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It was an unforgiving winter’s night when Major General Macadamia of the Nutcracker Brigade finally stood victorious over the battlefield, his long white beard billowing in the blustery air conditioning.
At long last, the terrible Captain Chestnut was defeated. With Czarina Tsuntsun now freed from his fearsome control, the land would surely be restored to its former glory under her characteristically passive-aggressive leadership.
“Oh, thank you for rescuing me!” she cried as Macadamia and his men escorted her to safer ground. Then, in a stuttering mumble, she added, “I mean, not like I needed you to or anything…”
Noelle sputtered. “Berdly? What are you saying?”
Berdly’s head whipped around so quickly that he nearly dropped the potted cactus he’d been moving on Noelle’s TV stand. “Ah,” he said, clearing his throat and adjusting his glasses. They must have slipped down his beak in the heat of battle. “I’m simply making room for all of your miniature nutcrackers, my dear Noelle!”
“Right,” Noelle said, stifling a laugh. She was standing on a stepladder in the opposite corner of her bedroom, humming as she strung more tinsel along the wall (on top of the year-round strings already hanging there).
Usually, Noelle had complained in their final few days of classes earlier that week, Mayor Holiday would insist upon decorating the entire house herself, which included Noelle’s room. But this winter break, Noelle had finally convinced her mom to let her decorate her own room (with Berdly’s help, which had apparently required additional convincing).
Noelle was utterly overjoyed, so of course Berdly wanted to be excited on her behalf… but he honestly didn’t see much of a difference. Aside from a few black ornaments, paper snowflakes, and DIY Dragon Blazers character cut-outs in the shapes of gingerbread people, Noelle’s sense for interior design was pretty much identical to her mother’s: that is to say, festive.
What was different was Noelle. As she darted around her room, rummaging through the storage bins the two of them had brought up from the basement in search of the ideal ornament, her eyes glinted with a confident, driven enthusiasm Berdly rarely got to see in her when they were talking about school or volunteer work.
After tacking up another strand of garland, Noelle stood back and admired her work. “Does it look crooked to you?”
Berdly blinked. It looked like a sparkly mess of red, green, silver, gold, and sprigs of faux seasonal plants. “Maybe a bit to the left,” he suggested.
Noelle tilted her head at the garland in contemplation. “Ugh. You’re right,” she said, reaching up again to nudge aside a crystal icicle.
“Heh.” Berdly smirked victoriously. “When am I not?”
He mentally added ‘decking the halls’ to a running list of his many aptitudes. Making educated guesses was still a form of intelligence, he reasoned; ‘educated’ was in the phrase, after all.
He ignored the slightly strained smile Noelle had given him at that and returned his attention to organizing the nutrackers into a phalanx formation (well, okay, there were too few soldiers for a phalanx by definition, but definitely far more than the average non-Holiday would expect).
A gentle quiet settled again over the room like a blanket of snow, interrupted only by the muted clacking of hooves and glass ornaments.
Normally, Berdly was compelled to fill silence—to capitalize on it, charitably, he thought; to grace everyone in the room with his intellections—or to control it with a pointed glare from behind the library circulation desk. Otherwise, the silence might fill instead with awkward stares and whispers. Or worse: with nothing, and with nobody.
Here, though, lately, Noelle just got to talk, and Berdly just got to listen.
“Oh, my gosh,” Noelle whispered suddenly. She snorted, laughing in shock as she lifted a lump of dried up, rainbow-striped modeling clay from one of the storage containers. She held it away from her face like it was going to bite. “What the heck is this? Kris!”
Berdly’s gaze sharpened at the mention of his sworn nemesis. “Another prank?” he asked, affronted. While digging through the decorations, he and Noelle had already unearthed several hardened wads of chewing gum, a black-and-white copy paper cut-out of ICE-E, and a jingly mouse cat toy. Kris must have planted them there years ago, the little rascal.
“No, no, it’s…” Noelle trailed off into giggles, spinning the clay on the strand of yarn wedged into the top. All the colors, messily scribbled on in permanent marker, shone in the string lights. Noelle cleared her throat and said, seriously, “It’s the God of Hyperdeath.”
“The what.”
“The God of Hyperdeath!” Noelle insisted, unable to keep a straight face. “It’s Azzy’s, like, edgy OC, from when we were kids. I forgot Kris made this.” She twirled the homemade ornament again, more wistful now even through her giggles. “I didn’t know we had it.”
Berdly glanced away. “Maybe your sister kept it?”
Noelle’s laughter faded. “Yeah.”
“I mean,” Berdly added smartly, “uh.”
The two of them rarely talked about December—or Asriel, for that matter, or even Kris and how they used to be. None of that had ever been relevant to their shared pursuit of knowledge, after all.
But now they were hanging out over winter break, comfortable, not a math workbook in sight. They could just talk like… friends, couldn’t they?
Friends. Yes. How did friends talk?
“Asriel, Kris’ brother… He’s back for the break now, right?” It was all Berdly had heard last night during his shift at the library. Hometown’s golden boy had just gotten off the bus, and all anybody wanted to talk about was just how grown-up he looked with his new haircut, and how much he’d been through, the poor kid, and still turned out so great, and how they were all so proud of him, like he was their own son.
Berdly could only scoff. Asriel had done well enough in school, from what he’d heard, but he was far from valedictorian.
As expected, though, Noelle’s face lit up at the mention of his name. “Oh, gosh. You’re a genius,” she said with a snort, to which Berdly smirked and shrugged. “He’s got to see this. We literally just talked about the God of Hyperdeath after service this morning, too!”
Berdly squinted at the lumpy ornament clasped in Noelle’s hands. “Why?”
“Okay, okay, so, he’s running this D&D campaign at college—you know, Daggers and Dangers—and he needed a villain for this arc where the players are trying to free a bunch of people who are trapped underground.”
“Right,” Berdly said, although his gaze drifted back to his nutcracker militia. Kris’ brother played D&D?
“But it was midterms, and he was too swamped to come up with anything good,” Noelle continued, plucking at a stray thread on the ornament hanger, “so apparently he tried just repurposing the God of Hyperdeath, but it’s, like, this crazy, cheesy, overpowered rainbow self-insert from when were kids playing make-believe without any rules and stuff, so he had to basically change the whole character anyway so his friends wouldn’t realize! I swear, I almost spat out my juice.”
“Kris’ brother plays D&D?”
“Huh?” Noelle asked. “Oh, yeah! We used to play together.”
“You played D&D?” Berdly squawked. “Without me?”
Noelle laughed awkwardly. “Sorry, Berdly, but we weren’t really friends back then! It was just me, Kris, Azzy, and Dess.”
“Hm…” Berdly grumbled. It made sense; Noelle loved RPGs even more than he did, and he was basically the ultimate gamer. She wasn’t nearly as skilled in Dragon Blazers as him, of course, but even he had to admit that in terms of pure geekiness, she had him beat.
“I haven’t played in forever,” she lamented. “So I was telling him this morning, like, ‘Azzy, you’ve gotta run a one-shot or something this break,’ since he never used to DM before, and he was all like, ‘oh, I’m not sure I’ll live up to your expectations, Ells,’ since he’s not great with combat stats or, um, cool NPC voices, but Kris insisted.”
“Hm,” Berdly repeated. An interest in D&D seemed almost self-explanatory for Noelle, with her love for storylines and RPG mechanics, but for Kris? Quiet, unimaginative, tactlessly button-mashing Kris?
“So finally Azzy agreed,” Noelle continued, “but we can’t have just two players, so Kris, um…” Her nose reddened bashfully. “Susie’s playing, too.”
At that, Berdly turned up his beak in feigned annoyance—maybe a certain dream had recently opened his eyes to Susan’s appeal, but Noelle didn’t need to know that—and tried not to visibly deflate. For just a moment, he’d thought he was being invited.
Ah, well. At least there were still nutcrackers to realign. He turned back to the brigade.
Once Noelle eventually stopped fawning over the mere thought of Susie, though, she asked, “Um, Berdly?”
“Hm.”
“You’ve said ‘hm’ three times in a row,” she said, peeking over Berdly’s shoulder with a musical little laugh. “What are you, a hummingbird?”
Berdly bit back another hum of annoyance. He made eye contact with Major General Macadamia and nodded once. “I want in.”
“Huh?”
“If Susan can join without even knowing the DM, then I can, too,” Berdly explained smugly. “She won’t best me! I was practically born to LARP.”
“Oh! Roleplaying isn’t really a competition, but okay?” Noelle said slowly.
“How right you are, my dear Noelle.” Berdly grinned. “There won’t be any competition.”
