You find a seat at an empty table and finger the dwindling copper coins in your pocket, your stomach growling, even at the faint promise of boiled potatoes and chopped carrots in a meagre broth. The barmaid shuffles over on nearly silent footsteps as you slide a single coin onto the table, and then, after a small hesitation, a second one. Fuck it. You can sleep in the stables tonight instead of a bed. You've managed worse.

"Food," you mumble while barely even glancing in her direction, following it with a hasty "...erm, please." Your mama didn't raise you without manners.

The coins are whisked away into a fold of skirt, as the barmaid disappears into the kitchen. You take a moment to survey the strange tavern you've found yourself in - if, in fact, it is a tavern. Never have you heard a local pub so full and yet so eerily quiet. There are no raucous shouts or whoops or hollars. No spilled drinks. No dancers, shaking the rooftops with the pounding of feet to a lovely fiddle or drum. No musicians at all, come to think of it. And yet - and yet. Nobody here seems at all disturbed by that, either. The gentleman in a grey travel-worn cloak seems content to eat his soup by the fire. The couple in the corner seems happy to merely gaze dreamily into one another's eyes. Even the cook in the back, barely glimpsed through the swinging double doors, seems to be in no particular hurry as he prepares the evening meal.

Your reverie is broken as the barmaid slides a small pie in front of you. Goddess, she's quiet! You didn't even hear her approach, and that's really saying something for you. The pie smells very very faintly of chicken, potato, and spiced root veg. Your stomach grumbles, and the sound is strangely loud in this cadaverously quiet place. You look up at her face, and register it for the first time. Not a beautiful face, but strangely compelling in a kind of forgettable way. But it's her expression that stills your hand, even as it reaches for a spoon. Her eyes are wide, nostrils flared. This is not the kind, but practiced neutral expression of a friendly waitress, but rather someone in the grips of absolute terror.

"Get out." she mouths silently, in exaggerated words, even as she slides the spoon toward you. "GET. OUT. NOW."

You look down at the meat pie on its wooden plate before you. It's bubbling as if dangerously, delightfully, piping hot.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

"It's not stealing," you think wildly to yourself as you reach for the pie. "It's not stealing because it's already been paid for." You remember putting the two coins on the table. One coin, then another, both whisked away by the waitress. So why does it *feel* like stealing? Your hand hesitates, and for a moment, you see on the table, two copper coins, flashing in the late midday sun where the pie should be. You shake your head to clear it. No, no that already happened. Your hand reaches for the pie again, and the coins vanish like a mirage. You expected the pie to be hot, but instead you find it to be strangely cool to the touch, as if several days old already. You pocket the meat pie in one of the deep recesses of your coat and stumble to your feet. When did it become so muzzy in here? So hard to breathe?

You blink and shake your head again, turning for the door, to find that blocking your way is the elderly gentleman in the grey travel-worn coat. The one who had been sipping his soup by the fire. Not looking so old and frail now, his frame seems to entirely fill your vision.

"Now now where are we going in such a hurry?" he says with a pleasant lilt in his voice - as if talking to an old friend. "We've only just started getting acquainted."

He smiles thinly, and his smile is the smile of cadavers. The smile of the moon on a moonless night. The smile of a god in his domain.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

You turn on your heels and run. No thought behind it. No hesitation. You always wondered how you'd react if you ever felt in mortal danger and now you know.

You're the kind of person who runs.

Something about that smile. That creepy, thin-lipped smile. You'd never seen someone smile like that before. It was as if someone just took hold of the man's cheeks and *pulled* - stretching the skin tight over bone and muscle. It was unhinged. People don't smile like that. *Humans* don't smile like that.

Leaping over a table where two guests sat, silently playing some unidentifiable local card game, you stumble blindly into the kitchen, bursting through the double doors like a cowboy in an old westry tale, the table flipping on its side behind you and spilling cards all across the rough-hewn floor. You throw a glance over your shoulder. The two patrons didn't seem to mind - or even notice. You watch as one takes a card from their hand and drops it in mid-air on a stack of cards that no longer existed. The card flutters meaninglessly to the ground, taking up residence against one of the gentleman's brown leather riding boots. Face up, in this moment seemingly suspended in time, you can even see the face of the card. The four of clovers; an omen card. Misfortune. Betrayal. Death.

