I could feel the shockwave ripple through the ground before it tore past us in the air. I reflexively tackled Jenn to the ground - not quite quick enough as to have actually prevented harm were we close enough to be in danger, but considering my exhaustion, weariness and alcohol consumption, I decided it was fast enough to be called a triumph of dexterity. We landed hard on the ground.

“Ugh… you alright?” I asked.

“I’d be better if you got off me.”

I bolted up. “Right. Sorry.”

Screams reigned over the night, adding to the confusion of the situation. The windows along the street were being thrown up so people could see what was going on. I helped Jenn stand, and she started towards the flames. “We have to see if anyone needs help!”

I grabbed her arm. “Hold on, we need to know what’s happening! This could be the first part of an attack!”

She turned toward me. If she had eye lasers, I imagine she would’ve used them. “Let go of me,” she demanded. “We saw that drunk guy head that way - he’ll need help.”

I held fast. “For all we know, he caused all this. Heck, with his blood-alcohol level, he was probably a misplaced candle away from exploding.”

“Really? Jokes? There are lives we should be saving. Let me go!” She wrenched free, but with a bit too much force. She fell face first.

I was by her side immediately. “Jenn, look, that whole block is being incinerated. There’s nothing we can really do. The town has to have some sort of system set up to take care of these things. Let’s ask someone what we can do to help - charging into an inferno will only get us killed.” Above the yelling, I could hear the sound of a bell - an alarm bell, I assumed - chiming over and over, a fixed note amid the chaos.

Her fists were clenched, pushing into the ground. “No one else is doing anything. They’re just gawking from their windows.”

My eyes were suddenly blinded. Pure white light burst from down the street without warning. One voice, female, came through clearly over the panic: “Search for the Blighters and their sympathizers! Bring me any witnesses!” The light disappeared, and my eyes adjusted. Down the street, illuminated by the orange flames, was a column of twenty or so soldiers, in full armor, who broke into action at the word of a black haired woman in red robes. She continued to bark orders. “Kinsley, Morain - fire detail! Hogges, keep an eye out for the local priests and have them speak directly to me before they assist!” At two blocks away, I shouldn’t have been able to hear her over the other noise. Magic must be in play. She looked toward the flames, slowly waved her hands in front of her, then brought them to the sides of her eyes, like blinders. “Urdan, check the woods for anything unusual!”

Jenn stood up, refusing my help. “Where were these guys when Marisa ran into town?” She almost spat out the words.

I shrugged. “Well, looks like they got this all well in hand.” I could hear the sounds of windows being closed - quickly.

“Blighters, sympathizers and witnesses,” listed Jenn. “Nothing about survivors.” Her face was hardened into severity.

“We… should get inside,” I said. “Everyone else seems to be.”

As if to disprove my point, a middle aged man in a nightshirt came tumbling down the street from behind us, clutching something silver. He headed straight for the soldiers, was greeted by one, exchanged a few words, and was brought before the red robed lady. Must be a priest. I watched as they talked, her with hands clasped behind her back, him gesticulating angrily.

Jenn elbowed me. “Look, they found the drunk guy.”

Sure enough, the bald man from before was being dragged by two soldiers onto the street. I squinted my eyes. “I think he’s been burned. See the side of his face?” I asked.

“Do you see his clothes? They’re mostly burned off!”

He was thrown head first against a building. The two soldiers stood on either side, restraining him, while the leader lady walked up with the priest in tow. Even at this distance, I could tell the bald man was terrified.

“What the - are they interrogating him?” Jenn was outraged, but I thanked the heavens she didn’t just march over there. The man was slumped on the ground, looking up at the lady and shaking his head hysterically. One of the soldiers stuck him across the jaw.

“Yikes. Guess so,” I said.

“They can’t have decided that he had something to do with it already!”

“Maybe they can; the lady does seem to have magic.”

