Pre-Chapter: An Introduction to Mayhem

  The air in the twisted, petrified forest crackled with a malevolent energy that smelled faintly of ozone and old blood. Before the party stood a gate of rusted iron and sharpened bone, woven together in a way that suggested it had grown rather than been built. It was the only entrance to a grim-looking castle keep, a jagged black tooth punching into the bruised purple sky.

  "Right, so the plan is simple," Kaelen, the human Spearman, began, his voice a low, steady anchor in the oppressive quiet. He was already polishing his spearhead with a small cloth, a nervous habit he’d never admit to having. "Liam, you scale the eastern wall, get a vantage point. Willow, prepare a spell to obscure our entry. Elmsworth, once we're..."

  "Plan? Bah! The only plan a gate like that needs is a dwarven battering ram!" a voice thick with ale boomed.

  Faelar Stonefist, the drunken dwarven tank, spat on his hands and rubbed them together, his knuckles like a collection of river stones. He took a long, gurgling pull from a seemingly bottomless waterskin that definitely didn't contain water, then wiped his beard with the back of a gauntlet.

  "Faelar, wait for the signal!" Kaelen hissed, but it was like telling the tide not to come in.

  With a roar that was less a war cry and more a belch of defiance, Faelar charged. He wasn't running so much as he was falling forward with conviction, his short legs churning, his heavy axe bouncing against his back. The rest of the party watched in a shared moment of horrified resignation.

  Every. Single. Time, Kaelen thought, his jaw tightening so hard he felt a molar creak.

  Faelar hit the gate not with his axe, nor his shoulder, but with the full, unyielding force of his entire drunken being. There was a percussive CRUNCH of splintering bone and a screech of tormented iron. The gate didn't so much break as it simply... gave up. It burst inward, and Faelar, having met with no resistance where he expected it most, continued his forward trajectory, face-planting spectacularly into the muddy cobblestones of the castle courtyard. He lay there for a second, groaning, a small puddle of spilled ale forming by his head.

  Inside the courtyard, a dozen robed cultists and two hulking, vaguely goat-like demons froze mid-ritual. One cultist, holding a writhing snake, simply let it drop. A demon, its skin the color of dried blood, slowly turned its horned head to its companion and made a low, guttural noise that sounded suspiciously like, "The hell was that?"

  Silence reigned for a full three seconds. Then the rest of the party arrived.

  "Well, the door's open!" Liam, the Elvin Ranger, chirped, vaulting gracefully over Faelar’s prone body. He landed, did a little spin, and flung a throwing knife. The knife missed the snake-dropping cultist entirely, ricocheted off a gargoyle's head with a loud PING, and sliced through a rope holding a large, netted cage. The cage dropped to the ground, releasing a torrent of what looked like angry, multi-legged badgers. Chaos had found its catalyst.

  "Oh, you poor thing!" Willow, the gnomish Cleric, cried out, rushing to Faelar's side, completely ignoring the now-screaming cultists being swarmed by demonic badgers. "Did you hurt your handsome face?" She began to chant, her hands glowing with a soft, green light. A beautiful, life-giving aura surrounded the dwarf. Unfortunately, her nature magic wasn't always precise. Thick, thorny vines erupted from the cobblestones, wrapping lovingly around Faelar's legs and anchoring him to the ground. The vines then continued their enthusiastic growth, snaking out to entangle the two closest demons, who bleated in confusion as they were hoisted upside down.

  "That's... not what I was trying to do," Willow mumbled, patting a thorny vine apologetically.

  From the shattered gateway shuffled Elmsworth, the ancient human Wizard. He paid no mind to the battle, his eyes focused instead on the chicken perched on his shoulder. "You see, Nugget, the change in air pressure clearly caused a momentary distortion in your plumage's chronal alignment," he lectured.

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  Nugget, who had been a sleek, black chicken moments before, was now a fluffy, bright pink ball of feathers. It cocked its head, let out a sound like a bicycle horn, and took flight. The chicken flew in a wobbly, impossible loop before dive-bombing a cultist leader who was trying to rally his forces. Nugget landed squarely on the man's head, flapping its pink wings and pecking furiously at his scalp.

