Chapter 2 - 4

It was a small dark game shop, the shelves overcrowded with sun-bleached games with torn lids and sloppily-placed price tags. Through the narrow aisles a large, bearded man could be seen reading a paperback fantasy novel, and he didn’t look up when Travis walked in. There was an open doorway near the back of the shop, out of which shouts about damage-taking and snorting laughs could be heard. Travis squeezed through the aisles to look in the backroom.

The room wasn’t tiny, but felt that way, as it was crammed with six tables, huge shelves stuffed with boardgames and gaming books, and about a dozen sweaty college students who were crowded around one table watching a match. Travis walked over to see they were playing Magic, and watched the combat. One player was trouncing the other, who was only able to stay alive with a life-gaining combo that was about to fall apart. The winner was awfully smug as he used a Terror to kill off the key creature, after which his opponent conceded.

They shuffled and began playing again, and Travis noticed that nobody else was really doing anything, even though they obviously played. He knew, merely from their disposition of being gamers, that they wouldn’t invite him to play, so he took some initiative, found a player nearby who was shuffling a deck lazily, and asked if he wanted to play. He had a deck, after all. Might as well give it a try.

“Yeah, sure, why not?”