“The old woman who gave you the quest cackles. ‘Fools! Now that you’ve done my bidding, the way is open! I have become a conduit for the power beyond!’” Erin pressed a button under the table with her foot. The lights dimmed and a thunder sound effect played from the speakers behind her. Erin threw her hands to the sky and closed her eyes, holding a grimace on her face.
The five of them -Erin, Blake, Tristan, Andi, and Daysha- were in Erin’s upstairs game room, all gathered around a folding table, sitting in mismatched dining room chairs. It was a den of clutter, with games overflowing out of multiple bookshelves. Behind Erin was a TV stand with a sound system she had built herself.
After a suitably dramatic pause, she opened her eyes.
Blake nudged Tristan. “Red contacts, those are new. She went all out.” Blake was a white boy. Brown hair, a little over six feet, and cute enough that it almost compensated for his sense of humor.
“Silence, thief! As I have told you many times, we are allies, not friends.” Tristan was shorter, but a lot bigger. He worked out.
Blake rolled his eyes.
Andi just nodded once. She had suspected this twist all along and prepared for it. Andi was an Asian girl, with a habit of redoing her ponytail while she was thinking.
“You are the fool, old hag! The power beyond can’t match the power of these hands,” Daysha said. Daysha was a black girl with dreads and piercings. She was chewing Nicotine gum.
“Hold.” Erin threw her hand out in Daysha’s direction, using her dramatic deep voice. “I come not to battle, but to parley.”
“I roll to shoot her in the face,” Blake said.
“The arrow passes through her. Like a daydream, it goes through her brain and disappears, leaving nothing behind.” She kept using her deep voice.
“I keep shooting.”
“Fine,” Erin said, rolling her bloody eyes. “Still does nothing.”
“A parley you say?” Tristan asks. “And pray tell, why would we listen to your ilk?”
“I bring gifts,” she hissed. She threw out on the table four D20s, black with darker black numbers. “Allow me to coexist, and these will grant you new abilities.”
Andi’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of abilities are we talking here? Do they stack with my gear?”
“Accept my bargain, or forego the chance to know.”
“Guys, I was looking forward to the boss battle, but I get if we want to go for the ‘new abilities’,” Daysha said.
“Indeed, I find myself persuaded by these strange tokens you have presented.”
“I keep shooting.”
“Blake come on. All or nothing.” Andi said.
“Fine, I’m in.”
They each picked up a D20.
“So come on Erin, what do they do?” Andi said.
“Not so fast.” She tossed out a fifth D20, then slumped to the side. Her foot landed on the thunder pedal, and they heard repeated crashes.
Then a red hand reached up through the table, clenching the die in its fist. It was bigger than a human hand. Bigger than a human head. It unfolded, letting the die rest in its palm.
“Erin?” Her deep voice continued, now echoing from all around them. “Do you accept my bargain?”
“Holy shit,” Blake murmured, impressed.
She sat up, eyes back to white. The room’s lights came up, and the red arm somehow looked more scary. They could see the details, the veins and muscles.
“No. Hell no.”
The fist shut, grinding the die to dust. “Very well. Enjoy watching your friends struggle.” There was a delighted laugh, and then silence.
“What did you idiots do?”
After Erin managed to persuade them that it wasn’t part of the game (which took considerable time), there was a thoughtful silence. They had moved downstairs to the kitchen. Erin was standing. Daysha and Andi were sitting on the kitchen counters, Daysha idly swinging her legs. Blake and Tristan had the only two chairs. Blake was leaning his against the wall, while Tristan sat with his hands folded under his chin.
“I guess we have demon powers now?” Daysha said. “What does that even mean?”
“Devil powers,” Andi corrected. “Demons are chaotic. Devils are lawful. We made a deal with it, therefore it’s a devil.”
“Idk about you guys, but I can’t wait to test out my demonic powers.” Blake gave a wheezing laugh that sounded more like someone with bronchitis than a mad sorcerer.
“Devil.”
“None of you can test them out!” Erin said. “It spoke to me, while it was in my head. Told me a little bit.”
“And?” Tristan asked.
“I’m scared if I tell you you’ll want to try it.”
“Oh well you HAVE to tell us now,” Daysha said.
“Okay...well, think of it like Final Destination meets X-Men. You can roll the die when you try things. If you roll high, you get superhuman performance. If you roll low...bad stuff. Impossibly bad.”
“Superhuman performance…” Tristan said, already fantasizing about how cool his next LARP session would be.
“Wait, Final Destination? Like, killed by Rube Goldberg bad?” Daysha said. “Oh fuck no.”
