by Bryan Bliss
“What the hell?” The guy was big and wore a T-shirt with FORD STRONG WRESTLING across his wide chest. He looked at the map and then to Brezzen, completely amused. “What’s with the map, Dora?”
Brezzen reached for the map, but the kid held it high above his head, his eyes moving furiously across the page, smiling even bigger.
“Oh my God. What the hell is this? Are you, like, on a scavenger hunt?”
His friends laughed as the kid held Brezzen back at arm’s length with no effort and continued on.
“Look, everybody, there’s a treasure chest over on that side of the school. And some skeletons in the gym. And some kind of terrible-looking monster right down the hallway from here, so watch out!”
More laughter and a few people looked down the hallway to the doors. Immediately Brezzen forgot about the map. The staircase was just a couple feet away from him. The long hallway. The doors, sunlight spilling through the glass windows.
The wrestlers kept laughing as one of them picked up the d20 and proceeded to roll it across the hallway, cheering even though it was a five. But Brezzen didn’t care about the d20 one bit. His eyes were locked on the staircase. His ears filled with gunfire. The sound of people running and falling. The screaming.
The two girls, he didn’t know either of them before. But he’d seen the picture of Eleanor, unable to avoid it even from the fortress of his house. The way she seemed to be screaming, crying. Had he seen her since he’d been back? Or the other girl? Would he even recognize either of them? Could he ever see them as anything except two girls, screaming and crying forever in his mind?
Though the others were still laughing, the kid in the Ford Strong T-shirt was staring at Brezzen like he could see the nightmares playing out in his mind.
“You okay, kid?” He tried to hand the map back, but Brezzen couldn’t move his arms to take it. Just then, the Great Mandolini appeared and grabbed him by the elbow, pulling him to the side of the hallway.
“Dude. What the hell?”
Brezzen looked at the Great Mandolini. He was visibly angry, his eyes wide and his mouth moving like he was chewing gravel. His hand might as well have been welded on Brezzen’s elbow, too. He pulled Brezzen even closer to the staircase, only stopping when the guy pushed the map into his hands.
“He’s, like, having a seizure or something,” the wrestler said. “We were just fucking around. I don’t even know what this thing is.”
The Great Mandolini let go of his arm and stared at the map for a second. Then he looked up at Brezzen.
“Is this a Wizards and Warriors map?” he asked, thoroughly confused.
Brezzen didn’t answer. He was still staring at the staircase, which had been painted in the last year—made to look new, spot-free.
“Shit. Is this . . . Ford? Why do you have a map of the school, Brendan?”
When Brezzen didn’t answer, panicked words rushed from the Great Mandolini’s mouth. “You’re not, like, planning something, are you?”
This broke Brezzen’s trance. The wrestler and his friends also stopped talking. Everybody in the hallway waited for him to answer.
“What? No.”
The Great Mandolini didn’t believe him and it made a different—a new—emotion flare up deep inside him, something he hadn’t felt in close to a year.
Anger.
“No,” he said again.
The Great Mandolini didn’t back down.
“Okay. But, like, you just went running out the door and now this map. And, like, we’ve all been through this shit.” The wrestlers, the other kids—everybody looked as if they suddenly couldn’t breathe. “And I’m supposed to be watching you. But I can’t do that if you don’t let me know what’s happening.”
“Watching me?”
Brezzen hadn’t needed to be “watched” since he was a kid.
“I don’t need you to watch me.”
Brezzen was on the verge of tears, hot and angry. He wanted to grab the Great Mandolini and—what? He didn’t even know. But he needed to expel all of this anger and sadness and fear somehow.
When one of the wrestler’s friends made a crack about Brezzen, how he was shaking—with fury or maybe it was fear—the wrestler turned and stared his friend down until he dropped his head and muttered an apology. The wrestler went to the now-forgotten d20, picked it up, and handed it to Brezzen.
