3. Will
Chapter three
Will
Roll to check the plot
“ O kay, we’re going to start where we left off last week,” I said, maybe a little louder than necessary, opening my obnoxiously large binder to the correct page as the others settled into their seats in the living room.
Because Gerry, yes, Gerry , had decided to stick around tonight and was currently retelling the story of my accidental summoning for a third fucking time to my grandmother as he munched on some leftover, cold pizza.
Apparently, free pizza was just as motivational to demons as it was to schoolkids.
I’d tried to get rid of the demon, reminding him that Gerry Jr. Jr. probably needed him back in Hell. But Gerry hadn’t seemed as concerned as earlier and said he’d check in on him later.
If I wasn’t convinced opening a portal to Hell in my living room and shoving him through would go awfully wrong by my hands, I would have done it already. So instead, I’d reluctantly allowed him to join us for our game night. I’d simply have to figure out a way to get rid of him later.
Growing up, Fridays had always been reserved for family game nights. We’d done the whole card and board games thing. Go fish had eventually evolved to poker. Apples to Apples had eventually evolved to Cards Against Humanity.
Recently, we’d dipped our toes into Dungeons & Dragons, not having any idea how complicated the game was when we’d started. We’d fumbled our way through our first several quests and, at this point, it was now more of a homebrew campaign than anything else. But overall, I thought we were doing fairly well for beginners. And more often than not, my family actually behaved, the game seeming to help bring everyone closer.
Because on a good day, my family struggled to get along. Usually, it was my dad or Nana purposefully antagonizing each other, which usually ended up with one or both hexing the other. It didn’t matter that my dad’s side of the family had mere dregs of magic in their veins. They had just the right amount to cause trouble. Seriously. The amount of stress they caused me with their childish antics had actually led me to recently discovering several gray hairs near my temples.
But on game nights, using magic was prohibited. That usually meant things remained uneventful. Usually. One wrong jab and someone might find themselves with no eyebrows, rules be damned. I’d been unfortunate enough to find myself the victim on multiple occasions, due to some misfired spells.
For tonight’s game, I’d transformed the round coffee table in our living room into a miniature, fantasy landscape, full of roads and forests and cities. Because while the rest of my family wasn’t allowed to use their magic, as the dungeon master, I was the exception.
At the start of this campaign, my family had created little figurines to go along with their character sheets, and I’d already had to make Gerry cough up one of them when he tried to eat it earlier.
Using my magic, I placed their characters in the heart of one of the forests sprouting from the table. “You’re on the sole path in the depths of the magical Heath Forest. Thickets of trees and tall shrubs guard you on either side, their dewy leaves glittering in the late afternoon sun. Mushrooms of all colors glow along the forest floor, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear a bubbling stream.” The table’s surface shifted to display just what I described, and my family ooh ed. “As you walk, you come upon a sign for the town of Ull. Your provisions are low, and you’re quite tired after walking all day through the forest, so this seems very fortunate. You continue on and happen upon a shrouded figure coming from the direction you’re heading. He halts you on your journey and inquires about what brings you to this neck of the woods. He seems pleasant enough, but as you get chatting and he learns where you’re heading, he warns you away. He tells you a great tragedy has struck the town of Ull, and you’d be better off heading back the opposite direction and seeking out another town to eat and rest.”
“I ask him what sort of tragedy has struck the town,” Dorothy said, while my dad tucked a long strand of her brown hair behind her ear with an adoring smile. After 22 years of marriage they were still sickeningly in love.
It would have been cute if I didn’t walk in on them getting frisky all over the fucking house. The things I’d seen . I still couldn’t eat whipped cream because of a sticky, unsanitary situation I’d accidentally stumbled in on a few years ago in the kitchen.
God, I really needed to move out.
“Roll Persuasion.”
After rolling her dice, she glanced at her character sheet and sighed, “Nine.”
“He’s reluctant to give you details and repeats that a tragedy has struck the town and to beware. Then the stranger bids you farewell, leaving you to discuss among yourselves what you’d like to do. However, when you glance back toward the stranger, he’s disappeared, almost like he was never there to begin with.”
