Dice Mage: A GameLit Adventure

by Andrew Beymer

  It was up to him to take out the scary werewolf creature. He felt like he was starting to get the hang of this. He held out his die and tossed underhanded again.

  "Fireball," he said.

  Sure he figured he could try out different spells. See what there was to see. Only there was a little problem of him worrying that if he did cast something and it turns out that wasn't even an option then he would’ve wasted his throw. Not something he needed with a werewolf bearing down on them with a sword and neither one of them able to defend themselves if it did close into melee range.

  So he went with something safe, something that’d already worked well before, rather than getting fancy.

  This time the die came up with a fourteen. High enough that he was pretty sure it was going to be a hit, and sure enough he felt his hit die pulsing. He tossed it and rolled for damage. The die caught fire midair and slammed into the werewolf, immolating it this time.

  "Damn," he said.

  Though as he looked at the thing’s health bar, something that was getting easier to see every time he looked, he saw that it had gone down to zero. Maybe that was a requirement before a cool effect happened, or maybe the immolation was what had caused the thing to go down below zero on the old health bar.

  He just didn't know enough about this whole fucked up game situation to be sure which was the chicken and which was the egg.

  "Damn," Gwen said. "Remind me not to get on your bad side either!"

  "Sure thing," Mike said. "Though I don't think you're in any danger of that right now.”

  That was one werewolf down, but there were still three more to worry about. Though Ron seemed to be occupying two of them with his claymore just fine. Sean was standing back, but Mike didn't begrudge him standing back. After all, it's not like there was anything he could do.

  Something told him reciting facts and statistics at these things wasn’t going to be much use in a fight. Meanwhile Lisa was nowhere to be found. He really hoped she hadn't disappeared only to get captured.

  The second wolf had gotten to its feet in the time it took Mike to take stock of their situation. He wasn't sure whether that situation was good or bad. He did know that the wolf suddenly hulking over him and staring down with its sword raised wasn't good.

  He glanced at Gwen. She'd reloaded, and she was pulling the shotgun up, but it wasn't going to be up in time to save his ass. Damn. All he wanted to do was get a new set of dice and have fun at game night without Doug doing too many horrible things to his character. He hadn't asked for any of this.

  Sure it’d been a wild ride, but he would've preferred a more boring ride if it meant he was still alive when he got off of that crazy thing.

  Then an arrow appeared in the wolf’s chest. The werewolf looked down, blinked a couple of times in surprise, and its blade went clattering to the ground. It fell back, looking for all the world like the werewolf equivalent of a tree being felled. It even made a loud thud when it landed, and cracked some of the asphalt underneath.

  Mike was surprised. He didn't think the thing would weigh that much, and that made it even more amazing in his mind that Sean had survived having one of those things landing on top of him.

  "What the hell was that?" Gwen asked.

  Mike smiled. One of Ron's favorite geeky pursuits was playing around with plastic armor and swords in the park. One of Lisa's favorite pursuits was something that could be considered just as geeky, but there was enough of a redneck population a few miles from campus that it was actually considered kind of cool ‘round these here parts.

  Though her motivations for learning archery were as geeky as they came, it was his understanding she never admitted that to any of the guys at the local range.

  "Thanks Lisa," he called out.

  30

  Party Up

  "Don't mention it," Lisa said, stepping out from behind a car with a rather complicated looking bow in her hands that looked nothing like any of the bows he'd ever seen in any fantasy novel or movie.

  Then again a few hundred years of technological development for a weapon of war that’d since been relegated to something people did for fun on the weekends or to go hunting on hard mode would do that.

  "Damn girl," Gwen said. "Where did you learn how to do that?"

  Lisa shrugged and blushed. "I always had a thing for elves. So I convinced my parents to get me into archery. They figured it was something I was doing that was outdoors, at least. My dad was so happy that I was doing something bankshot related to hunting that he didn’t interrogate my motives all that much.”

  Gwen looked at the wolf with an arrow sticking out of its heart. At least it was where a human would keep their heart, and from the way it’d gone down its anatomy seemed to mostly be in the same place.

  Gwen shook her head. “This night keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

  “Tell me about it,” Lisa said.

  A loud cry from beside them pulled their attention back to Ron swinging his claymore around and looking like he was having a touch of trouble with the werewolves facing him down.

  "We should probably help him," Gwen said.

  "You're damn right we should," Lisa said. "This isn’t the kind of party I thought would happen tonight, but I have to admit this is kind of fun! Like a LARP that got deadly serious or something!”

  "Minus the part where Doug got bisected," Mike said, trying to keep the whole crazy situation grounded in some semblance of reality.

  "Right," Lisa said, though she'd never been a huge fan of Doug. Mostly because she constantly had to fend off his awkward attempts to hit on her even though she'd made it clear on multiple occasions that she wasn't interested.

  Which was one of several reasons why Mike had been reluctant to hit on her. Not that he’d risk hitting on her now in their current situation with Gwen packing heat.

  "Well let's get to this," Mike said, holding up his dice.

  Lisa brought her bow up as Ron ran at one of the werewolves causing it to stumble back away from him. He stopped at the last moment then turned and charged at the other one, winking at Mike and company in the process.

