The Equestrian Gaming League

The skies shined with pink and blue intermixed and the trees produced white petals with flowers drifting along the wind from them. In the forest clearing, there stood ancient carved pillars of black stone and in the middle of them stood two figures. Prisma stood before her, wearing a tiara, a bright blue robe and various rings on her fingers as the two of them stood in a bright green, grassy field. Across from her stood Midnight in a tight, black leather tunic with hard leather shoulder pads and daggers sheathed all across her sizable chest. The tall bat pony held a long dagger in one hand and an ornate, red short sword in the other. Midnight gazed at Prisma through her mask that only showed her eyes, as the rest was covered in hardened black leather as they faced one another down.

On top of the black pillars, Mila, Vera, Dusk, Ember and Twin watched the two of them size one another up. That’s when the cat girl stood and raised her hand. She was clad in her own black chainmail armor that covered a generous portion of her body, but her dark purple leggings and plate pauldrons.

“Alright, you two ready?” She asked, as she lifted her hand, making them both go into a more concentrated fighting stance, glaring at each other. There was a long pause. So long, in fact, that the others sitting on the pillars looked to Mila with confused expressions. They were about to say something before she finally shouted, “Begin!”

“Anathematic!” Prisma shouted as she began with a large purple beam of light that came very close to blasting Midnight, who very quickly rolled out of the way. As she rolled, she released three daggers, which flew straight for the unicorn girl, who held up one hand and stopped them in midair. One sound of her voice caused them to disperse. As she did this, she noticed that Midnight was flying straight for her, both of her arms outstretched, holding two daggers ready to stab down at her. “Ignis Scutum!!” She shouted, causing a fire shield to form in front of her. As Midnight landed on it, she felt the heat and dropped to the ground with fire on her tunic.

“Hey! What the hell!?” She began to pat herself down, yelping at the fire on her. As Prisma prepared another spell, Midnight popped out of existence in front of her in a puff of smoke. The real Midnight came out from behind her with a dagger in hand, ready to stab her directly in the back. That’s when Prisma stomped her hoof into the green glade and caused a cataclysmic quake, knocking Midnight off her charge.

All of the ones on the pillar watching had to hold onto their pillars as the very ground beneath them shifted.

“So!” Ember said, catching Vera’s attention as she watched the fight with locked interest. “Where have you been, Vera? It was a cool two hours before you finally graced us with your presence.” She looked at the orange pegasus. He was clad in white platemail armor with golden etchings all across the shoulder pads and bracers.

“Oh, like I said… I wasn’t… feeling very well.” Vera said, not looking at Ember. He grinned as he saw her neck disappearing into her shoulders as she began to slouch and stoop.

“I heard you, but I’m not sure that’s all there was to it.” Ember said as they continued to watch the two ladies down there begin to create more explosions, which rocked the pillars they sat on once again.

“Yeah, sis.” Dusk said, drawing her attention. He was dressed in a green cloak with a wooden staff, vines growing all around it. “You say you weren’t feeling well, but you came into the lounge glowing like the sun. Seems like you were up to more than just being sick. Could this have something to do with the other voice I heard in your room last night? You were up pretty late.” He began to smirk as the blonde bat pony began to sweat and shiver.

“Guys, come on. Leave her alone.” Twin said as she frowned at them. Then the unicorn clad in the yellow gi suit jumped from her pillar and cartwheeled off of Ember’s, landing on Vera’s and sitting beside her with her arms wrapped around her. Vera nodded her thanks to her and leaned onto her. “She obviously doesn’t want to talk about it.” She said as all of them saw a gigantic explosion occur on the ground, once again rocking them and causing them all to sputter and yelp in surprise as the pillars shake.

Even though she got her magical shining shield up, it shattered immediately as Midnight threw three bombs into it, causing a gigantic combustion that caused Prisma to fly backward. She hit the ground, battered and bruised with her constant regeneration spell not healing her as fast as she would have liked. She cursed the fact that she didn’t have Ember or Dusk to heal her but took solace in the fact that Midnight also looked quite disheveled. The two of them stood in front of one another, their clothing in tatters and their breathing hard.

They faced each other down. Whatever plan they had was firmly in their mind as the smoke began to dissipate and Midnight got back into her fighting stance. That was when Prisma’s face went slack and her eyes widened. Then her face began to darken in a blush. Midnight saw this, and she screwed her expression up in confusion as she tilted her head to the side.