“Did he tell you anything else?” Andi said. “Are there rules or is it completely random?”
“No. I did get the impression that there were rules, but he never said for sure. If it was random you guys would just die from the law of averages and I don’t think that was his goal.”
“I’m hungry.” Blake leaned his chair forward, slamming down on the first two legs. “Give me food, dice.”
He flicked his wrist and they all yelled.
“Blake, what the fuck man,” Tristan said, louder than the rest.
“No, look!” It landed on 20.
The doorbell rang. Blake ran to the door.
He came back holding five pizzas.
“Hey! They said that we haven’t ordered from them in a while, so this was on the house.” It was their regular order from before they switched pizza companies.
“Oh man, that’s my shit.” Daysha spit out her gum and scarfed down the first piece in a matter of seconds.
“All good things from ya boy,” Blake said.
“Good luck goes bad,” Erin said. She threw her pizza in the trash.
“Listen guys, I’d love to keep arguing about this, but I have work early tomorrow,” Tristan said.
Andi sat quietly, redoing her ponytail. Her pizza was left untouched.
~~~
The next day, Andi skipped school for the first time in her life. A perfect attendance record, shattered. Part of her flinched at the horror, but she knew this was more important.
She laid stomach-down on her bed, looking at the dice. Her dorm room was one of five identical rooms in her suite. She had a lofted bed with a desk underneath, and a matching one on the other side of the room for her roommate. It was small enough that the only other things in the room were a closet and a microwave on top of a mini-fridge.
“Roll to remove one hair from the floor of my room.” She picked it up and placed it so that the 20 stayed on top. The numbers shifted on their own, blanking the surface of the die and then returning. An 8.
Down the hall, a cat coughed, and a hairball rolled in the room. Her suitemate yelled a muffled apology.
Andi got up, grabbed her handheld vacuum out of the closet, and came back to the bed. “Roll to remove 1% of that hairball.”
This time she physically tossed it. It rolled across the floor and projected the number in the air above itself so she could still read it. It hit 18, then flickered and changed to 19.
The hairball disappeared. Her hardwood floor looked like she had just swept it and wiped it down with a wet cloth.
“Hmm. Interesting.”
One costume change later, and Andi the French Maid from Last Halloween was rolling to clean a single bathroom tile of mold. One interesting thing she noticed was that as soon as she wanted to roll the dice again, it appeared in her hand. No risk of losing it at least.
8, which then flickered to 11. The tile was clean.
Andi smiled. Progress.
~~~
“EVERYBODY DOWN!” Blake strode into the bank, coattails of his purple suit jacket flapping in the breeze. His hair was dyed green. His face was covered in white makeup, except for his red mouth.
“Gun please.” 16. Two guns appeared in his hands, a heavy pistol and a sawn-off shotgun.
Blake fired the pistol into the air. The bank wasn’t crowded. There were three people in the queue and one talking to a bank employee at the window. The window was to the right as he entered the room. Further back were offices, all currently vacant, and the left was a blank wall.
The people in line had stared at him at first, thinking it was some kind of joke or cosplay. After the gunshot, they were all down on the floor.
“You! Your money or your life.” He was pointing to one of the guys in line.
“What?” The guy gestured to himself.
“Do you need help making the decision?”
“Evil laugh,” he whispered, and flicked his wrist. 14. It started with amusement, then moved up to schadenfreude, finally culminating in sadism. He sounded like a wild animal that had been chased by a hunter into a playground, happy to have found an easy victim.
“Not bad, dice!” he said quietly.
The man had wet himself. He pulled out his wallet, the corner damp, and threw it to Blake. There was a total of seven dollars inside.
“Sorry, I was here to make a wi-”
“Thank you,” he said, calm and sincere. He left the bank.
The entrance to the bank was up a three-foot flight of stairs. Blake stepped out, and saw a man across the street at eye level. Floating.
There was nothing but condemnation in his eyes. A halo of white light flared into existence above his head. He raised his hand like the signal to drop a guillotine, and a white light blade formed into existence around it.
Blake grinned with one side of his mouth, and pumped the shotgun.
“Let’s get dangerous,” he said, flicking his wrist. 7.
His expression of surprise was comical. He took a step towards the angel and fell down the stairs. The gun went off, missing him but leaving his ears ringing. When he hit the ground his weapons scattered into the street, and a truck ran them over.
“Bad dice! Very bad!” Blake scrambled to his feet and the angel was standing over him, even taller than he was. It brought its hand down, blade swinging for his forehead.
“Live!” he said, and rolled.
