After meeting an old friend of David’s family, who turned out to not only be from Sandra’s home world, but her actual father, David West and his warrior-woman companion had been attacked by a fire-using monster. They defeated it but David lost a shoe in the process and decided to call it a day.
After parking his car in the lot by his apartment, they went up to his rooms. As they approached his door, David felt that something was off. He waved Sandra back, motioning for her to get ready to call her armor up, as she wore a bracelet that allowed her to swap pces with the special armor she brought from her home world and the clothes she was wearing at the moment, but not to activate it yet. He quietly slid his key into the door, swung it open, and… let out the breath he had not realized he had been holding: “Malcolm! I did not expect you back for another two or three days?”
“Only so much family I can take,” his roommate, Malcolm Eisenstein, replied. Malcolm was slightly shorter but more solidly built than his roommate. He had light brown curly hair, a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, bright blue eyes so dark they sometimes seemed bck, and was wearing a khaki outfit at the moment. “That and I figured out how to fix that segment of code that was giving us fits at work, so, uh, hello! Who is the smoke show?”
David turned to where his roommate was looking. “Ah, Malcolm, meet Sandra. Sandra, my roommate Malcolm.”
“Wow! I am sorry but... Wow! She’s a huge improvement over the women you usually bring home my friend,” Malcolm said, trying hard not to stare and almost succeeding.
“Mal,” David warned, but his roommate was not being dissuaded.
Addressing Sandra, Malcolm said: “Until now, Carol was the best, but they are really just friends and have been for about a decade now. The st one, well she had fantastic eyes and was one of the best game masters either of us ever pyed under, but she had nothing else going for her, nothing at all,” he began.
“Deanna pursued me, and you pressured me to say yes,” David reminded him.
“True, but mostly to keep a good GM around. And before that, it was my sister, which was how we met, back in our junior year at high school. Where did he find you?”
“In a dumpster,” she replied brightly.
There was a moment of silence in the apartment and then Malcolm ughed. “Either that’s true and probably one hell of a story, she has a great sense of humor, or both. Somehow, I suspect both. Either way, I think I’m going to like this one. Gorgeous and funny. Do not mess this one up, Davey old boy.”
“I sincerely hope I don't,” David replied.
“I was thinking of making dinner, but I am exhausted. Anyone up for pizza?” Malcolm replied.
“I, ah, I promised Carol I would talk to her about something tonight,” David said, while fishing out his phone.
“Hey cool; maybe we can have her come over, or even better there is that great pce a few blocks from her house; maybe we could go over there together and bring a couple of pies from, ah, Marconi's, I think it was?”
David considered for a moment. He realized he would probably have to expin everything to Malcolm too, so if he could expin to both of them at once that might be helpful. He called Carol and mentioned Malcolm’s suggestions.
“Liz is working the te shift at the hospital tonight so yeah I could use some company, and I have not had Marconi’s since our game night st month. Sounds good.”
Food ordered, David changed his shoes and then he, Malcolm and Sandra filed out to his car.
A few minutes ter they were carrying two pizzas and a bag with two bottles of soda, a container of fried mushrooms and another of chicken wings into the small ranch home that Carol and her partner of two years, Elizabeth Bndford, owned together. It was a nice house almost in the suburbs, in an area where most houses were not kept up as well but showed decades of history. Carol welcomed them in, helped set up the spread on her massive kitchen table and then everyone sat down in her living room to eat. Sandra had never seen any of these foods before, so had to have them expined quickly and then the group found itself seated. After everyone had a little to eat, David said: “OK, now you all need a bit of an expnation but first, a re-introduction. The young woman with me, the one I call Sandra, is really Thellissandra, Daughter of Nyreen Gryphonsyer,” he said, then looked over at her, and asked “I said that correctly, right?”
“You left out the Temple and Order but otherwise yes, David.”
He nodded and resumed the tale: “I really did find her in a dumpster, but that was because that was where the gate that brought her from her world to ours deposited her. She’s here hunting down a renegade wizard.”
Malcolm piped in: “So you are saying that she’s a Cospyer who takes it very seriously?”
Carol interjected: “No, I think, as crazy as it may sound, he’s telling the truth. It expins a lot, actually. That weird hair thing you had when you came in,” she continued, now directly addressing Sandra, “those were Warrior Braids right? For completed campaigns?”
Sandra looked a little surprised but said: “yes, the one that was pointing up was for my current task while the others pointed out for successfully completed tasks.”
“Six completed tasks? Impressive!”
Malcolm was clearly not completely convinced, and asked “your current task is hunting down some kind of wizard?”
“The sorcerer Elgarin, sometimes simply called ‘The Betrayer’. The man who murdered my mother and betrayed his master - his former master being a man who I also just found out is my father.”
“You hadn’t mentioned that Elgarin was connected to Uncle Mike,” Dave interjected.