Nana, who’d dressed in her favorite nightgown and robe for tonight’s festivities, moved back and forth in her rocking chair. Gerry didn’t blink once as he tracked every shift of her feet, clad in unicorn slippers. “Roll to check the plot.”
“What? No, that’s not a thing.”
She squinted at me, her white brows slanting downward. “Then I cast Divination. What about now?”
I groaned. “No!” Then, “Wait, you don’t even have Divination.”
“What if I cast Clairvoyance?”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sighed. “Just play the game, please? I’m not giving you spoilers.”
Nana shook her head, making some of her curlers bounce, and grumbled about railroading. The group conversed, debating the merits of continuing on or not. But ultimately, they decided traveling to the town for food and rest would be the best course of action.
“It takes you the remainder of the day to reach your destination. But as night arrives, you finally happen upon the town.” The board shifted and changed, displaying a hillside village shrouded in mists. The hill looked a little... lopsided, and the mists made a sputtering sound that was completely unintentional.
The characters hesitated at the outskirts of the town. “As you travel up the winding path, you don’t notice anything amiss. It’s only when the first homes come into better view that you realize how run-down everything is. Every home has missing roof tiles. Some doors are completely missing, their insides cast in cobwebs and darkness. As you pass by some other houses with busted doors and broken windows, you can make out several haggard-looking people sleeping on dirty mats inside. One of the only structures with any sign of life is a shabby tavern with a sign for food and lodging. There’s music and voices coming from inside. What do you do?”
The table muttered between themselves. Nana wanted to continue to look around more, maybe search for food in some of the abandoned homes, but the rest of the party wanted to go inside the tavern.
“We go in,” Dorothy said, slicing some cheese off a chunk on the charcuterie board she’d made for tonight. When they’d returned home earlier, my dad had figured out pretty damn fast that Otto and I had lazed our days away while they’d been gone, and had griped all the way out the door to head to the grocery store.
But hey, at least we had snacks now.
“The tavern welcomes you kindly. It’s filled with people of all races,” I said, wiggling my fingers at their characters on the board to make them move inside the tavern. “Those inside ask you questions: ‘What brings you to Ull?’ ‘How long do you plan to stay?’ ‘What do you do for a living?’ After several drinks, you finally get the nerve to ask them what happened to the town.”
Dimming the board for theatrics, I carried on. “The tavern grows quiet at that. It’s the bartender, a dwarf with sad, kind eyes, who is the one to answer as he polishes a glass. He tells you of the castle atop the hill, full of magical objects and enough gold to live a life of luxury. How the king who lives there is trapped in the dungeons deep below the castle by giants, dark fairies, and a being of winged shadows. You learn that many of the townspeople have tried to save the king, but none have succeeded.
“So,” I said, scanning the group, “they ask you for help. Do you continue on your way once you have rested and eaten, or do you take up the challenge to rescue the king?”
“I don’t know,” dad said, scratching his goatee, his blue eyes narrowed at the board. “Sounds kinda boring, if you ask me.”
“Accepting a quest to save a king from dangerous fairytale creatures is boring to you?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“But maybe if we save the king, he’ll reward us with gold,” Nana pointed out, fixing one of her curlers, which had come loose.
Dorothy nibbled on a cracker, her dark brows lowered in thought. “And don’t forget about the magical objects we could collect.”
“I doubt the king is going to be okay just giving away all his gold and magical objects,” Otto pointed out, scratching Gerry between his ears. Gerry purred happily. “His kingdom is struggling, so he’ll need his gold to help.”
Nana grinned. “Who said anything about giving it to us?”
“You can’t stage another hostile kidnapping,” I interjected with a scowl, remembering a quest from a few sessions ago where she’d grown bored and kidnapped the abbess of a small nunnery in charge of protecting a magical basket that could produce enough food to feed their small, isolated village. Negotiations had taken place, things had escalated, and even after the nuns had given Nana the magical basket, she’d set the convent on fire.
