It was always the lulls that I treasured most.
“Okay,” I said to Fenn as the train rumbled along the Lion’s Mane. I reached into the backpack, visualized what I wanted, and pulled out a candy in an orange wrapper. “This is a Reese’s.”
“Are we going to be sick from all the sugar?” asked Fenn.
“Do you get sick from too much sugar?” I asked. “Because this is important cultural understanding I’m giving to you.”
“Okay,” said Fenn with a smile. “If I get sick, you’re to blame. Explain your Earth candies to me.”
“Alright,” I said. I unwrapped the peanut butter cups. “Now, this is an Earth detail that only us Earthlings would know. You take the paper wrapper off the chocolate, and -- ah, see there?” I pointed to the center part of the paper cup, which had bits of chocolate and peanut butter stuck to it. “That’s a detail that you’d only know if you were from Earth,” I said. “Vintage Americana.”
Fenn stared at the residue. “Why?” she asked.
I got some awkward looks when I came into the common room. Everyone was seated around the large center table except for Valencia and myself. We didn’t have assigned seats, except for Grak and Solace, who needed special chairs to make it less awkward to sit at the table, but we did have places we normally sat. That defined order had been thrown out though; Fenn was sitting across from where she usually did, having given up her seat next to me. I sat down and tried not to look at Fenn. I assumed that she’d told them, or that maybe Bethel had, given that our house had surely heard everything. Amaryllis cleared her throat. She’d changed out of her armor, and was wearing athletic clothing I thought she’d probably gotten from Earth. “We need to talk about next steps,” said Amaryllis. “I’m not going with,” said Bethel. Her imperious form was in her usual (illusory) seat. “I missed something?” I asked, grateful that the topic of conversation wasn’t on me and Fenn.
We left Bethel behind again. She and Amaryllis got in a fight about it, or at least as much of a fight as Amaryllis usually got into, which amounted to speaking a little more passionately and quickly than was necessary. The problem was, Bethel didn’t whollycareabout us. The idea of being a mobile home, or worse, onlytechnicallya home by the definitions that her Anyhouse ability allowed, seemed somewhat abhorrent to her. To temporarily be a thick staff with a fairy house on top was, it seemed, an experience reserved for special occasions. Valencia and Amaryllis got in their own fight when Amaryllis asked Valencia to kill a devil and assist in the conversation. Valencia objected strongly to the idea of using her abilities against another party member, because she knew as well as anyone that people could be talked into doing things that they didn’t really want to do, and would later regret. She had thousands of years of infernal
I spent some time staring at her body, her corpse, the flesh that had contained her but now did not. It felt like the weight of her death settled on my shoulders and then stayed there, pressing me into place. It probably wasn’t all that long, since Amaryllis moved over to Fenn and pointed the flickerblade at her forehead, making a hole using the brief appearance of the blade, then kneeling down to stick the runed spike into Fenn’s forehead. The soul was out moments later, and Amaryllis put it into a waiting bottle, which disappeared into Fenn’s glove the moment it was full. “Heal Solace,” said Amaryllis. “Give us some time,” said Solace. Her voice was soft. “We don’t have time,” said Amaryllis. “Juniper, is the fix working?” “I don’t know,” I said. I had to force the words out. “I don’t know how it works.” “Body talks to the soul,” said Pallida. She was in the middle of stripping the fox Animalia of her effects. “Poison says to the body, hey, stop working, body says to the soul,
“No,” said Arthur. “I’m saying it’s a numbers game, and only once you know the numbers can you play the game.” I slid into the booth next to Tiff with my food. Ruttles’ had a burger bar, full of fixin's, and whenever we ate there, I always spent a lot of time making sure that I had created the right sort of burger. Usually I went with my parents, but this was a rare night out. After dinner, we were going to stand in line for a midnight showing of Captain America: Civil War at the local theater. It was a tradition that wasn’t really necessary, but which we did anyway, mostly for the sake of it. It was Arthur, myself, Tiff, and Tom, with others joining us later on. “What are we talking about?” I asked. “Women in refrigerators,” said Tiff. “Explain?” asked Tom as he took his seat. Like myself, Tom took care in adding things to his burger. He was good people. “Are we just talking about how many women can fit in the average refrigerator? Because I would sa
I strained against the collar that held my neck in place, trying to get a better look around. My hands and feet were both cuffed, with thick metal bars connecting the cuffs to each other, resulting in no give at all. I had a gag in my mouth as well, but that was a little bit looser.Five seconds ago, I had been passing notes in fifth period English.I could see other people bound just like I was in the dim red light that came from regularly spaced bulbs. We were in two lines that faced each other. There was a loud droning sound that I imagined would be hard to talk over, if I hadn't had the gag. That sound, along with the vibrations in my seat and the curved walls, told me that we were in a plane, though I had no idea where we were going, or where we were.I didn't see anyone that I knew. I had been in English class, so given that I was abruptly transferred into bonds aboard some barebones airplane, it stood to reason that perhaps others from my class had been too. The other boys and
The character sheet appeared whenever I closed my eyes for three seconds. That’s not me being casual with my language, I sat there and timed it after the first time it came up. It was like the messages I’d been seeing that flashed up into my field of view to inform me of achievements, skill unlocks, and things of that nature. No matter where I turned while my eyes were closed, the whole character sheet stayed in focus. If I moved my eyes to the sides, it switched to mostly blank ‘pages’ with nothing more than empty panes and the occasional title like “Virtues”, “Companions”, “Spells Known”, and things of that nature. I did eventually find one that said “Afflictions” which had “Cowardice” listed, but it didn’t seem like that actually did anything, or at least it didn't have a tooltip. Somewhat surprisingly, there was no inventory, though there was a pretty pointless page that gave me a physical description of myself. The only information of note there was that I was level 2, which I’d
“That is an XC-class soulcycle,” said the most beautiful girl in the world. The thing she was pointing at sat off to the side of the auto shop floor. It looked more or less like a motorcycle, but it had metal wheels instead of rubber and where a gas tank would normally go there was a thick glass barrel which stood completely empty. “Comfort has been picked clean and I think that’s our best chance of getting workable transportation. I can’t do it without you.”“Two questions,” I said. “First, you haven’t given me a name.”“That’s not a question,” she replied. “But if you’re Juniper, you can call me Cypress.”“Second, who or what is Comfort?” I asked.“Comfort is this town’s name, and from what I saw while I was falling, it’s the only place of note for a dozen miles,” she replied with an arched eyebrow. “You missed the giant sign?”“I guess I was distracted by all the zombies,” I replied.Skill unlocked: Comedy!But apparently the humor was lost on her, because she lifted her gun back u
Look, you probably want to hear more about the sexy motorcycle mechanic or the punk gangs or the giant zombie creatures, but before we go too much further, I need to tell you about my D&D group. I know, I know, but so much of Aerb is a reflection of my scribblings while DMing, so there is a point to this. I’ll try my best to keep it to what’s important.To start with, “D&D group” is probably a misnomer, because we played a lot more games than just D&D, and the group had a Ship of Theseus thing going on where people came and went until Arthur and I were the only constants, and then eventually it was just me. The only real point of continuity was the Collection. The Collection actually predated the group; when Arthur’s brother had gone off to college, he’d left Arthur with two dozen source books for various tabletop RPG systems, though about half of them were for D&D. We’d added to the Collection over time, keeping our names in the books and sometimes taking them home with us, but for t