“We thought it was just the tornado alarm,” Sean said.
“The tornado alarm? At this time of night? Localized entirely to campus?” Mike asked. “Come on. They always run that thing on Fridays at eleven.”
“Well yeah…”
“In the morning.”
“Whatever,” Sean groused.
“The point is there are other players out there, and that means there are other magical artifacts out there as well. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but it’s big, and I think a big chunk of campus is going to be fucked up and a lot of people are going to be dead before this is all over,” he said.
Clapping from somewhere behind them pulled his attention away. He wheeled around and wasn’t at all surprised to see none other than hot toga chick walking up, illuminated by a glow that lit her sexiness and nobody else, swaying her hips in a most distracting way.
“Bravo, Mike,” she said. “You’ve impressed me with your ability to adapt, though you’re right. There are going to be a lot of people dead or irreparably harmed before this is all done, but it could be far worse than a few thousand lives if this doesn’t happen.”
“Hey. I know her. That’s that girl who’s always in the gym. What the hell is…”
Whatever Lisa was about to say was cut off. Mike turned to see her feeling at her mouth, only there was no mouth there. He turned back to toga chick.
“Seriously?” he said. “You’re ripping off The Matrix?”
She glanced at each of them in turn, seeming honestly surprised that they weren’t more freaked out about what she’d just done to Lisa.
“You’re not going to beg me to give your friend her speech?” she asked.
“Come on,” Mike said. “That’s like one of the lamest horror movie cliches you just pulled right there.”
“Horror… what?”
“Moving picture,” Sean said. “Projected on a screen. People watch moving pictures that feature scary things to get a good adrenaline rush from a safe spot.”
The woman blinked a couple of times and waved her hand.
“…she doing here?!” Lisa finished. “You bitch! What did you do to my mouth?”
“I’ll do it again if you don’t watch yourself around your betters,” the woman said.
Mike stepped between the two of them. He knew that might not be the best place to be considering they both looked like they were ready to claw some eyes out and at least fifty percent of the women he was standing between had the sort of phenomenal cosmic power that could reduce him to a pile of ashes in an instant, but he didn’t want that power to come to bear on Lisa.
This goddess needed him. He figured that meant there was a decent chance she wasn’t going to kill him. Yet. From the way her eyes narrowed as she looked him up and down she was making the same calculation and coming to the same conclusions. A thin smile passed across her face.
“You can have it your way for now, player,” she said. “Besides. There are more important things we need to cover before the werecreatures make their way over here.”
“Like what?” he asked.
She smiled. “Like some new rules you’ve unlocked. You’re doing so much better than any of my players before! Now be quiet while I do some explaining and pray your mortal mind can understand the knowledge I’m about to impart.”
Mike crossed his arms and bit his tongue. A few words about exactly how not mysterious anything she’d done came to mind, but he figured if she was in a mood to tell him more about what the fuck was going on then he’d play along.
It’s not like he had much of a choice.
25
Stand Up
“Okay, you seriously need to let me at this bitch,” Lisa said, rolling up her sleeves as she took a couple of steps towards the goddess.
She was interrupted by Mike throwing an arm out to stop her before she could take too many steps towards the strange toga goddess chick. Which had the added effect of placing his arm right on her breasts.
He looked down and blushed. She looked up at him and held his gaze, but she kept right on trying to get through his arm bar to beat up a goddess.
“Come on Lisa,” he said. “You really don’t want to mess with this girl.”
“Don’t want to mess with her?” Lisa asked. “I don’t care how drunk she is or what sorts of delusions of grandeur this bitch has. I’ve seen her around the gym creeping on you and it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a bunch of werewolves to stop me from giving her a piece of my mind.”
Mike stared. She’d just had her mouth silenced by this chick’s magic, and she was seriously still trying to fight the woman? He figured Lisa was either certifiably insane, or she was losing it. Maybe a little bit of both considering everything that’d gone down tonight.
“Do I have to teach you another lesson?” toga chick asked. “I’ll admit it’s been fun listening in on your thoughts while the two of you worked out in the gym and pretended you weren’t interested in one another, but this? This is far more amusing.”
Mike grimaced. The last thing he needed was the mental image of toga chick rummaging around in his thoughts while he was trying to work out. There were parts of his brain that went to some places it shouldn’t with Lisa precisely because he’d thought those thoughts would stay safely in the privacy of his own mind.
If he couldn’t perv out on a hot girl in the privacy of his own mind then where could he do it? He looked at toga chick and he didn’t think his face was very pleasant, but she didn’t look like she particularly cared what he thought.
Well it was time to take care of that. It was time to show her that he wasn’t going to be pushed around. Only she stopped him before he could even get started.
