Bursting with a dull shatter of light bulb glass, one of the four fixtures broke dramatically as the Incubus leaned over the table to retrieve the dice. One of his long, glossy black horns had struck the bulb with his motion and showered his upper back with hot, thin shards of glass. He yelped, cursing, and closed his fist over the dice.
"God damn game..." he muttered, his perfect features dark and stormy with his mood. "We've played a single round, guys, and it's not going to get any better. I say we ditch these dice, lock up the game and get on with our lives!"
"What?" Chris slowly stood, his feet tight and hurting within the cramped confines of his shoes. He winced and nearly lost his balance from the pain, but propped himself up on the edge of the table. "We can't quit now... I've lost ... I mean, you've lost your Name, Sid's a lion and ... and Tyler..."
"I'm a midget," muttered Tyler, darkly.
Sid tried to stand to go get a replacement light bulb but his legs failed him. Weakly, he moaned and fell back into his chair, barely able to stay in it and not slide to the floor, below. He winced, feeling (and hearing) glass crunch underneath him. Luckily, when Tyler had been holding him, he'd had the care to pull up the lion's pants.
"So? What makes you think it's not going to get worse?" demanded the demon, furiously. "I mean, what's to stop that damn game from turning you into mouse, Tyler? Or Sid into a living oil painting of Whister's Mother?"
"And I'm already a rabbit; God knows what else..."
"Shut up, Chris!" they all shouted, in unison.
"The point is, Da...Incubus; we don't know that it'll get better. It'll probably get worse. But a game's gotta have a point, right? We've survived Round One but what choice do we have? I can't live like this..." The tiny man spread his arms for emphasis and all eyes could see that his argument with the demon was starting to have an effect on his height.
"I don't want to take that risk," the Incubus responded. "I mean, I almost killed Sid! Killed him, Tyler! Don't you get it? If we don't cut our losses and stop, one of us will be dead!"
Sid wheezed weakly and managed to lean forward enough to reach under and brush the broken glass off of his pants and chair. He began to pant heavily with the effort, his hyper-skinny arms and legs almost useless in the wake of the Incubus' fellatio.
Chris finally managed to kick off his shoes revealing two extraordinarily large, rabbit-like feet. His toes had become thick and rounded with tiny, stubby claws poking forth from each tip and the bridge of each foot was elongated and thickly padded on the bottom.
"It's not just you taking the risk, Demon," retorted Tyler, shrinking another inch. "Look, if I didn't think it was important to keep playing would I keep arguing with you like this? I'm only getting shorter as we go!"
"Then maybe you should shut the Hell up," the demon snarled, his look horribly fearsome on a face that beautiful. All of the others could feel it, too: the anger that the nameless Incubus was feeling virtually radiated out from him in waves of heat. He was just as handsome as before, but his allure was now metamorphosed into a repellant, demonic fury.
"What do I care about mortal risk?" the Incubus demanded harshly. "As far as I can see, I'm the only one not dealt a lethal blow by this game so far... Give me one good reason to keep playing!"
"Well, it wasn't lethal for me..."
"SHUT UP, CHRIS!"
Tyler snapped his head around and looked up at the demon, towering over the smaller man as he shrunk down towards four feet tall. "One good reason?" he repeated, angrily. "How about this: you have no Name ... you only exist to suck the life out of other people ... you'll eventually, whether you like it or not, be hunted down by the cops or FBI. Then, in the end, someone is going to kill you. Not dealt a death blow? Oh, your transformation is as lethal as ours. The only difference is that it's going to take you a longer, slower time to die..."
Tyler's breaths were coming extremely fast, now, and his body shrank another couple inches until his chest was on a level with the 3' cardtable's top. He looked up at the massive Incubus and tried to calm himself before he shrank any further.
Sid was too weak to hyperventilate. If he wasn't he'd probably be inflating like a runaway balloon. Still, he could feel the tension in the room and he looked between his friends (and Chris), nervously.
The demon was silent, pondering Tyler's words.
Eventually, Sid put an arm weakly forward to touch the Incubus' wrist. "Come on," he said, quietly, "let's start Round Two and see if we can get this over with."
The glow from the Incubus' eyes, still a solid lavender, was noticably brighter as he gazed at the gangly remnants of the mortal he'd pleasured only a few minutes, before. The lion's face was thin and weak; his voluminous mane of hair that cascaded around his shoulders like an amber halo was drenched in sweat and made Sid look even more bedraggled. He knew he should be feeling something as he looked at his victim, but no emotions came. Perhaps without a Name his ability to empathize had been lost as well. Perhaps he was just too numbed to feel anything at all. Either way, as he looked at Sid, he felt nothing.
Taking the lion's hand, the demon pressed the dice into it with a sigh. "You're right, Tyler," he said, heavily. "Sooner or later, I'll die... I guess a demon isn't suited for this modern world."
Chris nodded, no longer willing to speak aloud and just sat in his chair, looking at his former friends.
Tyler's diminishing seemed to have reached four feet -perhaps an inch or two less- and with the argument over, wasn't progressing any more. "We just have to stick it out, Incubus," he said, solemnly and moved back to his chair to climb into it and sit down.
The demon only shrugged and turned from the table. Flicking on a couple desk lamps by his and Sid's study carols, he retrieved a light bulb from a drawer and brought it over to replace the one his horn had broken. "So, it's Sid's turn, right?" he asked, not looking at the others.
Sid nodded. "Yeah, but I'm pretty tired. Do we have to go on, now? Could we, like, take a break?"
Tyler shook his head as he glanced at the board. "You're on the fast track to the end-zone, Sid," he said in his soft, diminished voice. "I'd rather we get there sooner than later."
Sid nodded and waited for Chris to sweep the glass off of the game board with his white, rabbit hands. He felt a surge of jealousy towards the man. Not only was he one of the wealthiest and most famous people on Earth, but he, too, was now an anthropomorphic animal like himself. Even if it was a curse, Chris was still horning in on his uniqueness!
Finally, the light was fully restored, the glass was cleaned up and the game was ready to continue. The quartet of players reviewed the board. All of the green spaces now bore the text, "MYSTIC". The red spaces all said "RANDOM", the blues had "SOCIAL" written on them and the pink all said "PHYSICAL" Only the yellow and black squares had nothing on them, yet, although only one word remained as far as they could remember: "MENTAL".
Sid looked ahead. There were still several intersections in front of him, leading back to the outside track of the board but always giving the choice of proceeding along a passage rife with "CHANGE" spaces towards the end. Tyler had been right: if he got average rolls, the game could be over in 6 or 7 more turns.
If he survived.
With a glance at the Incubus and Tyler (and a grudging scowl towards the detestable Chris), the lion rolled the dice...