“What?” Midnight asked as she continued to try and get back into the fight, but Prisma’s face kept looking away, her cheeks flushed to a horrible degree. “What?!”

“Your…” Prisma cleared her throat. “Your boob is showing.”

“Wha…” Midnight looked down to see that her chest to see that one of her gray tits was, in fact, sticking out, leaving her darker gray nipple exposed. Before she could even react to it, Prisma thrust both of her hands forward, blasting a huge beam of frost into Midnight, causing her actions to slow tenfold. She squeaked at the sudden freeze as it solidified her body almost completely. Before the effects went away, Prisma stomped the ground in front of her, causing a gigantic shock wave to wave across to the batpony, knocking her out with 1 HP remaining.

“The winner!” Mila said as she stood up with both of her hands in the air. “Good work, Prisma!”

The rest of them clapped as Midnight got up from the ground with a snarl on her face and her arms shaking in fury. She wanted to yell at her for the dirty trick but was so embarrassed, she kept to herself.

“So, Vera–” Ember began before the purple bat pony burst out.

“I didn’t get licked!” She squeaked, causing all of them to widen their eyes and gaze at her. The moment of silence stretched for quite some time before Ember cleared his throat and Twin patted her back, petting her mane as she brought her back into an amorous hug.

“Right, so anyway, I was needing all of you to come help with this new project we’re doing on this game creation, but I was needing you most of all.” Ember said, drawing a strange look from the blonde bat. “That’s right, they’re needing someone to do concept art for their new game.”

“Concept art? What kind of game–” Vera began to ask before she heard an exasperated growl come from down below.

“I knew we shouldn’t have chosen Dragon Helm 3! I should have known you’d cheat!” Midnight snarled at Prisma, who scowled back at her.

“Cheat?! I didn’t cheat! You just have on flimsy armor! And that’s coming from a sorceress! It’s not my fault your tits are so big your shirt can’t hold them!” Prisma pointed straight back at her and the two of them gave each other death glowers.

“Okay!” Ember said as he got between the two of them. The paladin sighed as the two of them continued to glare each other down, even when he got in the middle and he gave them both glares of his own. “That’s enough of that. There was no cheating and quite honestly, I found it to be a bit of a tie.”

“What?” Both girls asked as they snapped their looks at Ember.

“Yeah, both of you were at the same level, essentially and both of you knew how to use your respective classes. So, honestly, this just proves that both of you know how to play Dragon Helm 3. I don’t know why we chose this game to begin with but I don’t see how it proves how either of you can lead a group. Perhaps we should have done some raids or something but we really don’t have enough people for that. So, let’s find another game that encapsulates the role of a leader.” He held up a finger, stopping either of them from speaking further. “Hold it. That will have to wait. We’re already late for our next appointment and I think our guests have already arrived and set themselves up.”

“Guests? What guests?” Midnight asked and drew looks from all of them present.

—------------

They’d been working together for around two years at that point. Video games and computer technologies were the push that brought them both together and the call to the gaming platforms was a strong one. Even though servers were his original profession, Firewire began to study up on gaming engines and found that he had a knack for creating and tweaking them to do what he wanted. More than that, he knew their capabilities and knew what would be too much for them to handle. Virtual reality game engines became something of a passion for his as they started to take hold of the mainstream gaming public and he found himself flying with the new technology.

Then Night Coder came along and saw potential in his gaming engines. Virtual reality games were still taking shape and she was becoming more fluent in the C# language as time went on. The two pegasi found that they not only looked quite similar in their fur and mane shades, but they also showed a similar affinity for games and creation. She could code characters, design freely and she knew how to shape the game’s engine to suit her needs within its confines. Night Coder also knew how to make a plan and stick with it while also improvising as needed. Firewire was fine with creating characters and obstacles with interesting levels, but Night excelled at it.

They started small, doing things like making a stick figure game that was simple yet practically made like a small adventure game with badly drawn backgrounds that were vast enough to look out upon. Then they created a low resolution ninja game where you had to defeat as many clone ninjas as you could before taking four hits. They were quite popular on gaming media sites and sold rather well. The two of them called themselves Double Blue and created three small games with moderate success. The residuals from those three small titles gave them enough to where they could live in moderate comfort and keep the lights on while they began development of their magnum opus.

