Homebrew

by Xavier P. Hunter

  “Sevius, take pity on this poor—” Sira prayed, hand upon the halfling’s forehead.

  “I see them,” Zeeto muttered. “Marching. Brave.”

  “…fool, and in your mercy remove the toxin from his body.” Her hand glowed the same color as the light imbued earlier on their weapons.

  Sucking in a deep breath, Zeeto’s eyes snapped open. “What the? Hey! I was just developing a deep and abiding understanding of the dwarven people when you pulled me out of there.”

  “Sorry for saving your life,” Sira replied, standing and dusting the knees of her pants.

  “I wasn’t in any real danger,” Zeeto replied indignantly. “I might have had our first real clue if you hadn’t wrecked it. There was this odd jumble of wars and coronations and festivals and marriages. Things were starting to make sense. I might have gotten the whole layout of this place, but now it’s gone like a dream after a bucket of water to the face.”

  Beldrak steeled himself with a breath. “I shall volunteer. If there be information vital to our quest within these waters, I shall plumb them. By mine best supposition, ’tis in the ladle that the proper dose be measured.”

  Taking up the ladle, Beldrak reverently filled it and brought the mouthful to his lips. In a single swallow, he drained the dwarven water, slouching against the base under his own power in the aftermath. Eyes open, he looked at no one. His mouth hung open.

  “How long do we wait?” Braeleigh asked.

  “Until he snaps out of it or seems close to dying,” Sira replied, arms crossed and staring at the paladin.

  Gary could only imagine what Beldrak saw. He’d never detailed the hallucinations. Whatever corner of his comatose mind was spackling in the cracks and crevices of the world had done it without his conscious consent.

  With a gasp, Beldrak blinked and opened his eyes.

  “What’d you find?” Zeeto asked.

  “Clarity,” Beldrak replied breathlessly. “’Tis like a shade hath been removed from a lamp within the slumbering mind. ’Tis seeing trees for the first time and realizing they hath been a forest and shall become a ship. Therein lies no map but mayhap the answer to far the greater quest of life ephemeral.”

  “I want another crack at it, then,” Zeeto said, confiscating the ladle. “If this stuff makes the damn world make the first bit of sense, I’m all over it.”

  With a slurp and a hand braced to keep himself from toppling over, Zeeto drained the ladle. He stood motionless a moment, then his shoulders fell. “Drat! Nothing. Thanks for blowing my one shot at maybe understanding why my dad walked out on us or why I can’t trust a man wearing an eye patch.”

  Sira held out her palm. The muscles of her jaw strained as she waited for Zeeto to hand over the ladle. “If I fall, carry this back to Durrotek and have the temple of Sevius return it to my family.” She held up the silver holy symbol, depicting an open palm, she wore on a chain around her neck.

  “This I swear,” Beldrak replied, holding a hand over his heart.

  Sitting against the fountain beforehand, Sira drank the hallucinogenic water like an oversized shot of vodka. The ladle fell from her grasp and clanged on the marble floor.

  Unseeing eyes didn’t blink when Zeeto waved a hand mere inches in front of them.

  When the trance ended, Sira’s eyes were half shut, and she let out a low moan reminiscent of post-coital bliss. Pawing absently, her hand closed on the ladle, and she handed it up to Braeleigh before climbing to her feet.

  “Too bad we left the pipeweed up topside,” Zeeto said. “You look like you could use a smoke.”

  “Peace. Balance,” Sira said. “The universe is coming together.”

  Braeleigh passed the ladle to Gary. “I don’t know that I want my universe changing to dwarfy mode.”

  “You sure?” Gary asked. “Beldrak and Sira seem happy about it.”

  Braeleigh nodded. “I’m not saying you have to. I’m just saying I’m not. Plus, I think at least one of us besides Zeeto ought to stay sober. I can be our designated thinker.”

  “Nay, I be not drunken,” Beldrak protested.

  “Me neither,” Sira said.

  Gary knew they weren’t. He might not have written detailed accounts of what the drinkers would witness, but he’d been fairly explicit about the way the poisoned water worked. It dealt temporary Constitution damage. 2d6 of it, to be precise. Zeeto and Sira had been in some danger. Beldrak not so much.

