Roll of the Dice

Things were not going well for the group. Emma’s character was ****, Mike was almost out of spells, Trent had burned through most of his heal potions, and Owen and Ben were barely standing.

I might have overtuned the fight, but this was supposed to be a big one. They had finally caught up to one of the wizards they were chasing and this was supposed to be a taste of what to come. I had no idea it was going to have them dangerously close to a party wipe. It would have led to a wipe had I not seriously fudged a few of my rolls. It wasn’t just the fight itself that was working against the group, but my dice were on fire tonight.

Dice clattered. Emma spit out a curse as she eyed the result of her throw.

“Was that a fail?” The look she gave me was matched only by the glare she sent me before storming off from her friends. I pushed forward. “One more and—”

“Yes, Isaac. I am well aware of my impending ****, thank you.” She turned her attention to the others. “Can anyone help a girl out here?”

“I can’t afford the spell right now. If Trent goes down, we all die,” Mike said with a shake of his head.

“You would sacrifice me?” she asked with mock horror.

“For the good of the group? Absolutely.”

Emma chuckled to show she wasn’t serious. Well, at least not totally serious. “Heartless bastard.”

“Heavy is the crown of party leader.”

Ben spoke up. “No worries. We’ll revive you… Eventually.”

“You know how expensive that is? Fuck that. Emma can reroll into something actually useful.” He looked to Emma with a smug smile. “Looks like there is only room enough for the superior rogue.”

I saw Mike close his eyes and shake his head slightly. I was in agreement but stayed silent. Emma was more than capable of handling herself and I didn’t want to spark a conflict when tensions were already high.

“Shame,” Emma said with a twinge of sadness on her face. “Eliona was starting to warm up to you.”

He frowned. “What?”

She gave a small shrug. “Doesn’t matter. Guess you’ll never find out.”

“Stop bullshitting. You just want me to save your character.”

“I’m just saying Eliona would be extremely grateful to the person who saved her from certain ****. Who knows what kind of things she would do for someone who risked their life for her.” Her eyes never left Owen’s. “Guess we’ll never know.”

That uncomfortable pit formed in my stomach as I wondered what was happening here. Was she… flirting with Owen? Owen. The man had been an annoyance on the best of days. While he was a constant annoyance to me, the shit Emma was subjected to was horrible. I told myself it was only to get him to help her, but after what she told me...

The rumor Mike had told me about.

I was about to say something went Ben beat me to it. “I can stabilize you. Have to save my health potion for myself, but it should keep you alive until we beat this encounter.” He was looking at the positions of everyone. “If Trent keeps everyone’s attention, I can sneak over—”

“You’re in combat. You can’t sneak,” I reminded him.

“I meant that metaphorically. Look, Eliona is over there. I can move over and at least attempt a stabilizing roll.”

“Yeah, but you’ll take an attack of opportunity from the guy you’re fighting,” Mike said.

“I’ll survive. Probably,” he added softly. “Look, I can get to her, stabilize her condition, then pop my health potion.”

“And then the guy you’re fighting flanks Trent and we all die. We’re just going to have to hope Emma makes her save next couple rounds.”

“Because that’s been working so well for her,” Owen said with a gleeful look in his eye. “I say do it. If you can stabilize her, I can give her a health potion.”

“Guys, come on! We don’t have the wiggle room for this.” Mike was the only one talking sense, but it seemed like his words were falling on deaf ears. Both Ben and Owen seemed dead-set on their impromptu rescue operation. Emma’s response sealed the deal.

“Aww,” Emma said with a cute smile. “Thanks, guys!”

It went about as well as Mike predicted. Ben nearly died when the guy he was fighting got his free attack off—I almost fudged it to down him—but he managed to stabilize Emma’s character. From there, Owen rushed over and managed to give her the potion.

I could have had the people the guys were fighting chase after them, but I decided they would go after the biggest threat in the room: Mike. Mike was none too happy when he suddenly found himself being rushed by two enemies.