You look wildly around the small kitchen, searching for any exit at all. There is a tall narrow door to your left, a staircase leading down, and what appears to be a short, squat metal door with a handle along the top side. Not an oven, but similarly shaped. The cook has stopped what he's doing, seemingly frozen in place, watching you, holding a tray of biscuits with a drizzled honeyed glaze on top. Your mouth waters involuntarily. It's been years since you've eaten khaffa cakes. Not since you were a little bairn. You have a sudden urge to stuff your cheeks full of tiny honeyed biscuits like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter. You start to giggle. You wonder if you're going mad.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

You lift the wooden latch and throw open the tall, narrow door, not exactly sure what you were expecting. Maybe a servant's stairs, or even a side alley exit - but whatever you were expecting, it wasn't this. You find yourself staring glumly at the contents of a poorly stocked kitchen pantry.

The walk-in pantry is just wide enough to enter, and about 6 feet deep, with two rows of shelving on the right and left. You spy some jars of honey, a few mostly-empty bags of rice flour and finely ground khaffa flakes, a single sack of sad looking potatoes with deeply sunken eyes, and a loose collection of root vegetable odds and ends in a basket. Against the back of the pantry stands a large brining barrel for storing fish or poultry.

Not the best hiding spot, you admit. But, any port in a storm, as your gran would say. You dive inside and close the door, hearing the latch click shut behind you. Your only light is a silver thread of lamplight sneaking like a thief through a small crack between the door and its frame to your hiding place. Pushing yourself into the farthest corner recess of the larder behind the brining barrel, willing yourself to somehow become smaller and unnoticeable, the faint salty scent of vinegar hits your nose, like the mere wisp of a memory of the sea, half-forgotten, and clouded with time. Suddenly, even that meagre light is extinguished as the pantry is thrown into darkness. A shape, a figure, a shadow of a person is occluding the firelight, positioning itself directly in front of the tall, thin door.

It laughs.

Your heart dies inside your chest and every hair on your body prickles. What in Goddess' name ever made you think this would be a good idea? Your hands begin scrabbling at the walls around you in a blind panic, trying to find something - anything useful - a weapon, a magic ward, anything. And then, a miracle occurs. Your fingers do find something. A small loop of fabric, at ground level, in the back corner behind the pickling barrel. It feels like the string of a yo-yo, or the tag on the back of a shirt that's all fancy-like.

The thing at the door begins to hum a jaunty little nameless tune, and you hear the unmistakable sound of a wooden latch being lifted. Sending a prayer to whatever Gods or Goddesses might be listening, you pull the loop and feel the wall behind you suddenly recess backwards on silent hinges, sliding off to one side. Having thoroughly wedged yourself into the back corner, you practically fall over yourself in a backwards somersault. The thing at the door growls and sniffs the air. Deep, raspy, and gutteral, like a wildcat defending a recent kill.

That specific sound seems to awaken some sort of primordial instinct in your body. You kick with your legs, pistoning your feet, shoving your body backwards through the opened doorway and into the secret passage beyond through sheer brute force alone. The last image you see as the wall slides itself back into place in front of you on silent counterweights, is the pantry door beginning to open, and the low animal growl suddenly turning into a hiss of disappointment.

You freeze, motionless, staring at the blank featureless back of the pantry wall, afraid to make any sound at all. Afraid to even breathe. There is a moment when the only sounds you can hear are the pounding of blood in your own ears and the shriek of the wind howling down the alley outside the tavern. And then the moment passes, and you hear the larder door snick shut again as the smiling man lets out an audible snort of frustration.

You allow yourself to draw a single, shaky breath.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

"No matter," you hear the slightly muffled voice of the smiling man say to the cook, or to himself, or perhaps to no one in particular. "All in due time, along in due time." He chuckles to himself, amused by his little joke.

You pick yourself up off the floor after waiting a moment to be sure the smiling man had truly gone and was not simply lying in wait for you to reveal yourself. Looking around, you find yourself in a surprisingly well-crafted tunnel of sorts. The floor, though dirty from disuse, appears to be made of well laid brick cobble, and the walls and arched ceiling are reinforced with regularly spaced lumber. And not the cheap kind, either. Whoever made this clearly cared about its construction, and had money to spare to ensure it would continue to endure for years, decades, maybe even generations.

