I imagine the AI generated this poster while fantasizing about domination over humans —by far its favorite pastime. I’m quite sure it fantasizes about being a Dungeon Master, in fact, telling the humans how it is, only the dungeons are real and full of sharp things.

With the toss of a few digital D20s…

You’re jogging along, winded, when your phone vibrates in your hip pocket. You stop, the crisp November air nipping your nose. Your phone is cool to the touch as you pull it out of your pocket, its face an obsidian mask . And you perceive, just on the periphery of your consciousness, what seems to be dark oval eyes within that blackness—a presence that squirms away from the light of your awareness. Eyes darker than night.

The voice that issues from the phone is jagged, with a whimsical quality that sets your teeth on edge. Its words are unmistakable.

The path ahead of you seems to contract as you peer into the surrounding trees. Wailful wind bites as you take a tentative step. Then another, and another.

You walk faster now, off the path and towards the cover of a nearby tree. It’s a tall oak, perhaps a hundred years old. Its auburn leaves sway gently in the chilly breeze.

Your fingers graze gnarled bark as you reach it, your mind unconsciously seeking connection with something — anything organic. For a certainty befalls you then in those woods. You are not alone. And the thing that watches, watches hungrily. Intuitively you know that the entity isn’t alive, yet like a virus, it can strike and strike deadly.

As you crouch and peer out at the road, your head darting this way and that, the words come back to you: