Dave looked at his friends and shuddered at the apparent fate staring up at him from his open palm. The simple, white dice just sat there heavy with the threat of supernatural action.
"You can't be serious," Dave said to Tyler, shaking his head. "After what's happened to Sid how can you possibly expect me to roll these dice and play the game? Look, as far as I'm concerned, I've still not started ... I'm not going to play!"
Chris, his ego still wounded from Dave's earlier barbs, snapped back, "Look who's the nancy-boy coward, now..."
"Shut up, Chris," came the tandem retort from Sid and Tyler.
Tyler looked back to Dave and set his jaw. "The thing is, Dave, we have no idea how to change Sid back. I don't think doctors are going to be able to do anything and -on top of that- the playing pieces already look like us. We don't know what would happen if we simply refused to play. The game already seems to think of us as 'playing'."
"You mean each of us is going to have to roll the dice?" asked Chris, catching on a bit more.
Tyler nodded. "For all we know these changes won't go away until we have a winner."
"Tyler, I don't want to be a lion. Look, I've got friends who are 'Furries'; heck, I even like anthro-animals... But in the real world, I don't want some cursed game to make me into something at random..."
Sid looked at his friend and roommate, and tapped his own playing piece, still on the "CHANGE" space. No one but himself had noticed that it now looked like a humanoid lion ... it had changed as he had. Still, his roommate was understandably nervous and -right now- they were all in a pretty uncertain situation. "Look, Dave, I can understand but -well- it kinda looks too late already. I think we're going to have to tough it out... Maybe if one of us gets to the other side, then... Then..." He trailed off for a moment, hanging his head. "Maybe I can be normal again..."
Silence fell on the small group as they all looked at Dave. The faint click-click-clack of the dice being turned over and over in his palm were the only sounds they could hear in the still room despite the distant noise of their fellow dorm-mates in the rest of the building. Finally, Dave sighed, closing his eyes and sitting down at his chair, next to the leonine Sid.
"Ok..." he muttered quietly. "Let's just hope when this game is over everything's normal again..."
With those words, he dropped the dice and listened to them as the clattered across the board. Tyler walked around the board and sat in the empty chair where between Chris and Sid. The dice rolled and rolled before finally stopping on a "6" and "3".
"Nine," said Sid with foreboding.
Dave's eyes opened. "But that's what you..."
The small playing piece that looked like Dave slowly moved along the board until it reached the same intersection that Sid had reached. Again, the choices were clear: take the shorter path that his roommate had chosen (turning him into a lion) or the longer path that led to the blank, green square.