Alexios found Sinope—the city to which the Roman sailors had brought the Paralos—stirring when the morning sun blazed over the horizon. Fishermen rowed their boats away from the wharf while farmers brought horses and mules along dirt roads. The wind carried the smell of cooking meat into the sky, drawing seagulls drifting over the city fortress. Church semantrons rattled; priests and nuns sang. Lowing oxen hauled mountains of produce into the market on rickety clanking carriages, the sun shooting dusty light shafts through their whirling spokes. Dogs were howling as cocks crowed. Children pushed wooden wheels with sticks along cobblestone streets drenched in daylight. A signal fire in the city was lit; a flame on a distant mountain to the west answered.
Pontos, Alexios thought. The hospitable sea.
He sometimes had trouble comprehending the beauty he found here, as though it would make his mind burst. The Middle Ages were supposed to be dreary, but the food, people, and sights all had their charms. It was much less crowded, for one, which meant more wildlife—swarms of birds in the sky, fish in the sea, animals in the woods. No nuclear weapons or pollution, and all garbage either decomposed or was recycled. Even the wildest medieval lunatics were unable to see in their most horrifying nightmares things like cars, phones, or TVs. And though many people (particularly those outside cities) were illiterate, they were easier to talk with. The only relief from boredom lay in the people around you.
But Alexios refrained from idealizing this place. As the manual taught, he needed to acknowledge the plus of every minus, the minus of every plus—the fact that positive and negative were bound together and defined each other—that feedback loops of history were whirling like dervishes toward their conclusion. The prehistoric, ancient, and medieval periods had made the modern world, just as a seed makes a mighty tree.
This was the first time he’d had a moment to think since he’d trained with Dionysios yesterday afternoon. Alexios clutched his fists at the thought of his teacher dying like that in the Great Palace garden. The Romans had killed his aunt and uncle, and now they’d killed Dionysios, too. All Alexios had wanted was to farm, but these terrible people kept murdering his friends and family. What was he supposed to do?
Take revenge, he thought.
No Sinopians indicated that they had noticed last night’s disturbances. No one cared that two Roman warships were adrift, and in fact the people were looking anywhere except at these vessels. The fugitives’ horses had also been stolen, and Alexios wanted to go and look for them—particularly for Blanco—but Gontran and Diaresso told him it wasn’t worth the risk.
Still, everyone aboard the Paralos kept out of sight as best they could when fishing boats drew near. Diaresso and Gontran had unfurled the sails in the hope of catching a breeze, and now they were struggling to keep their stinging eyelids open. Alexios offered to take over, but they refused, clearly because they thought him inexperienced. If the wind kicked up, and no one but Alexios was at the steering oars, the ship might capsize.
It was true that Diaresso and Gontran needed sleep, but each feared that if he passed out, the other would also, and then a whole Roman armada would rise over the horizon, and enemy sailors would leap aboard the Paralos and slit everyone’s throats.
Can’t imagine waking up like that, Alexios thought. You’re dreaming about playing video games, and then all of a sudden, boom, there’s sharp cold metal slicing across your neck, and you’re gagging on your own blood.
He shuddered.
Clouds filled the sky, and a breeze stirred, puffing the Paralos’s sails and pushing the creaking hulk through the waves. The two sleepy merchants staggered to the stern and worked the steering oars, directing the bow eastward, away from the peninsular city and along the green mountainous Paphlagonian coast. Then they sat on the deck, still holding the oars as their bodies swayed with the tides, their eyelids fluttering like those of drunkards.
When they were starting to burn under the afternoon sun Alexios climbed out of the hold and brought them—like two enormous children—belowdecks to their hammocks, where they both collapsed into sleep. Caring for others like this increased his empathy. Then the youth took the steering oars, passing the occasional galley, fishing village, and monastery. He kept as close to land as he dared, fearful of the possibility that the ketos had survived. Though he believed he had inflicted a serious wound, the creature was still writhing when he last saw it falling and screaming into that dark abyss. The XP gained was modest and nothing like the windfall he should have received for killing something so huge and powerful. There also must have been more ships in the Roman fleet. Who knew where it was? The ketos might have destroyed it. All those ships might have gotten lost. Or they might be on their way to Sinope.
Soon Herakleia joined him, bringing food for lunch. He pushed the food aside, hugged her close—holding one oar with his free hand—and kissed her.
