Dungeons and Dimwits

     Their very first quest was to rescue some poor fellow’s Lutra from someplace called Destruction Plains. Given that the location had been a neighborhood made entirely of fast-food joints before, it kind of made sense. It also raised some uncomfortable questions about just what they had been eating.

     “Please, brave adventurers, will you endure the wilds at the heart of Destruction Plains to save my dear friend… before the worst comes to pass?” he had asked them.

     Kay had appeared beside Reena, wearing a fake mustache, monocle, and with an investigative Uni bubble pipe in her mouth. No one knew where she got that getup. “We’ll take the case!”

     And that was that.

     Now, they had just crested a hill to see the plains sprawled out before them. Rolling emerald green turned sharply into a wasteland of dead plants and craters and smoke rising up from the ground. In the center of it all was a dark swath which no doubt counted as the heart of Destruction Plains. Trees blackened with corrupt magic, even from so far away, were a menacing sight to see.

     As it was the first hurdle of the game, though, it wound up being less threatening than it looked. They stuck to the narrow, winding paths, finding loot along the way. A corrupted Juma accosted them, and it was then they got their first taste of the real power those dice held.

     The set chose its second smallest piece, the six-sided one, to aid them in the battle. Reena rolled a five, giving her an incredible boost of strength and allowing her to break through the magical Juma’s defenses. Her strike did a considerable amount of damage to their enemy.

     With a roll of three, Kalilu’s shield of light magic was neither weak nor strong. The copperbone staff hung motionless in the air, the centerpiece of their golden wall. A fiery breath danced across its surface, burning the shield away but leaving the party unharmed.

     A two wasn’t the worst roll possible, but it still ended up with Kay face-down in a puddle of mud.

     Leala rolled a full six, allowing her to craft a blast potion so potent it won them the battle. She made it in just a few seconds, her veins spurred on by the arcane intellect of the dice, and threw it with an aim truer than a one-eyed bunny should have. With one final explosion, their opponent was down.

     They stood around looking at each other for a long while, confused and a touch startled at how the scarlet pieces could take hold of their fates. But if the only way to save Neopia from its altered state was to win their odd game, then the only thing for our dimwits to do was carry on.

     They cleared the plains, facing a number of similar fights along the way, and safely returned the Lutra to her owner.

     But there were whispers of an evil tower drifting through the town. Something that had long been dormant but was now waking.

     * * *

     The next leg of their journey would take them to the land of Alt-Shenkuu, where some fancy wizard guy was trying to take over the kingdom. It was there that they learned, at least in the strange parody DnD they were playing, that the pyramid die was the one the game wanted them to use for puzzle solving.

     It was also pretty terrifying if you thought about it for more than a few seconds, as the four-sided piece affected their minds instead of just their attacks. With Shenkuu converted into a maze of puzzles, they had ample opportunity to see just what it was capable of.

     They were surprised at the first puzzle, as they had kind of forgotten that the “D4” even existed in the first place. When their paranormal game chose that as their piece, the party wished that they’d never gotten the reminder that the blasted thing was there.

     The first was a simple pattern puzzle, presented to the party at the pretty… gate of the kingdom. Because Kay, as she was writing the retelling of the story, ran out of words to use for that sentence, which started with the letter P. But we’re not here to talk about the fourth wall! Let’s get to the puzzle!

     They were standing in an open corridor of towering walls made from gray brick. There was a gate blocking the way forward, with naught to open it but a few pieces of stone with different elemental symbols depicted on them. There was a slot next to the gate where they could place one of the stone tablets. The question they were to solve was simply this: which one was correct?

     “Fire, fire, earth, wind,” said Kay thoughtfully, staring up at the symbols above the gate. “… fire, fire, earth, blank.”

     “Well, it’s obvious,” said Leala, grabbing the loose tablet with the wind symbol on it.

     “Wait,” said Kalilu. “This is too simple an obstacle. I roll for perception.”

