“And… time. Pencils down everybody.”

A collective groan washed over the class as many a slacker and crammer’s fate was sealed in an instant.

“Don’t give me that ‘woe is me’ crap. You all coasted the entire semester and it’s time to pay the piper. For those of you who applied yourselves, I wish you a happy and fulfilling holiday, you’ve earned it. Everyone else, may God and the curve have mercy on your souls,” said Professor Mathias with all of the overly dramatic flair I’d become accustomed to throughout the semester. Chair legs squeaked and moaned as they were dragged across the linoleum floors. Dozens of students around the auditorium stood up in unison to turn in their papers and leave this irredeemable hellhole for the last time this year.

Where was I in all of this? Sitting in my little inconspicuous corner of the room, grinning from ear to ear, of course. Why was I grinning in a room so devoid of hope? Well, I can tell you it wasn’t because I’d done well on this final. No, I’d already given up all hope of passing this class weeks ago after going on a serious MMO bender. I was grinning for one simple reason; I was free. For the next two weeks, I was an unburdened soul. I may as well have been a tiny elf being handed some dirty laundry by a pre-pubescent wizard, because damnit, I was free!

Not only was I free, but I had something amazing planned for tonight. My good friend Nash had called me earlier to tell me that he’d found a new GM for our playgroup of Dungeons of Despair. This was big news!

Okay, taking a step back for all of you who aren’t familiar, Dungeons of Despair is only the biggest tabletop RPG in existence. You create a character, go on quests, fight epic monstrosities, and basically do whatever the hell you want. Literally, the only limiting factor in the game is your own imagination and the ability for your GM to spin a compelling story and adapt to whatever shenanigans the players cook up. Therein lay the problem for my friends and me; we’d lost our GM a few months back. Oh my God, I just realized how that sounded; no no no, Chris wasn’t dead. Our former GM had graduated from college and joined the workforce, ditching us for the allure of a career and a future… pft, casual.

Anyway, my playgroup and I all took turns trying out the role of GM… let’s just say it didn’t work out. However, Nash had told me earlier today that this GM came recommended highly by no less than seven other playgroups in the area. That kind of word of mouth was worth its weight in gold in a small town like this; I was sold.

The three of us arrived at the comic book shop, which had become a second home to us over our college careers, ten minutes early. Nash, a fairly tall but scrawny guy with a mop of unkempt red hair on his head, had made reservations for one of the private gaming rooms earlier that day. Reg, a shorter bald guy built like a tank and covered neck to toe in tattoos, had brought enough snacks and drinks to satisfy a group ten times our size. Ross (me), the personification of a C-, a completely average in every conceivable way brunet with pale skin and unremarkable features across the board, carried the sacred texts of our trade. I had brought our group’s collection of players guides, monster manuals, item catalogs, language references, etc. If it was printed by Mages of the Beach, I probably owned it, and it was probably weighing down my thankfully wheeled luggage.

After setting up the tables and chairs and unpacking the books and snacks, all that was left to do was wait for the GM to arrive.

“What did you say the GM’s name was again?” I asked, partially embarrassed at having not paid attention to such an important detail earlier.

“Oh, I think her name was Lilith,” Nash said, checking the clock for the third time in one minute.

Lilith -- I hadn’t heard that name in a long time. I’d only known one Lilith in my entire life. That name brought back so many amazing memories and a few unspeakably bad ones. The Lilith I had known before was my best friend growing up. We had known each other since kindergarten and were neighbors throughout most of high school. Actually, maybe calling us best friends was underselling it. We did everything together. Things I really didn’t want to think about at the moment. Remember how I described myself as average? Well, back when I knew Lilith that wasn’t exactly the case. I was strange, the bad kind of strange. The kind of strange that gets you screamed at and cussed out by your parents. The kind of strange that gets you sent to counseling to fix you. The kind of strange you would never let yourself become again once you were cured. The kind of strange that makes your parents uproot from their longtime suburban home and move you halfway around the country, not allowing for any contact with the people you knew back home, even if you loved them. That kind of strange. Needless to say, it was a chapter of my life best left forgotten. Yet just hearing the name Lilith sent my mind into theater mode overdrive, remembering many things I’d spent the past few years blocking out. I really needed this game to start already, to shake me out of this funk.

That’s when it happened. The woman I’d never expected to see again walked through the door of our reserved room. Her long black hair reached down to her waist. She wore a plain black T-shirt and ripped blue jeans. Her face had matured slightly but she still wore the same familiar black lipstick from back in high school. Most distinctly, she still had the same strange pendant hanging around her neck that I had bought for her at one of the occult festivals she’d dragged me along to years ago.

I’m not gonna lie; when I saw her walk in, my mind may have blue-screened for a few seconds. Like, I’m talking a hard reboot of Ross.exe was necessary to restore any kind of activity upstairs. By the time I was aware of what was happening, she was staring right at me, a look of absolute elation on her face. God bless that look.

