Damien woke in his bed.

No, he thought as the world swam into view around him. Not my bed, but my bed in the Goose & Child.

Everything hurt. Typically, that would have made total sense given the scrap he’d just been in, but thus far, injuries incurred in one place had never carried across to the other. Clearly, the rules were changing.

He sat up gingerly, gently prodding his jawline, ribs, and limbs, looking for any signs of a broken bone or a more severe injury. He found plenty of bruises and grazes, but aside from some difficulty taking a deep breath, he seemed to have come out of the encounter mostly unscathed. Oh, he looked like he’d been in a fight, but he’d had worse.

Unless that’s a broken rib. That won’t tickle.

His room looked largely as he’d left it, although he could not know if his impetuous charge into the cellar had been hours, minutes, or days ago. His sword and shield were propped up against the nightstand, and his bed had been made, so at least some time had passed.

I wonder what Oleg’s family thinks of all this?

It must have been strange for them to have him coming and going so abruptly, especially when he’d disappeared right after killing the dire rat. He chuckled a little as he imagined the looks on Oleg and Layla’s faces when his attire had just clattered to the ground.

Yet he was not naked, nor was he wearing his bloodied and torn work uniform. Somehow, he had arrived fully clothed in the peasant garb he always seemed to have on here.

Curiouser and curiouser…

Cracking his jaw, he noticed a fresh, unopened booster pack on his bedside table. He’d initially mistaken it for the one he’d already opened, but a closer examination showed it to be one of the smaller, ten-card ones.

The only kind I could afford with my pocket money, he remembered, bitterness and nostalgia warring for dominance. He’d resented his parents’ lack of money when he’d been younger, but age had given him a greater sense of perspective. They’d done their best, and he wished he’d told them that more often.

Or at all.

Picking up the booster, he hastily tore it open, savouring the smell of freshly printed cards as he gently slid them out.

There were only nine.

Well, there were ten if he included the foiled card he’d found pinned underneath him after killing the rat. I guess that counts.

He quickly flicked through them, his interest growing as he approached the back of the pack. That’s where uncommon and rare cards would be found.

As was standard, the first six cards were random common cards. Unlike his starter pack, which had been tailored to the fighter class, this was a true mixed bag. Whenever he’d opened one of these in high school, he’d have excitedly taken it in to trade with the others in his circle.

Carl had always had the best cards on account of having a high school job, and Tanya’s parents spoiled her on account of her brother having leukaemia. Still, he and Murray had always managed to engineer elaborate, multi-person trades that had made everybody happy. It had been a source of pride to negotiate such complex arrangements, although, in hindsight, there was probably a fair bit of charity on the part of Carl and Tanya.

* Bone Blade: Fleshcrafter Battle.

* Fast Talk: Rogue Social.

* Appeal to Honor: Fighter Social.

* Climb: Universal Exploration

* Hidden Cache: Talespinner Exploration

* Rotting Slam: Talespinner Combat

One card he could use and one card anybody could use. Not the most exciting draw, but he still had two or three uncommon cards, assuming his Unorthodox Tactics card was the pack’s rare.

* Grasping Hands: Talespinner Combat

* Chainmail Armor: Equipment

* Blessing of Strength: Priest Battle.

Damien sighed. This draw would have disappointed teenage him, and its dearth of useful options was worse news in a world where he needed these items to stand a chance of surviving.

The armour, at least, would be useful. Conjured by his thinking of it, a suit of finely made chain mail jangled noisily to the ground at the foot of his bed.

He also dedicated Climb and Appeal to Honor to his memory, although he doubted either would get a great deal of use. He rock climbed and had to do ropes courses during pre-season training—he didn’t think he needed a card to tell him what he could do.

He wondered what to do with the other cards. The last Talespinner cards he’d drawn had conjured dire rats, so could he expect to encounter zombies now? Finding a hidden cache wouldn’t be too bad either, come to think of it.