Noelle coughed. “I mean, if Azzy’s okay with you joining, then sure! D&D’s not really LARPing, though—or not the ‘LA’ part, anyway…”
With a triumphant (and totally voluntary, and absolutely not embarrassing) caw, Berdly said, “Noelle, you have no idea how much cardboard I’ve been saving for this moment. My years of saving shipping boxes and comic book sleeves are returning sweet, splendiferous dividends!”
“Wait, huh? Where do you even keep all of—”
“Do you even know how many papier-mache armor pieces I could make?” The thought nearly brought a tear to his eye. “Ahem. Not to worry. I’ll forge a fine helm for you, as well, m’lady.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
By the time Noelle’s miniature trees had been sufficiently trimmed and Mayor Holiday had returned from town hall (and kindly suggested, through gritted teeth, that Berdly head home for the evening), it had begun to snow lightly over Hometown.
The wind whipped through Berdly’s feathers as he walked across town, and he curled in on himself, clutching a stack of books close to his chest—a few entries in the Chronicles of Millenia series he’d recently checked out from the library, a math textbook he was preemptively brushing up on before next semester, and a beat-up D&D rulebook Noelle had pulled out of her sister’s closet. Thank goodness for Berdly’s renowned literacy! A less linguistically inclined individual would’ve had trouble sneaking something of December’s out of the house with no other books to hide it under.
Berdly was no chicken, but Noelle’s mother… She never got any less intimidating. If anything, she was probably more intimidating lately.
He shivered and pressed on.
His head was already swimming with brilliant ideas (no surprises there) for his D&D character. This was his chance to craft his ideal world, to upgrade himself both figuratively and literally, to dazzle the simpletons at the table (plus Noelle) with his brains, brawn, and epic pectorals…
Wait. His character could have epic pectorals, right?
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
@holidaygirl1225 I require your assistence in matters of daggers.
And also dangers.
holidaygirl1225
Already? XD You just left!!!
I can still see you down the street… lol X)
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
What is the setting for this DND campaign??? Will we be rugged warriors or perhaps something more… casual? For the newbies I mean.
I need to optimize my character.
holidaygirl1225
Umm… idk? Azzy hasn’t told me yet… I don’t know if he has decided. We just decided to play this morning XP
Also um… he hasn’t even said it’s ok if you join yet. I just texted though.
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
Oh trust me. He WILL want me in this campain. Consider it a favor to him.
I can’t begin truly cultivating my character until I know their circumstances and I want to get a head start. Give them time to marinate, if you will.
Let me know what Asriel says.
And if YOU need assistence with your character, worry not, I am MORE than happy to provide.
holidaygirl1225
Lol, okey-dokey
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
What are your current plans? If you don’t mind me asking.
Not that it will affect my character creation… I will NOT be playing support.
holidaygirl1225
Oh gosh, idk yet! XP I think I will play a sorcerer. They’re like wizards but with less books?
Well that’s an oversimplification, but you get it XD
You would probably like being a wizard, actually :3
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
Oh Noelle. My dear.
I am already a wizard.
A winged wizard of WORDS.
holidaygirl1225
Um… well yeah XD That’s why you’d be a wizard!
Wizards have books for the words. That’s how they cast spells
I mean, obviously X)
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
Of course. Other classes (such as the one Kris will play, no doubt) are better suited to picture books.
Words are for the BIRDS!
And that’s yours truly.
holidaygirl1225
Ok, I am going to bed now…
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
Pleasant dreams, my sugarplum chum!
If a dashing passerine paladin appears in your dreamscape and frees you from the clutches of a wicked warlock, you know who to thank.
“Oh, Berdly’s here,” Noelle said from inside the Holiday house, muffled through the walls and the (now considerably heavier, after a few particularly cold days) snow. “That was his knock.”
Berdly grinned privately at having been recognized—had he really been over often enough for that, now?—and then knocked again for good measure.
As Noelle’s hooves clacked toward the door, somebody else scoffed. “Ugh. Why? Tell him ‘no solicitors’ or something.”
Curses! Susie’s voice. Stupid, damnable, regrettably charming Susan.
Noelle laughed, half-heartedly shushed her, and opened the door. “Hi, Berdly. What are you… Um, you know what, come on in!”
It was, maybe, charitably, about 10 degrees warmer in the foyer than it had been on the snow-covered lawn. Admittedly, the chill likely was not helped by the single layer he was wearing under his hand-forged LARP armor, but even warriors must suffer for fashion. Berdly shivered and hoped it was taken for rousing. “Hello, Noelle! And… ahem. Susan. Kris.”
It was strange enough to see either of them sitting in Noelle’s living room, much less so comfortably. Susie sat on the couch with her arms spread nearly across the entire backrest, eyes shut, while Kris was scrunched up at the foot of the couch, fervently scribbling in a sketchbook. They both looked entirely too at-home, and, infuriatingly, neither spared a glance for him. Probably too intimidated by his sheer intelligence to even chance eye contact!
Berdly huffed and marched past them. He had a mission to complete. “Hail and well met, game master!” he announced, jabbing a feather toward Asriel’s face. “I’ve completed your quest,” Berdly said, by which he meant the character sheet (and many other requested campaign details) Asriel had painstakingly relayed to him through Noelle.
“Howdy! Berdly, right? Oh, uh—neat costume. What… is this,” Asriel said with a wobbly grin, slowly lowering the hand he’d raised in greeting as Berdly wordlessly slammed a binder on the coffee table.
He smirked with a flourish of his armored wing. “Read it and weep, Dreemurr! It’s my character’s immaculately crafted backstory, of course,” he explained. He took a moment to flip through the pages, displaying the dozens of handwritten documents in protective plastic sleeves and meticulously outlined maps he'd laminated at the library.
“Dude,” Susie said, flicking an eye open, and left it at that and a snort, as if it somehow spoke for itself.
Kris suppressed a snicker.
She shoved their shoulder. “Dude!”
Asriel blinked. “Uh… thanks, pal. I appreciate the commitment, you know! Noelle said you were excited,” he said slowly, making a similarly restrained expression to Kris’. Berdly felt strangely queasy. “Listen. Don’t let Susie make you feel bad. It’s way better than what she gave me.”
“Dude!”
Kris laughed—well and truly laughed—aloud at that. It was a strange contrast from their usually stony expression, especially recently, so much so that it almost seemed out of place. Maybe Asriel visiting home for the holidays had them in unusually high spirits.
“Man, screw you,” Susie grumbled to no one in particular.
Asriel began frantically reviewing Berdly’s frankly earth-shattering character lore, and the room briefly fell into an odd quiet which probably felt perfectly comfortable to everyone else, but Berdly knew was… wrong, somehow. Just Berdly himself sitting beside Noelle’s coffee table for anything other than a class assignment was foreign enough; for Susie and the Dreemurrs to be here, too, idly chatting like friends, was borderline unnatural.
Noelle produced a tray of snowflake-shaped sugar cookies from the refrigerator for the occasion, and Susie complained around a mouthful of them (gross) that she was surrounded by nerds, batting at Kris’ pencil and occasionally wrestling it away to doodle in the margins. At one point, she tried to write something crude across Berdly’s finely crafted cardboard greaves, and he nearly reflexively kneed her in the snout.
As Asriel read—currently, he looked to be puzzling over the in-character diary entries Berdly had written over the past few days—Asriel idly picked through his dice bag and began carefully sorting the contents by sides, color, and sparkliness. Susie grinned as she watched him, muttering something along the lines of, “Dude, they’re so alike, it’s crazy,” into Kris’ ear, to which they glowered and elbowed her in the stomach.
The atmosphere was uncannily… festive, for lack of a better word. Friendly. Berdly breathed in and drew his knees up to his chest. It wasn’t a question of whether the other shoe would drop, but when.
“Alrighty!”
Berdly squawked in surprise.
Asriel slammed Berdly’s binder shut—quite indelicately; there were one-of-a-kind writings in there! “I’m all caught up!” he announced. “Finally. I think. Some, uh, very important poems in there…”
“Poems,” Susie whispered to Kris, incredulous.
Berdly nodded gravely. Those poems were integral to the DM’s understanding of Berdly’s PC. Berdly certainly did not worship the ground Asriel walked on, unlike the rest of this town, it seemed, but he could acknowledge they shared an eye for good storytelling.
“It’s been, what, twenty minutes?” Asriel continued. “Golly, sorry I took so long! We can get started.”
Susie grunted wordlessly in a way that seemed to say ‘finally.’
