The Cursed Codex

by Matthew S. Cox

  That morning, he flew out of bed at eight to set up the card table and put the finishing touches on some new maps he made for some random side quests: small mini-dungeons with only a few rooms he could throw in anywhere. If the guys didn’t take quest bait in one place, he’d be able to use the same map/idea somewhere else.

  Elliot arrived with his mother a little after ten, carrying a huge aluminum tray of baked ziti. Keith’s mom put it in the fridge, agreeing to warm it for the kids later in the day. Another surprise came in that the boy had a green shirt on.

  “Holy crap, dude,” yelled Keith. “Are you okay?” He ran up and put his hand on Elliot’s forehead. “Feels normal.”

  Elliot swatted at him. “What? What?”

  “You’re not wearing a yellow shirt.” Keith cracked up laughing.

  “Yellow’s my favorite color.” Elliot folded his arms.

  Mrs. Gardner chatted for a few minutes with Keith’s mother before she waved to Elliot and left. Ashur and Tira rang the doorbell soon after. He looked ready to run track in a bright red hoodie and sweat pants, while Tira had worn a blue shirt with a brown fake-leather vest over it, leggings, and a tiny pair of boots, which she showed off.

  “They’re kinda like my rogue’s. And this is like leather armor.” She tugged on her vest.

  “You’re adorable,” said Keith’s mother.

  Tira pointed at her. “See. She knows.”

  Keith rolled his eyes when he faced the corner so no one could see it.

  With iced tea and a bag of pretzels in hand, Keith led the charge upstairs to his room.

  Everyone resumed the spots they’d been at last week, leaving one empty chair for Carlos, who they all expected to run a little late due to the car washing.

  Elliot swiped Keith’s spiral notebook off the corner of the table and glanced at it. “Wow. Bored at school?”

  “Couldn’t stop thinking about the game.” Keith grinned.

  “Dude.” Elliot shook his head. “You got it bad for your NPC.”

  “No I don’t.” Keith snatched the notebook back. “She’s just a character, and I’m doodling.”

  “What’s up with that anyway?” Ashur tossed a pretzel in his mouth. “Why’d you add an NPC?”

  Keith shrugged. “I dunno.” He tried to think of where the idea to use Sarah’s NPC came from, but honestly, he never even thought about doing it until he randomly mentioned her sitting at the side of the road. “It just kinda happened.”

  “No one ‘just kinda happens’ to spend an hour and a half making an NPC up.” Elliot laughed. “Come on man, who is she?”

  He hadn’t made her up. He’d spent an hour copying her onto a new sheet so Sarah’s original handwritten copy remained intact, like a museum piece.

  “Kyra’s no one real.” Keith fidgeted, clinging to the doodled notebook. “I found her character sheet in the book when I got it. I guess I improvised. A good GM doesn’t run modules like a computer. They add stuff, change stuff… make the story better. Kyra’s got a bunch of history if you wanna try talking to her.”

  Elliot reached over and felt Keith’s forehead.

  “He’s right,” chirped Tira. “It’s not all about killing monsters and finding treasure. It’s a story.”

  “Loot and victory!” roared Ashur, thrusting a pretzel into the air like a sword.

  Nasir the Bold lowered his longsword and looked at the others. “What?”

  “Loot and victory?” asked Tira Shadow, shaking her head. “What kind of a battle cry is that?”

  Docar gestured at the road. “Our companion is merely expressing his desire to put an end to Yzil’s evil.”

  “Indeed,” said Kyra. She looked a little paler than usual.

  “Is something the matter?” asked Nasir.

  “Troubling dreams is all.” Kyra gazed into the skies as if searching for something. “Memories of my former companions. I can still hear them screaming.”

  Tira Shadow gulped.

  The adventurers resumed their journey down the dirt road, soon entering the woods. Kyra took the lead among the trees, alert for danger’s approach. The group traveled for two days in peace, leaving the forest behind and following a more established road north toward the village of Narwick, which rumor placed close to the Devouring.

  “Kinda funny how we can walk like a hundred miles in a couple minutes, but killing a pack of goblins takes a half hour,” said a disembodied young boy.

  Everyone but Kyra looked up.

