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Elliot paused to take a sip of water from his glass, and then set it aside, wiping his lips. “-where was I?”“Well, ‘Hitch’-” Ruby shot him a momentary glare, apparently not happy that he had woven her house manager into the insane narrative that he had so far created. “- ‘Hitch’, our half-orc friend with a crossbow- he just showed us into a throneroom or something inside one of the spheres in this weird moon base.”“The Bureau of Balance,” Clancy corrected, tapping his pad of paper. He had been taking meticulous notes, which probably would have been helpful for him and his paladin character, Leitrum, if Elliot looked like he actually knew what he was doing.“Yeah, that, whatever,” Ruby said.“Should we be doing anything, or-?” Red wondered.“No, hang on, I’ve got this. Okay.” Elliot cleared his throat. “So, you walk down the carpeted runway to the, uh, throne portion of the throneroom, and you end up standing on sort of the edge of the a dais that the throne is sitting upon. And sitting upon the throne, upon the dais is a human woman in her, maybe early fifties. She’s got dark skin, white hair, and super blue eyes. And she’s got a pretty otherworldly quality to her in all honesty, you might think she’s an elf of sorts, if it weren’t so clear she was human.”“Is she an elf?” Del interrupted.Elliot rolled his eyes. “No, I just said she isn’t, keep up-”“But could she be?” Del rolled a dice. “I’m doing a perception check to check if the woman’s an elf or not. Aaand-” She frowned downwards at the result, and then stuck her tongue out, clearly annoyed. “That’s a one.”“You trip over your shoelaces, fall face-first onto the floor, and black out instantly,” said Elliot. “Okay, what else? She’s dressed in plain white robes, sorta ornate like? She’s also holding a long white oak staff. And I feel like it’s worth mentioning, she’s not an elf. This lady is completely human.”Out of the corner of her eyes, Ruby saw Clancy scribble ‘probably an elf’ onto his notepad.“And she looks at you,” Elliot said, “and she says- wait, hang on, I gotta figure out a voice for her…”“Welcome, the five of you, to the Bureau of Balance,” said the woman in white, studying the party of adventurers with an inscrutable look in her eyes. “It’s a…” She hesitated briefly, picking her words. “… an absolutely pleasure to have you here with us. I’ve heard a lot of things about your performance from Hitch.”Scarlett stared at the woman with faint suspicion. For some reason, she could have sworn that she knew her, but… “…thanks, I think.”“All good things, I hope,” said Leitrum, fiddling nervously with the hem of his cloak.“Of course they’re good things!” said Del, whose creator hadn’t actually picked a separate name for the character that she was playing. “We completely blitzed that last level, or did you not notice all of that totally cool sword fighting I did?”“To be fair,” said May, the Halfling cleric and healer, in her characteristically soft, near-unhearable tone, “we did end up decimating the entire town in the process.”“Nobody got hurt, right?” said Del, with a roll of her eyes.“Apart from an entire town’s worth of NPCs,” Adaira reminded her.“Well, yeah, but- details?”“But they are important details,” the woman in white pointed out. “And speaking of the decimation of the small town of Twinford- I’m going to need you to hand over the gauntlet that caused all of the destruction in the first place, so we can destroy it promptly and completely.”“Elliot, are you going to name everything in this game after stuff in real life?” Scarlett demanded of the ceiling, somewhat randomly. “Because that’s going to get super old, fast.”“I have no idea who Elliot is or who it is that you’re talking to,” said the woman smoothly. “Now- the gauntlet?”“I hand it to her,” said Leitrum, who had been carrying it in his Bag of Holding.“I have no idea why you’ve decided to announce the fact that you’re doing it to the world of general, but I appreciate it,” said the woman.“Wait, hang on, shouldn’t we discuss this first?” asked Ruby.“I mean, she seems trustworthy,” Clancy shrugged. “And besides, I’ve already done it.”“Hey, can I make a Perception check to see if she’s actually trustworthy?” Red asked, reaching for the dice and accidentally knocking them off the table in the process. “Ah- whoops! Hang on…”“Sure, you can do that,” Elliot said.“I think I’ll do that too,” said Ruby, and rolled the check just as Red remerged from under the table, looking sheepish. “I got… a 15, plus 2, so- seventeen. How’s that?”Red rolled her own check. “Five. Plus zero. Drat.”Elliot laughed. “Okay, so Red- you notice that the woman’s wearing white clothing, and you get distracted over how cool she looks.”Red seemed happy with that. “Nice.”“Ruby- you look at the woman for a long time, and eventually decide that-”“-yeah, you seem trustworthy,” Scarlett concluded. “Giving you the gauntlet wouldn’t be an awful idea, in my opinion.”“Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that, since it’s already been given to me,” said the woman dryly. “But nevertheless, thank you for your trust. You will be paid handsomely for your reclamation of this artefact.”“Money?- sweet,” said Del. “Sign me up.”