“I’m sorry, man. My name is Chris. If you need anything, let me know. Okay?”
He gave Brezzen one last look before pushing his friends down the hallway. And then it was just Brezzen and the Great Mandolini, standing there as people pushed past them, turning onto the staircase like it was nothing more than a way to get up to the second floor.
Brezzen expected the Great Mandolini to usher him the same way—to their next class. Instead, he followed Brezzen’s eyes to the staircase. He looked down at the map, and then back to Brezzen.
His entire face dropped.
“This is the place, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
The Great Mandolini paled like he hadn’t wanted to be right. And for a moment, Brezzen finally felt like somebody else understood how he was feeling. Alone. Scared. Disconnected from every single moment that went whizzing by him. When he saw the fear and sadness on the Great Mandolini’s face, he got a glimpse of how he must look. A glimpse of the same fear and sadness the Great Mandolini still felt. How that morning had affected everybody, even if they hadn’t needed an entire year off from school to recover, even if some were inclined to forget, to pretend.
The Great Mandolini held the map up to Brezzen.
“This isn’t your best work, by the way. And what the hell is up with this treasure chest? That thing is . . . I don’t know. Like something from a cereal box. Terrible, man.”
Brezzen couldn’t argue—it was pretty awful. He suddenly wanted to tell the Great Mandolini about Iaophos, about the campaign they’d been running for the past year. But all that came out was a curt nod.
“It’s actually a permanent repeating chest,” he said.
The Great Mandolini did a double take.
“Shit, dude. Be careful.”
“That’s exactly what I told Iaophos,” Brezzen said. “She’s my GM.”
Above them the bell rang, and a few kids cursed and then took off running toward whatever class they were about to miss. The Great Mandolini didn’t seem worried about a tardy slip.
“Shit, I miss playing with you guys. Maybe we could run a campaign during TA period. Kenny won’t be happy, of course. He loves Interdiction. But, honestly, it gets boring pretty quickly. I think Bork, the Great Mandolini, and Brezzen need to ride again. What do you think?”
Brezzen nodded. “It would be my honor.”
“Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I’ll get Kenny’s ass on board, too.” The Great Mandolini handed Brezzen the map and smiled. “Dude, you know I love you, so take this how I mean it—this is the shittiest Wizards and Warriors map I’ve ever seen. Like, ever. Show me some of those old-school Brezzen skills, what do you say?”
He didn’t need to say another word.
After school Brezzen was fired up.
At first his parents were confused—he’d never been an extrovert even on his best days—but today, he wanted to tell them everything. His classes. And of course, the coming campaign.
“We’ll run it in the TA class,” he explained. “So we’ll have to do short encounters. Like, in-and-out monster battles. Or maybe run the whole dungeon room by room and just realize that, hey, it might be weeks before we move out of a specific chamber.”
His mom smiled and his dad reached into the backseat of the car and rubbed his knee. Brezzen sat back and watched the country turn to city as they headed to Iaophos’s office, where he came in just as worked up.
“Well, look at you!” she said, brightening the same way his mom and dad had. “This sounds so wonderful, Brendan.”
“And who knows, maybe we can sneak you in to be a guest GM at some point,” he
said.
Iaophos chuckled. “Well, we’ll have to see.”
Brezzen pulled out the map and laid it on the table, smoothing the edges until it was mostly flat. Now that he was looking at it, it definitely wasn’t quality. It had been functional, but hurried—a childish and messy attempt. The realization didn’t dampen his excitement.
“Anyway, I made it into the bathroom with the repeating chest,” he said. “And I went here, here, and here.”
His finger was all over the map, tracing his day in the pencil-drawn hallways. When he came to the stairway, Iaophos raised her eyebrows but he didn’t stop talking—he was fine now. But Iaophos was no fool and when Brezzen finally ran out of steam, she leaned close, elbows on her knees, and touched the Medusa.
“Tell me about this.”