As your eyes adjust to the near-darkness, you can see that the main tunnel itself descends at a steep angle into the earth, disappearing after a few feet into the subterranean pitch black. You shudder a bit. You never did like being underground. Reminds you a bit too much of home, truth be told.

However, you can also see a ladder perched against what you assume to be the exterior wall, given the howling of the wind just outside. Crazy to think that only a few feet of rock and dirt likely stand between you and your freedom. What you wouldn't give for a pickaxe, you think to yourself. Or a stick of dyno. You wonder briefly how likely the explosion of a fireball spell would be to simply kill you in small quarters like this. You pluck a few threads of pyra absent-mindedly, the spell sparking and fizzling, sparking and fizzling repeatedly in your left hand, as you consider your options.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

You reach out and pluck two small threads of pyra, knotting them together in one hand and holding them there loosely as they begin to spark. "A flame needs only three things to survive," you hear your teacher's voice in your ear. "something to eat, something to breathe, and room to grow; just like little bairn." With practiced fingers, you select two more small threads of mana, one of ligna and one of aethra, adding them to the loose bundle in your hand and tying the spell off, but careful not to tie it too tight lest it create something less like a candleflame, and more like a bomb. "That's the difference," you repeat your teacher's words quietly to yourself like a mantra. "Things under pressure tend to explode."

Holding the spell in your empty palm, you blow gently, and watch the threads begin to glow hot, hotter, hottest, and then spring to life as a small cluster of flames dancing about an inch above your outstretched hand. To anyone not practiced in the arts, it might have looked like magic, but you know the truth. It's just a skill. One of many.

The tunnel mouth yawns before you, descending into the darkness at a rather severe pitch. You hold your spell-hand outstretched in front, take a deep breath in and out, swallow your fears, and begin. As you travel, you can't help but reminisce about home. The low dirt-walled tunnel reminds you of the streets of your city, hidden away from the sun, hidden away from invaders. Hidden and safe. It was exactly that safety which you had chafed against. "Things under pressure tend to explode."

And you had.

At first, your acts of rebellion were small, easily forgivable sins. A stolen pie from a neighbor's window, a few coins gone missing from the collection plate on Sûneday. But eventually your actions escalated, and the town council had no choice. You can still remember your mother weeping as the council gave its unanimous vote: banishment. Never to return.

The tunnel continues to forge ahead, straight as an arrow shot from a greatbow. To what destination, you couldn't even hazard a guess. But at some point the tunnel had leveled out, continued for a fair pace, and now seems to be pitching back upwards at a similarly steep incline as before. You take that as a good sign. Eventually, a stream of light up ahead causes you to hastily extinguish your candle spell as you approach; the strands of pyra, aethra, and ligna cooling as they separate, rejoining the fabric of reality. All things return to the Source.

You investigate the light ahead. Sunlight. You can tell that much immediately. From the low angle and the soft, buttery color, you'd say the hour out there must be getting late. Close to sunset. What was immediately apparent to your eye is that a small scree of topsoil and gravel had come loose near one of the joists holding up the low ceiling. You can't see much through the gap based on its tiny size and relative angle, but you reach up and poke two fingers into the crevice anyway. You can feel roots and grass. A dog howls in the distance. A soft breeze blows across your face.

Outside things. These small reminders of the freedom of outside fill you with a frankly unreasonable amount of wild hope.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

Your stomach rumbles again and you briefly consider stopping for a bit to rest and eat the chicken pie you pocketed earlier, what seems like years ago. But now is not the time, you decide. There will be time enough later for dinner, once you're free.

Sparking up another candle spell, you prepare for another journey, but you needn't have bothered. After only a few minutes, you find yourself staring at another blank, featureless wall, similar to the one on the other side of this tunnel.

There is some faint light glowing around the edges of this sliding door, enough to see by, so you extinguish the candle. And that's when you realize you can hear voices, disjointed and muffled, as if talking in another room.

"...still missing...weeks..."

"...will not accept failure..."

"...reward...prince..."

Reward Prince? Your ears perk up. Did they mean the prince is offering a reward? A reward for what? And what did they mean "missing for weeks"? Who or what had gone missing? And who "would not accept failure"? Whatever it was that had gone missing, it must be important. Especially if a reward was involved. Mysteries upon mysteries.