“I’m okay with this,” said Leitrum. “I also volunteer as treasurer for this group, mainly so Ruby- sorry, Scarlett, and Del don’t get their hands on it.”“Wow, I thought we were friends,” Scarlett said, and then, “I roll for slight-of-hand to punch him on the arm without him noticing it.” There was a brief pause. “14,” she said, and then promptly punched him.Leitrum yelped, and then glare, considerably more sulky now. “All I’m saying is, the last time we let you have the money, you spent it on buying novelty T-shirts in the Twinford marketplace.”“And it was well worth it,” said Scarlett, proudly pulling off her cloak to reveal a shirt with the words ‘If you’re close enough to read this, you’ve just provoked an attack of opportunity’ in tiny print along the middle. “I don’t see what the problem is."The woman rolled her eyes in response to this- apparently completely done with this back and forth exchange of banter. “This is all well and good, but-”“Sorry, wait, what’s your name?” interrupted Adaira.“You may address me,” said the woman, “as the Director.”There was a brief pause as everybody exchanged glances.“That implies that ‘the Director’ isn’t your actual name,” said Del.“Of course ‘the Director’ isn’t my actual name, that would be ridiculous,” said the Director. “Nobody gets named something like ‘the Director’ at birth, can you imagine what my parents would have been thinking-““Okay, but if that isn’t your real name, what is?” Scarlett asked, curiosity piqued.“My real name is actually classified information,” said the Director with dignity. “But as I said, you can address me as ‘the Director’, or ‘Madame Director’, but…”“What sort of check would I need to make to find out her real name?” Del asked, cutting across Elliot’s narration.“Please don’t,” said Elliot.Clancy and Red both leaned over Del’s sheet of character information, looking over it for an appropriate modifier.“I’m thinking Charisma,” said Clancy, “or maybe some sort of Intelligence?”“I’m going to go with Charisma, I’ve got plus three in that,” said Del, and rolled the dice. “-natural twenty!”“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Elliot looked extremely tired all of a sudden. “Okay, you roll a twenty on Charisma, which means that-”Del smiled really goddamn sweetly and batted her eyelashes at the Director, whose face suddenly softened. She looked slightly wistful, and her blue eyes teared up. “Oh my god, I just realized. You remind me so much of the daughter I never had. I trust you completely and utterly now, and that trust extends to your friends as well. I’ll now proceed to tell you my full, classified, name, and my entire life story from the moment I was born-”“You’re overdoing it a bit,” said Mouse.“Her name was meant to be an important plot point in the fifth story arc,” Elliot said through gritted teeth, flipping through his notes. “And you guys just went and derailed it like that.” He made a small, annoyed noise. “You know what, I hadn’t even thought up a name for her yet. I was going to get to that later.”“So think one up,” Clancy said after a moment of silence in which Elliot hid behind his makeshift cardboard DM’s screen without saying anything.“I’m bad at thinking up names,” Elliot mumbled. “That’s why I’m stealing names from real life and everything. Um, Mrs Drisco?”“I may murder you if you pick that,” said Del cheerfully.“Mrs Digby, Mrs Beesman,” Elliot said, “-why don’t I know the first names of any imposing female figures in this town? This is kind of ridiculous. Um. My mom-?”“How about LB?” Ruby suggested, who had just worked out exactly who the Director reminded her so much of. Clancy made an odd noise of surprise from his end of the table.Elliot gave her a look of confusion. “Um, LB? Just, like, two letters?”“Yeah, it sounds kinda mysterious, right?” Ruby said. “It fits her character.”Elliot thought about this and then shrugged. “All right, yeah- I like that. LB it is, then.”“My actual name’s LB,” said the Director, wiping a tear from her eye, “but if you call me that in front of the rest of the Bureau, I can have you executed. Painfully.”“I roll for Charisma again,” said Del. The die bounced on the table, and then came to a halt. “Seventeen plus three- another twenty!”Del’s eyes grew huge and wide, Bambi-like, and the Director let out a loud sob, burying her face into the sleeves of her robes to muffle the sound. “Oh my god that’s adorable- okay, you can call me ‘LB’ in front of the rest of the Bureau if you want, but only you.”Scarlett, quite inexplicably, was laughing uncontrollably- she had braced herself against the wall, and was finding the entire scene disproportionately funny.“What does ‘LB’ stand for?” asked Adaira.“That’s actually double-classified,” said the Director, straightening up, and rubbing at her reddened eyes. “It’s so secret that even I’m not allowed to know it.”Elliot slapped Del’s hands away from where they were slowly creeping towards the dice again. “No, don’t you dare, that’s the fifth story arc you’re meddling with there.”“Now that all of that’s over and done with,” said the Director, now also known as LB, “I believe it’s time to deal with this pesky little item.” She held up the gauntlet in one hand. “And unless you’ve got any objections-?”“None,” said Leitrum quickly, before everyone could start arguing again over trivialities. “Let’s destroy it.”
