I should be dead.

Failing that, I should be… dead in a car accident.

Damien woke not on the blood-sticky floorboards of the Goose & Child’s cellar nor in a tangled mess in the twisted remains of his car. Instead, he awoke warm, uneaten, and… naked.

His eyes snapped open, the world swimming into focus above him: motes of dust dancing in the candlelight, a moth fluttering about and, looking down at him with great concern, Layla’s face. She was so close that he could not only smell a hint of lavender from her perfume but even feel the warmth of her breath stirring the hairs of his beard.

Beard?

His hand moved gingerly up to touch the coarse stubble that had taken up residence on his face. He’d shaved this morning before work, yet here was at least two or three days’ growth.

His throat felt tight, like taut wire had been drawn across it. A questing hand found that it had been tightly bound with bandages. He winced at the pain his touch elicited.

“How long was I out?” was what he wanted to ask, but all that escaped his lips was a dry croak.

“Easy,” Layla cooed softly. “Try to lay still. You took quite a nasty wound battling those rats. My mother did what she could, but it has been years since she was a Sister of the Glade, and her powers aren’t what they once were. Still, we thought you dead when we heard you screaming up here. It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

Up here? How did I get up here?

In answer to his unspoken question, a warm light pulsed from somewhere in the room. Layla’s eyes widened, and she cast about looking for the light’s source.

Damien didn’t need to look. He should have known when he’d first found the chunk of unremarkable stone in his belongings. A Stone of Escape.

image [https://i.imgur.com/7nAzhY5.png]

He could picture it well enough from memory, an image dredged up from a corner of his mind long left to cobwebs and dust: a chunk of stone crisscrossed with jagged lines that would now be glowing, illuminated by an internal fire that gave off no heat.

That it still existed meant it hadn’t been destroyed in saving his life, but its usefulness would diminish rapidly if he died again.

The thought was immediately followed by another: giant rats, the innkeeper, Dukayne, the stone, and even some of the manouvres he’d executed in fighting the rats had all been in the booster pack he had found. What had the other cards been?

He tried to sit up and reach for his backpack, but Layla gasped in alarm, gently but firmly placing a hand on his chest and pushing him back to his pillow.

“You really must lie still.” she urged. “Mother says you’ll be weak as a kitten for weeks yet. Her magic only took you part of the way.”

He felt weak as a kitten. He doubted he could have resisted her urging even if he’d wanted to. In truth, he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open.

His memory of his death was blissfully vague. He remembered the last rat perched atop his shield, its red eyes luminous in the darkness and its yellowed fangs beared and ready to strike. He had no recollection of the pain he’d felt when it had torn out his throat, but the memory of it nonetheless left him damp with sweat.

I died.

He’d never had a true near-death (or actual death) experience before. A near miss here or there on the road, sure, but nothing that had left him quite so feeble. Even his footy injuries, of which there had been many in his relatively short career, had never left him fearing for his life.

All the more reason to find those cards.

His right hand fluttered weakly in the direction of his backpack. Layla got the hint. Eyes widening, she reached over to it and brought it close enough for Damien to fumble around inside it.

The effort of pushing aside the clothing balled up inside felt monumental, and, for a moment, he ignored the clink of glass as an annoyance preventing him from reaching his goal.

Thankfully, Layla recognised the sound’s significance. Her eyes widened as she withdrew the two vials of red liquid.

“Healing potions!” she shouted excitedly, turning towards the door to shout again. “He had healing potions in his backpack!”

“I told ye we shoulda checked his bag!” came Otto’s reply. Damien noted the relief in the big man’s voice.

Aw, he thought, he cares.

“Careful now,” Layla’s mother replied, the stairs already creaking under the weight of her approach. “Don’t go drowning the poor fellow.”

Soon, another concerned face hovered in Damien’s field of view. He was struck again by how unlike one another mother and daughter looked, but his focus remained on trying to find the cards.

“Easy, easy,” Mrs. Otto soothed as she uncorked one of the potions and held it to his lips. “Drink this, and you’ll feel a lot better.”

The liquid was icy cold, at once tart and sweet. He could feel its cold moving down his throat and into his belly and, from there, seeming to rocket out through his veins. The sensation caused his entire body to tense, his arms and legs outflung, and his head thrown back in a pain that was brilliant but blessedly short.

After a few seconds, he could feel the tightness around his throat fading and the tiredness leaving his body. God, it was like a bump of cocaine mixed with a shot of adrenaline and a dose of morphine. He’d never felt so energised yet lightheaded.

