The Twenty-Sided Dice

Chapter 2: Eve of the Blaze

Maya was bored. Her amazing adventure with her D&D group was over, and she missed that exciting thrill of running through the forest, nothing but her spells and her friends to guide her. She was a changed person, she knew. She would never see lightning the same way again, she knew that for sure. And she could tell that her group had changed too.

Erin had become less serious about the powers and more relaxed with using her abilities, Xavier had been studying the Monster Manual thoroughly to make sure that if anything like that ever happened again, he would have a bank of knowledge to use, Emma was still Maya's kind and reliable best friend, though they were starting to include the rest of the group in their powerful friendship bond, Alexa was still nowhere to be found, though Erin accidentally let it slip that Alexa had tried to contact her, and Ashley had started to avoid all of them. She was probably traumatized by the near-death experience, since she was younger than most of the group. Tanya... well, Tanya had been acting very weird lately. She wasn't avoiding them all like Ashley was, she only subtly dodged talking to Erin. To the rest of them, she was her ordinary, extroverted, comedic friend. But to Erin, it was like she had become a completely different person, and somehow, Erin didn't even notice. And Maya was starting to have a lot of questions.

Questions about the history of the powers, the origin of how Erin had known about them in the first place, and other questions that Erin was continually avoiding. So one day, she finally worked up the courage to ask her directly.

That weekend, during their D&D session, they were having a great game. Tanya had just found an Immovable Rod buried deep in a crevasse between two massive boulders, and she was having a lot of fun ruining Erin's story with her clever loopholes. At one point in the session, she even managed to avoid a dangerous pit trap by clinging onto the rod. Erin was having fun too, but also struggling with how she was going to help the story move along. After they decided to take a break mid-session for them to chat (and for Erin to regroup and figure out what to do next), Maya finally tried being blunt with Erin about her questions.

"Hey, Erin? What did you mean when you said all that stuff to Charlie in the forest? How did you find out about the powers in the first place?" As Maya finished her question, Erin grinned widely.

"So you know how all the players get the abilities of their characters?"

"Um... yeah?"

"Well, the DM gets her own powers... and you're about to see them in person." And with a dramatic flourish, Erin made a gesture with her hands and they all slumped forwards, their eyes flickering behind closed eyelids...

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The entire group opened their eyes at once and immediately saw a young girl who appeared to be about 11 years old, playing D&D with her friends. That's Charlotte, Tanya thought unexpectedly. Her thought bounced and echoed throughout everyone's minds, and Tanya didn't seem to notice. And poor little Evelyn. She was so young back then.

At hearing this thought, Maya started wondering who these people were, and how Tanya seemed to know them so well. At the same time, Erin seemed to wonder how Tanya knew them, but she said nothing. Tanya realized that the others could somehow hear her thoughts, and made a significant effort to quiet down her brain, though they could all faintly hear her thinking about that other girl, the one who looked like a DM but with somewhat less authority in her figure.

Xavier could hear Tanya's thoughts more clearly, though, and he broadcasted that the DM's name was Madison, the tall girl was Taylor, the short girl with long black hair that their vision was centered on was named Charlotte, the smaller girl who seemed to cling to Charlotte's every move was Evelyn, and the boy who appeared to be trying to hide, at least in Maya's point of view, was called Jamie.