Crowing roosters woke Torres in the blue dawn. He felt like he had been hit by a train. With a sigh he remembered he needed to finish his homework, study for today’s algebra quiz, and get ready for school. He had to make coffee, shower, get dressed, and catch the bus on time. Night had been full of stress dreams about being late or failing tests, but he must have only slept for a few hours. Still, he needed to get up. He had been in detention yesterday forever. How had he even gotten out?
But he was lying between warm animal skins in a stone room. An aging woman was cooking over a fire that flickered and sparked in a vast blackened hearth. Nearby sat an old man using his finger to rub a powder that smelled like mint over his teeth.
Torres shook his head. He was still in Byzantium.
This was all unbelievable, and yet it was as real as anything he had experienced.
Realer still was the revelation—as Eudokia poured wine into the big clay cup and mixed it with water—that there was no coffee.
Shit, Torres thought.
He didn’t know when or where coffee had been invented, but these people would have been chugging it by the gallon if they’d had it. They worked hard, and needed it more than anyone.
Torres groaned and turned over, pulling the warm animal skin over his body.
He also remembered there was no electricity or running water, either. No internet. Nothing. It was awful—much worse than being in a power outage. Those could hurl you back into the nineteenth century in an instant, and they were frequent in Maine. A little wind and rain might knock out your electricity for hours or even days, but at least you still had running water.
Here was none of that. The lack of electricity was particularly painful. It was almost like losing a body part. So much of what he had taken for granted was gone—basics like heat, light, and long-distance communication. If he really was stuck here, Torres would probably wind up spending his life trying to build a power plant and a light bulb from scratch, even though he knew almost nothing about any of that technology.
Then there was the issue of his parents. When could he see them again? Did they know he was gone?
An enormous, hard, heavy hand rubbed his back. “Hey, Alexios. It’s time to get up.”
“My name’s Julian,” Torres murmured.
“Did you hear that?” Eugenios said to Eudokia. “He’s still messing with me!”
“It’s his way of reminding you that he wants to go to the university,” Eudokia said. “He just wants your attention.”
“Well, he’s got it. Come on, Alexios, get up. You’ll never get any work done on an empty stomach.”
In high school Torres always slept as late as he could and almost never ate breakfast—he just never had the appetite. But as Eudokia filled a bowl with some kind of meat stew, Torres found himself feeling ravenous. His stomach rumbled, and he got up, grabbed a wooden spoon on the table, and shoveled the food into his mouth. Eugenios glared at him, shocked that Torres hadn’t waited for him to say grace.
You are at risk of leveling down in charisma, the voice in his mind said. From Apprentice Charismatic to Novice.
“Fuck,” Torres said.
“Excuse me?” Eugenios said.
Torres glanced at him. “Sorry.”
Since when do you lose XP? he thought. Can’t you only gain it?
In the so-called “real world,” the voice said, people must work to maintain their abilities. Otherwise they atrophy.
Did anyone bother to make this game fun at all? It’s too hard!
How do you know that anyone “made” this game in the first place?
Torres narrowed his eyebrows. What?
No answer came.
Hoping that he couldn’t have negative charisma points, Torres continued eating breakfast. It was a thick oatmeal mixed with some kind of meat and lots of herbs, onions, and garlic. Unlike most Western breakfasts, nothing here was sweet, but that was another change Torres needed to get used to. He had learned somewhere that sugar wasn’t really a thing in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, teleportation wasn’t really a thing in the Middle Ages, either, but here he was.
“Behold, for He is arisen!” Eugenios rubbed Torres’s back. “I’m glad you finally got up. I knew you couldn’t hold out long.”
Torres nodded. He was too busy eating to answer, and his hunger grew as he ate more. Meals in the old world—the distant world of that vague bland high school—were nothing compared to this, even if the flavors here took a little getting used to. The food was also waking him; the voice kept saying he was restoring his stamina, which was already nearly at one hundred percent since his long deep sleep.