Long hours in front of multiple computers and code screens took its toll on them. Soon, the truck loads of pizza and boat loads of caffeine were not enough to satisfy their cravings of freetime.

“But we’re in their lodge, what if they walk in?” Night Coder said as Firewire slid her shirt off, exposing both of her breasts as he clutched them in his hands, pinching her hot pink nipples. She began to say something else but then she felt his mouth on her neck, licking her and causing her to break out in gooseflesh.

“Then we should put on a proper show for them.” Fire whispered into her ear, causing her to melt into his arms. His hand trailed down into her pants and clutched her pretty pink quim, squeezing juice from it and causing her to squeak. “Besides, they were still deep into their little pvp scuffle.” He said, massaging her on two spots with both hands.

“But what are you going to do with all of that cum?” She purred toward him as her hand reached back and clutched his ridiculously hard phallus, stroking him through his pants. “Don’t tell me you’re going to waste– OH!”

He tugged her trousers down to her knees and pushed her over into the chair with her ass on full display in front of him. The blue pegasus mare fell as a willing victim as the male blue pegasus decided that they should probably hurry. He wasted no time in getting his horse cock into her and pounding her butt with his pelvis as his erection reached all the way inside her wet, wanting pussy. She was forced to bite the back of the chair to keep from moaning too loudly.

Night Coder had just had a shower before they left and he had plowed her pussy while she was there as well. The two of them had the appetites of pubescent high schoolers, despite having graduated college. Just as she did in the shower, she backed her ass into him, making his cock beat against her cervix, stretching her pussy tunnel with his wondrous girth.

“I don’t know, maybe I should pull ou–” Before he could even finish the sentence in his breathless voice she growled at him and backed into him completely, making sure there was no escape. Night felt his cock grind against her insides as she felt her juices cover his entire length. That’s when he began to pound her vaginal tube without relent and making her cover her mouth with both hands as he started to pulse huge wads of cum into her.

“Yes,” She hissed under her breath and looked back toward him as he continued to fuck her and cum inside of her. “Give me your babies, fill me up!” She whimpered as she smothered her mouth onto the chair’s back once again. She felt so full as he freely covered her insides in hot white spunk. Then she pouted as he pulled out of her, letting some of his jizz leak out of her pussy hole. “You’re the worst.” She whispered to him as he started to pull his pants back up and chuckle.

“You think you could make it to the bathroom without someone noticing your ass on display?” Firewire winced as he was forced to fit his still erect penis into his jeans.

“Nope!” She grinned back at him as she pulled her underwear back up along with her pants, zipping up. “Don’t care.” He raised an eyebrow as she enjoyed the afterglow in her chair, smiling at the feeling of her thoroughly stuffed, cream filled sex organ.

That’s when the door opened and in walked Ember Wing. “Hey, guys.” The orange pegasus looked at the other two pegasi as they sat in their designated spots in the room. Firewire waved to him, innocent enough as he typed away on his computer, as did Night Coder as the two of them sat at separate desks. “How are your accommodations?” He asked as he was followed by Vera.

“This is probably the most space I have ever coded in.” She said as she continuously typed and looked between two computer screens. “And we have an entire staff on call to test our levels. I somehow think our cup runneth over.” She said as Vera began to sniff the air, making her eyes widen a bit. “So, I hear you’re quite the artist.” She smiled at the purple bat pony.

“Oh, I’m okay, I guess.” Vera said as she giggled, brushing her hair to the side of her face and eyed the sketch book that Firewire extended to her. “What kind of game engine did you make for this new Blood Count?” She asked as she picked up the 3D headset off of Firewire’s desk as he blinked at her.

“Ummm, okay, I’ll pull up the level as far as we have it now.” He said as Vera put the VR headset. As she did, there was a white room all around her field of vision. As he started loading up the game engine, blocks began to form on the walls, floor and ceiling, beginning to build a dark castle environment.

“Hope you don’t mind if I make this a two player game.” Ember said as he appeared beside Vera in the game. Both of them were in the middle of the castle’s courtyard, surrounded by stone walls, towers, and a dubious red night sky. In front of them was the main castle door that stood nearly ten feet tall, built of dark oak.

“Wow, well they certainly have the atmosphere down.” Ember said, drawing a grunt of agreement from Vera as she looked around. “Have you two built any enemies for the lev–Wow! You are totally naked.” He said as he looked at the bare butt bat pony who yelped in surprise as she realized that not only was she naked, but so was the orange pegasus, who had a long, brown cock dangling between his legs. “And wow, were your tits always that big?”