Noelle bit her lip to repress an excited squeal, fidgeting with the green-and-gold D20 Asriel had lent her and scanning over her printed-out character sheet. Noelle’s character was the only one Berdly had really learned anything about yet thus far, and it had been mostly through his own insistent curiosity, as Noelle had insisted on a dramatic grand reveal. He couldn’t complain, of course; he wanted the same for his own character.
Kris simply nodded and continued sketching, their tongue poked out ever so slightly from between their teeth in concentration. They turned a tiny plastic figurine over in their hand, looking back and forth between it and the paper. Berdly had to commend their attention to detail with… whatever it was they were drawing, even if they were his greatest nemesis. They didn’t have many other commendable traits, so he’d charitably offer them this.
“Gosh,” Noelle said as Asriel set up his DM screen, “it’s been so long since I’ve played. Like, I love Dragon Blazers, but it’s just not the same, you know?”
Asriel laughed, nodding. “There are worse ways to spend my winter break than DMing for my kid sibling and their nerd friends… I guess.” He shrugged.
“Azzy!” Noelle complained.
He grinned and wrangled an arm around Kris’ shoulder. “Right, Kris?”
They wriggled around awkwardly in his grip but made no real effort to break away.
He rolled his eyes. “Love you, too, kid.”
At that, ever so slightly, Kris smiled: at Asriel, at Noelle, and then at the empty space between them. They melted a little, then, and finally pulled away.
Berdly cleared his throat quickly. Here it was—one of those silences to be filled. “Well! Shall we play?” he asked, determinedly ignoring the lethal look Susie shot his way.
“Yeah! Yes. Okay, everybody, shush,” Asriel said, sitting up straighter. There was a rustle of papers, and then…
In the farthest reaches of the frostbitten land of Flurria, ravaged now for months by an unrelenting, mysterious supernatural winter, there is nothing but white for miles. That is, except for a pinprick of warmth amid the vast cold: a cozy little tavern, its wooden boards rattled by the blizzard outside.
But inside, heroes warm their hands by the brick fireplace and their bellies with ale before embarking—
“We can drink beer?” Susie interrupted.
“No! Non-alcoholic ale!” Asriel said, flustered, and briefly hung his head in his hands. “Entirely age-appropriate, G-rated ale! Tea? Apple juice?”
“It seems a little cold for apple juice,” said Noelle. “Apple cider?”
“As long as it’s non-alcoholic,” Asriel mumbled into his palms. “I don’t want Mom getting onto me for being a ‘bad influence,’ and I really don’t want to see any of you roleplay being drunk.”
Kris held up their hand in a mock scouts-honor gesture.
“Now,” Asriel said, and cleared his throat again.
Heroes warm their bellies with spiced cider and hot chocolate before embarking on their treacherous journeys through the surrounding icy wasteland, many of them fighting for the same goal: to find whatever entity is the cause for this eternal winter and put a stop to it, restoring life to the land.
Among these patrons we find our own brave heroes, who are about to find one another, in kind.
Asriel paused again, carefully plucking a four-sided die from his now neatly sorted collection. Behind the paper folder labeled ‘Chemistry’ he’d propped up as a makeshift DM screen, he tossed the die and glanced around the table. “Noelle, what is Sapine doing right now?”
Noelle squeaked, delighted. “Oh! Yes! Right! Oh, my gosh! Okay. You can do this, Noelle. It hasn’t been that long,” she muttered frantically. She took a moment to steel herself. “The sorceress Sapine Tourterelle is gazing into the fire, sipping on a delicious peppermint eggnog—”
“Gross,” Kris stated.
“—and she has, like, bluish-silvery skin and hair that shimmers in the firelight—”
“Cool,” Susie stated.
“—and she’s wearing a matching fluffy hat and coat, and she’s got these big angel wings,” Noelle went on excitedly, “and there are icicles hanging from the feathers.”
“Same,” Berdly stated, and sneezed. What was the thermostat set to in here, anyway?
“And she stares at the fire, and her eyes, like, spark, like she’s thinking back on something, getting angry… and then her hair bursts into flames!” Noelle shouted, raising her hands for emphasis.
“Whoa! Did she dunk her head in the fire or what?” Susie asked, leaning forward, presumably utterly swept up in her first exposure to this sort of artful roleplay. Thankfully, Berdly had no such juvenile reaction. “Sounds cool. But probably also stupid of her. Is she stupid?”
Noelle giggled. Berdly doubted the others could see the unadulterated glee lighting up her face, but he could; he knew her well enough. “No, silly. She’s an eladrin—They’re, like, seasonal fey elf people? They shapeshift with the seasons and their mood. So she just flipped to summer,” Noelle explained.
Kris hummed. “Why does she have wings?”
“Huh? Oh! Um,” Noelle mumbled, pressing her die into her palm, “I asked Azzy if I could make her part Aasimar—just for the angel wings, honestly. I thought they’d be cool.”
Kris nodded in understanding, deliberated for a moment, and flipped a page in their sketchbook.
“So she gets mad about, well, something—we don’t know what, yet,” Noelle said, almost coy, “and flips to summer, even though she’s usually winter. And now she’s all red and orange and gold and stuff.”
“Sapine, with this sudden transformation, the icicles on your wings rapidly melt,” Asriel said matter-of-factly, trying and failing to keep a straight face, “and now the tavern floor beneath you is soaked.”
Noelle gasped. “No! Ugh. Sorry, guys. Um—I said that, to be clear. Not Sapine. She, um… she doesn’t say sorry.”
As Asriel began to narrate again and rolled another D4, Berdly simply watched Noelle’s face for a moment, glowing red with joy and embarrassment, a golden light in her eyes, and felt himself relax.
“Now, we move to—”
“Hell yeah! My guy!” Susie interrupted, cutting Asriel off mid-gesture. She raised her eyebrows at Kris and Noelle and held up a character sheet depicting a hulking, toothy stick figure. “So I’m Bone Crusher, Crusher of Bones.”
“Okay, maybe don’t call them—”
“I’m chilling in the back, chugging blood juice like at church,” she said, grinning. “Just straight up chugging it out of one of those big beer mugs. And I’m, like, eight feet tall.”
“I don’t think ‘blood juice’ is very wintry,” Noelle said, too timid to be a protest. “Cranberry juice could work… but, I mean, if you want…”
“Blood is hot, though, right?”
“Well, yeah, it’s…” Noelle looked troubled for a moment, and then laughed. “I guess it’d keep you warm—”
“I walk up to a guy,” Susie announced.
Asriel sighed and clenched his jaw in a smile. “Uh… okay. You approach the age-appropriate bar, and the tavernkeep says—”
“I clock him in the face!”
Kris snorted and hid their face behind their sketchbook. “Dude.”
Berdly clicked his tongue. “So hasty, Susan.” He respected the tenacity, though, even if he felt his compatriots were somewhat underprepared.
“Um.” When Berdly looked again, Asriel’s smile had morphed into a strained grimace. His eye twitched. “Okay, so, you’re going to have to roll for that.”
Following an overly complicated but frankly exhilarating altercation between Crusher and the innocent tavernkeep, Asriel rolled the D4 once again.
Despite himself—his ever-casual air, his self-assured confidence, his only having eaten one snowflake cookie—Berdly felt his stomach swoop. If this was his turn, he needed to be prepared to properly embody the character he’d spent the past few days lovingly crafting. If it was Kris’ turn… he needed to watch for weak points and adjust his performance accordingly. He would not be one-upped by that scoundrel.
Asriel tossed the die and glanced up. “Okay. Now, Berdly, tell us what—”
Thunder struck, reverberating through the room.
“In the coldest corner of the tavern,” Berdly rasped out, “illuminated only by dying candlelight… a sound in the stillness.”
Thunder struck again.
And again.
Oh, no. Why was it looping? Berdly scrambled to skip to the next sound effect on his phone—a quiet flick of metal.
“That quiet rhythm… What could it be? Perhaps… someone playing with… a blade,” he continued, dramatically drawing an intricate and ornate decoupage dagger from his satchel. This would’ve been a good time for that thunder sound again, but oh, well. “The figure standing there, tall as the shadows—maybe one of them himself—is… the Snatcher.”
A final horror sting sound hung in the air for a moment, and then Berdly cleared his throat, taking a little bow.
Noelle clapped politely. “Ooh!”
“Nerd,” Susie said like a swear.
And Kris, goddamn Kris, just sat there, silent as ever, their expression unreadable beneath the stoic shadows of their face.
Berdly narrowed his eyes at them, half in assessment, half in challenge. Surely they couldn’t best that performance!
“And tell us—just who is this mysterious Snatcher?” Asriel asked, an eyebrow raised.
