“No, hold on — no, hold on.” Katters pores over the paper in front of her, running a finger down the list printed in a messy scrawl across the back. “Hold the fuck on.”

Zebra taps his foot impatiently under the table. “Jesus, we’re holding, alright? What is it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I thought so.” Katters looks up. “This is bullshit.”

“What’s bullshit?”

“You’re bullshit.” She switches from Zebra to Sor, slapping her palm against the paper. “I don’t have anything for this, we’re screwed.”

“You’re overreacting,” Sor says. “This is probably one of those unwinnable fights, where we have to lose to progress the story.”

Zebra glares at her. “Stop meta-gaming.”

“Stop sucking.”

He leans back, swirling his wine for dramatic effect. “You will find that it is you who are sucking.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But you’ve apparently forgotten my ring of teleportation.”

“You don’t have one of those.”

Sor grins. “Sure I do! I got it a couple of campaigns ago and I’ve been holding onto it.”

Zebra narrows his eyes and pulls Sor’s sheet up on his tablet. Ever since Katters tried to cheat in their first campaign by modifying her sheet between sessions (just to see if he’d notice — she had no reason to cheat, already doing considerable damage every single round without it), Zebra has kept copies of all the sheets for his own reference. The players are pretty sure this makes him a control-freak — Zebra knows it does, and doesn’t care.

He checks Sor’s inventory and sure enough, right in the middle is a ring of minor teleportation, and now that he’s thinking about it he does remember awarding that at the end of a campaign. He was also pretty sure she’d already used it, but apparently not.

“I’ve been holding onto it,” Sor says, cheerfully. “Because I knew I could use it to break one of your fucking puzzles, one day.”

“It’s not a puzzle, it’s a fight. And if you want to teleport everyone out of the fight, you’re going to need to get them all together in adjacent squares, and take an attack of opportunity when you try to use it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know how the thing works. I’m the Sorceress, remember? I’ll take my turn to tell everyone to get close to me.”

“The firbolg is only too happy to do so,” Zebra grins.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

“Is it my turn, now?” Vivi asks.

“Yes,” Zebra says.

“I roll through these squares to Sor’s character.”

“Fuckin’ acrobat over here,” Katters mutters.

“Yeah, well, now I won’t take an attack of opportunity when I pass by the firbolg, unlike some people who are going to die next turn.”

“You underestimate my health pool. It is vast and considerable, because I’m not a weak-ass rogue.”

“Stop bickering,” Sor cuts in, “and take your turns so I can get us out of here.”

“Fine, yeah,” Katters says. “If Vivi’s done—”

“Yeah, I’m done.”

“I’ll saunter on over to Sor’s character and just take the ay-oh-oh.”

Zebra rolls some dice behind his screen and frowns. “Fourteen versus AC.”

“You know that doesn’t touch me.”

“I’m going to nerf you next campaign.”

“Go ahead and try it, I know where you sleep.”

“So the firbolg heard you call everyone over,” Zebra says to Sor, “And knows that means you have some kind of plan, which is why he’s going to throw a boulder at you.”

“I mean, we’re all clustered together, now, so he’s really throwing a boulder at all of us.”

“No. He’s going to hit everyone, but he’s throwing it at you. Specifically.”

“Now who’s meta-gaming?”

“Yeah,” Katters says, “you don’t know he’s going to hit us, yet. You have to roll, first.”

“Of course,” he says amicably before doing so. “Seventeen versus AC.”

“It hits,” Sor says. “That does it,” Vivi says. “I’m untouchable,” Katters says.

“So nerfed,” Zebra mutters. “Sor and Vivi take twenty-four points of damage.”

“You’re shitting me,” Vivi says. She turns to Sor. “I’m critical, get us out of here.”

“I could take it,” Katters says.

Zebra scoffs. “You were literally just complaining that this fight was bullshit, that I was bullshit, and that you had nothing.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot I wasn’t doing damage against it. That’s weird, I don’t like not doing damage against things.”

“Worry about that later,” Sor says, “or never. I’m using the ring to teleport us out of the room.”

“To where, exactly?” Zebra asks.

“Do we want to bail?” Sor asks the other players. “I can take us out of the dungeon but that’s all the way out of the dungeon. Or I could take us out of the room and we can keep at it.”

“Did you miss me saying I was critical?” Vivi asks. “Get us out of here.”

