59. End Game
Chapter fifty-nine
End Game
Ronan
Everyone knows tonight is the end, although that has not stopped Dex from asking four separate times whether I have planned some kind of post-credit scene.
“I’m just saying,” he argues as he opens a bag of pretzels. “Marvel established expectations.”
“This campaign predates most of the Marvel movies you care about.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It should.”
He squints at me like there might be a different answer written somewhere on my face if he studies it hard enough.
There isn’t.
The table looks exactly the same as it always does, and I think that is part of what makes tonight difficult.
There’s still the small scar along one edge from the time Dex dropped a candle.
The same dice trays are lined up in front of the same chairs, my screen is where it always sits, and the shelves behind me hold years of sourcebooks and handwritten notes.
All four of us still have healing tattoos, physical evidence from earlier this week that this ending has been arriving in more than one form.
More importantly, there are four people in front of me settling around a table they have occupied for hundreds of hours in a world that exists only because we kept agreeing to return to it.
I told them two sessions ago that tonight would close the campaign if they survived the final confrontation. There is no secret quest waiting afterward, no second villain hidden behind the first, and no late revelation that everything they accomplished was only part of some larger plan.
I dislike endings that invalidate everything before them.
They know what tonight is.
Next Thursday is already reserved for session zero.
That has not stopped Dex from asking about a post-credit scene four times.
I understand why.
This campaign existed long before Cami moved into the house. Long before she stood beside this table and called us super nerds, then eventually sat down at it with a character sheet of her own.
The sheets in front of them are worn soft at the folds now.
Micah has taped one corner of his. Griffin’s notes are organized in sections because of course they are.
Dex has written song lyrics in the margins of his, some relevant and most definitely not.
Cami’s sheet has accumulated doodles, coffee stains, and at least one lipstick mark whose origin I have deliberately chosen not to ask about.
These particular characters have been part of Thursday almost as long as Thursday has mattered.
I look around the table.
“Ready?”
Dex raises one hand. “If I say no, does the campaign remain alive indefinitely?”
“No.”
“Then emotionally? No. Mechanically? Let’s fuck this bitch up.”
Micah snorts.
Griffin shakes his head.
Cami smiles and reaches for her dice.
I let myself look at them for another few seconds before I start.
There will still be Thursdays. There will still be dice, bad decisions, arguments over rules, snacks consumed at an unreasonable rate, and Dex attempting to seduce things I specifically design without genitals.
But there will never be another first session with these characters.
There will never be another new piece of this campaign.
That is how endings work, regardless of whether I like them.
I clear my throat.
The room settles.
It always does.
I lower my voice into the cadence they know as well as I do.
“When we last left our heroes, you had returned to the place where the first thread of this story began.”
Griffin leans forward.
Micah’s fingers still over his dice.
Dex stops chewing.
Cami rests both forearms against the table.
“Miralen’s Keep stands above you.”
The name changes the room.
Good.
“The towers are mostly ruins now. The banners are gone. The western wall collapsed months ago. But beneath it, far below the stone you first walked through years ago, the catacombs remain.”
Dex groans softly. “Oh, fuck me.”
“No,” Micah says. “That’s how you got us cursed the first time.”
“I flirted with one necromancer.”
“You flirted with a skull.”
“It had cheekbones.”
Cami laughs.
Griffin points at Dex. “Can we survive the opening narration first?”
“Fine.”
I wait until they settle again.
“Your path has taken you through the Mistfen Marsh, the Embervault, the Whispering Fair and the Reliquary of Thalos. You fought the Headless Horseman on the old trade road, survived a frankly unreasonable number of mimics—”
Dex points at me. “Your fault.”
“—and somehow escaped every consequence of touching things I explicitly described as cursed.”
Micah lifts one shoulder. “They were interesting.”
“They were glowing.”
“Exactly.”
I let myself smile.
“All of it led back here.”
Silence settles again.
“The corrupted paladin’s journal you found beneath this keep during your first descent contained a name none of you understood then.”
Griffin exhales.
Of course he remembers.
“The Hollow King,” he says.
I nod. “The Hollow King.”
Dex sits forward. “Oh, this is some full-circle bullshit.”
“Correct.”
“I respect it.”
The final chamber exists beneath the same catacombs where they found that journal, and I designed it months ago—a circular room of black stone, four broken pillars surrounding a sunken center and something resembling a throne at the far side.
It is not actually a throne.
