by Bryan Bliss
Coach Harris walks into the gym and blows her whistle, calling us to her. When we’re all standing around her, she smiles.
“Big night. Big game.” She looks at each one of us individually, pausing a second longer when she comes to me. “Forget the distractions. When you step on this court tonight, I want you to support one another. I want you to be a machine. Everyone working together, playing smart basketball. Let’s do what we came here to do—are you with me?”
There’s some clapping, some general rah-rah, and Coach Harris waves a hand to quiet everybody down.
“Okay, let’s get suited up and ready.”
She raises her hand and we count down from three, all of us yelling “Win!” together. I run off before Coach Harris can grab me for another one of her not-so-motivational talks and go back into the locker room and put my earbuds in until I can pretty much feel the building begin to move with all the people. The energy. And while it isn’t that different from any other big game, I can’t help but feel some of the madness leech into my bloodstream, designing butterflies—something I haven’t felt since my first game on varsity.
I try to push them away, try to drown them in the confidence I’ve had since the first moment I picked up a basketball. A feeling that, no matter what, I could control this one thing.
When I look up, half of the team is staring at me and the other half is staring at Coach Harris, who looks like she’s just swallowed a bug. I pop my earbuds out and am about to say “What?” when I hear my name.
In the gym, it sounds like thousands of people—and I know it can’t be thousands, but it’s so loud, how could it be any less?—chanting my name, followed by some words that, at first, I can’t make out.
Elllllll-aaaaaah-nooooor . . .
We! Want!
Elllllll-aaaaaah-nooooor . . .
There’s a knock on the door and Coach Harris gives me a look before she turns and opens it only enough for her voice, tight and nervous, to slip out.
“Yes?”
“Uh, Coach Harris?”
It’s Dad. I stand up and walk over. Coach Harris holds a hand out to stop me, as if Dad is some kind of Trojan horse for the mouth breathers in the stands.
“Yes, Mr. Boone. What do you need?”
Dad clears his throat as the crowd continues chanting my name over and over again.
“I’m wondering if I can speak to Eleanor for just a minute. Before you go out for warm-ups.”
Coach Harris nods and lets me slip out. We’re not ten feet from the gym, just inside the tunnel that, for the boys’ games, they fill with strobing lights and a smoke machine that makes it seem as if they’re coming through the mouth of a dragon. For our team, it’s just us walking onto the court, even though the boys haven’t won a conference title, let alone state, since most of us were born.
From here, the noise from the stands is almost overwhelming. How is it possible to create such a sound? Dad steps in front of me.
“Pretty rough out there, kid.” He raises his eyebrows as he talks, the way he would when I was a girl and I’d done something wrong. I start shaking my head immediately.
“I’m not sitting out,” I say. Dad tries to say something else and I cut him off immediately. “I don’t care if I have to wear earplugs while I play, I’m not going to let them intimidate me. I already told you.”
I’m ready to push past him. To go to mid-court and stand there, arms spread wide, letting them try their best. Give me everything they’ve got. And maybe Dad can see it in my eyes, because he puts both hands on my shoulders and, surprisingly, laughs.
“Eleanor, I’m not trying to get you to sit out,” he says. “I came back here to make sure you were okay and to tell you . . .”
He starts to choke up, wiping his eyes and coughing a few times. When he looks at me again, he smiles even bigger.
“I wanted to tell you to go out there and shut their mouths. You hear me? Shut their mouths.”
I nod. I’ve never been more ready for anything in my entire life. Behind me, the door to the locker room opens. Coach Harris, the entire team—people I’ve cried and bled and fought with and for—look just as nervous, just as scared, to walk out into the gym that has been our home for years.
“You ready for this?” Coach Harris asks.
I don’t have to answer her because she can see it in my eyes. I turn around and push my way through the door, onto the court—ready for anything, everything.
Whatever they can bring.
We hear the songs that lift up steel and pain over every one of us.
Songs sung loudly, painted with the colors of flags.
Songs that matter more than the cries of children
and the tears of mothers and fathers.
Tears of an entire generation that dry too quickly—
a week, two if we’re lucky—
We can hear them singing now.
Thoughts and prayers.
Thoughts and prayers.
Thoughts and prayers.
A song for nobody but themselves.
Part Three
The Warrior
Chapter One
BREZZEN KNEW THE RULES, BUT THEY WERE REALLY INTO some shit now and he wasn’t sure how else to handle it, so he picked up his d20.
“Roll for initiative,” Brezzen said, rolling as he spoke—a natural twenty.
Iaophos tilted her head slightly and smiled.
“Are you being attacked?”
Brezzen shook his head.
“So, do we need to roll for initiative?”
“Better than just sitting here doing nothing,” Brezzen said, immediately regretting it.
He knew better. You didn’t argue with the Game Master. Not unless you wanted to face the consequences, which—depending on the GM—might involve a dragon, skeleton hordes, or, once, when the Great Mandolini’s weird cousin from Florida was leading a campaign, a randy minotaur. The GM made the rules. The GM was God. Even the greenest Wizards & Warriors adventurer knew enough not to push their luck.
