by Bryan Bliss
“There are no cons,” the Great Mandolini had said. “Unless it’s a con that nobody would ever be able to say shit to you because you have the Force!”
“What do you want me to say?” Brezzen said. “I have ethical concerns.”
“Ethical concerns?” The Great Mandolini was incredulous and borderline offended. “It’s the Force.”
“No way, bro.” Bork spoke through a mouthful of Cheetos. “Nobody wants to be around a guy who can, like, make you dance like a chicken in front of the whole school . . . with his mind. It’s just too much.”
“Exactly! You could call into school because ‘The Force isn’t with me today’ and what are they going to say? Nothing! Because they know you can choke their ass right through the phone.”
“Just like Vader,” Bork said, making them all laugh.
Brezzen thought about Jedi mind tricks as he stared at Iaophos one last time before picking up his d20 and rolling—twelve.
“Bullshit,” he said, and Iaophos chuckled to herself before marking an X on the map below him. Right at the front doors of the school.
“This is where you start your journey,” she said. “What’s in your inventory?”
Brezzen didn’t rattle off the usual supplies, because this wasn’t the campaign.
“What about the regular campaign?” he asked.
Iaophos didn’t hesitate. “You made this map. I think we should explore it a little bit. So, what’s in your inventory?”
Brezzen stared at her for a second before finally listing the standard dungeon necessities. He didn’t even get to the end of the list; Iaophos stopped him.
“Your high school isn’t a dungeon,” she said.
Brezzen could go either way with that statement.
“You won’t need rope or gold for this sort of campaign,” she said. “You’re going to need to think about this in a completely different way. Because there’s no minotaur in the middle of this labyrinth.”
“Technically, Wizards and Warriors retired minotaurs as a creature in the third edition,” Brezzen said.
Iaophos gave him a pointed look—always dangerous with a GM—and so he conceded the point because the last thing he needed was Iaophos getting worked up and taking it out on him in the form of undead skeletons, which definitely were not retired.
“But anyway,” he said, looking down at the map.
If it was a typical dungeon, there’s no way any GM would let him go through a side entrance and effectively skip whatever trap had been set. The whole point of dungeon raids was how they grew and escalated. The way they built, room by room, until you reached the final boss. The big bad. So the front entrance wasn’t the problem. It might be trapped, but once you went through it the first time, you knew what to expect.
“Well, I already made it through the door,” Brezzen said, tapping the map. “So technically I don’t have to roll for initiative for a move I’ve already made. Twice, actually.”
Iaophos paused for a moment.
“Hmm, yes. That’s right. So you walk into the school and you’re staring at a line of lockers and a wide hallway with a polished floor.”
“Check the lockers,” Brezzen said immediately.
“They’re full of books and jackets, none of which seem particularly special. Just ordinary belongings.”
Brezzen thought about potential tricks. So many times “ordinary” objects turned out to be the single trinket some old-ass rogue wizard needed to set off a cataclysmic series of events that usually ended up with him having to fight a dragon or some kind of giant worm.
“Detect magic,” he said.
“No magic.”
Brezzen stared at Iaophos, wondering what she was playing at. He picked up his d20, certain there would be some kind of action in the near future.
“I equip my shield and sprint down the hallway, hitting every locker with my battle-ax—just to see what happens.”
Iaophos gave him a little smile. “Roll.”
Brezzen landed a respectable sixteen. He sat back in his chair and smiled. Now they were getting into some shit.
“You run down the hallway and find nothing,” Iaophos said. “But your ears do hurt from all the racket you made.”
“What? Are you kidding me? I rolled a sixteen!”
“And you found nothing,” she said simply.
Brezzen muttered to himself. What was the point of putting him in a hallway where nothing happened? He looked at the map, trying to figure out what he was missing.
“Perception check,” he said, rolling. Another twenty. He was killing it. He’d been on heaters before, the sort of rolling streak that defied logic or odds. He looked up at Iaophos, not even trying to hide his satisfaction.