“Hang on.” He pulled back. “You’re…you’re—”
“Shut up.” She kissed him again.
He wanted to touch her whole body, but if he released the oars the ship would run aground, since he was too unskilled to pilot a dromon while making out with someone. Then they would either drown, or they would need to abandon the Paralos and walk to Trebizond across dangerous lands.
How romantic, he thought.
Alexios and Herakleia sat together, each eating with one hand while using the other to hold an oar. They stared ahead, sometimes checking the green hills to their right or the blue sea on their left, always watchful for soldiers, ships, bandits, monsters.
No desire to be a murderhobo, he thought. Not in a place as dangerous as this.
His mind drifted to Herakleia. If he could find the anchor, maybe he could stop the ship and go a little further with her. He even asked her to take his oar so he could look around. She asked what he was doing, but he was afraid to tell her. Although she had returned his affections, she still intimidated him. Alexios had believed, before meeting her, that she would be as unbearable as anyone raised in luxury, but she had proven herself far more interesting. A natural leader, she had commanded her rescuers almost as soon as she was strong enough to speak, weathering the torture she had suffered at Roman hands; she still winced and gasped when Alexios’s hands accidentally brushed against her wounds. So far, her only mistake had been last night, when she tried to convince a couple of Roman officers to change sides in the Paralos hold. Though this decision had almost gotten everyone killed, Alexios understood Herakleia’s reasoning. Many soldiers came from rural families, and the kentarch had been bellyaching nonstop before Herakleia spoke with him. There had been a chance of success. Alexios would only lose faith in her if she kept making mistakes.
People have no reason to reconsider their worldview when they come from a position of strength, he thought. It’s almost impossible to change minds with words alone. First you have to change the environment that makes their minds what they are. At least that’s what the manual says.
Though Herakleia was intimidating, she was also the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Alexios’s attraction for her clouded his judgment. It also helped him forget that he was inferior in stature—a farm boy compared with a royal who might one day rule Rome.
How much time had passed since Alexios had even thought about sex? He was so confused that when he found the anchor, and proposed that they toss it over the side, Herakleia asked him why, and he was unable to answer.
“We have to keep moving,” Herakleia said. “The Romans could be right behind us.”
“Right, right,” he said, returning to his steering oar.
It didn’t matter, because soon she was kissing him anyway. After a moment she was on top of him, even though they were both still piloting the ship.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Aren’t we supposed to use a condom?”
“This is the Middle Ages,” Herakleia said. “There are no condoms. Unless you want to hunt around for some goat skin. Just finish outside.”
“I don’t want to get you pregnant.”
“Great, then like I said, do it outside.”
Alexios followed her instructions, but he was so aroused that he finished too fast—so excited about losing his virginity—and even apologized.
Saying something about how she was going to use him to masturbate, she wiped him off with her old robes—which she retrieved from belowdecks—wet him with a water flask, and then got on top of him again. Clutching him close with her arms and legs, she moaned and trembled. Then she fell back onto the floor and leaned on him.
“So it’s true,” she said. “Sex is actually better as a woman.”
“Did you orgasm?” he said.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
They high-fived, and then Alexios said: “Go team!” Herakleia laughed.
Smiling, he sat back, feeling relieved for the first time since he’d arrived in Romanía.
Another achievement unlocked, he thought. Don’t I get any XP for that? I also helped a fellow worker have a good time!
He felt a curious sensation. Was the voice laughing?
Charisma has increased, the voice said. You are about halfway (54/100 XP) to Journeyman Charismatic (6/10).
So if I become a master, that means I’ll be irresistible?
Many people will think so.
Nice. All I have to do is charm the fuck out of everyone, stay in shape, bathe regularly, dress nicely, and not die.
Correct. ‘If you want to be loved, be lovable.’
What’s not to love about me? I’m a nice guy. I’m smart. I’m good-looking.
He was joking, but he sensed the voice rolling its eyes, if it was possible for a mysterious ethereal voice to do that.
Still, this was all his old self—Torres—had ever wanted. A girlfriend. A rewarding romantic relationship.
On to the next challenge.
“So I guess we aren’t superheroes after all,” Herakleia said.
“What do you mean?”
“Superheroes never have sex. Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man, you name it, they never fuck. They might hint at it. But sex never takes place. They also never have kids. They’re basically like living action figures. They don’t have genitals. It’s a symptom of the dead-end sterility of postmodernism.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s all platonic with superheroes because they lose their virtue or whatever if they fuck. You know that old saying from the Vedas.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Forty meals makes a drop of blood, forty drops of blood make a drop of bone marrow, and forty drops of bone marrow makes a drop of semen.”