  Clearly he was counting on them to take care of the one he’d just sent their way. Lisa pulled and let loose. An arrow hit the werewolf in the knee, and it fell to the ground with a pained howl. More importantly, that pained howl was accompanied by the wolf throwing its head up which exposed its neck.

  Gwen trotted up to the thing while it was in the middle of howling, something that seemed exceptionally stupid and dangerous to Mike, but she pointed her shotgun right at the things neck and let loose. Suddenly the situation seemed more dangerous for the distracted wolf than it did for Gwen and her boomstick.

  Blood fountained everywhere and got on Gwen who stood there in shock and disgust.

  "Probably should've let Mike take care of that one," Lisa said as she pulled her bow up and held it ready to take another shot.

  “What are you waiting for?” Mike asked. “Shoot the motherfucker and help Ron out!”

  “Little problem with that,” Lisa said. “The idiot keeps moving around. I can’t guarantee I won’t shoot him in his ass.”

  Sure enough now that Ron only had to worry about one of the werewolves he’d moved in close and was really mixing it up. Which might’ve been an easier fighting style for him, but it made it difficult to hit the thing with a ranged attack.

  “He has enough layers of fat and muscle that it shouldn’t hurt him too much,” Mike said with a shrug.

  Lisa hit him with a flat stare. “Seriously?”

  “What?” he said, grinning. “It’s a fair point.”

  Lisa made an irritated noise and pulled her bow back up, but didn’t loose. Gwen also held her shotgun at the ready, but she had the same issue. Probably moreso than Lisa considering her ammo would spread out a lot farther than a single arrow.

  The werewolf Ron was dueling seemed to be giving as good as it was getting. Which sort of made sense to Mike. The thing wasn’t caught b
y surprise in unfamiliar territory like the werewolves that’d been sniffing around the apartment.

  That or it just had more skill than its companions that’d been so easily defeated back in the apartment. Either way, Ron was in a spot of trouble.

  "I don't have a shot," Lisa said.

  "Same here," Gwen said. "I'll hit him if I fire. I don’t think we have time to go to the ER and wait for a doc to pick a bunch of shot out of his ass all things considered.”

  Mike looked down at the die in his hand. Thought about how he'd been able to pick which monster he was targeting before. Which made sense if the world was suddenly, inexplicably, operating on game rules. You chose your targets there as well.

  "I really hope there's not much splash damage with this thing," he said.

  "Seriously?" Lisa asked. “You’re trying that after what happened in the apartment?”

  "It's the only way,” Mike said. "You want us to let him go until he gets tired enough that the thing takes him out?"

  “Good point," Lisa said. "Good luck. I hope you know what the hell you're doing."

  "I don't," Mike said. "That's the scary thing, but I have to do what I have to do."

  Mike looked down at the die in his hand. Looked up at Ron. He did an underhanded toss. The die rolled through the air and landed.

  On a twenty.

  “Oh fuck yes,” Mike whispered in his bubble of slowed down time.

  He threw his hit die which tumbled through the air to calculate damage with a hell of a critical modifier. The dice shot out at the wolf, he really hoped splash damage wasn’t a thing now that he was hitting in critical territory, and slammed into the creature.

  The results were spectacular. The werewolf turned into a pillar of flame and Ron was knocked back. His sword clattered to the ground and he looked up in astonishment, his eyes reflecting the light of the werewolf that was very quickly being cremated in front of them.

  "Damn," Lisa said. "That is pretty cool."

  "Critical hit," Mike said.

  "Two in one night?" Gwen asked.

  "What do you mean?" Mike asked.

  "Didn't you get one earlier in that alley? You knocked that werewolf up against the alley wall. I'm assuming that was a critical hit too? Doesn't weird shit happen when you get a critical? Or did Lisa explain it wrong?"

  "It sort of depends on how purple a game master wants to get with their prose when they're narrating what happens with a critical," Lisa said. "But yeah, if the person running the game is a drama queen then they definitely can narrate something impressive like what you see right there."

  "So you're saying the gods fucking us over with this game thing are drama queens?" Gwen asked.

  “That sounds about right,” Mike said.

  The werewolf flailed around the parking lot. It slammed into a couple of cars leaving massive dents, but something told Mike the owners weren’t going to care about that by the time this was all said and done. Clearly these things had never heard of stop, drop, and roll.

  Though, to be fair to the werewolf, getting completely immolated like that probably wasn't the kind of thing those wolves had to worry about all that often. From the way they'd hesitated in attacking him he got the feeling they weren't exactly happy being sent after someone who could toss around fireballs and other magic.

  Besides, at this point Mike figured any burning the creature did was more for looks than practicality considering the creature’s hit points had already hit zero. Everything else was just cool window dressing to make the werewolf’s ultimate demise as awesome as possible.

  Awesome for anyone watching, that is. He got a feeling it wasn’t all that awesome for the werewolf. He wanted to feel bad for the thing, it was a suffering living creature after all, but he trouble working up any sympathy for anything other than his nose which was currently being forced to endure the unpleasant olfactory sensation of burning werewolf.