“No, they’re not this big.” Her eyes darted left and right as she covered herself with her arms. “They programmed it this way.”

“Yeah, no we didn’t.” Night Coder said with a snicker. “We didn’t have a costume set up for the player yet, and Firewire said that naked is always better than the motion capture crap suits. Sometimes, naked is better than pretty much anything.”

“Well, isn’t that a little inappropriate for a professional work environment?” Ember said as he turned away from Vera, who appreciated his decency, but also couldn’t help but stare at his long prick, which was now beginning to harden a bit. The idea that he got that way from looking at her made her cheeks flush.

“Says the guy who was getting it on with his girlfriend while he was on the phone.” Night Coder said, causing Ember’s eyes to widen. “Yeah, it was pretty obvious. I don’t think you’re very good at hiding the fact that you weren’t working out. Either someone was bouncing on your cock or you were getting slurped. It was cute that you tried, though.” Night said, causing Firewire to chuckle.

“Says the girl who has semen pooling in her vagina.” Firewire said, causing both Ember and Vera to widen their eyes even further.

“That’s fair.” She agreed.

To Vera’s surprise, not only was Ember at full mass, but she was finding herself under slick conditions between her legs. Her nipples on the fronts of her deceptively large tits were poking out, hard as pebbles.

“Alright, well to answer your question, we do have some of the classic Blood Count monsters present in this sequel. However, some of the more intricate creatures in the game are what we need an artist for. Vera, have you played Blood Count before?” Fire asked, making the bat pony nod and hold up her hand, causing an electronic pad to appear in it. She also caught wind of the fact that Ember had a full view of her tits that he labeled as FF’s.

“Yes, my brother has it on his computer and I’ve played it on there more than once.” She said as she began to sketch something on the pad. “I can do a sketch of it, and even get a bit of detail into it along with the code modifiers.” The blonde bat pony began to do her work on the tablet with the stylus.

Ember looked down in front of him to see a figure begin to take shape. At first it was just a strange looking dog figure. Then the dog figure turned into a skeleton dog. That skeletal canine began to move as if tugged on by puppet strings.

“Wait, you’re a coder?” Night asked and Vera shrugged.

“I took a few classes in a couple of coding languages. I’m not especially schooled in virtual reality coding, but it should use a lot of the third dimensional models as earlier systems, right?” Vera said as the dog began to move in a running cycle as she dragged the stylus across the screen.

“You’re seriously plugging in all of the outward info we need for a single creature. Do you know how to apply artificial intelligence?” Firewire said as he watched her input the cosmetic data, including a barking animation.

“No,” She looked at the dog, worried now.

“I can do that, no problem. You literally just did some of the hardest parts within seconds.” Night said as she took the skeleton dog and began to open its data files as they were input into the engine. “How in the hell did you do that?”

“I like making gifs.” Vera said as she waved the data pad away. “So we just go up to the castle door now?” She asked, seeming to forget that she and Ember were totally naked.

“Almost,” Night Coder said, and they could hear her typing on her keyboard. It sounded like a hummingbird slapping against the keys. “First we need to test out a few mechanics. Just kind of move around and get a feel for everything. We’re trying to test the sensitivity levels.”

That made Vera blush and widen her eyes as she glanced over at Ember’s still throbbing member. “Vera? Are you alri–” Ember was about to ask her, but she turned to him and began to run her hands over his chest and his abdomen. She was a bit shorter than he was, and looking down at her gave him a perfect view of her bust and her dark pink nipples. “Vera?” He asked, drawing a look up at her.

“S-sorry, I was just wanting to take the opportunity to…” Her cheeks were flushed as she pulled her hands away from him and looked the other way. That’s when she felt his hands begin to grasp her very large, blossoming bosom and squeezed them. She let out a soft whimper of ecstasy and put her hands over his as he did. “I-I’m sorry, I won’t tell–nnmm–Twin.” She whispered to him and he leaned over to whisper into her ear.

“I will.” He whispered and pinched both of her nipples softly, making her squeak in her bat tone. She had to stop herself from drooling. She reached back and gripped onto his long, hard shaft, squeezing it tight.

