Dungeons and Dimwits

     This was her chance.

     * * *

     A pale orange light bathing the room, the ground beneath them started to rumble. Everyone held their positions as though frozen in place. When they tried to move, they discovered that they were. Only their eyes could move. They stared at one another with varying degrees of surprise and fear, like a collection of sentient statues. The light grew brighter and brighter, the rumbling deeper, until they were cast into a thunderous, fiery void. They were for a few seconds, alone with their thoughts.

     Reena was thinking that maybe there was something to those stupid dice after all. Mio’s mind was alight with terror at the thought of that wraith somehow causing this. Kayixu wondered if this was supposed to happen, as she’d never played this before and had no frame of reference. Kalilu was painfully aggravated at this turn of events; couldn’t they go one blasted day without something weird happening? Leala hoped for some new test subjects if nothing else came from the madness about to befall them. The petpets were collectively thinking about cheese.

     Their ears filled with a thick humming that soon gave way to silence and darkness. When daylight faded in through the windows, the family found that those simply couldn’t belong to them. Those windows were clean, of a different shape, and also, it was nighttime a minute ago.

     That wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Their clothes were different, too. Kalilu was garbed in a green robe that flowed lightly with her movements and fell gracefully over her form. It was trimmed with gold and embroidered with a shadowy bone motif. There was a staff floating next to her, carved from the bone of some ancient beast and topped with a copper-colored sphere.

     Covering Reena was a thick leather armour of some sort, gloves and boots included. A strange metal band tied her mane and kept it out of her face. There was a sword on her one side, explosive potions on the other, and a backup dagger secured to her tail.

     Kay was dressed in layers of black and green. A dusky green cloak had manifested over her shoulders, hood up, with feline ears of a leafy design. On the back of the cloak was a mushroom shape surrounded by stars. Her shirt was loose, long-sleeved, black with silver stars that glowed a bit. She had black pants, brown boots, and a pair of clawed gauntlets.

     Leala was outfitted with leather armour with bits of steel here and there. A pair of goggles covered her eyes and showed her the potential crafts she could make with various pieces of junk lying around. Along with the debris that was already scattered around their home was a small collection of strange bits and bobs floating just above the floor, shrouded in a soft blue aura. There was a belt wrapped around her midsection with a fun-looking array of tools.

     The spell hadn’t given Mio any special outfits. Instead, it had grown her to twice the size of a Uni and given her a feral look. Her mane had grown out long and wild, and red buttons hung on threads dangling from her ears.

     The petpets were relatively the same; Niri was too big to fit on Reena’s shoulder now, tall enough that her ruby eyes were level with the Xweetok’s knees. Blook the Ghostkerchief was a large and imposing phantom… or would have been if he was the slightest bit intimidating to start with. Thimble, Mio’s Red Bowla, had simply grown big enough to wrap around her altered ‘pet’s ear.

     “What. The heck. Was that?” asked Reena. “I mean, I have some cool new weapons, so I’m not complaining. But what was it?”

     “It would seem that your find was not quite as mundane as we first believed,” said Kalilu as Kay gathered up the dice.

     One by one, she plopped them back in their pouch until the twenty-sided piece was the only one left. Carefully, Kayixu examined the golden twenty as its glow faded away. She hummed thoughtfully and dropped it in the drawstring bag with its friends. She pulled the strings and began to swing the bag around on her finger, as though its contents weren’t some ultra-powerful, reality-bending artifact.

     “Hm. If I were to give my best guess, I’d say-” the strings escaped her finger, and the bag flew across the room. “… that the dice figured out the backstory for us. They probably altered Neopia to fit it, too. If we wanna put everything back to normal, we’ll have to finish the quest the dice have created for us.”

     “Maybe I should hold on to these,” said Reena, grabbing the dice.

     “What, pray tell, leads you to such a suspiciously specific conclusion?” asked Kalilu with narrowed eyes.

     Kayixu shrugged. “You’d be surprised at how many times I’ve seen similar things on other planets. It’s a weirdly common problem.”

     The Tyrannian Kougress growled, the words “why didn’t you tell us that BEFORE we got into this mess?” almost pouring from her tongue before she remembered who she was talking to.

     “Well… then let’s have some fun with it!” said Mio. “A real adventure, just like Reena wanted!”

     “Yeah, let’s do it!” Reena proclaimed, cheering and charging out the door.

     Kay was behind her, and Mio shoved herself through the door after them. Leala, a renewed interest bringing her pelt to spark, hopped outside with them. Kalilu shared a look with Blook. The two of them shrugged (as well as a quadruped and something with no arms could) and dutifully followed the others.

     Alter-Altador was regular Altador turned up to eleven. Their Neohome had turned into some vine-coated ruin of marble, which was entirely fair given the state it was in before, but their surroundings were something to gawk at. And gawk, they did.

     Temples and towers of pale stone and gold splayed across the landscape. Architecture curved and arched and wound in near-impossible ways. Golden spheres gleaming with light magic shone like mimic suns atop points and pedestals. Crimson wildflowers spilled from the ground, and glowing lichen cascaded down the sides of impressive fountains. Their neighbourhood had been transformed, along with the people in it. Neopets wandered about in flowing robes and tunics, a strange fog to their disposition.

     “So, completely unrelated question,” said Kay. “Has uh, anyone here actually played DnD before?”

     There was a chorus of nos and nopes and nuh-uhs from her ‘pets, and Kay nodded with an air of authority that she didn’t feel in the slightest. Oh well.

     The tip of a claw from her gauntlet tapped her chin a few times as she thought. This time, she nodded with a bit more actual confidence. “Okay, team! As the leader of our party, I-”

     “You’re not the leader,” Reena said with a chuckle. “You’re just a space goblin.”

     Kay’s expression didn’t change as she restarted her spiel. “As the space goblin of our party, I know what our first move should be. Step number one in most games is to stock up on all the starting gear you can find. So, look around inside and all around the immediate vicinity for anything that looks useful. Also, food. Food heals broken bones in a lot of games for some reason.”

     “Right!” said Reena, Mio, and Leala with salutes.

     Kalilu simply nodded, as it was as logical a plan, and she had nothing better in mind.

     They all got to work on filling their seemingly endless inventories with all manner of junk. Leala soon figured out the crafting system, as throwing parts into a pile and getting results was way easier than what she was used to. She made Mio some armour and some throwing stars for Reena, as well as a set of special claw caps for herself. They were made from a weird metal, and their summary promised more precise work.

     Kalilu wasn’t overly deft in the ways of magic, but she was a quick learner. The copperbone staff, which followed her, seemed to function like a Faerie’s wand. With what basic spells the game had started her with, she reinforced the group’s equipment with some minor enchantments of protection and earth magic.

     Kayixu gathered up a bunch of food items along with the contents of the bag with the alien symbol. Rather than being simple energy drinks, the small, red bottles were now called “Potions of Energy Rejuvenation,” and she wondered if they would still taste just as bad. She also practised the special abilities that the game had thrown at her.

     Mio, precious little cinnamon roll that she was, spent this time mostly exploring and digging up shiny stones. Oh, how lovely they would be in arts and crafts! She did hope that she could keep them after all this was said and done. And that none of those wraiths accosting Neopia in real life reared their heads in this fun fantasy…

To be continued…