"Billy," I said. "And the rest of you guys, I just wanted to say that you really handled yourselves up there. A lot better than I expected or hoped. I should have given you more credit. Thank you."

Billy nodded and said, "It was worth it. Right?"

There was a murmur of agreement from the room.

I nodded. "Okay, then. Someone get me a pizza and a Coke and some dice, but I want it understood that I'm going to need thews."

Billy blinked at me. "What?"

"Thews," I said. "I want big, bulging thews, and I don't want to have to think too much."

His face split in a grin. "Georgia, do we have a barbarian character sheet left?"

"Sure," Georgia said, and went to a file cabinet.

I took a seat at the table and got handed pizza and Coke, and listened to the voices and chatter start up again, and thought to myself that it was a whole hell of a lot better than spending another night crucifying myself in the lab.

"You know what disappoints me?" Billy asked me after a while.

"No, what?"

"All of those faeries and duels and mad queens and so on, and no one quoted old Billy Shakespeare. Not even once."

I stared at Billy for a minute and started to laugh. My own aches and bruises and cuts and wounds pained me, but it was an honest, stretchy pain, something that was healing. I got myself some dice and some paper and some pencils and settled down with friends to pretend to be Thorg the Barbarian, to eat, drink, and be merry.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.