  “I wish we could travel so fast,” said Nasir. “All this walking is tiring. What fool thinks we travel in minutes?”

  “Don’t mind the phantasms of the mind,” whispered Docar. “They seek to deceive us.”

  “Speaking of goblins,” said Spirit Boy.

  “Goblins!” shouted Kyra, pointing at the weeds lining the road.

  “Should we really do a fight before Carlos is here?” asked a different unseen child.

  Nasir drew his blades and stared at the goblins, who for some bizarre reason had not yet come rushing at them.

  “Uhh, it’s only some random goblins,” said Spirit Boy. “Why don’t you run his character?”

  Fuegor appeared out of thin air with a faint pop.

  “Where were you?” asked Nasir.

  “Right here the whole time,” said Fuegor in monotone while staring glassily into nowhere.

  The goblins charged.

  One ran up and stabbed Nasir in the thigh, but its dagger didn’t penetrate the warrior’s armor. Nasir attacked, but both swings only scored small scratches with the tips of his blades. The goblin, wounded but alive, snarled.

  “Wow. Epic,” said a disembodied boy’s voice. “You hit a goblin twice and somehow didn’t kill it.”

  Another unseen boy growled.

  Docar lunged at a different goblin, driving his fist straight into the three-foot-tall creature’s green face. Blood flew out of its ears and it fell over, dead.

  “Why are you punching everything?” asked Tira Shadow. “Use your mace.”

  “Mace?” asked Docar. “I don’t have a weapon.”

  The rustle of shuffling papers fluttered in the air.

  Another goblin attacked Kyra, running at her with a tiny dagger. She jumped back and fired an arrow into its chest, killing it before it came close enough to swing. Before the first goblin even hit the ground, she loosed a second arrow, spearing the head of a goblin that had not yet made a move to attack.

  Nasir grumbled.

  “A morningstar is a weapon,” said a ghostly little girl voice. “It’s a spiked ball on a chain with a handle.”

  Said spiked ball on a chain with a handle appeared on Docar’s belt with a pop.

  “Aha!” Docar grabbed the morningstar and swung it around, testing the weight. “That’s more like it.”

  Tira Shadow pulled a throwing knife from the bandolier across her chest and flung it into the head of the goblin Nasir had cut. The four-inch blade stuck it in the cheek. Eyes rolling into its head, the goblin collapsed. The warrior glared over his shoulder at her.

  “You can take one out that’s not hurt. Unless I attack from behind, I can’t. Don’t waste your time with a hurt one,” said Tira Shadow.

  Two more goblins ran in together, one attacking Tira, one on Docar. She evaded with a graceful sidestep. Her goblin skidded to a halt and spun to face her, emitting a high-pitched growl that verged on being cute. The other one stabbed Docar in the leg, but the Genndi barely grunted.

  “Wait, you forgot Fuegor,” said the ghostly little girl.

  The two goblins reversed and slid back to where they started.

  Fuegor cast a fire bolt at the one Tira dodged, incinerating it to a goblin-shaped statue of ash. The creature blinked once, and fell over dead.

  With that, the other goblin fast-forwarded in and stabbed Docar again, hitting the exact same spot.

  “Hey, why didn’t you have him fry the one that was gonna hit you?” asked a disembodied boy.

  �
�Felt too cheap,” said another nonexistent boy with a thicker voice.

  Nasir the Bold whirled to attack the goblin that hit Docar. His left-handed sword went flying clear out of his grip and stuck in the ground a few feet away. His right hand sword passed inches over the goblin’s head.

  A disembodied boy yelled, “Crap!”

  “The gods are angry this day,” said Kyra, glancing skyward.

  Fuegor swung his staff at the goblin, but it avoided him.

  Three more goblins burst from where they had been hiding in the grass, all running up to Nasir.

  Tira Shadow raced over to the broadsword stuck in the ground. She grabbed it, whirled, and tossed it to Nasir, who caught it.

  “Thanks,” he muttered.

  Docar raised a hand, pointed at Nasir, and intoned words of magic. Golden light surrounded the warrior and faded out.