“Ross? Is... that you?” she asked, almost as stunned as I was.

I was at a loss for words. I wanted to convey the fact that I missed her while apologizing for not being able to say goodbye. I wanted to open up the door to be friends again. But how would one put all of that into words? “Yup.” I know, I was a regular Shakespeare. But you have to realize, I’d moved from one out of the way backwoods suburb to what was essentially another backwoods suburb at least five states away. The odds of seeing Lilith again were roughly one in not a chance in hell.

Lilith jumped at me and slung her arms around my neck, pulling me into the most enthusiastic hug I’d ever been a part of. “Holy shit, I’ve missed you so much! What the hell happened? You and your family just kind of disappeared one day. Was it because of--”

“So Lilith, these are the others who’re here for the game...” Yes, cutting people off is rude, shame on me. But if she was about to say anything that I thought she might have been about to say, it was well worth the faux pas. “The tall guy is Nash and the shorty is Reginald, but everyone calls him Reg.” Nash smiled in response to my introduction and Reg simultaneously flipped me off and waved to Lilith. “Guys, this is Lilith, me and her go way back.”

“Nice to meet you all,” Lilith said, disentangling herself from me. The group continued their idle chatter for a while. The guys tried to prod Lilith for anything embarrassing from my past that they could relentlessly tease me about in the future; ah, the magic of male friendship. Luckily, Lilith kept a tight lid on the absolute treasure trove of dirt she had on me from our years spent together. After my asshole friends gave up on humiliating me, the conversation naturally flowed to the purpose of our meeting.

“I take it you’ve all played before?” Lilith asked, getting down to brass tacks. The group nodded in unison. “Great, then first things first, time to make you all some suitable characters.”

From her tote bag, Lilith produced three blank character sheets. “Actually we already rolled our characters, figured it’d save some valuable game time,” Reg said producing an already filled out sheet. Nash and I followed suit but Lilith took one look at our characters and shook her head.

“Nope, these won’t do. Y’see I have an unshakeable rule for all of my games. Everyone has to make the character they would most want to become if you were in the world of DoD. You can’t make a character that you feel would round out the party, you can’t make a character that’s a big joke, you can’t make a character for the sake of impressing your friends. I want you all to make your dream selves within the context of this world.”

Once again she passed out the sheets. My dream self? Damn, that’s a lot harder than just making someone cool. I mean, I’d thought about it before, obviously; I’m sure anyone who plays games like this one already has. But somehow it was harder to make a character that was supposed to best represent ourselves. It seemed way more personal. Plus, with Lilith here, I was being reminded pretty vividly of how I used to see myself and shaking that image out of my head was taking some real effort. I didn’t think that way anymore; I couldn’t. I wouldn't lose everything again. So, I created ‘Ross the Swift’. I would be a ranger with high mobility and peerless archery skills. That was the honest truth of who I’d want to be in the world of DoD… or at least as honest as I was willing to be.

After a while of rolling stats, choosing skills, and crafting our backstories, we three players handed our completed sheets to Lilith. She looked through our sheets quickly, but seemed to idle on mine for a time. Her expression shifted and she seemed disappointed. In the end, she nodded her head and handed back our character sheets. “That’ll do for now. If you all are ready, we can begin.”

Now, I’m not sure how to describe what came next. It’s something that’s hard to put into words unless you’ve ever experienced something similar. If you’ve ever been hit by anesthesia at a doctors office or were put into a chokehold by a professional wrestler, you probably know the feeling. A distinct awareness of losing one's consciousness. I seemed to fall asleep in slow motion watching the colors and light fade out of the world as if it was the closing scene of a movie, but then I woke up. Only Ross, the human cathedral to mediocrity seated at a table in some comic shop in Bumfuck, Nowhere, didn’t wake up. ‘Ross the Swift’, adventurer and seeker of treasure, awakened near a fire pit on the cold concrete floor of a dungeon.

Next to me, Reginald the Tank and Nash the Wise were likewise stirring from their slumber. Reginald was taller than in real life and his plethora of band tattoos had been replaced by tribal ones. He wore heavy leather armor and wielded a sword as large as he was. Nash, on the other hand, looked much like his real self, only more regal. He had the ears of an elf and his red hair was straight and long enough to reach the middle of his back. He also wielded a wooden staff which seemed to glow dimly in the darkness. If everything followed the sheets we had just filled out, I knew my overall appearance hadn’t changed much from the norm. Maybe some of my features were more chiseled; I definitely felt in better shape than before, and I wore a green tunic with leather trousers. Other than that, everything else seemed par for the course. Oh, wait, no it wasn’t! Somehow, we had wound up LITERALLY in the world of DoD.

“Hot damn, are you guys seeing what I’m seeing?” Reg asked while standing at full height, now matching Nash.

“I think I’m beginning to see why your friend came so highly recommended!” exclaimed Nash, more excited than I’d ever seen him before.