“So,” Firewire said, drawing them out of their trance. “I’m guessing that means the stimulation centers work well enough.”

Both of them muttered about how it was working just fine as they drew their hands away, trying their best to hide their extreme levels of arousal. That’s when the two of them began to move their way toward the castle’s door.

As soon as Ember pushed the doors open, Vera couldn’t help but notice that his ass went taut with the effort. As the two large castle doors swung open, there was a great hall that came into view. It was dark, aside from a few wall sconces with flickering torches. What little light there was revealed a large bat flying at them both. Both of them gasped a bit but then remembered that this was just a demo, and the bat passed through Ember harmlessly.

“Wow, that is a pretty nice looking bat. Are they all that big?” He asked and Night hummed confirmation.

“Yeah, we just didn’t want to place too many of them in the first level, so we’ve kept them rather scarce in this side of the castle. I’m going to go ahead and give you both the proper weapons. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you want.” She said as a menu popped up in front of both of them. There came three choices. The sword, the flail and the spear scrolled from left to right and both players looked at one another.

Within seconds, Ember was wielding a spear that stood just a head shorter than himself. He gave it a few test lunges and grinned at the cool jagged edge that led to the tip of the spear. Then he looked over at Vera and expected her to wield the sword, but instead she was already spinning the morning star on its thick shaft. The naked bat pony had the spiked ball on the end of a chain and suddenly felt the awesome factor of this game.

“Oh, yes! This is the flavor we needed in this game.” Vera said as she kept spinning it, switching it into her other hand as she kept spinning. As soon as she saw a floating specter coming toward her in the doorway, she lunged forward! With one swing of her spiked ball and chain, she smashed the skeletal ghost in the ragged cloak in the skull. With a huge hole in its skull, it burst apart, giving way to view a line of zombies beginning to descend the stairs.

From the side, Ember could see a werewolf coming out from the shadows in the hallway. Before the fanged monster could reach Vera, the orange pegasus jabbed his spear forward and jammed the blade into its chest. He quickly backed away as the creature swiped its massive claws toward him and he swiped his blade across its face, causing it to snarl as it was dealt massive damage from his weapon. With one more slash, he caused the monstrous wolf to go down in a heap before disappearing into pixels. He grinned as he saluted the beast with his spear in hand.

That was when he turned around and saw two minions of evil fall to Vera’s chained mace. She was already up the stairs and moving on, beautiful in her naked form as she strode past her destructive path.

“Wow, Vera, you get into this, don’t you?” Night asked as Vera faced down three acolytes at the top of the stairs that began casting fireballs, which she very quickly dodged all but one. With one swipe of her flail, she bashed one of them to the side, injuring him terribly as the undead, hooded figure fell to the floor. “If you’re feeling brave, you could try out one of our more popular games.”

“Oh, yeah?” She said as she flailed yet another one down as Ember entered the fray beside her. He blocked one of their staff from attacking her with his weapon and jabbed into his defense, stabbing his spear deep into his chest. “What game is that?” She asked as the acolyte went down, and she took down the last one remaining.

“It’s our survival horror game, The Lost Manor.” This stopped both of them in their tracks and they looked at one another.

“Wait, you have a survival horror game under your belt?” Ember asked, all the sudden, his grin began to stretch across his face.

“Yeah! You want to try it out?” Fire asked as he began to type in another program.

“Ember?” Vera asked as she saw that he was formulating something in his brain. He looked at her with a devilish smile and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“I just got a great idea…” He pulled her close and she couldn’t help but blush deep.

—-----------

Prisma flew around the race track in her bright, rainbow colored racecar with the gigantic “10” across the top and the sides, on the hood and the trunk. The round racetrack had both cars going around it, catching up to one another as Midnight drove her black muscle car, periodically firing off the nitrous oxide and blasting across the track every chance she got. As soon as she thought she was going to lap the rainbow maned unicorn, there she was revving up next to her, clutching her steering wheel tight as the two of them locked eyes through their helmets. The bat pony cursed as she shifted gears and turned as hard as she could as she hit the breaks and went into a drift. To her surprise, there was the rainbow racer drifting her way into something of a mirror image. The two of them kept a close proximity as they curved through the entire race track as if they were reenacting an action movie car chase.

As they drifted through yet another curve in the track, however, they locked bumpers. At the speed they were going, they began to swerve hard!

“Hey! You bitch! You took up the track again!” Prisma shouted as she tried to regain control.

