Death stared at the two dice. The two dice stared right back at her, a single unblinking dot on each.

"Oh, bad luck," I said. "But that makes up for the double sixes that you rolled last turn."

"So what does this mean?" Death asked.

"You didn't quite make the charge," I explained. "You were three inches away, so you needed to roll a 3 or higher over the two dice.

Death regarded me with baleful eyes. "You told me this was an unfailable charge."

"Almost unfailable," I corrected.

"Hrmph," Death said. "I'm not sure I like this game. It lacks... inevitability."

"It's considered bad form to complain about your dice rolls," I said. "We all meet with bad luck sometimes."

"I have met Luck many times," Death said, "and She is neither good nor bad, but merely perverse. Nevertheless, I shall be having words with Her."

We both regarded the table in silence for a few moments. Then I cleared my throat. "You don't have any command points for a re-roll-"

"Convenient," Death grumbled

"-so it's the end of your turn. And since you went second, then you score at the end of this turn-"

"Another rule?" Death muttered.

"-and you didn't manage to knock me off that objective, so you only score another 5 victory points. So that puts us at a final score of 64 to 63. To me."

"You won by one point?" Death asked.

"Technically I should have an extra ten points for a fully painted army," I said. "But since you're a beginner, I didn't want to unfairly penalize you for playing with gray plastic."

"I see," said Death with awful finality. "You are being magnanimous."

"It was a fun game," I added quickly, "and you did great for somebody who hadn't played before."

I offered her my hand. She looked at it oddly, and then, hesitantly, shook it. To my surprise, the flesh did not fall from my bones, and to my even greater surprise, her hand was warm.

"Let us play again," Death said. "And this time, let us play with 2000 points a piece."

"Strike Force?" I said. "Are you sure? Those games can take a while."

"Were you going somewhere?" she asked.

I looked around, at the endless Halls of the Dead that stretched into darkness. I looked up, past the high vaulted arches to where distant stars and unknown planets twinkled above us. All things considered, it was an appropriately atmospheric setting for a game of Warhammer. There were some players in my gaming club who would have been dying to play in this kind of environment.

"No," I said. "I don't suppose I am. Alright, let's reset the table..."

More stories at /r/jd_rallage

"Hello again, folks. Another day in purgatory, another video."

The Lockpicking Lawyer glanced back at the imp holding the video camera, and made a gesture that told it to keep the camera on the lock and off his face.

"I've been blown away by the response to my last few videos. I thought I would take the opportunity to answer a few questions that kept on coming up in the comments."

While he talked, the Lockpicking Lawyer took a mental inventory of the tools that he'd been able to acquire in the afterlife. Item 1: a surprisingly good set of lockpicks, and even though he shuddered every time he touched the soul-dark metal, he had the odd sensation that the picks seemed to find the lock pins of their own accord...

"Johnny69 - thanks for the kind words. As for how I've been able to get my tools, I was able to fashion the first lockpick out of one of my toe nails. Once I'd broken out of the hell-loop they were holding me in, I managed to find the cell where they were holding Leonardo de Vinci and he made me some extra kit."

Item 2: A stethoscope, made of bone and something red and fleshy that he tried not to think about. Since there had only been one safe that he'd had to crack while making his escape, he'd been able to keep it sealed in its case for the rest of the time.

"Many of you asked how I was able to record these videos. Well, Hell has wifi. I have to admit that the coverage is patchy, and they have a pretty strict firewall, but we managed to get around that to upload these videos to Youtube. As for the recording equipment... let's just say that I was fortunate enough to find a friend in the most unlikely of places."

The Lockpicking Lawyer cast another glance at this friend, the imp that called itself Kreffing, who was teetering under the weight of a large camcorder that had survived from the earliest days of digital recording technology. A doubt had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since he had first bumped into Kreffing, when he'd first broken out of his own hell-loop. The imp had been nothing but helpful - leading the Lawyer first to da Vinci, then to the hidden safe at the back of the office of one Asmodeus, Duke of Hell, and even sharing its own wifi password so that the Lawyer could engage with his followers on social media.

No, the Lockpicking Lawyer could find no fault with the imp Kreffing, and as a man who always found the loophole or flaw or vulnerability, it troubled him that Kreffing seemed to have none.