  With 8 Constitution, Gary was looking at a little better than 50-50 odds of survival.

  “Look,” he told Sira. “I’m a wimp. You all know it. If this stuff knocks me totally off my feet, don’t hesitate to stop the poison.”

  “It’s not poison,” Sira insisted.

  Gary scowled at the halfling. “Then why’d your prayer snap Zeeto out of it?”

  That was enough logic for Sira. She agreed with a nod.

  Gary filled the ladle and sat down against the fountain. Ripples rushed across the surface with his breath as he stared into the liquid. This ranked up there with the stupidest Internet videos of college kids huffing sawdust or doing shots of furniture polish.

  The bardic song for courage was next in line down one of the third ring branches if he so chose. Knowing that didn’t help Gary in the moment. The best he could do was a little ditty.

  “Fifteen hundred dwarfs in a dead city rest. Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of… whatever this stuff is.”

  With that, Gary tilted the ladle back and swallowed. There were times that he considered his college days a waste, but even students at a community college knew how to find a party and get wasted. The “hey, try to guess what’s in this” challenge was training Gary didn’t regret as the dwarven equivalent of mescaline poured down his throat.

  Damage Taken: 7 (Constitution)

  Unlike the others, he didn’t get visions of dwarven history like a YouTube montage of movie highlights. Instead, Gary saw his dining room back home in Palo Alto, still set up to begin an epic campaign. He and his friends were collapsed on the floor around the table including Zane. Bits of broken glass lay scattered where Zane’s mysterious crystal ball had broken.

  While everyone looked like he remembered them, Gary had the hollow sense that he was looking at empty vessels, mere images in a wax museum.

  Gary was descending toward the body that had once been his own, drifting closer and closer until suddenly the vision ended. The poison wore off.

  1d6-1: 5 (Permanent Wisdom Gain)

  He checked his character sheet quickly.

  Player Name: Gary Burns Character Name: Gary Burns

  Level/Path: Bard 2 XP: 1,823/2,000 Race: Unknown

  STR: 7 DEX: 9 CON: 8 INT: 18 WIS: 17 CHA: 17

  To Hit: +1 Weapon: Rapier (1d6-2)

  Armor Rating: 11 Armor: Leather (+2)

  Path Powers: Inspire (+2), Lullaby

  Skills: Persuade (+5), Music (+5), Study/Search (+5)

  Profession: Cook (+1)

  Sira shook him by the shoulders. “Gary? Gary, are you all right?”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand.”

  18

  Gary didn’t feel any different, at least not in the ways he might have expected. While it was still certainly possible that what he saw was merely an Inception-like dream within a dream, he was beginning to suspect another explanation that he hadn’t previously considered.

  Portal fantasy.

  It was the heart of everything from The Chronicles of Narnia to The Matrix. Regular person sucked into an imaginary world. But none of them had been taken away to a world of their own creation.

  Just what had been in that glass ball of Zane’s anyway?

  If Gary’s new guess was correct: real magic.

  Zeeto snapped his fingers in front of Gary’s nose, forcing him to blink. “There ya go. Welcome back. Sira was this close from zapping you out of that poppy haze.”

  Clambering to his feet, Gary risked asking a borderline question. “Did any of you get a vision of a dining tab
le?”

  “That hungry there, champ?” Zeeto asked.

  Caspian barked. “He knows that word,” Braeleigh explained. “And I think all of us could use a meal.”

  The five of them sat on the edge of the fountain, their irreverence tempered by the fact that three of them had just imbibed that the wisdom of the long-departed dwarves had left therein and two had never found it reverent in the first place. They lunched or supped or possibly breakfasted upon jerky and hard tack.

  And Gary shared water from his canteen with Zeeto, whose dehydration had prompted him to try the fountain waters in the first place.

  Bellies filled, they set about searching the four cottage-sized vaults around the chamber.

  “There aren’t any levers for these doors,” Zeeto reported after a cursory inspection.

  “Good,” Sira snapped from across the chamber at another vault. “Maybe you won’t be able to drop the ceiling on us this time.”

