Disclaimer: Dungeons & Dragons was created by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and is currently published by Wizards of the Coast, a division of Hasbro. If any of these people say the word, this story ceases to exist. All characters in One Out of Two Ain't Bad were created by MidnightCereal; a planet-shattering LOL at anyone else who'd inexplicably claim them as their own. What's the over/under on how sad that would be?

One Out of Two Ain't Bad

By MidnightCereal

Consider this: I was born and raised in Sario Province.

My father was a farmer, and my mother was a stern twig from a tree of Lamina Province salt miners. She hated salt, which has nothing to do with the fact that she had a son--me--and a daughter. When I was eleven and my sister nine, mom ventured into South Roa City to attend the Jiskim Brother's Bazaar, which promised travelers a "wide wonderful selection of white ceramic wares so wondrous you'll never want to go home." Maybe that was why she never came home. Who would want to, what with all the W's?

I lost myself in the plowed troughs of soil, in clumps, crooks, sodden trenches. They were muddy scriptures to me, which may explain why I never did well in school--not like my sister. Our father never forced her to work the fields; his wife hadn't, after all. My sister wasn't a fan of the agrarian lifestyle so popular with people who never had any other choice. So she read a lot, hand-me-downs from charities that are not run so much as they are worn like summer jackets by elites. So my sister got informed a lot. And in the high shadow of Sario City, got angry a lot. She hid it well enough with hard laughter and soft smiles.

I kept my face in the dirt. When I looked up at sixteen, I found a girl standing in front of me. I am ashamed to say I don't exactly remember her name, only that her amber eyes were flecked with carmine silt. Let's call her Loess, because I think her name rhymed with Loess. I liked her and her father liked me, so that worked out great. I can track an elf treading beachline in feather loafers because of him, and because of him I can run that same elf through with my cutlass. Joking. I just shoot the elf.

Loess's father saw magic as black light, casting white shadows on the earth, burning negative glares into blades. I asked about how he knew when someone was concealing magic. He kinda laughed and rubbed the stump of his left arm. Then he taught me how, presumably so I'd never have to laugh like that. I'm not nearly as skilled as he was and intend on living a long time, but we'll get to that in a moment. Right now I'm talking about how I would've married Loess in exchange for him teaching me how to hunt and find and kill, had she not died in the Nightwater Flood.

My dad and Loess's dad and my sister let me leave Sario after that--I turned away from their raw, tenderized smiles and went west. I was eighteen. I kept my head down for another six years, looking up often enough to find someone for someone, to shoot deer and elves. Joking. I don't like deer meat.

An aside: I can't say when I started to not like elves. It was probably around the same time that I began to hate them. Oh, I'm a ranger. Consider this: Duh. This is the end of the aside.

When I came back to settle the last of my father's affairs, Sario hadn't changed much. The same soft, chocolate ground. Same cream clouds swirling above the valley. Loess's father still had one arm. My sister. Her unscalable, hard laughter, hiding the world behind her eyes.

Her new friends were not such good actors. They were angry like her, and they were active, and one day I found them in Loess's home, her father's not-eyes lost in the oak rafters of his gaming room. I call them the Vaseillo7 because that was how many I ended up killing. And one of them said she was from Vaseillo. I'm sure even back then there were probably more than that, but Vaseillo7 has a good sound to it, and any band of non-wizards so good at wielding magic deserve a good name before I cut pieces off them that they need.

Anyway, they're still around. I think they hate me. Since then they've tried to kill me or at least succeeded in keeping me from killing them. My sister is lost to them. Lost in her books and in the forever shadow of the elite, unable to see the negatives in the impossibles at her terrorist friends' fingertips; that's probably because she's just like them. At least that's what I told her. When I left Sario again, she was not smiling.

I looked up a year later and found a pretty girl. Beya, she sniffed at me. Beya is an impressive fifteen, but I am a gentleman. Consider this: stop laughing and/or rolling your eyes.

As a general rule, I don't escort people. As a general rule, I don't go to Lassar.

The Road to Lassar is paved with Good Intentions, a red fired brick with an inlay of glowing incantations. It is a vein pumping money and weapons and art and history up into the heart of the pedestal city it is named after. It's a wonder of the supernatural world, an end as much as a means. It is a path of well-wishing magic said to bestow its travelers with harder laughter, greater love and longer life.

We didn't take the road to Lassar. We went through its forest, which doesn't have a name because it smells like poo. Let's agree that if you are a Lassarian tour guide, that the following is not an attractive thing to see on a map adjacent to the greatest pride of your city:

The Forest of Shit.

Or:

Shit Wood, With No s.

Beya agreed with me and then told me to shut up. She's funny that way. Someone's trying to kill her, which is less funny. I sure hope it's an elf.

I don't know what the streets of Lassar are paved with, but it looked spectacularly, magically expensive. It was important for me to look up, and I managed to do so. We did a good job blending into the ancient villas; no one paid us any special mind as we passed by epoch cafes and weaved through a swarm of smiths and bakers and salt traders. They smelled like their work. I wondered what I smelled like to others, but I knew better than to ask Beya. And I didn't want to ruin her trance. She has a flow to her; I'd never been lead by anyone who truly knew where they were going. She knew who she had to see, which you'd think is a common thing, but it is not. Not really. Having to try not to be murdered affects different people in different ways.

And we almost made it. Then Beya turned a corner.

The back alley had been a straight shot emptying into a cobble-stoned T-junction at its opposite end. I felt the air absorb some wet illusion. The alley soaked the magic up, dried and warped as reality bent it into a new sickled shape. It now spiraled down between shops, a narrow thoroughfare with no end, and as soon as we looked behind us, no beginning. I was dumb enough to look up; the walls of the shops plummeted down to the orange sky. I thought Beya did a very good job of not crying.

A facade dared to ripple out of the corner of my eye, in the rock-paste between stacked stones. I know grout when I see it, and it was too white and too perfect to be wasted on a wall or handled in a laborer's pauper mitts. I drew and swung. I cut. Someone screamed for a thousand years--me.

I woke up and Beya and my sister and Loess and my mother were no longer there. I was nearly no longer there, but my life funneled back into me. I knew dirt and swords. I knew tracking. I knew outside. I was not outside because I was in a dungeon. I am in a dungeon. Now. Right now. Consider this: Was is very close to Is, so I'll speak instead of spoke. Okay?

The guard is large. I am fast. I can reach him with steel and quiver, so I reach for those things and close my hands around air. I notice that I am behind bars. There is a mighty confluence of Duh behind my eyes.

The guard smells that I'm awake. He turns. I want to ask him where Beya is, but you can see it in the tiny eyes floating in the space of his wide skull; he's been waiting to tell me something. Probably what he says next.

My cutlass? It was found sheathed in the heart of a Nightwater merchant. Yes. The only Nightwater merchant in Lassar. Yes. Deposed but beloved royalty. Of course.

I take a moment to commend Lassar's expedient and efficient justice system. My trial will be held up top at four o'clock. My execution will be at five.

I think of my sister, and kinda smile at him. He kinda spits on me. He leaves.

Then is now. Was is Is. I have a window, just an opening, really, sitting high above the bedrock of shit and fear that confine me. A piece of sky survives between the grimy sill, between the iron bars and the curved, crowding underbelly of the city. I wonder where Beya is. I wonder why there are no clouds above Lassar.

Consider this: I am alone.

End of One Out of Two Ain't Bad

A/N: This is a character description that got a little overweight. It was a good enough exercise. Something different. Now back to Eva. And dear God, please don't think of this as a self-insert--I don't

Random A/N: N\A modnaR

Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.