“That’s probably the strangest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Forty times forty times forty,” she said. “What is that, four times four is sixteen, sixteen times four is, what, sixty-four, then just add three zeroes. Sixty-four thousand meals equals a drop of semen.”
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“Do people even eat that many meals in their entire lives?”
“They mostly eat two meals a day here,” Herakleia said. “So that makes thirty-two thousand days. Let’s round to make it simpler and say there’s three hundred days in a year. So about every hundred years, I think, you eat enough to produce one drop of semen.”
“Then what the fuck just came out of my dick?”
Herakleia moved her hands and crossed her eyes as though she was a hypnotist. “It’s all an illusion! It’s all in your head! You can manifest things just by thinking about them!”
“Alright, I’m manifesting a portal out of this game right now.” He looked around. “It doesn’t seem to be working.”
“You just aren’t manifesting hard enough. But still, we should check and make sure we didn’t fuck up—or just fuck—too much. Can you still use the farr?”
“I could barely use it to begin with.”
“Try.”
Alexios stretched out his hand toward a brush that was lying on the deck. He summoned the farr, and the brush flew into his fingers.
Herakleia raised her eyebrows. “That’s convenient.”
“Psychokinesis.” Alexios hefted the brush. “It’s a thing.”
“You seem better at it than before.”
“Maybe the more you fuck, the better you are at doing things.”
“Just like in the real world.” She reached out her hand, and the brush flew into it.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “You know how—”
“I know just a little,” Herakleia said.
“Why didn’t you use the farr to escape that dungeon?”
“I was so fucked up I couldn’t even remember my own name.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Herakleia said. “It wasn’t your fault. It was that guy in that classroom, that jock. It’s his fault we’re here. What was his name. ‘Boucher.’”
“Weird names where we come from.”
“Yeah.”
As Alexios held his oar in one hand and Herakleia in the other, he found himself gazing across the green lands stretching into the horizon on his right. Paphlagonia. That’s what it was called. The name alone made him think of settling down again. Would it be hard to drive the Paralos onto a deserted beach, wish Gontran and Diaresso well, and then start a farm with Herakleia? They would never want for food here; the sea would supply whatever the land could not. They could have vineyards, orchards, farm animals—fresh eggs and milk every day. Their farming skills would grow; their fighting skills would atrophy. Yet some time had passed since he had seen any settlements or monasteries. The fact that this rich, beautiful, rolling land of endless forests was almost bereft of people told him what he needed to know. It may have looked beautiful, and it may have tempted dreamers like Alexios, but life was difficult here. People were moving all over the world these days—whole nations mounted on horseback were overrunning entire continents. Most of these people were armed and thought nothing of taking life—driven by revolutions in Asia, waves of barbarians rolling upon Romanía’s shores.
Better to kill than be killed, he thought.
“Do you remember who you were?” Herakleia said, startling Alexios from his thoughts.
He looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“Before we came here,” she said. “Inside this game. I can remember the name ‘Boucher,’ but I can’t remember my old name.”
“Oh, you mean back at that school?” He laughed, then narrowed his eyes and thought for a moment. “Yeah. What was my name? Yoo-lee-an Toreos, or something like that. I barely remember. All those memories seem to belong to someone else. It was a completely different life. Sometimes I remember little things like computers or the internet, but it’s hard to remember the whole thing all at once.”
“Julian,” she said to herself. Then she looked at him. “I was Darius.”
“What?”
“Darius Jackson. That was my name.”
“You were Darius?” Alexios’s tone was concerned.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“So does that mean—”
“You just coupled with a man?” Herakleia said. “But how is that possible? I’m a woman.”
“Did I just sleep with a man?”
“I’m not a man anymore.”
Alexios turned to face Herakleia. She was so beautiful, plenty of people would have died to sleep with someone like her.
“But we were friends, weren’t we?” Alexios said.
“We still are.” Herakleia smiled. “Friends who happen to couple sometimes.”
“I’ve got to say, I’m feeling kind of confused.”
“That makes two of us. But that was the old world. This is the new. Here you’re a man, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“And I’m a woman.”
“Alright.”
