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“Oh, we’re screwed,” Sanjiv croaks.

“Hide!” Kashvi yells.

“Is there anything to hide behind?” Mark asks Sloane.

“There’s not a lot, but there is a clump of trees you could try. But everybody needs to roll a stealth check.”

We all hide behind the trees. Sanjiv shakes his head. “What do we do? Even at Level 4, I don’t see how we can take on a dragon and be alive at the end of it.”

“What if you tried speaking to the other animals in the vicinity?” Mark replies. “Maybe if we can gather enough animal allies, they could help?”

Kashvi nods. “And if we can escape alive, then maybe we can find people who live in the area and have been hurt by the dragon—they could join forces with us.”

“Um…what if we just talk to it?” I ask.

They all gawk at me.

“One wrong move and that dragon will decimate you, Nasria,” Kashvi says. “I’m craving another battle, but I only like the ones we can all walk away from.”

“I may have peed myself a little, but I don’t think the dragon will notice,” Mark says, making us all laugh.

“Dragons have an impressive sense of smell, so it just might,” Logan replies.

“Dragons are also intelligent,” I argue. “They can hold conversations. Why don’t we try to figure out what it wants or if there’s some way we can get it to move from this area? If it doesn’t work, then we can focus on gathering allies and killing it.”

“Unless it burns you to a crisp when you open your mouth,” Sanjiv says.

I frown. “Don’t you think there’s something not right about all this? Granted, I’m not the trusting sort, but I don’t trust this king. He’s up to something and I want to know what. It’s very possible the king is trying to get us killed.”

“You know,” Sloane says, and their voice is now deep and gravelly to mimic a dragon. “I am not blind. I can see you all hiding behind those trees like cowards.”

We all freeze like we’re actually standing in front of a dragon instead of sitting in a basement in Ohio.

“Welp, I guess we failed our stealth checks,” Sanjiv whispers.

“Adris,” I say quietly, turning to Logan. “Will you come with me to talk to the dragon?”

“Why me?”

“You’re the most charming and persuasive in the group, aren’t you? I’m not sure we want only the grumpy dwarf talking to the creature that can kill us in two nanoseconds.” I give him a small smile. “And didn’t you tell me that you’d trust me with your life?”

His expression warms, and this time I can tell it’s not just Adris looking at me like that. “I didn’t realize that commentwould be tested so quickly, but I won’t rescind it. All right, let’s go have a polite chat with a dragon.”

The session ends with a fun twist—the dragon making a counterproposal for us to join with it and overthrow the king instead. Our group hasn’t decided what to do—especially since that would mean two characters would have to backstab their own father—but the twist certainly keeps us focused during the session. However, it’s hard to be 100percent absorbed in that when Sloane is acting so weird.

As soon as the livestream is over, Logan turns his attention to Sloane. “Is everything okay?”

It looks like I wasn’t the only one to notice.

“Yeah, seriously,” Sanjiv says. “I know they say to be scared of a smiling DM, but your angry face is pretty terrifying. At one point I thought you really were going to have that dragon kill us.”

Sloane sits back and plays with their hair. “The good news is we’ve had more new viewers these past few weeks than we have since the end of the last campaign. We’re up to fifty-five. It’s just…” They look at me and I wring my hands with worry. Did I mess up the game somehow? Another thought rises—were my worries about Paige and Caden justified? My eyes cut to Logan, even though I know he’s the last person I should be looking at.

Kashvi sits up. “What’s going on?”

“We have trolls in the chat room.”

Kashvi rolls her eyes. “Oh, that. I’m surprised it took so long for them to find us. What are they saying? Critiquing our role-playing skills?” She glances at me. “Or are they just annoyed that teenage girls are playing D&D?”