Today's Earth date: November 22, 1991

The elf I wrote about before helped me feel better. Since we're stuck in Cuan anyway, I've met up with him a few times for a drink and some bar games.

I'm of age here, so nobody back home should freak out.

Anyway, he's getting me excited to see Iomallach. It's a rainforest filled with above-ground coral growths. He gave me an amulet that applies a spell called "stoneskin." It will keep me from getting cut when we bumble through the jungle. I always get stuck in the front of our formation since we don't have a Chosen Fighter in the party, so I would have been sliced up for sure.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

Wayne stood just outside of the banquet hall, his back against the wall. Around the corner and through a wide arched entry were two basilisks chewing on chairs. One was the size of a horse if its legs were half as short. The other was much larger, perhaps three times as big. He guessed that one was the female. Fergus never mentioned those being bigger, but Wayne remembered reading about toads on Earth. The females were always larger.

In one hand, Wayne held his longsword. In the other, he held a basilisk egg.

The rest of the Zeroes waited at the top of the stairs, looking down at the castle's vast receiving chamber, one of the few places in the structure that wasn't crammed with furniture. Aside from a few statues along the walls, the floor was like an empty racketball court.

Hector was a few steps lower than the others, but not by much. In other battles, his job was to draw monsters to him. For this plan, though, he was on spit duty. If a glob of venom came at the party, it was his job to block it with his shield. Each of the party members also had the ethereal shields from Wayne's Defense spell orbiting them, but those were failsafes. The more Hector blocked directly, the better.

Hector nodded that he was ready. Wayne bobbed his head to quietly count to three and jumped under the arch. The basilisks immediately hissed at the intrusion, but Wayne was already lining up his first salvo.

Fire a Broadside.

The smaller of the two basilisk was closer, so Wayne chose that as his target.

But they were fast.

As he activated the attack, the monster bolted to the side. Wayne knew in that instant the cannonball wouldn't find its target, but thanks to his new Gunnery skill, the cannonball curved to correct course and hit the male basilisk in the ribs. The monster slammed against cabinets full of fine dishware. Wayne saw blood spray, but that was the longest he dared stay in the open to watch. The male seemed to have survived. Its grating vocalizations were more angry than injured.

Wayne ducked a glob of venomous spit from the female when he looked around the corner again.

Back behind the safety of the wall, he held the basilisk egg out for the monsters to see and threw it blindly into the room. Before the egg hit the floor, he filled the doorway with smoke from Fire Extinguisher.

The hissing turned to squeals of anger and the castle thundered with the pounding of basilisk feet.

Wayne summoned Linebacker Bot and faced the wall.

Blitz.

Super Soft Tires took Wayne up the wall as if gravity had changed directions by ninety degrees. At the crest of the Blitz, he pushed off the wall and Blitzed across the open room, toward the stairs to join the rest of the party. Wayne was getting pretty good at managing changes in orientation when he used Blitz as a pseudo flying spell.

Linebacker Bot stood at the edge of the smoke. It was quiet at first, but seconds before a basilisk mouth wrapped around him, he began to repeat, "hut, hut, hut, hut." He exploded in the crunch of the female's teeth.

Arrows and Missile spells rocketed down the stairs. Two of the Missiles struck the female basilisk in the side of her long neck, spraying charred feathers. As quickly as she appeared to destroy Linebacker bot, she retreated, sucking herself back into the banquet hall like a turtle disappearing into its shell.

"Did you get Doran off?" Wayne asked.

"Not sure if it hit," Margo answered.

After a few seconds of waiting, Wayne decided to use himself as bait to draw the basilisks back out, but before he could move, the male basilisk burst from the banquet hall. Its feet clawed and scraped for traction as he drifted into a sharp turn on the slick castle floor. The basilisk stalled, spinning in place like a cat on tile as it tried to charge the Heroes. Another barrage rained on the monster.

Wayne saw the spreading black of Fergus' rot wrapping around the basilisk's neck, and though pieces of the lizard burst away with each Missile impact, it spit venom at the party and bolted forward.

Castle.

When the party tested that spell against goblins, the results were promising. Miniature castle walls like those on a playground wrapped around the party, providing a magically enhanced barrier to shield them from ranged attacks.

In the Blackwell castle, however, Wayne frowned. They tested that skill on flat ground. On stairs, however, the walls treated Hector's stair as the "ground." For the party members behind him, that meant the walls were much too low to be useful. For Hector, that meant a wall extending out into open air. The fortifications didn't extend to the floor.

The whole thing looked like a clipping error in a video game. Wayne sighed. At least the walls blocked the first glob of toxic phlegm.

