Dice Mage: A GameLit Adventure

by Andrew Beymer

  Pun totally intended.

  Surprisingly when he pulled the paper out to double check the address it didn’t look like it was any worse for the wear.

  What was worse for the wear was his faith in modern technology. Like most people from his generation he’d come to put all of his trust in a small hunk of plastic, glass, and rare earth metals put together by the lowest bidder in near slave labor conditions on the other side of the world.

  He figured maybe he was getting some karmic retribution for basically living in the modern civilization equivalent of the allegorical magical cloud kingdom from Chrono Trigger, or any of a number of sci-fi and fantasy worlds that’d dealt with that theme over the years, because his technological god was failing him tonight.

  “Come on,” he muttered, glancing at the time and realizing he was going to be very late.

  Late was bad. Doug didn’t tolerate late. The last time someone was late by just a couple of minutes Doug had done unspeakable things to that person’s character by transporting them to the Plane of Elemental Papercuts, Salt, and Lemon Juice, and he’d lovingly narrated every moment of that player character’s unfortunate and painful demise.

  The problem hadn’t even been with the method of the character’s demise, or the fact of his demise for that matter. Characters meeting an unfortunate end when a player displeased Doug was an unfortunate fact of life at their gaming table.

  No, the real torture had been listening to Doug narrating everything in a faux-middle English style that he seemed to think lent an air of authenticity to his more ridiculous game scenarios. Mike imagined being forced to listen to that sort of narration came pretty close to the psychological torture of listening to a Vogon poet laureate recite their best work.

  “Where the fuck are you?” he growled.

  He looked around the campus village. At least this was one spoke of the campus village. The whole thing sprawled out across multiple city blocks with various blocks dedicated to various businesses dedicated to varying attempts at making money by aiding college kids in their weekly quest to get wasted, find food, and fuck.

  Right now he was in an area that was just down the street from several bars and dance clubs. Which meant this place would be hopping in a few hours, but it was still early enough that the daytime crowds of businessmen who came here to eat lunch and gawk at college girls wearing the latest in skimpy college girl fashion had all gone home to their wives and kids to jerk off thinking about what they’d seen at lunch while the evening crowds of even more scantily clad college girls and the popped collar and khaki shorts crowd that inevitably followed were still pregaming on the cheaper booze they could get at home.

  The practical upshot being that the place was like a ghost town as he stood in the twilight looking around for The Wizard’s Dungeon and rolling a big fat zero.

  He looked down at the address. His phone had brought him into the correct general vicinity, but the problem was he wasn’t seeing anything on the storefronts that matched what was down on the page.

  “42 1/2 E. Hamilton,” he muttered to himself as he looked at the page.

  He looked up at the business in front of him. He was well aware that there were a lot of buildings around here that had multiple units. The only problem was the building he stared at now was a hair salon, and there was no entrance leading to a staircase that would indicate a business above.

  As he looked up there he could see shadows moving around behind curtains or blinds. Which meant there were probably students living up there in apartments close to the action who either had more student loans than sense or parents who were willing to pay for them to live just down the street from all the bars.

  Mike sighed. Today hadn’t been his day, and so far the night wasn’t getting any better. He cast around for any business that showed signs of being open. H figured what he really needed was to do this the old school way and get directions from a living breathing human and not a frakkin’ toaster.

  His eyes fell on a business across the street that he was pretty sure was new since the last time he was down here. It was difficult to tell since the last time he’d been down here had been with Christine, and he’d been mostly concerned at the time with keeping his eyes off of the buffet of eye candy that’d been on display.

  Christine had tended to come a tad unhinged when she thought he was looking at other women, so he’d learned to perfect his peripheral vision game when he was with her.

  Most places were empty, but there was one store over there, Caffeine & Cookies, that had lights on and a big welcoming Open sign on the front door. A moment later he stepped through that door.

  The place was just as abandoned as everything else in the area, but at least it was open. The place had the slightly rundown look of all businesses that catered to the late night drunk college crowd. The drunks didn’t care about upkeep and tended to make that upkeep difficult with their antics, so why bother making the place look too nice?

  The only sign of life was a cute girl behind the counter who was arranging cookies behind a glass display case which blocked him from seeing her face, though he could see some curves that drew his attention. He’d been doing that a lot since Christine dumped him. Like some internal part of him that was afraid to even look at a girl suddenly decided it was open season on eye candy when Christine wasn’t there to gripe at him for even daring to so much as have an impure thought.

  She looked up and hit him with the polite smile that was the purview of retail drones around the world, but when she locked eyes with Mike that smile froze. Mike’s own smile froze as well, because he figured the fates had to be playing a trick on him at this point.

  “Mike?” she said.

  “Gwen?” he asked, squinting to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. “This is the strip club?”

  She shrugged and looked away. As though she was embarrassed that she was slinging coffee and cookies to drunks.

  “You’re like the last person I expected to see down here,” she said. “Need some cookies for game night? Or did you decide to give up on the geeky stuff and come down here to party and hit on the hotties?”

