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The party creeps as quietly as they can into the stone chamber, the guards outside surprisingly easy to distract, a little suspiciously easy to distract. This was supposed to be the end goal, right? Everything they were here for? The king was nowhere to be found, the castle was packed with guards that fell one after the other, like dominos after the slightest tap. The chamber was the end of the line, allegedly filled with the gold stolen from countless families in the name of lining the crowns pockets, and the medicine that Nog’s family needed to survive, hoarded for only the highest bidders. Of course, who could bid on it, when every last penny had already been extorted from the families that needed it most?
This vault should be the hardest obstacle yet, after everything they’d been through to get here. Instead, the guards outside are all unconscious, and Beeve carefully pushes open the door to their glory. Nog, ever the paranoid, is adamant there’s a trap around the corner of some kind, something they need to watch out for, so he insists they go quietly, gently, trying not to disturb anything that may lay in wait. It’s dark inside, hard to see much past the crack of light that spills in from the hallway.
Bobbin is surprisingly lax about it all, unconcerned and certain that this is it, there’s no trap at all beyond the door or the darkness, and the chamber is theirs for the taking. Typically she was hyper vigilant, always the first to check for danger, but this time? She’s sure it has to be safe.
“I’m serious, guys, I think we’re totally overreacting. Everything is fine, clearly there’s nothing wrong here,” Robin cackled, the sparkling “1” in front of her the only thing to show for her perception check.
“The dust has gone to her brain,” Mike mumbled, shaking his head in dismay. “Okay, what about me? I got a 22,” he shot a glare toward Robin, like she’d rolled a 1 on purpose just to slow them down.
Eddie nodded, gesturing to the scattered dice on the table, an eager glint of anticipation in his eye. He seemed too happy, relaxed, which meant something was about to go wrong. “Tayr, on a 22, follows Bobbin a bit more cautiously—”
Mike grinned a smug little smile, flicking his sights to Robin, who rolled her eyes and reached across the table to smack him in the arm. Mike scoffed, shoving her away, and the table dissolved into a fight of playground-level hair pulling. Eddie rolled while they were distracted — shimmying excitedly in his seat — before loudly clearing his throat to grab their attention.
“You feel… unsettled. You know it can’t be this easy—“
Tayr steps forward, shoving Bobbin out of the way with a roll of his eyes. He seems more cautious than he was just a moment ago, but he can’t put his finger on why. It’s floating around him somewhere, the answer, a prickle at the back of his neck like something isn’t quite right here. He feels like he’s being watched, but not from the darkness ahead.
There’s a small bowl on the wall to his right, and upon placing the lit end of his torch within, more fire rises from inside it, tracing its way along the walls of the chamber, and lighting the way through an intricate path outward, until the entire room is visible.
It’s empty.
The whole chamber is empty. The party looks from member to member, wandering further into the chamber in confusion. Where is everything? Had they fallen for a decoy and aimed for the wrong room? Is the real vault elsewhere in the castle? No wonder the guards outside were so incompetent, they weren’t guarding anything.
“Wow. Told you so,” Bobbin taunts, shoving Tayr’s shoulder as she passes him. He glares at her, that suspicious feeling still prickling away up his spine. Their cleric, Will the Wise, pats his shoulder in sympathy, but he knows something else is going on.
“So… where is everything?” Fraudiem wonders aloud, making his way further into the empty chamber. They’d collected him along the way, stumbled across him in the forest as they planned their route into the castle. He’d become particularly attached to Beeve, who follows along behind him toward the center of the room.
At first Bobbin had just shoved Beeve toward the stranger to distract him from the party’s conversation, but Beeve’s first instinct in a bind is just to flirt his way out of it. Which… surprisingly worked, much to the party’s chagrin and Beeve’s insufferable smugness.
“Maybe it’s… hidden?” Beeve answers, spinning in a circle like he’ll suddenly find the treasure if he stares hard enough.
Frau giggles, staring at him like a lost little puppy, “You’re so cute when you’re confused.”
“—Ugh!” Dustin groaned, “enough with the flirting!”
“Hey! I didn’t complain when you tried to flirt with that bar maiden for information,” Steve shot back.
“Yes! You did! Repeatedly!”
“Yeah, because you were bad at it, not because flirting doesn’t work.”
“It only works when you do it because you’ve got a plus 12 on persuasion,” Dustin grumbled, spinning the die under his fingers.
“Actually, I think it would work even if he had a minus 12,” Lucas grumbled back, staring at Eddie’s star-struck face like it personally offended him.