  “Gary, pray tell what sayeth these inscriptions?” Beldrak asked.

  Rather than read them aloud, Gary begged a piece of chalk from the group and wrote the translations beneath the dwarven words.

  “The pictographs are just that: pictures,” Gary explained, pointing to the chalk around the periphery of the low, dwarf-appropriate doors that Beldrak would have to duck to enter. “The words are a direct translation. Don’t blame me if they don’t make any sense.”

  I SHINE MY VERY BRIGHTEST SMILE

  TO HEARTY WARRIORS WITHOUT FEAR

  WHEN GOBLINS SEE ME, RANK AND FILE

  BREAK INTO GRINS FROM EAR TO EAR

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Zeeto asked.

  “It’s a riddle,” Gary explained. “The pictographs are likely the potential answers.”

  Zeeto blew a rude noise. “Pfft. Multiple choice? Easy. We just try ‘em all and—”

  There was a crackle of electricity, and Zeeto was launched backward staggering. His curly hair had straightened to a frazzled shrub still sparking like a Jacob’s ladder.

  Sira rushed over and prayed for healing.

  “I count us thankful, we four, that we have so brave a fool among our number so none but he must suffer for curiosity’s sake,” Beldrak said solemnly.

  Gary cleared his throat. “Personally, if I were designing vaults like this one, I’d worry about someone touching the wrong one accidentally. But I’d make sure each jolt was stronger than the last, because by then, you know it’s no accident.”

  “OK, so it’s a pictures thing,” Braeleigh said. “Like charades for old doors. Let’s see…” She traced around the door from lower left up and around. “Beardy dwarf face, anvil, axe, bag of gold, crown with three gems, hammer, mountain with two little mountains on either side, shield, pickaxe, gauntlet, tankard with curly hair—”

  “I think that’s supposed to be the head on an ale,” Sira corrected.

  “Aaaand, last but not least, an imperial-cut gemstone,” Braeleigh finished. “I know that one because that’s the cut of my human mother’s wedding ring. Well, it actually belongs to my niece now, but it’s way tinier than the picture.”

  Zeeto shuddered and tried to pat his hair back down to his head. “OK, so which of those is the answer?”

  “The crown,” Sira suggested. “Won by the greatest warriors. Goblins are known for being loyal to their monarch. Makes sense.”

  “Nay,” Beldrak replied. “’Tis the shape of a smile, and goblins be creatures of the underworld. Mining ought be second nature to them.”

  Braeleigh stared at the symbols, tapping a finger from each hand alternately against her cheeks. “The hairy ale. Ale makes warriors brave and goblins happy. I mean, I assume so. Don’t get me wrong; I haven’t known any goblins, so I can’t say for sure. But, I mean, people are people, right? We can’t all be that different.”

  Zeeto looked over to Gary. “This is kinda your bag, isn’t it? I mean, didn’t you probably read in some history book or something what the answer is?”

  Gary affected a sigh. “I could conjure up a meaning for and two meanings against every symbol on that list. It’s the curse of the creative mind to think in stretched and twisted parable and never in the straightest line.”

  d20: 15 + (Persuade +4) + (True, You Are Kind of a Bullshit Artiste +2) = 21

  “Fine. Be a scaredy cat,” Zeeto replied. “I think I’ve got it figured out, anyway. It’s the axe. Axes are like the dwarfiest weapons ever. The best warriors would use them. And that ear-to-ear smile is what a dwarf hero would give to any goblins he met. Ancient foes and whatnot.”

  “I’ll not touch any save mine own guess,” Beldrak said. “If Sister Sira be on her guard against thy imminent demise, have at it.”

  Casting the paladin a scowl, Zeeto backed up his words. Careful of an errantly placed finger, Zeeto lined up a digit with the rune for axe and pressed it firmly.

  With a grinding of stone upon stone, the vault door swung open.

  “Yeah, bitches!” Zeeto shouted, throwing the heavy metal horns gesture to the universe at large with both hands. He was first inside the vault.

  The audible groan of disappointment followed before anyone could squeeze in behind him.