“Why, only one of the most notorious thieves east of the Flurrian mountains,” Berdly supplied easily, turning up his chin as he spoke. “Harper Sykerylor… a half-human, half-elf rogue hailing from the warmer plains of the south, who turned to a life of crime when his human parent was taken by his elven father’s vengeful family for reasons yet unknown.”
At that, Kris’ face moved minutely.
“Although their few remaining loved ones know them as Harpy,” Berdly continued, clutching his wings to his chest—for the drama of it all, only, “all of Flurria knows and fears them only as the terrifying Snatcher, a dark and brooding thief as cold-hearted as the snow itself…”
“Dark and brooding,” Susie echoed with a snort.
Berdly glared at her, hoping his own eyes still retained some of Harpy’s fearsome aura. “Some of us are trying to take this seriously, Susan!”
Lying down across the couch, Susie blindly grabbed around at the table until she landed on a cookie, and popped it into her mouth. “Suit yourself, man,” she said, mouth full (still gross).
Noelle chewed on her lip for a moment. “I think Harpy’s cool, Berdly,” she offered, barely above a whisper.
She had been surprised, Berdly recalled, when he told her a few days prior about his plan to play a half-human—something about his ‘fragile masculinity.’ As if! Berdly was plenty manly, and anything but fragile; the same went for Harpy, even if they were half-human. His decision to play a differently gendered character said nothing about him. It was just that Berdly knew how to commit to a true character performance.
Besides, in a game like D&D, where Berdly could be human, in a way… Well, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity for rippling mammalian muscles, for one! Or the attached nipples.
As if she could tell what he was thinking, Noelle’s face scrunched a little, and she looked expectantly at Asriel.
“Right. So we find the Snatcher, Harpy, lurking in the corner,” Asriel narrated. “Is there anything in particular he’s waiting for? Anyone?”
Berdly straightened his shoulders. “The Snatcher waits for no one,” he said coolly. “He sidles up to the bar.”
“The tavernkeep is holding a cold steak on his cheek because Arand—or, sorry, Bone Crusher, uh… tried to punch his lights out,” Asriel said, laughing softly against the back of his hand, “and he says, ‘Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. What can I get for you? A drink? A room? A quest?’”
“‘I require no drink but the tears of my enemies, and no lodging but… the open road,’” Harpy murmured, staring at the tavernkeep as if through him. Berdly didn’t narrate that last bit, but his recreation with his own empty stare at Asriel hopefully spoke for itself. “‘Tell me, good sir. Has a drow by the name of Vaerevven Amastacia ever passed through these doors? I have reason to believe she has information regarding the whereabouts of my long-lost parent, and I,’” Berdly continued as Harpy, low and intimidating, clenching his fist for effect, “‘would like to speak with her. But first, know this, my good man—I am something of a practiced rogue. You see, I have a… certain set of skills—’”
“And lastly, Kris!” Asriel interrupted with a cough. He turned to them with a softer, truer smile on his face. “Kris, tell us about Valiance.”
Kris nodded, licked their thumb, and used it to make a few final graphite smudges before setting down their pencil. “This is Val,” they said, and turned the book around.
There, rendered in surprisingly skillful detail—Berdly had seen Kris slacking off and doodling in class, as any delinquent might, but he hadn’t known, much less thought, that they were any good—was a very, extremely, strikingly, somewhat upsettingly cool-looking tiefling.
Val was all long, slender lines and subtly sharp angles of muscle, with delicate yet elaborate jewelry strewn along their pointed ears and up their spiraling horns. Their long robe was billowing in some unseen breeze and slitted high up the leg, tucked up into a sleek armored metallic bodice. A loose shawl hung around their head; their slim hands wrapped around the hilt of a crystalline sword, and strangely, it all reminded Berdly of this weird dream he’d had recently…
He shook his head.
When he came back to himself, Noelle was beaming. “Whoa! Kris! So cool! I missed seeing your art.”
Kris nodded bashfully, offering a furtive close-lipped smile. “Val’s a tiefling paladin. Oathbreaker. They’re dressed like this right now. They’re sitting by the fire. They can turn it blue and stuff, since they’re a demon—fire magic. Probably sharpening their sword.”
“What’s the festive drink of choice, huh?” Susie asked, propped up on her elbow to lean down over Kris’ shoulder. “Eggnog? Enemies’ tears? Blood juice?”
Kris frowned. “Hot chocolate with mini marshmallows and a cinnamon stick,” they replied, seriously and immediately.
Unbidden, a mental image of Val’s bodice shimmering in the blue fire as they hunched over their sword, pausing for sips from a mug of hot chocolate, flashed across Berdly’s mind. It was deeply uncool. The mini marshmallows definitely subtracted from the cool factor.
Yet, still, as Kris smiled slightly (and tauntingly; it had to be) and retreated to curl up at the foot of the couch, Berdly couldn’t shake the sense that he’d been one-upped here, somehow.
He shivered.
Yeah. Something was incredibly not cool.
As the night wore on, the cutting winds of the first-level battlefield and the Holidays’ AC unit had begun to embitter both the party and its players (not themselves a party; more of a… neutral gathering, really). The voices over the table grew brisk and snappy as they repeatedly failed to gang up on a simple frost goblin.
“Just because you say you chop his head off doesn’t mean you do,” Asriel reiterated, putting his own head in his hands. “You have to roll.”
Susie rolled, but only her eyes. “That’s lame, though! What’s the point of playing pretend if you have to do math? Even real battles don’t have this many numbers!”
“You can’t just… not have any rules!”
Susie sighed dramatically and gave Kris another look. “See what I mean? So similar.”
Kris shook their head vehemently.
“Ugh. Fine. I’ll do your math,” she conceded, and tossed a die on the table in a harsh clatter. “Berdly! Uh… eleven plus four.”
Noelle’s eyes and smile went wide, gobsmacked. “Susie, are you serious?”
“N… no?”
“Convincing,” muttered Kris.
“Whatever. Do I hit him or not?”
Asriel laughed. “His AC’s 13, so yes.”
“Speaking of AC,” Berdly said, pausing briefly to gauge everyone’s appreciation of his clever pun, “is anyone else, ahem, feeling a bit… gelid? I mean, I’m no snowbird, but really!”
“‘You took off your shirt,’” Val replied—presumably Kris was speaking as Val, anyway, although they still spoke in the same flat, apathetic voice as usual.
“I’m cold, not Harpy! They’re fine!”
“There’s snow everywhere.” Kris pointed to the white map tiles organized along the table, and then gestured around in the air, as if Val thought Harpy couldn’t see the flurries all around them.
He resented that—and Berdly did, too! “And? What should that matter, to a fiery warrior in the blazing heat of battle?”
“He doesn’t have fire magic like me and Noelle. He doesn’t have feathers. Or fur. Or chest hair, because half-elf. And his nips are out.”
Noelle squeezed her eyes shut. “Please don’t say ‘nips.’”
Berdly scoffed. What was even the point of removing one’s shirt if not to have one’s ‘nips’ out? Otherwise, it simply revealed unnecessary vulnerabilities. This was why Berdly was still wearing his perfectly sculpted papier-mache breastplate multiple hours into the session.
Harper “The Snatcher” Sykerylor required no such defenses themself, though, for unbeknownst to their compatriots, their true Achilles heel could not be found on their physical form; rather, frozen beneath the sheer, icy layers of his heart, there lay a dark secret that—
“Berdly, you’re next in initiative.”
He cleared his throat. “Right. I’ll add my Dex to this,” he said, blowing on his fist for luck before rolling the die, “plus I can use Sneak Attack, so that’s… ahem, five piercing damage! How’s that for nips out in the snow, Kris?”
He briefly paused on a haughty smile for dramatic effect, and then turned to Kris, whose busy hands had returned to absently drawing. Looking into their eyes, scarcely visible behind their mess of hair, it was clear their heart wasn’t in the combat—much like Val, who Berdly could imagine with perfect clarity twiddling their thumbs on the sidelines of the fight, surely too concerned with their perfect looks to risk tearing up their stupidly elegant robes in battle. Some ‘valiant’ paladin!
Berdly and Asriel exchanged stats for another moment (although Berdly was numerically gifted indeed, he was nowhere near as much of a stats buff as someone like Noelle; it simply wasn’t of as much interest to him as an artfully woven story) before the goblin was declared dead.
“Harpy leans over him and whispers, ‘Get wrecked,’” Berdly narrated. “Spelled like ‘W-R-E-C-K,’ though. I mean, of course he wouldn’t get the video game meaning. It’s a metatextual reference, for the unenlightened among us.”