Eddie cleared his throat, clapping his hands for attention. “Alright, enough about the flirting. Beeve and Frau are minding their own business, you should be concerned with the treasure and not someone else’s relationship. The chamber is empty. Will, Tayr, Nog, and Sundar, you’re still by the door, correct?”
Will, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas nodded their heads, eyes on the board and their miniatures.
“We stepping into the chamber or back into the hallway?”
Dustin shook his head, “There’s gotta be more here, like a secret door that leads to another vault or something.” The other three boys nod, a steady focus to their eyes.
“Alright,” Eddie clears his throat once again, slipping into his DM voice. “The chamber is quiet, nothing but the flickering flames against the walls to light your way—”
They split up, checking the walls for traps or hidden doors.
“I just don’t get it, all the signs pointed to here,” Nog grumbles, shuffling around and smacking his axe against stones to check for movement.
“Maybe someone just isn’t as smart as they think they are,” Bobbin whistles, making her way closer to Beeve and Frau. Sundar laughs at her nonchalance, smothering it with a cough when Nog glares at him.
“Oh, like anyone else had a better idea?”
“I swear to god, that fucking tone ,” Frau grumbles toward Beeve, who can’t help the smile that breaks out at his exasperation. Frau pulls a strand of hair over his mouth to cover another giggle and Beeve swears he’s never been more infatuated with anyone in his life. No one else had fit into their group so quickly and it’s so endearing the way he snarks at the kids, if only to see the smile it brings to Beeve’s face every time. He winks at the paladin, making him smile even harder as the rest of the party are content to ignore them.
“Maybe it’s an illusion, and we just can’t see what’s in this room,” Will adds as he, too, steps further into the vault.
“Guys,” Sundar hesitates, stepping forward at a much slower pace than the rest of his party, “I’m not really sure we should be here. I mean, Tayr said something didn’t feel right and I’m kind of inclined to agree with him. If—“
Sundar is cut off as the heavy metal door slams shut behind him, locking the party into the room with seemingly no exit.
“I’m gonna need you all to roll initiative,” Eddie boomed, his voice practically bouncing with amusement.
“WHAT!” Dustin shouted, slapping a hand against the table — the miniatures jumping at the impact.
“How?!” Mike yelled, “We didn’t even do anything!”
“There’s no one else here! We checked!” Lucas smacked his hands against the sides of his head, cradling it in his suddenly clammy palms.
“You said the only thing here was the torch lights! On a 22!”
“Ah, ah,” Eddie tutted, his grin practically bleeding off of his face, it was so wide. “I said someone was watching you, it’s not my fault you couldn’t tell from where.”
“It’s literally your fault!”
Eddie cackled, thriving in the chaos of his own making. Steve couldn’t help but look on in amusement, Robin kicking him under the table. He knew he was being obvious about his crush on Eddie, but he couldn’t exactly care when this whole campaign gave him the perfect excuse to flirt with the man any chance he got. Steve was willing to take certain liberties, and if that meant mooning over the weird gremlin man while the rest of the party lost their minds, then so be it. Eddie didn’t seem to notice much, anyway.
The party grumbled as they rolled, shouting out their numbers for Eddie to write down on whatever secret papers he had hidden behind his screen. He cleared his throat, ready to continue their little journey.
“The chamber rattles with the sudden slam of the door—”
Sundar is startled the most, the stone behind him still and solid, as if it had never been open in the first place. He steps forward, awkwardly trying to reach one of his friends, to not be alone by the ominous door. The chamber is silent, still, aside from their party. It doesn’t seem like anything at all is about to happen.
Will the Wise tries to detect other magics that might be in the room, but once again they’re left with no leads. This is the quietest start to a fight they’ve ever had. Nog tries for another trap door somewhere, something that a threat could come out of, and yet that leads nowhere as well. He’s left standing bereft in the empty room, looking from friend to friend with no idea where to go next.
Out of nowhere, the room quickly starts filling with fog, a creeping sort of mist that obstructs their view. It’s like the room has been completely engulfed in a sickly yellow cloud, and no one can see anything past their own noses. It’s thick, heavy, clogging their throats with its poison.
“—I want you all to put on these,” Eddie said, cutting off his own dramatization of their surroundings. He held out a plastic bag, gesturing to the squares of fabric inside with a grin.
“Blindfolds?” Dustin gasped, excited to see what props Eddie brought. Steve rolled his eyes, sharing a glance to Robin. He couldn’t tell if she looked excited or irritated, but he knew she’d go along with it — she was just as dramatic as Eddie most of the time.
“Why,” Lucas whined with his head in his hands, drawing out the word until it was thin and completely muffled by his palms.
“For the drama!” Eddie shook the bag at them, holding it closer to Steve’s face until he caved.
