by Sarah Daltry
“It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue,” Lanyon says, his chip breath surging forward.
“You’re likely to be bitch slapped by a druid,” Katie says. “What are we going to do? Even if your dwarf friend brings the Ruby Key, Lanyon has the other two.”
“It doesn’t matter unless we get them all anyway. Maybe I can get Trevor to play as one of me,” Lanyon says as the power springs back to life.
The Xbox sometimes is a magical monster. When the power reconnects, the TV comes back on and all of our characters are standing in the same place. “That’s weird. It doesn’t usually do that,” I say.
“Fire spore is back,” Katie says and destroys it. “Holy shit. The treasure chest is also back.”
“Oh, goody.” Lanyon charges for it.
“Don’t touch it, you short, useless turd,” I yell as my bard runs his lute-bearing ass after him.
Lanyon stops but Katie beats us both there. Her character opens the treasure. “Awesome.”
“What is it?” we both ask in unison.
“Did the Emerald Key respawn?” I continue.
“Nope,” Katie says. “This time it’s black. According to my inventory, I have the Onyx Key.”
“Thank you, mighty Xbox and your freakish memory and/or glitch thing you have done for us.”
“Save, save, save,” Lanyon starts yelling. I do so.
“Now we have four. If we can trust the dwarf,” Katie says.
“You can never trust a dwarf. But as long as I’m the best bard he knows, I think he will share his Ruby Key.”
Live pings and Seynar joins our party. His soldier appears among us on screen. This time, he’s wearing a Helmet of Protection.
“Nice helmet,” Lanyon says.
“It may not look cool but I can’t trust you sneaky shits. I did discover something awesome, though.”
“Your mom loves you?” I ask.
“No.”
“Well, that’s sad. Not even your mom loves you.”
“Hadouken,” Lanyon shouts and he hits Seynar’s soldier with a useless Halfling dagger. Even without the magic helmet, it wouldn’t have done much.
“Do you guys want to hear my news or what?” We don’t really. But he deems silence as consent. “You remember that pulse grenade thing I had?”
“The one that knocked me off the boss and that you killed yourself with?” I ask.
“Yes. That one. Well, I did some research and it turns out it isn’t a grenade. It’s the Opal Key.”
Man, I think. These keys are a lot easier to find than I expected. I guess they figure, what with all the people out after them, if there wasn’t some chance at success, gamers would go crazy. I know I’m not about to grind against Claptraps for pizza slices again. Fuck that.
“How did you figure that out?” Katie asks.
“I looked in my inventory and it says that I have the Opal Key.”
“Haven’t you had it for a week?” Lanyon asks, perhaps ironically, given his own personal tendencies.
“Not quite. But I don’t check my inventory.”
“Snipers,” I sigh. “If they aren’t shooting things, they are just useless.”
“Useless? I have the Opal Key. What have you guys done?”
“We have the Emerald, Onyx, and Sapphire Keys. Plus, we know a dwarf with the Ruby one,” Lanyon reveals.
“Shit,” says Seynar. “These things aren’t as hard to find as I thought.”
“I guess not. I’m almost at level 38, so not much further,” I say.
“Oh, shit. That’s right; you’re a goddamn bard. This is too perfect. We have to find those other keys.”
“Wow, Professor Layton you sniffed that one out. Cole Phelps has got nothing on you,” Katie says.
“Online, it says that the Amber Key is located in the Mines of Heresy,” Seynar tell us.
“Cool name,” says Lanyon. “Let’s go there.”
“Are you a Halfling? Why are you a Halfling?” Seynar asks.
“I forgot my other character at home.”
“You guys are all together?” We say we are. “Well, let’s go to the mines.”
“Hadouken.” Lanyon throws another knife at Seynar for no reason. It doesn’t hurt him.
“Stop trying to kill me or I will obliterate your ass,” Seynar says.
“If you want him, come and claim him,” Katie says.
“Can you guys seriously stop? I want to adventure together.”
