Unwanted Adventure

January 5th?

When I was in high school, I was a gamer. I was a self-proclaimed geek; I played videogames (particularly those of the adventure and roleplaying genres) and CCGs (collectible card games), not to mention pen-and-paper roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons and Vampire: the Masquerade. I was almost always the one to run said games, setting the rules, creating the world, setting the monsters and enemies in place. Sometimes my friends and I would wonder what it would be like to live in a world like, what it would be like if all that magic and mystery was real.
If I could go back in time, I’d slap the shit out of myself for wishing something like that.
I’m writing this journal as a test of myself, of my sanity. I have trouble accepting this place as reality. I keep wanting to tell myself I’m having a vivid dream, or that my sanity has snapped and I’m living out some subconscious fantasy while I’m really strapped to a bed in an institution for the mentally insane. If I make it home before I die and I still have this journal with me, I’ll know all my experiences here were real. If I wake up in my bed or in a hospital, I’ll know it was all just some psychotic dream.
My friends tell me that this isn’t a dream, because if it was how could they be here too? I’ve studied enough psychology to know that the human subconscious has unlimited potential when it comes to dreams and hallucinations. They could all very well be complex personifications of my memories.
But the nature of this world is something I hardly have the time to contemplate. Staying alive is penultimate. Survival before all things save each other, that is what we swore when we first arrived here. The seven of us were just out to have fun, donning costumes and props for a LARP, or live action roleplay. We were on a late night adventure and a fog came up in the woods. Rather than risk getting lost, we decided to put the game on hold until the fog cleared. It was a warm night so we weren’t really worried. Maybe we should have been. We woke up the next morning to find our props were real equipment. The cabins where we all had been staying were gone, replaced with the ruins of some stone structure, a fortress or a castle or something. Things (I can only describe them as “things”, because they were unlike anything I’d ever seen or read about in real life or in any game book) swarmed out of the ruins and attacked us. Anybody else would have run screaming; that would have been a normal reaction, should’ve been our reaction. Instead, it was like we had become different people overnight. We wielded our props-turned-weapons as if we had been training with them all our lives, and two of us that were playing mages cast honest-to-god magic spells; we killed four of the things before any of us realized what was happening. The things scattered, and we took the opportunity to run. We happened to find a road, and just picked a direction to start walking.
That was over a month ago. We wandered aimlessly out here for a while unsure of what to do, until we learned from a traveler we met on the road that there’s a sage out here somewhere that supposedly communes with other worlds and regularly travels to other dimensions. I’m hoping he can tell us how to get home.

