Tales of the Lorekeepers 01 - Rise of the Red Dragon

and decorated. He decided he would get a few of them. After a while, he picked out an ogre carrying a wooden stick, a wizard with an impossibly long beard, a knight in armor and a set of two demon wolves. He quickly estimated the total in his head, so he did not spend too much of his budget in one place.
    “Hey Sam, what about this?” shouted Lucian behind him.
    Sam turned around to see his friend holding a weapon so large he could hardly move without knocking over items next to him.
    “Come on, Lucian, don’t be ridiculous. That’s a freaking crossbow!”
    “It’s made of awesomeness, man. Pure, genuine, kick-you-in-the-butt awesomeness.”
    “Well, as cool as it sounds, my dad will never allow me to keep it. How much is it, anyway?”
    “I don’t know, like fifty bucks or something. You have to get this, Sam, you just have to.”
    “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t actually work, Lucian.”
    “Oh my God, you’re such a dork. Fine, I’ll keep looking, but I still think you should get the crossbow.”
    “Whatever. Let me know if you see a broadsword or a claymore, though. I’m still looking for a sword to use this weekend.”
    Samuel moved down the long counter to another section of the store, where they kept the board games and trading cards. He studied the boxes carefully, looking for anything new and exciting that he could try with Lucian. Regrettably, everything was old stuff he had seen dozens of times before. Still, he asked the clerk for a few booster packs of a game called Sorcery, which he liked to play with Lucian.
    He then checked in the glass display where they kept the accessories like geographical maps representing imaginary worlds and multi-faceted dice of all shapes and colors. Again, there was nothing of real interest in there either.
    Samuel was about to give up, and was even considering the crossbow Lucian was still carrying, when a strange object caught his eye. He bent over the counter to get a better look. It looked like a misshapen cube, or a bone with four or five unbalanced sides, forming a strange pyramidal shape. He could not immediately say what the strange object was, but then he saw a second one, different, but with a shape roughly the same as the first one.
    They must be replicas of old dice, he thought.
    They appeared to be made of some material that perfectly imitated ivory, with impressive details. Whoever the manufacturer was, they had obviously developed a technique that reproduced the aging of the material remarkably well, as the dice seemed to date from antediluvian times.
    Moving along the counter, he saw a black set of the odd dice, made in the same way, but with a slightly different finish and different marks and scratches. They also seemed to be extremely ancient, and looked handmade.
    However, he could not help but notice that, considering the amount of work the artisan had put into the dice, it was strange that he had forgot to inscribe any number on them, leaving all sides completely blank. Then again, maybe it had been done on purpose, so that whoever intended to use them could add whatever mystical rune or magical sigil he could think of to the dice.
    “Excuse me,” he asked a young clerk who was reading behind the counter. “How much are these?”
    The employee slowly raised his head and walked over to Samuel. Without much enthusiasm, he looked at the dice. Sliding open a glass door, the clerk grabbed the black set.
    “No, not those,” said Samuel. “The other ones, please. The white ones. How much are they?”
    The clerk looked at Samuel and sighed loudly. “Bob! How much are these?” he yelled across the store.
    “How the hell should I know? It’s your section,” the other clerk yelled back.
    The clerk turned back to Samuel, just as Lucian was joining them, still carrying the crossbow made of awesomeness.
    “Well, they’re unique items for sure,” continued the clerk, suddenly trying to act as if he were a museum curator. “They’re handmade and very rare. Normally, we sell this kind of treasure for about fifty dollars.”
    “Fifty bucks!” screamed Lucian. “For a pair of dice? You have got to be kidding me!”
    “Look, fatty,” answered the clerk. “These are unique items. You won’t find anything like them anywhere else. Think about how cool your friend here will look with the other geeks when he throws bones like these babies during your basement games.”
    “They don’t even have numbers on them,” countered