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“Okay, so you’ve just reached a large wrought-iron door. You can hear faint screams coming from behind it, and there’s also the sound of rushing water.”
“Well, we gotta go through,” Del said, with the air of somebody stating the obvious.
Clancy pulled a face. “Aw, there’s people screaming back there, don’t you think we could just-”
“I- sorry, Adaira pushes open the door,” said Red.
“It’s locked,” Elliot reported. “It just kind of rattles a bit.”
“Adaira kicks the nearest wall in exasperation, because she’s completely out of spell slots and she can’t do anything,” Red said, crossing her arms and slumping down onto the table with a slight huff.
“Roll to kick the wall,” Elliot said.
Red wrinkled her nose, but did so. “That’s a 4.”
“You try to kick the wall, but miss and end up stubbing your foot on the ground. You take, ah-” he quickly rolled some dice. “-2 points of damage.”
“Ruby- um, I mean, Scarlett- could pick the lock,” Mouse suggested quietly, getting the adventure back on track. “You’re a rogue, right?”
“Sure am,” said Ruby, grabbing a d20. “Okay, I do that.”
“That’s gonna be hard, it’s a really hard lock to pick- you can tell it’s super strong just by looking at it-”
“Nat 20!” Ruby whooped, grinning widely. “The door’s open, and you know what that means….”
“Oh no.” Clancy covered his face with his hands. Del made a similar noise of exasperation, but Red looked expectant and
“That’s right- Scarlett rushes in!”
“And absolutely nobody is surprised,” said Del flatly.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The next Sunday morning and their ragtag roleplaying group had somehow managed to pull it together for yet another session of Dungeons and Dragons, hosted in the living room of Ruby’s house. Despite everybody’s frequent jibes at each other, their games were fun and everybody was enjoying themselves.By mutual agreement, Elliot Finch was still DMing, mainly because he had (apparently) plotted out an entire campaign that he swore would ‘knock their socks off, possibly through the wall and into a house some three blocks over’, and he was really extraordinarily good at coming up with character voices.They were currently some ways through another one of what Elliot was referring to as ‘lunar interludes’- which were, like the name suggested, one-shot interludes between the main adventures of the game. Also as the name implied, they took place on the moon- which wasn’t as weird as you might think at first, considering the weird, somewhat anachronistic setting of the campaign.The situation was as follows: their party had been in the process of attending a fun festival in celebration of the equinox when chaos had struck the organization, and most of the employees and attendants of the festival had been knocked out in a wave of sound and energy.The five players were leaned in, listening raptly Elliot as he described the situation.“-and then as the equinox passes, the music, whispers, and faint screaming also fades, and then it’s just back to normal,” said Elliot, full narrator-mode on. “It’s bright outside and the five of you are left standing. You have survived this terrible, cacophonous event.” He grinned, wriggled his fingers. “What do you do?”“Is anybody else awake, or-?” Del asked.“Most of the Bureau is unconscious or pretty much unresponsive, and nobody looks like they’re dead,” Elliot said, voice going more casual- sometimes he had a script of sorts prepared for major events in the game, and it was easy to tell when he wasn’t using it anymore- he got slightly more hesitant, not that you’d notice it. “But, uh, the Director looks like she’s kind of awake- she’s trying to sit up and everything.”“Gotcha,” said Del, running a hand through her hair. “Okay, so, uh… I head over to the Director, and say –” “What was that?” Del asked, stumbling over the bodies of several prone, groaning Bureau employees to come to a halt in front of the Director, who was just regaining consciousness. “That was freaky, man. Has that happened before, or...?”LB rubbed her eyes, and winced, pulling herself up from the ground. She looked more than a little dazed, not completely in touch with reality. “No, I – ““Is this a regular thing, something we should be expecting?” Scarlett chimed in, checking her tool belt to see if anything had been dislodged in the blast. Nothing had. “Because if so-”“Is anybody hurt?” May could be heard calling in the distance, checking on the rest of the fallen Bureau employees. “I have spell slots to burn, and it’s not like Elliot’s going to throw a dragon at us right now-”“I- I don’t know, I just-” LB looked really shaken. “She’s a little bit disoriented,” Elliot said, interrupting the flow of the in-character conversation. “She just woke up, and-”“I slap her,” said Ruby cheerfully, never one to waste a valuable opportunity.Elliot didn’t miss a beat. “She slaps you back.”