Looking for Group

by Alexis Hall

  When she hit about thirty-two percent, Mordant succumbed to Heartsblood on his way to the theurgist, turned zombie-mind-slave, and started carving up the raid.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Mine, mine forever.

  [Raid][Mordant]: shit soz

  “Put him down,” cried Bjorn. “Put him down like a dog.”

  It was slightly demoralising to have to take out one of your own party members, but Mordant disappeared in a hail of arrows and shadow.

  That put them further behind on portals, which meant they had to halt DPS on Bloodrose until they could get the last one closed. Drew quickly scanned his raid frames, and it wasn’t good. Only one casualty but everyone was hovering at about fifty percent health, and the healers were looking uncomfortably low on mana.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Must I do everything myself?

  They pushed into phase three, and Lady Bloodrose descended into the pit, thorns and roses spiralling out of her body and filling the chamber. From the tank’s perspective, this was kind of the most straightforward part of the fight. He rushed forward to get her attention, and started smacking her with his axes. Morag was going to be running around dealing with the briars, which would be coming thick and fast now that the Pillar of Thorns was permanently active.

  “Full burn, full burn, but don’t forget the barbs.”

  It was basically carnage. As Bloodrose’s health ticked lower, the debuffs from the pillars stacked higher, and the screen exploded with briars and special effects.

  Drew’s Heartsblood was getting into the high eighties, so he called to Morag for a tank swap, and she got to him just in time for Ella to reach the theurgist before she went psycho on the raid. Drew’s fingers were a little slippery on the mouse as he grabbed the boss back. It was a tricky manoeuvre to coordinate at the best of times, and even Anni occasionally screwed it up.

  The raid was looking increasingly unhealthy, particularly with the healing debuff from the Pillar of Life, and Bloodrose had only just dipped below ten percent.

  Bjorn: “Entangled.”

  “On it . . . shit, barbs.”

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Mine, mine forever.

  Bjorn sighed. “Get me untangled, and then kill Dave.”

  “It wasn’t my fault, I was trying to rescue you.”

  “Less QQ more pewpew.”

  While they were butchering Dave, Prospero died from raid damage.

  “Shit.”

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Violets are blue, roses are red, and as for you, you’re utterly dead.

  [Raid][Prospero]: I fucking hate that taunt

  [Raid][Ignatius]: Covering raid

  [Raid][Solace]: kk

  There was just too much damage and too many adds. Morag went down, then Ialdir, then Ignatius.

  Lady Bloodrose was on two percent.

  “We can still do this,” said Morag. “Keep Ella up as long as you can.”

  Solace had hardly any mana left, Heurodis and Jargogle were clinging to life by a thread. Drew blew all his cooldowns and hoped. A rampaging minion flattened Heurodis.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Violets are blue, roses are red, and as for you, you’re utterly dead.

  “Oh shut up, you stupid elf. My DoTs are still ticking.”

  They were so doomed. They were all out of resources, but Drew was kind of proud to be fighting on to the bitter end. Anni would have called it the moment Mordant had been HBed because it was an inefficient use of raid time.

  But it was scary and fun and exciting in a futile Helm’s Deep sort of way.

  They probably weren’t going to the opera on Friday, but they were damn well going to make this count.

  Drew wondered what Kit was thinking, and if he was happy or stressed or what. He found himself wishing he was there, so he could look at him and see.

  Then Ella died.

  “Sorry, oom,” said Kit quietly over Mumble.

  Now Ella was no longer holding her attention, Lady Bloodrose whirled round in a rush of blood and petals to face the kobold who’d been busy stabbing her in the back of the knee.

  The kobold who immediately vanished.

  So that just left a small, winged elf, who she took down with a single strike.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Violets are blue, roses are red, and as for you, you’re utterly dead.

  Jargogle reappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaped across the pit, and chained a sequence of flashing finishers into Lady Bloodrose’s spine.

  [Lady Bloodrose] says: Raziel . . . my lord . . . I have failed you.