A ferocious battle played out as Mike burned through the rest of his spells. The only reason the group survived is a flurry of good rolls from the now flanking damage dealers as Ben, Emma, and Owen rushed to join the fight. With his escorts gone, the wizard was easy pickings for the group.

I showered the group in rewards and sweet, sweet EXP for their effort.

Mike was the only one not reveling in the joy of magical items and gold.

“What the fuck was that, guys?” he said with a glare at Ben and Owen.

“Man, relax. It was fine.”

“I almost died! Trent almost died!”

“But you didn’t. With Emma up, we made short work of those guys.”

“Only because they were busy killing me and Trent!”

“Sorry,” Emma said, cutting in. She had a chastised look to her and I wondered how much of it was real.

“You, I understand. Your character was dying and you wanted to save her. These two know better. We nearly wiped. It was dumb luck some of those guys’ attacks missed or we would have.”

Yeah… I’d fudged those rolls. The one attacking Mike had rolled at Nat 20 and would have killed him with the kind of rolls I was getting. Not, ‘bring him ****’ sort of dead Emma had been facing, but straight dead-dead. Seeing how Mike was reacting to him almost dying, I could only imagine how he would be if his character had actually died.

“A damsel was in distress. My character wasn’t going to let that stand,” Owen said.

Ben rolled his eyes. “Says the guy who was telling her to reroll just a moment ago.”

“In which she subtly reminded me of what my character would think in the situation.”

“With his dick?” Ben shot back.

“Among other things.”

As the two entered their own bickering match, I glanced over at Emma. There was a wisp of a smile on her face, enjoying the sight of the two arguing. I narrowed my eyes. Of course she was enjoying this. When our eyes met, I saw that twinkle of mischief in her eye. I guessed she was quite proud of herself for setting the two against each other. If they were snippy at each other, they weren’t hitting on her in ways that made me cringe.

“We back at the tavern yet? My character needs a drink,” Mike said over the two.

“You’re back at the tavern. It’s late and—”

“You should come back to my room,” Owen said with a wiggle of his eyebrow as he shifted from Ben to Emma. The shift was subtle, but I knew Owen was in his ‘roleplay’ mode, speaking for his character. He always tried to lower his voice, thinking—wrongly—that it made him sound dark and mysterious. “We can check over our injuries, make sure we didn’t miss any.”

“Is that so,” Emma said with that flat voice she played her character in. She made a good show as an aloof elf, only showing emotion when she was playing an angle at NPCs—teasing me in the process.

“Seriously, dude?” Mike said with an exhausted sigh. “Give it a rest.”

Owen ignored him. “I risked my life to save you.”

“_W_hat? I almost died to save her!” Ben cried out.

“And?” he shot back. “Last I checked, you aren’t even here. Didn’t you go to the church with Trent to warn Father Gilbert about the wizard?”

“Fuck!” Ben looked to me. “We are headed back to the tavern, right?”

I shook my head. “The church is on the other side of town—”

“Yeah! So stuff it.” He looked back to Emma. “And?”

Emma looked thoughtful for a moment. That got everyone’s attention. Normally she shot him down with a witty comeback. Her initial silence instantly shifted the atmosphere at the table.

Sensing weakness, or at least a crack in the previously unbreachable wall, he pushed. “You owe me.”

With a subtle sigh, Emma glanced at me. “It would be a charisma check, right?” I didn’t answer right away. Was she seriously entertaining him? Why? “Isaac?”

Hearing my name jostled me from my frozen state. Blinking a few times, I focused back on her smiling face. “A-are you attracted to him?” My voice sounded detached from my body. For a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of the wildness lurking behind those blue eyes of hers. That hint of a smirk indicated I was implying if she was attracted to Owen.

She looked at Owen. “What’s your character's appearance again?” As he gave her a generic description, her eyes ran over him. It was enough that I would catch it. When he finished, she was looking back at me, hiding her smile. “Not. At. All.”

“Hey!” he said.