He sighed, reaching into the bag to pull a bandana out, folding it into a long rectangle. He promised to be a nerd for one campaign, he promised he would go along with it all, he promised — so he sucked it up and tied the fabric around his eyes. The things he did for a stupid crush.
Once they were all successfully blinded, Eddie returned to the game.
“Uh, guys?” Beeve calls out, coughing as the fog enters his lungs; his hands are held in front of him like he can somehow find Frau and Bobbin, though he knows they’re a few feet away, still. He feels around, trying to grab onto someone, anyone, just to know he’s not alone. Bobbin was right near him before the fog broke out, he should be able to feel her if he just crosses a few feet, but the fog is so dense and Beeve can’t tell which direction he’s facing — she could be anywhere. He has to get to them, he has to find them, but before he’s able, the sound of Tayr breaking into a coughing fit jolts through the chamber. His breathing is ragged and shallow, his knees hitting the ground with a dull thud as he fights to regain some air in his lungs.
Bobbin’s gasping breaths pierce through the fog next, and right into Beeve’s chest, but there’s silence that follows — no sound of her being knocked to the stone floor.
“I’m okay!” she shouts, and he nearly hits the ground from sheer relief. They’re not going down as quickly as he’d feared, which is good — great, even — but if they can’t get out of this somehow, it’s only a matter of time.
It’s a blind fight, whatever is hidden in the mist is waiting for them to succumb to the poison bleeding through the room. Sundar is still standing; he tries to make his way toward another party member, and Will tries to disperse the fog, to no avail.
“I don’t know what to do!” the cleric yells, letting out a frustrated groan. “I could conjure a gust of wind, but I don’t know where anyone is. I don’t want to throw someone into a wall by accident.”
Nog calls out to reassure his friend, but the gas is too much for his small lungs. He’s the next one to hit the ground in a coughing fit, axe skittering across the floor as it falls from his hands.
Another voice rings out, much closer. Frau coughs like Bobbin had, choking for a moment but ultimately fine. Something clatters against stone, like another weapon is thrown or dropped or wielded and Beeve can’t tell what’s caused it. There’s a yell, and then a few moments of silence, aside from his own footsteps wandering around, hoping to find someone else in the party, to collect themselves, to reassure.
He feels useless, his only weapon is a club and that’s not exactly useful when he can’t see whatever threat he should be aiming for. Tayr gets back to his feet, thankfully, but the coughing still doesn’t sound good. The mist is starting to sting their eyes, as if the obstruction itself wasn’t enough, and this wouldn’t be so terrible if they hadn’t just fought a whole fleet of the king’s guards before entering the chamber.
Nog’s axe makes another noise, scraping across the stone like it’s been kicked.
“I found Nog!” Bobbin calls out, wheezing through the mist. If they don’t get out of this soon, they’re all going to succumb to the poison before they even figure out who’s doing this. They can’t blindly start swinging, hoping to hit an enemy they can’t see, or they might accidentally strike each other. Sundar is the next to go down, and as far as Beeve remembers, Will is the closest party member to him.
“Will! Forget the wind, can you heal Tayr or Sundar?” he shouts. There’s no answer.
“Will?” Tayr calls out, a bit of panic slipping into his wheezing voice. There’s still no answer. The clatter of something against stone from moments ago is becoming unfortunately clearer with every second of silence that follows.
Nog yells, frustrated with their inability to figure out who’s doing this. “It’s one of us!” he shouts, “There’s no one else here, it has to be one of us!”
“What?!” several voices call back. “How—
“—How can it be one of us?” Mike yelled across the table, blindfold still covering his eyes like the rest of them.
Eddie didn’t respond with an answer, and Steve could imagine him sitting just to his right with a shit-eating grin on his face, excited to continue.
“Silence!” he boomed, with a loud noise — probably his hand hitting the table. “The mist is all consuming, your eyes burn and your throat threatens to close. Dustin, give me another constitution saving throw.”
Nog’s coughing isn’t as bad as before, and it’s hard to tell if they’ve lost anyone but Will yet. He’s still not answering, and Tayr is still panicked, muttering to himself from wherever he is in the fog. Beeve hears footsteps to his right, knows that it must be Frau because he was the only one near enough when the cloud appeared, since Bobbin had branched out to heal Nog. Something itches at the back of Beeve’s mind, a pesky little voice that says Frau is the only member of the party that hasn’t answered their call-and-responses. They’ve all been shouting out for each other, but other than Frau’s occasional coughing, there’s been no other sound, no check-in to say he’s okay like the rest of them, no attempt to reach out and help.