“Congratulations, you see a normal high school hallway.”
“Oh, c’mon.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s just a normal hallway.”
“So there’s no traps. No monsters. And no loot. Great. Awesome. I’m so happy we stopped playing our normal campaign so we could walk around a normal high school hallway.”
Iaophos waited for him to finish. Brezzen picked up his d20 and juggled it in his hand, trying to avoid her judgment. After a few painful seconds, she cleared her throat.
“I never said there wasn’t loot.”
“I did a perception check and didn’t find anything,” Brezzen said.
“And what is your intelligence again?” Iaophos smirked.
“I can’t remember it offhand,” he said.
“Four. Your intelligence is four.” That same smirk. “So you didn’t notice the faint glow coming from under the bathroom door.”
Brezzen looked down at the map. At the end of the hallway, right across from Mr. Bruns’s room, was a bathroom he’d barely noticed today. As he was staring at it, Iaophos reached down and drew an impressive chest that was already unlocked and, seemingly, overflowing with weapons, coins, and other treasures.
“Detect magic.”
“No magic.”
Brezzen studied the map, thinking. The chest was open, which never happened. Anybody could come and pick it up. And if there wasn’t magic, it wasn’t trapped—which only made him more suspicious.
“I investigate the treasure chest,” he said.
“Roll.”
A sixteen.
“The chest seems to be stuck into the wall and, perhaps, invisible to those who haven’t been deemed worthy.”
Iaophos paused here, perhaps waiting for one of Brezzen’s famous Actually . . . comments. But he’d never heard of such a thing and was fascinated.
Iaophos took off her glasses, folded them, and said, “You reach into the chest and pull out . . . what?”
Brezzen didn’t understand.
“What?”
“You pull something out. What is it?”
Brezzen wondered if he’d missed something. “What are you talking about? You haven’t told me what I pulled out.”
“It’s up to you,” Iaophos said, which at first confused Brezzen. And then, just as quickly, he became very, very excited. He knew what this was.
* * *
Repeating Chest
A repeating chest is a rare—some would say mythical—occurrence that has been known to drive even the most stalwart adventurers mad. What do you need? Speak the words and it is yours. Simple? Yes. Treacherous? More than you might think. Adventurers have been known to spend the rest of their lives guarding a chest, too afraid to ask for what their heart truly desires, for the risk that it might draw their attention away from the chest itself. Proceed with the utmost caution.
* * *
“Repeating chests are super dangerous,” Brezzen said.
“If you aren’t careful, yes.”
People had lost characters—characters they’ve played for decades, as the stories went—because they didn’t phrase their request exactly right. Maybe you need to find a way out of the dungeon, so you ask and the GM rolls. Guess what! You got your way out! It’s called death.
And even if your GM isn’t sadistic, even if she just rolls poorly, the phrasing matters. All you wanted was a new piece of armor and suddenly you’ve got a wild morlock sucking on your head.
“You said it was invisible,” Brezzen said carefully. “Is it permanent repeating or a single apparition?”
“Roll.”
Brezzen exhaled slowly.
This was the sort of roll that won entire campaigns. The sort of thing people would talk about for years after it had happened—like you’d hit the winning shot in a basketball game. But unlike some sports story, this mattered. Brezzen didn’t want to just drop his d20 all willy-nilly when a permanent repeating chest was at stake.
He studied the map one last time. He thought about any possible tricks. And then, giving Iaophos one more look—her face was stone—he tossed his d20 onto the table.
“Shit, yes.”
A beautiful, natural twenty.
“You discover that it is, in fact, a permanent repeating chest. Your permanent repeating chest.”
The possibilities were endless and fraught with danger, but mostly he was excited by the opportunity to pillage a chest that could literally give him everything he would ever want or need.
“Just so you know,” Brezzen said. “I’m offended that you brought up my intelligence.”