“P-persuasion then,” I said softly. It was hard to get a full breath knowing what she was up to. Teasing me out in the open like this was dangerous. She was subtle about it, but my reactions? Maybe that was why she was doing it. Get me flustered in front of my friends so they started asking questions. “Whatever he rolls is your DC for the charisma save.”

Her eyes slid from mine, looking over to Owen. “You heard him. What exactly are you trying to persuade me to do?”

Owen didn’t seem to think he would get this far. It didn’t take him long to come up with something appropriately offensive. “Going to give that slut what she really wants.” His eyes ran over her. “She can pretend all she wants, but we all know what she is.”

You could hear a pin drop. Mike looked especially horrified. Emma’s expression didn’t so much as flinch as she stared at him. There was a soft calm to her voice. “You referencing my character… or me?”

“Oh? Why would you think I was referring to you?” he sneered. “Unless I struck a little too close to home?”

Mike gave me a pleading look to step in, but Emma beat me to it.

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“I always figured the rumors were true, but it was Isaac sending the picture that cinched it for me.” His eyes never left Emma. “A good and proper girl would never want that to happen.”

This time, Mike beat me to it. “Owen, that’s—”

“Shut it, Mike. You know I’m saying what everyone here doesn’t have the balls to say. Emma wanted us to think nasty thoughts about her. Why else would she make Isaac send that picture out? Not to mention how she constantly dresses… teases us with innuendos.” He smirked, tilting his head back slightly as if he was looking down on her. “She’s a slut surrounded by dudes. Pretty damn clear what she’s after.”

There was a long silence. Trent looked like he was about to pass out. Ben, despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise, was clearly on Owen’s side as he waited for Emma’s response. I think only Mike had the correct response at the table, a horrified expression that was quickly mixing with anger. Anger that matched my own.

“You’re—”

He snapped to me. “Fuck you, Isaac. You’ve been getting a piece of her for months now. What? You don’t think we know why she stays behind all the time? Stop being so fucking selfish. There are other guys here that need to get their dick wet.”

I think I physically felt something snap in me.

I was going to enjoy kicking him out. This had been a long time coming.

Opening my mouth, I started to stand when Emma interrupted me. “Is that so.” Her words were soft but had the attention of everyone at the table. Grabbing her purse, it seemed like she was about to leave. I could see the look of panic on Mike’s face as he begged me to do something to stop this. After some digging, she tossed something on the table. The sight of the sealed condom sucked all the oxygen from the room. Never seen so many boggled expressions as the guys stared at the foreign entity.

“You pass this check, I’ll let you use it. Here and now.”

“What?” That was from me as I stared at her in disbelief.

“You serious?” Owen asked with greed in his soul.

She nodded. “Isaac’s room is right over there—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” The words tumbled from my mouth. She wasn’t serious, was she? That was my bed. With _Owen? _This asshole? No, no, no, a thousand times no.

“Win or lose, I expect you to behave from now on. No more excessive innuendo, no more snide remarks. You come here to play.”

Realization hit me like a bucketful of cold water. She didn’t care about who she slept with. It was just a thing she did to have fun with no meaning behind it. She saw the spiral, the group fraying apart and this was her way of stitching it back together. She cared about continuing playing Dungeons and Dragons and if having sex with Owen meant the group continued, then that was what she would do.

Only she had been spending too much time with her friends. That wasn't how the world worked—certainly not with a bunch of social misfits like us. It was like asking a school of starving piranhas to only nibble on the slab of beef you put in the water. Once she did this, there would be no going back. Maybe Owen would keep his promise, but he would never stop asking her for more.

“Deal,” Owen said scooping up his d20. He had a wicked expression as he make a jerking motion with his hand. With a poised hand, Emma took her own dice. In the brief moment before dice rolled, I found the other guys were equally stunned at what was happening. Only Ben seemed excited by the events happening as he watched the two intently.

Time to but a stop to this. No way was I going to let Emma and Owen—

Dice clattered.

My breath caught.

Fuck!