Nana... could be a little scary.
She pointed a gnarled finger at me. “You can’t tell me what to do, boy.”
“Yes,” I said, feeling a headache forming behind my eyes. “I can. I’m the dungeon master. It’s, like, my whole job?”
“Well, maybe I want to be the dungeon master!”
Throwing up my hands in defeat, I slouched down in my chair. “Fine! Next campaign, you can.”
This only set off the group further, and Otto excused himself to go grab some popcorn. Gerry didn’t even seem to notice what was going on, smacking his scaly paws at the mists hovering above the table.
As they continued to argue about who would make a better DM, my exhaustion caught up to me. My eyelids drooped, and I only partially managed to stifle a yawn.
I was debating whether or not I’d have time for a quick catnap, knowing how long these sort of arguments in my family could take, when my gaze drifted to the fantasy board I’d made of our table.
Whispers slid through the air, and quiet words tickled my ears as I watched the mists surrounding the hillside begin to swirl. I sat up a little straighter, even though my family didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.
But the whispers grew louder, and the sound of my family’s bickering dulled in my ears.
My heart galloped faster and faster as the mists cycloned, causing the characters and some other parts of the board to go flying in all directions.
That finally drew my family’s attention.
We stared as blazing light burst from the mists, but even though it burned to look at, my gaze remained glued. Power throbbed from the table, and through the glow, flashes of imagery started.
I saw a mother placing a silver and black ring around a newborn’s finger. The second showed a stranger attempting to calm their spooked horse, pulling tight on the wizened leather of its harness, but the horse jerked free and trampled them. In the next, a man and woman raced down the road in their car as ravens gave chase after them. The following scene revealed a middle-aged man losing his head to the claws of a black, winged beast, his blood dripping down his red coat. Another showed a hooded figure cloaked in swirls of ebony approaching a little girl playing in a meadow.
On and on, more scenes played out, each just as foreboding as the last.
But the next scene, one I was more than familiar with, acted differently than the others.
Instead of watching the events unfold before me, I was sucked into the vision I’d been plagued with for most of my life. The one I’d painted just earlier that day.
Only this time, instead of viewing from the sidelines, I watched everything unfold through the golden-haired man’s eyes. And when the sorcerer transformed him to stone, I felt the man’s anger, his betrayal, and his sorrow, as deeply as if they were truly my own feelings.
But unlike in the past where the vision ended, this time, it continued, and true horror bubbled inside me.
Because on the outside, the man of stone was silent, his body as still as a statue. His sword stood tall from his frozen chest, and the sky weeped tears down its glowing blade. But the outside was deceiving. Because internally, the man was screaming, the spell freezing him in endless agony. But the sorcerer didn’t even seem to realize he was awake, stuck feeling the piercing of the sword through his heart, the biting lance of pain from his wounded head... It was enough to steal my breath.
I barely managed to suck in some air before it switched to the next scene. I was once again a spectator to the vision as it played out on the coffee table before me and my family. In it, I observed the sorcerer using magic to transport the man of stone’s body across the lands until they reached a large, mist-shrouded lake. A grassy island rose in the distance at its center, its grounds hidden by the low-lying clouds. A lone tower sat upon its crown.
There, the sorcerer was greeted at the shore by nine hooded figures. Their faces remained hidden from view, but the sorcerer nodded to one on the far left. “Moronoe,” he said, and the figure removed her hood, revealing a pasty woman with brown, curly hair shorn short.
She didn’t return a greeting to the man, though he didn’t seem to expect one as he turned his attention to the three people beside Moronoe. “Gliten, Gliton, Glitonea.”
With each of their names, they too drew back their shrouds, exposing three, near-identical women. Though, while their pretty, pale faces looked the same, Gliten’s hair shone copper, Gliton’s gold. Glitonea set herself apart with her maple-brown shade of locks. They smiled at the man, though the expressions lacked any warmth.
The next woman revealed had bronzed skin and rich, ebony curls cascading down her back. “Mazoe.”