“Famed warriors who are also great intellectuals? Pretty rare.”
It was true, of course. They mostly went by names like “Boromear the Great” or “Wildfire” and had exceptional hair that inevitably became a liability. (Once a dragon had grabbed one such warrior by his hair and carried him off, much to the delight of the entire party.) And this didn’t even mention the standard, marblelike physique that, annoyingly, solved more problems than you’d think.
Of course, it was easy enough to build a character that could swing an ax and string together two words—you just had to build your skills tree intentionally. Spread your experience evenly and not rush toward the ability to single-handedly crush any creature who stepped in your path.
Easier said than done, Brezzen thought.
“Still. I’m offended.”
Iaophos turned the GM guide around so he could see the description of the repeating chest. The artwork in the fifth edition had been updated from the original illustration and was now in full color. Iaophos tapped the picture once.
“So, this chest—it provides everything an adventurer might need for a campaign. It’s a tool you can search out when you need it. When things start to feel like they’re a little too much and you need some extra help.”
“If you trust it,” Brezzen said.
Iaophos looked at Brezzen strangely, as if she were trying to solve a puzzle. But there was no double meaning to his words; he’d meant exactly what he’d said.
You had to trust something like a permanent repeating chest. You had to truly believe that it wouldn’t let you pull out the wrong tool at the wrong time. And while it could be debated that the chest did not respond to the player in that way—that it was just an inanimate object—Brezzen wasn’t so sure.
“So how can you start to trust it?” Iaophos asked.
“I don’t know,” Brezzen admitted.
Iaophos wrote something down in her notebook. When she was finished, she looked up and folded her hands on her lap.
“If you need it, use it,” she told Brezzen. “Okay?”
Chapter Four
THE NEXT DAY BREZZEN WOKE UP WITH AN IRON FIST for a stomach. When he stood up, the pain he anticipated—perhaps hoped for—did not appear. Instead, it transformed into something much more troublesome—doubt.
He’d left Iaophos confident and ready for the next school day. He’d told his parents as much and they’d smiled at each other and, when they thought he wasn’t listening, called and spoke with Iaophos, their voices light and hopeful.
But now, standing in the middle of his room in his underwear, Brezzen knew he wasn’t ready.
He picked up his d20 and rolled—seventeen.
When they first started playing, he and his friends would sometimes let each other reroll particularly heinous turns, especially if it meant an early end of the campaign. As they grew older and more snobbish about the rules, the idea of rerolling might get you kicked out of the party. If you rolled a one, you lived with it. You leaned on the other members of your team. You laughed, grumbled, wept uncontrollably, but you never, ever, rerolled.
Brezzen stared at the seventeen on his bedside table, he wondered if the same rules applied for rerolling and hoping for a lower number.
Because he didn’t have the energy to spend another day decoding every movement of every person, student, and teacher. And even though there was a repeating chest waiting for him—guaranteeing he’d have any tool he needed—he couldn’t escape the simple fact that yesterday had nearly broken him. And now, any bravado or residual courage he’d taken from Iaophos’s office had slipped away.
His mom knocked on his door.
“Hey, honey, are you ready for school?”
He looked down at that bastard seventeen one more time.
“Almost,” he said
He put his clothes on, dropped the d20 into his pocket, and walked downstairs to breakfast, which was already on the table. His dad ate slowly. His mom hovered around Brezzen as he poured a glass of orange juice, just trying to be available in case he needed something.
His dad spoke first.
“So, today’s going to be a good day.”
His mother nodded and Brezzen reached into his pocket and pulled out the d20, throwing it on the table.
Eighteen. Of course. He let d20 be his answer, because what else could he do?
As he was eating, his mom opened her mouth but she didn’t say whatever had come to mind, which was probably another ultra-positive comment. “Carpe diem and all that fancy Latin shit,” as Bork had once said right before rushing into a horde of what turned out to be giant bloodsucking frogs.
