The Dark Lord Bert 2 by Chris Fox (bookstand for reading .TXT) 📕

2

Oh, Crap

Jess shrank down into her seat and wished she were anywhere else. She didn’t fully understand the implications of the die falling into the game world, but she needed to.

“Todd?” she ventured, when he didn’t speak. The skinny teen huddled behind the GM screen cradling his head in his hands, long dark hair screening his face. Kit made her tone as calming as she could manage, given the rising fear. “Todd, you never told us why the die touching the mat was bad. What’s going to happen?”

Todd looked up, his eyes red and swollen, more from allergies than tears, she hoped. He licked his lips, and calmly related the answer. “The die is a sort of control mechanism, but the real magic is the mat. That’s where the world is stored. If the die falls in, the magic becomes unstable, and eventually it will blow up.”

Todd rose to his feet, and began folding up his GM screen, as if relating the weather. “The explosion won’t hurt anything in the real world, but it will be visible astrally. Every mage in California will know it happened, and when they investigate….”

“Your dad,” Jess whispered. “He’ll get disbarred. Maybe even arrested.”

“Probably. This will be worse than the Jimanju incident.”

“Then we have to fix this.” She straightened in her chair. “Maybe we can go in and get the die back somehow.”

“That’s a great idea,” Robert mocked, rolling his eyes as his chair groaned beneath him. “Oh, wait, no, it isn’t. If we go into the game world we become our characters, and can’t remember the real world. We won’t know about the die, or that we need to get it out.”

Jess glared at Robert. Why was he always so patronizing? Well, maybe she could channel a little bit of the well actually trope. She didn’t have to put up with his crap. “You’re forgetting something important. Any character you build will be a conniving power hungry weasel, and will steal anything not nailed down, and most of the stuff that is. If we put you in that game world what’s the first thing your character will do when he hears about that d20?”

Robert squirmed in the metal folding chair, meeting her glare pound for pound. “Well, if you strip away the character assassination, you’re right. My new character would probably pursue the die, if for no other reason than to keep it safe from people who might abuse the power.”

“People like you,” Max muttered under his breath. Jess was proud of the ten-year-old. He was already more mature than Robert.

“It’s a moot point.” Todd stuffed the GM screen in his backpack, and began scooping books in next. “In about fifteen to twenty seconds you guys are going to get sucked into the game world, like it or not. And, because the game started without me making any changes….” Todd’s gaze fixed on Robert, and the murder was back. “It means that your characters were all automatically approved. Robert gets to play his Pwn class, and the rest of you will have to deal with it.”

“I’m sure we’ll still have fun.” Barb seemed unfazed by the crisis, which didn’t surprise Jess.

It wasn’t that Barb didn’t take things seriously. It was just that she was a lot like the characters she played. Barb didn’t need long complex answers. She needed to know what they were doing and optionally why they were doing it, and that was it.

Jess wished she could blindly and happily put her trust in someone like Robert, but she’d seen where that led.

The game mat began to glow softly in a way Jess had come to eagerly anticipate. That glow washed through the room, the pleasant warmth of a bath after a long day, and then suddenly she was elsewhere.

Kit stood in a familiar glade, ringed by redwoods. A clear path led up a wide trail covered in soft pine needles. She experienced a moment of vertigo as she tried to remember what she’d just been doing.

Part of her realized this was a game, and that the real world was being obscured from her. She stifled that part, as she always did. Kit loved nothing so much as immersing herself in this world, and that was exactly what she was going to do.

She turned to her party, and several new faces greeted her. The first was a good deal shorter than she’d expected, almost Bert-sized. The gnome monk wore a white gi, with a simple black belt tied loosely around the waist. A mop of bright blue hair grew like an untended hedge, obscuring the tiny man’s features.

As she studied the gnome the magic took hold, and she could feel information pouring into her head. Nutpuncher was a renowned gnome monk from the distant city of Dildozer, and also a close friend of Crotchshot, come to investigate his disappearance.

Behind the gnome loomed a handsome elf with dark skin and platinum hair. He wore the robes of a wizard, and raised a perfect eyebrow as he glared down at the gnome. The dark elf straightened a golden clasp around his rich magical cloak, which held a ruby trope Kit was unfamiliar with. “You are a disgrace. How can you even see through that mess of hair? It probably gives you a penalty to perception. If it doesn’t it should.”

The voice chilled her to the core, as it was a perfect rendition of White, despite her knowing damned well that the necromancer had been killed during their last adventure. This must be his new character.

She took a moment to study the dark elf, unsurprised that he’d chosen that race, which no sane GM would ever authorize. As she winced at his smug expression information filled her mind.

White—apparently he happened to have the same exact name as his previous character—was a renowned wizard, a respected necromancer, immortal, and lord of his own kingdom. Also, a random fact she could do without, he had 79 wives. Eww.

Kit