Chapter 1: One: Games and Gateways

The door smashed open.

Three more bugbears barreled in—hair, muscle, and hardened leather armor—brandishing massive spiked clubs.

“That makes five of them!” Alaric backpedaled, eyes wide. “Should I fireball them?”

“Cast anything!” Lissandra screamed, fury blazing in her eyes. She swung her two-handed axe at the nearest bugbear’s head. It ducked, dodging the blow, then retaliated with a crushing swing of its club.

Lissandra had no armor to absorb it, and the sharp retort of cracking bone echoed through the chamber.

But she didn’t stop; she couldn’t. Lost in uncontrollable rage, she charged, muscling the bugbear backward. Yet now she was surrounded by the newcomers, and her left arm hung limp from the blow.

Everything happened at once.

Dave’s healing spell flashed, striking Lissandra’s shoulder with soothing green light. Some bleeding stopped, but her arm still dangled uselessly.

Lissandra swung her axe one-handed, burying the blade into the chest of a bugbear. Blood sprayed across the room in a crimson arc.

Alaric finally finished his spell, hurling a fireball into the midst of the bugbears. It exploded, engulfing them in flames … and catching Lissandra in the inferno.

The fifth bugbear rushed the wizard, its club slamming into Alaric’s head and sending him sprawling to the ground, unconscious.

Dashfoot seized the moment, leaping from the shadows and driving both daggers into the exposed back of the bugbear. He rode it down as it collapsed, dying.

The remaining bugbears beat out the flames licking at their armor and stepped over Lissandra’s smoking, motionless form.

Dave and Dashfoot backed away slowly, outnumbered and outmatched. But the door through which they’d entered had sealed behind them.

*

“Let’s call it there for tonight,” I said with a sigh, leaning back in my chair.

“Total party wipe again?” Samir asked, disgusted, then drained the last of his Mountain Dew.

I nodded. “Yep. Sorry.”

I sympathized with Samir; he was one of the more competent players around the table. But that wasn’t saying much.

Derek leaned in, looking at Mike. “Why’d you run in when I was about to cast my spell?”

“Barbarian, dude. Full-on rage queen, right?” Mike shrugged. “Just playing the character.”

“You don’t technically have to be where the fighting is fiercest,” Harry said, neatly tidying away his dice into their box, each in its own little slot based on shape. “You could’ve gone for any enemy, and still stayed within the rules of a barbarian.”

“Exactly!” Derek said, exasperated. “If you’d just attacked the one that hit me—”

“It was already too late,” Mike protested. He turned to me. “Nigel, how are we supposed to deal with five bugbears?”

“You’re not,” I said, pulling down my Dungeon Master screen to see them better. “But when the party rushes in without doing even basic skill checks first…” I trailed off with a one-shouldered shrug.

“…We get wiped again,” Harry finished for me.

“Doesn’t help that the wizard wasted a full round wondering which spell to cast,” Samir muttered.

“Doesn’t help that the thief didn’t even do a simple listen check before we went in,” Derek shot back.

I raised my hands. “Guys, guys. It’s just a game, okay? Let’s reset next week, go back to the start of this dungeon. Maybe have a think about your tactics?” Maybe—just maybe—develop some tactics.

“Alright, Nige.” Harry gave me a smile, standing up and swinging his backpack onto his shoulder. “Thanks for hosting.”

“Yeah, thanks man,” Mike added. “Are we getting better at least?”

No, not really. “Sure.” I nodded encouragingly. “Just try to … picture what’s happening, and go with what your characters would do.” Not what you would do.

“Cool. Good tip, thanks.”

Like I hadn’t given it to them every week we’d played.

The guys traipsed out, still arguing amongst themselves, leaving me with the detritus of empty pizza boxes, beer cans, and Mountain Dew bottles.

Man, this group was a lot of work. They were getting worse, not better, like they were stuck in some loop of poor decisions and frustration. No one ever listened, and no one ever seemed to care about tactics, which was the whole damn point. Maybe I needed to take them back to basics. Encourage the occasional search roll. I might entertain the fantasy of replacing them with competent, tactically minded players who didn’t need ten minutes to figure out how many dice to roll, but … D&D just wasn’t that popular these days.