“So the only sin we committed was adultery,” she said. “Besides, even if we were both men, and we slept together, what would it matter? ‘Let brothers dwell in unity.’”
“I’ve just never thought of myself that way. But I guess I’ll try anything once.”
“Maybe people are more fluid with their sexuality than you think.”
He looked at her. “So you lost your dick? What was that like?”
“I’m trying to think of it as gaining a vagina rather than losing a dick.” She gestured to her crotch. “You can make entire people with this thing.”
“That’s true. You’re also a woman, so that means you never have to ask for sex.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, men are always desperate for sex, and women are always trying to avoid having sex with anyone unless they really like them.”
“So you might have forgotten your old name, but you seem to have remembered your old sexism.”
“Why?” Alexios said. “What was sexist about that?”
“Assuming that women never want sex is obviously sexist. Not every woman is exactly the same. Some want it more, others want it less. Some have an easier time getting it, some have a harder time.”
“I suppose that’s true. Sorry.”
“Believe me, it’s not the worst I’ve had to deal with in this place.” Herakleia squinted at the passing landscape. “You wouldn’t believe what women go through. Men are always second-guessing us. None of them believe we can do anything except make babies, satisfy their sexual urges, and keep their houses clean.”
“Now that’s a little sexist, too, isn’t it?” Alexios said. “I know for a fact women can do pretty much anything men can. I just thought they had an easier time getting sex.”
“I think I read somewhere that people thought women were the horny ones in the Middle Ages. People thought men were naturally chaste, and women were always trying to corrupt them.”
“Well, obviously.”
Herakleia laughed. “The church views women as the enemy, because we can teach each other so much, and also teach men. We can lead men away from the church and away from war and private property. The church, the emperor, the bureaucracy, the rich, they call it corruption if men decide they’d rather fight alongside women than enslave them.”
“You definitely corrupted me,” Alexios said.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“It’s a good thing. I hardly even knew I was dying of horniness until you…”
“Until I fucked you.”
“Yeah.”
Herakleia leaned in to kiss him. Alexios hesitated for a moment, then thought what the hell?, and kissed her back.
He pulled away. “Hey. Weren’t you also Black?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“So what’s that like, having white skin now?”
She sighed. “It’s made me realize a thing or two that I kind of already suspected. There’s a reason modern people pretend racism has always existed in the exact same form.”
“I mean, Diaresso’s Black, and no one gives a shit. But Dionysios already talked about this. Here they don’t care about the color of your skin. I mean, they aren’t colorblind, but they don’t look at a person with dark skin and think: ‘I must enslave or imprison or kill or dehumanize that person.’”
“Sexism is definitely a problem, though,” Herakleia said. “Take it from me. Class also matters.”
“So why doesn’t anyone here talk about race?”
“They use words like ‘Skythioi’ and ‘Persioi,’” Herakleia said. “And by that they mean Bulgarians, Avars, Persians, Arabs, Turks, all kinds of different people. But like you said, the Romans don’t target a specific kind of people to enslave. They’re really equal opportunity enslavers.”
Alexios thought for a moment. “Enslaving Black people exclusively only started during the Age of Discovery, didn’t it?”
“The Age of So-Called Discovery.”
“But we’re in Byzantium—in Romanía, now. All of that genocide is hundreds of years in the future. We could stop it before it even happens.”
“One thing at a time, I guess. We’ll take back the Roman Empire and march on Western Europe. That way they’ll never enslave the planet.”
“Sounds like a plan. Unless it turns like into a Greek tragedy or something, where like the main character finds out about his fate and tries to avoid it, but then just winds up getting screwed anyway specifically because he was trying to avoid his fate.”
“Yeah, we’ll try not to do that.”
The Paralos sailed until evening. When the sun was drifting closer to the horizon, and Diaresso and Gontran were still asleep, Herakleia and Alexios discussed what to do next. They had three choices. First, they could sail to deeper waters, which risked running into more monsters. Second, they could drop anchor along the coast, and cross their fingers. Third, they could pull the ship onto land and rest there. Herakleia and Alexios chose the third option. The land was deserted—hours had passed since they had even seen a fishing village—and it was almost nightfall. As long as they sailed at dawn, they would be alright. Besides, they had been at sea for two days and missed solid ground.
Before long, Herakleia and Alexios found a beach and maneuvered the Paralos there, wincing as the hull rumbled against the gravel beneath the waves. As Herakleia climbed the masts and struggled to furl the sails—she was an Initiate Sailor (1/10)—Alexios jumped into the water and tied the ship to a nearby boulder.