Brezzen took a deep breath, feeling his energy slowly turn into anxiety.
How many other times had he stared into the face of monsters—flayers, the undead, any number of nameless bloodsuckers—without a hitch. Ran in, hero style, with the sort of reckless abandon that made for viral social media videos. He always came out unscathed. Always followed the siren’s voice home, back to whatever pub or inn they’d started the adventure in, ready to pick up his loot.
This wasn’t any different, he told himself.
“It was fine,” Brezzen said, reaching into his pocket for his d20. Iaophos stopped him.
“Nothing to roll for yet.”
“Initiative,” Brezzen said simply.
“You already have initiative. In everything you do, Brendan.”
Brezzen cleared his throat. “Initiative isn’t assumed.”
“Let’s just say it is.”
Brezzen shook his head. The whole point of initiative was to make sure the game wasn’t rigged. If you assumed initiative, you assumed that nothing could ever go wrong. That you would always be able to act first—always able to protect yourself.
But it wasn’t true. And Iaophos knew it.
“This is the first time you’ve come into my office and been excited about, well, anything,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve seen you.”
“I’m here every day,” Brezzen said.
Iaophos gazed at him, not speaking. Usually, she would break her stare and change the subject. But this time it lingered, boring deep inside him. And when she turned her attention back to the table, which normally delighted Brezzen, it felt like she pulled a piece of him out with her.
“So you’ve explored the map. You’ve got your bearings. What happens next?”
This time it was Brezzen’s turn to study Iaophos. Normally the GM was the one who would answer that question. The players, while definitely blessed with some agency, didn’t decide what happened on the map. Now, if they were really skilled—or, in most cases, really stupid—their actions could shift the GM’s priorities. But this was a question Brezzen couldn’t, or wouldn’t, normally answer.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean, what do you think you need to do next? Where does this story go now?”
Brezzen was still confused, but he looked down at the map. He guessed he could move toward the gym tomorrow. Or maybe down one of the other corridors that wrapped around the school, mostly filled with classrooms and kids who were older than him.
He sat back, frustrated.
“You’re supposed to tell me where to go next. Or maybe, you know, have a monster pop out and force me to act.”
Iaophos shrugged and it made Brezzen madder. If he couldn’t roll for initiative and if she wasn’t going to play her part and give him the next encounter, he would just sit down on the ground and wait.
That sounded amazing, great.
Iaophos reached into her bag and pulled out the GM guide. Brezzen almost made a crack—something like, “Do you need me to tell you what page, too?” But not only was it not nice, she was already paging through the book in search of something.
“Maybe you need something to help you see your path,” Iaophos said.
Brezzen shook his head immediately.
“I haven’t done anything. You can’t get loot by just standing around!”
Iaophos didn’t back down. “But sometimes you don’t have to work for things. Sometimes good things actually do just happen.”
Brezzen wasn’t sure. Iaophos closed the book and once again leaned close to Brezzen.
“Brendan, there isn’t always a reason or an agenda for every moment in your life. Sometimes really terrible things happen to us. But that’s not the end. We get opportunities to reclaim what was taken from us. We get opportunities to heal. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Brezzen nodded.
In the game it was as easy as drinking a potion or, if you were lucky enough to have a cleric in your party, asking them to perform a simple healing spell. But he wasn’t sure how you did it in the real world. He wasn’t sure how he could keep moving forward.
“What’s going on?” Iaophos said, tapping the side of her head. “Up here?”
Brezzen shook his head and smiled. “Just thinking about that loot.”
Iaophos turned the GM guide around and pointed to the bottom right-hand side of the page.
* * *
Archivist Glasses
The archivist is not a god per se, but as close as one can be without having the ability to bend space and time. A part of the archivist suite—bag, pen, and staff—the glasses are unassuming upon first glance. The numerous lenses can help an adventurer track animals, determine traps, discover mimics, and various other abilities that are unlocked as an adventurer increases in experience.