Skycat dropped in for its own pass with the Missile spell. Striking the male from above exposed its spine to danger. Every impact sent a spasm rippling through the male basilisk. The monster seemed to slow.

But the room was still too tight for the little fighter plane. It hit a wall and broke into pieces.

The male basilisk struggled to lift its head, the rot expanding rapidly through dozens of open wounds.

The female crashed into the lobby, crumbling the masonry at the edge of the banquet hall in the process.

Hector blocked repeat blasts of venom, but the splashes still hit him. Armond was on it, immediately casting Cure on his comrade while Fergus and Margo continued their attacks from the high ground.

In its rage, the female basilisk didn't see Wayne Blitzing across the ceiling overhead, his Soft Tires skill keeping him attached as long as he was within a click of his Blitz ability.

The female basilisk coughed and roared, throwing its head about in confusion.

"It hit!" Armond called. His new Shiza spell eliminated an enemy's use of "special" attacks. The party wasn't certain if or how that would apply to the Basilisk. But the venom spitting stopped.

Fergus hit her front left leg with Rot. Margo followed that with arrows.

Wayne fell from the ceiling, holding his sword downward with both hands. In its final second of life, the female basilisk looked up, locking eyes with Wayne through the filter of blue lenses. Then his sword went through her brain and into the floor. Wayne lost 6 hitpoints for the maneuver, but the basilisk was dead.

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"See?" Fergus said, coming down the stairs with a grin. "Nothing to worry about."

"Castle is a pretty disappointing ability," Wayne observed.

Fergus agreed. "Lesson learned, though."

"Is it safe to take off the goggles?" Wayne asked.

"You sure they're dead?"

Wayne looked at his sword through the brain of the female and at the pieces of the male. "Pretty sure. Nothing else on Probe either."

Fergus took off his goggles first and rubbed the red lines pressed into the skin around his eyes. Next the old scholar produced a flask and a knife. He delicately opened the female's mouth and pressed a gland at the base of its upper fangs. Venom dripped out of the tooth and a second stream went down the back of its neck.

"Sheeri was looking for basilisk eggs, wasn't she?" Wayne asked.

"Now who is thinking about gifts for lady friends?"

"I never made fun of you."

"Your tone implied it."

Wayne shrugged. "I'm going to grab an egg, and we can go."

***

The castle guards offered for the Zeroes to stay in one of the guest suites, but no one in the party wanted to be near the basilisk smell. Even Fergus preferred a tent and a bedroll, which was saying something.

While Sammy finished dinner, Wayne activated his Pictionary ability. The sketch pad appeared in front of him in a window only he could see while the same display appeared over his head, visible to his party.

"I don't understand why this game was so popular in your world," Fergus said, watching Wayne struggle to draw with the mental knobs on his HUD. Rendering an image with just a mouse was a skill Wayne never mastered in his first life, and this felt exponentially clunkier.

"We still don't know what happens if you guess correctly," Wayne replied.

Prior to unlocking Pictionary, Wayne hadn't realized how much his own visual vocabulary differed from people who hadn't grown up on Earth. Those differences grew more and more apparent as he struggled to get his party to correctly guess the subject of his drawing. Wayne's poor digital art skills didn't help either.

Furthermore, the system did not abide cheaters. If Wayne tried to communicate the correct answer in any way–whether verbally or with gestures or with written notes–he would feel the failure notification. He even tried planting an idea in Fergus' mind days before sketching it with Pictionary, but the system was somehow wise to that as well.

"Paintbrush?" Fergus guessed.

Wayne sighed. "It was a fish."

"In what universe is that a fish?"

"I would have said hairbrush," Margo added.

"Or a stamp," Armond added as well.

"No, no, no, the lines are the texture of its tail. What you're seeing as a handle is the body."

Fergus squinted. "If I pretend I have a serious brain injury, I can kind of see it."

Wayne closed the screen as Sammy passed out plates of grilled chicken breast with fresh-snapped green beans and apples cooked soft over the fire and slathered with a sweet, sugary sauce.

Through a mouthful of chicken, Hector asked Fergus, "Your lady will really go for a jar of poison?"

"Women enjoy thoughtful gifts."

Hector chuckled and shook his head.

"What?"

"No, they don't," Hector said. "I was sweet on this gal named Rosie. Was supposed to take her out, her mum meets me at the door, takes the flowers out of my hands, and says that Rosie isn't available. Saw the flowers in the alley garbage a few minutes later. Rosie did the tossing. Saw it myself."

"That sounds more like an issue with the recipient," Fergus said. "A thoughtful gift shows that you listened when they spoke, took an interest in their interests, and were thinking about them when they weren't present."

"I'm with Fergie," Margo said. "Rosie was a dud. A respectable person would have been thrilled to receive flowers."

