I sat on the ottoman. “I have no idea what he means by saying I summoned him. I did nothing of the sort. Have any of you heard of a Funtime demon?”
“No,” Rowan said, an unsettled look on her face. “Can we meet him?”
“He’s eating cookies and milk and doing a crossword puzzle right now.” I led them into the kitchen. Tarvish had finished the puzzle and was sitting back, examining one of the cookies.
“These are good. I’d love the recipe—” he paused, looking up. “Oh, you have company! I don’t mean to intrude, but I don’t have anywhere to go right now.”
“Tarvish, I’d like you to meet my friends. This is Tad, and Caitlin. And Teran, and this is Rowan.” I introduced them in turn and each reluctantly shook hands with him.
Tad settled into a chair next to Tarvish and Caitlin hopped on the kitchen counter to sit. Teran and Rowan sat down at the nook, and I moved over next to Caitlin.
“Where are you from?” Rowan asked.
“Like I told January, I’m not sure, to be honest. I can’t seem to remember where my home is.” Tarvish bit the head off a gingerbread man and another smile spread across his face. “This is yummy,” he said, making a smacking sound that disconcerted me to no end.
“And you said the last thing you remember is…?” Tad asked, pulling out his laptop.
“I was with my buddies,” Tarvish said, scratching his head. “Well, I was oath-bound to help them, but they’re a good band of rogues. Anyway, we were chasing a group of orcs who stole the SlimStone from the Castle Detwager. We followed them through the Forest of Discontent and ended up driving them into a cave. They’re fast and devious, though, and the idiot magic user accidentally cast a spell of blindness on our group, and we got lost, wandering around the cave in total darkness. The last thing I remember was fighting an ochre jelly. Those things are damned hard to fight, and it was attacking Ulantrum when we found ourselves trapped by a beholder on the other end of the tunnel—”
“Ochre jelly? Beholder?” Tad said, squinting. He shifted and said, “Just who was in your party, Tarvish?”
“Well, there was the magic user—she summoned me. And Snarleth the Vile—the mage—is pretty high level. They have two fighters—Dwarb and Dweeb—and the cleric’s name is Ulantrum. They also have a druid, but Aeleath is a coward and he always hides in the back. Now, I know druids don’t generally lead the party but in this case, he’s high-enough level—I think tenth—that it’s appalling how he sneaks around behind the rest of them. His intelligence is high enough, and he has enough hit points, so he shouldn’t be such a coward.”
As Tarvish rambled on, I groaned. I glanced at Tad. Both of us knew immediately what was going on. I cleared my throat and stood up.
“Excuse us for a moment, would you, Tarvish?”
“Of course. I’ll start another puzzle.” He flipped the page and began working on another crossword as we headed back out of the room.
As soon as we hit the living room, I whirled to Tad. “Dungeons and Dragons. I played for a while, but Ellison hated it and so I stopped when we started dating.”
Tad nodded. “Yep, everything he said is straight out of a game. Hold on, let me do a quick search.” His fingers flew over the keyboard.
“D&D? Really?” Caitlin said. “How…what do you think happened?”
“I’m not sure. Tarvish insists that I summoned him…”
“Bingo. Online forum dedicated to old-school D&D players,” Tad said. “Here’s one group in Oklahoma, the Mirewood Guild—they uploaded a mod to the forum titled ‘Winter Solstice Rites.’ I searched on ‘Funtime Demon’… The mod includes the maps for the game, the list of creatures, including a special NPC created for the game, and his name is Tarvish.”
“NPC?” Teran asked.
“Non-player character,” I said. “An NPC is a character the dungeon master plays, one that interacts with the group of players, quite often in a positive manner. So, Tarvish isn’t a demon—he’s…what the hell is he, then?”
“Did you by chance download this mod? Even accidentally?” Tad asked.
I thought back to all the sites I had been looking at for information about winter solstice rituals. “Oh, fuck me hard,” I said.
“I’ll leave that to Killian.” Tad snorted. “I take it you did?”
“The Witches Guild put me in charge of researching winter solstice rituals, to prepare for the upcoming town solstice celebration. I did a mega search and started downloading what I thought were rituals from throughout history. I was so scattered and focused on the court appearance—I’ll tell you about that later—that I didn’t even notice what sites I was on. Then my laptop cord began to melt while I was downloading one mega zip file and…something must have happened.”
I sank down on the sofa. “How the hell did he come to life, though? If he’s out of a game…”
“Let me do a quick search on the players’ LifeBook pages.” Tad tapped away on his computer. “All right, I found a couple of them. The magic user, in actuality, is a witch named Kyler. Kyler Fenton. And Kyler…hmm…it’s hard to tell from here, but I think Kyler’s element is on the astral. I’ll bet you the group has enough psychic power that they created a thought-form of sorts, and that energy went into the description of the character.”
“So, in essence, they created Tarvish in more ways than one. But it’s just a game…”
“But they focused so much on this character that he’s become real. That happens at times. Somewhere out there, in a dimension not too far away, Bella and Edward-the-Shiny actually exist, thanks to Stephenie Meyer’s fans.” Tad frowned. “The question is, what the hell do you do with your version of Tarvish?”
“You mean there’s more than one?” Teran asked.
Tad nodded. “I have a feeling there are enough Tarvish-like creatures running around that they could form their own boy-band. The module has been downloaded fifteen times.”
“Well,” I said. “At least he doesn’t seem destructive.”
“No, but you can’t let him run around free. He may not seem too startled by your kitchen, but I doubt he’d have a clue on what to do if he was let run around loose.” Tad gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but you’ll need to keep him here until we figure out what to do with him.”
I stared at him. “But I don’t want to keep him here. I don’t want an uninvited guest for Thanksgiving dinner. And I sure as hell am not going to hang up a stocking for him.” I wasn’t worried that he’d eat the cats or terrorize my house—the D&D club who created him seemed to have built in some fun little quirks that took the edge off of his “evil”…but he was still a demon, at least on paper.
“I’m afraid you have no other choice. Also, you have a bigger house than the rest of us,” Tad said.
“Room or not…” I paused. “I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?” I turned to my grandmother, my shoulders slumping. “Do you have a clue on how I can get rid of him? You’ve got more experience than all of us put together.”