“Cowards,” Katters says.

“Yeah, that’s a point,” Sor says to Vivi, ignoring Katters. To Zebra, she says, “I teleport us out of the dungeon, outside the entrance.”

“You can’t take us to a town?” Vivi asks.

“Doesn’t go that far.”

“Cowards,” Katters repeats.

Zebra grins. “You slip on the ring and think about the entrance to the dungeon. You feel suddenly weightless, and then as though you are floating, but the image in your mind’s eye begins to fade, growing distant instead of closer. You and your companions are pulled through the aether, not to the dungeon’s entrance but up, through the ceiling, out of the dungeon and into the earth, and then into the sky—”

“Oh you dickbag,” Sor says.

“And then you all find yourselves in a small, dark room. Heavy fabric lines the walls, but you can’t tell if it’s black or a very dark blue or green. There’s a depression in the floor with cushions in the middle, you’re all standing around the edge of it.”

“You wanted me to do that,” Sor says.

“Did you really think I’d just forget I gave you a frigging teleport ring? Really?”

“So was that the solution, or?” Katters asks.

“I wouldn’t really consider that situation solved, now, would you? Considering you ran away and all?”

“I didn’t run away,” Katters protests, “I was teleported away against my will.”

“Shut up, let’s figure out where we are,” Vivi says.

“Yeah,” Sor says, “I look around, for exits and anything that looks suspicious or out of place.”

“Roll an investigation for that.”

“Us, too?” Vivi asks, already picking up her dice.

“Sure.”

Katters plucks a d20 out of her stash. “Yeah, alright, I feel like failing at something right about now.”

“Seventeen,” Sor says. “Unnatural.”

Vivi rolls and adds her bonuses to the result. “Twenty-three.”

“Eight,” Katters says, sarcastically triumphant. “Thank god you two are around to do the brain things or I wouldn’t be able to find my own feet in a well-lit room.”

“Katters is able to find a closed door behind one of the curtains,” Zebra says. “Sor and Vivi find unlit candles spaced evenly around the edge of the depression, and Vivi finds the still-warm ash of woody incense behind another curtain.”

“So people were here recently,” Vivi says.

“Not necessarily,” Sor says. “Incense can burn for a couple of hours unattended.”

“Who cares?” Katters counters. “Until someone gives me a reason to care how frequently this room gets used, I don’t. But I do care that I found an exit.”

“That does seem more immediately useful,” Sor admits. “But we should send the rogue through first and see what’s on the other side.”

“Fine,” Katters says. “But make it fast, this incense is giving me a headache.”

“Oh, sure,” Vivi says. “Send the rogue. You know there’s a difference between rogues and scouts, right?”

“We don’t have a scout. So we’re sending you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Vivi turns to Zebra. “I’m going to listen at the door for anything on the other side.”

“Roll perception,” Zebra says.

“Nineteen.”

He hums, scrolling through his tablet. “You don’t hear anything.”

With a nineteen, Vivi thinks, it’s a good chance that’s because there’s nothing to hear. Still, this is Zebra we’re dealing with and he can be kind of an asshole. “I’ll crack the door open and look through.”

“Wait,” Sor says, remembering she’s the the designated healer. “I should heal you.”

“Oh. Yes, you should.”

“We should probably all heal up,” Sor continues, looking at her sheet. “Let’s see. A divine intervention on Vivi and some healing hands on Katters and myself?”

“Gay,” Katters says before taking a drink of her soda.

“Isn’t your character a guy?”

“It’s still gay.”

“ANYway,” Zebra interrupts. “Roll for the intervention and remind me what your charisma is?”

“Devastating,” Sor says. “But my character’s modifier is seven.”

“That’s plus seven HP for you and Katters, then.”

“We know how healing hands works,” Katters mutters, erasing a mark on her sheet. “That tops me off, I’m at full.”

“Yeah, well, some of us took almost thirty points of damage from the firbolg the tank couldn’t protect us from,” Vivi says.

“That sure was a sentence,” Katters replies. “You done torturing the English language or do you wanna keep talking?”

“Fourteen to heal,” Sor says. “That was a shit roll, sorry.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Vivi says. She narrows her eyes at Zebra, measuring him up.

He looks bored and only slightly buzzed off of his wine.