“Fuuuuuuuck!” he uttered unbidden, “That was a rush!”

Layla’s mother chuckled. “We could have saved the both of us a lot of pain and grief if I’d known you had potions on you. It had been some twenty years since I’d last tried to call on the grove.”

That was the second time he’d heard this “grove” mentioned. He vaguely recalled Sam waffling on about it on occasion. The boy had been ridiculously invested in the world he’d crafted, to the point that he’d carried around a hefty binder whose pages had long since been exhausted, leading to napkins, class printouts, torn bits of legal paper, and cardboard coasters being crammed in to accommodate the additional detail.

“The grove?”

“Aye. Before Otto wooed me with his promises of an ordinary life, I was a sister of the grove. The woods we called home weren’t far from here. At least, before…”

“Mother,” Layla interrupted, “I think Mr. Fighter needs his rest, don’t you?”

She shot her mother a meaningful look with all the subtlety of Damien’s earlier reckless swordsmanship.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I feel fine, actually,” he began to say, but Layla’s mother had already made up her mind. She stood, her knees popping as she did, and made for the door.

“I’d best get back to the preparing supper, though I don’t know why I bother preparing so much these days. We haven’t had a guest since that young fellow with the odd attire left.”

She paused again, catching herself returning to the subject her daughter had so bluntly steered her away from. “You’d best come down shortly, young lady. I won’t have you lingering about with a naked adventurer. No offense, Mr. Fighter.”

Damien’s cheeks reddened, as did Layla’s. The two exchanged an entirely uncomfortable glance before Damien pulled the blanket around his chest.

“Just Fred is fine. Or you can call me Mr. uh Smith.”

Why did I never give Fred the Fighter a surname?

“As you like it, Mr. Uhsmith. All the same, I’ll thank you for keeping your eyes and your hands off my daughter.”

“Mother!” Layla was beet red.

“Oh, hush,” she laughed in response. “You don’t think I was immune to the charms of a passing adventurer, do you? I was young once, too.”

“Gross,” Layla protested. Her mother shooed her outburst aside in much the same way Damien’s mother had whenever she and his father had been canoodling in the kitchen.

Funny how he’d always found the sight so revolting as an adolescent, and now he’d have given anything to see the two of them giggling and kissing like teenagers. He had only their ghosts for company in the house they’d left him.

“Righto. I’ll leave you to tidy up the room and say goodnight, young lady. I expect you down in two minutes; else, I’ll send your father up to fetch you.”

“Yes, mother. I’ll be right down.”

She set about gathering up the clothes Damien had strewn about the room while searching for his cards, making a point of not looking at him as she did.

“Layla,” he eventually ventured, careful to keep his tone neutral. “What happened here? Where is everybody? And why is it so dark outside?”

She did not turn, but he saw how she stiffened at his question.

“I’d best be off,” she said, straightening. “I’ll have father bring your stew up. Sleep well.”

She placed his backpack by the bed and scurried out, leaving Damien all the more confused.

—---

An hour later, he sat, a bellyful of lamb and potato stew and fresh clothes on, looking through the cards he’d found tucked neatly into a concealed pocket within his backpack. He’d spent half an hour tearing his room apart before he’d come upon the pocket by chance. He’d snagged his little finger in it while angrily stuffing his clothes back into the bag.

He divided the cards into two piles: those he had already encountered and those yet to come into play.

In one pile, he placed the giant rats, I Know the Bartender, and the equipment he had found in his room: his sword, shield, healing potions, Stone of Escape, and a bundle of hard tack.

He contemplated placing the fighter manoeuvres into this pile as well but eventually decided to make a hand of them instead. Into this went Powerful Strike, Parry, Cleaving Blow, Shield Bash, Shrug it Off, Just a Flesh Wound, and Whirling Assault. He also placed Threaten and Forced March into this pile, although they weren’t combat powers.

That left Tavern Brawl, Nemesis, and Ghostly Companion. Tavern Brawl was one of those cards that could go either way. It could be used to extricate the party from a sticky social situation, but it also meant having to fight your way through a crowd of belligerent drunks. A Ghostly Companion would have been handy down in the cellar, but he’d seen nobody in the inn save Otto and his family.

Nemesis worried him. It was a Talespinner card, just like Giant Rats, which meant it would normally have been Sam’s job to play it. Unlike Giant Rats, which was an encounter card, Nemesis had far-reaching story implications, establishing a link between a character and a powerful villain somewhere in the world.