I sneak up behind him. “No problem. Just once more,” I say as I dispel his Helmet of Protection with my lute. He turns, but not fast enough as I backstab him. Really, it was a side stab, but he dies anyway. “Requiescat in pace.”
“You bastards.” Seynar’s character begins to blink out of existence.
“Snake? Snake? Snaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake,” Lanyon yells as Seynar’s soldier disappears. We all break out in great gouts of laughter. Except for Seynar.
“You spoony bard. You guys suck.”
He’ll be back, though.
Katie
The Mines of Heresy might be heretical, but mostly, they’re just dark.
“Can you play us a song of clairvoyance?” I ask George.
“I don’t think so. I think that’s a Skyrim thing. I can, however, play us a lovely melody to ease our journey.”
“Fuck,” Seynar cries out. “You just eased a fucking troll into our path.”
“Where is there a troll?” Lanyon asks, just as his Halfling flies over our heads and lands in pieces by the mine entrance.
“Maybe I need to adjust the screen brightness,” George suggests. He digs under his bed for his remote and, as the screen adjusts, we see that the mine is now basically a giant troll. With an enormous red health bar.
“Um,” I say.
“What level does that say?” Lanyon asks.
“Sixty-three,” I read.
“Maybe George needs to adjust the text. Perhaps it’s an 03.”
The troll, clearly wanting to prove that it’s a six and not a zero over his head, punches the ground. We all die.
“Well, then,” George says. “Amber can wait?”
“Wait? There is no way we can fight a level sixty-three troll if you can’t go over 42,” Lanyon points out.
“You’ll all just have to go on without me,” George says. “It’s the only way. Level up. See what else FDX has to offer. I’ll read a book.”
“You read?” Seynar asks.
“Yes, you dumb fuck, I read. I am a wordsmith. Now suck my balls.”
“Beautiful. I think it was your use of heroic couplets there that really made the sonnet work,” Lanyon says.
“Heroic couplets,” George mumbles.
“That wasn’t vague. Not at all,” I point out.
Lanyon opens another Snickers. “Well, what other keys do we need? We have Onyx, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, and Opal. Amber is out of the question, so we only need…” He waits, but none of us knows.
“Seynar?” I ask.
“Searching.”
We wait some more. I can hear Seynar clacking away on his computer. “Maybe, in the future, bookmark it?” I suggest.
“Oh, sorry. I was finishing up a blog post. Okay, what are we looking for?”
Lanyon covers his mic and leans over to me and George. “Can we kill him again? I’m not even sure I wouldn’t rather look for the Opal Key on our own.”
“You know I can hear you, right?” Seynar asks.
George points to his own mic, which is not covered.
“Amethyst,” Seynar finally says. “It’s the Amethyst Key.”
“Cool. Where do we find it?” I ask.
“Doesn’t say.”
“Lovely,” George says. “Maybe we should just play the game for a bit. I kind of forget what it’s even about.”
“You can’t,” Lanyon reminds him. “You’re gonna read a book.”
“Or I could start a new character?” George offers.
“No,” I say. �
��No more new characters. This is getting ridiculous. Read a book.”
“Okay, but you’re all going to be screwed without my lute.”
“We’re screwed anyway. We have a Halfling and a soldier who doesn’t check his inventory. He probably already has the damn Amethyst Key,” I complain.
“Huh. Let me check,” Seynar replies. “Nope. But I do have another Helmet of Protection. Sweet.”
He doesn’t get it on, though, before George stabs him in the back.
“What the mother fuck?” Seynar groans.
“I don’t know,” George says. “I’m reading a book.”
“What book?” Lanyon asks, setting up the response.
“How to Stab Friends and Immolate People.”
“Ah, yes, I heard that was a good one. Seynar?”
“Yeah. I’m coming,” he says.
We’re off. Seynar does help with the fighting, since Lanyon is both underleveled and useless. Still, it’s not fun. Not that grinding is ever fun, but it’s less fun. I turn to George, who is reading intently.