  Mike couldn’t be sure, but he almost thought he saw a twinkle in her eye as she said that. He could think of at least one hottie he wouldn’t mind hitting on right about now.

  Gwen was a cutie, that was for sure. Even in an apron and a shirt under it that looked like it had the cookie shop logo on it, but that couldn’t hide those curves in all the right places. Curves that had distracted him more than once when they were in class together.

  He’d never given it serious thought because he figured she was out of his league for one, and he’d been with Christine for another. Now that they were here alone, though? Now that he was single? Now that he was pretty sure she’d been acting very interested earlier?

  Well… He was going to ask her for directions and get going. He was late for game night, and the fact that his inner fat kid was yelling that his chances with a girl like Gwen hadn’t changed just because his relationship status had gone from It’s Complicated to nonexistent wasn’t helping matters.

  “Maybe you can help me,” he said. “I’m looking for a place called the Wizard’s…”

  Gwen let out a laugh that was really more of a snort before he could finish his thought. She pointed vaguely across the street.

  “Game night. Right. I should’ve known a big old nerd like you would be looking for the Dungeon,” she said.

  “You should?” he said, genuinely confused.

  “Sure. We get lots of guys coming through here looking for the place. Most of them aren’t as cute, but whatever,” she said. Then before he could open his mouth and comment on that little aside she gave him what he’d been looking for. Well partly what he’d been looking for.

  Suddenly there was something else he very much wouldn’t mind getting from Gwen tonight. “Look for the stairs on the side of the hairdresser and you’ll find what you’re looking for, o mighty adventurer.”


  “Oh come on,” he said. “You don’t have to be like that. Surely you’ve played a game in your time?”

  “Maybe, but then again maybe not,” she said. “I wasn’t a big fan of hanging onto my virginity any longer than I had to when I got to college.”

  She looked him up and down and he really got the feeling they were having a moment. Again. One that wasn’t going to be interrupted by Ron and Doug coming along and acting like idiots. He was pretty sure it wasn’t because he was really on the rebound having been dumped just a week prior.

  “Something tells me you never had much trouble with that though. The cute nerd thing works for you,” she said with a wink.

  Mike was flummoxed. He felt like he should say something. The only problem was he’d been so short-circuited by being with Christine for so long and listening to her steady stream of abuse that he had no idea what to say. He just wasn’t used to a girl saying something nice like that.

  The best he could hope from Christine was her waiting a couple of minutes before she rolled her eyes and said she was busy when he tried being affectionate. Not a good memory, and not something he wanted to think about right now talking with Gwen.

  So instead he smiled at Gwen and chickened out. He told himself it was because the wounds with Christine were still too new, that he didn’t want to be that asshole who hit on a friend or a retail person who was simply being polite, Gwen was sort of both all wrapped into one right now, but deep down he knew he was taking the coward’s way out.

  “Well thanks for the directions,” he said. “I should get going if I’m going to make it to game night.”

  And there he was acting like the most pathetic nerd stereotype ever. Something part of his mind was kicking him for even as the inner fat kid oozed satisfaction and told him that was as things should be.

  Honestly, how pathetic was he using game night as an excuse to not talk to a girl? Though admittedly his reasons for using game night as an excuse were very different with Gwen than it’d been with Christine. With Gwen he was too unsure of what was happening here.

  With Christine he’d just wanted an escape.

  “It really was good seeing you Mike,” she said. “Maybe you can swing by here some other time when you’re not scheduled to do one of your cute nerd things.”

  Mike smiled. He felt like this was an opportunity to maybe set things right just a little. His smile turned to an idiotic grin.

  “Yeah, I’d like that,” he said.

  And before he could screw things up any more he made his escape. He still had to get his dice and get to game night.

  He just prayed his character would survive whatever wrath Doug laid down on him for being late. Doug wasn’t the kind of guy who’d be understanding about being late because of a girl. Mostly because the fairer sex refused to have anything to do with him, which was a source of endless frustration for the guy. He tended to lash out at anyone who did have a way with the ladies.

  Either way Mike was on a timer, and the countdown had reached zero like ten minutes ago. It was time to get to The Wizard’s Dungeon, get his dice, and get to game night.

  7

  The Wizard’s Dungeon

  The first thing Mike noticed when he stepped out onto the street, aside from the overwhelming feeling that he should turn around and go back to continue hitting on Gwen, was the stairs on the side of the hairdresser.

  He should’ve seen it the first time around. Odd that he needed a hot friend to tell him where those stairs were before he really saw them. Also? Odd that there was even a store in the basement, though he figured it totally fit the dingy game store ambiance that most game store owners could only ever dream of.

  The second thing he saw were some big shadows lurking in the distance. He thought of the craziness he’d seen earlier in the day. Things that had to be hallucinations. This had to be something like that too, or a trick of the light in the evening darkness, because those shadows looked way too big to be people.