"The first date is a gamble for gifts, though," Wayne added. "No matter how much you've talked to a person, that first date is a turning point."

"That sounds like it comes with a story," Margo said, smiling.

"First date disasters?"

"Yes."

Wayne laughed. "Let me think… I've had a few bad ones, but this story always got laughs on Earth. I was in my early 20s, and I'd known this girl since school. Crushed on her hard, but never acted on it. We were never single at the same time, and we were good enough friends, so didn't see a point in making it weird. When it lined up that neither of us were attached, I asked her out, and she agreed. With enthusiasm, I should add. Like she had been hoping I would ask.

"The day comes, and I'm nervous as hell, way more than was normal for me for a first date. And that's serious because first dates are scary for me anyway. But this is the girl, the one that always seemed untouchable, and she was going on a date with me. Me!

"She was still living with her parents at the time, so I go to their house to pick her up. I knock on the door, and her six year-old sister answers. And guys, this kid looked at me like she knew how pathetic this was going to be, pity in her eyes like a farmer putting down a good horse. She tells me her sister left with another guy already. As I tried to process that, she slowly shut the door and slid the deadbolt."

"Oof," Hector said. "Brutal."

"I've never had an experience like that," Fergus said. "I'm always the one being pursued, rather than the one doing the pursuing."

Margo gave the old scholar a deadpan stare of disbelief.

"Should be easy enough to see why," Fergus said, smiling.

"How about you, Armond?" Hector asked. "Any dates so bad they were funny?"

"When you're military, not a lot of time for love. The love you do get, well, they know you're a soldier and aren't sticking around."

"That sounds a little sad," Margo said.

"I don't see it that way," Armond replied. "Duty was my first love, so it always took priority. I knew that when I signed up."

Wayne leaned forward. "I think Fergus is holding out on us."

The Zeroes and Sammy turned their eyes to the old scholar. "Fine, I can think of one bad first date."

Fergus explained that a friend set him up on a blind date when he was in his early thirties. Neither Fergus nor the woman knew anything about each other, so their story was starting on a true blank page in all respects. She was pretty, and she had the energy of a woman who enjoyed celebrations and socializing.

"We call that a 'party girl' on Earth," Wayne interjected.

Fergus agreed that description was appropriate.

The pair had a night on the town, going from tavern to tavern, sampling food and drink at every stop. Being with her was so easy, and she was so fun, like an aura of levity followed her everywhere they went. As the night waned, the two talked about dreams and philosophy and the temporality of life.

Then she said, "I'd like to show you something."

"So I'm following her through the streets," Fergus continued. "We stop at a small home on the outskirts of the city, and she goes right up and knocks on the door. I thought maybe she knew an interesting friend or of some kind of afterparty, but that wasn't the case. So there I am, standing on a stranger's doorstep after midnight. I'm quite drunk, by the way, and I'm certain this night still had sparks ahead. Then she says, 'This is my mom.'"

"What?!" Margo and Hector said simultaneously.

Fergus nodded and added that it got worse.

After meeting her mother and her father–Fergus trying his very best to not betray how drunk he was–Fergus' date escorted him inside to the bedside of a sickly man.

"I want you to meet my brother," she said to Fergus back then. "The doctors say he doesn't have much time left."

Hector whistled. "That's a hell of a first date surprise."

"I did my best to be respectful and polite about the whole thing," Fergus said, "because she was absolutely telling the truth. Her brother was in a bad way. Then she disappears into the house somewhere else, leaving me alone with her mother, father, and brother in his little room. She left me there for half an hour. Felt like decades.

"The brother knew it was ridiculous, and he felt bad for me. He didn't say so, but I saw it in his eyes. The guy was dying, and I was the one he felt bad for."

Margo patted Fergus on the back.

The old scholar dropped his head and said, "It gets worse. We eventually end up back at her place, drank some more, and then we got to the sparks. I look down about two minutes in and she's snoring. Dead asleep. Oh, I shouldn't say 'dead' given the other parts of this story. She was very asleep. I've never had a single night filled with so many extreme emotions. The walk home was a long one."

"Damn," Hector said. "The brother was that sick?"

"Died a week later."

"No way."

Fergus sighed. "Swear on my mima's purity. She wanted me to go to the funeral."

Hector stared at Fergus.

"I swear. And we hadn't talked since that night, so the first date was meeting the dying brother and the second would have been his burial. No, thank you."

"Wait," Margo said, holding up a hand. "You slept with her after the meet and greet with her family?"

"Yes."

Margo chuckled. "Men are ridiculous."

Fergus shrugged. "Sometimes you drop a piece of good food on the floor and you think, 'Eh. I can still enjoy this.'"

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