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The Gamer Chapter 1818 – Bowling with the Boys
🕑 Added 2025-01-16 16:14:03 +0000 UTC
The world was a much smaller place when one was rich and powerful. A teleporter across, a private jet taken, and the distance between New York and Vienna was the same as a normal person driving to the specialized hobby store once a week.
John shared that journey with Nia, Lee and her brother. Obviously, the women had to be dropped off once they reached Vienna. it was a guys’ night out and thus a Y-chromosome was mandatory for entering. Nia and Lee would have to find their own entertainment.
Previous stays in the capital of the Austrian kingdom had been short and even that day John would not see too much of the strange fusion of classical architecture and futuristic infrastructure. He was there to grab Maximillian and then change to the mundane side of things. A hug and a kiss by his wife later, they had collected the king.
“You know, you can dress like a civilian sometime,” John pointed out.
Magnus chuckled at his own joke before he said it, “The suit is cast on him.”
“You two simply have no sense of style,” Maximillian retorted.
Where the two men from overseas had changed to a simple set of clothes, shirt and pants with winter coats on top, Maximillian had only changed one suit for another. “At least you managed to take off the cape and the crown.”
“I rarely wear the crown to begin with,” the gravity king answered with a dismissive wave. “It’s too cumbersome. Speaking of cumbersome political instruments, I hear your experiment has gone awry?”
“If you want to put it in the mildest possible terms,” John answered. The conversation came to a short pause when they entered the bowling alley. The Gamer was teased a little for his American accent by the attractive receptionist. The reserved lane was assigned and the group went down to the basement. “Who did you hear it from?”
“Irielz,” Maximillian answered.
“I heard from Nina,” Magnus added.
“Okay, and who did they hear it from?” the Gamer poked further.
The king put in his three letters for the machine that kept track of scores and turn order. “Siena.”
“Same.” Magnus got up and put in his name next. To avoid confusion, he went with MGN, rather than MAG. JHN was the last in the order, putting MAX at the top.
“Should I find it concerning that we get to know about each other’s lives because our women keep in touch?” John asked.
Magnus snorted. “I thought that was what one got a woman for.”
“You’re in a jovial mood today,” John observed. Usually, the oldest child of Magoi was of the stoic sort. Not without his humour, certainly not, but not as openly and frequently joke-y. “Something good happen?”
“Just Lee’s developments.”
“Which, by the way, the entire Abyss knows about.” Maximillian picked up one of the bowling balls, took three steps towards the lane, then sent the ball sailing down the lane. It met with the frontal pin, sending it flying, creating a cascade that sent all pins onto their sides.
The strike was everything but surprising. They were a bunch of men at the prime of their life with ample experience at moving about. Really, it would have been more embarrassing to miss a single pin.
“Seriously, you did not keep that one a secret whatsoever.”
“She did not,” the Gamer clarified. “I requested that she do so, but she decided to be enthusiastic with it. Can’t blame her, she got excited that she finally achieved something great.”
Magnus had gotten up and sent his own bowling ball down the lane. Another throw, another strike. “It was only a matter of time,” he said proudly.
“The most pressing matter of time here is the lack of beers,” Maximillian lamented.
“Did you order already?” John asked. “When?”
“While you were busy trying not to strip the receptionist with your eyes.”
“I have done no such thing, I am faithful to mine.”
“Trying and succeeding, then,” Maximillian said and gestured toward the lane.
It was John’s turn. He grabbed one of the balls from the rail and weighed it in his hands. It felt good? John was never sure with bowling balls. It wasn’t his first time playing, but that hardly helped him here. He swung his arm back and forth and released the sphere.
Immediately, he knew he had done goofed. The ball rolled at ever so crookedly a path. What his erudite mind could calculate in detail, reality made true within a few seconds. The ball took all but one of the pins with it. A second throw turned the disaster into a spare.
Maximillian immediately threw another strike, as did Magnus. John followed it up with one of his own, but he was already behind now. The beers arrived and with them the game took on a slower pace. “Should you be drinking anyhow?” the Gamer asked. “Actually, should we be drinking? It's Wednesday.”