“Me?! You should have gotten the fuck out of my way!” Midnight shouted as the two of them faced one another in a scene that seemed to go into instantaneous slow motion. The fronts of their cars interlocked suddenly, and collided hard! The two of their cars flipped up and sideways, causing them both to screech in terror as they began to bash into the pavement. Tires flew, glass shattered and metal twisted as the two cars hit the asphalt with sparks flying in every direction.

“Whoo!” Dusk hooted from the stands, clapping his hands as Twin sat beside him and pinched the bridge of her muzzle with a sigh.

“So, the crash is your favorite part?” Mila asked as she sat behind him, popping another nacho in her mouth.

“No, I just like watching them make left turns.” Dusk said with a chuckle as the two racers got out of their complete wrecks. The two cars reformed beside each other as they stood in the middle of the track.

“You did it again!” Both players shouted at the same time as they pointed at each other, scowling into each other with a fury.

“Yeah, because this never gets old or anything!” Twin said from the stands, drawing both of their attention. “Alright, I’ve had just about enough of this little scuffle the two of you have been going through and if this continues, I’m about ready to call it quits for this team!”

This drew everyone’s attention as they gazed up at the unicorn with the ice blue fur and multicolored, beautiful mane as she huffed, sputtering. “If this is what we have to look forward to for the rest of our time as a team, then we may as well stop all of this and cut our losses. It’s not worth it when our leadership is always up in arms and arguing over strategy and petty squabbles that should be so simple to solve when cooler heads will prevail over us!”

Obviously, her words cut deep because all the sudden Midnight and Prisma looked at each other, speechless. That’s when Twin took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair, taking a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry, but I didn’t sign up for this gaming team out of any deep seeded love for video games. I’m mostly here because my boyfriend just so happens to have a great passion for all of this and I enjoy playing with him and all of you as well. I’m not even all that good at it, but I feel like you all accept me as I am because you’re all just cool like that. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but this is not working at all.” Twin said as she looked off to the side, her sudden fury replaced with something of melancholy and slight annoyance in herself for getting frustrated.

Then she yelped in surprise as both Ember and Vera entered into the game, popping in from a beam of light seemingly out of nowhere. The two of them were smiling when they came in, but that smile soon melted away from both of them as they looked at the team.

“Oh, ummm, what’s…” Ember cleared his throat. “What’s happening, guys? How’d the…” He looked on the race track to see the two cars that had respawned. The rubble and debris littered the entire track around them. “Racing… go…” He cleared his throat once again. “I have fantastic news!”

“Oh, thank God.” Mila said as she sighed behind all of them, drawing their attention. “We could use some!”

“Yeah! Not only does the Blood Count game look amazing so far, but I also have a perfect, foolproof plan for the leadership role of this group!” He announced with his arms up. When he drew very little fanfare, it was Vera who gave a little clap, trying to be happy in that moment, only to soon stop as she saw no one joined her. She looked off to the side with red cheeks. “Alright, what’s going on?”

“It’s not going well. Let’s put it that way.” Mila said, and the rest of them murmured their agreements. “We’re starting to question the future of this team as a whole if we can’t even agree upon something so simple as leadership.”

“Okay, then, what we need is a definitive competition that cannot be disputed, no matter what.” Ember said as she stepped toward them and popped his back as he leaned backward and stood tall. Some of them winced at the sound of his very audible, cracking spine. “We need to swallow our pride and push forward as a group instead of worrying about who is in charge of what. Who gives a crap who is the leader of this group? It’s not like they’re going to be leader of every facet of everything. We just need a figurehead that will act as a guide as we trounce our enemies with our awesome skills and prevail no matter the cost! Just look at what we did to the Tree of Dildos the other day! We trashed them and wiped our mouths on their tattered remains! This is not about victory over each other, but victory over those assholes that doubted us! That’s why we’re going to choose a leader tomorrow using this definitive method and then we’re each going to be leaders and lend a helping hand to each other!” Ember said, causing them all to raise their eyebrows.

“What’s this…” Dusk started, then reeled a bit as everyone faced him. “Definitive method?”

“Two words:” Ember held up two fingers. “The Lost Manor.” He said with a grin on his face, causing everyone to pause.

“That’s three–” Vera started to say.

“I figured it out as I said it.” Ember sighed at his failed attempt at holding suspense.