My eyes cracked open for about a quarter of a second before immediately slamming shut like a five hundred pound steel door on a bond villains lair. The insidious shaft of light that I was sure was somehow sentient and hated me drilled directly into my brain and set off a napalm fireworks show inside my somehow now too small skull. We had stayed for most of four hours at the goblin market before leaving, thankfully despite every one of us downing some of that horrible swill, at least one of us (Sarah of course) was smart enough not to try to storm the tower in our inebriated state.

I winced when I thought of Sarah. The sweet bubbly blonde clearly wasn’t very experienced with alcohol and after devolving into the same drunken state as the rest of us she had decided to make her intentions clear. She had kissed me and told me how nice and handsome she thought I was and made it clear she was interested in being more than friends. She very clearly expected the night to go somewhere, but I hadn’t had the heart to let that happen. She wasn’t looking for a hook up, she was looking for a boyfriend, and as beautiful and kind and fun to be around as she was I wasn’t ready for something like that, especially with everything going on.

The sight of that sweet girl quietly crying as I told her I valued our friendship too much to do something stupid in a drunken haze hurt even worse than the supernaturally bad hangover. Not to mention Ren and Star had extended an invitation to join the two of them, but I knew if I did Sarah would feel even worse so I had to turn the two of them down, which under other circumstances I definitely would not have done. I was sure my sadness and discomfort at the whole mess was obvious, because Ali and Erin both dragged me over to sit with them to dote on me, and neither of them were really the coddling type.

Ali in particular seemed oddly pleased at how the night ended up, not that she’d been obvious about it, but there was a certain smug satisfaction behind her admittedly sarcastic consoling. I personally found the shaudenfreude distasteful but hey, she had actually been pretty nice in an overt sense so what she was feeling wasn’t my business.

Besides, no one who didn’t know her as well as I did could have spotted the smugness so if I’d made an issue of it I would have looked like a petty asshole for no reason. Abby had grabbed Sarah when she noticed the tears and given me a fierce scowl before dragging the sweet natured blonde over to the other side of the room to talk, and I was grateful that even drunk and angry she had enough sense to stay in the tavern with the rest of us and not wander out into the market.

I spent about five minutes waiting for the nuclear explosion going off in my brain to settle down before rolling over and, hoping that was enough to stop the horrible light from perforating my consciousness slowly cracked my eyes a second time. I was happy to see I was apparently in my room, and as I intended still alone. I was still fully clothed, which was probably my least favorite way to wake up short of covered in my own vomit, since I usually sleep naked. I managed to stagger to my feet and toward the bathroom, grabbing a towel on my way and stumbling into the huge waterfall shower that I could definitively say was the undisputed greatest invention in history. Bar none.

After I boiled myself alive and got dressed in a pair of baggy sweats and a t shirt stashed in a cabinet beside the shower I made my way out to the kitchen, which was probably the quietest room full of college students in the history of the world. Apparently I wasn’t the only hangover sufferer. Aiden was frying hash browns and Theo was making pancakes while Erin stared blearily at the coffee maker as it slowly filled, as if willing the liquid to move faster would somehow make it drinkable more quickly.

I grabbed four pancakes off the plate of already made ones beside the stove and darted over to do the same with the hash browns, which had been smothered with cheese and bits of bacon as is proper. After a quick root through the fridge I dug up some sour cream and scooped it onto the hash browns before putting some of the real maple syrup on my pancakes. I saw at least two people look at the sour cream in horror though none of my family members extended or otherwise batted an eye. I sat down and dropped my plate, wincing and nearly giving myself a heart attack when it hit the table, before looking around at the shambling husks of my friends, who were all staring blankly off at nothing.

I cleared my throat, causing everyone including me to wince again before preemptively adjusting my voice to something a hundredth of a decibel above the whisper of spider webs over crushed velvet. “So, as much as I would like to curl up in a ball in the dark and down a whole bottle of Benadryl so I can sleep this hell off, we need to hit the tower today to take advantage of this XP bump, or what was even the point.” There was a muffled groan from literally every person in the room, including Ren for some reason, because I guess you never got used to this stuff.

I sighed. “Yeah I know, I’m not saying we should go now, take some time, rest up, recover and get some fluids in you-“ I broke off to glare at Theo as he started to turn around and open his mouth “I will knife you in the spine if you make a sex joke right now. The point is, we’re not totally helpless.” I smiled at Sarah, who looked even worse than everyone else, since she was both hung over and mortified with some sad thrown in for good measure, but at my confident smile the corners of her mouth actually lifted a bit, not that it prevented Abby from scowling at me like I was anthropomorphic puppy cancer. I ignored her and addressed Sarah, trying to be as cheerful and positive as I could “We have an amazing healer who takes great care of us, I know we’ll all be right as rain before we go in.”

Sarah’s face somehow managed to flush a bit, despite being just as pale and sickly as the rest of us, and Abby looked like she was about five seconds from hurling the whole table at me. I winced, knowing there was a confrontation brewing there, I didn’t know Abby as well as some of the others but I considered her a friend, and I wasn’t willing to let her think I was playing with Sarah. Aside being something that would probably get me killed I liked Sarah, and I didn’t want Abby to convince her of something like that, she was a sweet girl and I was lucky to have her as a friend, and Abby was pretty cool herself.

I quickly continued “Now we looked into it, and there actually isn’t any rules against bringing external supernaturals on tower runs as long as you register them with the university. Ren, Star, you guys interested in doing some leveling? Honestly you’re probably exponentially stronger than any of us at the moment so you’d be power leveling us to start, but trust me, we’ll catch up quick.” Star of course looked almost apoplectic from glee at the thought of joining in on more college activities, and Ren seemed viciously amused at the idea of being able to do some damage, even to tower monsters.

Star shot an enthusiastic grin my way before giving the answer we all saw coming “Of course I’m in! The boss told me to keep an eye on you outside the tower specifically but what I do when you’re in the tower is my business, and that includes going with you! Besides I haven’t killed anything in ages and I’m getting antsy.” She looked over at Ren, whose answer was just as clear “How about you sweetie? Want to do some damage?” Rens vicious grin seemed to somehow shift into a genuinely evil smirk, and in the back of my head, the little voice that told me when I had made a bad choice started screaming for mercy.