Dice Mage: A GameLit Adventure

by Andrew Beymer

  “Looks like you just rolled a natural twenty,” she said. “Too bad it’s not going to change the…”

  She glanced down at the piece of paper in her hand. Frowned. Looked at the die and then back to the piece of paper as though she was trying to understand something that didn’t quite make sense.

  “What the?”

  “What’s wrong?” Mike asked. This whole back and forth had been fun and all, but he really did need to get going already.

  “This can’t be right,” the girl said, clearly irritated.

  “What can’t be right?” he asked.

  He knew what wasn’t right. The sort of things Doug was no doubt doing to his beloved mage right about now. He’d worked long and hard to get that guy where he was today. Through the crappy lower levels where he could barely levitate a stone all the way to the point where he could casually deal the kind of damage that would wipe out an entire opposing army with the twitch of his little finger.

  Okay, so maybe he wasn’t quite that overpowered, but he didn’t want his mage to run into a magical flower or monster or something that took away all his powers like he was a force user confronted with a ysalamiri back before the mouse came along and wiped out all the good stuff and replaced it with the adventures of emo Vader.

  “That’s really weird,” the girl said. “I could’ve sworn the price was a few hundred dollars, but it says right here they’re five bucks.”

  Mike licked his lips. He tried to ignore the tingling running over his body as he thought of grabbing the dice like they were his precious and he was going to have his birthday present, damn it.

  Though it wasn’t his birthday. And he wasn’t going to strangle anyone to get a set of dice. Though he would be willing to take the mildly evil step of taking a set of dice worth a few hundred dollars for cheap because the price tag had been mislabeled.

  “So they’re the same price as the cheap stuff at the other end?” he said, scarcely believing his luck. “I mean that’s awesome. In that case I’ll take’em!”

  He whipped out his wallet and held out his card. It only shook a little. The girl looked at the price tag and looked at him. That tingling and warmth he felt as he kept his other hand on the rest of the dice only got stronger.

  Clearly she was trying to decide whether or not she should double check the pricing, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that if she did then he wasn’t going to get his nice new awesome set of fake plastic dragonbone dice at the price he wanted.

  It was too bad he couldn’t, like, use a Jedi mind trick on her or something. That’d be a neat trick to do in person.

  “Whatever,” she said. “He doesn’t pay me enough to care about this shit.”

  She took his card and walked over to a tablet on the glass display case to run the thing. A tablet that looked decidedly out of place among all the other low technology trappings. He figured they had to make some concessions to modern convenience for all that they were trying to make the place look like some nerd’s conception of what the Middle Ages had looked like.

  Mike waited until her back was turned before he breathed a sigh of relief. He’d been pretty sure she was about to go talk to the owner or someone who had more power than her and he wouldn’t get his shiny set of awesome weighted faux-dragonbone plastic dice. A moment later she was back with a receipt for him to sign.

  “Here you go,” she said, smiling at him again. This time it seemed like a genuine smile, and not one of those half smiles she’d hit him with before that said she was being polite to yet another one of the geeks that regularly came through this place.

  “Thanks,” he said, pulling out his Crown Royal bag and tossing the dice in there.

  “You know we have other bags you can use for that stuff that don’t make you look like an alcoholic,” she said, that smile still there. “Though if you’re into getting drinks…”

  She trailed off and Mike was pretty sure she was dangling an invitation. The only problem was he was in sort of a hurry, he was in sort of a weird place since this whole trip was precipitated by Christine which made him a little gun shy on getting back into the dating scene, and he had the painfully dorky excuse of needing to get to Ron’s house as soon as possible so he could try and prevent the worst damage Doug might try to inflict on his character.

  He held the dice bag up in salute. “Nothing like one of my dad’s bags. It’s sort of tradition, and if anyone has the booze problem it’s him.”

  “Oh,” she said, blinking a couple of times. Like she was surprised he hadn’t taken her up on her obvious offer.

  He got the feeling there weren’t a lot of guys coming through here who got offers like that, let alone dudes who got the offer and turned it down.

  If he wasn’t still smarting from everything that’d happened with Christine he might’ve taken her up on that offer. As it was he needed to get out of there before someone else higher up on this game shop’s org chart came along and realized he was getting away with a nice expensive dice set for practically nothing.

  “Maybe I’ll see you around,” he said.

  That sounded a lot cooler in his head than how it came out. Clearly whatever spell had been working was gone. She rolled her eyes and walked towards the back of the store where the sound of gaming could be heard on the other side of a beaded curtain.

  Mike paused to watch her go, and almost reconsidered following her and seeing whether or not there was an offer there or whether she was simply being polite and doing her flirting routine for yet another paying customer.

  She hadn’t been trying to upsell him on anything, after all.

  Then he shook his head. Told himself that she was only flirting because that’s probably what she did with all the customers. He gathered up his dice, and that’s when the booming voice that sounded like a fucking earthquake hit.

