Boiling Isles RPG

Amity’s POV

Amity sat stiffly at the dinner table, the only sound was that of silverware scraping against the plates as her family ate dinner. By the time Emira and Edric had picked Amity up, she’d already finished her homework so she was able to relax in her room until the inevitable dinner conversation, or interrogation as it felt like. Her parents always started the night by having their children eat in silence as they were not allowed to speak unless spoken to, even the twins as, even though they were adults, they still lived under their parents’ roof while in college.

“Edric, I trust that you contacted your economics professor about the grade on your last paper.” Amity gripped her fork a little tighter at the sound of her mother’s voice, but was careful not to show any noticeable variations in her facial expression.

“Yes mother, I did.” Edric stated, his voice wavered slightly. The Blight children had learned a long time ago how to hide their tells, unfortunately these dinner table interrogations had a way of tearing those walls down and leaving them vulnerable.

Their mother didn’t look up from her meal. “And?” There was an edge in her voice and Amity could see Edric stiffen out of the corner of her eye.

He swallowed even though he hadn’t taken a bite of anything. “Unfortunately, my professor refused to allow me to make a revision since my grade was higher than the vast majority of the-”

Their mother placed her fork down, signalling an order for silence. She brought her eyes to meet his, her expression practically made of ice. “We do not care how the rest of the class performed. We care about how you performed, and for a Blight that grade was unacceptable.” She looked back at her food. “Since you cannot revise this paper you will speak to your professor about how you can do better on the next one. Emira,” Amity’s sister snapped to attention, “you will assist him with his future assignments. Ensure that this does not happen again.”

“Yes Mother.” Emira gave a short nod, glancing over to her brother who was trying hard not to shake in his seat.

“Very well then, you are excused.” The twins grabbed their half-eaten dinners and left the room as quickly as they could without inciting more chastisement for being rude.

Amity gathered her plate as well. She hadn’t finished either but her appetite had dissipated the second her mother opened her mouth.

“Amity,” her mother’s voice froze her in place.

“Yes mother?” Her heartbeat spiked but she was careful not to show it. She was better at this game than her siblings were, not that it mattered, her mother could see right through her anyway. Her mind was buzzing with all of the things her mother could bring up, all of the minor infractions that kept her up at night whether it was possible for her mother to know about them or not. It was only the first day of school, she didn’t have any real assignments yet, her homework was done. Had she discovered that Amity was talking to Willow again?

“Did you speak to your teachers about opportunities for extra credit as I instructed you?”

The blood drained from Amity’s face. She was going to do that the second that class was over but when that Luz Noceda girl had interrupted the class the extra credit just slipped her mind. On the one hand, she was relieved that her mother didn’t know about Willow, on the other hand, she still had to tell her mother that she had failed the task that she did know about.

Amity was hesitating for too long. She could lie, say she spoke to her teachers and then actually do it tomorrow… No. Her mother would see right through her like she always did. Amity’s tongue felt like lead. She only had one real option. “I apologise, Mother, but it must have slipped my mind. I will be sure to do that tomorrow.”

It was only a second before her mother spoke again but it felt like an eternity. “Amity, a Blight does not forget such things. I expect you to perform to the best of your ability and so far you have failed in that. Do you really expect to get into Harvard or Yale or Princeton if these things just slip your mind?”

“No, Mother.” Amity fought to keep her voice steady. “I will speak to my teachers tomorrow.”

“Yes, you will.” Her mother went back to her meal. “You are dismissed.”

Amity grabbed her plate and rushed out the room as her mother and father continued to eat in silence. Her father hadn’t looked up from the newspaper for the entire conversation.

After putting her dishes away, Amity went back to her room. On her way she passed Edric’s and heard Emira comforting him as he muttered about how an eighty-seven was fine if the rest of the class failed. Her heart was racing and she just wanted to lock her door and shut the rest of the world out. Why couldn’t she have just remembered to talk to her teachers? Why did Luz Noceda have to show up and distract her?

She groaned and checked her watch. It was going to be a while until Lazura usually got online. Sure she liked playing with Willow and Augustus but Lazura was different. Amity didn’t feel like she had to justify herself to her like she had to with the other two. Logically she knew that they were on reasonable terms now, if they weren’t then they wouldn’t have let her stay in the game, but Amity knew that she was on thin ice with everyone around her. If Willow or Augustus decided that she wasn’t worth it they could kick her out of the adventuring party, if Boscha got wise about why Amity was blocking her from bullying them her social life would go down the drain, and if her parents found out about her hanging out with Willow again even if it was just online… Amity shuttered. She didn’t want to think about that.

Lazura was the only person she didn’t feel like she had to walk on eggshells around. With everyone else it was like Amity had to justify her existence, but Lazura just welcomed her with open arms and a voucher from Willow. Amity didn’t need to know everything because Lazura was happy to explain. She didn’t need to be perfect every time because ‘mistakes are part of being human’. She didn’t need to fake a smile or a laugh at a dumb joke because everything about being with Lazura just naturally put her at ease. Her laugh, her exaggerated reactions, even the way she talked about the virtual world, analyzing every little detail and design choice as though she’d been born there. Amity could listen to her talk for hours but after logging onto discord it was clear that she wasn’t online yet but Caesar and Salix were.

She entered the voice chat and heard Augustus and Willow talking to each other. It sounded like they were working through a dungeon while having a separate conversation. Amity was about to announce her presence when she heard what Willow was talking about.