  “You magnificent kobold,” roared Bjorn. “I would kiss you if you weren’t such a peculiar small furry animal.”

  And then Mumble went wild with joy.

  To [Solace]: nice healing <3

  [Solace] whispers: nice tanking <3

  “By the way, Kit,” said Madga, once everybody had calmed down a little. “I’m sorry I aggro-dumped on you. I was just so close to everything being off cooldown, and I thought it was our only chance to salvage the encounter.”

  “Oh it’s fine,” he answered. “You made the right call.”

  High Theurgist Venric was still monologuing and bleeding out in the background, but basically nobody cared. They were too busy rummaging in Lady Bloodrose’s chest (“Hurr,” said Dave, “Lady Bloodrose’s chest.”) to see what goodies they could plunder. There was a selection of the usual items, all of which went to good homes.

  “And finally,” announced Bjorn, “we have . . . that tiny, little baby plant-monster thing, which is a vanity pet and therefore of no interest to me.”

  [Raid][Heurodis]: [Briar Seedling]

  “But I understand they are popular with some people for some reason.”

  The raid immediately erupted into a menagerie as everybody pulled out their favourite noncombat companion. Drew wasn’t a big collector either, but it was impossible to play the game without getting a pet or two, just for buying expansions, doing some questlines, or getting them as random drops. He summoned a squirrel that he had no memory of acquiring. Solace had an incredibly cute baby hippo. Drew didn’t even think there were hippos in the game.

  “I see what you are doing,” Bjorn went on, “and I am ignoring it. As our loot master, I have two suggestions for how to dispose of this nauseatingly cute little artefact. Either we do a raid roll like normal, or alternatively we give it to Magda as a reward for kicking the crap out of its original owner. I will now initiate a readycheck vote. If you wish to give this seedling to our kobold, please click Ready, if not, click Not.”

  Drew voted to give it to Jargogle. It seemed fairest to him.

  “All right, we have a nine-to-one majority. Jargogle gets the seedling, Friday we go to the opera. Good job, everyone.”

  After a bit of dancing and gratsing, and admiring Jargogle’s new pet, they gradually logged out or teleported away.

  To [Solace]: Alarion?

  [Solace] whispers: Yes :)

  Drew left the raid, grouped up with Solace, and they made their way together to their usual rock, where he got his usual hit of being slightly nervous.

  [Group][Orcarella]: good run

  [Group][Solace]: Yeah, that was kind of crazy at the end there.

  [Group][Orcarella]: you must be totally sick of me

  [Group][Orcarella]: you were stuck with me this afternoon and then all evening

  [Group][Orcarella]: and half the time i was whinging about wiping

  [Group][Solace]: I’m really not

  [Group][Solace]: I kind of miss you actually

  [Group][Solace]: Sorry, is that weird?

  [Group][Orcarella]: no i miss you too

  [Group][Solace]: <3

  [Group][Orcarella]: i totally lost track of time this afternoon

  [Group][Orcarella]: you didn’t think I was too creepy or intense or something

  [Group][Orcarella]: i was worried you’d think i was holding you hostage in starbucks

  [Group][Solace]: Me too

  [Group][Orcarella]: lol we suck


  [Group][Solace]: Maybe we could have a pact or something. To say if we’re getting bored or want some space.

  [Group][Orcarella]: that sounds way too sensible

  [Group][Orcarella]: okay

  [Group][Solace]: we can shake on it next time we meet up

  Drew took a deep breath.

  [Group][Orcarella]: so like when do you want to do that?

  [Group][Solace]: Whenever you like

  [Group][Solace]: But soon, please :)

  [Group][Orcarella]: friday? we could have dinner.

  That had just sort of . . . happened. And it was a proper proper date. Not just coffee. Which meant he needed to take Kit somewhere. Somewhere classy.

  [Group][Orcarella]: we could go to Pizza Express?

  [Group][Solace]: I’d love to, but I’ve already signed up for the raid.

  [Group][Orcarella]: but its just a fun run

  [Group][Solace]: Fun’s important too. Can we go on Saturday?

