And that's when I remembered a moment during our character creation session. Suresh, Dane, and myself in Teo's parents' basement -- yes, sometimes these things do take place there. Teo had annexed this part of the house in an uneasy ceasefire with his father, who would sometimes appear down there to retrieve a leafblower or wrench set, and gawk openly at the foreign language that all of us spoke fluently.

  Teo had put a little money and a lot of energy into crafting the best possible D&D pit that several broke college kids could dream of. Prop swords hung from the walls: Anduril, Frostmourne, Geralt's pair of steel and silver blades. Boxes of space marine miniatures peaked out from behind blackout curtains. Several fold-out card tables had been appropriated from his dad's poker nights, pushed together into one not-quite-Round Table for a nevertheless passionate and committed group of nerds who never missed D&D night, except for sometimes. Two members were out with A Thing or Some Shit To Deal With that night, so that left Suresh, Dane, and myself to chat and banter and shuffle papers across a mountain of Takis bags, trays of crumbs where homemade empanadas had briefly existed, stacks of papers, pens, calculators, dice of every variety in fancy resin molds, and a hand-built miniature labyrinth of mixed materials, which included popsicle sticks and rocks from the actual back yard. But most of it was covered by a layer of cotton, an ingenious "fog of war" of Teo's invention which he would pull back in sections as our characters explored the chambers, cells, nooks, and yes, even the darkest and oldest crannies of the Cryptozian Gaol.

  I remember, because as I handed Arthrem's character sheet over to Teo, our esteemed DM raised an eyebrow. "Min-maxxing, eh?" he asked with a sly grin. He looked like he'd caught me doing something untoward.

  "Cheater!" shouted Suresh, pelting me with off-brand, flamin’ hot cheese puffs.

  I defended myself against both missile and accusation. I told them I was sick of nuance. Tired of being level-headed and well rounded. I wanted my great big fantasy boi to kick ass and, perhaps, chew gum. The news was depressing. My grades were depressing. My job was extra depressing. I wanted to grip two big-ass maces in my big-ass hands, stomp goblin ass, and just generally destroy ass all around. Suresh and Dane got into an argument over it, but Teo watched with amusement, the "I know something you don't" look that never left his face when he was in his element.

  "Died of starvation," said Strength. He really just rattled it off, uncaring. "Or, something. I don't keep close tubs on the others, you know." I guess he meant tabs. His disfluency was starting to make sense. He was all muscle--indeed, he was all things muscle. A nasty look came over him. "After all, they should be the ones coming to me. They should be here. I will not waste my time calling to these, ahh, knuckle-heads."

  So Intelligence was dead. Dexterity and Charisma were missing. Connie, Constitution, was down for the count.

  That left only one attribute left. "Then I'm... the lowest one. The throw-away stat."

  "Wisdom," said Strength. But he pronounced it "wiss-dom," as though it were an alien word, hard to squeeze the phonemes together. A silly thing to even try to verbalize.

  Arthrem's dump stat.

  I looked up to my character, the rampaging badass I had designed to rampage badassedly. "This is what he is seeing. His eyes."

  Strength only nodded, as though this were obvious, and went back to his contemplative admiration of the real Arthrem. But no, not real. But still, yes, realer than me, realer than all this.

  "What is this place?" I asked, trying to remember if I had asked before.

  "The Observatory," he said. The "duh" was implied.

  We watched in silence as the hard light beyond the iron bars became bigger in the great big window, which I was now thinking of as a viewport. What did this mean? Sloth-slow, his hands rose into view, sequoia-log fingers closing around dark bars, oxidized and flaking. Strength mimicked the motion again, gripping nonexistent bars in front of him.

  "What do you think he will do?" he said, a boy's simple awe in his voice. "If it were up to me, I would grab them, these bars." He motioned pulling them out like weeds. "Yank them. Beat the guards with the bars." He said it like 'gwards,' and I wasn't sure if I thought this was idiotic or adorable. It wasn't Strength's job to have high verbal, right?

  We watched together as the massive hands tested the bars. They clinged and clanged, rattling shrilly, with the speed of a slow gong being rung over and over.

  "Curses," said Strength. "Well, perhaps we lure a gward over, grab him through bars."

  "Good call," I said. "Maybe he's got a key?"

  "No, I mean for leverage. To snap bars."

  I chuckled, but not out of real laughter. Who knew? Maybe Arthrem could bend the desiccated iron of the cell door, or snap the hinges, given the shape they were in. It all came down to a roll, right? I would have asked Teo if I knew how. "I think you're underestimating how strong iron bars are."

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  He scowled at me, then let it pass. Then he scowled again. A slight movement of his elbow sent me sprawling onto the floor. "Do not doubt the Strength of Arthrem."

  One butt cheek took the brunt of the impact with the stone floor, but I must have hit an elbow too, because that joint ached when I got back to my feet.

  I was angry, and reached for my staff. I had no idea where it was, or if it even was mine, really. My eyes scanned the table for a dish to throw at the back of this brute's big, stupid head.

  But, in a way, I had designed that head. Sorta. It was my head, too, kinda. Wisdom's head. Wisdom's brother's head. Were they siblings?

