So I gained another level.

  The four of us, me and Molly and Gerik and Fridu, all gathered in my living room discussing my changes and our revelations about Selena.

  Well, three of us did. Molly immediately stripped next to my couch and left her clothes in an untidy heap, striding naked to my bathroom. I could hear the shower running for a few moments, and then the tub. Fridu sorted through Molly’s discarded clothes as we talked, making a gesture over each of them in turn, banishing the blood and mending any damage.

  “Handy thing, that,” I said.

  “Magic is the handiest thing there is,” Fridu said.

  “Swords are better!” Molly called out from the bathroom. “Or a willing man!”

  “Something as commonplace as a willing man has little value,” Fridu called back.

  “You can say the same thing about air,” Molly said. “But it’s only worthless until you’re suffocating.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t suffocated under all your willing men,” Fridu laughed. That was followed by a stretch of silence from the bathroom. We could hear Molly splashing a little. Shifting about. Finally, she answered.

  “Good one,” she admitted.

  All the while, Gerik and I were studying my new status display, which was hovering in the living room, slowly revolving. I didn’t know how to stop the revolutions so Gerik and I were walking in a slow circle, reading.

  Josh Hester

  Class: Open  Level: 2  Health points: 24

  Race: Human  Alignment: Neutral Good

  Strength: 12 Intelligence: 11 Dexterity: 12

  Charisma: 12 Constitution: 13

  Languages: English Special Abilities: Stat Divination,

  Poison Resistance (30% chance no damage: half damage otherwise)

  Heal Light Wounds (1d4+5: 3x day)

  Special Attack: Precision 3x day: attack ignores

  opponent’s armor class

  Known Spells: Lightning Bolt (2x day), Fireball (1x day)

  Magic Items: Trip Ring, +1 Cloak, Blameless Dagger

  “You gained more points in your personal attributes,” Gerik said. “Why is that happening? That’s something you should have to work harder for.” He was nursing a grape soda. We’d ordered delivery from a deli. The delivery girl hadn’t blinked when she’d seen us. I wondered how jaded she was, and what else she’d seen in her days of delivering meals, revealed when the doors were opened.

  I also wondered how much “harder” Gerik thought I should have to work. I’d almost fallen to my death when a murderer tried to cut my rope. I’d quite nearly been eaten by a ghost. I’d come very close to getting stomped flat by a giant. It felt like I was working pretty damn hard.

  “He didn’t gain any more intelligence,” Fridu noted, gesturing to my status, emphatically chomping on some chips.

  “No,” Gerik said, slurping on a pickle. It was like he didn’t know how to eat one.

  I said, “I got smart enough to never go down into any more dungeons with Gerik.” Fridu laughed at that, and even Gerik gave a smile. We all looked to my status display to see if my intelligence would raise. It didn’t.

  “That’s a lot of health points for only second level,” Fridu noted. “Most people would be happy with half that.”

  “And he gained another spell,” Gerik said. “Why’s he getting spells?”

  “I feel like he’s cheating. I need to see him cast that Lightning Bolt you described. If it’s as powerful as you made it sound, well . . .” She trailed off, shook her head, then returned to the turkey and avocado sandwich she’d been nibbling.

  “Can I see that dagger?” Gerik asked. I knew the one he meant. My new dagger, the one we’d found in the treasure pile that appeared after Molly had killed the giant. She’d claimed a sizable amount of gold coins for herself, as well as several jewels and a non-magical ring with a blatantly vulgar design, but she’d gifted the dagger to me.

  It was finely made, long and sleek, with a slightly curved handle that fit well in my hand. The pommel and blade were black. The handle was wrapped leather. Gerik took the dagger and sat on the opposite side of the couch from Fridu, perched like he might need to spring up for battle at a moment’s notice. Fridu was slumped like she was ready to binge watch several seasons of her favorite show.

  “An interesting magic,” Gerik said, tapping a fingernail on the flat of the blade, holding it near his ear, as if daggers were musical instruments in need of fine-tuning.

  “It seems… strategic,” I said. I’d used my Divination ability to understand what the dagger could do. We’d still been down in the dungeon. Fridu had healed the worst of my injuries, but not all of them, because… according to her… if she healed all of my injuries right away, then I wouldn’t give proper weight to the lecture she and Molly were giving, the one that lasted nearly an hour and included Molly boxing my head a couple times when I was falling asleep, and a couple other times when she was getting sleepy herself, just as an exercise to keep herself awake.

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  We’d discovered that, whenever I stabbed or cut anyone with the dagger, I could plant a mental suggestion in my victim’s mind, making them believe they’d actually been attacked by anyone I wished. So, if two men attacked me, I could cut one and make him believe his friend had sliced him open.

  I watched Gerik testing the weight of my new dagger, inspecting the plain scabbard, and I found myself listing to one side, like a boat about to capsize. It’d been a long time since I’d slept, and even though I’d felt revitalized both times I’d made a level, I was reaching my limit. The room was increasingly fuzzy. Fridu was humming a song, eating potato chips. The crunching sounds mixed with her hums. It felt like a lullaby. Everything felt like a lullaby. The room was warm. My eyes were heavy. I could hear the subtle thrum of traffic outside. The rumble of big trucks. Fridu with those potato chips. The silence of Gerik, a void with a life of its own. And then I heard something else.