“What are you actually reading?” I ask while Lanyon talks to a merchant and finagles a deal on potions.
“The Sheltering Sky.” He holds it up, but the cover tells me nothing. It’s just brown with a swirl or something on it.
“Any good?”
“That depends. Do you like books where pretentious douchebags think rape is awesome, go to Africa, and die a lot?”
“Not so much.”
“Hmmm. Then not so much,” he says and smiles. “It’s okay, I guess. It’s well-written. I just wish I didn’t hate everyone in it.”
“So why read it?” I ask and shoot a lightning bolt at an oncoming chicken-looking thing.
“I started it. And so, now, I finish it.”
“George is a big finisher,” Lanyon says.
“Is that some kind of joke?” I ask.
George shrugs. “I don’t get it if it is.”
George
This book is a cancerous glob of dick juice. I toss it aside and observe. Lanyon has no clue what he’s doing. He literally just runs around trying not to die. He hardly even attacks anything. Then, as if on some kind of cycle, he’s killed by something.
“Spawn and grind, Halfling,” I tell him.
This endless wall of murder drones on for quite some time. Katie gets crushed by a blasphemous boulder. “That’s what you get for using Gygax’s name in vain,” Lanyon tells her.
She leans back against me on my bed as Lanyon and Seynar keep plugging away. They’ve been joined by some person named Telemachus the Terror. It’s obviously some ten-year-old as he keeps telling everyone they’re noobs and he’s going to tea bag them. Seynar gets into a shouting match with the kid and Lanyon makes random and increasingly bizarre comments. All in all, it is good entertainment.
Katie looks up at me from where she’s lying on my lap. “So, you won’t mind going on a date with my friends? They’re a little shallow.”
“It’s fine. I’m not exactly a world class human.”
She smiles and lets her hand rest on my leg. It’s pretty dark now, with only the flicker from the TV keeping off the darkness. That isn’t very effective, either, since the Caverns of Blasphemy are really dark. Crazy blasphemers.
I try to get into a more comfortable position and notice a small crinkle in my pocket. By Shatner’s teeth! My poem. Do I give it to her? Things seem to be going pretty well. In fact, if I can get Lanyon to disappear, I can certainly get into some heavy petting. That’s always nice, no matter how much health class tried to warn us about it. Do I try to woo her with poetry or just stick to my lute skills? I better act fast before she falls asleep. There won’t be any heavy petting then. Debate, debate. Oh, what the hell? Kratos never killed any gods by being scared, did he? Hell, no. Instead, he was a remorseless lunatic who really has no business being a god of any kind. The perfect model.
I pull out the poem. I decide to stick with my Zelda theme, even though she left my heart in my car. “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.” I hand it to her.
She opens it and squints. “I can’t see. What is it?”
“A dragon,” Lanyon says. But he’s referring to the giant beast grinding him between its teeth, not the poem.
“Maybe you can read it later when there’s more light,” I say.
I’m regretting this already. Not only is the poem stupid and a big pile of poorly constructed ass, but now, she’s going to read it in front of Lanyon. He isn’t exactly the judging type, but still. If my girlfriend reads a lame poem of mine, he is obligated to mock me. If he doesn’t, they’ll take his membership card away. I’m so stupid. This failure was as obvious as Megaton getting blown up. I wish I had that teddy bear shooting gun so I could fire myself the hell out of here.
“Is it a poem?” she asks. “You write poems?”
“I wouldn’t say I write poems. I wrote this one. I’m not really a poet, though. Poetry is not my thing as a rule. Not so much into poems.”
“Why don’t you say poems a few more times?” asks Lanyon. “You can set a record.” He turns to look at me. “You’re obviously not a poet, you redundant bag of shit.” I get some solace, though, as his Halfling is obliterated again, this time by dragon fire.
Meanwhile, Katie has brought my skid mark on paper over to the window in the hopes that the meager light from the moon will let her see it. “I can almost make it out,” she whispers. Is that excitement or annoyance? I can’t be sure.
“I can turn the light on,” I say.