Still.
“Fine. Detect magic.”
“No magic.”
Brezzen sighed heavily and stared at Iaophos hard. She looked away only to write something down on the pad of paper she always had whenever they were playing their solo campaign.
Brezzen looked down at the d20, polished and black—a beautiful piece of geometry that slipped from his hand like silk. His old set had been a mishmash of different-colored rollers, cobbled together from various friends and relatives. This was decidedly nicer, a gift from his parents when he started this campaign with Iaophos nearly a year ago.
“Tools for the journey,” his dad told him.
Iaophos, however, was being unreasonable. He’d rolled a legit twenty and now she wouldn’t let him use it. So, he sat there, staring at the d20 and waiting for her to change her mind.
Instead, she changed the rules.
“Can you tell me why you rolled for initiative, Brendan?”
Brezzen grabbed his player’s manual, his d20, and started packing.
When he first became a warrior, Brezzen’s friends gave him all kinds of shit. They were rogues and wizards and dark elves capable of shockingly complex and devastating attacks, spells that could leave a lesser adventurer on the verge of death. And then you had Brezzen. The dolt. The meat shield. The person whose sole purpose was to rush into battle with nothing but brute strength, a big-ass weapon, and the sort of irrational courage that only a warrior can summon.
Yes, they gave him shit and called him basic. They howled with laughter whenever he failed to roll a simple intelligence check and somehow got mind-controlled by a low-level NPC. But Brezzen didn’t care. There was something pure about rushing toward a fight without a second thought. About the courage needed to put your own health and well-being at risk for the party—for your friends. So Brezzen let them laugh. He let them have their fun because he knew if—no, when—they got into some shit, they always changed their tune.
They needed his ax, his strength, his courage. They needed him to be Brezzen.
“Hey, Brezzen, we forgot to do your loot. Let’s do that before you go.”
Brezzen didn’t move.
Iaophos was clever, and she’d been playing this game for a long time. She knew how to direct him into battles he didn’t necessarily want to fight. Steer him toward the sort of shit that any normal player would avoid quicker than a legendary dragon peacefully minding its own business. He knew this. And he knew that she had some other motive for getting him back in the chair a bit longer, one that he’d probably dread once he figured it out.
But, loot.
He sat down.
Iaophos smiled and opened her Game Master manual, running her finger down a list of supplies, gold, and the occasional epic item that he could use in this campaign. A few weeks back, he’d received an invisibility cloak that had no cooldown period. You could simply throw it on whenever you needed to escape and—poof—you were gone. His friends, the Great Mandolini and Bork, would never let him get away with using it if they ever got back to their weekly campaign, but he still enjoyed the spoils.
“Twenty-five gold,” she said as Brezzen fished out his character sheet and began writing. “An antique dagger with a mysterious inscription that you can’t read . . . yet. Two lengths of rope. And . . .”
Iaophos paused, which Brezzen knew would lead to one of the overpowered items that he simultaneously scoffed at and took great pleasure in receiving.
“The candle of aims and purposes.”
Brezzen dropped his pencil and leaned back in the chair. A candle? In the past he’d gotten the cloak, elven boots of flight, and a broken shield that could detect the presence of most magical creatures, not even accounting for the straight-up, no-frills, ass-kicking weapons that he could equip.
A candle.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I guess. It’s just . . .” Brezzen wasn’t exactly sure how to put this. “Candles are weak. Like, weak.”
Iaophos chuckled and spun the manual around so he could read the description, a slight break in procedure that made Brezzen pause for a second. But when she pushed it a little closer toward him, he read the item’s description.
* * *
Candle of Aims and Purposes
Lighting the candle gives the user the abililty to determine the alignment and intentions of any person or creature. The candle, oddly, burns without heat or noticeable light (to enemies). Must be used with a true heart.
* * *
Brezzen looked up, wondering if Iaophos was trying to trick him. This was a candle, yes, but it seemed like something a player of his level probably shouldn’t have—or at least, should have to really go through some shit to obtain.
So, he told her, “I should’ve probably been through some shit to get this.”
“You’ve been through some shit,” Iaophos said, but he hadn’t, at least not in the campaign, and they were only allowed to talk about the campaign, because those were the rules.
When Brezzen didn’t say anything else she said, “Are you saying you don’t want it?”
“What? No. Are you kidding? This thing is way overpowered. Do you realize what I can do with it?”
“Yes,” Iaophos said.
“I’m going to use it. I don’t want you telling me I can’t use it later, because I’m going to use it. None of those GM tricks you like to pull.”
“Fair enough,” Iaophos said, laughing.
Brezzen waited for the catch, because items like this always had a catch. Maybe you didn’t realize that it needed to be put out after each use and, slowly, it drove you mad. Or maybe you lit it, only to find out that it called forth some kind of demon—the candlemaker, or some shit—who would seriously mess up your campaign in the usual, annoying ways.
Iaophos could see the wheels spinning in his head.
“Just use it honestly.”
“What does that mean?” Brezzen asked.