Maybe I was wasting my time trying to teach people who didn’t care. But then that was the story of my life—spinning aimlessly like a hamster on a treadmill. Was this all I had going for me? Living alone in a small apartment, a mind-numbing job, Friday nights spent with pizza-stuffed, beer-breathed amateurs who couldn’t even strategize their way out of a paper bag?

Was this all there was? Was it really worth it?

I sighed and started cleaning up.

The surface of the polished table started glowing with a soft, purple light. That was … weird.

I stopped, staring at the swirling reflection, an empty pizza box still in hand. The light was growing brighter by the second. But where was it coming from? I didn’t own any purple bulbs.

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Glancing around the room, my brow furrowed. Twisting shadows filled my small apartment as the purple glow glinted off various surfaces wherever I turned: the lamp on the side table, the screen of my brand-new, very large television, even a clear patch of wall opposite me. But that could only mean… Oh. I looked down at myself.

A white-and-purple spark of … something hovered before my chest, blinding in its brightness.

I stepped back in reflex. It didn’t so much follow as keep its relative position, as if I hadn’t moved at all. I retreated another pace, panic rising, and swatted at the light with the pizza box. It passed right through it. Of course it did; it was just a light. What had I expected?

Then the purple glow darted inside me.

I froze, breath catching, eyes wide, staring at where the light had just been. It was inside me. Was I imaging this? Had I finally OD’d on Mountain Dew and started hallucinating? I spun. Had it gone out the other side?

A wrenching, visceral tug shot through my core, as if unseen hands yanked at every muscle, twisting and pulling me in directions my body wasn’t meant to go. Not just in my chest, but everywhere—my gut, my head, my arms, my legs.

I gasped, the breath strangled from my throat. The invisible hands seemed to clamp onto every part of me. The force wasn’t human, it wasn’t natural. My muscles strained, but I couldn’t fight it. It felt like I was a marionette on the end of a puppeteer’s string, jerked all ways at once. There was no clear direction. A sickening wave of helplessness washed over me. My body wasn’t mine anymore—I had no control.

My heart slammed against my ribs in a wild rhythm, each beat louder and faster than the last. The ice of pure terror spread through my veins.

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be.

My back snapped into an arch as I was yanked upward, legs trembling, the tips of my toes barely in contact with the floor. My arms stretched wide, fingers clawing at nothing, the pizza box spinning away. I hovered there, suspended, too long for any human body to resist gravity's pull—some impossible force keeping me locked in place. Panic swelled, pushing past the pain—this was beyond me, beyond anything I could understand or prevent.

Purple light exploded from me, illuminating my entire apartment—the table, where my Dungeon Master screen rested loosely next to my best set of dice. The small kitchen, cluttered with dirty plates and glasses. My cheap Ikea sofa and chairs.

For a moment, everything was bathed in vivid, pulsing purple light.

The Dungeon Master screen slid off the table and hit the floor.

And then everything went dark.

*

I was lying on something hard and cold.

It wasn’t my floor. That had a carpet, as thin as it was.

No, this felt more like stone.

My eyes were heavy, refusing to open, and my body felt sluggish, too lethargic to move.

There was a voice chanting softly nearby. A pleasant voice, feminine, though I couldn’t make out the words. They sounded foreign, strange. Latin, maybe? Some ancient language?

Wait … that couldn’t be right.

The burst of adrenaline was enough to crack my eyes open.

I was in a vast room, a white ceiling high above. Four perfectly circular pillars of white stone were around me, each mounted with sconces holding torches. I stared at the torches. Not flashlights, not bulbs, but the real deal—wood wrapped in cloth, dipped in tar or something, ready to ignite. Like the torches from my D&D game.

Who even used torches like that anymore? What about fire regulations?

Where the fuck was I?

The chanting stopped.

“Oh, my God, you’re awake!”

I turned my head, which took considerable effort.

Beside me stood a woman in a white robe, elegantly draped over both shoulders and open at the front. The fabric was spotless and luxurious, suggesting a softness that was almost tangible. Her long blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders, and strikingly beautiful eyes stared down at me. Beneath the robe, she wore a two-piece tunic: the bodice was tight across her full breasts, tied at the front with laces that revealed quite a lot of cleavage, while a short skirt rested low on her hips, leaving her smooth stomach bare. I blinked, my gaze irresistibly drawn to the expanse of her creamy, alluringly curved skin.

“How do you feel, my God?” she asked, her voice full of concern. “Are you in pain?”