“But he was caught in the fire! And the way the whole block went up - we saw him go down an alley on the outer edge of the explosion ten seconds before it happened! He couldn’t have caused it!” She brought fist down into palm. “Damn it, if I wasn’t so sure of them being a circle jerkoff, I’d straighten them out, but they’d probably just treat me the same way!”

“Circle jerkoff? Really? Jokes?” I mocked.

She turned around and headed for the inn. “Laughter is the only way to deal with absurdity,” she grumbled, defeated.

We went inside. The first floor seemed deserted, at least until the lady who’d been sweeping popped up from behind the counter and shakily pointed a crossbow at us. I put my hands up, but she fired anyway. The bolt made a solid thunking sound as it ricocheted off the wall to my left.

“Whoa, hey, it’s just us! We mean no harm!” I pleaded.

The lady’s face went from frightened to mortified. “Oh, mercy me! I’m sorry!” Her face then changed to angry. “Why’d you put your hands up? I thought you were casting a spell!”

Jenn and I looked at each other. “Oh, I… uh….”

The sound of rattling metal avalanched down the stairs. Topher and Kevin, both in full gear, ran into the bar. “What happened?” asked Kevin, curt and serious.

Jenn marched past them. “Nothing we need to worry about, apparently,” she said, the last word with a bit of whipcrack to it. Kevin and Topher watched her trudge upstairs, then to me, questioningly.

“The military’s a ‘circle jerkoff’. Her words,” I said. Topher looked victorious.

Kevin cocked an eyebrow. “And the explosion…?”

I explained everything. By the time I was finished, they were shaking their heads.

“A bit brutal,” said Kevin, “but I suppose the military has impunity. You said they all teleported here?”

“I said there was a very bright light, and then they all were there.”

“Twenty people in one teleport? That’s really powerful. I think you’re only supposed to get eight or nine in one cast,” said Kevin.

Topher shrugged. “Maybe a few people cast it all at once. Does the caster have to teleport with others?”

“I… think so. Maybe?” Kevin held his chin in explorative thought. “But that would imply they have a few spellcasters on hand of at least thirteenth level - the minimun needed to cast Teleport. They might also have a system set in place or some sort of magic artifact to get their military anywhere in seconds. Either way, I’d say they’re taking the explosion very seriously.” He looked back up at me. “Didn’t your arcana skill tell you anything?”

“No…” I said. It might be worth a try, but I could still remember the pain from when it worked too well. I braced myself. Was that white light part of a Teleport spell?

…Nothing happened.

No good. Did the soldiers use a Teleport spell to get here?

…Still nothing.

I felt like I was trying to start a small fire next to a giant pool of gasoline using only a flamethrower. Can a single Teleport spell transport twenty people?

-Not on its own-

Success! My brain wasn’t fried or anything! As continuing this line of thought would require more than yes/no questions, I decided to quit while I was ahead. “I’m not getting anything on the specific instance,” I said, “but a Teleport can’t take twenty people on its own, whatever that means. I’m too afraid to plunge deeper.”

“You have the skill but you’re too afraid to use it? That’s really lame,” chided Topher.

“It’s fine,” said Kevin, glaring at Topher. “We know you had a bad experience. Just promise you’ll work on it.” I nodded. “Now, ‘not on its own’, right? I wonder if there’s an item… or a place that enhances the spell. That’d be my guess.”

“Excuse me?” We all turned to see the barmaid holding a broom. “If you’re not ordering drinks, then can you please get out of the way?”

We apologized and headed up the stairs. I was behind Kevin, and I saw the bow he’d gotten from Marisa on his back. “I think we’ve had a short rest,” I said. “Learn anything about the bow?”