No fault except an annoying tendency to drift the camera away from the lock and towards the Lockpicking Lawyer's face instead. He spent his life keeping his face out of his videos, and he didn't propose to change that in death.

"Back on the lock, Kreffing," he reminded the imp (they would edit that line out in post), and then continued, "But today, folks, we have the lock you've all been waiting for. This lock was allegedly made by an omnipotent locksmith. It has apparently kept these pearly gates safe for millennia. They say that no unworthy soul has never made it past these gates."

He tapped the lock that was built into the gate itself.

"Unfortunately, it does not live up to its reputation. Frankly, I've bought better locks on AliExpress for a quarter. Technology has advanced a lot in the last few thousand years. All we need to do is take our lockpicks, adjust them a little to find the first pin... yes... then the second... and there, open.

"Only two pins, hardly adequate security for these modern times-"

He broke off, as the gates swung in and he saw what was inside.

Until that moment, the Lockpicking Lawyer had not realized just how badly he had wanted to get here. To be out of Hell. To be in Heaven. It had been a desire he had not dared to express, but a hope that had sustained him through the endless misery that was Hell.

A chuckle, inhuman and malicious, made the Lawyer spin around. As he did so, Kreffing panned the camera from the gates back to the Lawyer's face, capturing the moment that hope died. The moment that despair found the Lawyer, the true despair of Hell that made all the previous dread seem like happy memories.

"But this was where I started," he said to Kreffing, pleading even though he knew the answer. "This was my first hell loop."

The imp was still laughing. Its mirth racked its little frame, and the camcorder wobbled violently enough to make even the iron-stomached viewer feel nauseous.

Just before the hell-loop ended (and just before the hell-loop started) there was enough time for the Lockpicking Lawyer to wonder if any of the views and comments had been real, or whether that, too, was part of this.

More stories at /r/jd_rallage

Oops, thanks!

"How are you doing, kid?" I asked the bedraggled young man.

He peered back at me through the iron lattice of his jail door. Hungry eyes locked onto the tray of food in my hands and he took half a step forward before hesitating.

"You want it?" I asked, holding the tray towards the dedicated slot in the jail door. This was, if you listened to the usual tales, an unusually humane feature to be found in the dungeon of a Dark Lord.

But this realization had not yet struck my young guest. Instead his hunger steadied into resolve.

"Enchantress," he spat. "You won't trick me that easily."

"Two days," I said, and left him to ponder what that meant.

Two days later he accepted the tray of food without protest. I watched him eat it greedily, and then as if realizing what he'd done, he hurled the empty tray back at me.

It bounced off the jail door, and clattered harmlessly to the ground.

"What now?" he asked hoarsely. "What cruel fate have I harnessed myself to? Will you turn me into a horse to draw your carriage? Or a sheep to grow wool for your spinning needle?"

"A pig," I said before I could stop myself, "to fatten for a feast. No, don't look like that, I was joking. I won't turn you into anything you don't want to become."

He did not seem particularly reassured by this. "I've heard of men who willingly submitted to the magic of beautiful sorceresses."

"If you genuinely want to become a pig," I said, " then they really did do a number on you. What's your name?"

"What's yours?" he asked craftily, and I remembered the old sermons we'd been taught about the power that names were supposed to possess.

"Ladria," I said.

"Ladria, "he repeated, and then more shocked, "The Ladria?"

"Yes," I said. "The very same."

"But I remember you. I had just joined the monastery when the monks picked you as the Chosen One. You look..."

"Wiser?" I suggested.

"Older," he said, until my sigh reminded him that he was still talking to an evil enchantress and probable companion of the Dark Lord. "Wait, I didn't mean... but you were the Chosen One... they told us you were dead."

"Better older than dead," I observed.

This observation also failed to find agreement. "Not if you had to join the Dark Lord."

"Oh," I said breezily. "You mean Fred? He's not so bad when you get to know him."

"But he's an evil wizard!"'

"A very skilled engineer and scientist," I amended.

"But he kills people!"

"A highly successful disinformation campaign," I said. "Mostly propagated by the monks who raised us in that wretched cult of an orphanage. And who, I suppose, also told you that you were the new Chosen One?"