“Oh it is amusing when you get your back up like that,” she said. “This is why you show so much promise, you know. You have to be one of the best players I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something considering some of the heroes I met back in what you call the bronze age, or some of the games we played back before your history was recorded because most of that ancient history was lost in the resulting wars…”
She trailed off now as she got lost in thoughts of how the world had been a long time ago in games far far away. And it didn’t sound promising to Mike that she was talking as though there were entire civilizations the modern world didn’t know about that’d risen and fallen as a result of this game.
“Wait a second,” Sean said, his mind finally catching up to the conversation. “What was that you were saying about what he was thinking about my sister?”
“Your sister?” the goddess asked. “Well this is getting interesting, isn’t it? The forbidden fruit?”
She threw her head back and laughed. It wasn’t exactly a villainous laugh. For all that she was doing her best to fuck with his life, Mike couldn’t quite bring himself to think of this woman as a villain. A first rate pain in his ass, sure. The kind of cut-rate all powerful being who’d show up in a third season Star Trek episode and was only a danger because they didn’t understand how fragile mortals were? Definitely.
But a villain? Not exactly.
“Shut up,” Mike said.
“Excuse me?” the goddess asked, her eyebrow shooting up.
“You heard me,” he said. “I told you to shut up. If you’re going to do this, if I’m going to do this for you, then you’re going to treat me and my friends with some respect. We’re not just pawns in this stupid game you’re playing with our lives.”
“Well no,” she said. “You’re much more than a pawn, otherwise I wouldn’t be bothering with you. As for your friends…”
“Exactly,” Mike said before she could let his friends know just how unimportant they were in the grand scheme of this game. “I get a feeling I’m pretty important to you. That there’s something you want, and it’s something you can only get if you’re the one winning whatever the hell this game is. How close am I to the truth?”
Her mouth turned down in a half frown. Cl
early she didn’t care for him talking to her like that, but after the night he’d had Mike was running out of fucks to give about what anyone thought. The worst she could do was kill him, and she’d hardly be the first to try that tonight.
“If I were you I would seriously watch my tone,” she said.
“Tell me what it is you get if you win this game,” Mike said. “Fame? Fortune? Quatloos? Bragging rights? Surely there’s something or you wouldn’t be wasting all this time pulling a John de Lancie on us.”
Her frown deepened. “A what?”
“He was a character in a TV show who…” Sean started, but Mike waved him off and turned back to the goddess.
“Something tells me a powerful being like you has better things to do than hang around a college campus bothering a bunch of college students, so what is it you get if we succeed? What’s your angle?”
“I really don’t…”
“No. No all powerful goddess routine. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re sort of getting beyond that crap here. Your schtick isn’t intimidating us.”
The goddess finally smiled at that. A patronizing smile that said he knew nothing, but what the fuck ever. He’d already seen what modern things like a gas oven could do to those werewolves, and he had a sneaking suspicion that even though a lot of people were going to die tonight, when the modern world caught on to what was going on here a lot of fantasy creatures were going to find modern weaponry a lot harder to stand up to than ancient swords and spears.
“Act amused all you want, but I really don’t appreciate how you’ve been treating me or my friends,” Mike said. “So you’re going to start treating us like more than a bunch of pieces on a game board for you to throw away, or I’m going to throw myself away.”
“What?” the goddess asked.
“Yeah, what the hell are you talking about?” Gwen asked.
“If you think you’re going to leave us behind then you’ve got another thing coming,” Ron said, which made Mike feel better. “That fireball cannon you have with that die there could be useful at a time like this!”
And there went the warm and fuzzy feeling.
He was surprised to discover that it was true. He was his only bargaining chip in this game, after all. Besides, she could read minds. That’d already been established. There was no point trying to bluff with a goddess who could know your thoughts.
The thought of offing himself to spite this goddess wasn’t as terrifying as he would’ve thought. He figured there was a good chance they were all going to be dead before the night was through no matter what he did, so he figured dying on his own terms rather than getting ripped limb from limb by a bunch of hungry werewolves was a calculated risk that might result in this goddess maybe providing them with a little more help that could keep them alive through the night.
“What do you think you’re doing, mortal?” the goddess snapped.
“Simple,” Mike said. “I’m taking that mortality and using it against you. I’m willing to bet you’re stuck with whatever player you chose. How pissed off you got when I chose mage instead of whatever it was you thought I was going to pick is pretty good proof of that.”
“Probably thought you’d be a nice barbarian or warrior with the way you’ve been hitting the gym and packing away the protein,” Lisa muttered.
“Hush,” Mike said, and for a wonder she hushed. She still glared at the toga goddess, but she shut up.
“So here’s the deal,” Mike said. “You’re going to be a lot nicer, and you’re not going to pull any bullshit with my friends anymore. Which includes removing their ability to talk or threatening their lives.”
“And in exchange?” the goddess asked.
Mike took a deep breath. Sighed. He had to mean this. Mind reader. Which meant he could be taking a short walk off a long drop in the near future.
“And in exchange I’m not going to throw myself off the nearest tall building or walk up to those werewolves and moon them so they can shove one of those swords up my ass and end this now.”