“Booyah,” said LB, equally as cheerfully.Scarlett rubbed her face. “Okay, ow.”Elliot folded his arms, grinning. “But yeah, now LB’s fully awake, and she actually seems a lot happier than she did before the phantom whispers started out.”“Can I roll to see if the happiness is because she slapped Ruby?” Red asked, reaching for the dice.“That’s an Insight check,” Elliot told her.She nearly rolled the d20 right off the table, but managed to catch it just in time. “-fifteen!”“Then yes, it is absolutely because she slapped Ruby,” Elliot said.“Can I roll to see if she’s been waiting for the opportunity to do so ever since we joined?” Clancy asked.“-sure, if you want.” Elliot sighed, rolled his eyes. “You know, I actually have a plot for, for this thing- I got notes and everything. It’d be really nice if you could, I don’t know, actually investigate things that matter, for once?”“You have a plot?” Mouse asked, apparently stunned, just as Clancy triumphantly announced his roll of, “twenty-one!”Ruby laughed, and leaned backwards in her chair, stretching. She glanced sideways out of the living room, and saw Hitch- the actual Hitch, not the version in the story that Elliot had created- entering through the side door, looking distracted.“With a twenty-one, you figure out through pure intuition that LB is Ruby’s eternal arch-nemesis, and has been totally waiting for the opportunity to bitch-slap Ruby as soon as she was employed-”“I rolled a nineteen for Insight!” Del said. “Can I check to see if she’s plotting to slap the rest of us, as well?”Elliot threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “Fine! LB was lying from the beginning, her only motivation in life is not, in fact, to destroy all of the Grand Relics, she’s actually waiting for the chance to slap you all in the face, one at a time. LB wants to bitch-slap everyone, especially Ruby!”“LB wants to what?” said Hitch, dropping the carton of eggs he had been carrying through the living room in complete shock.There was a brief, confused pause. Del and Red, who had both been laughing uproariously throughout this, continued doing so. Mouse was giggling almost silently still, but paused to shoot Hitch a curious glance.Clancy and Ruby had been laughing too, but immediately stopped upon Hitch’s arrival. They exchanged quick what do we do sort of glances.Later, Ruby mouthed, eyes darting meaningfully towards the rest of the people at the table. Later, don’t ask what we’re-“Oh hey, butler man!” said Elliot, just noticing Hitch’s arrival for the first time. “I could make a really awful pun about eggs here-”“Please don’t,” muttered Del, recovering from the hilarity of the situation.“-but instead, I have a much better idea!” Elliot rubbed his hands together, looking the very portrait of an evil mastermind. He looked like he was going to break out into fits of giggles, but instead cleared his throat. “Um, so. LB- you know, the Director, she’s got to her feet, and she’s grinning, and everybody else is gradually recovering- Mouse, you don’t need to burn any spell slots, don’t worry, they’re all fine- and uh, she says…”“Well, that was actually the most fun that I’ve had in about a decade,” LB said briskly, brushing dirt and dust off her otherwise pristine white uniform, “and to be clear, I’m talking about the bit where I got to slap Ruby- whoops, did I say Ruby, I mean Scarlett- and not the bit where almost the entirety of my staff got knocked unconscious by forces unknown. That was really not fun. Let’s not do that again.”“Speak for yourself,” muttered Scarlett, rubbing her still-stinging cheek again. “I actually think I enjoyed the dark whispers of chaos more.”“Still.” LB regained some trace of professionalism, and turned to face the only other people in the building that were still functional. She cleared her throat; tucked her hands behind her back. “I need you all to debrief with me, in my office, but first- Hitch!”Hitch, mouthed Leitrum in wordless disbelief. “What am I doing here,” said Hitch flatly, standing up and emerging from the crowd of primarily unconscious people. “What are all of you even doing. Why are there so many dice on this table-”“Just in case you’ve all forgotten,” said Elliot, raising his voice over Hitch’s increasing noises of protest. “Hitch was the half-orc NPC who you originally met while fighting the Black Spider, a.k.a. Mrs Drisco-”“Yes, Elliot, we remember,” Ruby said from between gritted teeth, intentionally not looking at the actual Hitch.