“I …” I tried to speak, coughed, then swallowed hard. I tried again. “I’m okay … I think. A bit tired.” Exhausted, more like, as if I’d recovered from a debilitating illness. Is that what had happened?

She nodded, her large, expressive eyes watching me intently.

“Um … who are you? Where am I?” Once the questions started, they didn’t seem to want to stop, spurred by a rising sense of panic. “What happened? How did I get here? Where is here?”

I pushed myself up, feeling a bit stronger now—or maybe it was the panic. My muscles protested like they would after a heavy workout. Or, at least, what I imagined that might feel like. It wasn’t like I had first-hand experience.

“Oh, my God,” she said, as if that was her go-to phrase. “I’m Lira, your High Priestess.”

Sitting up, I took in more of the room. A lot hit me at once. First off, I was naked, sitting on a stone table which was covered only with a thin white sheet. I quickly cupped my hands over my groin, despite it being a bit late.

“I summoned you, my God,” Lira’s voice softened, trembling slightly as her hands pressed together in a gesture of devotion. Her gaze met mine, intense but full of unspoken hope. “As your High Priestess, I’ve brought you to Corthos. I prayed for you, and now—" She inhaled deeply, as if gathering her strength. "You are our answer, our only hope in these desperate times.” Her fingers twitched, betraying the anxiety she tried to hide behind her reverent words.

I was only half-listening, my brain working overtime as I took in my surroundings. Everything felt surreal. I couldn’t really be here, could I? It was impossible.

The place was massive, with polished marble everywhere. The stone was veined with black and gray streaks. My eyes were drawn to a weapon rack standing against the wall nearby. Swords, axes, even a morning star—spiked ball on a chain, straight out of the weapons section in my player’s manual. They looked too real to be replicas. Next to them were suits of armor displayed on posts: leather, some type of chain mail, a set of full plate. Beside those was a table holding a variety of clothing, folded in neat piles. High windows let in bright sunlight, and I could see glimpses of cloudless blue sky and distant rooftops through a huge doorway behind her.

Despite the furnishings, the room was large enough to have a spartan feel to it. Add in the pillars and the marble, the mention of a priestess, the stone table that might be an altar … temple, suggested my brain.

I didn’t have much use for temples or churches. Or religion, for that matter. Pointless waste of time.

“…And this is Norathil.” The woman was still speaking. “Well, its outskirts, at least.”

“Who are you?” I asked, still struggling to process everything.

“Lira, my God. Your High Priestess.”

Right. She’d said that. “Where am I?”

“In Valorah,” she answered patiently.

Where the hell was Valorah?

A small frown creased her perfect brow as she noticed my obvious confusion. “On Corthos?”

“Corthos?” She’d mentioned that too, and in context, it sounded like a world. But that was impossible.

“Yes, my God. Surely you know of Corthos?”

“Corthos?” I repeated numbly. It seemed hard to string coherent sentences together, but then a lot had happened in a short space of time. I was doing my best.

Her expression faltered briefly before brightening again. “It’ll come back to you. Maybe the summoning has disoriented you. Yes, my God, that’s probably it.”

“Summoning?”

“Yes, my God.” Lira’s hands clasped over her heart, her brow furrowing in sincerity as she nodded. “I brought you here, summoned by my deepest prayers, in our darkest hour.” She stepped forward, her smile radiant, full of hope and expectation.

“Uh huh.” I was just about keeping up. I felt sick. This was too real to be an elaborate practical joke or a hallucination. The obvious question was on my lips. “Why?”

“To face Drakos, my God.”

I tried to place the name, but came up blank. A knot of anxiety tightened in my chest. “Who is Drakos?”

Her eyes widened, as if I’d just asked her to explain what fire was. “Surely you know of Drakos, the scourge of Valorah? The warlord who slaughtered our army … took our cities … taking freedom from our people ... bringing ruin to our lands …”

I nodded faintly, hoping there was an explanation somewhere. Drakos. Warlord. Corthos. Valorah. Nothing made any sense. What the hell had I gotten myself into?

Lira spoke again. “You’re our only hope, my God, and I’m so grateful you’re here. Now you can defeat Drakos and save us all!”

I blinked twice, the words taking longer than usual to travel from my ears to my frontal cortex.

And then they did.

“Say what?”