“‘Among us,’” Noelle echoed with a giggle.
Asriel groaned in dismay.
Susie seemed genuinely puzzled (naturally) but laughed along with Noelle anyway.
But Kris gave Berdly no such satisfaction—or any reaction at all. His attempts to torment Kris with superior gaming lingo had once again proven unfruitful. Had it always been so difficult to get under their skin? Had he always wanted to so badly?
They just kept drawing while rotating another matte gray miniature in their hand: different from the one they had been referencing earlier, but still a tiefling, now lunging with a sword in hand. They must have been drawing Val in the fight they had barely fought! Well, history was written by the victors, Berdly supposed, and the victors rarely did much fighting themselves. (Briefly, his thoughts wandered to Major General Macadamia and the dead of the Nutcracker Brigade.)
Kris was a known cheater, so it only made sense their D&D character would be similarly lazy and delegatory. Some people simply lacked the brainpower to play characters with experiences and desires outside of their own. They were too one-dimensional, too narrow-minded, too simple…
They turned their sketchbook again and pointed to a new drawing of Val (somehow in an entirely new, impossibly more badass outfit). “Tail’s wagging ’cause we won.”
Susie’s eyes narrowed. “Dude, I thought you weren’t being a… dog taxi thing.”
“Tabaxi?” Asriel whispered.
Kris pointed again helpfully at an illustration of Val’s pointy devil’s tail.
Berdly sniffed. True to life indeed. “But they didn’t even help!” he protested.
“I told Susie what cantrip to use earlier.”
“But you did that, not Val! They have no reason for tail wagging.”
Kris simply shrugged. “I can’t do it in real life, so.”
Fuming, Berdly glanced around the table only to find his comrades looking equally unaffronted (although Noelle did look amused by Kris’… canid tendencies). Now that he thought about it, though, of course it made sense—all of them were using D&D, this purest and noblest art form, as a mere game for their own shallow wish fulfillment!
For someone as socially savvy as himself, psychoanalysis came naturally.
Clearly, Sapine was an outlet for Noelle’s innermost volatile emotions: rage, passion, sorrow. Bone Crusher (actually named Arand according to their character sheet, apparently at Kris’ insistence upon a real name), Susie’s hulking, axe-wielding dragonborn barbarian, was transparently Susie’s idea of peak badassery. And Val, of course, was Kris’ lazy self-insert.
It was shameful, really. Good thing Berdly would never stoop to something so vapid as playing make-believe. He had respect for the story. He had originality! He was a true gamer.
Unlike Kris, he was above projecting onto his character.
Harpy was furious.
Berdly wasn’t, because Berdly kept cool in the face of danger—and mild annoyances.
Of course, Harpy did, too. They were a hardened criminal with dozens of jailbreaks under their belt. They had stood unflinchingly before battlefields of hired hitmen, blizzards that wrought famine on their nation, eldritch beasts, and even their parent’s captors. But every fictional character needed some faults.
And Harpy’s, the party learned after a few sessions, was Val.
The two bickered during every fetch quest when Harpy went off on his own self-appointed mission, every puzzle when Val refused to offer any assistance but snide commentary, every character beat when Val interrupted an emotional moment with a cool stunt or Harpy interrupted some silly banter with a dramatic monologue.
Although Berdly himself was above such petty squabbles, Kris, ever the immature one, wasn’t, and therefore neither was Harpy.
It was true to his characterization, Berdly thought. The Snatcher was known all across Flurria as a vengeful and raptorial thief and assassin. They had dedicated their life to enacting revenge upon their elven family; of course when they were slighted, they struck back.
An icy voice hisses from the dark: “Sapine… You try in vain to return warmth to this land. Your efforts at harmony are futile, sorceress. Your final flame is about to be snuffed out.”
A dark figure looms over the pale horizon, but before Sapine can step toward them, a flurry of blinding white swirls up before our heroes, and when it dissipates, the figure is gone.
“‘Get back here!’” Sapine screamed into the distance. Noelle was delivering an especially compelling performance this session. It was a little unnerving how intensely she enacted Sapine’s bouts of rage, but Berdly supposed this was a better outlet than when, in a dream, she shook him so hard he was still dizzy when he awoke. “‘You terrible warlock! You fool! The subjects whose fealty you want so badly won’t survive another snowfall!’ Gosh, this guy is the worst…” She huffed.
“Right? And what did he mean about a ‘final flame’ getting snuffed out?” Susie asked, bumping Noelle’s shoulder with her own. The two of them were sitting together on the couch today. “Ominous as hell.”
Asriel shrugged with a knowing smile. “Great question! Anyway…”
Susie groaned in feigned annoyance.
“We cut back to the rest of the party,” Asriel narrated, “tracking a dragon poacher who’d come after Crusher last session. Since we don’t have a ranger, a rogue’s about as close as you’re gonna get. Harpy, give me either an Intelligence check, add Nature or Investigation, or a Wisdom check, add Survival.”
Berdly rolled accordingly and did some basic mental math. “That’s a 19,” he said, perhaps a bit smarmy.
“Ooh,” said Noelle.
“Harper, with a 19, you are able to trace footsteps through an embankment of snow,” said Asriel, “clearly marking the poacher’s exact path into an outcropping of spruce trees.”
“I follow. ‘Stand back,’” Harpy instructed Crusher and Val in their characteristically gravelly and lispless voice. Berdly hunched his shoulders, clad in a new set of plastic pauldrons, to demonstrate Harpy’s tactical crouch.
“I guess we follow him,” Susie muttered, seemingly torn between being annoyed—or, rather, tsundere—toward Berdly and being eager to hunt down the poacher who had made an attempt on Crusher’s life.
The three of you track the poacher into a sparse evergreen forest. The boot tracks left behind seem fresh and fitted for narrow humanoid feet, with gaps between each mark that, to Harper, seem to indicate they were taking long strides.
You follow for nearly an hour, hacking away at the underbrush to stay on track, and the sun begins to set just as you happen upon a small makeshift lean-to.
“Yes! Found them,” Susie declared victoriously.
“I don’t know,” said Berdly (for perhaps the first time in his life). “A conspicuous shelter right at the end of a known criminal’s obvious escape path? Definitely suspicious… ‘Stand back,’” Harpy repeated. “‘It could be a trap.’”
Kris looked up from their phone (probably playing a mobile game, the plebeian) for the first time in several minutes. “Val stands in front of Crusher. ‘Oh, criminal…’” Val sang. “‘Come out, come out, wherever you are. I’ve got some fresh dragon meat for you…’”
“Dude,” Susie whispered harshly.
“Luring them out,” Kris explained.
“Yeah, to eat me!”
Kris’ slight smile flickered for a moment. “Won’t let them. ‘Oh, criminal!’”
Berdly’s eye twitched—calmly, mind you; he was being extremely calm. Harpy, however, was a different case. “‘Valiance, what in Blizzaria’s name are you doing,’” he hissed.
Asriel rolled something behind the DM screen.
“‘Luring them out,’” Kris repeated. Berdly knew it was Val, though, by how ingratiating it was.
“‘If the poacher is out here, you’re going to get us killed,’” Harpy stressed. “‘We—you can’t handle these people. They’re dangerous.’”
Asriel sucked air through his teeth and rolled an additional die.
“‘I’ve got fire magic,’” Val said, as if that solved literally anything.
“‘These people hunt dragons,’” Harpy retorted. “‘Not just dragonborn. Real dragons. All their stuff is flameproof, obviously! Listen, Val. I’ve been locked up with Flurrian poachers before. They are not to be messed with.’”
Asriel flipped through a notebook and scribbled something in pencil.
“‘If I didn’t know better,’” Harpy said, intense, and Berdly lowered his voice even further until his throat hurt a little, “‘I’d think you were working with them. But I know you’re not a traitor.’”
Minutely, Kris’ smile wavered again.
“‘Because you’re not smart enough for that!’” Harpy snapped. “‘You’re just… playing games!’”
Kris shrugged. “I mean, yeah.”
How could Val be so nonchalant—not collected like Harpy, the picture of cool composure, but apathetic—in the face of danger? How could Kris be so nonchalant about the D&D campaign? They had been a performer, once, playing tricks on Noelle and ballads on the piano. But a true performance couldn’t just be play, could it?
Asriel began to narrate: “In the woods behind—”
“Harpy pulls his dagger!” Berdly interrupted.
Asriel blinked. “Um. I didn’t get to finish, but okay. The poacher is—”
“Not on them,” Berdly grumbled. He swiveled his head toward Kris in the way he knew made them uneasy, a full 90 degrees, and narrowed his eyes at them.
