The girl was a cutie. She had short hair in a pixie cut that was dyed several different colors, with pink and purple being the principle hues on display. She had a nose ring and piercings in her eyebrow and lip. She wore a dark tank top that clung to her frame in all the right places and fell open in just the right way as she leaned over the counter.
Basically she was the kind of tight little alt-punk package that would probably scare off some gamer guys, even the more socially inept ones, but he was willing to bet the amount of upsells she managed to get by flashing a little skin and the occasional smile at the typical clientele more than made up for anyone she scared away.
Hell, he was already starting to think he should spend a lot more time in this store than he’d been planning, and it wasn’t like he had all that many gaming related expenses to begin with. The mangled dice tonight were the first time he’d needed something new in years.
“So what can I do you for tonight?” she asked, spreading her hands out on the glass counter and, incidentally, giving him an excellent view down her shirt that he had to try very hard not to look like he was taking advantage of.
Which was difficult considering she was staring right at him with a half grin that said she knew exactly what he was doing.
Mike swallowed. He got the feeling she’d totally intended to phrase things that way, and there were definitely a couple of things he could think of that he’d like do with her in an abandoned gaming store.
It would be one of the most interesting places he’d done that sort of thing. It would beat out the previous contender for the top spot. Not that the passenger seat of a ‘90s-era Honda Civic behind the local dollar theater in the middle of a sudden snowstorm was all that interesting.
He cleared his throat. Tried to think of something to say, but his mind was a total blank. As he looked the girl over he got the feeling that was exactly the intention.
Step one: short-circuit the nerd brain with boobs.
Step two: use the temporary boob-induced insanity to load them up with lots of useless crap.
Step three: profit.
“Dice,” he finally managed to croak out.
“Dice?” she asked. “Do you need one, in which case you need a die, or do you need multiple, in which case you require dice? And are you looking for your d6 to replace something you lost in your Wizardopoly game, or are you looking for the good stuff that goes higher than six sides?”
She smiled and that, plus her low cut tanktop, took some of the sting out of her impromptu grammar nazi session. A session he didn’t think he deserved. He knew the difference between the singular and plural of die, thank you very much. He also didn’t need Wizardopoly, themed after the university mascot, thank you very much.
“I need a new set of dice. Definitely plural,” he finally said, getting control of himself. “The whole shebang. Way more than six sides.”
He walked over to the display case and forced himself not to look at what was on display above the case. The last thing he wanted was for this girl to think he was some creeper who was only interested in staring down her shirt. He was sure she got that all the time.
Even if there were other more primal parts of his mind that were telling him that was exactly what the fuck they needed to be doing, thank you very much.
“I think we can help you out,” she finally said, standing and relieving him of some of his torture. Much to his disappointment.
He looked down the row of dice on display instead. Tiered levels ran the length of the case. Down at the other end he saw a stuffed owl staring down at him blankly which added to the whole “1980s sword and sorcery movie” ambience they seemed to be going for with this place.
“Man, whoever put this place together really doesn’t want to stay in business for long, do they?” he asked with a laugh.
He turned back to the girl. She didn’t look amused in the least. For one panicked moment he thought maybe she was the owner and he’d just insulted her baby on top of assuming a cute alt-punk girl couldn’t own her own business.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, her voice casual. Though he couldn’t tell if that was “I’m paid by the hour here so I don’t give a fuck if you insult the place” casual or “I’m about to rip you a new asshole for insulting my life’s work” casual.
This wasn’t his day or night when it came to easy interactions with the fairer sex.
“I was just thinking it looks like someone went really all out with the ‘80s movie dungeon theme. That can’t be cheap, and considering what rent is like around here and the limited gamer population on campus…”
He trailed off. The girl looked more bored than anything. It was a practiced sort of boredom though. As though she was used to geeky guys who thought she gave a fuck about the business plan for the game store they were buying from and she’d long ago developed a poker face for dealing with the dorks.
He trailed off. He only jumped a little when movement seen just out of the corner of his eye told him the stuffed owl wasn’t as stuffed as his first glance might’ve led him to believe.
The girl smiled. Again he got the feeling that people being surprised by the owl being among the living was something that happened a lot, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of reacting any more than that little jump.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Rutger there likes surprising newbies, but he’s harmless.”
Mike was busy trying to decide whether or not it was more or less expensive to keep a live owl in a place like this when he glanced at a clock on the wall near the owl, designed to look like an old carved cuckoo clock rather than digital of course, and realized how late he was.
He turned back to the girl. His determination to avoid dire consequences for his character tonight overrode his desire to talk with this girl and learn more about this place.
“Right. Dice. I’m in a hurry and I don’t want anything fancy,” he said.