  The middle goblin attacked Nasir, but he swatted the dagger aside with ease. The goblin in front of Docar hit him again, but didn’t appear to do much worse than a cat scratch. Tira Shadow disappeared into the weeds. Fuegor raised his hand. A tiny fizzle of smoke came from his palm with a crackling pop. Nasir roared and attacked. His first strike started to pass clear over the goblin’s head, but it jerked backward in time and corrected, striking the three-foot-tall creature in the chest and nearly cutting it in half. His second blade took the head of the goblin on the left.

  Docar spun his morningstar around faster and faster before walloping the goblin so hard its corpse landed fifteen feet away. Blood and goblin bits dripped from the spikes on his weapon when he held it up.

  Tira Shadow leaned out of the bushes, reaching for the goblin’s belt.

  “You can’t really do that,” said Spirit Boy. “One, they don’t have anything worth taking, two you can’t pick pockets in the middle of combat.”

  Tira Shadow grumbled and sank into the bushes again.

  Nasir whiffed over the goblin’s head twice, his motions jerking and repeating.

  “That is unparalleled bad luck,” said a ghostly voice. “Even with a War Blessing, he still missed both swings, with rerolls. That’s four rolls in a row under five.”

  Kyra gazed up again. “Does anyone else hear those voices, or is it only me?”

  “I hear them,” said Tira Shadow from the bushes.

  “I do.” Nasir squinted at the clouds.

  The goblin nodded. “G’obru.”

  “Aww,” said the bush in Tira’s voice. “It’s almost cute.”

  “There is nothing cute about goblins,” said Docar. “They abduct and eat children.”

  “Why?” gasped Tira Shadow.

  “Uhh,” said Nasir. “Probably because they’re not strong enough to abduct adults.”

  Fuegor leaned on his staff, waiting.

  The goblin tried to stab Nasir, emitting a tiny grunt with the effort he put into his swing. The warrior deflected the attack with ease, but when he prepared to counterattack, the goblin exploded, showering everyone with gore and leaving a clean goblin-sized skeleton standing there.

  Tira Shadow, half out of the bush with a dagger in the skeleton’s back, shrugged. “Oops.”

  “Stop. Hold on,” said Ashur.

  Elliot threw his head back and laughed until tears ran down his cheeks while pounding his fist on the table hard enough to make dice jump.

  “Dude.” Ashur shook his head. “A goblin’s not going to freakin’ explode like that from being poked with a dagger. Fifty-two damage from a dagger backstab is not the same thing as fifty-two damage from a massive boulder falling on it. That fifty-two damage she did is based on like criticalness. Putting a dagger right in its heart is more deadly than stabbing it in the butt.”

  Keith raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I overdid it. Forget the blood explosion.”

  The fifty-two-foot radial blast of blood and goopy bits lifted off the ground, (and the party’s clothes) compressing back into a whole goblin, which promptly fell dead off the end of Tira Shadow’s blade.

  Another pack of five goblins rushed in from the weeds.

  “The vermin are endless,” cried Nasir the Bold.

  The goblin in the middle of the new group carried a tiny staff instead of a dagger and wore a skirt made of tall grass. It hopped up and down, chanting words of magic.

  A tremendous reverberating clap of thunder rolled across the sky.

  Sickly brown-yellow gas appeared in a cloud among the adventurers, causing their eyes to water and everyone but Docar to gag.

  “By Hæm’s beard,” wheezed Nasir. “That’s ghastly. I can’t breathe.”

  Tira Shadow swooned out of her hiding place. “I’m gonna throw up.”

  “Ugh,” groaned Spirit Boy. “Dude.”

  Fuegor raised his arm like an automaton.

  “No!” roared Tira Shadow. She leapt on him. “Don’t cast a fire spell until the cloud’s gone or you’ll kill us all.”

  Four of the goblins rushed in, nose-drinking the fetid cloud and adoring it.

  “Oh, I’m gonna be sick,” muttered Tira Shadow. “That’s disgusting.”

  Kyra Redmane coughed. “Goblins use little pieces of petrified deer poop for money.” As with Docar, the cloud appeared to have little effect on her other than making her squint a little. She shot two arrows one after the next into the goblin shaman. It teetered back and forth on its feet, blinked once, and fell over dead.