~~~
Daysha was doing her best to have a very average morning. She had decided that Erin was right and demons were nothing to fuck with.
She sat through Microeconomics in first period and Calc 2 in second period. She was really good at math, so she tuned it out and spent the time daydreaming about what her barbarian character would have done to the hag if it had been a straight fight instead of an accidental devil summoning.
Kicked ass, that’s for sure.
In real life, she was shy and didn’t talk to many people outside the group. In game, she could be a total badass. And that was good. If people went around being badass all the time IRL, there would probably be a lot of property damage and general inconvenience. Traffic jam thanks to the Avengers tearing up downtown? Pass, thank you.
It was fine.
When Calc 2 finished she went to the dining hall. But as soon as she sat down with her tray of food, she saw the dice on the table. It had been nearly 12 hours since they had gotten the dice, and she hadn’t used hers once, even to test. She moved it to the table behind her, careful not to roll it, but when she turned around it was sitting in front of her again.
She knew she had to use it. It felt like, not gravity, but a powerful social compulsion. It was as if the whole cafeteria would notice if she didn’t roll the dice and judge her for it. Logically, she knew they were focused on their own meals and couldn’t even know about her dice. But the irrational feeling persisted.
Fine. “Have a normal day.” She rolled. 1.
The wall of the dining hall exploded inward. An olive-skinned man dressed in a white suit stood resolute in the rubble. A halo flared above his head.
“That is BULLSHIT,” Daysha said, unaware she was yelling.
His cold eyes locked on her. He moved, striding up as well as forward.
“Escape. Escape. Escape.” She rolled as fast as she could. 5. She fell, legs numb from the knees down. 3. The angel was hovering directly over her now. His hand was edged in gold and descending. 20. Daysha vanished.
~~~
Tristan worked as a Renaissance Fair blacksmith. Around the same time the dice made itself irresistible to Daysha, he finally decided to do what he’d been thinking about.
“I want to get good.” He already was good. Tristan completed a few suits of armor a year, which was much harder than it sounded. That, only top of his roleplaying duties for the fair. But he wanted to be faster, and to make his own custom work for events.
17. Knowledge flowed into Tristan’s mind, smithing techniques that would have been risky without perfect control. Which he now had.
“Hell yeah.” Tristan stoked his forge.
~~~
Later that day, Erin sent a message in their group text.
E: “Guys, Blake is in the hospital. He’s in a coma. Also, uh, dressed as the Joker. Do any of you know what happened?”
The typing bubble appeared under Daysha’s name. It appeared and disappeared as she organized her thoughts.
D: “Yeah I got attacked today. I’m kinda freaking out. It probably went after Blake too.”
A: “Attacked by what? Recon data pls”
D: “This isn’t a fucking game, Andi. It tried to kill me.”
D: “I think it was an angel.”
E: “*coughs*”
T: “My gift has made me strong. Allow me to seek out the angel that I may chastise it.”
E: “Your.. T, what did you do?”
T: “I made the weapons of a hero, milady. Of a champion. With these no angel can match me.” He sent a picture of himself, decked out in steel plate, with the kind of pointed edges and sharp aesthetics of an RPG character. He was holding a two-handed sword over his head that was at least six feet long.
D: “It will fuck you up. Trust.”
F: “Have you turned yellow-bellied after one encounter? I oft admired your stalwart nature.”
D: “It’s not the same IRL.”
A: “I think I’ve figured out the mechanics. You can get circumstantial bonuses depending on what you ask for and what you already have relating to the request. I’m just trying to find a universal modifier that stacks so I can roll 20s all day.”
E: “Andi, don’t.”
D: “Tristan I’m coming over. If you’re so badass, protect me.”
T: “It would be my honor.”
A: “I’m going to check on Blake. We need all the help we can get. I don’t want to get in the game until everything is perfect.”
Their icons blinked dark as they each closed the chat.
E: “Okay I’ll just wait here then.”
~~~
Daysha got off the bus and walked into the Renaissance fair. Near the entrance there was one modern building. Everything past that was wood and tents. She found Tristan outside the back of a wooden building. He was shirtless and pounding hot metal into shape.
She let out a low whistle. He normally wore baggy clothes, especially sweatshirts. She resolved to take him shopping once this was all over. That body needed to be seen, or at least hinted at with a tight white tee.
“Tristan!”
He waved, motioning her over. Then he took the hot metal and dropped it in water. Steam hissed.
“Good morrow, Daysha. Wait until you see how I’ve used my gift.”
Thunder rolled from a clear blue sky. Past the meadow where the tents were raised, there was a thick forest. At the edge of that forest stood a man, three feet above the ground.
