Thrag slid the leather thong off his wrist, leaving a crimson trace where the sword's weight had bound into his flesh. His wife handed him a skin bulging with sweet red wine. He took a long cool swallow wiping his beard with a beefy arm, then he scooped her off her feet.
"Welcome home," she said huskily. She giggled and pretended to try to escape. Her small fists pummeling his chest, she squirmed away from his kiss. When their lips met, she transformed from sinew to soft delicious pelt. With a tremble she slid back a bit. "The children," she wispered, a lusty promise in her eyes.
"Ahh," Thrag replied. "My kith, the treasure I bequeath the next generation. Where is my brood?" he demanded with a lusty laugh.
Alyssa bit her lip, sorry now that she had mentioned them. "In the damp cellar."
"I'll get them," Schwa offered.
Thrag waved the gnome back. His perpetually worried expression got a little worse. "Allow me," Thrag said with mock formality. With a warriors stride he crossed the room in a few lithe steps. "what are they doing in the damp cellar? Surely not softening skins?" Normally the the cellar was the site of groaning protests.
Allysa was silent. Something was wrong. Father and fighter Thrag trotted down the stairs into the tunnel beneath the house. The door was standing open a slit, something strictly forbidden. But his thoughts were not on discipline as he thrust the door open. He gave a confused sigh of relief. The children were seated around a candle, laughing and cajoling one another. Thrag looked back at his wife mistified. She was more concerened then ever.
It was mad, unless...
"The game!" he spat.
"Oh, hi father," the children said in chorus. "How was your quest?" one asked without turning around. As thier father answered a peal of laughter drowned him out.
He looked around the circle of small plump bodies, his face fixed in a scowl. The cold damp of the room was starting to stiffen his leg where a shriekbeast had shattered it. It seemed ages ago. Suddenly feeling older then his years, he climbed the stone steps.
"They were expecting you tomorrow," Alyssa said.
Thrag forced a smile and slid an arm around her. "Scorceress," he chided her.
She reacted to the compliment with a coy turn of her head. "I'm too tired, to sapped of my magic to feel anger right now."
His huge form settled into a wooden chair, causing a faint sound of strain, "when I was just a thief. . . "
"Never just a thief, my lord," Alyssa whispered. Now it was his turn to be embaressed.
". . . life was simple. Decieve and mesmerize the rich, barter with the lowfolk. That was all there was. Now though, the children dream, well, strangely. Myka, less then a season from her first bleed, should be studying the arts. But all she does all day and night is play that cursed game.
"We had our strange games."
"Not that strange," he said defiantly. "Sometimes I wonder if those who say that this game portends the end of everything might not be the wisest."
There was a tapping at the door. Thrag gave the gnome a commanding glance. The little creature had forgotten himself, attending the human talk with rapt attention. "Id better get the door," he said meekly.
"Yes," Thrag agreed with authority.
The knobby little had slid the stout iron bar aside. "Cleric Pon," Schwa half-greeted, half-announced.
The cleric swept into the room on a wake of black and purple cape. He was clearly surprised to see Thrag.
Alyssa smiled, "Comforts of Hearth," she said formally.
"Comforts of Spirit," he replied.
Thrag held his questions in check, but clearly he would do so for only a moment more.
"My husband returns from quest a day early," Alyssa told the cleric.
Pon grinned, "A sign of health and success, I trust."
"I alight in a a fog of dragon's blood," Thrag said, "even so, your blessing is always welcome."
"I asked the cleric to visit, my love. The game."
"Thrag's training as a warrior failed him for just an instant. He was shocked, "that serrious?"
"As you know," Pon said, "the game takes more time from the young as each session passes. Admittedly, they learn crafts as well, often better, after playing T&C, but they seem to believe that the world where it happens is real."
"Surely my children are safe from such extremes," Thrag insisted.
Pon just shrugged, "Today, perhaps. Tomorrow, even a seer cannot say. The game grows more elaborate as they contiue to play. Some adults, even clerics, have been known to play."
"And you," Thrag asked.
Pon nodded silently, "my magic dulled to the point where I could hardly lift a brineload."
"What is the magnetism of this damned game? Is that world so superior to our own?"
"It lacks so much," Alyssa said. "Much of life, even a measure of magic is missing from this fantasy world."
"They simply play to be defiant, to show that they can," Thrag said.
"No," Pon eplied quietly. "There is depth there. A sinister one, perhaps, but a depth none-the-less."
Thrags eyes flashed. "I've dropped half a hundred lizard warriors in a day, sucked wraiths into my own lungs to spew them to their deaths. A sack of toys will not steal my children from me. I will feed these games to scumbeasts, every last one."
