Broken Mates

Chapter One

2 years later…

“Alright, you’ve managed to pick the lock on the door. It opens easily. Standing in the doorway, you notice it is almost entirely dark. Since you are a Genasi, you do not have dark vision. Do you enter or stay back?”

“Do I sense anything?”

“Roll for perception.” Kaiya rolls her D20, landing on 16, and with her +2 Perception modifier, she gets an overall 18. This has to be good. Kaiya looks into the monitor on the right where the Zoom chat shows her four other friends playing different roles and their friend James who is set as the Dungeon Master for this campaign. Kaiya notices him smirk slightly knowing how she will react. She is going to use this to her advantage immediately by doing the exact opposite of what she would normally do.

“You don’t sense anything in the room.”

“What about magic? Do I sense anything magical or spellbound?”

“You’re a monk and you don’t have any magical qualities as of yet, you cannot detect magic.”

It was worth a try. Sometimes she can pull extra information from him in these types of situations. Always information he does not want to give up without one of his players earning it. Seems he is on his A-game tonight.

“Hold on, let me strategize for a moment.”

“You have two minutes. Starting a timer. If you don’t come up with something by the end, I am rolling your reaction for you.”

In her team’s secret text chat:

Kaiya: Does anyone have detect magic?

Jen: I don’t have that yet. I focused on healing since we never have a healer.

Avery: I’m the only other spellcaster and I am out of spell slots from the fight outside this place.

Katelyn: I told you we should have rested at the campsite before coming here!

Kaiya: Alright, I’ll go in. I have the highest HP left and a decent AC. Katelyn, ready your axe just in case something or someone comes out and after us. Spellcasters stand a ways back. Ace and Katelyn, be ready to use force just in case.

Katelyn: You got it.

“Alright, what are you going to do? You have ten seconds left.”

“I’m going to walk in, can I light my torch on the way in?”

James smirks in his video screen while looking at his game notes. “Sure.”

“Okay, I step in…”

“I’m going to ready my axe in case of an attack!”

“Alright, noted,” James responds to Katelyn. “You walk into the room with a torch and suddenly…” He rolls a 12 in the chat. “You are attacked by a force that comes from the back of the room. As it gets close enough you notice it is a broom.” The group erupts into laughter. James rolls on behalf of the spelled object’s attack. 17.

“What’s your AC?”

“15.”

“Okay, rolling for damage.” It’s a 10.

“Great, I’m down to 3 hit points. Do we need to roll for initiative?”

“No, you can attack the broom if you want.”

“I’ll just kick the damn thing across the room.”

“The broom attacks you again.” James rolls to attack her character again. This time it’s a 12. “You successfully dodge the second attack of the broom.”

“Alright I’m over this mother f*****g broom. I’m gonna put the torch down and light the b***h on fire.”

“You successfully light the spelled broom on fire. From the bristles up to the top of the handle, it is in flames.”

“Alright, I’ll step on the flames and embers so I don’t catch anything in the room on fire.”

“Okay, sounds good.”

“Seriously you almost died because of a broom!” Ace roars through the zoom call. The rest of the group bursts into laughter, including Kaiya.

“Yeah, yeah, at least I got us in. It was obviously locked for a reason!” Kaiya retorted. “Can we see the room now?”

“You notice torches on the wall that need to be lit in order to light up the room,” James leads.

“I will use my torch to light them up,” she responds.

“Alright, you light them up and see everything in the room. You notice up against the right side of the room, a painting of a little girl holding a doll. She looks eerily similar to the spirit you encountered in the cemetery outside. She looks happy in the painting but you notice her eyes are looking directly at you. As you move in the room, you notice her eyes follow you everywhere.”

Katelyn makes a fake ghost “ooooooo” sound.

“Where is she located in the painting,” Ace asked.

“It looks as though she is in a little girl’s bedroom.”

“Must be hers,” Jen says.

“Let’s keep checking out the room. That doll in the painting must be the one we are supposed to find. Hopefully it has the key in it,” Kaiya says.

James leads the group through the room and the different objects in place, allowing the group to inspect the items. When Kaiya comes across a chest James allows her to easily open it with her lockpicking tools. He had to, she rolled a nat 20.

“Alright, you’ve successfully opened the chest. Inside it you see…” James looks at the time. “Well, that’s it for tonight, we will get back together next week.” The whole group groans loudly. Kaiya screams. Not the groaning scream. It was a scream you would hear coming from a girl in a horror film. She perfected it in her drama class Freshman year. Yes, she’s being dramatic on purpose.

Suddenly the door to her bedroom burst open with her brother, Kellan, and his best friend Callum. “What happened?!” The two see Kaiya turn around, wide eyes, in her dark room lit only by the computer screen. She sees them and starts laughing so hard she falls out of her chair and onto the floor with her Beats still on her head, leaving her computer screens in full view. One with some weird looking chessboard type screen with images on it and the other with a Zoom call with her friends’ faces on it with some weird medieval-type music playing in the background on the Alexa.

“Kaiya!” Kellan yells. “Did you seriously use your drama queen scream for this stupid game?!”

Still laughing trying to get up, Kaiya hears her friends in her headphones. “Damn Kaiya, your brother is HOT!”

“Ah Kaiya, somebody’s got some ‘splainin’ to do!”

Kaiya gets up and immediately shuts down the computer without a word. She would text them all in their group chat later whatever happens and to yell at James about how he was a horrible friend for leading them on with the chest after they spent the last three four-hour sessions looking for a damn doll that may or may not have a skeleton key in it.

“Okay, first of all,” she holds up her index finger, “what are you doing here? I thought you were going to some party and I was supposed to have the house to myself tonight. Second of all,” she holds up her middle finger with her index finger, “that door was locked.” She pointed to her bedroom door. “Did you break my door?”

Kellan, taking a moment to look at what his sister was pointing at, Kellan and Callum noticed the broken lock and torn up pieces of wood from the abrupt entry. “You know what Kai? It’s not my fault, we heard you scream bloody murder and thought something happened to you. It wouldn’t be the firs-” he was cut off by Callum.

“Dude, shut up, that’s low.”

“She’s MY sister and she should know better after her…history.” Kellan looks at his sister who suddenly looks withdrawn like she is having flashbacks of that night again.

“Look what you did, you brought it back up. Again. I’ll go get the whiskey.” With that, Callum leaves the room, leaving the siblings alone. A big mistake.

“Look, Kai, I’m sorry. It slipped ou-”

“You’re not sorry, Kel. You do this all the time. Whenever I start to forget and start feeling happy, you always manage to drag me back to that place. When are you going to just let me be?”

“I don’t mean to. I jus-”

“Save it. I don’t need you and your friend babysitting me and I sure as hell don’t need you to remind me of something that plagues my dreams every single night. Why don’t you both go do what you’re good at and betray your future mates and live life without consequences, yeah?” With that, Kaiya shoved past her brother and walked down the stairs. On the way she passed Callum holding a bottle of whiskey.

“Kai, wait!” he tried to call after her. Kaiya ignored him and left the house.

“Nice dude, you really managed to f**k things up with her again.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk.”