He let himself drop, light as a feather. The second that his feet touched the ground, he sprinted at Tristan. Tristan only smiled.
At the moment of impact, steel erupted from his skin. In less than a second, he was wrapped in his RPG armor. The angel’s fist drove him back, but he held firm, heels digging into dirt. Light erupted from the angel’s hand, but flowed around the armor instead of cutting through it.
“Nay, being.” Tristan’s voice was muffled through his faceplate, but full of pride. “You are a worthy opponent, but I shall bring you down.”
Then he drew his sword from thin air, slashing down at the angel’s shoulder. It chipped, a piece of white stone falling away.
Daysha watched open-mouthed. Tristan fought the angel on seemingly even terms, but it wasn’t human. A hit to the head momentarily stunned Tristan. Each hit to the angel cracked his marble body, but allowed more of the light to seep out from its core. It moved faster, hit harder, the more he managed to hurt it.
He wasn’t going to win. Daysha quickly texted Andi to get her ass in gear. Then she took a deep breath. Running wasn’t going to work this time. If she left Tristan alone, he’d end up worse off than Blake.
What would her barbarian character do if she were here? The corners of her mouth turned up.
Kick ass. That’s what.
Daysha took out her dice and blew on it once for luck. She threw it, but didn’t see the number. For the next few minutes, all she saw was red.
~~~
Andi redid her ponytail. Then immediately did it again.
She felt paralyzed. She hadn’t used the dice on anything big yet. Just small tests to figure out the rules. If she took a chance on something big before cheating the system to make it perfect, people might die.
The best she could figure out was a nurse’s uniform, playing a song about waking up (waking up inside), holding a loaded die. The first two were circumstantial bonuses for getting someone out of a coma, and the last was a universal modifier that added +1 to any roll.
Unfortunately it didn’t stack. The three bonuses combined would only be a +5. If she got a five or below, Blake might get worse. And when you were already in a coma, worse meant dead. She couldn’t take a 1 in 4 chance that her friend would die.
She just needed more time to think.
Her phone buzzed.
D: “Dude, we’re getting our asses kicked. Help.”
Andi bit her lip. It was either take a chance on Blake, or let her friends fight alone, at worse odds than 1 in 4. She could go alone, but if she wasn’t willing to take a chance, she wasn’t going to be much help anyway.
Andi closed her eyes, and held out her fist, palm down. She opened it, letting the dice fall. She was afraid to look. The hospital monitors were all still beeping. That was a good sign.
Finally, she opened her eyes. A 9 flickered and became 14. She looked closely at him to see if anything changed.
“Boo!” He jumped at her.
Andi yelped. “Fuck you, Blake!”
He swung his feet up and got out of bed. He was in a hospital gown, ass hanging in the breeze. His hair was still green, but the makeup was gone.
“Well, that won’t do. Dice, Fawk me up.” He flicked his wrist. 18.
His clothes shifted. All black, with a cape and knives at his belt. He wore a mocking white mask, and his hair was brown again, short and straight.
“Yes! There it is.”
“Wait, that’s where you got the joker costume?” Andi asked. Using it for costume changes hadn’t even occurred to her. She could get any circumstantial bonus that way. It was a step up.
“Duh.” He checked his phone. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to save the day.”
He crashed through the fourth floor window and rolled when he hit the ground. She could see him toss the dice again, and then start walking away from the hospital. Each step moved him further than it should have, and each step was faster than the last. When he left her frame of vision, he was strolling at the speed of a moving car.
She thought about his casual approach, and the last number she saw him roll. Maybe she was looking at this wrong. She didn’t need to hit 20 every time. She just needed to be good enough. Everything crystallized into one idea.
~~~
When Blake arrived at the Renaissance fair, the tents had been blown away. Tristan, Daysha, and the angel stood in a field of smoking dirt where a green meadow had been half an hour before.
Tristan’s armor was dented, his sword snapped in half. He had lost his helmet, and there was blood around his mouth.
The angel looked even worse. He was like a holy Rayman, legs and arms broken, held together only by white light. But appearances were deceiving. He moved faster than the eye could track, hammering Daysha with blasts of light.
She was equal to it. Her whole body had expanded, bulging with muscle. Her attacks had no finesse. She roared, and smacked the angel around like a ragdoll. There were plenty of bruises and both of her eyes were black, but she didn’t bleed. He tried to fly over her, and she grabbed him by his stone ankle, slamming him into the ground.
That was a mistake.
