Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: hutch@hutch (Stephen Hutchison)
Subject: Destiny and Death II
Message-ID: <1992Jul27.160221.18695@intelhf.hf.intel.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 16:02:21 GMT

Death and Destiny were still at their game.

The game board spun between them, a sphere of infinite extent which turned
in the seven directions.  Destiny pushed the miniature white tower down
two spaces and wrote a note in the Book.  Not his best move.

Death smiled.  She always smiled.  It's hard to do otherwise when there
isn't any flesh to cover the teeth.  She moved the freshly painted blue
Dragon miniature from its cave and pulled a card from underneath.  She
placed the card face down before her.

"Now what are you up to," Destiny muttered, and rolled a 5-sided die.
It came up seven.  He carefully pulled a stick from the bottom of the
pile, without causing the rest of them to collapse, and moved the pawn
from the horse into the penalty box.

"Atari" he said, and Death (still smiling) turned over the card.  Void.

"Oh NO," said Destiny, dismayed, as the stones all changed from white
to black, leaving only two pawns on the playing surface.  He thought for
an instant, then played the suicide king over her card.

"You won't catch me in a fools mate this time," he said, promoting her
pawn to a general.  Both cards were discarded and the stones returned
to their prior colors.

Death casually reached for the roulette spinner.  A 00-green.

Destiny smiled, this time.  "Baltic Avenue.  I own it.  You owe me a
forfiet.  No freebies left either."

Death grimly removed a small copper from the board, and crumbled it
before Destiny's gleeful eyes.

Death would have frowned.  Bony sockets won't contort, however, and
it would have been showy and inconvenient to enflesh herself just for
the effect.  She considered the playing surface.  Then dropped a ball
onto the start of a chute, watching it roll back and forth across the
cheap plastic railings, down the convoluted path, and triggering at the
end, a cage which dropped over the tiny blue plastic figure of a mouse.
*IN GENERICA, a secret was inadvertently passed to one of Death's devotees...*

Destiny was gleeful.  He drew a card from the stock, and completed a
book of Falling Towers.  "GIN!" he cried, playing the falling towers
on her blue dragon space.

Death nodded.  The game was becoming interesting.  A small sacrifice for
a later gain was appropriate.  She moved a bishop diagonally from the
sand to the gate, and Destiny, predictably, took it, placing one of his
pieces out of her immediate reach.

"I still don't know how you plan to keep that queen.  She's running out
of eyes."  Destiny mused, as she placed a chute in front of his Knight,
causing it to slide precipitously back on the board.

Destiny eyed the board dubiously.

"Well, now," he said, "How about something really different."
He reached for a ship in a bottle ...

[ADMIN]  I kind of like this venue.  Thanks, Ray.