NPCs (30 page)

“I understand.” Tim held the blue D20 in his sweaty hand, staring into its swirl-patterned depths. As much as he hadn’t cared for the way his party did things, Tim didn’t want his character to die. He liked Timuscor the knight, he liked the game, and he didn’t really want it to end. Tim suspected that if the party wiped again, no one would want to play anymore, and finding another group was a prospect he had no idea how to tackle. When he rolled, it wouldn’t just be for Timuscor: it would be for his whole future of gaming.

* * *

Eric stood over the unconscious knight, aware of a growing warmth coming from The Bridge. As it heated, the knight’s eyes fluttered halfway open. He stared at Eric in confusion, as though he were drunk, gaze flitting from the glowing artifact to Eric and back again.

“Whroo… yu…” The knight’s words were slurred and only halfway intelligible.

Eric gave him what he hoped looked like a reassuring smile and pressed The Bridge to the dying man’s chest. “I have no idea what’s supposed to happen now; I’m only following orders. Let’s just hope it isn’t boring.”

The Bridge did not disappoint.

As the enemy barbarian’s death cry echoed across the field, The Bridge’s glow intensified. It seemed to envelop the knight, seeping over him like spilled jelly. The air around them began to ripple, first lightly, and then with such intensity that it was all Eric could do to hold on. Even with his eyes closed, he could see the ripple, feel it rattling his very bones. It grew stronger still, and just when Eric was certain he could hold on no longer, the energy seemed to snap.

It surged outward, inward, and all over at once. Eric felt like everything had been burned away and rebuilt thousands of times, all before he could draw a single breath. Then, just as suddenly, it was over.

He carefully opened his eyes, uncertain of what would lay before him.

* * *

“With Mitch dead, Tim is the last one still breathing,” Russell said. “Roll the dice, and see if you survive another round.”

Tim nodded, touched the D20 for luck, and then sent it tumbling across the map. Usually, it would roll for a few seconds before unceremoniously stopping on a number. Sometimes, it would strike an object, and very occasionally, it would be rolled too hard and would tumble off the table, necessitating a re-roll.

None of those things happened this time.

The D20 rolled twice then stopped in an impossible position, resting on one of its corners. Before the players could comment on the strangeness of such an event, it was overshadowed. The D20 began to spin in place, moving with such fierce speed that a whistling sound filled the air. Small wisps of smoke began to rise from the map below it, and the die’s blue facade seemed to throb with light. Then, without any slowing down as warning, the D20 stopped spinning. It shook once, the barest of shivers running through it, and crumbled into countless pieces.

Everyone in the room stared at the now-destroyed die, dumbfounded into silence at what they’d just seen. It was Tim who finally spoke. Tim the rookie, Tim the newbie, Tim who was willing to turn to his GM and ask a question, inane or insane as it may seem.

“So… what does that mean?”

* * *

The knight’s eyes opened slowly, the stabbing pain in his head making exposure to all but the faintest bits of light an unbearable pain. He found four people standing over him: a gnome in shining armor, a woman with an axe, a half-orc in robes, and a smiling human male clutching an object that shone with a fading glow.

“Who are you people?” He tried to sit up but found his body stiff as a dragon’s talon. The throbbing ache from his stomach made him brave the discomfort to check it; thankfully, there was no wound that he could see.

“We were going to ask you the same thing,” the gnome replied.

“I’m…” His voice trailed off as he plumbed the depths of his mind. Surely there was an answer; it was such a simple question. Yet it eluded him as he bore the pain in his skull and searched about. Who was he? He was… a warrior, yes, that felt right. A knight? No… a knight for now; his true dream had always been to become a paladin. The pain receded as these details and more came to light in his mind. He’d been stuck working with a group of… well, assholes, to try and progress his goals. He was here on a mission for the king, and his name was…

“Timuscor,” the knight replied at last. “My name is Timuscor, and I’d like to take this chance to apologize for the way my cohorts treated you. They were unscrupulous men, and I’m happy to be free of them.”

Everyone looked at Eric, who gave them a small nod. He carefully tucked the object he’d been holding back into his pack and looked down at Timuscor.

“Well, Timuscor, how do you feel about travel?”

Epilogue

Russell and Tim were the only ones left in Russell’s house, the others having left as soon as the game ended. Only Tim had stuck around to help clean up. In fairness to the others, after what they’d seen the D20 do, it was hardly surprising that they’d wanted to put some distance between themselves and dice.

“I guess we’re not going to play
Spells, Swords, & Stealth
anymore, are we?” Tim had held back this question for some time, but as he deposited the last soda can in the trash, it seemed he needed to ask now, or lose the opportunity.

“It doesn’t look likely. Dice weirdness aside, I don’t think the others liked my new game-running style very much.”

“Well, that’s their loss.” Tim yanked the trash bag out from the container and tied the edges together.

“You liked it?”