“Look at the last line of the description. ‘Must be used with a true heart.’”
“Or?”
Brezzen suddenly had visions of a campaign he’d led his friends on years ago. It started out normal enough. And then they found a mysterious elixir that clearly said it would offset all damage they would take, forever. What’s the catch? The Great Mandolini had screamed, because it seemed too good to be true. And it was, of course. The elixir did eliminate damage. But it was also slowly turning them into vampiric were-beasts—wombats, specifically, which still made Brezzen laugh. It could be reversed by finding—and drinking—the anti-elixir, which meant really getting into some shit.
So, there was always an or . . .
“There’s no consequence to using the candle,” Iaophos said. “If it doesn’t work, it simply doesn’t work. Next item.”
This made sense. Swords broke. Enchanted items misfired. You were at the mercy of the d20. One bad roll and even the most badass candle was just a stick of wax.
Iaophos smiled. “Just use it without assumption, okay? Let the candle do its job.”
No player worth their salt used anything without assumption. Danger was everywhere, in everything. You only had to be attacked by one enchanted book to know that much.
Still, he wrote the candle down on his player sheet.
Brezzen ran to the car, his bag flapping behind him wildly, enough that he almost stopped to make sure his player manual, character sheet, and dice hadn’t fallen out. He could see his dad, singing to the radio with the windows open—loudly, so Brezzen could barely hear the actual song on the radio.
When he got in the front seat, his dad turned the radio down. His hair was messy, sticking up like a monster clawing its way from the earth. He had a deep southern accent, a holdover from his roots in the Appalachian Mountains that he carried with pride.
“How’d it go today? You kick some ass in there?”
Brezzen chuckled, because you didn’t really “kick ass” at Wizards & Warriors. Still.
“Yes.”
“Get anything good?”
“A candle,” Brezzen said.
His dad shot him a confused look as they pulled out of the parking lot. Wizards & Warriors was relatively new for him; he’d never played or even thought about playing when he was Brezzen’s age. It had been all football and basketball and baseball and, during the summers, any combination of the three that he could put together with his friends. Even today, his father’s buddies would show up to watch football games, drinking beer and laughing until the sun fell away.
But from the very beginning, he’d encouraged Brezzen’s interest in everything not sports. If anything, his dad was flat-out enamored with the idea of sitting around with your friends and pretending to slay vicious beasts and best power-hungry warlocks. He always wanted to hear the details, the lore—and the man was a fiend for loot.
“The candle tells you if a person is good or bad. Or if what they’re saying or doing is good or bad.”
His dad thought about this for a moment. “Huh. Could you use it on, like, a dragon?”
“Yeah, sure. But dragons are quite independent and can be both good and bad in a single moment, so it might not be worth it.”
“Hmm. Well, I can honestly say I’d never thought of that before.”
His dad spent the rest of the drive home pondering dragons and magical candles, occasionally turning the radio down to ask Brezzen a clarifying question. When they pulled into the driveway of the house he’d lived in his entire life, Brezzen gathered his things and followed his dad through the front door.
The house was warm and had been decorated for Christmas since just after Halloween, because his mother didn’t consider Thanksgiving a decorating holiday—who liked turkeys enough to put them around your house? Now that it was February, they were beginning to have the first conversations about, maybe, taking everything down.
Brezzen said hello to his mother and started walking back to what used to be a TV room, a space
he had taken over and claimed nearly three years ago. The room was large—larger than his parents’ bedroom—and had become a de facto hangout spot for him and his friends, whether that meant watching movies or playing Wizards & Warriors or simply sitting around waiting for something to happen.
“Hey, B. Hold up a second.” His mom was pulling a baking dish out of the oven for dinner. She set it on the counter and pulled the oven mitts from her hands. “Tony, can you come in here, too?”
His dad lumbered into the kitchen and gave his mother a kiss. They’d been high school sweethearts, paired together on the first day of school in what might’ve been the most successful get-to-know-you icebreaker of all time.
Brezzen stood there, aware the mood was shifting. His father suddenly looked nervous. His mother seemed determined. It was the same way they looked when they told him that Santa Claus wasn’t real, years later than most of his friends—days before fourth grade started. The way they looked when his grandmother had died.
He reached into his pocket and palmed his d20.
“So, it’s been a year, bud,” his father said.
“Do you remember the deal we made?” His mother’s voice was gentle, almost encouraging.
Brezzen didn’t say anything and his parents shared a look. His father spoke first, his normally fluid voice creaky with nerves.
“Bud, we think . . . well, we think it might be good to get you back in school.”
“Honey, Dr. Ivy—”
“Iaophos,” his father cut in, “agrees.”
It was a sneak attack, made worse in that it had come from within Brezzen’s own party. There weren’t rules for this, not officially, because no player he knew would join up with a party that allowed for intergroup backstabbing. Such disregard for the dignity of a campaign. No matter your alignment, you just didn’t do it.
He pulled out his d20 and his mother went to stop him.
“Honey, that’s not going to fix this. The decision has already been made.”