“Kinky,” Ron muttered.
“Really not the time Ron,” Mike growled.
“Sorry man,” he said. “But that seriously does sound like the kind of thing Doug would try to punish one of us for…”
“Shut up Ron,” Sean hiss, accompanied by the sound of a smack.
The goddess, for her part, looked good and pissed off. Like pissed off to the point that Mike wondered if he was about to get a lightning bolt up his ass instead of a sword. He figured it would be a lot quicker to go that way, but he wasn’t looking forward to going either way.
He just wanted to go back to his normal boring life where the biggest thing he had to worry about was what Lisa was going to wear to the gym that day, the outfits seemed to be getting more and more skimpy as time wore on, or what Gwen was going to be wearing to class.
The goddess looked like she was about to say something, but then the air was filled with the sound of a trumpet sounding off in the distance.
He knew what that meant. Someone else had found one of the artifacts scattered around campus. Another player had entered the game.
He still wasn’t sure what that meant for him though. Were those players going to come after him? Were they supposed to work together? What the fuck was going on here?
He did know that it elicited an immediate change in his goddess though. Her frown didn’t go away, not entirely, but she did suddenly look like she was a lot more interested in playing ball.
“You’re right, of course,” she said. “I think this is why I like you. You have backbone. Do you know how long it’s been since one of my players talked back to me like you are right now?”
“Don’t particularly know and don’t particularly give a fuck,” Mike said. “But I would be much obliged if you get on with telling me whatever extra info it was you were about to impart before you started arguing with Lisa here.”
“Very well,” she said. “If that’s the way you prefer it. I enjoy it when you stand up for your women as well.”
“I’m not his woman, thank you very much,” Lisa said, crossing her arms and looking at Mike as though she very much hoped he believed her. He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it made the goddess laugh.
“I’ve seen into your mind child,” she said. “And you’re not going to be the last one. Not with a player like this. Not by a long shot. Not before the game is over, but for the moment that would be revealing too much. Come, Mike. Mage. Player and champion. I have much that I would tell you.”
“If you can tell me then you can tell my friends too,” he said.
She took in his merry band of misfits. There was Gwen standing there cradling her shotgun looking like she wasn’t sure what to make of any of this and probably wishing she was still back at her job that had been blown to smithereens. There was Lisa who was blushing furiously, and he found some promise there even as he thought of how embarrassing it was to have this goddess rummaging around in his mind. She looked to Sean who was looking between Mike and Lisa and frowning like he wasn’t appreciating the clear violation of the bro code that was happening right in front of him.
Then there was Ron. Good old Ron. Huge Ron. Ron who was staring at the goddess with a goofy grin that said he was seeing something in front of him that he really liked.
The goddess held her hand out. As though she was offering it to Mike. He regarded that hand for a long moment in much the same way he might regard a venomous snake he’d come across.
Not that he was in the habit of coming across venomous snakes on the regular. No, he wasn’t a very outdoorsy person, and the nearest venomous snake to this place was in a local zoo a few hundred miles away as far as he knew.
Finally he reached out and took her hand, and yelped in surprise as she pulled him in close. Pressed him up against her body, and boy was that a body that was every bit as amazing as he’d imagined the first time he saw her in the gym.
“Come with me, my champion,” she
said, and she pulled him into a kiss.
26
Almost Heaven
Mike’s toes curled under the intensity of that kiss. It was like there was a live wire attached to her tongue which was being shoved into his throat, and it was all he could do to hold onto consciousness as she ran her hands up and down his body and seemed to fill him with an impossible warmth everywhere she touched him.
His friends cried out behind him, but that was distant. It was like he was being pulled… away. That was the only way he could think to describe it. The asphalt of the parking lot disappeared out from under him and he was swept away to somewhere else.
He wasn’t sure he’d like that somewhere else when he got there, but he did know that he liked the process of getting there if it involved sucking face with an impossibly hot goddess.
When she broke the kiss he stumbled back and looked around, blinking a couple of times at the fluffy white clouds and the perfect blue sky all around him. There was no sign of the parking lot, his friends, or the werewolves that had been hunting them across that parking lot.
He was happy about that last bit, though he was less so about his friends being gone. Especially when they were left behind with those werewolves stalking them.
“My friends…”
“Are going to be perfectly fine where they are,” she said. “Think of this as a place where time doesn’t flow the same as it does out in the real world. I know it can be difficult for you to understand the concept of…”
“A pocket dimension where time is paused for the outside world by fucking with relativity or something,” he said. “Got it. So do you want to tell me why you brought me here? And we don’t have to worry about this breaking off from the normal universe and floating away with us trapped in it, do we? Because that would really suck.”
Though being trapped in a pocket dimension with an impossibly hot goddess where time didn’t flow at all could be interesting, to say the least, he was more interested in getting back to his friends to save their asses and less interested in spending eternity tapping goddess ass.
Dice Mage: A GameLit Adventure Page 18