It is a mass of fused armor, bone, and old magic built around what remains of a man who tried to live forever and succeeded in the least useful interpretation of that request.
They enter carefully.
Griffin goes first with his shield raised.
Of course.
Micah shadows the edge of the room while Dex stays far enough back to remain useful without becoming the first target, and Cami positions herself near the center.
It is a formation they have used so many times that nobody discusses it anymore.
“The figure on the throne moves.”
Dex whispers, “Rude.”
“Slowly,” I continue, “one gauntleted hand closes around the armrest. Metal scrapes stone. Then the thing beneath the armor breathes.”
Cami wrinkles her nose. “I hate that.”
“You should.”
“Helpful.”
“The Hollow King lifts his head. There is no face beneath the crown. Only darkness.”
Dex points a pretzel at me. “See, that’s where he fucked up. No face means no charisma.”
Micah looks at him. “Please don’t seduce the final boss.”
“No promises.”
Griffin sighs.
I almost let them keep going.
Almost.
Instead, I drop my voice.
“Roll for initiative.”
Dice hit wood.
I have heard that sound thousands of times.
Tonight it lands differently.
The first round goes well. Too well, if any of them were paying attention to the way I structure fights.
Griffin closes distance immediately and takes the first hit against his shield.
Micah disappears into shadow. Dex burns a spell slot earlier than he probably should to lock down one of the spectral guards rising from the floor, and Cami throws radiant damage across the room in a streak of gold-white light.
The Hollow King retaliates.
The chamber changes beneath them. Stone fractures. One of the pillars comes down.
Griffin makes his save.
Dex does not.
“Of course,” he mutters when the die stops.
I describe the impact, debris coming down around the bard and pinning him beneath broken stone. He isn’t unconscious, but he can’t move.
Micah’s attention snaps toward him immediately.
“I’m going to him.”
Griffin says, “Don’t.”
Micah looks up.
Griffin is already moving his mini.
“I can get there faster. You stay on the King.”
Micah hesitates for one beat before nodding.
He trusts him.
Griffin burns his movement and takes an opportunity attack to reach Dex. Cami sends healing across the room before Griffin even has to ask.
It is efficient now in a way this party wasn’t when we started.
Nobody is trying to do everything.
Nobody is trying to prove their role matters more.
They compensate for one another almost automatically.
Griffin gets Dex free. Micah finds the first magical anchor binding the Hollow King to the chamber and cuts it. Cami identifies the second.
Dex gets back to his feet with six hit points and immediate opinions.
“I would like it formally noted that I survived being crushed.”
“You were pinned.”
“Crushed emotionally.”
“That’s different.”
“Not to my nervous system.”
I move them into the second phase.
The Hollow King stands.
The fused armor opens along the chest, and darkness spills from the gap instead of blood.
Cami makes a face. “Ew.”
Dex says, “Would.”
Every head at the table turns toward him.
“What?”
Micah pinches the bridge of his nose. “Never mind.”
The second anchor breaks.
The chamber reacts violently as one of the old spells protecting the room starts collapsing inward. They need to interrupt it before it reforms around the King.
Dex spots the opening first.
Of course he does.
His bard has the right spell, the right angle, and exactly enough time.
He picks up his d20.
“Okay, sexy people. Observe greatness.”
He rolls.
The die bounces once.
Then twice.
Then stops.
One.
There is complete silence.
Dex stares at it.
“No.”
Cami presses her lips together.
Micah looks down.
Griffin turns his face away.
Dex points at all three of them. “Nobody fucking speak to me.”
I look at the die.
Then at him.
“The spell leaves your hand.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Ronan.”
“You rolled it.”
“I reject causality.”
“The spell hits the collapsing ward at exactly the wrong angle.”
Dex slumps in his chair. “I hate this game.”
“The magic ricochets.”
“Oh my God.”
“It strikes the third pillar.”
Griffin sucks air through his teeth.
Micah mutters, “Fuck.”
“The pillar fractures, and the remaining anchor shielding the Hollow King disappears behind a wall of fallen stone.”
Dex drops his forehead onto the table. “Can I die in real life instead?”
Cami is already studying the map.
“No.”
She points near Micah’s mini. “He can get through there.”
Micah leans closer. “Maybe.”
Griffin studies the path. “If I hold the King here.”
Dex raises his head. “Wait.”
Then they begin talking over one another—not chaotically, but strategically.
Griffin can hold position for one round.
Cami can keep him alive if the King turns fully toward him.