“I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting her to do, but I hoped she would have at least tried to talk Boscha down again.” Willow sounded upset. “She just sat there while Boscha dumped that drink all over her and didn’t say anything-”

“Hey guys.” Amity interrupted Willow’s rant.

Augustus squeaked into his mike before regaining his composure. “Oh, hey Witchling, sorry we’re in the middle of a dungeon right now. It was taking a while for you to get on so we just went ahead and-”

“I heard what you guys were talking about.” Amity had to choose her words carefully, she didn’t want to lie to them but she had to find a way to defend herself without them kicking her out of the party.

“You could have at least said something to her.” Willow's voice came over Amity’s headset. She didn’t bother with greetings, just getting right to the point.

Amity sighed, “I already talked to her when I told her to stop bothering you.”

“You know what I mean.” Willow didn’t sound angry, just disappointed which was somehow worse. “You just let her bully Luz, it was her first day, she didn’t know what she was getting into.”

“Well maybe she should have been more careful.” Amity knew the second the words left her mouth that that wasn’t the right thing to say. The conversation with her parents had drained her energy making it harder to choose her words, she needed to try a different route. “Look, I talked to Luz later and gave her some advice on how to deal with Boscha.”

“What kind of advice?” Augustus asked.

Shoot. This was going to sound bad. “I told her to just ignore her and maybe Boscha would get bored.”

“Oh come on, you know that won’t work. If it did you wouldn’t have had to talk to Boscha in the first place.” Now Willow sounded upset.

“Look, it’s not my job to hold Luz’s hand and tell her what to do. If I had given her real advice it would have been to cut her losses and go to another school but that’s probably not going to happen so instead I told her to do the thing that would cause the least complications.” Amity knew they wouldn’t like what she was saying but at least it was the truth. “At least this way, it won’t be as bad, Bosha’s behavior won’t get that much worse unless she gets a real reaction and hopefully it’ll be awhile until Luz gives her one.” She could feel Willow about to say something but after the talk she’d had with her parents at dinner Amity really didn’t have enough energy left in her to continue.
“Guys,” her voice was a lot softer now. “Can we please not talk about this right now? I’ve… had a long day and…” she sighed, knowing that the exhaustion was showing in her voice. It was uncomfortable for her to show this kind of weakness and she would help it if she could, but at this point she was just done. “Can we please just keep this and school separate? I really don’t think I can-”

“Hey guys!” Lazura’s voice rang out over their headsets. Amity stiffened as the ranger’s cheerful tone cut through the tension like a knife, leaving only an awkward silence behind. “What’s going on?”

The voice chat was silent. Amity waited, desperately hoping that Willow wouldn’t tell her. She knew it was being a hypocrite but she didn’t want Lazura to know about what she was like outside of this game. She didn’t like that person, she didn’t like the friends she had outside of The Boiling Isles, she didn’t like the way she was expected to walk with her nose in the air and talk without emotion.

But... she liked it here. She liked fighting spiders in dungeons and drinking ale made of ones and zeros in a virtual bar. She liked talking to Willow and Augustus without worrying what would happen if her parents found out, even if she still needed to watch what she was saying around them. And... she liked Lazura. She liked her a lot, and she didn’t want the one person who didn’t know her outside of the game to be told about her most recent mistake that she wished she could fix but didn’t have the power to.

“We were just talking about how our first day of school went,” Willow said. Her voice was neutral. Amity nearly sobbed in relief.

“Ugh, can we please not?” Lazura moaned followed by a playful chuckle.

“Rough day?” Augustus asked, following Willow’s lead of dropping their previous conversation.

“Yep,” Lazura responded. “You know, I don’t know why I had any hopes that this year would be different, but hey, at least we have this to look forward to! Who’s up for getting right to the adventure?”

“Caesar and I are almost done with a dungeon right now, we’ll meet you guys in town square when we’re done,” Willow said.

“Already on my way there, what about you Witchling?”

Amity blinked, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t said anything yet but that Lazura would have been able to see that she was in the chat. “I’m uh, logging on now.” She double clicked on the icon on her desktop and watched as the page loaded. “Is there a plan for today?”

“Well, I was thinking we could take a trip to the knee. According to the lore it’s the place where the first wizards went to develop their magic due to its natural power, but mechanically there’s about a fifteen percent increase in experience point gain for magic based classes there. I figured we could go so that you can level up again and Salix and can get some more experience points, it’s a bit of a journey to get to the main area though so I hope you’ve got some snow boots.”

As Lazura spoke, Amity made her way to the town square where the half elf was already waiting, probably triple checking her inventory. She could listen to the ranger talk for hours. “So what about you?” She spoke up after Lazura finished her lecture. “Rangers aren’t considered magic based classes right?”

“Not really, no, ranger-artificers like me and paladins like Caesar mostly work by using magical items we find or make in place of actual spells. Caesar will benefit a little bit because he’s got some healing spell mechanics but definitely not as much as you would.”

“Don’t worry Lazura,” Augustus’ voice came up, “we’ll get to the red mountain eventually.”

“The red mountain?” Amity asked.

“Yeah!” Lazura said, suddenly extremely excited. “It’s an artificer challenge, that’s supposed to have some great loot but-”

“But Lazura keeps trying to do it on her own and dying.” Willow said with a laugh. Amity felt herself relax a little bit more, it didn’t sound like she was mad anymore. That didn’t mean this was the end of that conversation but if she could go the rest of the night without hearing about it that would be enough.

“I just don’t want to bother you guys.”

“Lazura,” Amity felt herself smile at the half elf’s almost cartoonish exasperation, “There is absolutely nothing you can do that would bother us.”