Don't Stand So Close To Me

15 - Dancing in the Moonlight

Author note: I cannot for the life of me work out/read how 1st edition D&D is played, so I'm using my couple of years experience of playing 5th Edition to help me write the D&D game

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"Eddie! Come on, man! You can't do that. She's your girlfriend! You should at least give her another chance at the roll!!" Gareth yells down the table.

Lyra stares at the one on the twenty-sided die.

"Gareth the Great, you know as well as I do, at this table, there are rules, and my love life", he shoots a wink at Lyra ", is not a factor in those rules changing. At this table, you are my players." he says firmly to Gareth, pointing at the table, before turning back to Lyra, "Sorry, sweetheart that's a critical fail," he says gently but with a smirk on his face.

"So with that mighty swing of a mace, missing the ogre wildly. It's now their turn in the initiative." Eddie is half kneeling on the table and looks from under his hair at Lyra, still with that same little smirk. "Unfortunately, you're still engaged with them so..." Eddie adjusts his seating position again, "The ogre stands over you laughing cruelly ', Is that all you've got, tiny human?' as he raises his great club above his head, waiting to crash down on you."

Lyra can hear a die roll from behind his screen, and Eddie takes a small sharp intake of breath, "That is gonna hit for sure. Any last words?" He asks Lyra sinisterly, tapping his newly steepled fingers together with glee.

She flops back in her chair, disappointed. She hadn't expected to, but this game had been delightful to play, plus Eddie was here, which meant Eddie often had, over the last few hours, leaned over her pointing out which modifiers she needed to add onto the die roll, or why she couldn't use that spell just now, or how far she could move. It took all her strength not to reach out and touch or lean against him. Something about him in the setting lit a fire in Lyra, which was occasionally quite unmanageable. If it wasn't for everyone else at the table also requiring to be engaged with Eddie's storytelling, she probably would have played up to it a little more.

"Well, I guess knowing their time in this world is coming to an end, they would hold their holy amulet," Lyra says as she clutches at an imagined pendant at her chest and closes her eyes, "and say a final prayer to their deity. Asking for forgiveness and to be welcomed into their hall upon death."

Eddie shakes some dice in his hands, and Lyra opens her eyes. But this time rolls them on the hand-drawn map stretched across the table. All eyes watch them as they tumble across the drawn terrain until they finally come to a stop. A one on each die, "That's six points of damage."

Lyra checks over her character sheet that Eddie had filled out for her, "Wait...six, did you say?" Eddie nods. Lyra scrubs out the number eight and replaces it with a two, putting her hands to her face, "I'm still up!! Barely, but still up."

Lyra's enthusiasm makes Eddie grin as he turns back to the rest of the table and looms over his dungeon master's screen, "Your Cleric is bloodied and beaten, swaying from side to side in a vain attempt to keep upright. They're praying for a miracle, some divine intervention, but do any of you have it?" Eddie's eyes scan each of the other players at the table and finally land on Kevin, "I do believe it's the turn of your mage."

Kevin looks at Eddie, the map, Lyra and then back to his sheet, "How is the ogre looking?"

"This grotesque giant has taken quite a beating, but he's got a little left in the tank," Eddie says.

Kevin taps his pencil on his forehead, "Ok, I was gonna save this, but as a delicate little wizard, I can't really afford to have our only conscious healer out of the game, so...I'm gonna aim a fireball just to the right of the ogre, so it hits them but just misses Lyra."