  “Dear ranger, I wish you would have done that before it cast that spell,” wheezed Nasir.

  Tira Shadow crept off to the side, trying to get away from the lingering heavy cloud that had turned olive-drab in color. “By the gods! It smells so bad it’s visible.”

  Two goblins ran at Nasir, howling. The first swung at his waist. He avoided with a rapid thrust of his butt backward. The second sliced at his thigh, leaving a small cut. A third goblin wasted time trying to hit Kyra while the one in front of Docar jammed its knife into his leg again.

  Docar pressed a hand to his chest and cast a spell. A thin golden light aura surrounded him, and his wounds vanished.

  Nasir leaned forward and let out a bellowing roar. The remaining four goblins all stared at him and cowered. He sprang at two, cutting them down (and in half) as a throwing knife flew in from nowhere and embedded in the head of the third, killing it. The last goblin, in front of Docar, screamed in panic and started to run, but Kyra shot it with an arrow that lifted it off its feet and carried it a few yards before it landed, sliding to a halt on its chest, dead.

  Tira Shadow walked over to the dead goblins, squatted, and rummaged their stuff.

  Nasir grabbed her arm. “Not again.”

  “You don’t know that,” said Tira, her blue shirt up to cover her nose.

  Keith gagged on the stink in the air, and punched Elliot in the side twice. “Dude. That’s so damn nasty.”

  Elliot cackled, the only person at the table who didn’t have their shirt over their face.

  Tira stared at Keith while gesturing at her brother. “His character doesn’t know I took the Bottomless Bag before. Why would he stop me from searching the goblins?”

  “She’s gonna take all the treasure,” said Ashur.

  “Roll perception if you wanna catch her stealing,” said Keith. “It’s an opposed roll. You have to total higher than she gets with pickpocket skill.”

  Ashur grumbled and rolled a d20, getting a five. “Oh, come on. This isn’t even funny anymore.”

  “I’m not stealing anything,” said Tira. “I’m only searching the goblins. I don’t wanna take important stuff. My character’s playful, not evil.”

  Elliot lifted one cheek and farted—again.

  Tira pointed at him. “That’s evil.”

  Three seconds later, she gagged. “I gotta go outside. I need air.” She hurried out of the room.

  “Oh, my God,” said Ashur, before burying his face in his elbow. “What did you eat?”

  “Just pretzels.” Elliot put on an innocent face.

  Keith,
teetering on the verge of throwing up, climbed past Elliot to open a window. “I’m serious dude. If you gotta cast fetid cloud again, go to the bathroom. You’re staining my walls.”

  Elliot cracked up laughing.

  “Yo,” said Carlos, walking in. “What’s… holy crap. Damn.” He backed up fanning the air by his face. “Who did that?”

  Keith and Ashur pointed at Elliot. Tira leaned in the door and also pointed at him.

  “That should be worth an experience point penalty,” said Tira. “Disruption of game.”

  “Come my little lovely, come and bask in my gloriousness,” said Elliot, reaching at Carlos.

  Ashur threw a wadded up piece of aluminum foil at Elliot, bouncing it off his head.

  “Aww, come on guys, it’s not that bad.” Elliot shrugged with a lame smile.

  Keith gagged again. “Let’s take a break and go get more tea.”

  12

  The Edge of Nothing

  The rolling cloud of magical gas dissipated.

  Tira Shadow gathered a pile of copper coins from the goblins, which she counted out in the open and divided five ways.

  Nasir took his seven copper coins, muttering, “Now I can buy a whole inn.”

  Fuegor, no longer zombie-like, laughed. “You didn’t expect to get rich hunting goblins did you, friend? We’ve an evil overlord to depose. There, you shall find wealth.”

  “And if not, there’s still the five thousand gold from the king.” Docar grinned.

  “Still, that goes five ways.” Nasir sheathed his broadswords.

  “I’m not doing this for coin.” Kyra collected her arrows. “If we succeed, you’re welcome to my share.”

  Nasir sighed. “Easy for an NPC to say.”

  “What?” Kyra glanced at him, confusion on her face. “I’m not sure what you said.”

  He blinked, disoriented. “I mean… That’s selfless of you.”