If a trio of oversized rats had managed to kill him, he did not want to draw the attention of some kind of warlord or wizard.

He shivered at the thought, unable to resist the urge to look out through the frosted glass at the fathomless abyss beyond. What manner of nemesis might lurk in such a place?

“No use dwelling on it. You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt.”

Pun intended.

He turned his attention back to the cards that represented his repertoire of combat abilities. The “real” Fred the Fighter had been 39th level, possessed a deck of over 120 cards, and had a maximum hand size of ten.

He’d also had access to paragon powers, a crafter’s deck, two universal decks, and all six of the fighter’s core archetype decks.

Judging by the paltry selection strewn out across his bed like a drunkard’s tarot, he was not Fred the Fighter.

This was hardly news to him, despite Otto’s insistence that he was his high school character. He resembled him for the most obvious of reasons - teenage Damien had not been an artist so, instead of drawing a fanciful depiction of his character, he’d just described a taller, older version of himself. The version of him he’d wanted to be.

He felt a small sense of satisfaction when he realized he had done an okay job of realising that teenage dream.

Until you fucked it up.

“Until I fucked it up.”

“Fucked what up?” Otto’s gruff voice asked from the doorway. The big man had come to collect Damien’s bowl.

“Oh, ah, nothing. I was just -”

Otto cut him off with a conciliatory smile. “Don’t ye be beatin’ yerself up about it. I shoulda warned you they were dire rats. I just didn’t think ye’d be fool enough to go down there without yer armour. What were ye thinking?”

Damien gestured to the dearth of armour in his room. “I seem to have misplaced it.”

“Ah, I see. Well, don’t ye worry about finishin’ the job. I’ll put a notice on the board downstairs, and somebody’ll take care of it when they…uh… roads open.”

Otto’s gaze had drifted to the darkness outside. Had the colour faded from his cheeks?

“What happened here?”

“What?” Otto quickly composed himself. “Happened here? Nothin’ to be worryin’ about, I’m sure. Master Frump said he’d send help. We’ve just got to wait.”

Master Frump.

Jock Frump.

Had Sam been here, too? Jock Frump had been his short-lived graffiti handle in high school. He'd drawn goofy caricatures of the guy on desks, walls, and chalkboards through year nine. Had he been here as Jock Frump instead of one of the million characters he’d made up to populate his world?

Otto was already at the door. “What did he look like?”

“Who? Master Frump?”

Damien nodded.

“Oh, he was an odd lookin’ fella. He had a whole mess of what my wife would call honey-blonde hair on his head, and he had a smile that showed the whitest teeth you ever saw. He dressed funny and spoke funny, and he smelled like he overindulged in pipeweed, but he was a man that was hard not to like.”

He was describing Sam. Damien didn’t listen to the rest of the innkeeper’s description, merely nodding along as he tried to make sense of what was happening to him.

Sam had been here in the tavern he had created for their high school games of Hand of Fate. He had left a model of that tavern on Damien’s doorstep, and since then, he’d twice been pulled into this island of light in an ocean of darkness.

You knew Sam had been here, he reminded himself. He carved his name into the table downstairs. Who did you think left you the cards?

There was knowing, and there was knowing, though. Those things had seemed like set dressing in his strange dream, yet now he knew Sam had been here and that he had promised help would come.

Am I the help?

“Anyway,” Otto carried on. “I’m just sayin’ ye don’t need to worry about finishing the job. We’re even.”

Damien nodded as the innkeeper closed the door. Alone with his thoughts, he considered the ramifications of Sam’s plan. If he had wanted Damien to come here, why hadn’t he just said something?

And why was this tavern floating in the void?

And how was he supposed to fix that?

What would Fred do?

It was a silly thought, yet it took root in his reeling mind. It was clear that he was not truly Fred the Fighter, yet he had been able to tap into something in the cellar that mimicked the hero’s abilities in combat. It had been horrendous luck that the rat had managed to get the jump on him, but that had been his failing, not a failing of his hand. He’d had the cards to beat the rat, but he hadn’t really understood that they were playing the game.

Now that he knew that, he knew he could finish the job.

Or, his inner critic mocked, you’ll get your throat torn out again, the magic stone will crack, and you’ll die here. Oh, and you’ll apparently be dooming their world in the process. God speed, you idiot.

He ignored the voice. Taking up Dukayne and his shield, he strode towards the door before common sense could talk him out of it.