Aw hell nah

Connor slammed his hands on the table with the energy of a man who had been slowly losing his mind for the past forty minutes and had finally reached the bottom of his patience like a kid hitting the floor of a ball pit—except the ball pit was filled with idiots.

"Ok ok guys can we PLEASE focus," he said. "Diego. What. Are. You. Going. To. Do."

Diego leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling with the expression of a philosopher confronting the void.

"...I don't know," he said finally. "Kiss him."

The room was quiet.

Connor blinked. "Kiss him."

"Yeah."

"You want to kiss the orc."

"I want to see what happens."

"Diego you will get TONSILLITIS—"

Andre looked up from his phone. "What the hell is that."

Connor spun to him immediately, grateful for literally any opportunity to be educational. "It's the inflammation of the tonsils—two lymph nodes at the back of the throat, usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection, symptoms include—"

Diego squinted. "So basically like covid."

Connor stopped. "What. No. It's not like—it's a completely different—"

Zhang Wei looked up from his chips very slowly with the expression of a man who had been personally accused of something. "Ok to be fair," he said carefully, "my people wasn't the reason that happened."

Andre said, "then who was."

"Well—" Zhang started.

"It was a complex geopolitical and epidemiological—" Connor began.

"UH," Zhang said loudly, cutting Connor off, "maybe the Indians?"

"ZHANG!"

"What! I'm just saying—"

"That's not—it doesn't even—GUYS." Connor pressed both hands to his temples. "It's not like covid. It's a completely separate medical condition that has nothing to do with any ethnicity or nationality or—" he paused. Took a breath. "I need some ice."

Diego's chair scraped back so fast it almost tipped over. "No no NO don't call them—"

Connor stared at him. "Diego I meant ice. Like frozen water. For my head. Because you people are giving me an aneurysm."

Diego slowly sat back down. "...Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

"You should've been more specific bro."

"I didn't think I needed to be MORE SPECIFIC about ICE—"

"In this house you do Connor," Andre said. "In this house you absolutely do."

Connor opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at Diego. Looked at Andre. Made a sound like a man who had accepted his fate.

"Never mind," he said quietly. "Never mind the ice."

Andre stretched and looked at the TV in the corner. "So can we play Fortnite."

Connor's eye twitched. "Can we—ANDRE. No. No Fortnite. We are playing Dungeons and Dragons which I have spent—"

"Two weeks," everyone said in unison.

"TWO WEEKS on—"

"Bro," Zhang said, setting down his chips with the gravity of a man about to deliver a TED talk. "We already established this. Games are for cool people. DnD is for Reddit users."

Diego pointed at Zhang. "And that's a fact."

"THAT IS NOT A FACT—"

"It's a little bit a fact," Andre said.

"IT IS NOT—" Connor grabbed his notes. Held them up. His hands were shaking slightly. "Ok. OK. I swear—I swear on Zhang's left tit, I swear that this game is actually fun. I SWEAR."

"Hey!" Zhang said.

"You guys just have to give it a CHANCE—"

"We gave it a chance," Diego said. "The orc is still alive."

"BECAUSE YOU WON'T DO ANYTHING EXCEPT KISS HIM—"

"I said I'd CONSIDER kissing him, there's a difference—"

"THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE DIEGO—"

"Bro why are you so against love—"

"I AM NOT AGAINST LOVE I AM AGAINST KISSING ORCS—"

Zhang raised his hand. "What if the orc is into it though."

"ZHANG—"

"Rizz is universal Connor, we been through this—"

"OH MY GOD—"

Andre was already laughing. Zhang was already laughing. Diego was nodding seriously like he and Zhang had just solved something. Connor stood up, sat back down, picked up his notes, put them back down, and pressed his forehead directly onto the hand-drawn map he had spent four hours making.

"I just want to play the game," he said into the map. "That's all. That's the only thing I want. I am nine years old and this is my one joy."

"Bro you need therapy," Andre said helpfully.

"I NEED FRIENDS WHO—"

And then the map started glowing.

Not the LED strip. Not Connor's phone. The MAP. The hand-drawn, four-hours-of-work, pencil-and-marker map that Connor had made himself, sitting in the middle of the folding table, was emanating a deep amber light from underneath the paper like something had been switched on inside it.

Everyone stopped.

The laughter died.

Diego slowly uncrossed his arms.

Zhang put down his chips.

Andre looked up from his phone for the first time with actual attention in his eyes.

The miniatures—the little plastic figures Connor had placed carefully on the map—began to move. Not falling over. Not sliding. Moving. On their own. Walking across the paper surface toward the center of the map where Connor had drawn a dungeon entrance. One by one they stepped into it and disappeared.

"Connor," Zhang said very quietly.

"Yeah."

"Is that supposed to happen."

"...No."

The light got brighter. The table vibrated. The dice rattled. The Mountain Dew cans fell over.

"Guys," Diego said with the tone of someone who was somehow still not scared, "this is actually kinda sigma ngl—"

The map EXPLODED with light.

Not an explosion. Not fire. Just light—white and gold and ancient, filling the entire basement, flooding every corner, swallowing the LED strip and the beanbag and the Dorito bags and Connor's two weeks of carefully organized notes—and then the floor wasn't there anymore—

And neither was the basement—

And neither were they.

Connor's last thought before Valdenmoor swallowed them whole was that he had not saved his campaign notes to Google Drive.