  Molly was crying in the bathroom.

  Fridu’s head came up. Her expression fell. She looked to the bathroom, then away. Gerik winced and redoubled his examination of my dagger. The sobs from the bathroom continued. I looked to Gerik and Fridu.

  “Isn’t… shouldn’t one of you do something?” I whispered. “See if she’s okay?”

  Gerik shrugged as Fridu told me, “There’s nothing to be done. Sometimes she’s like this. She gets mad if anyone sees her cry. Consider it a sudden storm, Josh. Just hunker down and wait it out.”

  So we sat there. It was impossible to hold a conversation. There were too many interruptions from the bathroom. Sniffles. Murmured curses. Inaudible words. The sobs. The sounds of Molly crying were more monstrous than any of the creatures we’d fought in the dungeon. The weight of doing nothing was unbearable. Finally, I stood. Fridu shook her head, with a trace of panic in her eyes.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “Think wisely, lad,” Gerik added.

  But I was already headed to the bathroom. Maybe it was because of all the times I could remember my sister Binsa crying in her bedroom, or in the hall closet where she sometimes liked to hide. Often it was because some girl in school had been mean to her. Never a boy. Boys weren’t worth crying over.

  But sometimes Binsa cried because she was scared of graduating and going out into the world alone. For one week it was because her favorite teacher at school, Dave Strong, the art teacher, had been diagnosed with spinal cancer and didn’t have long to live. I could never stand it when Binsa cried. Couldn’t let it go. Shouldn’t let it go, in my mind.

  So I’d knock on the door to her bedroom and then go in to talk with her. Often, she wouldn’t want to talk. During those times I’d just ramble about the latest comic books I’d read, or tv shows I’d watched, or I’d talk at length about dinosaurs. I don’t remember how the thing with the dinosaurs started. Binsa and I never talked about dinosaurs except when she was crying. I don’t know what that was all about, but it helped.

  If Binsa was in the hall closet, I’d just open the door and then sit scrunched up and huddled on the floor next to her. We wouldn’t talk at all. I don’t know why talking was forbidden in the closet, but it was. Rules develop in any relationship, and must be maintained.

  I never wanted to go into that closet when Binsa was crying. I never wanted to knock on her bedroom door. But to do anything else was an act of cowardice. I felt the same way about Molly, so I walked into the bathroom.

  She was slumped in the tub. There wasn’t enough water. She looked more like a kid that’d fallen into a puddle than a woman taking a bath. Her eyes were red. Her tears were disguised by the water. Her teeth clenched when she saw me. Her eyes flared. It was almost as if she was emitting a physical force pushing me back to the door, out of the bathroom. I ignored it completely. I’d had a sister.

  I closed the door behind me and sat on the closed toilet lid, taking care not to look at Molly. I knew she wouldn’t want that.

  “Leave,” she said, with more than a tinge of threat in her voice.

  “You know much about dinosaurs?” I asked.

  “What the hell are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Probably. How about you?”

  “I don’t want you in here. Fuck off.”

  “A brontosaurus is maybe my favorite,” I said. “Scientifically, they didn’t exist for a while. Got reclassified out of existence. Grouped in with a different dinosaur. But the public outcry was huge. We missed our brontos. Then the paleontologists admitted they’d been a bit too hasty. There was still distinct evidence of separation in the fossil samples. And, boom, the brontosaurus is back, now.”

  “Josh. Leave.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “About you leaving? Or about you coming in here just to leer at me?”

  “Neither. I meant the thing that’s making you cry. There’s no sense in talking about me leaving, because… why talk about implausible events? And I certainly didn’t come in here to leer at you. We both know that’s ridiculous. You look like a mess right now. Anyway, if I wanted to see you naked, I could just wait until the next fight breaks out. Plus, if you were worried about me seeing you naked, you wouldn’t have stripped in the middle of my living room. Here’s my guess, you left the living room because you didn’t want to think about your mother’s final month, or final week, or whatever duration she’d had that fox geas tattooed on her body. You didn’t want to think about her days and her hours ticking away, about her knowing everything was slipping away. Maybe you have some memories from your own side. Maybe you can remember your mother acting strange. Maybe you remember seeing the tattoos. Maybe you remember her becoming more and more frantic, every day, every hour. Maybe you’re remembering being a little girl, not understanding anything.”

  “Maybe you should fucking leave me alone,” Molly said. There were ripples in the water all around her body. I reached over and turned the water back on. All the way warm. Hot, even. I had to lean over her to reach the faucet. She didn’t stop me. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it, but it felt right. We didn’t talk while the water was running. That felt right, too. Another one of those rules that just develops, unspoken.

  The problem was, the water couldn’t run forever. Molly seemed like she would let it. The surface of the water was only inches from the lip of the tub. I reached over and turned it off. Molly tried, somewhat, to stop me. Her toes were against the faucet. She nudged my hand aside, several times. I put a hand around her ankle and held her in place while I turned off the water. She gave a grunt of amusement.

  Her eyes turned to me and waited for me to say something. I met her eyes, looking nowhere else. It was like looking at a feral creature. Dangerous. I willed my heart to remain calm, my eyes to remain steady, and my mouth to find something to say.