“I’m tempted to use an item to top myself off,” she says, “but I think I’ll wait and see if we won’t get a chance to rest here in a bit. Okay. Now I’ll crack the door open and look through it.”

“Give me another perception,” Zebra says.

“Twenty-one.”

“It’s a hallway, better lit than the room you’re in. The floor looks like marble, and there are similarly marble pillars lining the walls. Hanging between them are sheets of fabric just like the ones around you.”

“No signs of movement or anything?”

“If you’d perceived movement,” Zebra says, pouring more wine into his glass, “I would have said so.”

“Okay. I’ll tell tweedle-heal and tweedle-hit over there that I don’t see or hear anybody.”

“Well, go and see where ‘here’ is,” Katters says.

“Alone?” Vivi asks. “I mean, who knows what’s out there.”

“You just said nothing was out there.”

“Yeah, in the immediate two feet around this particular door.”

“Look,” Katters says. “My sneak is shit, and Sor’s isn’t much better. If we go with you, you’ve lost any element of surprise, and if there are people out there, they’ll know we’re here.”

“Have I lost the element of surprise,” Vivi asks, “or have I gained a convenient distraction?”

“I will literally pick you up and throw you at the enemy if you try to pull that shit.”

“Well, your character will,” Sor says.

“I will throw Vivi at Zebra, do not try me.”

Zebra rolls some dice behind his screen, apparently getting bored with the disagreement.

“Can I vote for not splitting the party?” Sor asks.

“No, you can’t,” Katters says.

“What exactly is your plan?” Vivi asks. “You send me out there to, what? Map out the entire building? And then come all the way back here, so I can then go all the way back to whatever I find? That’s some solid gameplay right there, that’ll make a great campaign.”

Katters snarls and the words she says come out a little strained. “Look, something brought Sor’s character here, I want to keep her character out of sight until we know what we’re dealing with. I’d rather not hand-deliver her to whatever the hell is going on. We don’t have enough information right now and it’s your job to gather more information when that happens.”

Vivi frowns. “Well you could have said so.”

“I did say so. Go find out where we are.”

“Sssssor,” Zebra says, suddenly, without looking up from his tablet. “You hear something in the hall.”

“What kind of something?” she asks.

“God damn it,” Katters says.

“If you’d just come with me,” Vivi mutters.

“Then we would have run into whatever it is even sooner,” Katters says with a mock-grin.

“Shut up,” Sor says. “What do I hear, Zeebs?”

“Sounds like footsteps,” he says. “They’re getting closer.”

“How many?”

“More than one.”

“Wait,” Katters says, “more than one pair, or more than one foot?”

“More than one pair.”

“Shit,” Vivi says. “I didn’t close the door. They’re going to know something’s going on in here.”

“Hide,” Sor says. “Behind the curtains. That should work.”

Katters shakes her head. “No. I draw my weapon.”

“What?” Sor asks. “Why?”

“We had our chance for stealth, we didn’t take it. Now we fight. Also my hide is going to be even worse than my sneak.”

Vivi balks. “What? How?”

“Are you hiding?” Zebra asks, still bored. “Sor? Vivi?”

“I’m not,” Katters says.

“I know you’re not.”

“Yes,” Vivi says. “Behind one of the curtains.”

Sor considers. “I’ll stick with Katters, get ready to fight.”

“I’m surrounded by idiots,” Vivi says.

“If we get taken hostage or something, come save us.”

“Fuck that, that happens, I’m out of here.”

“Okay,” Zebra says. “Vivi’s hiding behind a curtain, Sor and Katters are in the middle of the room, their weapons ready?”

“I don’t want to brandish my weapon or anything,” Sor says. “I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

“Fine,” Katters says. “I’ll be ready to draw my weapon but I won’t have it out or anything.”

“Good, there are children present.”

“Since when?”

“Anyway!” Zebra says. “Vivi, roll to hide and we’ll get on with this. We’re almost out of time.”

“Shit, that’s not good.”

“What is it?” Sor asks.

“Well, with my modifier it’s a twelve.”

“Let’s hope whoever this is rolls just as poorly,” Zebra says. “The footsteps approach the door, and the door swings open, casting light into the room. The enshadowed figures—”

“Enshadowed?” Katters interrupts.

“Shut up. The figures are wearing medium armour, mostly leather with shining metal plates protecting their joints and vitals. When they see you, Sor and Katters, they put their hands on their swords, but they do not draw them.”