“Okay, Davey, I know a good psychiatrist; we both do, as you dated her twice,” Malcolm interjected, “If you’re saying Uncle Mike is from another world, I am pretty sure you are…”
David interrupted him: “Oh, there’s a lot we have not told you yet. But I think you’ll need some proof. Carol, if you’re willing to take a bit of a risk here, I think I can offer it.”
“What kind of risk?”
“Something with your hair, something I am ninety nine percent sure you can fix if I’m wrong.”
She gave him a skeptical gnce then shrugged. “Go ahead.”
David walked over to her and began running his hands through her medium length, heavily yered blonde hair as he mentally grabbed and rotated the Metal and Pnt symbols in his mental array. As soon as he had the symbols oriented the way he wanted, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The gasp from Malcolm told him he was getting some result, so he opened his eyes and smiled. “Carol, I think it worked but you’ll need to check in a mirror.”
She gave him an odd look then stood up and walked into her bathroom. After a moment, she let out an odd squeal and rushed out to embrace David. “I don’t know how you did it, but I was right - I do look good in that hair color!” Her hair was now the same light reddish-brown shade as Sandra’s. “I love it,” she said, running her fingers through it. “But how did you do that?’
“Like the man that my,” he hesitated for a second, then, looking at Sandra, added almost as a question, “girlfriend is hunting, I’m some kind of sorcerer.” Sandra’s smile at him calling her his girlfriend made him melt a little inside and really wish they were alone.
Malcolm was the first to respond: “So maybe that’s why you always seem drawn to the spell casting csses in Dungeoneers? How long have you known this?”
David ughed. “You could be right. As for how long, I only found out literally this afternoon. When we fought a monster.”
He then reted their encounter with the 'demonling.’
“Oy, that expins the mangled shoe, I guess” Malcolm replied. “I guess I can buy this all now too.”
Then Carol and Malcolm exchanged a gnce and almost in unison asked: “so, how can we help?”
David was about to say “Stay out of it” but Malcolm stopped him: “Do not say ‘stay out of it' we are involved. And I am at least as good a coder as you are; maybe that has something to do with casting magic? Plus, the only reason you are in any shape at all is that damned giant backpack and the fact that you only use stairs except when wearing that gargantuan thing, while I have five years of Karate and one of Aikido. Also, I am Jewish so can sometimes bullshit people into thinking I know Krav Maga…”
“That worked once and backfired once,” David interjected.
“It worked twice, but you were only with me that one time. Oh, three times if, as I do, you consider successfully picking up Stephani at that bar once by ciming to know it ‘working’”
Carol then chimed in with “I’m a thesis and four contact hours of coursework short of a doctorate in Organic Chemistry”
Both of the men turned and stared at her. “What?”
“You didn’t know that there is a brain behind this beauty?” She smiled at them, shaking her head like a model tossing her hair around, “Running a salon gives me a living but to really make money. I need to have my own product line, and investors like to see those letters after a name, so I have my Masters and almost my Doctorate.”
Seriously impressed by this, David said: “I don't know how that’ll help us but I am honestly impressed. Good work Carol.”
Carol looked at Sandra and in a conspiratorial whisper, said “guy cims to be a gamer but does not know how chemistry can be useful in a fight?”
“Yeah man,” Malcolm chimed in. “Remember Captain Kirk in ‘Arena’?”
“Well, that thing did kind of look like a tiny, bright red Gorn so maybe you have something there,” David said, thoughtfully. “We’re meeting with Uncle Mike in the morning for breakfast so he can give me some tips on using my abilities and discuss strategy.”
“Text me the time and address and I’ll meet you there,” Carol said. “Melinda can open the salon for me.”
David sighed and agreed. Then Carol asked Sandra about her world. David realized he had never thought to ask these kinds of questions and felt a little guilty.
“Well, I was raised in the Temple, seventeenth child in the bloodline Elliskreen the Fearless, Third of the Order of Guardians at the Temple of Earth’s Bounty at Rhyven . I do not know a lot about the world outside of the Temple, as I have only been sent out on seven missions and otherwise have spent all my time either in training or training new recruits. My mother, Nyreen, was a rebel of sorts who fled the Temple for a while around her eighteenth birthday, and while she was Outside, she earned her name by killing a Gryphon who was terrorizing a nearby farming community. The injuries she sustained led her to return to the Temple, where she was assigned to my father, and I was conceived. She completed seventeen out of nineteen missions for the Temple. We do not have electricity, cars, pizza or fried mushrooms, but we do have much rger bird wings and legs that are prepared like the ones we had tonight, and we have running water but not the same flush toilets you have, nor do we have showers as wonderful as the ones you have here. Apparently, we only have the running water due to something my great grandfather did.”
Carol picked up on one phrase and questioned her further: “you said your mother was ‘assigned’ to your father? What exactly does that mean?’