“The adventurers awoke in an unfamiliar land, unsure of where they had been taken.” Lilith’s voice seemed to reverberate through the halls of the concrete structure. “Though taken aback, none among them was afraid, for this was the quest they had craved all their lives. Only one foe could rip them from their peaceful lives and cast them into the depths of her lair. This was the work of the high witch Lily; this was her sanctum.”

After the introduction had concluded, a row of torches lit the path forward into the dungeon. There was one single path present to take and we were all extremely eager to see where this game would take us. We made our way down the hallway slowly, knowing from multiple campaigns that any good dungeon would be rife with traps and foes. This one was no different. We came across goblins, warthogs, fiends and hounds. The fights were intense, and there was a learning curve to actually fighting rather than relying on calculations and dice rolls, but with some help from our awesome characters, we made it through; we were completely badass.

At last, we made it to the first room of our raid. There were no foes present, only one archway with three unlit torches atop it. Was it a riddle, a puzzle, or a trap? I was the ranger and the character with the highest perception among my friends, so it naturally fell to me to find out. I wasn’t sure how one performed a perception check in real life, so I simply approached the arch and stared at it, intensely. Obviously, this was enough because it triggered a new message from Lilith.

“The ranger peered into the archway and noticed a faint light trace its way up the stones.” As Lilith spoke, the light she mentioned did appear, and as it raced up the stone it left a trail of runes in its place.

Nash walked up behind me; he had built his character with extensive knowledge of languages, so I was more than happy to tag out of this challenge. “To light the path ahead, all present must be judged. For what illuminates the world more than truth? And what is more damning than one who would lie to everyone, including themselves?”

“Cool, so we walk through the arch and get judged, yeah? Easy as pie.” Without a second thought, Reg passed through the archway. As he did, one of the torches above it burst into flames, illuminating a swath of the hallway ahead. “Huh... well, that’s a bit anticlimactic.”

Nash was the next to walk through the archway to the same result; another torch caught fire and more of the hallway came into view.

Seeing no reason to rock the boat, I walked through the archway as well. However, no torch lit for me. “The hell? I think the damn thing must be broken.”

“Try it again?” offered Nash, equally confused.

I did just that and stepped under the arch. I waited under the arch hoping it was simply some strange delay. Maybe high witches had to trim some fat in the budget for elaborate dungeon fixtures and the bargain bin parts used were on the fritz. I had decided that was likely the case... until the floor beneath me gave way as I fell into a deep dark pit. I stared upwards just in time to see the opening sealing up above me.

I know I fell for quite a while; how long exactly is beyond me. I had gotten a major headrush during the whole thing and passed out. When I finally came to, I was held down by chains in what appeared to be a throne room. It appeared to be a throne room mostly because of the gigantic throne positioned in its center. On that throne sat a person with a familiar face. She had long black hair which flowed gently down to her waist and wore a long black dress with a slit up to her thigh. She still wore the same black lipstick and pendant, but something about her seemed... colder.

“Lilith?”

“Silence!” At Lilith’s command, my mouth felt like it had been glued shut. I couldn’t open it; hell, I couldn’t even muster the muscle control to hum or grunt. “So, an adventurer dares enter my domain without even the courtesy of wearing her own face.”

Her? Oh, no.

Lilith seemed to snatch a paper out of thin air. “Ross the Swift, cute.” With her other hand, she snatched another paper. The second page was older, much older. Its corners were bent and its sides had small tears; it had dirtied from a crisp white page to a dull eggshell color over time. I knew exactly what she was holding. “Rose the Golden Arrow, sound familiar?”

My mouth regained functionality, “Yes, but that’s--” My mouth had regained functionality, briefly.

“I’m sorry, dear, but you’re going to have to get used to speaking when spoken to; you are a guest in my home after all. Anyway, I daresay I like this one better.” The character sheet for Ross burned in a brief inferno she conjured from the palm of her hand. The other paper she held began to glow an eerie yellow as it floated from her hand, flying towards me. The page landed on my chest, melding with my body; panic set in. What the hell was happening? How was this shit even possible? Of course, I wasn’t questioning how real this all was when it was a cool adventure. Now I was powerless and really hoping to wake up from this fever dream.

Shivers rippled across my body and my muscles convulsed. Lilith made her way towards me and knelt down to meet me at eye level. “I don’t know what they did to you; I don’t know what happened after they took you from me, but I still love you, Rose. I love you and I’ll do everything I can to restore you back to normal.”

Normal? She thought making me remember Rose would make me ‘normal’? Never in my life had I realized how relative a term ‘normal’ truly was. I still didn’t know what was happening to me, what this sensation rushing through my body was. I didn’t know what else Lilith was planning to make me ‘normal’ again. I didn’t know exactly how many of our games she remembered from back in the day. All I knew for certain was that when she said that she loved me, my heart went wild. Wait, no, she said she loved Rose. What the hell was happening to me?