  Even though they had to be drunk students shambling through the darkness. He shook it off and made a beeline for the stairs. He told himself it was because he wanted to get some dice and get to game night and not because he was worried that those shadows in the distance were quite literally monsters lurking in the dark.

  That wasn’t the kind of thing that happened in real life. Then again goblins slinking through shrubs and riders flying through the skies and hot women touching him in the chest and hot girls from class hitting on him weren’t things that normally happened either.

  He made his way down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and as he did he could tell he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. He didn’t even feel like he was in the campus village anymore. Sure he could hear the sounds of city life going on up above, but the world above felt like it was too sanitized. Too perfect.

  It was a nice version of a college campus nightlife that local owners had gone to great pains to create for the college kids who lived and drank and fucked and spent money in this area, and it was totally at odds with the grimy look down in the stairwell. As though those same drunk college students had taken to using this stairwell as a place for them to drop their garbage and whoever owned the stairs couldn’t be bothered to clean it up.

  Which, when he thought about it, sounded like the sort of thing a store owner with geeky inclinations would totally do.

  His nose wrinkled at the stink, but he figured he was on the right track. Under the smell of stale beer and the crunch of beer bottles under foot was another smell he recognized all too well. It was the smell of cardboard collectible cards brand new after being ripped out of their packaging. It was the smell of a new pair of dice or a new miniature ready to be painted that the owner couldn’t wait to take home so they’d opened it up right there in the stairwell.

  Of course under all of that there was also the faint whiff of body odor which seemed to proclaim to the world that the owners who couldn’t take the time to get back to their car or their dorm or their apartment before they looked at their latest adult figurine, never call it a toy or an action figure, also couldn’t be bothered to waste time on petty concerns like showering or deodorant.

  That more than anything was why Mike didn’t bother to take in a deep breath. Sure it was a scent melange he was used to. Something that even stirred nostalgia in him because of how many years he’d been gaming.

  It also totally wasn’t something he was all that interested in smelling any longer than he had to, so he pulled open a door that looked like it’d been painted to look like something straight out of some ‘80s fantasy movie. It seriously looked like a couple of old boards held together by an iron wrap and then weathered over the years, though of course that wasn’t possible since the flyer said this place had just opened a few weeks ago.

  He almost wasn’t sure this was the right spot, even with the smell. Only there’d been a practiced casualness to the way Gwen rattled off her directions. As though she was used to confused geeks coming into her store asking her for directions to the game shop across the street.

  He pushed open the door, thinking this place was definitely interesting. Also probably not long for the world if the production values he saw on the outside were any indication of what he was going to find on the inside.

  Anyone spending this kind of money to make the place look this awesome probably didn’t have the business sense to actually make money, which was a damn shame.

  An unearthly wail that sounded like the souls of the damned greeted him as he stepped through the door. He looked around for the obvious Halloween toy that’d made that noise, but didn’t see anything. He figured there must be a surround system or something purchased out of the box at the local Best Buy and hidden to create that greeting.

  As he looked around he was impressed, yet again, by the production values on display. He reached out to touch the walls and they felt like genuine stone. They also had condensation all over them which he figured the owner or owners probably thought looked totally coo
l, but the only thing he could think was it meant whatever foam they’d used to make this place look like a dank dungeon was going to get some serious black mold behind it sooner rather than later.

  He took in the rest of the place. Wood shelves lined with various gaming implements ran to rows of board games for people who were into that sort of thing. It was a little odd seeing the traditional classics that wouldn’t be out of place on the shelves at, say, Walmart or Target, hanging out on the first few shelves.

  That also made sense though. Display the obvious game choices for the normals so they didn’t get too confused looking for university-themed Monopoly. Beyond those games he saw more specialized choices. Your Catans and Munchkins and things like that, and then beyond that were the board games that only the most hardcore of board game junkies would go for. The kind of people who bought mail order German translations back when that was the only way to get your specialized board game fix.

  Speaking of. There was even an entire shelving unit dedicated to German games with cheap photocopied translations of instructions taped to the front of the boxes. He nodded his approval even though there was no one to see or care about that approval.

  “So you like the choices on offer?” a feminine voice said from behind him.

  He wheeled around and pointedly tried not to jump. When he got a look at the source of that voice it was difficult for him to keep his tongue from hitting the floor as his eyes popped out and he did an old fashioned “awoogah!” like he was a vaguely misogynistic wolf from a cartoon that belonged in the first half of the twentieth century and probably shouldn’t have been seeing airtime into the early ‘90s when he caught it on Saturday mornings.

  He figured this must be his day, and night, for running into cute girls.

  “Um, hi,” he said. “And yeah. Pretty cool place you have here.”

  He could’ve kicked himself for coming up with something so mind-bogglingly inane, but he couldn’t help himself. His mind was suffering from a short-circuit. The kind of short-circuiting that was the unique purview of a man old enough to know better but still young enough to be very much at the mercy of the hormones ravaging his body as he eyed a gorgeous woman.