Bert briefly considered saving him, but White had been very nasty, and Bert suspected he wouldn’t change. So Bert let him fall into the lava with a little splash.
He felt a little badly. What had made White such a despicable person? Bert didn’t like him, but also didn’t want anyone to suffer, not even nasty people.
A moment later White burst out of the lava in a snarl, his dragon wings flapping and his entire body covered in magma that had burned off his hair and clothing. A naked and crispy necromancer fluttered in Bert’s direction with skeletal dragon wings, only his long curved ears evidence that he was still a dark elf.
Bert considered a dozen responses, but the die vibrated in Bert’s hand and he knew time was short. If he didn’t diffuse whatever was happening right now, they were all going to die.
They only had seconds. A great deal of work needed to be done in a terrifyingly brief span, so he got right to work.
First, Bert had to deal with White, as expediently as possible. Being the game master had opened up a whole bunch of things he didn’t even know he knew. Bert could make things and take things away. Could he take White away?
Hmm. Since Bert had taken the d20, White’s character sheet had shifted again. He was a player once more, just like Kit. But White had made it so that no one could change his character sheet, and Bert didn’t see a way around it.
Hmm. Bert relied on the intelligence from dark lord trope, but even sticking his tongue out didn’t provide an immediate answer. Bert stepped to the right in midair and dodged White’s charge as he continued to chew on the problem.
Hmm.
Kit left sometimes. So did her friends. He’d followed the adventurers for a long time, and when they finished their adventures they disappeared. They went somewhere.
“Die show Bert where Kit go.” Bert held the die up and peered at it the same way his mother peered at him when she wanted him to do something.
In his head, a sort of mental picture, Bert saw a strange far away world. The place where Kit went when she wasn’t playing. It seemed a very, very long way away.
“Okay, rock.” Bert shook the rock to make the magic more bubbly. “Send White back to strange world!”
The dark elf swiped at Bert’s face with a clawed hand, but as the claws neared his nose White simply vanished, and Bert sensed that he had been ejected from the game world. How convenient.
Bert zoomed up through the volcano, and as he passed the Eye of Soreness his friend and mentor bobbed up and down. “He’s beginning to believe!”
Bert reached into nothingness and retrieved a pair of sunglasses and a leather trench coat, which made him look quite mysterious. Then he looked down at his world from high up in the sky.
The d20 pulsed, and Bert harnessed the energy. Bert reached into the stone and found each of the monsters. “Sheila, Brownie Monster, hungry rhino person!” Bert hesitated and his shoulders slumped. He needed to include everyone. “Yes, even annoying bird people from Naz. All be alive again!”
Bert thrust out a hand, and all the monsters appeared again, just as they had been in life. They all smiled up at him, especially Sheila who was recording the entire thing with her rhinestone phone. The spider wrapped her legs around the gulls and gathered them to her like a gaggle of stray ducklings. “Selfie!”
“B is for brownie!” Brownie Monster hopped up and down, and he and the rhino hugged as they joined the photo.
Bert threw his hands up and cheered. This d20 was amazing! Bert could fix whatever he wanted. He knew time was short, but he had a few more quick changes he needed to make, then he could deal with the vibrating.
Bert focused on the wights, and turned them back into the people they’d once been. He undid all the nastiness White had inflicted, and then rippled the magic outward across the whole world. Bert fixed the High Elf village, and turned Bobertown back into a proper town, and even made a few improvements to the plumbing.
In three eye blinks Bert restored his realm to the way it should be. He fixed everything, and he even made a pair of new collars for Lefty and Righty.
But the second problem still remained…the d20 was going to cause the whole world to explode. He had to stop that, but how? Bert didn’t know.
He did know that he could save Kit and Boberton, at the very least. Bert clutched the die more tightly, and spoke to it, since he figured that would give the magic a greater chance of working. “D20, move Boberton and Kit to where Bert send White. Also, make gnome be alive again, and send him too.”
The die vibrated faster, and he realized each time he used it the die came closer to blowing up. It would happen soon on its own, but everything he used the die for hastened the end of the world.
He had to get the die away from here. He had to save everyone. What point was there in giving Boberton new collars if the whole world was going to blow up? His mum would be very cross if Bert were responsible for ‘sploding her.
The die was the problem. He needed it to be elsewhere. He could use the die to move things. Could he use the die to move itself? If so, where would he send it? He could put it in the swamp. Nobody would much care what happened to the trolls, who’d probably survive the explosion anyway.
No, that wouldn’t do. The explosion would be very large indeed. It would probably destroy the entire world, and that meant no matter