He shakes his head, tries to dispel the thought from his mind because it couldn’t be. Frau is one of them, one of the party, Frau is Beeve’s other half, just like Bobbin and he knows that neither of them could betray the party like this. He steps forward, catching up to the sound and finding the man he’d called his for months now.
“Beeve!” Frau yells, “Thank god!” but his eyes are panicked, like he’s trying to hide something, like Beeve’s interrupted his plans.
He watches Frau’s eyes shift from side to side, though neither of them can see farther around the fog. He can’t believe it. Can’t believe that he could be tricked like that.
“It’s Frau!” he calls out to the rest of the party, and the panic in the other man’s eyes turns sharp. “Frau is the one doing this.”
“—WHAT?” The party yelled around the table, chaos erupting at Steve’s declaration.
“Are you kidding me?!” Mike whined, hands shooting up like he was about to pull his blindfold off, but he kept his hands away. He was just as passionate about all this as Eddie, and he wasn’t about to ruin the illusion just because he was caught off guard.
“How could you do this?!” Lucas shouted next, and Robin shoved Steve’s shoulder, incomprehensible noises bubbling up from her throat.
“You’re dead, Munson,” she screeched, “You’re so fucking dead!”
“Steve, Steve!” Dustin shouted at the other end of the table. “Cloudkill is a concentration spell, if you break his concentration then we’re fine!”
Steve groaned, slumping in his seat. How could he break Eddie’s concentration? He couldn’t even figure out how to help in all of this, and apparently it was his fault to begin with, because he’d been the one to insist Fraudiem join their party. So much for flirting being his secret weapon, he’d doomed them all.
He heard Robin scoff next to him, mumbling to herself. “ Frau, oh you slimy little skeezeball, frau means fraud in Latin. I hate you so much.”
He could imagine Eddie batting his eyelashes in response, giggling to himself for being found out. God, Steve wanted to wipe that smile right off his face, even if he couldn’t see it. He knew the man was vibrating in his seat, a plan come to fruition, and there was one thing that had shocked him, one thing that had him at a temporary loss for words, and scrambling to get his plans in order because Steve had thrown him an action he hadn’t expected — and that was when he’d flirted with Frau in the first place.
Eddie’s eyes had gone wide, mouth open like a fish out of water and it had been so satisfying to make the other man quiet — a feeling he’d been craving for the rest of their sessions. Steve sat up in his chair again, a new determined set to his jaw and he hoped his sudden concentration threw Eddie for another loop. There was one thing that might break Eddie’s concentration, if the dice played out like he wanted them to, he just had to ask.
He cleared his throat, turning to Eddie, though he couldn’t see the man past the blindfold. “I’m standing right next to you now, right?” he asked.
“That’s right, pretty boy,” he taunted. Steve thought he could hear someone fake-gagging across the table — probably Mike — and that spurred him on even more.
“Could a kiss break concentration?”
“Are you kidding me?” Mike shouted, “Now is not the time! He’s evil!”
“No, no,” Robin jumped in, slapping Steve’s arm a couple times, “Let the man speak!”
]He desperately wanted to rip the blindfold off and see Eddie’s face, see the expression of shock or confusion. Were his eyes wide, eyebrows drawn tightly together? Was he sitting there with his jaw slack, brain having yet to catch up, to answer Steve’s question? He hoped so.
Eddie cleared his throat, tapping his fingers against the table before he giggled nervously.
“I guess?” he sounded hesitant, unsure if he should humor Steve or put his foot down instead. “But!” he shouted over Mike’s complaints, “It has to be a significantly high roll, I’m not just going to give it to you!”
“Yeah, right,” Robin mumbled, and Steve elbowed her in the side.
“Fine!” Steve lifted his blindfold only enough to find his d20, making sure not to spoil the illusion by looking at the board or at Eddie’s face. He gripped it in his hand before letting go of the blindfold, allowing darkness to fill his sight once more.
He was going to do this right, he was going to take a chance he probably shouldn’t take, but when had Steve ever held back when it came to pursuing what he wanted? Plus, he was a little annoyed at Eddie for that twist, and if he wanted the man shocked, he was going to really shock him. Give it that Harrington charm, do something he couldn’t just ignore.
Steve fumbled around with his empty hand, waving it through the air until he felt Eddie’s arm graze the tips of his fingers. He gripped the man’s wrist, could just hear the quiet, confused whine that left Eddie’s lips as he loosened his hold and trailed his fingers up the man’s arm, across his shoulder, and gripped the back of his neck.
He leaned forward, giving Eddie only enough time to gasp before he was tasting the air from his lungs. He heard the whine again, a little louder than the first, and he hoped he could hear it several more times tonight — maybe once the session was over and he asked Eddie to stay.