Although drinking wine for breakfast was a bad idea, he sipped from the communal cup. Both Eugenios and Eudokia were hungry, too, but Eudokia always made enough for everyone.
“Have you stopped chewing your food?” Eudokia said to him. “It looks like you’re just swallowing it whole!”
“I’m chewing,” Torres said between bites.
“Take your time or you’ll choke,” Eudokia said.
“It’s really good,” Torres said with his mouth full. “You’re a really good cook.”
Eudokia glanced at Eugenios. “Thank you.”
“No, like, this is amazing,” Torres said. “I’m serious. I’ve never had anything like it. And I don’t just say that to anyone.”
“Here he goes.” Eugenios shook his head. “I told you, boy—you need to stop this nonsense.”
“What do you mean?” Eudokia said. “Is it so wrong for him to compliment my cooking?”
“It’s this strange joke he’s playing on us,” Eugenios said. “He started yesterday for some reason. He keeps acting like he’s never been here before.”
“It’s true,” Torres said. “This is my first morning here.”
Eugenios looked at Eudokia. “Now do you understand?”
“Alexios,” Eudokia said. “Tell me, child: are you serious?”
“Totally,” he said.
His aunt and uncle exchanged looks again.
“Maybe we should speak with Father Sergios,” Eugenios said. “The boy’s acting possessed.”
“Again with the Father Sergios,” Eudokia said. “You always have to bring priests into everything. Well, I’ve got to tell you something important. You aren’t a priest, and you’ll never be one! So stop talking about priests all the time!”
“Oh Eudokia, if only my parents had sent me to seminary.” Eugenios shook his head, clutched his heart with one hand, and looked to the ceiling. “Through no fault of their own, of course. They worked hard all their lives, but they never earned enough money for anything so expensive. The tax collector squeezed them too hard, and the army recruiter took so many of my brothers away! May God rest their souls!”
This guy is too much, Torres thought.
“Maybe that’s why you don’t want to send him to the university.” Eudokia glanced at Torres, who by now had finished and was sitting back against the wall. “You’re jealous.”
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“Enough.” Eugenios waved his hand. “I suppose you’re right. There’s no point in discussing things that cannot be. Now let me eat my breakfast in peace.”
Torres rinsed his mouth with more wine and then Eugenios gave him the little wooden box with the tooth powder inside. To Torres’s surprise, the experience was similar to brushing back home in the old world, and even left his mouth tasting like mint. This action added a little XP to his charisma, but not nearly enough to level up.
People must have been associating mint with cleanliness for a long time, he thought.
Before long, Alexios and Eugenios had packed their lunch—a loaf of bread and a lump of cheese in a cloth bag for each of them—and returned to the fields. Other farmers working their own lands were singing—since they had plenty of energy in the morning, Torres guessed—and Eugenios joined along. The lyrics were joyous, and about working their land, harvesting crops, eating food, enjoying God’s bounty. These must have been old songs. The word they used for god—Theos—sounded just like Zeus in English.
Again Torres and Eugenios worked all day, scything and singing and talking, taking a few minutes now and then to drink water from the well. Other farmers joined them and asked how things were going. As Torres got back to grinding, he thought about how uncomplicated this place was. Was this all you did here? Did people just kind of farm and hang out for pretty much their whole lives, with maybe some holidays and parties mixed in?
He had only been in this place for a day, but already he was impressed with how his work produced results. For the first time in awhile, he was making a difference. It was an odd feeling, but also intoxicating, grinding and leveling up, getting better, doing more. Most of this grain, Eugenios told him, they would store for the future. Some they would use as seeds for the next season. A small portion they would trade with farmers who had apples, olives, cheese, wine. The previous emperor, God rest his soul, had declared a moratorium on taxes for all small and medium farmers, saying the rich would pay for the state’s upkeep from their own purses from now on.
“But now with the usurpation,” Eugenios said, “who can tell what will happen?”
“What usurpation?” Torres said.
“I told you, Alexios, I’m not playing along with this joke of yours any longer. And you already know how much I hate politics.”