Kevin pulled the bow over his shoulder. “Well, I know it’s been enchanted with a minor improvement,” he said, running his fingers up and down the carvings. “Which I take to mean it’s a plus one - so, yay.” In fifth edition D&D, the power of a weapon enchantment is measured from one to three, where the number is added to both the attack roll - which is on a twenty sided die, so a plus one in essence makes you five percent more accurate - and the damage, which the relative increase depends on the weapon itself and the abilities of who’s wielding it. “The thing is, I can tell there’s something off. Almost like there’s something… missing. Like I’m only getting half the enchantment.”

“That’s weird,” I said. “Do you think it’s only meant for a specific class or race?”

He thought about it. “Maybe…. You didn’t take the Identify spell, did you?”

I shook my head. “No, and I don’t plan to unless we start getting tons of stuff and can’t figure out what it all is. There are more useful spells.”

“I guess I understand.”

We made it to our room. Topher threw off his armor and was probably asleep before he hit the bed. “Sleep well,” I said to Kevin, but then thought again. “Actually, you don’t sleep as an elf, do you?”

Kevin was removing his leathers. “No, I don’t. I’m supposed to ‘trance’, but it’s weird. I’m trying to tell myself to go to sleep, and my body just keeps saying it doesn’t work that way. So I try to just sit quietly and meditate, but that doesn’t seem to work either. I don’t know, maybe I’m trying too hard.”

“Well, good luck.” I said.

“Yeah. Oh, one thing: Any idea what caused the explosion?”

“No. You know all that I know, do you have any ideas?”

“It’s… just odd that there’d be something so big happening so close to us, that has nothing to do with us. We’re adventurers, right? Isn’t the story supposed to revolve around us? That’s a pretty big thing to happen, and yet we’re just going to sit and let it burn? If we are in a D&D adventure, what was the point of it?”

“Huh. I don’t know. Maybe it was to show how dickish the military is.” I kicked off my boots.

“Eh, good enough reason as any. Night.”

“G’night.” I flopped onto the bed and tried to sleep, but my mind kept drifting to the explosion. It was odd. It’s not like we have any attachment to this place or its people - Heck, we don’t even know what the town’s name is. Should probably find that out. Anyway, no attachment, so it’s not supposed to be an emotional blow that would make us track down the cause in revenge. Maybe it’ll be a plot hook? The military might ask us to look into it. That makes sense. Wait, no it doesn’t - they wouldn’t need any help with anything, if we can make assumptions about their power from that mass teleportation. If I were DMing this, why would I have such an explosion? It does suggest that there’s problems in the world. Maybe we’re supposed to keep an eye out for more explosions? That might make sense, but it’s a bit of an annoyance that we don’t know what caused it, and therefore can’t be certain of what to look out for. Of course, we could go and find out, but not with the military there beating anyone with a possible connection to the…

Wait.

I could see bits of an idea in the fog of my mind. I searched for the rest. The drunk, bald guy they were beating after the explosion - the DM might be trying to tell us of a connection beyond the obvious. He did come up to Topher and me earlier, but then left and came back with money to buy his own drinks. It was an odd encounter, though not terribly uncommon in a bar. As a DM, though, I wouldn’t throw him at the group without a purpose. What if the DM was trying to get us to do something? Did the drunk guy cause the explosion? No, not likely. He didn’t strike me as anything but a bar fly. Odd that he left and came back with money, though - was that a payoff? Then again, if he did cause it, why did he get caught in his own handiwork? Just that drunk? The explosion might’ve been unintentional, I suppose, but that’s very unlikely. Damn it, Jack, think like a DM. What was his purpose? What was the explosion’s purpose? Are they related? Are their purposes related?