  "Get it off! Get this infernal, rose-colored beast off me!" the cultist shrieked, running in circles.

  "Now I'm stuck!" Faelar roared, finally coming to his senses and realizing he was now part of the local flora. He started hacking at the vines around his legs with his axe. "Kaelen, you useless stick-waving bastard, give me a hand!"

  Kaelen was, in fact, quite busy. He had engaged two cultists at once, his spear a dizzying whirlwind of polished steel. He parried a cursed dagger, spun to trip one assailant with the shaft of his spear, and thrust the point to keep the other at bay. "I'm a little occupied trying to prevent our imminent, messy deaths!" he grunted, sweat beading on his brow. "Liam! Suppressing fire!"

  "Can't! Out of knives!" came a shout from above. Liam was now clambering up the side of a barracks, having decided the ground floor was too crowded. He reached into his satchel, rummaged around, and came out empty-handed. His eyes darted around in panic before landing on a loose roof shingle. With a shrug, he ripped it free and flung it like a discus. The shingle sailed through the air and smacked a demon squarely between the eyes with a comical THWACK. The demon staggered back, more surprised than hurt, and stumbled over one of its own freshly-released badgers.

  "Improvise. Adapt. Overcome," Liam muttered to himself with a proud smile, just before the section of roof he was standing on gave way and he crashed through it with a splintering crunch and a yelp of surprise.

  "Fireball! I shall incinerate them with a roaring conflagration!" Elmsworth announced to the courtyard at large. He began to chant, his hands weaving intricate patterns in the air. A ball of orange energy started to form between his palms, growing larger and hotter. The remaining cultists backed away in terror.

  "Finally," Kaelen breathed, dispatching his last opponent.

  The fireball swelled to the size of a pumpkin. Elmsworth drew his hands back for the final thrust when Nugget, who was now the size of a hawk and shimmering with all the colors of an oil slick, chose that exact moment to swoop down and try to snatch the glowing ball of fire.

  "No, Nugget, that's not a seed!" Elmsworth cried.

  The chicken's beak made contact with the unstable magic. The fireball didn't explode. It imploded, collapsing in on itself with a sound like a giant sucking his teeth. In its place, a thousand tiny, harmless, multicolored bubbles floated out into the courtyard, gently popping on bewildered demonic horns and confused cultist noses. One of the goat-demons, entranced, reached out a clawed hand to poke one.

  Faelar finally freed himself from the vines, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, and charged the keep's main door. Liam stumbled out of the barracks, covered in straw and coughing up dust. Willow had managed to accidentally grow a patch of sentient, very aggressive mushrooms. Elmsworth was trying to coax Nugget down from a statue. Kaelen just stood in the middle of it all, his shoulders slumped in defeat, a single, iridescent bubble resting on the tip of his spear. They were, against all odds, winning.

  Just as Faelar’s axe was about to bite into the heavy oak of the final door, a voice, calm and impossibly loud, echoed through the courtyard, cutting through the din.

  "Wait."

  Everything froze. A cultist, mid-scream, was locked in place. A bubble paused its descent. Faelar's axe hung inches from the door.

  A figure shimmered into existence in the center of the courtyard. He was impeccably dressed in a simple grey robe and looked like a man who had spent far too much time in a library and had found it all deeply disappointing. He pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed. He took a slow, deep breath.

  "Hold on. Stop. Just... stop," the Game Master said, his voice laced with an eternity of weariness. He opened his eyes and surveyed the tableau of utter, unmitigated chaos. His gaze drifted from the mushroom patch, to the upside-down demons, to the bubble on Kaelen’s spear, and finally to Elmsworth's chicken, which had turned a sullen shade of plaid.

  He sighed. It was a sigh that contained the death of galaxies and the agony of filing paperwork in triplicate.

  "No. This isn't where the story began," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Not even close. We have to go back. Way back." He pointed a finger at the plaid chicken. "Back to before that was even a thing. Let's show them how this glorious, unmitigated disaster actually started."

  The world seemed to hesitate, and then it began to unravel, the colors bleeding away from the edges as the entire scene dissolved like a memory in the rain.