* * *
Brezzen picked up the GM guide and looked at the picture. They looked like normal reading glasses, the sort his mother wore, except for a tiny lever on the side of the right lens, which manipulated a series of increasingly smaller lenses. It was undeniably cool and, as Iaophos likely planned, highly useful.
Still.
“What does a warrior need with something like that? Probably better for a rogue.”
She took the book from him and closed it.
“They will help you find the path.”
Chapter Six
BREZZEN HAD HIS PARENTS DROP HIM OFF AT SCHOOL early the next morning, almost an hour before the first bell would ring. They smiled to each other like teenagers on a date, taking it as a good sign that Brezzen would piece together two good days in a row. When they pulled away, he imagined them giving each other a high five and cranking up the radio, the perfect song coming on at just the right time.
And it was true: he had a reason for being early. But it wasn’t to make any connections with teachers or to stoke the fires of burgeoning friendships. He just wanted time to have the school mostly to himself.
He walked through the doors and started down the hallway. When he first passed the bathroom, he paused—but only briefly—before he started walking down the north hallway, toward the gymnasium.
When he opened the door, the creaking hinges echoed throughout the dark and cavernous room. There was nothing but darkness save, in the distance, a flickering exit sign above the locker room doors.
He went down the east hallway, the south, and didn’t see anything. Yes, he specifically avoided the west side of the school, the staircase and the long hallway that led to the side door, but he had been there yesterday, so what was the point?
After he made it around the entire school twice, unscathed and still able to breathe normally, he found a spot in the library and settled in. There was almost forty-five minutes before the first bell would ring—more than enough time.
He worked quickly, designing a new map. The lines were crisper, more certain. And he didn’t let his point of view skew the layout. This was an accurate representation of the school, complete with nods to some of the more intriguing places—Mr. Bruns’s room, the principal’s office, and of course the bathroom. They’d have to really get into some shit before the repeating chest would be revealed, though.
>
Brezzen sat back and appreciated his work. He followed the lines of the map with his eyes, carefully erasing a corner that didn’t look exactly right. The only thing that finally drew his attention from the map was two girls he’d known in elementary school telling him the bell had rung.
He was only the second student in Mr. Bruns’s class, and he gave Mr. Bruns a nod as he passed, which the teacher more or less ignored.
As the room started to fill up, Brezzen watched the other people in his class sit down and chat with one another, showing pictures on their phones—the whole room moved with an energy Brezzen had once known, even if he had never fully participated in it.
In some respects, his existence in the school wasn’t much different from the way he’d been before. Mostly ignored. Sometimes targeted. Happy to hang out with his friends and otherwise keep his head down.
“Hey.”
A girl was waving cautiously, like he’d absently forgotten a coffee on top of his car. Brezzen coughed once and shifted in his seat, trying to work up the nerve to speak.
“Hello,” Brezzen said, giving her a little wave back that he hadn’t meant to be funny, but made her laugh all the same.
“You’re Brendan, right? We went to Mountain View Elementary together. Mrs. Tate was the teacher. I’m Alaina, in case you forgot.”
Brezzen nodded slowly, remembering Mrs. Tate. Her claim to fame was being able to throw a football farther and better than any other teacher in the school, maybe in the whole state. She’d played softball at Tennessee, a fact that seemed to impress nearly all of his other classmates.
But the biggest thing Brezzen remembered about her was that she was kind.
“Well, cool. I just wanted to say . . .” She looked back at Mr. Bruns, who had stood up and was stretching his back—getting ready for the day. “I’m glad you’re back. It’s nice to see you. You know?”
Brezzen nodded again, even though he knew it was the wrong move. The weirdo move. It didn’t help that his entire body was suddenly hot, every muscle tied in a knot. Before he could say something, though—Thanks! I remember you! How nice!—the Great Mandolini came running into the classroom, just as the bell rang. Of course, Mr. Bruns stopped him in front of the class.