  [Group][Orcarella]: sure. I’ll meet you there at 7?

  [Group][Solace]: :) :) :)

  [Group][Solace]: Are you going to come to the opera?

  [Group][Orcarella]: i’m kind of meant to be meeting my mates in the pub

  [Group][Solace]: but you just asked me to dinner

  [Group][Orcarella]: yeah, but that was a date

  [Group][Orcarella]: this is a game

  Kit didn’t type anything for a while.

  [Group][Solace]: okay, I’ll see you on Saturday

  [Group][Orcarella]: <3

  [Group][Solace]: :)

  Drew had barely sat down in the Slug and Lettuce on Friday evening before his friends were bombarding him with questions about his big date with the guy from the internet.

  Sanee opened with, “So, are you, like, an official gay now?”

  “Oi—” Steff poked him in the arm “—we talked about this.”

  Drew just rolled his eyes. “No, I’ve got to send in four passport-sized photographs first.”

  “Hey,” protested Sanee, “I wasn’t being rude. I didn’t mean gay like lame, I meant gay like gay.”

  Tinuviel doubled facepalmed. “Sanee, that’s ableist and homophobic.”

  “I’m just asking a question.”

  “No, a question would be something like ‘Did you have a nice time?’ or ‘Did he like your whale T-shirt?’ not ‘How can I best put your sexual identity in a box that I find comfortable to think about?’”

  Drew realised that if he didn’t do something now, this would go on all night. “I had a lovely time,” he announced. “He liked my T-shirt, we had coffee, and then went raiding. We downed Lady Bloodrose on the final attempt of the evening.”

  “Dude,” said Andy, “you took a guy raiding on a date?”

  “No, we were raiding anyway.”

  Sanee leaned over the table. “That’s how they met. Massively multiplaying online.”

  “Seriously?” Andy blinked. “You’re dating someone you met in a video game.”

  Now Drew double facepalmed. “Look, yes, I’m dating a guy. Yes, he’s a guy I met online. No, he’s not a twelve-year-old French boy. Yes, I’m pretty sure he’s not a serial killer. No, he’s not a minger. Yes, I really like him. No, he doesn’t ask me to dress as an elf.”

  “What about a hobbit?” asked Sanee.

  “He doesn’t ask me to dress as anything. And, before you ask, I don’t ask him to dress as anything either. I like him just the way he is.”

  “That’s very sweet, Drew.” Tinuviel smiled her vague smile. “But there’s nothing wrong with a little creative cosplay. I once went to Nine Worlds as Geralt of Rivia.”

  There was a long silence as everyone processed the image.

  Sanee got there first. “Do you still have the outfit?”

  “No, I took it apart. This year I’m going as Viserys Targaryen.”

  There was another long silence as everyone processed that image.

  “Um, why?” asked Andy eventually.

  Tinuviel thought about it. “Well, I had the wig. It was that or Sephiroth, but he seemed a bit dated.”

  “Did it not occur to you,” suggested Drew, “that you could have gone as, say, Daenerys.”

  “I don’t really identify with Daenerys.”

  “So, what, you identify with her psycho, abusive, petty tyrant brother?”

  “I don’t identify with him, but I think I understand him better. Daenerys is very admirable, but I find it difficult to relate to admirable people, and I feel Viserys is treated unfairly by the world he lives in because he fails to embody conventional masculine virtues. Also the actor who played him is terribly pretty.”

  “Don’t you ever like to dress as girls?” asked Steff.

  “Oh yes. Two years ago I was Dolores Umbridge.”

  Drew sipped his pint. The nice thing about having a deeply weird, highly opinionated friend was that you never had to be the centre of attention if you didn’t want to be. The conversation drifted back towards the latest season of Game of Thrones, which Sanee was illegally torrenting for the group and had forbidden anyone to watch until he had the whole thing so they could sit down over a weekend and do a proper Throne-athon. They spent the rest of the evening bickering about spoiler etiquette and deviations from book canon.