There, at the edge of the couch, where Kris was now (tauntingly) dangling upside-down from the armrest by their knees, he could almost see Val: a devilish smirk across their deep blue face, their eyes flickering hot pink in challenge. They would have been draped more elegantly across the couch, looking, infuriatingly, somehow both austere and mischievous at once.
And had Harpy been in Berdly’s position, he would have hated them. Maybe he would’ve even felt a bit flustered, as Val raised their eyebrows in a gesture that simultaneously said ‘really?’ and ‘bring it on, then.’
Berdly, though, felt nothing of the sort. He was simply… method acting.
“‘I pull my dagger,’” Harpy repeated, slow, methodical.
Val snorted and hastily fumbled around for a D20 to roll for initiative.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Asriel interrupted, smacking his hand over V—Kris’ and wrestling the D20 away like it was a safety hazard. In Kris’ hands, it might have been. “No PVP! When did I say PVP was a thing?”
“But… but it’s in-character,” Berdly complained, still reaching for his trusty decoupage dagger.
“No friendly fire, please,” Asriel said with a strained smile.
“Oh, trust me,” Berdly mumbled as he retreated, resting back against the base of the armchair while Asriel figured out initiative for the actual enemy encounter. He glared at Kris, who simply snorted once more and returned to their phone, and he could feel embers burning. “Nothing about that fire was friendly.”
Harpy descended into madness like a falcon from the clouds: really, really fast.
Berdly discovered this during a volunteer shift at the library later that week. The few patrons who had braved the weather were either cozied up in reading nooks or playing computer games to wait out the snow, and Berdly had the main floor to himself.
Naturally, he spent the time writing.
Before leaving for the afternoon, Ms. Boom had graciously lent him some tea bags with which to stain Harpy’s lore documents, and he’d since busied himself with crumpling them up before laminating them for visual flair. Authenticity was very important, and if a certain somebody wasn’t going to take this campaign seriously, Berdly would simply have to pick up the slack.
Harpy’s words flowed from Berdly’s pen like they were personally guiding his hand: prison logs detailing their loneliness, unsent letters to their estranged parents, frenzied poems to their childhood friends and rivals.
Winter break was coming to a close, and with it, so would their brief D&D campaign. A final showdown against the dark warlock Cryogo loomed on the horizon. Their next session would likely mean a reckoning with Harpy’s family, an end to the poachers’ conspiracy, a final moment of true self-acceptance for Sapine, and… well, Val didn’t really have any character arc of which to speak. As expected.
So Berdly needed to prepare. After all, Harpy may have been crafted for this game in particular, but they had a story to be told, one that extended far beyond the table. He had a complex past, nuanced opinions, complicated relationships…
He tapped his quill (okay, a ballpoint pen, but held between his feathers it looked like a quill) against the page in contemplation. Perhaps he could use a second opinion.
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
@holidaygirl1225 Once again I require your assistence.
holidaygirl1225
Hi Berdly! :3 What’s up?
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
I am assembling some more pieces for my portfolio, if you will.
I know maybe you know what Kris thinks of Harpy. If that’s the sort of thing you talk about.
And I know everyone knows what VAL thinks of Harpy.
But what does SAPINE think of what VAL thinks of Harpy?
holidaygirl1225
Umm why???
I guess she thinks they don’t like Harpy and vice versa. IDK how anybody would think anything else! XD
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
True, they are sworn nemeses.
But what is the percieved reason they don’t like each other according to Sapine?
As for why, I am doing some in-character writing as finale prep for both myself and the DM. So I am trying to decide what Harpy thinks of what Sapine thinks of what Val thinks of Harpy.
holidaygirl1225
Ummmmm okey
For what? X)
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
A sonnet.
I DON’T write sonnets, for what it’s worth. HARPY writes sonnets.
Also, unrelated question. Would you say Valiance’s eyes are more roseate or fuchsine?
holidaygirl1225
Umm… has Kris ever even done a color drawing of them? Lol X)
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
Listen, it’s NOT weird.
holidaygirl1225
I didn’t say it was…?????
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
I can’t help it if Harpy (NOT me, for the record!!!) has been obsessing over them lately.
They (AND I, for the record!!!) believe Val is a threat to the party’s success. So they are justifiably suspicious and trying to gather intel. You know, as rogues do.
holidaygirl1225
Right…
Anyways, I guess Sapine would say you guys don’t like each other because Val annoys you. I only know about some of your backstory stuff OOC
*Harpy. Not you. Lol. She thinks Val annoys Harpy.
And she’s got no other opinions about it XD
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
Hmm… interesting. Harpy will need to have a conversation with her when the party regroups next session to insure Sapine is aware of Val’s conduct.
Thank you, my ungulate classmate. Now, I’ll be off. There’s much left to write…
holidaygirl1225
About Val’s eyes? Lol okey X)
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
It’s normal.
I don’t think Harpy would write a poem for Sapine, but I can write one for YOU if you’d like.
Would you say your pupils are more ovoid or ellipsoidal?
holidaygirl1225
Ummmm…
:T
Maybe oblong?
smartgeniusinstantmessenger
PERFECT.
Of course, it wasn’t enough to merely develop Harpy as an original character; their very textual personhood was inextricably, metatextually tied to their role as a PC within the D&D gameworld.
(Or so would say the scholars in those neat “game studies” journals Berdly had found online. At least some educated people out there understood the emotional intricacies of Super Smashing Fighters as a form of art, communication, and, ultimately, love.)
That being said, he needed to prepare his stats, as well. The party was supposed to level up before the final boss fight, and he needed to select Harpy’s new abilities for both maximum tactical improvements and faithfulness to the character.
Once again, Berdly found himself perched behind the circulation desk, poring over the D&D reference book Noelle had lent him at the start of the break.
Now, where were the rules regarding Uncanny Dodge when receiving several attacks in one turn…?
He turned another page only to find a beautiful illustration of a snowy owlbear carelessly smudged with graphite. “Gasp!” he said aloud. How could darling Noelle have done such a thing?
The rest of the spread was similarly bracketed in pencil markings: messy notes in handwriting that resembled an earlier form of Asriel’s now-elegant cursive, equations in neat print which must have been Noelle’s movement speed calculations, and skulls-and-crossbones and cool S’s that almost seemed like something Susie would draw.
But Susie would’ve never had access to this book. Even when Berdly brought it along to sessions, the massive tome of arcane wisdom scarcely left its dedicated cardboard sheath at his side. So…
Berdly traced a feather over the fading pencil lines.
December’s loss hung over each winter in Hometown, silent but heavy, like a blanket of snow. Of course he’d felt it in Noelle’s house before, in moments of dusty, empty quiet; it’d be impossible not to. But now, playing this game with everyone, it felt heavier than ever.
Each session resurfaced inside jokes Asriel would abort halfway through, attempts at callbacks to amateurish campaigns Dess had run when they were kids. Noelle would giggle awkwardly, and Kris would freeze and shrink impossibly smaller, into themself.
And each time, Berdly felt frozen himself. He would duck his chin and stare intently at the carpet for a moment, or at the cookie tray on the coffee table, or at Susie, who seemed to feel equally out of place. They had never known her. They didn’t know how to talk about her.
It seemed like maybe they weren’t supposed to.
Berdly flipped through a few more pages of her ugly little doodles, strangely tangible. For someone who had only ever existed to him as this unspeakable, larger-than-life concept, her little drawings in unsharpened pencil were real. It was nauseatingly… alive.
He turned pages until he couldn’t see any more.
Instead, he found better sketches—good ones, actually, messy but surprisingly skillful mimicries of the official Daggers & Dangers monster art printed in the book.
Of course… It was just like Kris to heartlessly vandalize a poor, innocent book, the miscreant. Berdly shook his head.
There were only a handful of their sketches across a couple of out-of-the-way pages, and none of Val—not that Berdly had been expecting that; that would be silly. Of course there were none of Val—but several of glamorous mages and stoic swordspeople and canon D&D monsters with extra horns added.
Berdly ran a feather over those, too: the sure, graceful, sweeping lines of humanoid faces and flowing cloaks.
Defacing a book was never okay, but, well… maybe exceptions should be made for quality art, he thought. As much as he loathed Val and all they stood for, Berdly could appreciate their beauty—in a purely objective, critical sense, of course! These older sketches of Kris’ were no different.
After the campaign, he knew he’d have to give the book back to Noelle. After all, the only library sin greater than drawing in a book was not returning it at all.
But it had already been so thoroughly vandalized, so much so that it’d be formally withdrawn from a real archive. In that case, would it really be so bad to remove a page or two and keep—
“Berdly.”
