My Friend Taught Me How To Play ‘The Blood Game’ And I Regret Ever Playing It
“What is up dude?” I asked. He sighed. Clearly he’d been expecting this but he still seemed reluctant to talk and again that silence grew between us. It was a long time before he broke it.
“I think I’m going to quit the Blood Game,” he said. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. The last time I had talked to him, the Blood Game had been his baby, something he was proud to show off. This reversal seemed strange to the point of almost being unbelievable. He went on, not waiting for me to acknowledge what he had said with a response.
“It’s just… It was so fun when it started. Sure, it was spooky, and everyone did their best to make things as scary as they could, but it was also light-hearted. It was just something we did for fun…”
He trailed off until I broke the silence.
“Is this about the Wolf Paw thing? I know that’s sort of your faction —” I started but he cut me off.
“No it’s not about fucking Wolf Paw,” he said, again startling me with his belligerence. I had never seen Garrett like this.
“I’m sorry,” he said, composing himself, “This has nothing to do with you. It’s… well, it’s Bethany.”
This piqued my curiosity somewhat. As long as I’d been involved with the Blood Game I still had barely interacted with Bethany, and even at this point, I found the idea of her as the leader behind this whole thing odd. The other moderators had seemed to be constantly involved with the various storylines of the game, to the point where one had to wonder how any of them got any schoolwork done, but Bethany was largely absent outside of large events, and her private events which I had still not been privy to.
“She’s not really playing by the rules,” Garrett went on, “I mean, she’s the one who is really in charge of this whole thing, it was all her idea at the start, so I guess to an extent she can do whatever she wants, but what she’s doing doesn’t even make sense.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, like, the Red Rippers, right? Have you ever seen them really participate in anything outside of their own events?”
I shook my head.
“That’s her special faction, her chosen elite, and they don’t even seem to be playing the same game as everyone else. They’re never involved in stories, they don’t leave or follow clues for other factions, they participate in relatively few events, and here’s the weirdest part,” he continued, looking at me intently, “They never ask me for rule checks or to help upgrade their characters.”