Pon held up a hand in admonition. "Learn. Conquer through understanding." With that he was surrounded by a frigid mist. When it cleared, he was gone.
"I hate parlor tricks," Thrag grumbled.
"I would try what he said, mate to my soul," Alyssa said.
Thrag looked her up and down. "Such learning and thinking are for someone mystically endowed. I am not one of those."
Alyssa eyed him with understanding. "My lord carries more magic then he may ever know."
Thrag glanced at the stairway a moment. It would be easy to ravage the room and terrify the children. Too easy, perhaps. He nodded and gave a crooked smile. "Perhaps your right. Once I understand this thing, it will be easier to fight." He glided down the hall, ashamed at his stealth.
Alyssa followed, eclipsed by his muscular bulk.
From the dampcellar young voices crowded one another. Thrag strained to hear something sensible, craving an invisibility spell. A wisp of mist slid from his lips into the candlelight.
"A D in chemistry? Gag me out totally!"
Thrag shot a quizzical glance at his wife. She shrugged in response.
"What is this game called," he whispered. Dice galloped across the cellar floor.
"You're behind the cafeteria, holding a pack of cigarettes. Someone is coming around the corner. It could be the teacher."
"Teachers and Classrooms," Alyssa said.
Thrag nodded, still mystified.
"It's Mr. Potter, the gym teacher." A gasp passed through the room.
"You're dead,"one of the children said.
Thrag was still strugling with the arcane words and names. "Potter," he mouthed silently.
"He's just comming to the corner."
"Oh, sacred soul. Uh, I, uh, jam the cigarettes in my sock and pull my pantleg over them," Myka said, her voice almost desperate.
Dice rattled.
"No good. He sees the bulge and smells the smoke. Your busted. He grabs you by the collar and drags you to the principal's office."
Myka's thin whine sliced the damp air. She was holding back a sob as she spoke, "another two weeks and I would have graduated. It's not fair!"
Even around the corner Thrag could sense the funeral feel in the room. It was eerie to hear a room full of young children silent save for an occasional uneasy cough. Thrag started forward only to have Alyssa hold his arm," She suffers no real danger," she whispered.
Thrag nodded uneasily. Myka slinked into the hall, head drooping tragically. Thrag watched the tiny form, wrapped in a teddyfur, plod up the stairs. He followed her, silently, although he guessed her ears were closed.
"Child," he implored as they reached the warmth of the house. Startled, she twisted and saw the huge bearlike form of her father, now bent in puzzeled compassion.
From her lip up was puffy red from crying. "I can't ever win. Never. The others are going to graduate, go to work for microcomputer manufacturers and accounting firms. But I got expelled. I might as well quit the game."
"Would that be so terrible?"
Myka's lip quivered. "Niola may even get a job with the IRS. THE IRS!!!"
Thrag stifled his anger. "These words, these places are all strange to me. If you seek this world, our clan could entreat the Gods for a lifequest."
"It's beyond quests, father. Beyond even the Gods," Myka pleaded.
Thrag held his breath, waiting for a wraithful bolt. None came.
"I understand I think," Alyssa said from the cellar doorway, "this imaginary world, it has no magic and no Gods?"
Myka nodded, clearly relieved that her mother was trying to understand. "One maybe, we're not sure. He hides out alot."
Thrag sputtered, "a hiding God? Madness."
Alyssa gave an imploring look. "That means," she said thoughtfully, "that for our Gods to send someone there, thy would have to put them beyond the powers of magic, outside reality."
quot;Even if they could do such a stupid thing they would not," Thrag said. "It would put anyone they sent beyond thier power to retrieve them."
"I'm confused," Myka whimpered, "you told me once that there was no evil that couldn't be challenged. And nothing that could be challenged that couldn't be beaten."
"But to put someone outside the worlds known," Thrag said, striving to understand himself. "That goes beyond evil."
Myka buried her face in her father's pantsleg, sobbing. His huge calloused hand glided across her golden hair. "Shhhh pixie."
She managed a tear-ravaged smile.
The thief-turned-warrior hoisted her onto the pillows in front of the hearth. "Rest little one. Listen to the stories of my quest. Dream sweet dreams and ride the frigid embrace of the winds to the nests of the stars."
Her eyelids fluttered, already heavy with sleep. Alyssa quietly stacked wood in the fireplace and hung a flamecharm in the hearth. The room began to warm.
Thrag strolled through his memory, arranging his thoughts. He wondered if a simple cache of sentient gems could shadow the unnatural lures of cigarettes and a D in chemistry. The night would be long, and he prayed it would not be as lonely as it started.
He began his story . . .