The girl smiled. It was a thin smile, but he got the feeling that was about as much emotion as she ever showed. She seemed like the kind of person who went through life oozing “sardonic cynicism” and not much else.
“Lucky for you we have a wide selection. Make your choice, mighty warrior,” she said, looking him up and down and clearly taking in the results of his time in the gym.
He wasn’t as big as the Almighty Austrian Oak, but he was in shape. He also couldn’t shake the feeling that that was an interested look. He also couldn’t shake his inner fat kid who was telling him she probably looked at all the dorky suckers who came through here with those same eyes in an attempt to get them to shell out more money.
“Mighty mage,” he said without thinking.
“Whatever,” she said with a sigh as she dropped the act. “You want dice, we got dice. Make your choice so I can get back to babysitting the guys playing in the back.”
Mike looked up, and for the first time he realized there were more sounds than the occasional creak of wood or the shuffle of the very live owl moving on its perch. He heard the faint but distinct sound of dice hitting a table.
“Sorry,” he muttered, and looked at the dice on display. He was in a hurry and so was she, so he didn’t know why he kept delaying.
The place was lousy with dice. It was time to make a fucking choice and get out of here before his character fell into a spike pit in absentia and he found himself rolling up a new one.
8
Dice Shopping
As he leaned over the dice case and got a good look at what was on offer Mike was impressed. There was a lot more on offer in those cases now than what had been on offer back when he was in high school buying his first set of geeky dice for a game he’d been invited to in a buddy’s pool house.
“See anything you like?” the girl asked.
Mile looked up. He concentrated on keeping his eyes on her face, on those eyes, and not on the way her tank top spilled open revealing the rather distracting swell of her breasts which threatened to break out
of her top and… Oh dear Lord she wasn’t wearing a bra, and she snickered when he looked back up.
Busted. Damn it.
“Not yet,” he said.
He turned his attention back to the angular dice and away from the more curvy distractions on offer from the beauty in front of him.
There were the usual plastic offerings on one end of the glass case. The problem was the same dilemma that confronted anyone when they go shopping for something shiny and new:
He may have come into this shop with every intention of buying something cheap that wouldn’t break the bank, but the more he looked at some of the cooler offerings the more he was convinced he absolutely had to have some of these expensive toys in his life.
He looked down to the end. It looked like whoever owned the shop had conveniently arranged things so they got more expensive the farther down the glass case his eyes ran, and at the end he saw some ivory looking dice that seemed to glow which was a neat trick.
His eyes passed across solid metal dice that claimed they were plated in 24K gold. That had him wondering if there were any solid gold gaming dice out there. On the one hand it seemed like that would be totally awesome, but on the other hand that seemed like the kind of thing that would be impractical and quickly ruined considering what a soft metal gold was.
Though he didn’t doubt there were some rich gamer motherfuckers out there somewhere who had a set of solid gold dice to use when they were out taking down make believe dragons, and fuck how impractical it was as long as they got to look impressive to their friends.
Well, at least they got to look as impressive as a person could look playing a pen and paper roleplaying game.
He glanced to the end again. A shiver ran down his spine as he looked at those ivory dice again. As though they were calling to him. Weird.
Mike sighed as he turned his attention to a set of quartz dice that looked pretty awesome. There was no worry about those slowly wearing down, though there probably would be some worry that the crystal would bust up any table it was tossed against.
“Are those made out of titanium?” he asked, looking at a set that glinted in the LED light strip that ran under the glass.
“You’ve got it,” she said. “The manufacturer claims they made the dice out of metal that was reclaimed from an SR-71 or something.”
“That’d explain the price tag,” Mike muttered.
It might be impressive to think that his dice had once flown through the stratosphere making the world safe for democracy before being made obsolete by advances in spy satellite technology, but he wasn’t going to pay hundreds of dollars for that privilege.
Not when he’d had a very recent lesson in how ephemeral dice could be. Though he was pretty sure a set of titanium dice would destroy the garbage disposal rather than the other way around.
“I really shouldn’t be down on this end of the display case,” he said with a sigh.
“You’re already all the way down here,” the girl said. “Might as well take a look at what we have on offer. The owner went to the trouble of putting it together.”
“Well yeah, but this stuff is all out of my price range,” he said.
Though there was that one set of dice near the end that kept catching his attention. No matter what else he looked at under the glass he found his eyes returning to them. They looked to be an off white color, and it looked like the numbers had been hand painted. Even up close he almost thought he saw a faint glow coming off the things.
“So are these like glow in the dark or something?” he asked, getting down on his knees and peering into the case.
“Um. Does it look like it’s dark in here?” she asked.
Mike looked around and blushed. Of course. It was dim in here, as it should be in a gaming store, but it wasn’t exactly dark.
“Sorry,” he muttered. He peered a little closer, but didn’t see any obvious price tag on this set. He figured that meant they were definitely too expensive. In his experience if the price had to be asked then it was too rich for his blood.