  Zeeto came out holding in his hands a pair of bracers, silver and etched with a hammer and anvil motif that screamed dwarf. It looked as if someone had taken a pair of fancy pewter drinking tankards and hollowed them out to fit a pair of wrists. “They’re not even halfling-sized.”

  “They’re pretty,” Braeleigh said. “Objectively, I mean. It’s nice workmanship. I wouldn’t wear anything like that. A little blocky and masculine for my taste.”

  “Any additional effects?” Sira asked. Always a mind on the practical, same as her creator. Kim could see a friend drive up in a Ferrari and her first question would be about the gas mileage.

  “Armor bonus,” Zeeto replied. “Hardly worth trying to get them resized to fit normal-sized arms.”

  “Gary needeth the most protection,” Beldrak stated as if it were a natural fact. “Thus, he is the logical beneficiary.”

  Cool as those bracers were, he knew they only gave +1 Armor Rating. If there was better loot yet to come, he’d rather take his chances. “I decline. Sira should get them. As our healer, the rest of us are disposable by comparison. She goes down, we’re all screwed.”

  Sira cocked her head, possibly an imitation of Braeleigh’s frequent pose. “Seriously? That’s sweet of you. They’re not exactly my style, either, but I don’t plan on wearing them to fancy dinners.”

  As Sira donned the bracers—known as Forge Guard, Gary read them from an inscription etched inside—and checked out the look and feel of them, they trekked over to the next vault.

  Around the door of this one, the pictographs were identical to the last set. Gary set to work again with chalk translating the riddle.

  BLUE

  WHITE

  GRAY

  BLACK

  RED

  “Um,” Braeleigh said when Gary finished. “That’s it? How are we supposed to answer a color puzzle when all the answers are marble-colored?”

  “Maybe this one has five answers,” Zeeto suggested. “Like a combination lock. You know, the puzzles getting harder as we go along.”

  Sira shook her head. “That’s silly. The order can’t matter. We just started at random and came over to the next one. There’s no order to them.”

  She neglected to draw any meaning from the fact that Gary had been the one to direct their wandering path from vault to vault.

  “Accepting for the moment thy premise,” Beldrak said, stroking his chin with a gauntleted hand. “Therein lie five and only five, one to each color. Mine eyes see many a gray among thy cohort of pictographs.”

  “And that gem can be any color,” Braeleigh said. “My mother’s was sapphire, but most of the townswomen with more money had diamonds in their rings.” She yawned. “Anyone else getting super tired? I was hoping to sleep under the stars tonight, but I’m about ready
to sleep standing up.”

  Sira didn’t hesitate, showing that Braeleigh wasn’t the only one feeling the weight of a long day. “Double watch. Latrine is outside this chamber—I won’t stand for any further desecration; if we earn these treasures from the old dwarves, that’s one thing. Soiling their temple is a whole other level. No one goes out alone.”

  They set up camp. Tent stakes were a non-starter with the impeccable stone floors of the vaults. Bedrolls beneath a soft blue radiance were what they settled for.

  Gary fell asleep, head pillowed on his pack, listening to the muttered protests of the ghostly wizard stuffed inside as bone-deep exhaustion drew him into slumber.

  No one bothered waking him to take a turn on watch.

  19

  No cell phone. No clock. No wristwatch, television, or even hourglass. Yet somehow, around about the same time, they breakfasted on more jerky and hard tack and decided to begin a new day.

  For someone who hadn’t couch-surfed in years and often found sleep elusive even in a motel bed, Gary awoke well rested from a night spent on a bedroll.

  He yawned and stretched and ambled over to where the others were gathering: in front of the second vault. “Any inspirations? Anyone solve the puzzle overnight?”

  “That’s silly,” Braeleigh said. “How could anyone even touch the runes in the middle of the night—the middle of the sleep, that is. I have no idea whether it’s night or noon right now.”

  “Yeah,” Gary replied. “It could be anything from a cloudy night to midday under a clear blue sky.”

  Braeleigh giggled. “Under blue, just like the words in the puzzle.”

  “What did you say?” Sira demanded.

  “What?” Braeleigh said. “I was just saying… you know… blue it up above us outside and it’s up above the other color words on the vault door.”