Calista set her hands on her hips as she faced the voice, “I don’t know who you are, but I’m not your sweetcheeks.”

The reply was mocking, “Well, excuse me, but I’m not the one walking around the room in tight leather armor with my hair all done.”

She touched the crown of her head, “I haven’t done anything with my hair and this is my armor. So, unless you have something useful for me, I think I’ll be leaving now.”

“Well if you’re getting out of here, the least you could do is take me with you,” said the voice.

Calista frowned and began walking toward the door. “Yeah, I don’t think I’m interested.”

“What are you talking about?” The voice cried. “We just met!”

“No. We haven’t met. You’re just a voice. I can’t even see you and to be frank, you’re quite rude and uncouth. A proper gentleman should know not to talk to a woman that way.”

She was almost to the door when the table next to her exploded in dark flames. She stopped. Floating above the table was a skull wreathed in black fire and laughing. “I don’t recall any claim to being a proper gentleman. And frankly, if you had any sense, you’d take a compliment every now and again. You’re far too pretty to be a stuck up bitch, you know.”

Her jaw dropped as she stopped and turned to face the horrid little skull floating over the table. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but I only came in here out of curiosity and now that I can plainly see there isn’t anything worth taking, I’m going to take my leave. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

The skull laughed maniacally, “You can excuse this dick.”

She turned again and glared. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t let me get in your way. I hate to see you leave, but I love to watch you go.”

What the hell? Her eyes were practically bugging out of her head as she did her best to glare at the skull. “Look, I don’t know if you know who you’re talking to, but you need to cool it down. Floating magical skulls are not my thing, okay?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Well who says I’m just a floating magical skull?” The skull seemed to smile.

Why is the skull smiling? Wait. Skulls smile. What is this thing? I don’t understand it and it doesn’t seem to understand me, but here we are talking and I need to get out of here before this place turns into a trap. Then she stopped. Her eyes narrowed and she leaned down to inspect the silly thing sitting on the table. “Just why are you here?”

“What? You’re not going to ask me who I am? I’m hurt. Usually when someone like you wanders in here, they at least have the decency to ask my name.”

“You haven’t asked for my name either, jerk.”

“Well I know that already. You’re Calista Stricthaven. You’re an idiot for trying to climb down to the bottom of a bottomless pit, but you happened to stumble upon this ledge which led to this secret room which just happens to be the final resting place of all these recently deceased demons.”

She looked over to the dead balor lying in the middle of the room, “Yeah, I was wondering about that …” Her voice trailed off as the skull floated above the table and crackled. Calista looked from the skull to the dead balor and back to the skull. “So who did this?”

“Still not interested, huh?”

“In what?”

“Me.”

“Yeah, no. I’m going to get to that in a second.” She waved toward the dead balor. “I want to know who did for these demons in here.”

The skull tittered proudly. “Well me, of course.”

She gave the skull a sidelong glance, “I don’t believe you.”

“Fine, be that way.”

“I don’t like that line,” she said.

“Then why are you laughing?” The skull asked.

“I’m not laughing,” she glared.

“Yeah you are. You just laughed.”

“No, I didn’t.”

It was then that Calista realized she was laughing. “Do I know you?”

The skull smiled again, “Yeah, we just met.”

She put her hands on her hips as she did her best to look intimidating. “I feel like you’re a bad version of someone I used to know.”

“Well yes, actually,” the skull explained. “My alignment is neutral evil, but that’s why the discerning player knows well enough to take me along.”

“Why would I want an evil player in my party?” She asked.

“I’m not evil,” the skull explained. “My character is.”

“What?” She raised an eyebrow and tapped her foot. “How do you have a character? I thought we were all trapped here on this planet and couldn’t get out.”

“Welllllll … okay, is it exposition time?” The skull asked. “I feel like it’s exposition time.”

“What’s exposition time?” Calista asked.

“Exposition time is when you run into a character who tells you a bunch of stuff you need to know and you just listen and if you really want, you can write something down, but this game happens to have an automatic note taking app so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“You sound like you know a lot about this game. Are you an Admin or something?”

“No,” the skull sighed. He sounded bored, like he was about to explain something he had explained a thousand times before.

“What?” She asked. “Are you like an unlockable NPC or something?”

“Yeah,” the skull sighed as he made the bored sound again.

“Is this … boring to you?”

“Noooot exactly,” the skull’s glowing blue eyes looked up at the ceiling. “I’m just trying to figure out how to explain this.”

“Explain what?”

“What I’m about to explain, okay? Now just give me a minute while I try to figure out how I’m going to let you have it, babe.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.

“Call you what?”

“You know what. What you just called me. Don’t be like that.”

“Why you gotta be like that?”

“I’m not being like anything. Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“I’m not laughing,” but then Calista realized she was.