“Think I’m going to head back down to the other end. I had a set of translucent red plastic dice before. If I get something like that, or maybe something blue to mix things up, I should be good.”
“You sure about that?” she asked, leaning down and opening the display case. “It’s not going to hurt for you to take a look.”
Mike glanced at the clock again. He was a good twenty minutes late now, and that never meant anything good. Not only was Doug going to be pissed, but everyone else was going to be pissed at him for holding up game night.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said. “If I don’t get out of here soon there are going to be serious consequences for my character.”
The girl rolled her eyes. That eye roll was filled with all the contempt in the world. As though she was just putting up with this whole gaming thing and would love nothing more than to have a job in, say, the fast food industry where the customers were more entitled, but probably had better body odor and less of a chance of hitting on her all the time.
Or maybe that was Mike projecting what he imagined it must be like to be a hot chick working in a gaming store. Either way he felt antsy. He knew that even as he stood there talking with this girl his character was moving closer and closer to a very nasty untimely doom.
Or maybe that doom had already come. Maybe they were happily playing without his mage to help them on their adventures because he’d been snapped in two by a random dragon who sometimes showed up for the express purpose of disciplining characters.
“Come on,” she said, hitting him with a dazzling smile and leaning over the display case in a way that showed off some of her more compelling assets once more.
Mike glanced. He couldn’t help himself. He tried to be polite, but he was a man. Yup. She definitely wasn’t wearing a bra, and it occurred to him that the glass case she was leaning against to show off the goods, wink and a nudge, wouldn’t do jack shit to cover up the rather hard and potentially embarrassing situation rapidly developing in his pants.
He knelt down in front of the case to cover that up. He had a feeling she was doing that on purpose, but best not to risk pissing her off. He wondered how many guys had been convinced to spend hundreds of dollars on some hunks of plastic that would probably be lost within the year all because they wanted to impress the nice girl who was giving them a glance down her shirt.
“Fine,” he said. “I guess I can look at them.”
He grabbed the d20 off the display case. As he grabbed it he almost thought he could feel a warmth running up his hand. The die felt right in his hand. Like they were made for each other. Even though he had no idea what these things were made of.
“What are these made of anyway?” he asked, wondering what was going on with that tingling feeling traveling up his arm. Surely that had to be his imagination.
The girl leaned down and inspected a piece of paper behind the little riser the die had been resting on. She squinted.
“Huh,” she said with a chuckle. “Says here these dice are made of authentic dragon bone that has been passed down from some of the greatest wizards the world has ever known. You know you want to get a good price on those.”
Mike had his own chuckle, but he still felt that odd tingle. He thought of the hot sorority chick in her toga earlier and all she’d said before she disappeared. For a moment he almost wondered if there could be some truth to the drunken crazy she was spouting, but no.
That was ridiculous. Stuff like that didn’t happen in the real world, and it certainly didn’t happen to him. He’d almost convinced himself that all the crazy he’d seen earlier in the day was his imagination running wild.
Clearly whoever was responsible for marketing at whatever company manufactured these things was having a little bit of fun with the product description. Not that it was going to convince him to spend hundreds of dollars on a pair of custom dice with a weird backstory.
Though as he rattle
d the d20 around in his hand he had to admit that it felt different. There was that warmth, and they had some heft to them that surprised him. He figured if dragons really had existed, and they had bones, then they’d be light. Sort of hollow like bird bones to facilitate the whole flying thing.
Of course he realized how ridiculous it was that he was even thinking about the comparative anatomy of a mythological creature that’d never existed in the real world. He knew what he held in his hand was nothing more than some impressively weathered plastic that probably had a weight in the middle to give it some heft.
“Yeah, well these are nice and all, and I’m not going to fault the marketing department their hustle, but unless these are the same price as the plastic stuff at the other end of the display they’re not going home with me tonight,” Mike said with a grin.
Just for fun he tossed the d20. He felt that warmth almost overcome him. It was such a surprise that he had to lean against the glass case, though he tried to make it look like he wasn’t using it for support. He didn’t want this girl to think he was going crazy even though he was pretty sure that’s exactly what was happening here.
Considering everything that’d already happened today he wouldn’t argue with anyone who told him he was going just a little crazy.
“You okay?” she asked, making it clear that his attempt at not looking like a complete idiot was in vain.
“I’m fine,” he lied, wondering why he suddenly felt so dizzy.
The girl pulled out something that he assumed was the price tag for the dice set, though he didn’t know why she was bothering considering how obviously expensive they were. She glanced at the die he’d just rolled as she looked over the price, and another one of those small almost-smiles told him something interesting had happened there.
Dice Mage: A GameLit Adventure Page 6