  “The choice has been made!” a sonorous female voice intoned. He would’ve thought he was going crazy, but the hot chick on the other end of the room, poised on the edge of the bead curtain, also looked around in a clear panic. “The first player has entered the game! The Dragonbone Dice of Destiny have been claimed!”

  There was a pause. Then the voice came back, still booming to the point that it shook everything around him, but sounding a hell of a lot more incredulous. The shelf full of German board game imports topped over, and he cried out as he dodged out of the way.

  “Wait. The mage? Are you fucking kidding me? I chose someone with some muscles! Not another mage! What the…”

  The booming sound was replaced with the sound of a booming scuffle, for all the world like there were two radio announcers fighting over a microphone over the air or something, and then the place went silent. Mike stared at the girl, and as he stared some other guys came through the beaded curtain and looked around in confusion.

  He wasn’t the only one. He wasn’t going completely crazy.

  He also figured a bunch of people coming into the main shop was his cue to exit, stage left. The last thing he wanted was for one of those guys to be the owner who might start asking questions about what he was buying. He wasn’t letting his precious go now.

  Not when he had a sneaking suspicion they had something to do with that booming voice. He recognized that voice. It was the hot sorority chick in the toga, and she’d sounded pissed off. He still wasn’t sure what the hell she was talking about with all that business about game pieces, but he had a sneaking feeling he was going to find out sooner rather than later.

  He headed out and up the stairs, and that’s when he heard the screams.

  Yeah. Sooner rather than later. Fuck.

  9

  Rescue

  Mike sprinted up the steps, telling himself the entire way that it had to be a bunch of drunk girls letting the world know they’d already had too much to drink before they got out to the bars.

  The mating call of the American college student. He figured it would be followed by some guys answering with “woos” of their own, but there was none
of that as he got to the top and listened.

  No, there was just another scream. The sort of scream that didn’t come from a drunk girl having a good time. That was the kind of scream that came from a woman who was in danger.

  Only he didn’t see a damn thing as he looked around frantically trying to find the source of the screaming.

  Not that he knew what the heck he was supposed to do even if he found the source of the screaming. He was a college student. He didn’t have any martial arts training or anything. He wasn’t carrying a weapon, and he wouldn’t know how to use one even if he was carrying.

  The best hope he had was that whatever asshole was causing that screaming would take a look at him, particularly at the work he’d been doing in the gym over the past couple of years, and decide it wasn’t worth it.

  That was a thin thread to hang his hopes on.

  Batman he wasn’t. He could admit that. Sure he went through that phase in his life where he thought about joining one of the martial arts clubs on campus or something, but as with most guys who went through that phase the urge had passed just as quickly as it came. The reality of staying on campus well past his last class was finished had quickly overruled any desire for learning how to kick ass.

  “Where the hell are you?” he growled.

  He was surprised at that growl. Was he seriously doing the Kevin Conroy just because he thought there was a damsel in distress somewhere out there? He shook his head. The best that was going to happen when he found this girl was he called the cops and they got there in time to save the day.

  The worst that could happen was he got his ass kicked six ways from Sunday because anyone who was attacking a girl here in the middle of the campus village where there were going to be a lot of people around to witness what was going on very shortly was also the kind of person who probably didn’t care about adding Mike’s ass to their list of asses in need of a good kicking.

  Another scream. That made it easier for him to triangulate things. A chill ran through him as he realized it was coming from an alley that looked like it was right behind Caffeine and Cookies.

  He wasn’t sure why he suddenly worried that the scream was coming from Gwen. All he knew was something terrible was going on here, and those screams did sound a little bit like his friend.

  Either way there was a lady out there in trouble. He was going to run to her rescue. Even if “rescue” in this case was calling 911 and letting the boys in blue with guns take care of the issue. He’d dialed 911 and his hand was hovering over the send button just in case, but he didn’t call just yet.

  He wanted to make sure this was actually an emergency and not just a bunch of pregaming college kids being stupid. He was pretty sure they couldn’t get him for making a false 911 report if he honestly thought there was a real emergency, but he also didn’t want to stand around dealing with all the time wasting that would come with the cops chewing him out if he could avoid it.

  He spared a thought for all the bad things no doubt happening to his mage because he was going to save this girl who might just be some drunk chick being stupid. If it turned out it was a bunch of college kids acting like idiots he was going to go old man on them and give them a piece of his mind.

  Even if he was only a junior. Aside from the occasional TA he was well aware that being in his early twenties meant he was basically a grandpa in college years.

  Though he kind of liked that. He wasn’t looking forward to going out into the workforce and being the youngest all over again. Assuming he could even find a job, which was doubtful with the way things had been going lately.

  Mike stopped at the edge of the alley and took a deep breath. He figured he was either about to discover something very bad or he was going to be very angry with someone for wasting his very limited time.

  There was something about the atmosphere around him though. As though the air was crackling with electricity. It felt like when he rubbed a balloon against his head and watched his hair standing on end. Or the one time as a kid when he’d gone to one of those “science” museums for kids that ended up being a bunch of cool demonstrations that were supposed to get kids interested in science. He’d touched a ball and the electricity made all the hair in his body stand on end all at once.