“You knocked him out after he rescued you from the effects of the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, stole his crossbow,” Elliot continued, pretending not to have heard her, “and then threatened him with torture until he agreed to show you what was going on-”“Yes, Elliot,” said Clancy loudly, “we remember.”“This was shortly after you destroyed an entire town along with everyone in it,” Elliot said, “and as I recall, you laughed about it loudly on several occasions, and haven’t shown any remorse at all-”“Yes, Elliot,” the entire table chorused at him, “we remember!”“Good,” said Elliot, folding his arms. “Just wanted to make sure you know how far you threw the plot off-track.”“I still have no idea what you’re doing or why I’m apparently a ‘character’ in your game,” Hitch said. “Also, I’d appreciate it if you’d take me out.”“You have a crossbow and a boyfriend in this universe,” pointed out Scarlett. “It’s not actually as bad as you think it is.”“I’m glad somebody appreciates my- I mean, Elliot’s storytelling,” said LB. “But seriously- we need to get a move on here. Things are gonna go to hell really fast otherwise, and I don’t wanna-”“Hang on, stop,” Mouse said. “You don’t sound like LB. You’re slipping into your Elliot voice. Your regular voice.”Elliot paused, grimaced. “Yeah, you’re right. She sounds a lot more… regal. Collected.”“Gravelly,” Ruby put in.Behind her, Hitch was still wearing that bemused look of utter disbelief.“I had some really quick vocal surgery, and now my voice is back to normal,” LB announced. “Which is good. Because we need to get things done. Hitch-”“You’re not my boss, why are you pretending to be my boss- why is this happening-”“-I need you to go to the docking bay, and prepare a sphere, so these five idiots can actually get on with the rest of the adventure-”“You’re breaking character again, Elliot,” Del announced to the ceiling.“I am not,” said Elliot, sounding personally offended. “We’ve already established that LB carries a grudge against all of you-”Hitch leaned over to Ruby, and muttered, very quietly into her ear, “we’re going to have a very long talk about this later.” He then picked the carton of probably now-shattered eggs off the ground, and then left the room. Ruby instantly regretted suggesting ‘LB’ as the Director’s name, but it was too late to change it now.Elliot stuck a tongue out in his direction, and then returned his attention to the game. “Okay, so it looks like Hitch went off to get the sphere ready, which means that the rest of you are going to go off to the Director’s office to get-” and here he wriggled his fingers dramatically again- “-debriefed.”“Oh joy,” said Red.The eventual culmination of the debriefing was this:“Look,” said Del, “all I’m saying is that the owner of that hook-a-duck stall at the carnival was definitely crooked, and you should put all of your resources into a background check on him.”“Ten gold says that he ends up being the major villain,” Adaira said.“You’re dismissed,” ground out LB, looking like it was taking all of her energy not to smash her head repeatedly into the desk. “All of you. Dismissed. Now. Please.”“Wh- are we fired?” demanded Leitrum, looking horrified.“Some days I wish,” LB muttered under her breath. ”No, you’re not fired, yet. Although in a few minutes we’re going to literally fire you out of an actual cannon, which will… give me a lot of joy, to be perfectly honest.”“Wow, really working on that character motivation, I see,” deadpanned Adaira.“You know what, I have absolutely no idea what you mean,” said LB, and pointed to the door of her office. “Hitch is waiting at the launchpad. Get out.”They got out.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The Black Spider