The Priest, Rogue, and Fleshcrafter cards were useless to him. Carl would have liked the priest card back in the day, and Tanya’s rogue could have used Fast Talk, but he had no idea what a Fleshcrafter was. Obviously, it was a class that had been added after he became too cool for Hand of Fate.

Nonetheless, he tucked the cards gently into his backpack, a lifetime of nerding ensuring he wouldn’t bend or scratch them.

An isolated part of his brain wondered if he could find plastic sleeves for his cards, but he quickly quashed the thought.

Priorities, mate. Sort it out.

He had just finished tucking away the last cards when he heard a shout from downstairs. It was not Oleg’s boisterous cry nor the sound of the man’s wife or daughter.

“WE WOULD LIKE SOME FOOD AND DRINK, INNKEEPER!”

The voice was utterly without emotion. While its volume was entirely too loud, it held no hint of anger. It was almost like a bad actor reading from cue cards.

“Alright, friend,” Oleg replied amicably. “Why don’t you and yer… friends take a seat, eh? I’ll bring your drinks right over. Me wife’ll start on yer meal. We’ve got a lovely beef and vegetable stew today.”

Did Oleg sound… frightened?

Before he could process the thought, a timid knock came at his door. Layla entered without waiting for his answer, her face pale and eyes wide.

“What’s going on?”

“Guests,” she replied breathlessly. “Strangers.”

“That hardly seems like cause for alarm,” Damien observed dryly, “you’re an inn, after all.”

She pushed the door closed behind her, resting her slight frame against it as if its meagre weight would make a lick of difference if somebody wanted to force the door open.

Let them come, he thought, lying to himself with false bravado.

“They’re… odd.” She explained. “Something is off about them.”

“How do you mean? Are they armed?”

She shook her head. “Not that I can see. They’re wearing clothes like yours but haven’t removed their cloaks or lowered their hoods.”

She paused, realising that none of this sufficiently explained her fright. “Something about them frightens me. Da is tense, too. He hasn’t let his hand drift from the crossbow under the bar since they came in. Something’s not right.”

“Where did they come from?” Damien asked. A glance at the window confirmed that the formless void remained, although his past attempts to engage Oleg on the subject had been useless. Maybe it was time to try asking somebody else.

Layla blinked. “Outside, of course.”

“Did they come through the door?”

“Where else would they have come from?”

“I mean, did you see them come through the door?”

“What in Saita’s sweet tits are you talking about!?” she snapped. “I came up here asking for your help, not stupid questions!”

Grimacing, Damien sighed and took up Dukayne and his shield. He contemplated shrugging on the chain mail he’d “found” but decided against it. He had no idea how to fight wearing armour, and he didn’t want his movement impeded if things did break down.

As an afterthought, he quickly pictured his cards in his head. If he remembered the rules correctly, his hand size was six cards. Thankfully, his equipment cards wouldn’t count, so he tucked the Stone of Escape into his belt pouch alongside the remaining healing potion.

Six cards.

1. Powerful Strike

2. Parry

3. Unorthodox Tactics

4. Cleaving Blow

5. Whirling Assault

6. Shield Bash

A good hand if you were certain you were going into a fight, although it left little in reserve for defence. He contemplated trading out one of his offensive cards for Shrug it Off or Just a Flesh Wound, both of which could be used to mitigate a potentially fatal blow.

Would have been handy against the rats…

But did this have to be a fight? What if he went down there with guns blazing, and they were just innocents?

Then you just don’t fight them.

That wasn’t quite how Hand of Fate worked, though. The social side of the game was every bit as important as battle. While he had been able to improvise a little in his fight against the rats, and he was sure he’d do the same in a conversation, it wouldn’t hurt to have a non-combat card in hand, just in case.

Sighing, he rearranged his imaginary hand.

1. Powerful Strike

2. Cleaving Blow

3. Parry

4. Shrug it Off

5. Threaten

6. Shield Bash

It was a gamble. He traded raw offense for a little defense and a social card, which would either be a brilliant move or a fatal one.