Sandra considered for a moment before answering. “When a warrior has successfully completed one mission and passed her nineteenth birthday, unless she has a prior commitment, she is assigned to either one of the priests, a Magister or Apprentice Magister, or to an important ally of the temple. They must spend at least two nights a week together until either she hits her twenty-fourth birthday and is allowed to choose her own partners, they conceive a child, or they both agree that they cannot work together. In the tter case, the Warrior has a new partner assigned after a two-week rest period, or after her next mission ends, whichever comes first.”
Carol nodded at this and asked: “And how old are you?”
“Twenty-three, though only by a month.”
“So, David is seeing an older woman,” Malcolm teased.
David flushed slightly but remained silent.
Carol then asked: “Are there monsters on your world?”
“There are wild beasts that are dangerous, and there are creatures altered by magic so, I guess that word applies. My mother fought a gryphon, and I have heard stories of creatures called 'minotaurs' but have never seen any myself,” Sandra replied.
“Have you fought many of those altered creatures?” Malcolm joined in the discussion.
Sandra answered: “I have only seen three, and David destroyed one of them today. Most of my fighting has been against other humans.”
“Like those guys in the alley?” Carol asked. Both Malcolm and David stared at her, as this had not been brought up yet.
“Yes. Though if David had not been there, I would have fled the encounter instead of facing them,” she admitted.
David turned to Malcolm: “her brother is a cop, you know. He told her of a fight in an alley near the Convention center - a fight Sandra and I were part of, though not… officially.”
“Ah! You know, I’ve been up since four this morning and I suspect you have all had long days, so maybe David and I and, oh! Sandra, are you staying with us?”
David answered before she could: “yes, I am on the couch, and she has my bed.”
She looked a little disappointed at this but nodded.
“Gahad strikes again,” Carol said. “Thought maybe it was more like Launcelot and Guinevere at this point.”
David flushed slightly. Sandra simply replied: “I have no idea who any of those people are, though I do have a Battle Sisters named Jen’a’veiar.”
“Oh dear, you do not know the Arthurian Cycle. Only thing worse with these two would be to not know Tolkien,” Carol teased. “You guys have a virgin to corrupt!”
“I am not, oh, maybe that means something else here?” Sandra interjected, shocked.
“It does and does not,” David began, blushing slightly. “Or more, it can mean the same thing but, in this context, it just means you have never been exposed to two of the greatest stories in world literature.”
“Oh,” Sandra said, clearly only a little less confused. Then a sly smile crept across her beautiful face, as she added, “I am sure we will enjoy making me no longer a virgin.”
David turned beet red, and Malcolm ughed. “I said it before and I will say it again every time I see you two together - do not blow this one, Davey.”
They were starting to say good night when Carol’s housemate and lover, Eilzabeth Bndford came in the front door. David greeted her first: “Hi Liz, geez is it that te already?”
In a slightly nasal voice, the petite raven-haired nurse said “Hey David, Malcolm and … whoah! Is this a new member of your gaming group or did one of you boys really hit the jackpot?”
“She is Sandra, an Anthro student I met online a while back and in person at OmegaCon,” David replied, hoping the lie would be enough for her and that Carol would go along with it.
Liz looked at David, then at Sandra, then back at David. “So… both then?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” David replied, smiling a little sheepishly. “And while it’s wonderful to see you again, that means it’s really close to midnight so we really should head home.”
Liz nodded in agreement, “as much as I would love to sit and chat, I am absolutely exhausted myself so, good night boys, and Sandra. Hope to see more of you all soon. Except Malcolm, you can leave him at home next time,” she added with a pyful smile.
“You love me and you know it,” Malcolm shot back.
“True, but only because it was your ham-fisted attempt to pick me up at that bar that led to me meeting Carol here,” Liz replied, sliding over to Carol’s side. Then she stopped with a shocked look on her face and asked: “What have you done to your hair dear? I have to admit I like it, but it’s a big change!”
Carol smiled and slipped an arm around her waist, saying: “Just an experiment. Gd you like it, I pn to keep it this way for a while,” she said as she bent down to kiss her.
The fact that Carol was so tall and Liz was so short always amused David a little, but not as amusing as the back and forth between Liz and Mal, and he had seen variations of that many times since Liz and Carol had bought the house a little over a year ago. Chuckling lightly, he headed out to the car. Sandra was on his heels, but Malcolm stayed back a moment before joining them at the car.
“One of these days, those two will agree to a threesome,” he said, “and on that day…”
“You would either die of a stroke or stand there staring stupidly with no clue what to do next,” David finished for him.
He flushed slightly, fastened his seat belt, and said “probably, yeah, but a guy can dream. Especially when they are both bi.”
“I am not sure any of that made any sense at all,” Sandra said, shaking her head. David just ughed and took them home.
