The Twenty-Sided Dice

Chapter 3: Candles

Maya couldn't stop thinking about Erin, specifically, her powers. She vividly remembered the cutscene that Erin had immersed them in, and how easily she had made the players see the events of the past as if it were happening before their eyes. However, that was not the only part that she was thinking about. What she really couldn't keep her mind off of was the fact that she didn't need consent. Erin had waved her hand, and the whole group had slumped over and entered the cutscene. Maya fiercely craved that power, and the respect that came with it. No, not just the status that came with the powers, the respect that came with being the DM.

She wanted to be the Dungeon Master, she desperately wanted the title and status that came with the position, but she didn't want to give up her cleric spells and abilities. She had become accustomed to using her powers for everything, whether it was a burst of thunder to get someone's attention or a small flicker of lightning to impress her friends. So what if there was a way for her to have both?

Maya had heard of DMs who were in several campaigns at once, and players who attended 2 sessions a week, each from a different group. So why couldn't she do that? Why couldn't she gather a group of friends, teach them how to play D&D, and be the DM of that campaign? Then she could have both the player's powers and the DM's abilities, and a few of her friends would get the powers too, since they would technically be in her group too. It was a perfect solution.

The next time she met up with the group for their D&D session, she studiously observed how Erin operated the game. She noticed that behind the DM's screen, there were small sticky notes with hastily scribbled notes on them, and multiple sets of dice as well. She watched how Erin improvised alternative paths when the players refused to follow the storyline, and she tried many different things to see how a DM is supposed to react to those situations. But something felt really off.

Throughout the session, she could feel a watchful gaze that seemed to pierce right through her soul, scanning her motives and intentions. At first, she brushed it off, assuming that it was probably Alexa, being a creepy stalker and watching their game. But as the session went on, she began to feel very uneasy about the mysterious staring sensation.

She glanced at the direction of the forest, and she had the odd sensation that whoever was watching her had abruptly just disappeared into thin air. That was very strange, but she decided to concentrate on the game instead of investigating the shadowy forest that could be hiding anything. The rest of the session went by uneventfully, with Maya taking periodic notes about Erin's DMing style and Erin barely noticing Maya's unusual behavior.

That night, Maya texted a bunch of her friends to ask them if they would be willing to play D&D with her, and surprisingly, a lot of them expressed an interest in joining a game with her. She stayed up late designing a really meaningful homebrew campaign to play with her friends, and she went to bed thinking about how much fun it would be to have the vast abilities of the DM.

The next morning she woke up in a haze, got out of bed, and was startled by a semi-transparent amber wall that just seemed to appear right in front of her.

"What the- what's going on?" Maya said out loud, realizing that no one seemed to be anywhere. As her vision cleared, she saw that she was in some kind of separate plane. The whole world was just an infinite flat expanse that seemed to be littered with small golden-brown candles, which would occasionally flicker and sometimes fully go out, filling the air with thin wisps of smoke from the embers. She looked around in wonder and fear, not knowing where she was or how she had gotten there. All of a sudden, a booming voice echoed throughout the place, causing some of the candles to flicker and come dangerously close to snuffing out.

"You weren't supposed to do that, Maya. You broke the rules of the game. And I make the game. It's my job to make sure there are no loopholes in the rules for clever players like you to exploit. But as always, there are some people that will find a way to best me." Maya turned her head, trying to find the source of the disembodied voice, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, with no discernible origin. The voice had a distinct lilt to its tone, and it was unlike anything she had ever heard.