“I thought it was a lot of fun. Sure, keeping track of meals and stuff got a little tedious, but it also made it feel a lot more real. Honestly, the only part I didn’t like was how the others kept making their characters act.”

Russell silently mulled Tim’s words over for a moment, scooping some unattended sour cream into the sink. He was so distracted he nearly let some spill onto one of his mother’s Rodrigo romance novels left on the counter, a sin that would have earned harsh punishment. “You know, there are other gaming groups out there. I bet if we hit up the comic shop, we could find more than enough people to put a new group together.”

“Really?” Tim almost dropped the trash bag. “I mean… are you sure you want to run another one, with everything that happened?”

“Shitty players are part of the package that comes with GMing. As for the dice thing, I have absolutely no idea what that was, but weird stuff happens all the time. I heard on the news that last week, a whole bunch of birds fell out of the sky for no reason, and I’ve got a cousin that still swears up and down he met an actual god on a vacation. There’s tons of unexplained crap out there, and I’m not going to give up my favorite hobby because of one weird incident.”

“Count me in,” Tim said excitedly. “I can hardly wait to make a new character. Any idea what the next game will be about?”

“Nothing offhand, but there are some really cool modules at the comic shop. There’s one I’ve had my eye on by the same company who made our last campaign: it takes place in a kingdom neighboring Solium.”

“There’s more than one kingdom?”

“Way more than one,” Russell confirmed. “This one is called Alcatham.”

* * *

Thistle walked over to the campfire where Eric sat on a fallen log. The Bridge was in his hands, shining in the firelight. Eric’s eyes seemed lost in its depths, but as Thistle approached, he looked up to greet his friend.

“How’s it going?”

“He’s settling in all right,” Thistle replied. “Got more than a few gaps in his memory, but genuinely seems not to be put off about us killing his comrades.”

“I doubt he remembers more than their names and skills,” Eric replied.

Thistle sat down on another log, keeping his gaze away from the artifact resting on Eric’s lap. Whatever it was, whatever it did, Thistle didn’t need to make a connection with it. Grumph had only held it for a few moments, and now, he was resting under a tree, writing out new spells. Eric had heard the thing speak without laying a finger on it, and when he finally did touch it…

“Have you figured out what happened? Did it wipe his mind or change his disposition or something?”

“Or something,” Eric whispered. He turned The Bridge over once more, then stowed it in his pack. “I have… let’s not call it a theory yet. Maybe a suspicion. Do you remember what Aldron said about adventurers being influenced by people from another world?”

“Aldron said a lot of crazy things.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily make him wrong. Let’s assume, just for a moment, that he was right. Real adventurers, not fakers like us, are influenced, connected in some way to another world. Their world flows into ours, shaping the actions and choices of the adventurers.”

“That would be the gist of Aldron’s claim, aye.”

“Then maybe The Bridge broke that connection, severed the influence. Maybe it made Timuscor like us, an adventurer who isn’t ruled by some foreign magic. After all, The Bridge is supposed to be able to affect their world; why not the connection from theirs to ours?”

“If what you’re saying is right, and I am in no way jumping on ship with that idea, that would mean everything we know about our world, about magic, about life itself; all of it is bunk,” Thistle said.

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it means there’s more than we realized. Maybe we’ve only scratched the surface, and what remains is sh
eer wonder. Of course, if we want any real answers there’s probably only one way to find them.”

“You want to look for the other pieces, don’t you?”

“As you’d say: aye. The longer I think about it, the more it feels like what we’re supposed to do. Besides, it’s not like we have anything else planned.”

“I had a healthy amount of ‘not-dying’ all lined up, but I suppose, for a paladin, that’s a crazy dream anyway.” Thistle leaned back and looked up at the stars. They looked the same as they had in Solium, which made sense given that they were only a few miles from the border. Perhaps, as they traveled deeper into Alcatham, he’d see new constellations. That’d be something to tell Madroria about when he finally saw her; she’d always loved the stars.

“Aren’t these pieces supposed to be impossible to find?” Thistle asked.

“Nightmarishly so.”

“There might be others searching for them, as well,” Thistle reminded him. “Perhaps agents of the king; he’s apt to realize we lived once they find the guards’ corpses.”

“Almost certainly,” Eric agreed.

“And if we do find any, which is beyond a long shot, they’ll be guarded by dungeons and monsters as bad, if not worse than, this one.”

“Stands to reason.”

“So, you’re proposing we go on an impossible quest, facing unknown enemies and certain death, all for nothing more than the slim chance finding a few magical baubles?”

“Certainly,” Eric replied. He stood up from the fire and looked across the plains to where Gabrielle and Timuscor were sparring, and Grumph was furiously writing in his spellbook. “Didn’t you get the message yet, Thistle? This is what we do. We’re adventurers now.”

The gnome hesitated for only a moment, then rose from his own seat as well.

“Aye; that we are.”

Other Novels by Drew Hayes