Here’s hoping they’re harmless.

The entire process had taken roughly thirty seconds, throughout which Layla watched him with increasing confusion and frustration. He’d just finished organising his thoughts when she sighed loudly.

“Well? Are you going to help us or not?”

It felt odd to see this side of Layla. In Sam’s descriptions, and even in their past interactions here, she had played the demure, mildly flirtatious innkeeper’s daughter. It felt odd to have her scolding him like a recalcitrant child.

He stood and moved past her in answer, mentally repeating the six cards over and over in his head. He had no way of knowing how this world worked mechanically. Could he only change his cards in his room?

Putting on his sternest frown, he descended into the common room. The look of relief on Oleg’s face at his appearance was both gratifying and slightly daunting. The rats had very nearly killed him - had been killed, technically - and Oleg still looked at him as if he were actually Fred the Fighter.

“Ah, Fred, my boy. The usual for you?” And then, before he could answer, “On the house, of course.”

The big man’s eyes darted to the trio of strangers huddled around a table, their backs to the staircase.

They certainly didn’t cut intimidating figures. Their builds were the very definition of average, and he saw no weapons hanging at their hips. They wore white cloaks with hoods drawn up over their heads.

Wizards? Priests?

Despite their unassuming appearance, there was something offputting about them. The common room was toasty, yet they hunched their shoulders like a chill wind blew through. And their robes were impossibly white, so much so that it almost hurt to look at them.

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Like staring at the snow on a sunny day.

“Uh,” he replied dumbly, almost tripping on the last step, “yeah. The usual.”

The strangers made no sign that they’d heard the exchange. They sat in silence.

“Greetings, friends,” Damien ventured, his naturally gruff voice deepened for effect. “Fine…uh… day?”

Stupid.

The three strangers turned to face him as one, their movements identical. Their cowls hid their faces so completely that they may not have even existed.

“Good morrow,” said one, his accent a crude imitation of a stuck-up British man.

“Well met,” said another in the high-pitched tone of a man imitating a woman.

“Isn’t it just?” the third agreed, their accent a passable Irish lilt. “Pull up a pew ‘n join us for a pint!”

Their sentences flowed into one another, a choreographed recitation of greetings that ended with abrupt silence. Despite the Irish one’s invitation, no effort was made to make space to accommodate Damien, nor were there sufficient chairs to do so.

“I…uh…”

They turned away as one, returning to their silent huddle as if he’d never approached. Damien shot a confused look towards Oleg, who merely shrugged.

He mouthed three words at Damien, but the footballer could not make them out. Sighing, he slumped into what he’d come to think of as his chair, keeping a wary eye on the trio as they continued to occupy space.

Soon, Layla came over to place a plate of gravy-drenched peas, beef, and mashed potato before him. A frothing tankard of ice-cold beer joined it. She wore a perfect, porcelain doll smile, but he could see her wide-eyed fright. She didn’t take her eyes off the three strangers.

Oleg saved his daughter the trouble of waiting on the group’s table by bringing over their meals himself. They were afforded the same fare as Damien and fell to consuming it with mechanical efficiency.

They made sounds while they ate, at least: grateful slurps, lip smacking, and a trio of back-to-back burps from separate mouths. They were poor simulacra, and their actions were gross mockeries of how people would typically act in a tavern.

Like you’d know what ‘typically’ happens in a fantasy world’s tavern.

They played to the tropes. Even their distinct and poorly done accents reminded Damien of the way Sam would hastily improvise an entire personality for an NPC the group had randomly decided to attach significance to.

The British one was always stuck-up, the woman was almost always high-strung and histrionic, and the Irishman would drink a lot and befriend a party member, with an equal chance of becoming a beloved occasional ally or leading said party member into an ambush. The kind of enduring stereotypes that, in hindsight, Damien realised could probably be considered offensive.

True to form, the one with the Irish accent raised his empty mug into the air. “I’ll be havin’ another, sure!”