His back cracked open, letting out light from his core. Instantly, it formed into three huge wings made of solid light. Two of them folded over his stone pieces, protecting them from further hits. The other smacked her away like a tennis ball.
She landed in a dust cloud next to Blake, who had been waiting for his chance to make an entrance.
“One more time.” He let out the predator’s laugh he had acquired in the bank. “Let’s get dangerous.”
13. He moved, that unnaturally fast stroll that had taken him to the fight, and released all the momentum in a stab to the angel’s back.
The stone shattered, leaving only the head of the angel.
It let out a wail, the only sound it had made so far. It resonated through the air, knocking them all down with the shockwave. It also brought back horrible memories for each of them, their darkest shames. It told them there would be no forgiveness.
Blake got up. He grinned.
“I don’t need your forgiveness.”
He moved, faster than the angel but still earthbound. The angel hovered above him, hurling down blasts of light. It had seven wings now. Three were nestled around its marble face, and the remaining four launched an attack per second.
“Guys?” He was running out of daggers.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Daysha said. She had been thrown out of her rage state, and was starting to feel the pain now.
Tristan was unconscious.
“Whatever, I got this.”
He threw rocks, and managed to recover some of his daggers to throw again from where they had fallen. But the angel seemed to be relentless, and he was starting to slow down.
“Okay, maybe I don’t got this.”
“Third time’s the charm!”
He stopped, blocking bursts of light with his upraised arms.
“You can’t kill an idea. Even if that idea is just ‘Fuck you.’” He raised the dice. “Let’s get dangerous.”
He rolled a 1. His costume vanished, and he was back in his hospital gown.
“Son of a-” He tried to dodge the next blast, but his speed was gone. The angel left him burned and broken on the ground.
Before it could finish him off, his body vanished. The angel looked around, but Daysha and Tristan were gone too.
Across the burned meadow, a girl stood. Her aesthetic was best described as Heavy Metal Queen. Piercings, tattoos, and torn black leather. Tattooed on her forehead was the number of the beast.
The angel dove, harsh white light cutting the air in between them.
She rolled an 18. Where it hit, she was not.
It was on the ground now, grappling with seven wings and two arms.
Rolled an 18. She blocked each strike with one hand, careful not to chip her perfectly manicured black nails. With the other she covered a yawn.
She rolled an 18 and tore a wing from its roots.
The angel screamed again. Mistakes were made, it called. Mistakes were unforgivable. All have sinned, and fall short of perfection.
She winced, the idea finding purchase. But then she shrugged it off, face once again neutral.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
She rolled an 18, and ripped the marble head out of the body of light.
“And I’m damned good.”
After Andi cleaned up ground zero, the four of them went to Erin’s house.
“Oh thank god, you’re all still alive.” Erin hugged each of them, ending with Andi. “Oh my god, what are you wearing?”
“She embraced her demonic side,” Blake said. “It was kickass.”
“Devilish,” she corrected. “I stopped going for circumstance bonuses and just aimed for something that would get me a high number. It worked out okay.”
“Okay, she says,” Tristan laughed. “She saved my ass. Daysha, I’ve got to say sorry. I said I could protect you, but I still treated it like a game. I should have broken character and done whatever it took, like Andi.”
She shrugged. “It worked out okay. And I kicked more ass than you did, so maybe I don’t need protecting.” She stuck out her tongue at him.
Tristan formed a metal glove around his hand, then threw it down. “Dost thou desire a rematch?”
“No fighting!” Erin said.
Blake flicked his wrist. “Joker me.” 3. Tattoos crawled across his skin, and he sprouted a grill. “I’m not fighting, I just like to suit up.”
Andi gave him side-eye. “Just don’t get any of your Hot Topic on my Aleister Crowley.”
The Devil coughed. He stood in the middle of them, unnoticeable until then. He was about three feet tall, and the massive left arm from before dragged the ground.
“Hey I just wanted to thank you guys for killing that angel. No peace in the middle east, am I right?”
“Oh damn,” Daysha said. “Was that what it was supposed to be doing?”
“Yeah. You all are the bad guys here.”
Blake offered him a high five. The devil left him hanging and disappeared.
“Wow, rude.”
“Did any of you guys try negotiating with the angel, or did you just fight it?” Erin asked.
“He didn’t talk,” Tristan said defensively. “He just yelled. Very loud.”
Erin sighed. “I’m going to get you guys to learn how to use a diplomacy check one of these days.”
“Speaking of. Can we game?” Andi said.
Erin smiled.
~~~
The five of them were sitting in the game room, four costumed as their characters.
Erin coughed. “Fools! Now that you’ve done my bidding, the way is open!”