Mazoe’s gaze almost seemed to darken before he greeted the next in line. “Tyronoe.”
Tyronoe shifted off her hood, uncovering a head of graying hair. But though her dark skin was aged more than those prior, she was just as beautiful with wise, keen eyes. Like the others, she gave no greeting to the man in return.
The next two bared their faces at the same time, and it was apparent immediately they were twins. The one beside Tyronoe had deep, brown skin and hair and looked bored by this whole situation. Her sister lacked almost all melanin, her hair and skin nearly translucent. The pale twin’s alert gaze flicked around their surroundings as if expecting an attack.
“Thiton. Thiten,” the man said.
But as he turned to the last figure in the row, the cloaked person stepped forward, leaving their anonymity in place. When they spoke, I was surprised to find I could understand the words.
“This is a mistake,” the figure said, her voice heavy with emotion. With grief. “You should have ended him for what he did at Camlann. He is a monster .”
The sorcerer shook his head, his expression somber. “What happened to Mordred—”
“Do not speak his name,” the woman hissed.
The sorcerer hesitated then, seeming to choose his next words carefully. “Your son’s death was a tragedy, Morgana. But surely you do not blame Arthur when it was not he who instigated the attack?”
The woman, Morgana, turned away, giving him her back.
“I am only doing this because I owed thee a favor,” she said, hesitating on the shoreline. “But my debt is paid hereafter. As thou hast asked of me, I shall keep Arthur safely hidden in Avalon.”
“Only until the time comes to raise him. He is not thine to keep forever,” the sorcerer said, voice tight. “I have sworn on my blood that he shall return, Morgana. The Grail shall be found, and Arthur shall rule once more.”
Morgana’s eyes glittered with tears and defiance in the darkness of her hood as she glanced over her shoulder to give him one final look. “Then I suppose you ought to start searching.”
The other figures used magic to move the man of stone’s body to a small boat tethered to the shore. Then they boarded the boat, Morgana stepping in last.
As the figures used their magic to sail away through the mists, the sorcerer watched on with a determined expression.
But as the scene dimmed, the mists continued to whirl around the table. No images appeared now, but a ball of light floated up from the center of the mists, coming to hover before my face.
Those whispering voices from before spoke from the light, sounding like a hundred different people speaking at once:
The time to act is here at last And make up for your bloodline’s past To raise the once and future king Then find Merlin’s Treasures Thirteen They’ll aid your quest to find the Grail For without them, your search will fail
A word of care you must hold dear The Raven Queen is one to fear So venture deep into the lands Where legends rise and evil stands Help the curs’d king find what is lost Or else we all will face the cost
As the last word rang through the room, the light suddenly vanished, and I had to squint into the now dimmer setting around me. When I spotted the table, I stilled.
The game made from its surface had been leveled, though some remnants persisted, like a few random homes and a lump where the hillside castle used to be. The table itself was cracked down the center, splitting that lump of a hillside in half, and a puddle soaked into the carpet below where the lake’s water had seeped through the break.
My family and Gerry blinked at me.
I blinked back at them.
Little dark spots hovered in my vision, and magic still thrummed through me like a shot of adrenaline. I couldn’t get my heart to stop racing, even as the seconds ticked by.
It was like they were waiting for me to say something, to explain what just happened. But I couldn’t. Hell, I didn’t even know what just happened.
Finally, Nana peered at me before saying very loudly, “What did the ball say? I didn’t have my hearing aid on.”
A demolished pink mushroom fell out of Gerry’s mouth as he frowned at me, then the ruined table. “I’m confused. Is this part of the game?”
“If you wanted us to take up the villager’s request to save the king, you could have just said so,” my dad pointed out. “You didn’t have to ruin my furniture. I actually liked this table.”
“It did seem a little like overkill, honey,” Dorothy said, patting my hand kindly.
“I really hate you all sometimes,” I muttered, my heartbeat drumming too loudly in my ears as magic, my own and other, overwhelmed me.
And then I collapsed.