HC ran one hand through his dark hair, slowly growing out from it’s military style. He rolled up the parchment on which he had been writing and stowed it back into the small scroll case he had in his pack. He stood and stretched, checking the campsite to observe the area out of habit. Part of him felt a little silly doing that; sure, he had suffered through Army basic training and had been taught all about field missions, but he was no fighter. He had been trained in an administrative job, handling personnel issues and paperwork, not the cut and thrust combat drilling of the infantry, and he was only a reserve component soldier anyhow.
His brother Jake was on guard then; they had sheltered in a cave out because HC had decided it was easily defendable, and Jake was crouching behind a large rock at the entrance, peering out into the night in search of anything that might be trying to creep up on them. The two brothers were almost identical as far as looks went. Tall, thinly built, with proud Scottish features and tanned skin that was due to both exposure to the sun and the genetics of their mother‘s Italian blood. Jake was seven years younger however, barely 16 years old, with golden brown hair hanging down over his ears and blue-gray eyes, where HC’s own hair and eyes were the color of dark chocolate. Jake had embraced his newfound abilities and he wasn‘t in any hurry to give them up. Where HC wanted to believe this was all some crazy dream, Jake never wanted to leave. As far as the younger brother was concerned, this was an opportunity for greatness that he never would have gotten at home.
A yawn to his right told HC that Les had woken up for his turn at watch. Les was another that saw this world as an improvement. Les was two years older than HC; he had spent four years in college and never even made enough credits to get an associate’s degree, was barred from military service because of a handicap with his manual dexterity, and was living with his grandparents because he couldn’t find a job no matter how hard he tried. Shoulders below HC and Jake, Les was barely 5’7” but had more than sixty pounds on either one. Since they had arrived his dark hair had been hacked short with a sharp knife to keep it out of his dark blue eyes. Spotting the thick bristle of a growing beard on Les’s face, HC fought the urge to tell him to shave.
“Old habits die hard,” he muttered to himself. Les raised an eyebrow and cast HC a sidelong glance as he passed, but said nothing. Les tapped Jake on the shoulder and traded places with the teenager, who promptly muttered a few words while making a few gestures in front of Les’s eyes.
“Night vision spell,” Jake explained, sitting down an empty bedroll near the fire. “Want one?”
“I don’t have watch until after midnight,” HC said, but Jake brushed the comment aside.
“It’ll last for the rest of the night,” he said. “Sunlight’s the only thing that’ll ruin it, bro.”
HC sighed and agreed; he felt a tingle behind his eyes as his brother cast the spell, and when it was over he found he could see through the shadows of the night as clearly as if the sun had been shining down. Jake yawned, tired from his watch and the energy spent to cast his spells, and curled up under his blankets; within minutes HC could hear his brother softly snoring.
HC decided he should get some rest before his own turn at watch, and climbed under the blankets next to his wife Nicole. Of all of them HC felt that it was unfair for her to be trapped there; Nicole had never really liked the games, and had only tried them because HC wanted them to share their hobbies with each other. HC thought she looked angelic where she lay, her long, light red-brown hair loosely braided while she slept. Her breathing was slow, and HC reached out to caress one lightly freckled cheek before wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. Her light blue eyes opened briefly as she woke from the disturbance, but closed as soon she saw it was only HC. She tilted her head back and lightly kissed his chin, then nuzzled up to him and fell asleep again, her head resting on his chest as she sighed contentedly.
HC hoped they came across a town soon, with an inn large enough for them to rent separate rooms. Nicole was a dancer; she had danced ballet since she was five, and had majored in dance and performing arts in college. All those years of training had given her a lithe, muscular body that HC found irresistible, and after a week without any time alone with her he silently begged whatever higher power that happened to be listening for just an hour alone for the two of them. He slowly drifted off to sleep, pleasant dreams brought on by Nicole’s proximity drifting through his mind. He was woken from his pleasant reverie by someone gently shaking his shoulder. He got up slowly, careful to let Nicole continue sleeping, and stretched while Will reported the happenings on his watch.
Will had gone through a startling physical transformation in the trip. Back home he had been the same height as Les and about the same build, but after they had woken up he was a few inches taller and near fifty pounds lighter, and his clothes had changed as if he had always been that size. To add to the strangeness were the large, pointed ears that poked out from underneath his curly brown hair. Will found the change to be a bit invigorating; he had always enjoyed playing elves in the games and now he had the chance to actually be one.
“I think there’s someone casing us,” he said. “I spotted a guy stalking around in the trees, I guess about a couple hundred yards out. Once he knew I had seen him I never got another good look, just catching him out of the corner of my eye or something.”
“Great,” HC muttered. “Think he’s dangerous?”
Will shrugged. “He doesn’t seem like the same type as those bandits we ran into the other day.”
HC shuddered at the memory. Jake had taken a crossbow bolt through his chest and Les nearly got his arm severed before the bandits had turned and run. If Nicole hadn’t had a bit of healing magic at her disposal and HC hadn’t found those potions on one of the dead bandits, Jake would have been dead and Les probably would have followed him shortly after. “That could be a good or a bad thing. They might just be more professional,” HC said. “Get the others up and tell them to get ready but do it quietly.” Will nodded while HC took up his position at the watch point as if nothing were wrong. The night vision spell Jake had cast was still in full effect, and HC spotted the spy easily. Will’s natural vision here was a lot better than it was back home, but it wasn’t a match for magical vision. The man checking out the cave was only one of a group of five, the other four slowly creeping up on level with the first. HC guessed they had been watching the shift changes and were waiting to strike in the early morning, when the guard was changing and everyone would be off guard.
HC turned nonchalantly back to his friends and made the warning sign he had taught them. The bandits rushed towards the cave, the first two going down from arrows fired by Will. Crackling bolts of lightning flew from Jake’s fingers and blasted a hole through the chest of a third, and HC’s staff lashed out and crushed the throat of a fourth. The fifth and final bandit skidded to a halt and tried to run back the way he came, but large hands wrapped around his neck and the vertebrae snapped and popped like eggshells under the pressure.
Aaron let go and the dead bandit fell to the ground in a heap. Aaron, like Will, had changed physically. The wiry kid with a bad leg was now a towering mountain of muscle; a two-handed sword was strapped to his back, but Aaron more than preferred using his hands in close quarters like this. His twin sister Larisse stepped around him and checked on the bandit HC had taken down. The two possessed the same piercing blue eyes, light blonde hair, and fair skin, but there the similarities ended. Aaron had a square jaw and angular features, where his sister had an oval face and soft, rounded features. Even back home Larisse had been the shorter of the two, barely even five feet tall, and now her brother dwarfed her in size.
The bandit was thrashing on the ground, unable to breathe through his crushed windpipe, his eyes bulging out of his skull as his face turned blue. Larisse whispered a spell over the bandit and a blue glow briefly surrounded her hands before the bandit gasped and coughed trying to suck in as much air into his lungs as possible. He tried to sit up, but Aaron’s foot crashed into his chest and pinned him to the stone floor of the cave. “Ah ah,” he said. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Let him up, Aaron,” HC said. Aaron looked HC strangely, but removed his foot when Larisse put her hand on her brothers arm.
The bandit rolled over onto his stomach and slowly climbed to his knees, still gasping for breath. “Spare me please!” he begged between breaths. “I can lead you to our stash! You can have it all!”
“Oh for crying out loud!” Les said, rolling his eyes. “Just kill him already.”
“I’m not killing him, and neither are any of you,” HC said, deadly seriousness in his voice.
“I’ll follow your lead Dungeon Master, but I won’t say I like the idea of leaving him alive,” Will said.
“I will not be party to cold blooded murder!” Nicole snapped, standing next to HC.
“I agree with Will and Les, bro,” Jake said. “Who knows how many others like him are out there?”
“Rules of engagement,” HC said, and the others backed down. HC was the only one of them that was in the military and the only one to even entertain the thought of military service, but in the past month he had been teaching them everything he knew in the hope that it would help them all survive. The rules of engagement he had pressed upon them more than anything, and they knew he would tolerate no deviation from those rules. “He’s an enemy combatant. He’s no longer a threat, and we even went so far as to tend to his wounds. That means he’s our responsibility until we can turn him over to the authorities. I won’t accept any other solutions.”
The conversation had distracted them, and the bandit used the opportunity to draw a dagger hidden in his boot. He leapt to his feet, throwing an arm around Nicole, pinning her arms to her sides and holding the dagger against her throat. “Wrong, kid,” the bandit said. “You’re going to stand right there while I walk out of here. Any of you make a move towards me and I draw a red smile across the lady’s neck with my dagger. Understand?”
Two bolts of energy slammed into the bandit’s face, burning into his flesh and blowing out the back of his head. The dagger slipped from the bandit’s twitching fingers, and Nicole pushed away from the corpse as it crumpled. “Sorry,” Jake said, blowing wisps of smoke away from his index fingers. “You lost me at ‘draw’.”