  It was like the feeling he got earlier when he saw all that crazy shit going down on campus. Goblins. Riders in the sky. Hot girls in togas touching his chest and making him feel all funny deep inside.

  Yeah, this felt sort of like that, but different. There was a pulsing heat in his pocket where he’d put his dice bag. He figured that was just his imagination, but it felt weird even if it was all in his head. Not to mention that heat in his chest was starting to come back for some reason.

  This was not a time for him to get another high off of whatever that crazy girl had done to him. He figured he’d also gotten a little aftershock from the stuff down in that game store when he thought he heard her voice again.

  If he kept telling himself that he’d taken a hit of something really new, really weird, and really powerful then his mind could keep comforting him and saying it was all a bad trip. That monsters and the supernatural weren’t real and nothing weird was going down tonight.

  Mike peered into the alley. Sure enough there was Gwen backing down the alley. He knew that was her. Not so much because he recognized her as because he figured with the way bad things had been happening to him today of course it would be Gwen who was the damsel in distress.

  A bag of garbage was on the alley floor sliced open neatly and a dumpster with one of the top doors open showed what she’d been doing in the dark alley.

  Also? There was totally a giant werewolf in weird armor walking on two legs advancing on her with a black sword held out at its side.

  Huh. Now there was something you didn’t see every day. His first thought was that he was seeing an actual werewolf, but then his rational mind took over.

  His rational mind which was quickly losing out to the more lizard part of his brain, the more ancient part of his brain, that was screaming this was all real, this was all happening, and they were fucked. Rational brain wasn’t having any of that shit, because it knew this sort of thing didn’t happen. Couldn’t happen. That this had to be a hallucination. Or someone in a costume filming one of those stupid prank videos.

  He didn’t live in a world where werewolves were real. He did live in a world where cosplayers with more enthusiasm than sense were a real thing, though. The only thing that was really surprising about this was that it wasn’t someone in a Deadpool costume pulling an asshole move that would inevitably be followed by protests of “it was just a prank bro!” when it inevitably went wrong.

  Though this little prank had obviously already gone too far.

  The werewolf raised its black sword over its head and let out a very realistic snarl. Mike would have to have a look at the dude’s sound system, but not before letting this asshole know the joyfulness was over. He opened his mouth. His rational brain told him it was the right thing to do while the more ancient primate-adjacent parts of his brain that still remembered running from predators on a deeply instinctual level had curled up in a ball and were rocking back and forth whimpering in terror.

  “Hey asshole!” he shouted just loud enough to get the thing’s attention.

  His hand still hovered over the phone. He was still ready to call the cops at a moment’s notice. His mind still couldn’t quite admit that there was actually a threat. He’d lived in the modern world in a relatively safe and stable area for most of his life, and so he was in a place, mentally speaking, where he just couldn’t reconcile his relatively safe life up to this point with the possibility that danger might actually be sniffing around in the form of a fucking werewolf with a sword.

  Even if all the weird shit he’d seen throughout the day should’ve told him that this sort of thing was entirely possible.

  One of the curious things about the human condition is an instinctive understanding of the r
ole statistics plays in governing the universe that is masked by a gleeful and willing ignorance of that subject that allows people to make it through the day without constantly succumbing to the existential dread that the universe is indifferent to their existence at best and actively trying to kill them at worst.

  A person who is terrified of flying will still get on that plane because they know on some level that, statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel. The hiker traveling through the Pacific Northwest is aware of but not terribly worried about the numerous apex predators in the woods around them that would like nothing more than to make them into a snack because really, how many people were attacked and killed every year?

  The same held true for beachgoers who continued to enjoy the sunshine and the sand despite the best combined efforts of Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg. Entire cities sprang up in the shadow of large and ominous volcanoes because, while a city planner’s terrified forebrain might gibber at the thought of lava and explosions and the possibility of the air pocket their burning body left behind being dug up thousands of years later by excited archaeologists, their rational mind knew that geological events worked on their own damned time and they're more likely to win the lottery than to be the unlucky son-of-a-bitch who lived to see a dormant volcano roar to life and send a pyroclastic flow their way.

  This curious innate understanding of odds and taking chances was precisely why the first thing to cross someone's mind when there's something on the wing or claws digging into their deliciously defenseless hairless monkey flesh or the pyroclastic flow comes rushing down to simultaneously suffocate and incinerate is the simple fleeting thought: "How could this be happening to me?"

  Of course it's happening to the poor hapless victim because the bell curve is very forgiving when it comes to the middle, but cruel and merciless when it comes time to satisfy the demands of its highly improbable but gruesome edges.

  So it should come as no surprise that when the creature turned and let out a snarl that was accompanied with a low growl that seemed to thrum through Mike like the overpowered bass at a concert and connect to a very primal part of his monkey brain that hadn’t had to deal with danger from predators in at least five to ten thousand years, depending on what anthropologist you talked to, the first thought to run through his mind after the more visceral corners of his brain screamed that was way to realistic to be a costume was simple: