Gambling at the Oasis

“We’ve been walking for hours. Where the heck are we even going anyways?” I breathed heavily, as sweat dripped down my forehead. The sun just rose, but the desert heat was already unbearable. Walking around in a black hoodie definitely wasn't helping either.

“We're headed to the province's capital, Blackjack Crossing.” Despite trying his hardest to look unbothered, Rollnaldo huffed and puffed, as he started struggling to pull his cart through the sand.

“And what's supposed to be at this place?” I wondered.

“It's the biggest city in the province. We can stock up on supplies for our journey. More importantly though, it's one of the only places we can cross into the Wager Woods Province from.” He explained.

“Judging from the name, I hope Wager Woods isn't this hot.” I wiped my forehead with the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

He gave a casual shrug. “I wouldn't know. I've never been outside the Dicey Desert.”

My lips were becoming increasingly chapped, from the dry heat. I attempted to lick them, but my mouth was so dry that it didn't do any good. “You wouldn't happen to have anything to drink and maybe a pair of pants in those crates would you?”

He shook his head in refusal. “No and even if I did, this isn't a charity.”

“Don’t you just sell cheap bootleg junk, though?” I retorted.

He stopped walking for a moment and looked at me with an offended look on his face. “First of all, I prefer to call it ‘off-brand merchandise’ and second, this stuff wasn't cheap. I had to jump through hoops to get someone to make reproductions of Matthew the Giant Twine Ball™ products. In case you didn't know, Matthew is pretty famous throughout the kingdom. I can easily make a small fortune from all these products.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay sorry... Are we at least close to this city? I'm dying of thirst.”

“No, we're still several hours out, but just up ahead there's a place we can take a rest at.”

If Rollnaldo hadn't just pointed it out to me, I would have assumed what laid in front of us was a mirage. As we crossed over a set of tall sand dunes, just below was a small pond that glistened from the sun reflecting off of it. Surrounding it was a set of palm trees and a small shack made from rusty sheet metal.

“It's a miracle!” Suddenly finding the strength to run, I made a dash toward the body of water.

As I got closer, I realized that the metal shack was actually a toll booth. Before I could get any closer, a yellow bar attached to the side of it swung down in front of me.

“Nobody enters my oasis without paying the toll, man.” A sleepy sounding voice echoed. Inside the rusted up booth, stood a hippy dude with matted sun bleached hair, wearing a pair of rose tinted sun glasses and a yellow and white Baja hoodie with the sleeves cut off.

I turned to Rollnaldo. “You got any money?”

He patted a crate on his cart with his hand. “Nope. I spent it all on this merch.”

Likely from my desperate need to hydrate myself, an idea manifested itself in my head. “Hey Rollnaldo, you said in this world gamblords can challenge each other for any reason, right?”

He shot me a grin. “I see where you're going with this.”

I turned back toward the hippy guy. “I challenge you to a Gamble Showdown. If I win, me and my companion can use this oasis as much as we want for free.”

“If that's what you want, man.” Rummaging around in his shack for a moment, he pulled out a small wooden camping table and three red plastic party cups. “We'll settle this with a simple shell game.” He held up a wrapped stick of chewing gum. “I'm going to hide this gum under one of these cups and then mix them up. If you can choose the correct one, you win.”

“Simple enough.” With my gambling sorcery, which allowed me to… actually I still didn't really know how it worked, but it seemed like it altered probability to be in my favor. In a game like this, there was no way I could lose.

Get ready to lose, sucker.

The hippy placed the gum under the center of the three cups. He then proceeded to slide them around the table. Not bothering to pay attention, I simply cast my gambling sorcery.

As he stopped shuffling the cups around, he lifted his hands away and put them to his side. “Take your pick, man.”

“It's that one!” Going with my gut, I pointed to the one on the left.

“Let's see if you're right, man.” Slowly, he lifted the cup revealing…nothing!

I stared blankly at the empty space under the cup. “What the-? But I used my gambling sorcery.”

“I used mine too, man.” He reached into his back pants pocket. “My gambling sorcery makes it so I can teleport pieces of gum into my pocket.

Other than this game, his ability seemed pretty useless. If my ability worked how I thought it did, since he created a probability of zero by removing the gum, even if I used my ability, I couldn't win since anything times zero equals zero.

I fell to my knees as the heat was becoming too much for me. “Well Rollnaldo, old pal, it looks like we’re going to die of dehydration!”

“Just wait here a second.” Rollnaldo said, as pulled something from one of his crates. “Let me ask you something, good sir. You wouldn't happen to be a fan of Matthew the World's Largest Twine Ball, would you?”

The hippy suddenly changed his tune as he nodded excitedly. “Yes, I’m actually a giant Matthew fan, man!”

“Well it just so happens I'm a traveling merchant from Dice Town, the home of Matthew. You wouldn't happen to be interested in this limited edition Matthew action figure, would you.”

The Mathew figure that Rollnaldo held in his hand consisted of a small ball of twine pasted on to a plastic superhero body, wearing a blue jumpsuit with a red ‘M’ on its chest and a red fabric cape.

“Holy Crap, man!” The hippy exclaimed, unable to contain his excitement. “I’ve been searching for one of those for my collection!”

Little did this hippy know, that figure was just a cheap knock off.

Rollnaldo dangled it in front of him. “It's all yours if we can use your oasis.”

“Deal!” The hippy snatched it from his hand, while simultaneously lifting the gate for us to enter into the oasis.

“There's more than one way to do things.” Rollnaldo smirked.

Immediately the two of us ran in and dove into the water, completely submerging ourselves. I was so thirsty that I gulped down as much water as I could. I had to give it to Rollnaldo, he managed to save our skins big time. Maybe things were starting to look up for me…