  The image of Strength using his mace and club as food processor blades through which dozens of nags were essentially liquefied gave me pause. If I was Wisdom, what was I going to do? And for that matter, why would I?

  I breathed in through my nose, let it out through my mouth. Strength's huge hands were clasped behind the small of his back, which was actually not small by any stretch of the definition. He was at peace. Expecting no retaliation. He knew the score here, and he felt in charge. Or like the only one who mattered.

  Was this how this was going to go? Was I going to be bullied by my own creation? Or rather, by my own creation's inner abstract concept... of his own strength? Did I have that right?

  The answer was yes, on all counts.

  "Oh," said Strength. "Here we go." His hands were out, palms downward.

  In the viewport, a guard yelled through the bars, droplets of spittle moving like an instant replay between the iron. He was human, with a light leather cap with untied leather thongs framing what I can only describe as a face for radio. What few fortunate remaining teeth did not look functional, and his nose had been broken very apparently in opposing directions. He yelled at us--yelled at Arthrem. A brass keyring could be seen hanging from his rope belt.

  "We should spin him," I said. "Make a grab for the keys."

  "Boring," said Strength. "I sleep at this suggestion."

  Oh, so he was a bit of a smart aleck, too. He didn't look like he was trying to think about that. The hairs on Strength's arms and neck stood on end quite visibly--they were thick like a hog's mane and he was getting very excited. Strength hopped from one foot to the other and back, like a kid who has to pee.

  The prison guard was too close. Arthrem's hand--offscreen, as it were, to us--reflected in his fire-lit eyes, slowly going wide as two moons on the viewport. It chopped as slowly as you could chop, I suppose. When the edge of his blade-flat hand finally came into view, the wind howled around it, the sound of a car window cracked a quarter of the way open while doing 60. The tough flesh of Arthrem's palm flapped like a streamer, the full length of his arm wedged between the bars. The only reaction the guard had time to execute on was gritting what few teeth he yet had ahead of the impact.

  The impact was like watching one of those old car crash videos they used to try to scare students with in Driver's Ed. Right into the crook of the neck, waves of skin rippling outward, his jerkin bouncing in the counter direction. The man's left shoulder deflated like a balloon. We could hear the knee buckle as his head whipped back over the striking hand, fingers releasing the torch, frozen in the air between him and us for a long moment before acknowledging gravity. It was the grimmest ballet.

  I winced and grabbed the crook between my neck and shoulder. This wasn't loss of hit points. This guy's trapezius muscles were ruined on one side.

  "Ughgh" escaped my mouth.

  "Perfect," said Strength. He blew a kiss at the screen. "That is my great boy."

  The jangling of the keys were like churchbell-sized wind chimes a mile away. Bing bong, gadong, kathung. Slowly, the man sunk and slunk, tilting backwards, gaining downward momentum like a cut tree.

  "There go the keys," I could not help saying.

  Strength shushed me. "Is fine. Don't ruin the moment."

  "The moment is going to be a long one, now that we're stuck here."

  "Pish and posh," said Strength. "There is word for you–ah, yes, being the Negative Nancy."

  The slumping of the guard shook the theater, a reverberation coming from the viewport, it seemed, but also echoed by something deeper, farther, more solidly connected. The bowels of the earth, maybe, humming the bassline of his collision with the ground, framed "on screen" for our entertainment.

  If we were going to be here for a while, I decided that Wisdom was hungry, and snapped a couple of juicy, purple-black grapes from a bunch draped over a haunch of something with claws still in. I popped one into my mouth and nearly gagged. How to describe the taste? It was a mix of acidic and bitter, the flavor profile skirting those specifics and finding their way through the armor of the tongue to aggravate previously unknown and deeply vulnerable taste buds. It was like tasting a pressure point. The flavor of having that recess above your collarbones gouged.

  I sent it flying, paying no attention to where it landed, which was probably somewhere in Strength's unfinished feast. He turned and frowned.

  "Oh, wow," I choked. I curbed my true opinion, remembering the ease with which his elbow had launched me onto my ass cheek. "That is... not for me."

  He scowled openly, chin raising and beard braids swinging. "No," he agreed. "Is not."

  I thought of Constitution, bleeding alone somewhere in this poorly lit building. I didn't think pen and paper games worked this way, but I was taken by a momentary memory of video games that let you restore health points by hitting pause, going into the inventory menus, and just slamming every random edible item you had in there. The dish disposal method of medical care. I considered asking to take a sack full of food back to her, but the look on Strength's face was a little on the territorial side, so I let it pass.

  Arthrem attempted to reach for the keys over the course of the next half-hour or so. He couldn't. He knelt down and eventually made a grab for the ratty shoes of the unfortunate man. He couldn't reach that either. To each of these developments, Strength experienced a full-body reaction, like a sports fan watching an unintelligible game. His hands went up over his head in surprise. He clawed at his lips in suspense. He followed the macrogestures forming and passing over the course of minutes at a time, popping various foods into his mouth without looking way, pacing in front of and around the table.

  Wisdom got bored. Is that a thing?