The dice rolled to a stop, showing 5. As soon as they stopped, Ernest's figurine moved forward along the track, though nobody touched it. It stopped on a green square.
"Whoa, cool, I wonder how it does that?" said Art
"No idea," Doug answered, but this game keeps getting weirder.
As if to prove his point, another card shimmered and appeared in the card space, replacing the instruction card that had been there. This time it was face down. Ernest reached over and picked it up. He read it aloud.
"You've earned a 'head' start toward the prize,
with feathers, beak, and eagle eyes."
"Hmm, so what does that do exactly?" asked Rhonnda.
"Hold on there's some text at the bottom of the card." said Ernest.
The extra text had a header that said "For receiving players knowledge only. Do not reveal." Beneath that it read: "Your sharp eyesight allows you to escape danger easily. Avoid any unwanted effects of a yellow square directed at you."
"What's it say?" asked Rhonnda.
"I'm not supposed to tell you, it's part of the game. It's like what it said in the rules, the change comes with effects that the receiving player will know immediately, but the rest can only learn through observation," Ernest explained.
"So there really is more to this board game. I'm beginning to like this game a bit better," said Jeanne.
"Wait..." Art interrupted. He pointed at Ernest's game piece. "Did it always look like that?" The figurine had the head of an eagle.
"Huh, that's weird, it didn't look like that before..."
Suddenly Jeanne screamed, and pointed at Ernest.
"What?" said Ernest, confused. But then his neck started to itch horribly. He reached up to scratch it and felt... feathers? He looked down across his nose and chin as they expanded from his face, becoming harder. They formed into the hooked beak of a bird of prey. The white feathers spread all over his head, engulfing and replacing his hair and covering his disappearing ears. His eyes were the last to change, turning from a frightened human to the stern, piercing eyes of an eagle.
All of the others were screaming and yelling in shock and disbelief.
"Ahhh! Oh my god, what in the name..." from Art
"Dude, what's happening? You're seriously freaking me out man!" from Doug
"What's happening?!" and a flood of tears from Rhonnda.
Jeanne just screamed some more.
Ernest was trying to make sense of what was happening. He decided to try calming the rest down. "Guys calm down this is not helping," he said. ...Only he didn't say it, his beak wasn't designed for speaking and didn't even move. Instead his voice just sort of projected from him like an audible thought. This only served to make things worse.
After a couple of minutes Ernest managed to calm everyone down.
"What's going on?" asked Rhonnda, still sounding frightened.
"I think we now know exactly what the game meant by 'changes,'" Ernest said, or rather, thought out loud.
"But that's impossible, how could this happen?" argued Jeanne.
"It must be magic," Art responded, "The game does appear to be really old, and a lot of the symbols on the board and box look like they could be magic."
"Oh right, magic? That's what you think?" said Jeanne. "Magic isn't real, it only exists in books or movies."
"I agree with Art," said Ernest. "It must be magic."
"I don't think so, man," Doug joined the argument. "I think you're just playing a way too elaborate prank on us."
Ernest insisted. "No, seriously, you know how the game mentioned eagle eyes? It's real, I can tell because right now I can see everything WAY better than before."
"Yeah, right."
"I'm not joking, right now I can read the license plate numbers of that pick-up across the street. I can read the ingredients list on that bottle of soda on the counter from here. I can even tell you that Mrs. Livingstone in here house across the street is making apple cobbler, through the windows I can see her cookbook opened to that recipe." He read them aloud as he said he could.
"That's incredible!" said Rhonnda. She reached over to touch Ernest's face. Her hand paused, but Ernest gave a reassuring nod, which looked a bit strange with an eagle's head. She stroked his neck, which made Ernest feel a bit uncomfortable. Ernest plucked a feather, with just a prick of pain, and handed it to her. Rhonnda examined it and announced "It's a real bird's feather." She passed it around so the others could look at it.
"This is actually really cool," Ernest insisted. "I wonder what else this game can do?" He looked at Rhonnda, then picked up the dice and handed them to her. She gazed into his piercing eyes for a moment, then made up here mind. Rhonnda accepted the dice from Ernest and, after a deep breath, rolled them onto the board...