     And so, she did. She pulled the red die from its pouch and gave it a toss.

     It landed on one.

     Kalilu’s mind wrenched away from her with a horrified roar. Reena’s hands began to glow with healing magic that proved ineffective. When they figured out what had happened, the rest of them tried to intervene. Leala attempted to get her sister to focus on some simple cognitive tests. Mio tried to help her with some grounding techniques. Blook the Ghostkerchief floated frantically around his dear friend, helpless.

     Kalilu flailed about in the darkness of an artificial madness. She clawed desperately for coherency, for thought, for reason. She found none. Her veins were alight with a rampant terror, an instinctual knowledge that something awful was happening, but an inability to understand what. The poor Kougress reached for something-anything- to make sense. All she found within the drowning shadows was a wolf’s grinning maw and eyes like death standing on a razor’s edge.

     Kay, for some reason, decided that the best course of action was to try to strangle the four-sided die. This ended in her accidentally rolling a one of her own. Because she had no IQ points to speak of, she was unaffected.

     When Kalilu came to, gasping and clutching at her chest, the puzzle was done. It was over. And yet, it wasn’t. They’d plenty more of these to get through, and she was well and truly done with whatever that had been. So, for the rest of their quest, she sat on the sidelines, complaining about how the idiots with no intellect were actually safer for this leg of the journey. How annoying.

     * * *

     Our dimwits would find as they carried out their adventures, that the pyramid piece was thankfully the only one that did… whatever that had been. Whenever they needed a puzzle solved or a trick or a trap to be detected, Reena, Mio, or Kay was the one to roll. They said that it was because the die just so happened to like them. Kalilu said it was because they were all idiots. Secretly, though, they were all more than a little horrified.

     Their quests continued. We’ll spare you the details, as they were little more than a collection of dungeons to clear and puzzles to solve, and traps to avoid. There was that one part where Mio accidentally started a bit of a revolution, inspiring the people of a small town to overthrow their local government. But that, my friends, is a story for another day.

     As they carried on, finding stronger weapons and upgrading their spells and gear, the dimwits found that the dice themselves seemed to be “leveling up” in their way. The four-sided piece was a special case. The battles and loot drops and persuasion and such were all decided on a roll of six. That was, until they were all decided on a roll of eight. Then ten, then twelve.

     By the end of it all, the party was halfway between Alt-Meridell and Alt-Brightvale. For it was there, jutting out from the ground like a fang and reaching for the heavens: their final challenge. Shadow Spire was an impressive and menacing sight. Tomorrow, they would be going in.

     They camped just a little way away from it, reflecting on the wild week they’d had. But if the twenty-sided piece that was taking center stage here lately was anything to go by, they were almost done.

     “Well,” said Reena, “I think we can safely say that I am the best adventure Neopia’s ever seen.”

     “When this is all over, I am quite literally never letting you leave the house ever again,” growled Kalilu. “Lest we fall prey to yet another of your treasure hunts.”

     “But you gotta admit it istreasure.”

     “I most certainly do not.”

     “I wanna go to an arts and crafts store,” whined Mio. “Kay, when we’re finished with this, can we go to an arts and crafts store? They have yarn on sale!”

     “Ah, this does bring up an excellent question,” said the Tyrannian Kougress. “When we reverse this nonsense, will a week have passed in real life? Or will it be as if none of this happened at all? Did these artifacts truly transform Neopia? Or did they take us to another version of our world entirely? If the multiverse theory is correct, then…”

     As Kalilu rambled on about science and discoveries, using words that no one but Leala understood the definitions of, the ground beneath them started to shake. All eyes turned to the spire as eerie crimson veins flared to life all across it. A dark smoke began to rise from its very top, blackening the sky and swallowing the light of their campfire.

     Mio stared off into nothing, the vision reminding her of- never mind. “Well! Time for beddy byes! We’ve got a big day tomorrow!”

     “That,” said Kay, staring thoughtfully at the scene, “we do.”

     To be continued…