“Thirty seconds!”
Felix saw Jo on her feet, frantically pointing back and forth between two players. He couldn’t tell what they were doing, but suddenly there was a whoop of joy, and Jo held out a slip of paper.
“Fifteen seconds!”
A player at Jo’s table grabbed the slip and pelted toward the front, dodging chairs and people like an honest-to-God rogue.
“Ten! Nine!” Dozens of people—admins and GMs and players alike—took up the countdown. Felix joined them.
“Move!”
“Eight! Seven! Six!”
Jo’s player slammed the slip onto the admin table, panting. A woman behind the table snatched it up.
“Five! Four!”
“Success in combat,” the woman said, and a tally went on the board.
“Success in exploration,” added another admin as a player thrust a piece of paper in his face. Another tally on a different board.
“Three! Two!”
“Success in social,” said two admins at once. Two tallies.
“One!”
“Successincombat,” someone snuck in. A hasty tally.
“TIME!”
A subdued scattering of applause around the room was all that met that announcement. Felix was surprised there wasn’t more excitement, but then he remembered. David had said that everyone wins or loses the Legendary together. MnM wasn’t typically the kind of game players win or lose; Jo had explained that to Felix early on. Telling a story together came with highs and lows, successes and failures, but that was where the concept of “winning” usually ended. The Legendary, though, was different. It had a win condition. And the group here at Indi-Con didn’t know yet if they had won.
The admins hurriedly took down the white boards and turned them away from the crowd. A hush fell over the room. Hundreds of people on pins and needles. Felix, caught up in the moment, felt his heart pounding.
“Heroes of the Sibylline Wastes,” shouted Matthew, the admin who had called the countdown. “Tonight, you—”
“Yes, you, adventurer!” half of the room supplied.
“—took up your calling. In order to win your Legendary adventure, you needed to collect forty successes in each of the three categories.” Matthew gestured toward the backs of the white boards and paused dramatically. “In social encounters, you earned a collective forty-four successes.”
Some cheers and applause as one white board was flipped over and held up.
“In exploration, you earned a total of fifty successes. Well done, explorers.”
The second white board was turned. There were no cheers this time. The room was silent.
“In combat,” Matthew yelled, his voice cracking from overuse, “which is the most challenging category, you earned… exactly forty successes.”
The silence broke. The uproar was deafening. GMs applauded and high-fived their players. Some people actually danced with excitement. Felix had never seen anything like it. The closest comparison he could come up with was a stadium full of football fans cheering for their team’s playoff win. Except, even that wasn’t quite right—everyone here had participated in the win. They weren’t the fans; they were the team. And unlike a football team, most of these people were perfect strangers to one another.
There was something beautiful, awe-inspiring even, about it. Felix remembered this feeling from the night Jo first explained MnM to him. Not the books or the rules or the archetypes, but what the game was really about. Inclusivity, teamwork, and good prevailing over evil, even if it was for pretend. The idea that, with unshakeable belief and a good group of allies, it was possible to win. Felix doubted that everyone in the hall tonight saw MnM that way. For most of them, it was probably just a game. For Trey, it was a way to goof off and let loose and make his fiancé laugh. For Max, it seemed to allow him to come out of his shell and become someone else for a while.
But for Jo? For Jo, it was this. This feeling of camaraderie and triumph that hummed like magic through the room.
And Felix got it.
“GMs, please distribute rewards to your players,” Matthew bellowed with the last vestiges of his voice.
Players and GMs took their seats, and the noise level returned to the dull roar of conversation. When the hall finally started clearing out, Felix headed to Jo’s table.
“Hey,” he greeted her, leaning on the backrest of a chair.
Jo smiled at him, sending his heart into a tailspin. “Oh, good. I was afraid we scared you away.”
“That was the wildest shit I’ve ever seen,” Felix said. “And I loved it.”
Jo stopped scooping handfuls of dice into her enormous drawstring bag. She stared at Felix for a long second then abandoned her side of the table and rushed him. Felix barely had time to stand up straight before she was throwing her arms around his neck. He caught her waist, hitting her butt with his bag of exhibit hall purchases. Jo didn’t seem to notice.
“You really loved it?” she said in his ear. “You’re not just saying that?”
“I really did. And I think I understand better why you love it too.”
Jo sniffled, and Felix drew back to find her crying. He brushed her sweet, round cheeks free of tears.
“Ugh, sorry.” Jo shook her head and stepped back, roughly drying her face with her palms. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m just exhausted. It’s been a long couple of days.”
“You’re allowed to cry, Jo.”