The British one sniffed. “Do you have wine? This frothy dross bloats me horribly.”

“Oh, boys,” the man-imitating-female said. “We really must be abed early this evening. We’ve a long road ahead of us tomorrow.”

They lapsed once more into silence, having demolished their meals and beverages at a frightening pace.

For his part, Damien merely nudged his food around the plate, his appetite having been quashed by the bizarre pantomime playing out at the next table.

When Oleg brought the Irish one their refill, he stopped by Damien’s table, pretending to clear away his plates.

“NPCs,” he said in a hushed voice. “There’s something wrong with these.”

Aren’t you an NPC? Damien thought to himself. Oleg and Layla were not real people. Sam had invented them for their games, hadn’t he?

The burly innkeeper did not linger at the table long, but his presence had reminded Damien of his promise to Layla. He’d said he would help, and his faltering attempt at a greeting did not constitute aid.

Standing again, he conjured the image of his hand of cards in his head, focusing on Threaten.

image [https://i.imgur.com/kciZIRC.png]

He had intended to say, “Excuse me, fellas. I was wondering where you’ve come from and where you’re headed next?” but that was not what came out of his mouth.

Instead, in a gravelly voice that would have made Henry Cavill proud, he growled, “I think it’s time you left, friends.”

The trio’s chairs scraped as they stood in unison, their hands going to their hoods and pulling them back. Damien’s skin crawled as three featureless heads, each as bald and smooth as an egg, focused their eyeless glares upon him. With no facial expressions to read, Damien had no idea if his threat had been met with fear, derision, or anger.

In the game, he’d have had to roll a Charisma check, but he did not know his Charisma score nor saw any dice - gigantic or otherwise - anywhere nearby.

“Well, I never!” huffed the Englishman.

“How rude!” cried the woman.

“Don’t be like that, fella. We’re just havin’ a drink afore bed. We’ve been on the road long and longer, and we’re in dire need of a kip.”

Three moderate successes, then, Damien thought. Nobody ran away in terror, but nobody's throwing knives at me, either.

Just as it always had in the game, the lilting Irish accent, however poor it might have sounded to trained ears, softened Damien’s resolve. The Irish accent, along with New Zealand, had been Sam’s go-to tool when he wanted the group to like and trust one of the NPCs he put before them.

Just like the Russian and British accents were almost always villains or annoyances.

Still, even if these were NPCs of Sam’s creation, he’d never have put something so ill-formed in front of his players. Even the most irrelevant beggars or merchants had been given a description, a character quirk, and a short backstory. Sam had been a stickler for such things.

How, then, had these three blank faces come to be?

The logistics of this world still confused Damien. The Goose & Child was Sam’s creation, as were Layla, Oleg, and his wife, yet so much of this world felt unfinished, not the least of which was the absence of anything outside the tavern.

Except these three faceless fellows.

“What word from the road?” Layla chimed in, standing a safe distance behind Damien. She seemed on the edge of flight like a prey animal, aware of a predator’s presence.

The three strangers turned to face her as one, their movements mirroring one another.

“Dark times, my lady,” said English.

“The roads are thick with bandits,” came the woman’s shrill reply.

“Rough as guts, ma’am. Things have been a right mess since…”

Three featureless faces turned to Damien as one, considered him a moment, and then returned their attention to Layla. They lapsed into silence.

“Since?” Damien pushed. This time, even Layla’s gaze shifted to him. The innkeeper’s daughter and the three faceless, eyeless strangers seemed to exchange the briefest of glances, if glances were even possible without eyes.

Oleg’s heavy hand suddenly fell on Damien’s shoulder. The innkeeper smelled of leather, tobacco, ale, and aftershave, immediately conjuring up memories of Sam’s late father. The old bear had been one of those men who could do a little bit of everything, although none of them well enough that he’d ever held down a job.

Was Oleg a proxy for Sam’s father? There was no reason he shouldn’t be, especially since his daughter was a proxy for a high school crush.