“Just don’t drink too much and we’ll be fine,” Maximillian answered. “Anyhow, I just heard that it took an end, but not what context there was to it?”
“Was to what- Oh, Justinian,” John needed a second to catch up to the relapse in topic. “I suppose I can give you the rundown on the whole thing, it’s entertaining enough.”
A few minutes later.
“Really?!” Maximillian slapped his knee and laughed. A gesture that Magnus mimicked in his own way, rubbing his forehead while shaking his head and smiling. “What a troglodyte. Makes me feel second hand shame.”
“I do not believe you are capable of shame,” John teased.
“And I cannot believe that you refuse to take your turn,” Magnus needled.
John sighed and got up. As he did, he took a look at the scoreboard. The other two had been having perfect games so far, while the Gamer had two spares and one 9 pointer mixed between his strikes. An objectively great game, but he was still the guaranteed loser here.
“I find it fascinating that you still suck at physical activity.”
“The nerd goes deeper than appearances,” John said self-deprecatingly. “Anyway, Justinian is in custody for a few weeks. I doubt it’ll do anything to make him see reason, but at this point I am not sure if that is physically possible anyway.”
“In life, you just have to accept that some people are absolute idiots that you can never see eye to eye with,” Maximillian stated and finished his first beer. A quick gesture made sure three more were on their way. Now John had to increase his drinking speed.
“Water,” Magnus recommended.
“It's just beer.”
“It's half-litres.”
“Of beer.”
Magnus sighed and ended his efforts to make the king see reason. “How has the married life been?” he asked instead.
“Honestly, I don’t know how to describe it.” Maximillian sent another ball on its path to a strike. “Everything is the same, yet everything is different, you know?”
“I can guess, but I don’t quite know,” John answered. “It was the same after I proposed… I reckon it’s a whole different layer after marriage.”
“It is,” Maximillian reported, then reached for his pocket. “Speak of the devil,” he joked, after checking the display of his phone. He was in the middle of the motion of answering the call, when the vibrations suddenly ended. “Huh?” Visibly confused, he wrote her a message. His almost joined eyebrows then shot up, concerned confusion turning to confused confusion. “Okay?”
“Anything you can tell us?” John asked.
“She just wrote, ‘I’ll tell you when you get back, don’t worry about it,’ which is the most worrisome statement of all.” Maximillian shrugged and put the phone away. “Were I John, I would now be deeply concerned for her safety.”
“Yeah, yeah, just make fun of my paranoia,” John grumbled into his raised glass.
“Since we’re playing the catch-up game, how is life with you, Magnus?”
“Same as always: slow and predictable,” the Fateweaver answered with a layer of prideful sarcasm. Magnus was neither powerful nor interested in becoming a world-moving figure as the two of them were. He had his ambitions, absolutely, but the gulf in the scope was tremendous. For his part, Magnus just wanted to live a good life and John could respect that.
“Not everyone has three world-changing events happen to him in as many months,” Maximillian pointed out. “At least I think that’s an accurate count since my wedding?”
“I don’t think I had any world changing events since your wedding… The Aztec expedition was more of a local affair, all things considered. Which, for the record, just speaks to the absurdity of the Abyss.”
“It speaks to the absurdity of your life,” Maximillian answered. “Although I shouldn’t be that reductionist about it. It speaks to the absurdity of the current age. I actually had a Kingdom rift open in Transylvania last month.”
“Really?” John blinked a few times and tilted his head. “I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“Good.”
“Maybe don’t talk about it openly?”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s closed now.” Maximillian made a tossing gesture. “Some volunteer adventurers checked it out and brought back news of it. From what little we had from the three weeks it was open, it was a desert dominated by tanned lamias. Some of the adventurers decided to stay and deal with the ‘semen shortage’. That’s about all that happened there.”
“Interesting,” John remarked.
“Interesting is indeed all it was,” Maximillian grunted.
“Deserts make me think of Egypt,” Magnus said. “Do you know any of what is happening there at the moment?”
