Page 24 of Hell and Hexes
Chapter 10
Sylvie
“Roll for initiative,” I said.
Immediately the sound of dice on my wooden table drowned out the background classic rock. This was the other me, the one my clients and my family didn’t ever see. I’d gotten into role playing games, or RPGs, in college and missed them so much that two years ago I’d started a game of my own. Due to the variety of supernatural beings in Accident, I’d needed to develop my own rules and ended up running a mashed-up version of Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Call of Cthulhu, and RuneQuest.
“Dang it!” John the Cyclops shouted. “My dice are cursed. Someone cursed my dice.”
“No one cursed your dice, John,” I told him. “Trust me, I could tell.”
He eyed me. With his one eye. “If I paid you, could you charm them? So I can roll better?”
That was greeted with howls of protest from the other players.
“No spelled dice,” I reminded him. “And that includes mine, too. We’re here to have fun, John. There are no bad rolls.” I looked over at his dice. “Well, at least in initiative, there are no bad rolls.”
“Everyone is going to be dead before I can use my scroll,” he complained. “Can I switch with someone else and go in their place instead?”
Being a game master was like being God, and I certainly had the ability to grant that request. But I chose not to.
“Sorry, John.”
“Dude, just chill. Wait your turn. It’s not like you have to save us or anything.” Smoke curled from Fernando’s nostrils. The dragon was in human form right now because he just didn’t fit in my dining room or at my table as a giant winged reptile.
Fernando had been through three characters this campaign because he couldn’t seem to understand that his human fighter, or half-elf, or human paranormal historian couldn’t fly, or spit fire, or eat an entire army. We were working on this inability to see the world from others’ eyes, but in the meantime, we’d rolled up a robot fighter that was a bit more able to withstand Fernando’s impulsive actions.
“Flora, you’re up,” I told the Valkyrie.
She grinned, her teeth covered with sharpened gold caps. Her metallic wings shivered, their serrated edges nearly slicing the upholstery on my chair. “I grab the wand out of the chest and…”
Everyone held their breath.
“Throw it at the alien.”
Everyone released their breath. We’d all assumed Flora was going to use the wand without any idea what sort of spells or curses it might hold or break it in half and release a nuclear blast of magical energy, or slip it in her pocket and make a run for it. A Valkyrie playing a human mage/thief didn’t make for the most reliable member of our adventuring party.
Actually, none of them were very reliable when it came to teamwork.
My gaming buddies were a cyclops, a dragon, a Valkyrie, a pixie, a vampire, a nymph, and a dryad. Not the dryad that was our sheriff, but his sister. The woman was an absolute blast to play with and was trying to get her friend, a bunny shifter, to join the group. Evidently this bunny shifter lived outside the wards in the human world and in typical bunny shifter fashion, was nervous about venturing into a town with so many supernatural beings who might find her to be a delicious treat.
Of course we’d protect her, but that vow didn’t do much to reassure a bunny shifter.
I rolled my percentile dice. “The wand bounces off the alien. Bob, you’re up.”
Bob was the vampire. Yep,Bob. Most vampires in town had elegant, old-world names, but Bob was Bob. I was pretty sure that wasn’t his original name since he was roughly five hundred years old, but if that’s what he wanted us to call him, then I was good with that.
“I pull my revolver and shoot.” Bob rolled his dice and grimaced. “Eight.”
“Yeah…no. Better luck aiming next time. Trapper?”
The pixie hovered above the table, his wings vibrating like a hummingbird’s. “Spit.”
I blinked. “Spit…...?”
“Spit, spit.” He lowered himself to the table, eyeing his character sheet. “I’ve got that amulet of cobrafication from last year and I’m finally gonna use it.”
Shit. I’d totally forgotten about that. Never doubt that a pixie would pull some crap out of a bag of holding from a campaign years ago and use it. They were worse than dragons when it came to hoarding.