“Our guests are weary, Fred. Let ‘em get back to their meal.”

Damien shrugged off Oleg’s hand, frustrated and confused. First, they drag him down here to help, and now they usher him away as if he were some clingy fan who can’t take a hint to fuck off.

“But you -” he began to protest, but the big man raised his bushy eyebrows in the universal gesture of “Shut up, you idiot.”

“I just remembered, I saw a couple of yer things down in the cellar. I left ‘em there in case I broke ‘em.”

My things are all in my room, Damien thought, but he knew an excuse to leave when he was given one. Nodding, he brushed past Oleg and approached the trap door. Before opening it, he paused and looked back at Oleg, who was watching him as if he were the predator Layla was afraid of.

“No surprises down there?”

Oleg shook his head. “None. Now go on and take a look see, eh?”

Sighing, he opened the hatch and went below.

—--

The cellar was much as he remembered it, sans the presence of red-eyed, dog-sized rats looking to tear his throat out.

He knew he’d killed them, but that didn’t make him any less nervous as he moved carefully into the centre of the room.

There was a key where he and his final foe had wrestled to the death. It was not like the keys for his car or his parent’s place, but the heavy, round-headed kind that opened old chests and heavy locks.

A key for one of the rooms upstairs, perhaps?

There was nothing else in the cellar that seemed out of place. The bodies had been disposed of, the worst of the scuffs and gouge marks had been raked out of the floor, and the kegs and shelves had all been righted.

“Was it just the key?” he shouted over his shoulder. A moment later, Oleg’s head appeared in the trapdoor.

“Aye, lad, just the key.”

“Any idea what it’s for?”

The big man shrugged. “You’re a smart fella. I reckon ye’ll figure it out.”

And then he was gone again, back to tending to the hunger and thirst of people with no discernible way to consume food or drink.

What the hell is going on?

There were no chests, steamer trunks, or hidden doors in the cellar, not that he had any real skill at finding or unlocking such things. He was not a rogue or inventor, nor did he possess the keen senses of an avenger, ranger, or sentinel. His ‘kit,’ such as it was, was almost entirely limited to brute force.

That had been the main reason he’d picked fighter when Sam and the others had roped him into the game. He didn’t have the head for complex systems like Sam or Carl, nor did he possess Tanya’s obsessive personality. He and Murray had opted for less complex classes, with him as the fighter and Murray as Fudgerod the Flatulant, a berzerker.

The “twin towers,” as they’d called themselves, would stand in front of Illustria, the Rogue and Sir Eustice of Brie, a priest, played by Tanya and Carl, respectively. The two of them did the complicated stuff like studying Sam’s hand-drawn tactical maps or deciding which buff cards to play in which order.

“I sure could use Illustria now,” he muttered to himself. “I’d even settle for that prick, Eustice.”

With neither likely to materialize out of thin air to heed his call, he palmed the key and climbed back up into the common room, where Oleg stood sentinel behind his bar, watching the three silent strangers warily.

“Figure it out?” he asked cheerfully, although his eyes never left the strangers. Layla and Oleg’s wife were nowhere to be seen.

“Huh? The key? No idea.”

At the mention of a key, the three strangers turned as one. Their necks popped - 1, 2, 3. Three featureless faces regarded him.

“You have the key?” They spoke in unison, their voices now devoid of accents. The feat sent chills down Damien’s spine. Not a key, the key.

“Yeah,” he replied gruffly, tucking the key into his back pocket, “what of it?”

They next spoke not in unison but with each speaking a word at a time, cooperating to form a sentence.

“You.”

“Will.”

“Surrender.

“The.”

“Key.”

“To.”

“Him.”

“It.”

“Is.”

“His.”

“By.”

“Rights.”

And then, all at once again. “To resist is heresy. He has been anointed.”

What the fuck is going on?

The situation had graduated from hell to fuck. He was going to run out of curse words if this kept up.

