How I became the Empress of Hell

“Hey gorgeous. How you feelin’?

“I guess that alcohol hit me a bit hard… I’m so sorry for making you guys have to carry me out. I don’t drink a whole lot, so I’m a pretty cheap date.”

She kissed my forehead, and I snuggled into her.

“Tonight was perfect, Allie. You have nothing to apologize for. When you’re up for it, the others want to play a game in the common room.”

I pulled away slightly and cocked my eyebrow.

“I hope I haven’t kept you guys waiting you could have-“

She pushed her lips against mine to silence me, and I kissed her back briefly, before pulling back again.

“Really? Are you going to keep inter-“

She moved to kiss me, but this time I was prepared for it. I kissed her first, and we both fell back giggling. After the laughter subsided, I sat up and pulled some clothing on. I smacked Emily’s naked ass as she walked by, and she made that cute squeaking noise I enjoyed hearing. She glared at me playfully and put on some pajama pants and a tank top. We both walked out of the room and sat on one of the large couches next to everyone else. In the middle of the room on a large coffee table were several decks of cards that had been shuffled together. Bray grabbed the large pile of cards and dealt out four to each person.

“Don’t look at ‘em yet. I’m going to go over the rules for you, ‘cause I’m sure you’ve never even heard of the game Mau.”

I shook my head.

“That’s what I thought. If you’ve ever played crazy eights, it’s similar to that. At least it is at first. As the game progresses, the rules get more and more complex, but it’s easy enough to follow along. The objective of the game is to play all the cards in hand. You can play one card that either matches the suit, or number of the card on the top of the stack. So if the top card is a 7 of hearts, you can play a 7 or a heart. As soon as you get down to one card, you have 5 seconds to say Mau. If you don’t and someone catches you, you have to draw another card. Sound simple enough?”

I ran through everything in my head, and nodded.

“After someone plays the last card in their hand, they are the winner of that round. Before the next round starts, they can make up any rule about any card or group of cards. For instance, you can make the rule every time someone plays a hearts card, they have to say ‘I wear my heart on my sleeve.’ Or something like that. If you forget a rule, you have to draw a card for each rule you forgot. To keep things more entertaining, we’ll also increase the number of cards we start with by one each round. Sound good?”

“I think so.”

“Cool! In that case, you can start.”

He flipped over the top card, and it was a 4 of clubs. I picked up the four cards he had dealt out, and saw that I had neither a 4 nor a club.

“What do I do if I can’t play anything?”

“Oh sorry. If you can’t play anything, just draw another card and say ‘pass’ if you still can’t play.”

I grabbed another card off the deck and passed my turn.

We went around the circle pretty quickly, with Emily playing another club card. 

“Ugh. Pass. Still can’t play.”

After a few more turns, I had managed to catch up and was now holding two cards, when Emily beside me declared Mau.

We all played, and she grinned from ear to ear.

“I’m out.”

We all groaned, and passed over the cards in our hands to Bray. He dealt out five cards, and we waited for Emily’s new rule.

“Every time Allie plays a red card, she has to kiss me.”

“Really? Well… It’s a good thing I enjoy kissing you.”

The group laughed, and Emily turned over the top card. She laughed softly when she saw it was a queen of diamonds. She played a king of diamonds, and moved a bit closer to me. I smirked at her, and moved to kiss her, but pulled away just before our lips could touch and played a king of spades. 

“Oh! You bitch!”

Everyone laughed, and I kissed her anyways. I ended up winning that round, with a minimal amount of “required” kisses.

“Payback time, Em. I think Allie is going to have it out for you.”

I gave Emily a playful glare, and grinned.

“Whenever Emily plays any card, she has to say Allie is amazing.”

“Ooooh good one!”

I flipped over the top card, and played an 8 of diamonds on top of the 8 of spades. I leaned over and kissed Emily, who pursed her lips and glared at me after I pulled away. I blew her a kiss, and she stuck out her tongue. When her turn came around, she turned to me and spoke in a breathy voice dripping with entendre.

“Allie is amazing.”

The group laughed loudly, and I blushed a little. She sounded so fucking sexy, and the way she said amazing could only mean one thing. 

“Damn, Em. I’m as gay as they come but now I’m wanting a piece of your girlfriend if she’s as amazing as you made her sound.”

Without missing a beat, she grinned.

“Oh, she is. And then some.”

We played for a few hours, and each time Emily or I won, we would make a rule about the other. On our last round, I had to remember nearly 10 rules for playing one card. When I didn’t miss a single one and I went out, Bray called the game.

“I think after that performance, Allie is unequivocally our winner.”

“Allie is amazing.”

We all laughed loudly, and Emily leaned over and kissed me.

“Before you ladies start making out in front of us, can we go over some clan stuff before we log in tonight?”

Emily and I broke apart, and I jumped off the couch and sat on the floor between her legs. As she started to run her fingers through my hair, I gave a thumbs up to Bray.

“Right now we’re grinding like hell and leveling up like crazy… but to what end? What is our long term goal? I mean, I’m not against the dungeon raiding, but eventually we’re going to need a change of pace.”

“I’d like us to all get to at least level 50 so I can challenge my demon master. Something he said way back when my character first changed stuck with me; he’d have control of me as long as he remains alive. Which means if we manage to kill him, I’d finally be free from his control. Because the castle isn’t directly bound to him, I think I’d also gain control of it when we slay him. I’m thinking that we could make that our Clan HQ or something.”

Everyone seemed to agree with that idea.

“Cool. Level 50 it is then.  Anyone have anything else they’d like to address?”

This time it was Jade who spoke up.

“Allie, tell us more about that Corrupting Touch skill you have. Is that something you could do on us to make us into a demon like you? If we were all like that, we’d be a badass clan.”

I shook my head.

“The touch only works on items and lesser beings like Pain and Panic. In order for you guys to become full demons, you would have to sleep with me or my master. Sadly that would also mean you would be bound to my master like I am. I think we should hold off on you guys becoming demons until we kill him. I... don’t want to put you guys through that hell.”

We all agreed, and after Bray asked if there was anything else, no one spoke up. One last random thing popped into my head, and I turned to Aaron.

“Aaron, I’m curious about something. When I was making my character, I created the class Paladin Commander. It just now clicked that you are the same class as something I created. Did we just happen to have identical character ideas?”

He smiled at me and shook his head.

“No, when I couldn’t decide on a class, the game guide suggested character builds that other players had made. It was pure coincidence that I ended up in a clan with the same character build as the person who created it. Happy coincidence, but coincidence nonetheless.”

“The odds of that are… well the odds are really low, let’s put it that way. It feels like more game manipulation if you ask me.”

He shrugged, and we adjourned our little clan meeting. After everyone finished hugging, Jade, Emily, and I were left standing in the common room. 

“I’m jumping on, I’ll catch up with you two lovebirds in a bit.”

“See you in a few, Jade.”

She turned, walked into her room, and closed the door. Emily leaned against me and bumped me gently with her hip.

“Wanna take a shower with me before we get online?”

“Do you even need to ask? Although… if we do much more beyond showering we’re going to hold up the rest of the clan.”

“And?”

“You’re bad!”

“And?"

We showered quickly with only a moderate amount of fondling and feeling each other up. We dried off quickly, and I used Jade’s hair dryer to dry my hair. Once we were back in her room, we both laid down on the bed, kissed each other briefly, and logged on.