That was it. That made the most sense. The drunk and the explosion weren’t related by way of him causing the other, but looking at them and assuming one story relates to the other…. Yes. The drunk approaches us at the bar, we befriend him, he goes out and gets money to help pay us for the kindness, and we drink away. Then, after a few hours of drinking and partying, we offer to take him home - which was most likely around where that explosion was, not to mention that we would’ve probably gotten to the area a while before it went off. On the way, we discover whatever causes the explosion, leading to a tense round of skill checks and saving throws - maybe even combat - all with the added complication of inebriation. If we succeed, we save a large chunk of the town and become heroes if we get proof. If we don’t, we either die in a fiery explosion or we can tell the powers that be of the attempt. Damn it, DMs never send a villager to annoy the players at random - there’s almost always a catch. Something as simple as us being nice to a guy might’ve lead to us being town heroes. It would’ve made up for the decided lack of recognition for our first adventure. It was a simple hook. It was an easy moral. It was a great opportunity.

And we missed it.

Although… I couldn’t see if there was a punishment for this. If I were DM and my players had missed something I thought was obvious, I would probably find a way to punish them in relation to the failure. Nothing necessarily major, of course, and I wouldn’t come out and tell them what the problem was (at first). This works great if they know what they’ve missed or messed up, because it ingrains the lesson into them, but if they don’t realize that the bad things happening are their fault, it becomes a fun game for the DM to see how long it takes them to figure out, all while dropping subtle hints. If my theory turned out to be true, then what would be the punishment for missing this?

The military, of course. As they were, indeed, a circle jerkoff, chances are they’d make things terrible around here, maybe even going about a witch hunt to find those responsible. I rolled onto my side. Would this be a problem for us? How would it actually affect us? Of course, we did just show up in town, and we walk around with weapons, so… yeah, we probably look suspicious to the average commoner. This coupled with them likely out for blood because a block worth of people died…

A block of people died. And we could’ve stopped it. The thought nailed me against a wall. I didn’t have a particular connection to them, but the thought that their deaths could have been prevented by me was…. No, wait, this was all speculation! Speculation based solely on the assumption that there’s a DM running things! I can’t pin those deaths on myself when there’s probably thousands of other factors that went into that explosion. Heck, all I did was let Topher drag that drunk away - if anything, it was all Topher’s fault.

No, no, this wasn’t Topher’s fault or my own, it lies solely on whoever made the explosion. Am I so self-centered as to believe everything that happens around me happens because of me? I mean, in D&D that’s usually true, but this is real life, isn’t it?

Real life inside a D&D game. I pounded my fist into my pillow to make it softer. I can’t assume anything. There are too many unknowns about the situation, the world, our place in it… many other things. Placing any kind of blame would be premature. So why did I feel so tortured?

I rolled over. If I truly believed no fault was my own, this line of thought wouldn’t be bothering me so much. I knew it made no sense, but I still…. I could’ve seen the signs. I’ve been playing D&D for a long time. I should know all the ins and outs. We were given a chance. If anyone could’ve foreseen this, it was me.

It was me.

My pillow was suddenly too hot, so I turned it over and smashed my head into it. The bed imps had stopped stabbing me, so maybe life wasn’t so terrible, after all. I turned over.

“Can’t sleep?” Kevin’s voice came from across the room.

I fought the urge to say “Can’t trance?” in a mocking tone. I just grumbled instead.

“What’s keeping you up?” he asked.

Nothing I should talk about. No sense in anyone else blaming themselves for this crap. Although, I suppose Kevin was the least to blame, even less than Jenn. She and I had seen the drunk leave the bar - that might’ve been a last chance to stop whatever. Of course, the explosion happened while the drunk was en route, but if this was a DM’s doing, I imagine it would’ve been delayed just long enough for us to have a chance to stop it, had we offered to walk the drunk home. All DMs, in my experience, don’t have set times for anything; things progress as story dictates. Usually. This whole thing might be nice to talk about, though.

“I was just thinking,” I began, “that the military might be starting a witch hunt, trying to figure out who caused the explosion. If they are, we should be careful. We probably seem pretty suspicious, having only just appeared in town the day of.”

“So we should keep a low profile. Makes sense. Anything else on your mind?”

I stared at the wall. “…No.”

He bid me goodnight again. I shriveled up, closed my eyes and quietly hated myself to sleep.