“Okay, um, Ruby,” Elliot checked a page of notes, “no, Scarlett, right, that’s your name, keep forgetting- you run down the tunnel and exit out into a huge room. A massive room that is, that almost seems like a quarry, almost seems like a pit, like a mining pit where they would dump the product down. That’s on the far side of the room that the quarry is on. God, it’s huge. It’s a forty-by-forty foot hole in the ground on the far side of the room. It is actually bigger than the floor of the room itself. The only other exit in this room is a giant iron-wrought door. A huge production, you wonder how they got it in here. It is very, very big.”Ruby nodded thoughtfully at this. She was apparently getting very into roleplaying her character. “How hard is she wondering that?” Del asked, who apparently was only there to derail the entire game.“Does she need to roll to see how hard she’s wondering?” Red chimed in, also there for mainly kicks and giggles.Elliot rolled a die. “Um, fifteen. So yeah, she’s wondering pretty hard.” He cleared his throat. “Also in this room is the orc dude that you saw before, who is basically plastered to the wall with webbing. He has been totally webbed on, head-to-toe… oh yeah, except for his head. That’s not covered. And across from him, about twenty feet away, is a Drow. A dark elf. Holding a staff that she has pointed at him. She’s dressed in black robes; on the black robe she’s wearing a tabard with a white spider on it– do you guys get it yet?”There was a brief pause where everybody at the table exchanged glances.“It’s the Black Spider!” said Clancy, suddenly, and everybody immediately made ohhh noises of exasperated realization- the Black Spider was the villain that they had been hearing quite a lot about.“The Black Spider’s a ridiculous name!” said Ruby loudly, unknowingly starting off a long tradition of questioning unknown characters’ pseudonyms. “Who gets named something like ‘the Black Spider’ at birth, that’s just-” “Actually, dear, that’s not my birth name,” interjected the Black Spider in a frankly ridiculous German accent.Scarlett eyed her for a moment. “…I’m almost afraid to ask.”“Roll a Persuasion check if you want her name,” Elliot said, rolling his eyes.Ruby did, quite gleefully. “Seven- plus five for persuasion,” she said. “Twelve. How’s that?”“Fine, I guess. Okay, so….”“Oh, my actual name’s Mrs Drisco, darling,” said the Black Spider.“Are you saying that Mrs Drisco has a terrible German accent, because I am so down for that-”“Shut up and roll initiative.”
Sweet Flips
“I cast Clairvoyance,” said Red, consulting her list of spells. “And, umm. That lets me either see or hear what’s going on in another room, so I guess I’m choosing to see what’s going on behind that frozen door we can’t get through.”“Do you need to roll for that?” Elliot wondered aloud.“Don’t think so, no.” Red grinned. “I just need to concentrate. Okay, show me what’s behind that door!”Adaira closed her eyes and concentrated, humming a weird song that had no business being in the universe it was being hummed into. As she did, her mind’s eye moved forwards and through the frozen door- as it did, it formed an image of what was going on in the room beyond.It was completely frozen over, from ceiling to wall, but filled with what looked like evil ice robots, which wasn’t actually the weirdest thing she had seen today. Within the room, two figures that she recognised were there, in the middle of it all, and they were doing a more than decent job of holding their own against all of the robots.One, a short dragonborn, was firing off spells from his fingertips at the speed of light, with bursts of fire and lightning leaping out to incinerate any robot that got close. His general appearance was messy and most of his clothing was too, but he appeared to be having the time of his life.The other was a tall half-orc who was running up walls, and leaping to the ceiling, and using his crossbow to obliterate the robots just as, if not more, efficiently than his companion.To make a long story short, Blacker and Hitch were completely wrecking the robots.“They’re holding their own?” Red asked.“Oh, definitely,” agreed Elliot. “They’re far more competent than you guys are.”“That’s not hard,” Clancy pointed out.“Okay then,” Red said. “In that case, I stop the spell and say-” “It’s empty, guys,” announced Adaira, cancelling Clairvoyance and turning away from the door to face the rest of the party. “Let’s try the other one.”There was a brief, unconvinced silence.“That’s weird,” said Scarlett, crossing her arms, “because I could have sworn I heard you mutter, oh damn, sweet flip while you were doing your wizard-y concentration thing.”“It was a really sweet flip,” said Adaira, and then realized what she had just said. “Oh no, I mean, uh… I was just talking about the ice robots.”“Ice robots?” Leitrum asked.Adaira slammed an open palm against her forehead. “Oh jeez- okay, you didn’t hear that, you didn’t hear that, there’s no way you could know that the ice robots are there, there’s like six feet of solid ice between us and them-”Del had already pulled her battleaxe out and was preparing to chop through the iced-over door.“Oh come on-”