  After all, these bastards had killed his friend. Well, they'd killed an acquaintance. Scratch that. They'd killed someone he'd hung out without as a necessity. That was as far as he was willing to go.

  They'd also tried to kill Gwen. They would've killed him, of that there was no doubt. And so he had trouble working up much of a bleeding heart for the scary leather clad monster.

  "What the hell was that?" Ron asked, scrambling up to his feet and grabbing his sword. He held it in front of him, looking for all the world like a manic bearded Conan poster, though he was a little more flabby than Arnold had been back at the height of his muscled powers.

  “Fireball,” Mike said.

  Ron shrugged and nodded as though that was the most natural response in the world. Given all the craziness that’d gone down here tonight maybe that was the most natural response in the world.

  “Well this was fun,” Lisa said. “But I think we need to get the hell out of here. There could be more of those things out there watching so they can run off and tell their friends about what happened here."

  "You mean telling their friends about how they got their asses kicked?" Ron said. "Do you really think they're going to come back for more after what we just did to the ones we faced down?”

  "I don't know," Lisa said. "But I don't want to stick around to find out, either.”

  Mike and Gwen exchanged glances. All Mike could think about were all the shadows he'd seen lurking in the distance back when he saved Gwen’s ass in the campus village. He got the feeling there were a lot more of these things out there than he wanted to run into, and the last place he wanted to be was somewhere they could easily find him.

  Like a nice open parking lot where there were a lot of cars they could use to sneak up on someone.

  “Lisa’s right. We should get out of here," Mike said. "We got lucky here."

  "Are you kidding?" Ron shouted. "Look around! I just killed a bunch of werewolves with a sword, Gwen's got a shotgun she knows how to use, and Lisa actually used a bow and arrow to fight off the fantasy creatures she’s been imagining at target practice her whole life! This night was fucking awesome, and it’s only getting started!”

  Mike wasn't sure if it was because his friend's enthusiasm was infectious, or if maybe there’d been a part of him, deep down, that had enjoyed the hell out of this. It’d certainly been a rush. Whatever the reason, he found himself smiling a half smile.

  "Seriously?" Gwen asked. "You're actually listening to this guy?"

  "What?" Mike asked. "It was kind of fun."

  "Except for Doug," Lisa said. “I don’t think he had much fun.”

  They all looked down. The guy might've been an asshole, but he didn't deserve an end like that. No matter how ironically poetic that end had been.

  Sirens off in the distance brought Mike back to reality.

  "Did one of you call the cops?" Ron asked.

  "No need," Gwen said, nodding to the apartment fire which had spread to adjacent units at this point. People in other apartments were starting to come out and have a look. Most stared in disbelief then run back into their own apartments to presumably grab whatever meager possessions they had as college students living in cheap off campus housing.

  "Shit," Ron said.

  “Shit is right,” Sean said. “What's going to happen when they put out the fire and discover a werewolf body and our friend who's been cut in half?”

  “Fuck,” Ron said. "I didn't think of that."

  "Probably a good idea to not around when the cops get here to start asking questions," Sean said.

  “Assuming they even get here with everything that’s going on tonight,” Mike said.

  "Why not?" Lisa asked. "It's not like they can arrest us, can they?"

  "Are you kidding?" Mike asked. "They have enough stuff to hold us, at least, and there’ll definitely be some charges going around when they see what's in there burning up. This isn't like some movie where everybody gets off easy just because a lazy writer needs to wrap everything up. This is still real life, even if it has gone crazy.”

 
; "He has a point," Gwen said. "Probably best to pretend we were never around to begin with."

  “Either way they’re going to want to talk to whoever owns that apartment,” Lisa said.

  Her words were punctuated by another trumpet fanfare that came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Which meant someone else had discovered yet another artifact.

  Only this time there was something different to go along with the trumpet fanfare. Clouds roiled above them looking for all the world like they were in for one hell of a thunderstorm, only there was no rumbling thunder or rain to go along with it.

  There was a roar though. An unearthly wail that sounded like the hellish offspring of every nasty sound effect Hollywood had ever come up with to represent a pants-shitting monstrosity. Along with that sound there was a flash of lightning in those roiling clouds that outlined a massive creature flying up there that looked pretty damn close to a dragon.

  “A new player enters the game! The Bridle of Wyrmsbreath has been claimed!”

  That booming voice was close. Presumably because the wyrm being bridled was somewhere nearby on the x-axis, even if it was well above them on the z-axis.

  “Fuck,” Ron breathed, staring up.

  “Something tells me we’re going to have bigger problems tonight than the cops,” Mike said.

  “You’ve got that right,” Ron said.

  “Shit’s going down,” Sean said.

  “Maybe it is,” Mike said. “But that goddess made it clear we’re the key. She said to party up and we might survive the night.”

  “Great,” Lisa said with a roll of her eyes. “All this bullshit going down and the only hint we have is we’re supposed to survive with the power of friendship. Fucking wonderful.”

  “Better than nothing,” Mike said. “We could be like all the poor bastards out there on campus who’ve been relegated to NPC status.”

  “No one wants to be the NPC when the bad guys come to burn the village,” Sean whispered.