The thought made Brezzen grin, which his dad must’ve taken as an opening.
“Hey, bud,” his dad said. “So maybe you could leave the dice at home today?”
Brezzen stopped smiling.
The dice had never been a problem. If anything, they helped him avoid and solve problems. He needed them in the same way he needed Iaophos’s campaign. For a brief moment, he considered rolling and letting the d20 give them their answer. Instead, he ignored the comment, hoping his silence would be the end of it.
“Dr. Ivy said you didn’t need them,” his mother said.
“So? What do you think?” his dad asked.
Brezzen couldn’t imagine a day at the school without the ability to roll for initiative. To walk through the hallways completely blind and unprepared. And just like the time the Great Mandolini had accidentally led them into a nasty patch of tendril vines that, just for kicks, also made it impossible for them to communicate verbally, he shook his head, picked up the d20, and placed it in his pocket.
The ride to the school was quiet except for the radio, turned down to barely a murmur, and the sound of his parents shifting back and forth in the front seats of the car, occasionally turning to check on Brezzen. He stared out the window, not making eye contact.
When they arrived at the school, the Great Mandolini was waiting for him at the front entrance. As soon as he saw Brezzen, he waved and hopped down the front steps, two at a time, giving him a big smile.
“What up, Brendan? You good?”
Brezzen nodded, looking at the front door.
You’ve solved this already, he told himself, and followed the Great Mandolini up the stairs and into the school. As soon as he was inside, he caught himself holding his breath. He’d taken karate for two weeks—a trial run at a trial rate—and while, now, he couldn’t have performed a front kick to save his life, he had remembered one thing.
Never hold your breath. Breath through your problems. Focus.
So he monitored his breathing as they walked, and counted the lockers unti
l they came to the bathroom across from Mr. Bruns’s classroom.
Brezzen was standing in the middle of the hallway, staring, when the Great Mandolini touched him on the arm.
“Uh . . . you gotta go?”
The Great Mandolini would be equally enamored with a permanent repeating chest, but Brezzen wasn’t sure how to bring it up—especially with all the other kids pushing past them in the hallway. There was so much backstory involved. He’d have to explain about Iaophos and their campaign. Brezzen wasn’t sure how the Great Mandolini would react, so instead he gave the bathroom one more glance before shaking his head and following him into the classroom.
Mr. Bruns was sitting at his desk, reading a magazine and squeezing a small purple stress ball with one hand. He didn’t look up from the magazine as he spoke to Brezzen.
“Did you bring any d20s with you today?”
Brezzen was momentarily silent. “Yes.”
Mr. Bruns looked up, almost amused, and dropped his magazine on the desk. It was a catalog for collector statues. The Great Mandolini glanced down at the page—figures for a popular online MMORPG—but before he could speak, Mr. Bruns quickly swept the magazine into a desk drawer and eyed both Brezzen and the Great Mandolini.
“So, you brought a d20. Into my class. Again.”
“Yes.”
Brezzen wasn’t sure if he should lie or not. Mr. Bruns sat up straight.
“And . . . do you plan on using said d20 during my class?”
Brezzen had a sudden desire to pull the die out and roll, just to know how he should answer. Instead, he went with the honest truth.
“No.”
Mr. Bruns considered him for a long time before finally reaching into the desk drawer to pull out his magazine. “Okay, then. Stop bothering me during my personal time.”
Brezzen looked at the Great Mandolini, who nodded back to their desks. When they were only a few steps away from Mr. Bruns, he said, “I told you. A complete psycho.”
For the rest of class, Mr. Bruns prowled the front of the classroom, asking questions nobody knew the answers to and, when he realized nobody knew the answers, proceeding with esoteric but vaguely insulting things like, “Of course you side with the capitalists. High school is just one big factory of cool.” None of it made sense to Brezzen, but at least he wasn’t alone. Based on their reactions, nobody else in the classroom knew what in the hell was happening.