“What is happening there at the moment?” John asked.
“Are you that out of the loop?” the Fateweaver asked.
John could only shrug helplessly. There were only so many hours in the day, and when none of his advisors nor haremettes saw it suitable to inform him about something, he took that to mean it was not worth his attention. “Are you going to give me lip or are you going to tell me?”
“Just a series of odd events around there scattered around recent weeks. Locusts inside Illusion Barriers, ancient buildings getting found, that sort of thing,” Maximillian reported.
‘That does sound like the kind of thing that’s not necessary for me to know about,’ the Gamer reckoned. If he got a briefing every time an oddity popped up in the Abyss, he would never leave the meeting room. “To echo the previous sentiment: interesting.”
They continued to chat and play for the whole 2 hours that John had reserved the lane for. Against John’s worst fears, he was only tipsy at the end of it. He had lost all the games played. For all the grumbling he did about that, he was happy he had managed to get together with his male friends for an evening. It was a treat whenever it happened.
They went back to Maximillian’s palace on mundane roads. The various transports that his sister had designed and sponsored allowed rapid travel through Abyssal Vienna, but given their profile and state of loosened tongues, they did not want to give anyone the chance to entangle them in a conversation.
“Lee and Nia will still be out for ten minutes,” John said. “Mind if we stay for a bit?”
“I am short on space, so watch your step,” Maximillian joked and gestured for them to follow. Over expensive rugs and past great works of art, they walked into the depths of the palace. Servants they came across bowed. Excited glances were snuck at Maximillian. The staff, especially the female side of it, was following them. “What is this about?” the king asked, his voice filled with authority despite his mild drunkenness.
“The queen has instructed us not to tell you,” one of the servants was quick to answer.
Maximillian blinked, confused, then went on. An answer would only come from his wife. The door to his quarters was quickly found. They went in through a foyer, took off their winter clothes, then advanced deeper into the apartment. To call the expansive decorations and lascivious expanse of the rooms anything short of royal would have been an understatement.
Irielz awaited her husband in the living room. It was a truly enormous chamber. One wall was dominated by tall windows of crystal glass, the other by a fireplace and an oil painting ten metres wide and five tall, depicting the lines of the Abyssal Habsburgs. There were vases, baroque chairs, a chandelier under the ceiling, tables older than John’s family name, and for all of that the most luxurious thing in the room was doubtlessly the succubus.
A queenly dress covered her in a sapphire blue. Her wavy black hair was open, parted bangs framing yellow eyes. Whatever grace she had immediately broke when she saw Maximillian. Eyes glistened with tears that she barely managed to blink back.
John felt removed from the situation in a way that one only could if they were part of it. Was there something to be said, some struggles he did not know about? Maximillian’s confusion reached a panicked boiling point, then Irielz hastened over. Her black lips parted in an attempt to say something, but only a half-excited squeak came out. She put something into her husband’s hand.
Maximillian raised it up. He looked at it. He stared. He went from panicked, to rigid, to blinking back his own tears. John finally managed to get a look at what the object was: a white stick with a blue tip, a simple display on it that showed two lines.
“I’m pregnant,” Irielz finally got the words out.
It was rare indeed to see a man, particularly one like Maximillian, get overwhelmed by emotion. He stood as if struck by thunder, grinned as if… well, no metaphor was necessary. What more joyous occasion could there have been than the one he found himself in? The king wrapped his arms around his short wife and pulled her to his chest. “I’ll lay the world to their feet,” he whispered. Other words followed, but John tactfully decided not to listen.
After an appropriate amount of time and space had been given and after the hug between king and queen ended, John and Magnus stepped forwards. “Congratulations, both of you,” John said.
“Congratulations,” Magnus echoed.
“Thank you,” Maximillian wiped the tears of happiness out of the corners of his eyes. “What timing… My condolences to you, John. You will not hear the end of it.”
“…I, indeed, will not,” John sighed.
Comments
Nessa Bright
Sounds like John’s about to start getting a lot more pressure to bend to his submissive lovers’ will
