigning ignorance as she tidied up the basement.
“You girls are more than welcome to stay the night,” Tain Hu’s aunt offered. “I know you both hate driving when it’s this dark out.”
They took her up on her offer, curling up under the covers in her spare bedroom. While they always snuggled every night, whether they were spooning or sprawled across each other, tonight they were inseparable. Baru’s leg was trapped between Tain Hu’s, and her face was buried in her chest, her chin resting on her head. Tain Hu stroked her back, just gently enough to make her shiver and cling even closer to her.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Baru whispered.
Tain Hu nuzzled into her hair. “You won’t lose me,” she promised. “I’m not going anywhere, not without you.”
“I know, just…” She sighed. “Even though it was only a game, it felt so real. It scared me, just thinking about something like that happening to you.”
“But it won’t.” Tain Hu moved her hands to her waist. “Nothing like that will ever happen, my love.”
Baru felt like a petulant child. “But how do you know?”
“I know it the same way that I know the sky is blue, and the sun is warm. It is an irrefutable fact of life.”
She accepted that explanation, finally closing her eyes as she realized how tired she was. “I love you, Tain Hu. You’re my favorite everything.”
“And you, Baru, are my entire world. I love you too, darling.”
They both dreamt of masked men, burning ships and golden chains, but in the morning they were still there, and everything was okay.