Death by Cliché (35 page)

“I gave you a blood clot. I gave you an embolism. And a bad credit rating. Oh. Yeah. And cancer.”

He looked down at his brother, writhing with bone cancer and stomach cancer and lymphoma and leukemia. He didn’t have the heart to watch.

“I also gave you an appointment for next Tuesday, but I don’t think you’ll make it.” He picked up the eraser and obliterated Hraldolf’s head.

The body fell to the ground, and Damico turned from his fictional brother. He turned to his real friends and quickly, stroke by stroke under a sky of nothing, made them whole again.

Chapter
Sixty
-Six

“There’s my thesaurus.”

—Bob Defendi

amico scrutinized the pencil, the writing utensil,
then shook, or diddered it. It made no auditory emission. Empty. Without graphite. Only the tenuous bit of material currently left charged in the end. It would have to do.

He surveilled the sky, the empyrean. With broad strokes, he began painting, rendering the blue arch. It was a big job, and he feared he wouldn’t have the ablative carbon filler to finish, but he did. He terminated, using the last, dull piece to sketch in clouds, fog, saturated water vapor. The things were sketchy anyway.

“Is it done?” Gorthander queried.

Damico confirmed, “I didn’t think the world would hold together without a sky.”

“Do you have any left?” Gorthander put to him next.

Damico oscillated his neck in the negative. “I might have stopped when all I had left were clouds, but I didn’t think there was enough left to do anything
but
clouds.”

Gorthander repetitively adjusted the level of his head in the affirmative. “It’s done then.”

“Done.”

“Poor Omar.”

Damico indicated his assent with his cranium. “Brian can make another character.”

“Maybe this one will be able to do something,” Gorthander posited.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean maybe in the next adventure, the GM’s character won’t have to do everything during the climax.”

Damico contemplated him, blinked, and laughed.

Chapter
Sixty
-Seven

“All’s well that ends.”

—Bob Defendi

amico found Lotianna walking down a corridor,
wearing a gown fit for a queen. The milky white pearls stitched the green silk in perfect little rows. The lines and whirls of the things so cluttered the dress that had it been red it would have resembled the mat of a well-used boxing ring.

The next thing he knew, they were in each other’s arms. She shook even as he crushed her into his chest, but she didn’t cry. It seemed neither of them had the strength to cry anymore.

This. All his life, all he’d really wanted was this. What good was it to go home, if
this
was here?

“What happened?” she asked.

“We won.” His voice cracked. He could hold her like this forever. He was willing to give that a try. Let his body stay in a coma. This was real enough.

“The Artifact?”

“I threw it in the fire. No one should have so much destruction at their fingertips.”

“Not even you?” she asked, a smile in her voice.

He kissed her on the top of her head. He felt good. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d actually felt good.

“If you had the ability to make someone disappear forever and without any pain, would you?”

“It seems humane.”

“Too humane. How could I trust myself? Their pain gives me pain, and that stops me. That’s what keeps me Human. How could I trust myself with something that killed so easily? Absolute power, none of the unpleasant consequences. I think I’d become the Evil Overlord.”

“The way I understand it, Hraldolf was your brother. He has no heirs. Heck, you were older and left the throne to him. The way I see it, you
are
the Overlord,” she said.

Damico shrugged.

“Omar?”

“Dead too long to save him,” Damico said. His brain would have started decaying by now.

“Jurkand?”

“Dead, I’m sure.”

“We’ll just wait for his one-shot resurrection to kick in.”

“Yeah.”

“The rest?”

“They’re fine.”

They held each other for several minutes, not caring if anyone saw. Then finally, as the tightness eased in Damico’s heart, he let her go and looked her up and down.

“Nice dress.”

“I don’t know when I screamed louder, when I thought something horrible was going to happen to me or when I opened the door and saw an entire wardrobe.”

“Sounds like a false disaster to me.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

They walked back to the throne room, arms around shoulder and waist. She nuzzled her head into him. Eventually, both of them would need to deal with the deep trauma of the day’s events, but for now, it was nice to walk together.

“What was the Artifact?”

“Something from my world.”

“Your world?”

“I’m not from around here.”

He still didn’t know how he’d got here. None of that made sense. Was Carl magic? Was this
really
Hell? What final piece of the puzzle would make sense of all of this? He might never know. Life was like that sometime.

Or maybe the author just wanted to leave something for a sequel.

She smiled. “How did the Artifact get here?”

“I’ve found socks, paper clips, and toys, all from my world. I think when something there is lost inexplicably, it appears here or somewhere like here.”

She walked in silence, then: “So, this is the trash pile of the universe?”

“Something like that.”

“We should be paid more.”

“Indeed.”

They strolled in silence a time longer. They passed two guards, but the men only nodded. Evidently you didn’t work for an Evil Overlord if you couldn’t take a little coup in stride.

“So, how did
you
get here?” she asked.

I
said
sequel.

“Someone shot me in the head.”

“So, you’re dead?”

“I think I’m in a coma.”

“So, this is all a dream?”

That one was easy. “No, this is real.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

He could hear the doubt in her voice. Did she know how short a time she’d been alive?

“Because I made it real.”

She nudged him with her head. “You’re talking like you’re some kind of god.”

He shrugged. “Only in bed.” How did he explain to her that each game master was the god of his or her little universe, and that he was perhaps a bit more? Better to let it go with a joke.

They arrived in the throne room, and she considered the excised upper levels of the keep for a moment, and looked past them to the fluffy clouds. He’d given them a tinge of sunset orange. He was rather proud. Gorthander had some of the remaining guards in a line, and he explained the new situation to them with a minimum of knee kicks and helmet-to-groin head butts. Meanwhile, Arithian lounged on the throne, surrounded by women. Damico wondered vaguely where he’d found them.

“You did a number on this place.”

“Hraldolf did. I was too busy trying to remember what a tumor looked like.”

“Come again?”

“Never mind.”

Damico flexed his hand. The power of the artifact pulsed there, flowing in his blood and vibrating in the muscles.

Gorthander nodded in Damico’s direction, and he smiled at the dwarf. For all the annoyance a player must feel for having a Non-Player Character win the adventure, Gorthander had forgiven quickly. He was a good guy. Damico wished they’d met in real life.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“After I take you to bed?”

She hit him in the arm. “What makes you think you are?”

“I’m pretty irresistible.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He gazed at the room and wondered that no one had searched for treasure yet. That had been Omar’s job. He kind of missed Omar. Likely he’d come back as Omar 2.

The creative force still echoed inside him. Without the Artifact, there was nothing for him to connect to, granting others life. Still, he wasn’t sure he couldn’t bring a person to life with a touch now, or even a glance. He burst at the seams. He overflowed. Enough life to birth a village. A nation. A world?

He’d have to see.

“After that,” he said as if she’d agreed. “After that, I don’t know. Something will come up.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they meet every week.”

“Who does?”

Damico smiled and took her into his arms. He kissed her thoroughly, passionately, lifting her off the ground. When he finished, he set her back down and gazed into her eyes.

“I sure hope you weren’t played by a guy.”

Chapter
Sixty
-Eight

“Okay. I admit it. The pun was intended.”

—Bob Defendi

nd somewhere, in a shark’s belly, a hand twitched.