Free Romancing the Nerd by Leah Rae Miller Page A

you all were looking around the room, Craytor was captured by a Thief’s Menace. He fought it and won, but he was poisoned by the Menace’s thorns and is at a severe disadvantage.”
    I glance over my shoulder at Dan. Slowly, he holds up his crossed fingers and mouths the words, “I hate you.”
    I smile and cross my fingers, too. “Sorry. Just playing the game, dude.”
    He rolls his eyes and I turn my attention back to Tommy.
    “You’ve entered the Sphinx’s lair. The creature’s snores echo through—”
    Gregor interrupts Tommy with crossed fingers. “Don’t you mean a minotaur? There was never a sphinx in a labyrinth.”
    Tommy goes quiet and stares at the ceiling for a second. “Well, there’s a sphinx in this one, okay? Can we just get through this?”
    Gregor shrugs.
    The final battle involves a riddle, but no one knows the answer, so we just attack. Dan/Craytor is knocked unconscious pretty quickly. Gregor tries to use all his special powers, but his dice rolls are horrible so he doesn’t succeed in much. He runs out of magic juice fast. My rolls, on the other hand, are so on point, it’s ridiculous. I’m cracking this thing’s skull left and right. It’s critical hit after critical hit, and it’s glorious. I’m even distracting the thing sufficiently enough that it’s not paying attention to Julie, whose little zaps of fairy magic aren’t doing much damage at all.
    Even Dan’s stupid peanut gallery comments don’t affect me…that much. Most of it is him doing that thing where he knows that I know what I should do next, so he says it right before I do it to make it seem like he’s coaching me. So annoying.
    “Drink a health potion!” he yells.
    “I know.”
    “Aim for the gem thing on his chest!”
    “I know.”
    “Turn on your ‘Resist confound’ prowess! I bet he has some sort of confusion power!”
    “I…know.”
    Okay, that last one was sort of helpful, but I’m not going to actually tell him that.
    Like these things usually do, it takes a good thirty to forty-five minutes to get the sphinx down to his last bit of life. Just as I’m about to finish it off, Julie decides to do something rash.
    She steps between Tommy and me. “I’ve got this, friend.” She’s totally not trying to steal the glory/XP points. She’s just trying to participate, ya know.
    “I fly at its face and unleash a swarm of fireflies with my last few magic points.”
    I admire her bravery but this is a bad, bad idea. Her swarm just won’t do enough damage to kill the sphinx, and this move will put her in its eyesight. It’ll turn its attention to her and she’ll die a horrible, confounded death. The sphinx will swat her to the ground with its cat paw and squash her like a mosquito.
    I have a chance to save her, though. Every power takes a certain amount of game seconds to occur. I know the swarm takes ten seconds. My most powerful spell takes seven. My health is already so low that I can only take one maybe two more hits from this thing and this spell will totally deplete my magic points.
    It’s perfectly in line with my character’s levels of loyalty, bravery, and goodness that she would potentially sacrifice herself instead of letting this noob fairy die.
    “Wait! My spell will precede hers!” I yell like I’m really inside an echoing chamber with all kinds of explosions and battle sounds going on around me. “I cast ‘Straight and True’ on my hammer and throw it at the gem.”
    I hear a gasp that would normally be inaudible, but it’s as loud as a gunshot because Dan’s mouth is directly next to my ear. I jump and turn to him. His eyes are glued to my character sheet, which I’ve been holding this whole time.
    I hug it to my chest and shove him away. “Stop peeking!”
    “Are you sure you want to do that? You’ll be dead in, like, one turn if you don’t roll above a”—he looks at the ceiling and does some mental calculation—“a thirteen! That’s not lucky at all. That’s