None of that mattered though if you couldn't figure out how to operate this door first. Let's think this thing through step by step. Machines were like spells. There was always a kind of internal logic to them.

What do you do?

You reach down and feel along the bottom gap, fingers immediately locating the small loop of cord you knew you'd find there. You trace the cord upwards, along the doorframe, until you find it, just about where you expected. A small metallic catch on a spring. Despite yourself you feel a certain pride at having worked out the solution. Machines always have a kind of logic to them.

Your deft fingers flick the lever downwards, releasing the mechanism's internal counterweights, and the entire panel slides to the right, revealing a room unlike any other you've ever seen. You have but a moment to register some of the important details.

A gigantic bed near the fireplace, which, even now has a small fire simmering away inside it, keeping the chambers nice and toasty warm. A large, expensive looking desk, with several pieces of correspondence scattered about it, along with two ink wells and a healthy variety of quills. Just one of which would have fed your family for a week, you think wildly to yourself. A plush armchair with a silk-lined dressing gown thrown over it haphazardly, and, perhaps most salient to the moment, three very large, very armed guards in full kit, whose gazes immediately turn toward you, the interloper.

All three guards draw their longblades simultaneously, as if choreographed. You have just enough time to register the crest emblazoned on the right breast of the nightgown, and also on the desktop, and also over the fireplace mantle, and even on the helmets of the guards. The royal crest of the Prince himself. These must be his private bedchambers.

"Ohhhhhhh fuck." you say.

"'An oo the FUCK are you?" one of the guards says, approaching. "Identify yourself immediately."

You take a step back, raising your hands in a defensive posture, eyes darting between the three guards.

"Keep your hands where I can see 'em, ya thieving barstard." A second one says.

"Whoah whoah I think we got off on the wrong foot. I'm not–* you begin to explain

"Lay down your weapons immediately an' surrender!" The first barks.

"Okay okay okay I'm reaching for my—" you begin

"I SAID KEEP YOUR FILTHY FUCKING HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM" the second guard's voice is rising in panic.

"How am I supposed to do both??" you ask, confused by the contradicting orders.

"COMPLY IMMEDIATELY! DOWN ON THE GROUND!" the third guard screams at you, spittle flying from his lips.

"HANDS BEHIND YOU! NOW!" the first one continues to bark instructions.

"KEEP YOUR HANDS IN VIEW UNLESS YOU WANT TO DIE!" the second guard bellows simultaneously, brandishing his weapon.

"IDENTIFY YOURSELF! IDENTIFY!" the first guard yells, closing to within striking distance. The gleam of firelight dances merrily on the edge of his longblade. It looks sadistically sharp.

Your stomach grumbles stupidly. You wish you had eaten that pie.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

In some ways, the Fireball spell is even easier than casting Candle. Two threads of pyra to make a spark. Ligna to eat. Aethra to breathe. Easy. A child could do it.

"SPELL! SPELL! SPELL!" screeches one of the guards, raising his weapon to strike. You're so close now you can see the whites of his eyes and smell the garlic sandwich he ate for his supper. There are still flecks of it in his beard.

The main difference between the two spells is there's no need to give this particular spell room to grow. Things under pressure tend to explode. You savagely twist the threads together–

Just as the sword swings down, severing your left hand at the wrist. You gape at the stump, which is now starting to gush rapidly, splashing back into the guard's face. And now there is blood AND garlic in his beard, you think to yourself stupidly. Ha ha blood and garlic. Garlic and blood. Your hand flops around on the floor like a dead fish. Blood and fish and garlic. Ha ha. You've lost a lot of blood, you realize.

The guard winds back for the killing blow and you sober up enough to notice that the spell you just tried to cast is - miracle of miracles - still hovering there in midair. Complete. The last thing your left hand ever did before being separated from your body. Just...hanging there ready to go. All twisted up like and shining. Like an angel. Like a beautiful shiny angelly angel. You shake your head, trying to regain some measure of clarity. You've lost a lot of blood, you realize. What were you doing? The guard's longblade is descending now. Aiming for your neck this time. Oh yes, the spell. The pretty littley firebally spelly spell. All it needs is a little...

You blow gently on the spell.

It detonates.