He slammed the book shut.
What was he thinking? Ripping out bound pages? That… that was bibliophilic sacrilege! He could never… not even for such beautiful…
“Berdly.”
Wait a second.
That flat, disinterested voice, repeating his name more like a neutral observation than the opening to a conversation…
“Dude,” Susie interrupted. “Are you, like, good?”
Berdy took a breath and sat up. “Kris! Susie! Funny seeing you here!” he squeaked out.
“D&D at work,” Kris observed, pointing at the (now shut, thankfully) book.
Berdly laughed haughtily. “Naturally. I’m dedicated to my craft, Kris.”
“No kidding,” Susie muttered under her breath.
“Is there something I can help you two with?” Berdly asked in his worst customer service voice. “I believe the easy readers are to your left.”
“No way,” Susie complained. “We’re here for the computer lab.”
“Ah! Hoping to print some spell cards?” Berdly reached under the desk to fish his own for Harpy out of his satchel, brandishing them with a grin. “We have corner rounders in the die-cut closet, if you’d like to finally attempt some professionalism.”
Susie squinted. “Uh, no, thanks. Not trying to do any arts and crafts… Wait, ‘die cut?’ What? Sounds metal!”
“And rubber,” Berdly confirmed. “Do—”
“Berdly,” Kris said, with purpose. They were unreadable as ever. “How’s Harper?”
Berdly felt his eye twitch. “You know how Harper is! Val tried to get him killed last session—again!” he whisper-shouted. He might have been mad, but he respected the sanctity of the library above all else. “Plus, now those poachers know they’re the Snatcher, and if they’re actually working for the Sykerylors and word gets back to Harpy’s father, they are well and truly dead.”
Infuriatingly, Kris shrugged. “Val’s doing good.”
“Val’s doing nothing! They just sit around and look pretty!” Berdly hissed.
Susie blinked. “Uh—”
“Of course they’re doing ‘good!’” Oh, Berdly was mad. His voice rose from a whisper to a regular inside voice. “They’ve had no personal development! No intrigue! No complex inner struggles reflected through external battles against enemies! Sure, they’re mysterious, but only because that’s all there is to them!”
After a moment of silence, Berdly huffing, Val said, “‘Mysterious and pretty. According to you.’”
Berdly felt himself grow hotter with rage. “You—”
“There’s other stuff to Val,” Kris said. Their voice wavered slightly as they went on, hoarse with disuse. “It’s just private. I don’t need to loredump it on you guys. You don’t need to know. That’s up to them. It’s… Val’s choice.”
Berdly sputtered.
Kris coughed. “Ow.”
“Hell yeah, man,” said Susie, finally, and gave Kris an overly aggressive fist bump. “Alright, nerd. Let’s go destroy some keyboards.”
Kris held up their hands and wiggled their fingers at her. Berdly had no thoughts about this. Nope. None at all.
Kris stumbled over their own feet racing Susie to the computer lab, and Berdly glared at them as they went, his throat fluttering to flush out the heat that had risen in his face. Stupid Kris. Stupid Val.
“‘Hey,’” they said. They were turned to look back at him, standing in the open doorway to the computer lab.
Berdly was almost too embarrassed to look, but Harpy felt compelled—and he was nothing if not a method actor. “‘What?’”
Val smiled, thin and teasing. It glinted in the light. “‘See you.’”
The final battle against Cryogo raged on for hours.
Well, many of those hours were taken up by Berdly’s insistence on resolving story beats via mid-combat monologues, as well as Kris and Susie’s shared impulse for reckless experimentation and impossible rolls. The battle no longer felt particularly climactic. But it was crucial and dramatic nonetheless!
“Cryogo chuckles,” Asriel narrated, followed by a poorly voice-acted deep laugh, “but this time, you can see he’s holding his side where Sapine’s Counterspell hit him.”
“He’s low,” Berdly deduced.
“Kris, bud, you’re up,” said Asriel with a slight smile, tapping on the chipboard back of their sketchbook.
Susie whooped loudly. “Get his ass!”
Kris nodded solemnly and took the die. “‘I still got Searing Smite?’”
Noelle nodded, glancing down at her own notebook full of the party’s current stats. It was really meant to be Asriel’s job, but Kris and Susie were essentially giving negative effort, and who was Berdly to deny Noelle the joy of arithmetic?
“‘Cool. Sword’s on fire,’” Val explained, probably looking upsettingly dashing in their previously elaborately described battle vestments. “‘I lunge at him.’”
“‘Wait!’” Harpy complained. Berdly gestured wildly at the huge map spread over the coffee table. It was so big that even the cookie tray had been relegated to the couch. “‘I’m right behind him! Sneak Attack, remember?’ Kris!”
Val shrugged. “‘Nips out in the snow,’” they reiterated. Seemingly unable to conceal a smile, they added, “‘Fire’ll warm you up.’”
“‘Ugh!’”
“‘Ice guy. It’ll work,’” Val reasoned. “‘I lunge at him,’” they repeated seriously, and Kris rolled the die across the table.
It wobbled to a stop right under Berdly’s beak.
A natural 1.
“‘Valiance!’” Harpy screamed.
“Dude,” Susie shouted, shoving Kris’ shoulder.
“So,” Asriel said slowly, “that misses pretty bad…”
“Dude, did you just kill Berdly?” Susie cackled.
“‘Um,’” Val said. Kris added, “Uh.”
“Val!” Berdly shouted, wavering between his lowered voice for Harpy and his own pitchy shrieks. “You—ugh! Harpy has so many plotlines left to resolve! So many relationships to rekindle! You careless buffoon! You know I have low HP right now! If Harpy dies—”
“Um. Berdly, we have healers,” Noelle said in the lilted voice she always took on when she was trying to be comforting. It was not very effective. “It’s okay, really!”
“You’re so… inconsiderate! Just prancing around, being all suave and gorgeous—just ‘having fun!’ But guess what? When we all die, it will be your fault!” Berdly yelled.
Kris stilled for a long moment.
“Dude,” Susie said.
Berdly heaved and reached for his own dice.
“Uh!” Asriel said.
Kris’ face was impossibly pink. They looked away, not coyly like Val might, but somehow… ashamed.
Berdly took another breath, slower this time. “Ah. Um. Kris, I—”
And then a D4 hit him right in the forehead.
Berdly gawped. How… Did they really…
The gall. The audacity. That charming little devil!
He grabbed as many dice as he could wrap his wing around and wound his arm back.
“Hey!” Asriel shouted. “Hey! I said no PVP! So, like, definitely no real PVP!”
“‘Valiance, your foolhardy escapades have gone far too long unchecked,’” Harpy growled (the only appropriate descriptor). Berdly chucked all the dice in his hand in Kris’ general direction. “‘I won’t stand for it anymore!’”
Much like Val’s Searing Smite, it missed. The dice clacked against the map tiles, and Val grinned devilishly. “‘What if I won’t stand for your boring monologues anymore?’” they retorted as Kris opened their arms in challenge.
“‘Boring? You—’”
“Kris!” Asriel’s voice rose over Susie’s cackling. “I will call Mom!”
“‘You think you’re more important than the rest of us,’” Val said, “‘just ’cause you’re so edgy?’”
“‘Um, you aren’t exactly, uh, un-edgy yourself!’” Harpy yelled, their voice cracking. “‘Otherwise, what’s with the outfits?’”
“‘Me, edgy? Oh, Harpy,’” Val said, putting their hands on the table. “‘Quite the opposite. I think I’m plenty smooth.’”
Harpy definitely did not squawk at that, because half-elves did not squawk.
Somewhere, Noelle whispered, “What… is even happening right now?”
“Dude, this is gold,” Susie said.
“‘The difference is I don’t have to try so hard,’” Val continued. Slowly, they rose, pushing up off the table like a prowling cat.
Harpy’s pulse quickened: probably a basal prey instinct—or a normal half-elf instinct, since they were a half-elf, of course.
“‘I like being Val,’” they said, their voice slightly unsteady. “‘I don’t have to pretend I’m something I’m not.’”
Berdly lunged at them.
“Berdly! Kris!” Noelle yelled.
“Aw, jeez. Come on. Break it up, guys,” Asriel muttered helplessly.
Berdly didn’t hear anything after that.
The two of them had wrestled over Super Smashing Fighters as preteens enough times for Berdly to know all of Kris’ weak spots: the ribs, the solar plexus, the ticklish spots on their inner elbows.
While Harpy was a skilled fighter, though, Berdly was admittedly… more academically than physically inclined. The pen is mightier than the sword and all that, he thought absently. He was a little preoccupied.
