dungeons-dragons

Even then, I was dreaming of Raistlin's black robes one moment, and Dorsett's spin move the next. This was what my father deeded--that our Knowledge of Self be more than America, that we understand the brain death that sprawled from the projects to the subdivisions. Consciousness was a beginning, but the imagination could turn straight 18s into paladins in plate, could make warrens in tunnels from graph paper, could pull armies of gnolls from miniatures--that was the Knowledge that ultimately would find a way out.

The closest I ever got to Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms was when I bought the box game set for the latter (I think this was before the novels came out). I well recall this__e were living in James Bay, in Victoria. We opened the box up and took out the maps while sitting in a Mexican restaurant. Ten minutes later I was as close as I have ever been to publicly burning someone else__ creation_What bothered us was the reworking of every fantasy cliché imaginable, all in one package now, and none of it made sense.

God himself had sent me away. I was truly now among the damned.

My life was going exactly where I wanted it to until the Devil showed up.

The black of the ocean waves was the color of the sorrow in my breast, a sorrow that was never far away and always visible.

I did not choose to be a monster__ shell of a man__alf-human, half-fiend. I am a tiefling. I am what I am.

Iona stared at me for a long time. __ou are going to leave me a widow before I have a chance to become a bride.

I was once a man, not a great man, not a saintly man, but a good man, and a man nonetheless.

Then it kissed me__ot as a man would kiss a lover, not with tenderness or even passion. This was a kiss that stole the soul of men. Revulsion at this creature__ kiss was instantly replaced by the warmth stealing through my veins, as if my missing blood were being replenished and contrived to heal me. I craved to keep kissing the beast. My entire being awakened to that kiss feeding me ecstasy, feeding me life.