The front door opened to let in the towering figure of my unfortunate stats mentee. His cheeks were a little red from the cold outside, jacket zipped up all the way to his chin, hands balled into fists, and bags hanging low.
“Um…yes?” Rowan said.
“Dud’s here to crack some skulls,” Jason said in a low rumble.
I could feel the tension in Andrew and Jake. They’d probably spent a few hours in lockers in their high school lives. I didn’t blame them for bristling.
“Guys,” I said, clearing my throat. “This is Jason. He’s, uh, joining us.”
“Right,” Andrew said skeptically next to me.
“And we agreed on this…when?” Rowan asked.
When I didn’t think he’d actually show up, I thought. “It slipped my mind,” I said.
Jason closed the door when a gust of wind reached me, then walked all the way across the open space tothe table. “Ooh, Bennet, you didn’t tell them, did you?” He wore that confident smile nonetheless.
This was pure torment. “No. I forgot.”
“Gotcha,” Jason said, not believing it one bit. “Well, I bring snacks. Am I allowed to join?”
“Bet you scrapped a whole lot of plans for this,” Jake said under his breath.
“In fact, I did,” Jason said lightly. “But since Bennet wouldn’t come to our party, I had to revive my old Cave Troll for you guys. Better brace yourselves because my luck is maxed out.”
Something happened then. I wasn’t sure what it was, but the frost receded, the air warmed up, and some of the tension left the table like a sigh. Rowan leaned back in his chair, his narrow eyes relaxing a little. “Cave Troll, you say?”
Jason put bags of snacks on the floor and unzipped his jacket, producing a small stack of ancient, dog-eared papers. “He’s slept at the bottom of a shoebox for a few years, but he lives,” he said in a voice far too dramatic for the circumstances. The papers dropped on the table, and the familiar pine scent reached my nostrils as Jason positioned himself between Andrew and me. Cold air still radiated off his jacket.
Rowan looked at the papers, eyes glimmering with opportunities he recognized. “Alright. I’ll write you in for one session, and we’ll see how it goes from there.”
“It’s all I ask,” Jason said humbly. Then he bent down and lifted the snacks. “Let’s get this open.”
True enough, one was a plate of cheese wrapped in plastic. Jake scoffed at it. “Cheese?”
“Be happy it’s not Kevin’s famous chili,” Jason said casually and unloaded all sorts of sweets. “Can I squeeze in here?” he asked no one in particular.
“Yeah, that’s good,” I said, getting up to fetch a chair.
Jason felt at home already, so he waved me off and walked over to the dining table, picking up a chair with one hand and lifting it high. He placed it between Andrew and me, his arm rubbing against mine in passing.
He was too confident, too comfortable, and was entirely sending mixed messages. “Dud ready. Speak, Dungeon Master. Speak.”
Rowan allowed himself a small smile. “You’re an odd one,” he murmured before drawing a deep breath of air. “As you, the old gang, stand on the cracked earth and jagged rocks, you hear a sound. It’s a scratching, dragging noise of dirt. You all look to your left, to where the sound is coming from, and you see it. A big, ugly, smelly thing, he is. Clearly, he is not the smartest, even among his own kind, and you now know that you had been smelling him from a mile away.”
Jason chuckled, taking it like a champ.
Rowan flicked his gaze to him, seeming almost vengeful but still having good fun. “He notices you noticing him,” Rowan continued. “He goes stiff, nervous. Farts and burps, then scratched his big, bald, warty head.”
“Alright, we got it,” Jason said under his breath.
“Is he hostile? Is he friendly? Nobody knows. Archer, what do you do?” Rowan asks.
Jake leaned in. “I shoot an arrow toward his foot,” he said, still not warming up to Jason.
Jake rolled for accuracy because we were playing the most elaborate version of the game that was a product of years of playing and personal grievances that needed to be sorted through various gaming methods. Picking up on it, Jason leaned in and demanded to roll for his luck. His stats were low. Even his strength sucked compared to the attribution points assigned to his luck. There was little he couldn’t escape.
Rowan sighed. “The arrow is precise. Nice shot, Archer. Alas, there was a worm in the ground, wriggling, and a strange, bony, undead bird swept down to eat it, taking the show inches before it struck the Cave Troll.”