Phone calls from the Dice

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝟷

"There weren't always dragons in the Valley." Stumbling over my words a little, I played with the gleaming transclucent dice that were always kept in my red satin bag. For this scene, I began to narrate the mystery behind our crumbling kingdom in my (slightly overpriced) wizard cosplay from the Comic World Convention. Or, "CWC" as I call it.

A round of booing had immediately ensued, as Ben threw an empty water bottle towards my head while I sat behind the game board.

"This storyline is so boring. You said that last week!"

Ah yes, it was the weekend. Though it felt like the beginning of the workweek considering how serious we all take this game.

Let me explain.

Every Friday night, the guys and I join together for our usual round of probing our brains for imaginative adventures. We start off with sharing our character stats, preparing the board, and pulling out a gray dusty fog machine from Halloween to set the tone for our gnarled swampy environment. It's haunted by the spirits of ancient crustecean entities, so you have to create the perfect eerie tone. Dungeons and Dragons isn't some mere card game, no. It is an entire world created with dice rolls and submersive imagery.

As always, you can find me being the ring leader of it all. I am the dungeon master balancing an intricate wooden wand from Oogon's Adventure, a players manual that I wrote myself, and a lukewarm beer in my hands on these types of nights. That's how the best games go!

But yeah, I know.

What is a 27 year old man like me doing at home on a weekend still playing dress up?

Those words from my sister echoed loudly in my ears every time the doorbell would ring to signal my friend's arrival.

Mmm...honestly, who knows.

It's extremely fun, and that's all the explanation I have to give. Besides, who would want to miss the riveting and immersive role-playing experience that is D&D?

Not me, of course.

"Okay well...now what do we do? Our clubs have been stuck sinking in this viscous mud for the last 20 minutes, and we have no other weapons on hand until we get to the silversmith!" AJ shouted.

"Your journey is taking a sharp turn, as you are descending into the valley of the spiked cyclops."

"Another stupid cyclops, huh?" Ben laughed at my description and took another sip of his cheap beer.

"Yes, another cyclops. Roll to see if you can defeat him, please."

"Are you serious right now, this is the worst defense these dice have produced. Im going to die!" Ben's annoyed hand gestures caused the clay figures of the distant Orcs to fall over.

"I'll get it, just keep going. Maybe AJ can figure this out."

The game continued on for another 3 hours, even though we had been going since 6 pm. It was now almost 2 am, and I was becoming much sleepier. Every time we play, I always hit a wall of pure tiredness right when the clock reaches 2.

"Should we pack it up soon?" AJ asked with a deafening yawn.

"Probably, I need to drive home anyway." Ben added, playing with the mini sword on his car keys that marked the 10th anniversary of our D&D games. Both him and AJ began to pack up their bags of dice and accessories, while I started to collect our figures.

My own bag of dice were somewhere around here.

That's weird.

"What?" Ben asked, turning around after throwing away the night's appetizers into the trash. He probably noticed my face visibly startled after losing my precious dice in a matter of 10 minutes.

"Have you seen my dice?"

"No...they can't be far." His eyes rolled, while letting out a soft chuckle.

"I'll help look." AJ scooted over to help find my treasured collection.

"Do you see this..."

"What?" Aj coughed out, after trying to put away more lose dice from his own collection.

"Are these like, limited edition dice or something? Why are they twinkling so much?" Ben asked.

"No, they're just plain old red. But they were expensive."

I paused.

They look...different.

A small buzzing sound began to circulate in the room, coming straight from the depths of my glistening red dice. The clay figures left on the board, started to look like they weren't immobile pieces of our fictional tale anymore. They were slightly changing, too...

"What is..is going on..." I stammered.

And thats when, the dice began to mimic the sound of ringing.