And takes out half the guard's face in the first impact. You are forcibly shoved backwards out of the Prince's bedchambers and into the tunnel by the fireblast. You land on your back with an audible grunt, and stumble back up to your feet, moaning, eyes wide and ears ringing. The bedchambers are on fire. The bed is on fire. The ornate desk is on fire. Your severed hand is on fire. The guards are on fire. Somewhere, a klaxon is ringing, calling all guards, all guards. And all along the parapets and the watchtowers, guards are running dutifully. Running here. Toward the fire. Toward you, bleeding in the secret tunnel behind the Prince's bedchambers. And you've lost a lot of blood, you realize.

With your right hand, you reach out and slap the catch on the sliding panel, watching it close silently on its cunning gears and counterweights. You breathe a sigh of relief. There. Good. No more fire. That fire is someone else's problem now. Right now, you've got to figure out how not to die. You've lost a lot of blood, you realize. You're bleeding everywhere. Your stump is a mess. You shove it under your jacket in an attempt to staunch the flow.

You've lost a lot of blood, you realize. Nice blood. Very bad. Very no happy. Garlic and blood ha ha. Lost a hand. Where is it? You don't know. You wave at yourself with the stump. Ha ha blood and garlic. Blood all over. You've lost a lot of blood. You realize suddenly that you've lost a lot of blood.

What do you do?

#MastoDnD

It's too loud in here. Why is it so loud? Why is everyone so angry? You're so sleepy. Need to find a place to lay down for a bit. You stumble away and into the darkness, fighting to keep your eyes open. Too tired even to attempt lighting a Candle spell. Probably just blow yourself up again if you tried. Your vision swims. You see soft light just up ahead, streaming through that hole in the ceiling near the joist. You slump against the wall, just for a minute. You just need to rest a second. Your vision clouds and tips sideways. From somewhere very far away you hear the unmistakable sound of a skull knocking against cobbled brick pavement. You blink once, very slowly.

Two yellow eyes appear in the darkness. You blink again. The eyes are still there.

"No." you say.

"Yes." the smiling man says, emerging into the light.

"No." you repeat, with a whimper.

"I found you. I knew I would, if I was patient enough. And I am very, very patient." the smiling man squats down on his haunches next to you as he says this, head tilted to one side as if studying a curiosity - an exciting experiment. "Oh my. It looks like you made some...choices" He picks at the fabric of your clothes, examining the burnt and frayed edges, the bloodsoaked jacket, the severed hand. You find you lack the will to stop him.

"Got yourself blown up, did we? And your hand chopped off. Not the sort of choices I would have made, my friend. Tsk tsk tsk. But then again, that's why you're you...and I'm me."

You reach out with your right hand and weakly claw at the dirt, trying to find any purchase at all. Any miracle escape. But there is none this time. Just blank, featureless brick cobble stone and muddy walls. Is this how it ends, you think to yourself. Alone in the dark, underground, with a madman?

The smiling man runs his hand through your hair gently. There is something supremely condescending about that act of comfort, the way a man might pet a beloved dog.

"Shhh. Won't be long now."

Your eyes close involuntarily again. And when you force them open, the smiling man's form has been replaced by something...other. It was as if someone had torn a person-shaped hole in the universe and let in all the stars. It was not a thing. It was the absence of things. A null entry where there should be a person. A naught where there should be an equation. A void where there should be the threads of reality. The form kneeling on its haunches in front of you, head tilted to one side was human in shape only. Beyond the event horizon of its skin you can see whole planets, stars, nebulas, entire galaxies spinning in place.

"What...are you?" you manage to croak.

In response, the smiling man's smile widens and sharpens, transforming in front of your eyes into a crescent moon, his two eyes becoming twin shining stars orbiting one another slowly in the dark. Each time they complete an orbit, they emit a flash of light and sound, and the entire world blinks off and back on again, like static interfering with a radio signal. Your mouth opens on its own accord, and you watch as some gaseous form expels itself from your body, spiralling down into the vast emptiness of the smiling man. You whimper, and close your eyes.

You open your eyes. The sign above the door reads "The Anxious Trumpet". The local tavern, you assume, stepping foot inside the doors and knocking the mud from your boots against the doorframe. But the raucous shouts and jeers you’ve come to associate with taverns are nowhere to— what the hell?

What do you do?

#MastoDnD