Burned Out [Completed]

Real Life Dungeons and Dragons

I cried out in surprise, throwing out my arms to try and catch myself. As soon as my hands touched the lava, they submerged.

I should've made contact with the bottom of the fountain's basin by the time my forearms were covered, but then my elbows disappeared, then my shoulders were gone. I closed my eyes when my head went through. I didn't need lava in my eyes, thank you very much.

I felt the sensation of falling a couple more feet, then I made jarring impact with something hard. My hand light up with a searing pain.

I opened my eyes to find myself in Sute's domain.

That should have been extremely obvious, but I was kind of surprised the ritual worked. Who knew, I guess.

I turned my head, looking for the others. I spotted each of them at least fifteen feet away from me, except Martin, who was laying spread eagle to my right. I nudged him and he groaned. I choked back a scream. I had forgotten about the pain in my hand.

Oops.

I looked at it and winced. My index finger was definitely not supposed to bend that way.

Martin was sitting up now, rubbing his head.

"Hey, guys," I called out, ignoring my finger for the time being, "are you all okay?"

Jin had stood and was already making his way to Martin and me, looking at his surroundings with wary eyes. "I'm good. What is this place? It looks like the Cold War ended differently here."

Well he wasn't wrong. "Assana? Wynn?"

"We're good," Assana replied, helping Wynn to his feet. Wynn was dramatically flopping around, making this task difficult, so I knew he would be okay. His sense of humor was intact.

"So where are we?" Jin repeated.

I turned on Jin. "I've only been here about four times before, so I could be wrong, but based on those moldy Council members specifically asking Sute to banish us, I think it's safe to say we're in Sute's realm."

Martin winced at my tone. "Jeez, Oliver. Take the sass down a notch."

I muttered an apology, cradling my hand with the broken finger.

Jin didn't seem bothered by my sarcastic attack. "What's wrong with your hand?"

I held it up, my bent pointer finger flopped awkwardly as I did, sending fresh impulses of pain shooting up my arm.

"Yeah that's broken," Jin observed as Mart made a retching noise.

"No duh." I walked over to one of the rock-like trees and stripped off two pieces of the fossilized bark with my good hand. "Assana, have you got a hair tie?"

She removed one from her wrist and handed it to me.

I sandwiched my finger between the two pieces of wood and bound it all together with the band. I think I made a pretty decent improvised splint.

"Where do we go now?" Assana was looking at me. Wait a minute, everyone was looking at me, even Jin.

"Guys, I don't know that much about this place. I never thought to go exploring."

I could tell that wasn't the answer they wanted, but I couldn't give them a different one. I'd never had to go look for anything. I had no idea how to lead my friends.

Now you see what I meant in the beginning when I told you I was trapped in a nightmare. Only the situation was worse than I originally let on; I had gotten my friends trapped with me.