“No way,” someone mumbled across the table, and it was just loud enough to remind Steve why he did this to begin with. He let go of the die in his other hand as he squeezed the back of Eddie’s neck, pulling back into his own space after he heard the rattling piece of plastic settle in its place.
The table was quiet, everyone still blindfolded as far as Steve was aware. He heard Robin rustle next to him before she shot up from her seat.
“No way!” she shouted, gripping Steve’s shoulder and shaking him. “Blindfolds off!”
Steve pulled the fabric from his eyes, searching for wherever his die landed as the others did the same.
“NAT TWENTY!” Dustin yelled, pointing at the die just a few inches in front of Robin.
The table erupted, several people jumping from their seats just like Robin had, and she kept shaking him, grip like steel on his shoulder. He did it.
He could still feel the tingle of Eddie’s lips against his — the warmth that he’d pulled away from just a few seconds before — and he glanced over toward the DM to finally gauge his reaction. He was staring at nothing but Steve, eyes wide and lips parted just like Steve had wanted, just like he’d hoped to see once the blindfold was off. He was so flushed, so red and frozen in place and deliriously, Steve thought maybe if he leaned back in — if he kissed Eddie’s cheek — maybe it would taste like cherries based on color alone.
“Hello? Earth to Eddie?” Dustin called out, waving his hand back and forth to catch his attention.
“Whuh— huh?” Eddie blinked.
Steve could barely feel his cheeks, he was smiling so wide. He’d made Eddie speechless. Eddie. Reduced to nothing but empty thoughts and wide eyes. Robin scoffed next to him, and Mike groaned loudly across the table, head hitting the back of his chair as he slumped in his seat. Lucas was busy hiding his laughter behind the palm of his hand, and Steve started to count as the seconds passed, just to see how long it took for Eddie to blink himself back to the present.
“You, uh,” Eddie glanced down at the die, golden ‘20’ practically glowing where it sat. Twelve seconds. It took twelve seconds for Eddie to look away and remember he was in the middle of a campaign. Steve would never let him live it down.
Eddie cleared his throat, giggling nervously as he looked from the die to Steve and back again, trying to remember where he’d left off. “Right. You- uh…” he cleared his throat one more time before shaking off his stupor and sitting up right in his chair. “Frau’s concentration snaps like the thin branch of a tree, shattered under the lightest pressure—”
“Oh, get a grip,” Mike mumbled, ignored by the rest of the table.
—Frau slowly drifts back to the present, eyes locked onto Ste– Beeve’s brown eyes. He’d been too distracted to remember the spell, too caught-off-guard to push Beeve away and keep his concentration. This was meant to be quick, a simple plan — all he had to do was infiltrate the rebel group and trap them here for his father. And yet. He hadn’t expected this party to weasel their way into his head.
He stumbles back as the poisonous fog fades away, revealing the rest of the party in various states of disarray. Will is the only one left unconscious, though he’s not too far from Bobbin and her healing magic. They made it through, and are relatively unscathed — now they just have to take care of the real threat.
Frau looks nervous as they all turn to him, the element of surprise no longer there to cloak his intentions. He can’t believe he’s been beat out by a stupid kiss, that the other man had gotten so far under his skin that he could rip this perfect opportunity out from under him. It was like… like…
“True love’s kiss?” Steve offered with a smirk, revelling in the emotions that flashed across Eddie’s eyes as he tried so hard to keep his own concentration. Steve bet he could get the upper hand one more time, could roll another natural 20 in real life and get his house cleared out in minutes. Maybe this dragon game wasn’t as far removed from reality as everyone thought.
He leaned forward with a grin, and watched Eddie swallow nervously.
“You really screwed us over there. Maybe you can make it up to me?” he whispered, eyes dropping down to Eddie’s lips. “If you can think of something.” He flicked his tongue out, a flare in his gut as he watched Eddie’s eyes flick down to follow it.
“Session over!” the DM shouted, not even taking his eyes off Steve’s mouth.
“What?!”
“Why?!”
“Are you kidding me—”
“—Session over!” he repeated, slipping back into his DM voice as he pinned Dustin, Mike, and Lucas with a glare that could probably set them all on fire.
They’d have to finish out the campaign another time, bribe them with apologies and probably never hear the end of it, but Steve had other plans for tonight. He’d just have to remind them that he was the only reason they were still alive to see another day — and if they didn’t let up he’d lay it on thick, slide in next to Eddie, and bat his eyelashes, and drown in the sea of fake gags and endless complaints as he blamed true love’s kiss.
That was bound to keep the kids away for at least another week.