"I am here to defeat the Dark Lord!"

"To murder him, you mean?"

"Well...," he said, and trailed off.

"There is no magic," I said. "There is only sufficiently advanced technology. Technology that could help people and save lives."

"But the monks- "

"Would have a lot less influence over us if we didn't need them. "

He tried one last defence, one that he'd obviously been saving. "If you can't use magic to see the future, how did you know it would take me two days to accept the food you've been bringing?"

"Because," I said, "ten years ago I sat in your place in that very cell, and that's how long it took me. Now, would you like to see what we really do here?"

More stories at r/jd_rallage

In those days, when the Tiber was still navigable, you could reach Rome by boat. The still smoldering ruins of Ficana were a helpful landmark to find the river delta, and as one turned into the river, under the gaze of the fresh garrison of Ostria, the water turned from salty to sweet.

At that point, your ship's captain (if he was competent, and eager to impress you) would order the sails to be lowered and the sweeps to be put out, and the ship would begin the long pull against the stream.

You would stop at nightfall, half way to the city that all roads would one day lead to, beaching the shallow long boat on a low bank, staring late into the fire as the exhausted sailors snored around you and the wolves howled in the hills above.

That was how I returned to the city of Rome in the year that would now be known as 601 BC. When we had docked the captain offered me his hand off the ship.

"Shall I accompany you?" he offered gallantly. "Strange towns are no places for ladies to walk alone."

"I have been here before," I said, and that did surprise him, for I had made no mention of it when I had hired his ship for the passage. And, in truth, Rome had changed much since my last visit. But I had learned from one or two unpleasant experiences that it never did to tell a man your age. "I shall return to the ship tomorrow."

I was half way up the Palatine Hill when a procession of men in horseback trotted briskly down the road towards the harbor that I had come from.

Several of those around me muttered, "The king", and the crowds parted.

The king, I thought, and wondered whether this descendant of Romulus would resemble his ancestor. It was that curiosity that led me to linger a moment too long in the middle of the street.

"Make way for the king," came a shout from the riders, and I was almost knocked aside by one of the outriders as they swept by. Stumbling backwards, it took me a moment to realize that the horses had come to an abrupt halt, and one of them was now wheeling back in my direction.

A heart beat later he had dismounted, and then there were no heart beats, because I looked up into his eyes and time, which chases mortals so relentlessly, chose to hesitate for the two of us that it has no claim over.

For that timeless moment his brown eyes locked with my green ones. Was it my imagination or did I see the old look in them?

"So," he said roughly, "it's you."

Imagination, then. He was still bitter after all these years.

"It's good to see you again," I said.

He snorted. "What bring's you to my city?"

"Your city?"

"This is King Tarquin," said a stiff soldier who had appeared next to me, hand on a sword. Time had evidently caught back up with us.

"It's Tarquin now, is it?" I said. "And a king?"

"The King," corrected the soldier. "Bow, woman."

I stared indignantly at the man who now went by Tarquin, and he smirked back, amused. The soldier's grip on his sword tightened. I inclined my head half an inch. Immortality, after all, does not mean that a sword through your guts doesn't hurt. Ask me how I know.

"It's alright, Lucius," Tarquin said. "I know this witch of old. Tell me, what name do you go by now? It is still Calypso?"

"No," I said, and sought around for a name. But my mind betrayed me in my moment of need, and the only name I could think of was Tarquin, which would not do. I blurted out, "I am called Tar- Tanaquil."

"Are you?" he said skeptically. "And what brings you Rome? More mischief?"

"None of your business," I said tartly.

"As King of Rome, everyone's business here is my business."

"Then I shall become Queen," I said.

"And how do you intend to do that? Is this another proposal of marriage?"

"I plan to depose you," I said.

He actually laughed, the pig. Then he said, "Come, it's been too long. Ride with me, and tell me what you been up to since I left your island."

The soldier Lucius watched the tall woman with with hair of gold walk off with the King, and frowned. He had heard the King mention the name Calypso once before, when he had drunk too many glasses of harvest wine and fallen into a loquacious melancholy, and told a particularly long story. Lucius tried to remember what the story had been about, for the king told many stories. How had it begun? Something about the men of Ithaca stealing the Sun God's cattle...