“Fuck that. We’ll all be stuck blinking for the next hour,” says Lanyon as he dies again. “Man, Halflings suck.”
“That’s okay,” Katie says. “I think I can see it.” As she squints, her phone glows and rings. She glances down. “It’s Anna.”
“You might as well get it,” I say. But I’m a little bummed because I was hoping she’d rather read my crap poem than talk to her friend.
Katie
I let the call go to voicemail, but I turn on my flashlight app and cup my hand around my phone to read the poem. It’s awesome. Pure awesomeness caught between two slices of awesome. I use my flashlight to cross back to George and get into his lap. Leaning close, I whisper, “Am I really a distracting, sexy vixen?”
He wraps his arms around me and kisses me. Holy airship Strahl. Maybe I need to give that whole sex thing another go. Of course, as I think it, and as George’s hand makes its way to the hem of my t-shirt, Lanyon coughs out a massive cloud of salt and vinegar, mixed with chocolate and peanut, over the two of us.
“Hi,” he says.
I exhale slowly and get off George’s lap. He groans and I’m thankful for the darkness in the room, because I feel like we’re both quite red right now. My face feels like the inside of Mount Doom. I look down at my phone and text Anna back. She replies almost immediately.
The double date is a go for Saturday. We’re going cosmic bowling.
I don’t know what that is, but this girl spends a lot of time bowling.
Okay. Do you know any girls?
Why? she texts back.
It’s actually going to be a triple date. But we’re short a girl.
Hold on, she texts. I do. I get back to the game. We’ve moved to early levels since there is so little we can do with Lanyon’s Halfling and Seynar is half-ass playing while blogging about something no one cares about. One thing that’s nice about magic, but also boring, is that you really don’t need to do much with low-level enemies. I just hit buttons every so often to release area attacks and everything dies.
Anna texts back. Chad said he’ll bring his sister.
I agree and she says she’ll call me in a couple days to figure out the “deets.” I shake my head.
“I found you a date,” I announce as I unleash an earthquake and destroy a group of sprites.
“Really?” Lanyon pauses the game. “Who?”
“Chad’s sister.”
“She sounds hot.”
“Is she legal?” he asks.
“I think so. Also, we’re going bowling. I don’t think you’ll be doing anything that requires you to verify her legality.”
“You never know,” he says. “My moves are slick.”
George finally speaks again. It’s been a while. “I hate you,” he says.
“But why? Is it because of my epic cock block?” Lanyon asks. He turns his attention back to me. “Katie, tell me about this lovely lass.”
“Um, I forget her name, but she plays clarinet. I know that.”
“Excellent. A musician. I, myself, am quite the percussionist.”
“You are?” I ask.
“He played the triangle in our fifth grade Easter pageant,” George says.
“And it was the greatest moment in Easter pageant history,” Lanyon adds.
“What did you play?” I ask George.
Lanyon laughs. “George was our MC.”
“Oh, I wish I could have seen that.”
“Actually-” Lanyon starts.
“No,” George says. “Do. Not. Even. Consider. It.”
“Hey, Katie, want to go for a short jaunt?” Lanyon asks. “You have to be very, very quiet. The parental units are sleeping.”
“Sure,” I say. George groans but he gets up, too, and we sneak out into the hallway. I follow Lanyon down the dark passage and then into the basement. He turns on the light and the paneled TV room is illuminated.
“What year is it?” I ask. There is shag carpeting, some brown furniture, and an old TV with a VCR on top of it.
“My parents believe that if things still work, they don’t need to be replaced,” George explains.
“Hence his car,” Lanyon offers.
“His car doesn’t work,” I remind them.
“It works sometimes,” George says.
Lanyon goes to the cabinet next to the TV and George collapses, defeated, onto the couch.
“Ah ha,” Lanyon shouts and he holds up a VHS cassette. I settle onto the couch next to George while Lanyon prepares the video. George sighs as the TV is turned on and then, images of Jesus and Easter bunnies fill the screen.