It also didn’t help that Kris seemed… a lot stronger than when they’d last bickered and fought like this years ago. Was this really just human puberty, or had they been working out or something? Their frame was still scrawny, far from Val’s slender athleticism, but their grip felt nearly as strong as Val’s would have.
In Berdly’s imagination, anyway.
Not that he was regularly imagining Val’s grip strength.
“‘See? You’re, ah—a competent combatant, Valiance. Why don’t you act like it in actual battles,’” Harpy panted, “‘instead of posing for portraits?’”
“‘What, you mean sitting around and looking pretty?’” Val taunted Harpy, making a grab for their wrists. “‘It’s a talent. You said so yourself.’”
“Okay, guys, this is a little much,” Susie said.
Val scrabbled for Harpy’s arms, but his roguish elusivity let him slip away. He reached for the dagger sheathed at his side.
“‘Heh,’” Harpy said, brandishing their very real and not at all decoupaged weapon. “‘Not so, ah, intimidating without your trusty blade, now, are you, Valiance?’”
Val said nothing in reply.
As Harpy readied another incisive comment, though, something hit the backs of his knees, and they buckled, sending him stumbling back onto the coffee table.
Val swept their leg out from under him, holding Berdly down by the arms. Their smile was wide and conniving.
“Kris!” Asriel shouted.
Berdly was frozen still. D&D figurines pressed into the back of his cardboard chestplate, and his talons clawed around for purchase on the floor they could no longer reach.
Above him, Val leaned down, the thick curtain of their hair shielding both their faces from the rest of the party. The battlefield fell away, and Berdly could only see their face—their teasing grin, their scar-speckled face, and their eyes.
As it turned out, they were neither roseate nor fuschine. They were red, a brilliant crimson-brown that bore into him.
He shuddered.
“Answer your question?” they asked, so low only he could hear.
He nodded. Definitely still intimidating.
Their eyes gleamed with a strange light. Then, they let go, leaving Berdly awestruck on the table. “Settled,” Kris said, giving a casual thumbs-up to their brother. “Roll damage.”
“Um,” said Noelle.
“Dude,” said Susie.
Asriel took a deep breath and let out his longest and most strained sigh yet. “Uh! Well! Okay!”
Once again, Kris had ruined everything. Typical.
The final session had been going great up until Val had decided to provoke Harpy! But despite Berdly’s best efforts at raising morale with yet another rousing in-character speech, the ruined battlefield layout and awkward atmosphere meant everything had wrapped up fairly quickly. They had banished Cryogo, restored warmth to Blizarria, and everybody had gone home.
That night, back in his bedroom, Berdly’s thoughts wandered to—who else?—Major General Macadamia of the Nutcracker Brigade.
Much like he had defeated Captain Chestnut and rescued Czarina Tsuntsun, so had Harpy defeated the warlock and rescued the seasons. But… where did that get him, in the end? When the battle was won, what was left for Macadamia the man?
Berdly sighed, already feeling the loss of Dess’ D&D book and all the vibrant warmth it concealed. His room was cold in the night.
Harpy had reunited with his long-lost human parent and enacted some nebulous off-screen revenge against his elven father, sure. He had taken up the mantle of the Snatcher again, this time for good: poaching poachers in defense of his dragonborn compatriots, yes.
But they existed beyond the confines of winter break, and Berdly’s lore binder, and Kris’ mean-spirited taunts. They had to.
Berdly knew they were missing something—a loose end left untied—but he wasn’t sure what.
Knock, knock, knock.
His eyes widened. A uniquely and intentionally patterned door-knocking sequence? A fellow rhythm game connoisseur, perhaps, at his door? He batted his eyelashes to himself. Surely it wasn’t Noelle, so…
Berdly hurried to the front door, still half-clad in his LARP armor (including the regrettably now-dented chestplate), and twisted the handle.
“Hi,” Kris said.
“You—What do you want?” Berdly demanded. He felt more tired than angry, now, but something about Kris’ presence at his door was quickly riling him up again.
“Let’s talk,” they said, more of a statement than a command or request. Their voice was hoarser than usual—maybe from all the louder-than-whispered arguing earlier—and they leaned heavily against the doorframe. They looked a little… sick, strangely.
Even more strangely, Berdly felt a pang in his chest at the thought.
Taking pity on them, he shushed them and led them to his bedroom. Kris had been over a few times to play video games when they were both much younger and Kris’ competitive spirit was still fiery and inextinguishable, and they clearly knew the way, although their knees wobbled a little as they walked.
The moment they were in his room, they breathed deeply. Then, they grabbed his shoulder again.
“Hey!” Berdly squawked, crouching into a fighting stance. “The campaign is over, you reprobate!” he complained, although a childish part of him thrilled at the prospect of more pointless, immature roughhousing.
They merely gripped his shoulders tighter. “‘Harpy.’”
Berdly grimaced. “Kr—‘Valiance?’” Harpy demanded. “‘Why have you come here so late, when our enemies have been vanquished? What unfinished business could we possibly have? Laughing at my dedication to the mission? Hmph. You’ve already had your fun. And I’ve already won.’”
Val smirked. “‘Have you?’” they asked in Kris’ voice, which grew steadier as they slipped back into character—at least, Berdly thought they were in-character. The line wasn’t always particularly distinct.
“‘Obviously,’” Harpy lied.
“‘But are you happy?’” Val asked, Kris’ fingers instinctively drumming a rhythm on his shoulder. “Did you… have fun?”
“Well, I…” Berdly sputtered. “Look, Kris. Our fun isn’t the same. Some of us actually like following the rules! Some of us like to develop rich inner worlds for our PCs instead of just… making a hot self-insert!”
Kris’ face did something funny. “And Harpy isn’t just a hot self-insert?”
“I… they’re… ugh!”
“And your ‘rich inner world’ involves aggressive, homoerotic poetry about my character?”
Berdly nearly leapt out of his feathers. “Whoa, okay, it’s not—When did you read—um—”
Kris drew in their lips as if holding back a snicker. “‘Harper Sykerylor,’” Val said, clicking their tongue. “‘I knew you had some strong feelings about me, but…’”
“‘Of loathing!’” Harpy argued. “We are sworn nemeses, you dolt!” Berdly shouted. He was going to faint.
“‘And you get so mad, denying it,’” Val continued. “‘No word for that, though. Shame.’”
Berdly gasped. “You are not calling Harpy a tsundere.”
“I’m not,” Kris agreed with a grimace. “‘But… well. You know,’” Val said. They sucked air through their teeth in reproach.
Berdly gaped at them.
Val leaned in closer.
Berdly went for the hair.
“Ow,” Kris complained, promptly elbowing Berdly in the stomach as they tried to wrestle away, biting down a giggle. “‘The Snatcher’s got me. Oh, criminal!’” they sang as Val. “‘Come save me! Anybody’s better than this ruffian, even a certain poacher…’”
Berdly shoved a wing over their mouth. “‘Shut up,’” Harpy said, laughing.
Kris spat around a mouthful of feathers. “Gross. Criminal,” they called out again, this time more characteristically monotone.
Berdly fumed. “You are insufferable,” he said, and he meant it—not in a tsundere way, mind you.
“And fun,” they stated flatly.
Somehow, though, it felt just as taunting as if Val had said it, or how Kris used to tease him over Smash and Minecrap.
Ugh, they really were just a lazy, wish-fulfilling self-insert, weren’t they?
“And pretty,” Kris added. “Oh, criminal, the Snatcher thinks I’m pretty… I am in need of urgent rescue. Oh, criminal. Oh, no. The humanity. Please help—”
For the second time that evening, Berdly lunged at them.
Kris reeled back. “Ow,” they repeated, grinning. “Dude. Sharp beak.” They rubbed their lips with the back of their hand.
Berdly felt horrifically hot. In the chill of his room, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been so warm before. Maybe Val really had hit him with their Searing Smite—and set his brain on fire. It seemed to be conspicuously missing in action. “Um. I—”
“Pecking you back,” Kris stated before promptly jamming their nose into his forehead. “Peck.”
Berdly glared at them. They were a real, actual, intolerable imbecile, in and out of character.
“Peck, peck,” they—Kris or Val; they were indistinguishable, really—repeated, monotone, beginning to mime flapping wings with their elbows.
He shoved them away in disgust.
They shoved Berdly in return, and he tugged haphazardly at their hair again, and they wrestled each other to the floor, kicking at one another’s stomachs and legs and bickering and laughing all the way down.
And when Kris attacked Berdly’s face with a kiss and a bite, he could have sworn he saw a devil’s tail flicking behind them.