  Once the pub kicked them out, they headed to Sanee and Steff’s for their traditional Friday-night board game-age. They settled into a postmidnight session of Arkham Horror that ended with them heroically beating up Yig with tommy guns, and then feeling faintly short-changed.

  “Poor old Yig,” said Sanee, as he carefully stacked twenty-five different sets of cards into their proper places in the box. “He’s more of a mediocre old one, isn’t he?”

  Drew was kind of sleepy and a little bit sad. He always enjoyed Arkham while he was playing it, but afterwards it always felt like an anticlimax, whether you won or lost. He blinked the board game haze out of his eyes and looked round at his friends. Andy had actually fallen asleep while trying to close a gate to the Great Halls of Celeano and was now slumped facedown on the coffee table. Steff was curled up in Sanee’s lap, handing him loose counters, and Tinuviel was reading the Fantasy Flight brochure that came with the game.

  Drew missed Kit.

  He tried to imagine him here. He sort of managed and sort of didn’t.

  He couldn’t picture them sitting in each other’s laps—not least because Kit was pretty tall, and Drew had played a lot of rugby when he was still at school, so it wasn’t really clear whether the taller or the heavier one should go on top or underneath—but maybe they’d hold hands under the table and smile at each other when nobody was looking.

  By the time he got back to his room, it was the kind of late that was technically early, and he woke up the next day with the sinking realisation that the sun wasn’t going to get any higher. He pulled on his pyjama bottoms and logged onto HoL, did his auctions and ran a few dailies with Ialdir and Prospero. And then he had to prepare for his date.

  Which was complicated by the fact he was coming to the end of a laundry cycle and he’d already worn his best T-shirt.

  He’d hoped that, by this point, he’d have this down, but he ended up dithering all over again about what to wear. A shirt seemed appropriate for dinner, but not appropriate for, well, him. In the end, he decided to compromise by wearing a shirt over his T-shirt, but leaving it unbuttoned. Of course, this left him with a problem because anything with a slogan on it would be hard to read and probably looked kind of cluttered. He was hesitating over his Caffeine Molecule when he remembered he had an Epic Purple Shirt kicking about at the back of a chest of drawers. He hadn’t worn it much because he hadn’t been sure he could get away with a purple T-shirt for reasons that now seemed pretty stupid.

  He took a quick glance in the mirror to make sure he didn’t look like a complete knob end, decided he didn’t, and headed off to meet Kit.

  He’d had the foresight to book a table in advance, which turned out to be a good
thing because it was a Saturday night and the place was packed. Kit was waiting just outside, still in blue, still looking like a model, still reading Canticle for Leibowitz.

  He closed the book and smiled, and Drew grinned back and waved, and then felt like an idiot because waving at someone when they were eight feet away seemed a bit much.

  “Hi,” he said, wishing he could just do less-than-three, and not have to worry about whether he looked happy enough, or too happy, or if he’d be able to think of anything witty to say.

  They trooped in, and Drew gave his name to the waiter. He knew it was just Pizza Express, but having to do the whole ritual of booking and being shown to your table made him feel like he was doing an impression of someone he’d seen on TV.

  The waiter led them to a table for two tucked into a little niche. There was even a flower in a blue glass-vase thing.

  They got sat down, and Kit vanished behind an enormous menu. Drew stared at an equally enormous but totally incomprehensible wine list.

  “So,” he asked, trying to sound suave, “shall I order the merlot?”

  Kit’s eyes appeared over the top of his menu. “Um, do you want to?”

  “I don’t know . . . I just thought it would be a thing . . . that we could . . . do.”

  “Well, you can if you want, but I don’t actually drink that much wine.”

  Drew had this horrible image of trying to drink an entire bottle of merlot on his own, and he wasn’t even particularly sure what a merlot was, other than the second-cheapest, most pronounceable wine they had. “Me neither. I just panicked. I might have a Coke.”

  Kit hid his face behind the menu again.

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Maybe a little bit.”

  Drew didn’t really mind. It was sometimes nice to be laughed at. If it was the right person laughing. He tried to redeem himself. “I thought we could have the dough balls doppio to start.”