The Threaten card he’d played earlier was still in effect. He growled back with a great deal more confidence and menace than he felt. “Oh yeah? Well, “He” can take a long walk off a short pier, you arse-lickers. Get out of here before I crack those ugly fucking eggheads of yours.”

It was not entirely what he had intended to say, but it seemed to have an effect. The three flinched away, causing their chairs to scrape painfully across the floor. Oleg winced.

“You would do well not to fight this.” the British one huffed, his accent returning.

“He’s right, y’know. Our master is a right cunt when he wants to be. Why don’t you just give him what he wants? Not like you’ve got a horse in this race, fella.”

The one with the woman’s voice sniffed in disdain. “It’s pointless trying to reason with them. They’re all the same.”

They stood in unison.

Reached into the folds of their robes in unison.

Drew blades as black as night in unison. Each was curved and jagged as if wrought from shadows and wrong angles. Each was as long as Damien’s arm.

Where were they hiding those?

“Easy, friends,” Oleg soothed. “There’s no need for violence.”

Even so, the big man was reaching for the crossbow he kept under the bar. If Damien’s memory served, it was a +2 Crossbow of Impact. Illustria had tried to steal it once, and they’d all spent the next session evading the town guard until they could convince Oleg to forgive them.

I wonder if he remembers that? Did our adventures here actually happen?

There was no negotiating with the three strangers. Each stood in an identical stance. Shadowy blades extended before them, and their trailing hands pulled back their hoods, revealing pates as bald and featureless as their faces.

“Time to crack some eggs.”

“I think you’ll find us far harder to crack than eggs,” the woman’s voice had lost its ludicrous falsetto now. It was now the seductive purr of the girl of your nighttime fantasies, even if the rest of her androgynous, featureless body said otherwise.

“It is a shame it had to come to this,” the British one said, although his accent, too, had changed from a first-year Uni student’s impersonation to something out of Pride & Prejudice. Damien could practically smell the colonial entitlement coming off him.

“I did try to keep it friendly now,” the Irishman, too, had gained authenticity in his accent, “but ye had to test us. But it’s not yet killing time, says I. What say you, Kin?”

No words were exchanged between the three, but their blades dropped to their sides. Damien, whose sword had come to his hand instinctively, did not lower his guard. He had no cards to help him read the situation or predict their next move, so he’d have to rely on good, old-fashioned caution.

He wouldn’t have predicted what came next if he'd had the cards.

Their heads split, not down the middle, into quarters, flesh peeling back like a flower’s petals unfurling, revealing a gaping, toothy maw at the crown of their skulls. As they underwent this transformation, they hunched forward savagely, limbs twisting and bones popping as their bodies reformed into something far more terrifying.

Fingers elongated like pulsing worms, forming into long digits capped with bloody claws. Their knees jerked violently backwards into plantigrade, each pop like a gun firing.

Throughout this obscene mutation, the three yawning mouths keened maddeningly; the sound of it like nails on a chalkboard turned up to eleven. It took all of Damien’s will to keep his hands from going up to cover his ears.

Oleg was more proactive in his approach. With a sharp twang, the crossbow discharged, and a black-feathered bolt blossomed in the concave chest of the British one.

It swiped dismissively at the air, nowhere near either of the people in the room, yet Damien heard a startled cry as Oleg was flung violently across the room. His passage was slowed by the tables and chairs through which he was dragged, but he still struck the rear wall with enough force to shake loose dust from the roof.

What the fuck am I going to do against that!?

Before him, the writhing transformation had come to its terrifying conclusion, leaving three identical monstrosities standing before him. They had stretched as part of their transformation, and each now stood so tall that their nightmarish heads brushed the ceiling. Gaunt and pallid, their arms were so long that their knuckles came to just above their ankles.

I recognise these things… he began to think, but their sudden movement erased all thought from his mind.

As one, they thrust empty hands towards him.

“Begone!”

“Begone!”

“Awake!”

And all was white.