All this commotion woke Gontran and Diaresso, who asked what the hell was going on. Gontran in particular got angry at them, saying it was too dangerous to moor their ship here, that bandits were sure to kill them in the middle of the night. But Alexios and Herakleia maintained that they hadn’t seen anyone since morning. Gontran refused to change his mind, however, and was getting angrier, when Diaresso announced that they would eat cooked food that night.
“We have eaten nothing but uncooked rations since we left Konstantinopolis,” he said. “I shall hunt something, or I shall fish. One way or the other, we shall eat roasted meat tonight.”
“Ever the gourmand,” Gontran said. “Even when we’re in the middle of nowhere…”
Diaresso was about to jump over the side when Herakleia stopped him. “There’s cooked meat stored in the ship,” she said. “The Roman soldiers left it when they captured us. Maybe we could reheat it over the fire.”
He smiled. “Even better.”
Ransacking the ship’s hold, they brought axes and food onto the beach, hacking low pine branches and gathering big pieces of dry driftwood. After shedding sparks with an iron and flint, a roaring fire sprang up, and the fugitives were soon shoving skewered meat into the flames. Having brought more food than they could eat, they stuffed themselves and guzzled wine, toasting the Romans, the ketos, and anyone or anything else which had made the mistake of attacking them.
Darkness fell, and starlight illuminated the splashing waves and the swaying pines. All else beyond the fire was shadow.
Soon they were telling stories. Gontran mocked the men he had killed the night before, imitating their boldness when they had attacked, then their terror when they fled. Alexios and Herakleia—leaning against each other—told Diaresso and Gonran about the ketos’s disgusting insides. When they had finished, Gontran nodded to them.
“So are you two together now?” he said.
Alexios and Herakleia looked at each other and then nodded to Gontran.
“Fast.” He swallowed another mouthful of purple wine.
“Hey, you know how it goes.” Alexios stretched out his arms. “Kid gets zapped inside board game. Kid lives as a farmer, but finds his way to the capital. Kid rescues damsel in distress. And then…fireworks.”
“Fireworks?” Diaresso said. “What is that?”
“Forget it.” Gontran sipped his wine, then looked at Herakleia. “You know, I always thought we might get together someday.”
“What?” she said.
Diaresso reached out and took Gontran’s arm. “Be silent, you fool.”
“I thought we had kind of a thing going.” Gontran threw off Diaresso’s hand. “You and me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were always smiling, always polite…”
“I was raised that way,” she said. “I treat everyone politely unless they give me reason not to.”
“We got a real polite lady over here.” Gontran glanced at Diaresso. “She was so polite, she screwed one of the guys on this little adventure of ours.”
Diaresso frowned and rolled his eyes.
Alexios stood. “That’s enough.”
“Oh yeah?” Gontran said. “What are you going to do about it?”
“You can’t talk about her like that,” Alexios said.
“Watch me.” Gontran stood. “One of those soldiers back there called her a whore. Maybe he was right.”
Alexios punched Gontran’s face, then stepped back as Herakleia yelled at them to stop. Swearing, the merchant swung at Alexios. But since Gontran was so drunk, Alexios darted out of the way. Then Gontran stumbled, but Diaresso caught him before he could fall into the fire. By then he had passed out. Diaresso lay him on the ground.
“I apologize,” Diaresso said. “He sometimes acts the fool when he is drunk.”
“He’s definitely not at his most endearing,” Alexios said.
“I shall watch over the camp tonight,” Diaresso said. “It shall be my way to make up for this.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Herakleia said.
“I slept all day,” Diaresso said. “I am rested, and you two have done well in bringing us this far.”
“Well, alright,” Herakleia said. “Make sure to wake us at sunrise. We have to keep moving. Just because we’re resting doesn’t mean Romanía is.”
“I understand.” Diaresso bowed.
After finishing their meal, they packed up the leftovers and moved back onto the ship, hauling Gontran aboard like an enormous doll. Soon he was asleep belowdecks, as were Alexios and Herakleia. Diaresso, searching the hold with a torch, discovered a lute, and tuned it and strummed the strings on the beach, singing folk songs from his home—the story of Sunjata, taught to Diaresso’s grandfather by the djinn—as well as another tune that always came to him in this place: “Take me back to Tomboutou…”