“I guess we’ve got that in common,” Torres said. “You were the one who brought it up.”
“Enough.”
As the day wore on, Torres gathered that the imperial legions had been marching back and forth across the land in response to the uprising, even during the harvest. Unlike other nearby cities, the village of Leandros wanted nothing to do with either side, considering both extreme, believing moderation best, the richer peasants saying that compromise and incremental change was important and it was uncivil and bad strategy to demand too much. Leandros and the surrounding farmland belonged to the Opsikion Theme, which was Romanía’s wealthiest province, and the closest to the capital. This meant that the last major military engagement here was decades ago when the Sarakenoi armada had sailed up the Dardanelles and besieged the capital, only to be incinerated by naphtha.
Anyway, Torres had never been interested in farming, not until now. He appreciated the difference he could make just by picking up his scythe. It also helped build his strength and stamina. Back in high school, everyone was working hard, it was true, but for what? Torres always had mountains of homework, and if he did a good job, his reward was—more homework. Then, when he finished school, finding meaningful employment would be almost impossible. Sure, they could pay him, and he might have a nice house and a family—in some suburban wasteland of chain restaurants, gas stations, car dealerships, Wal Marts, and AirBnBs. But how would he be improving anything? There would just be more busywork. And that was the best he could hope for. If you tripped up even once, you’d be getting a lot less. Everything there seemed to be getting worse, even as everyone was trying to convince you that it was actually getting better. Nobody even wanted to think about it. They all just focused as much as they could on their own hobbies and interests, too frightened to look at the big picture. To hope for something better, it made you vulnerable. And the only way to escape that vulnerability was cynicism and mocking and questioning everything except yourself—and the system. To even think about this was difficult. It was like lancing a boil that was swollen with pus, and ready to burst.
Yet in Byzantium he didn’t need to convince himself of anything. Torres saw the difference he made with his own eyes. He was shocked at how his muscles had grown and how much grain he and Eugenios mowed in one day. For a Master Farmer like Eugenios, it must have been about an acre. Their land ended where a nearby forest began. It was kept there, Eugenios explained, as a royal hunting preserve. The Lords and Ladies of Byzantium sometimes came here to hunt with their falcons or their Molossian mastiffs, but the trees also stopped landslides.
True, there’s no running water or electricity in this place, Torres thought as he scythed. But it has things that the modern world doesn’t. Meaningful work is kind of a big deal when you finally discover it. My mom’s been stuck in offices all her life, my dad’s a chef, they both hate working their bullshit jobs, they’ve never had a boss who hasn’t been a lying thieving scumbag. My sister’s the only one who seems to be doing okay in high school. But my entire family’s always liked gardening. Maybe they would like it here, once they got used to it. Farming is kind of like super gardening. Gardening like your life depends on it.
Thinking of his family made Torres miss them. Since moving to Maine they’d never had time for each other, and everyone in the house was so grumpy they all usually preferred to be alone in front of their screens. What if their relationship improved in a place like this?
It was mid afternoon when they retrieved their horse Bukephalos and the cart. Eugenios told Torres that they would stop work early today—thanks be to God—so they could get their grain ground at the monastery mill. Lately the monks were grinding everyone’s grain for free because of a recent incident which Eugenios refused to discuss. Regardless, free milling had helped smooth over the village’s anger.
This is nothing like history class or history textbooks, Torres thought. They never even mentioned Byzantium. But why? Did they just think it wasn’t important?
Overcome with exhaustion, Torres told Eugenios he was going to take a break for a minute. He sat against a beech tree at the forest edge and wiped the sweat from his eyes. In the glowing sunlight, as Eugenios brought Bukephalos and the cart away, Torres’s stamina slowly recharged.
How am I ever going to get home? he thought.
You must defeat the emperor and destroy the empire, the game voice said.
I know, I know!
Byzantium had its charms, but he still needed to leave. He couldn’t spend his life here farming. And anyway—how was he supposed to defeat the emperor and destroy the empire in the first place? Torres could barely defeat a field of grain! Besides, wasn’t the emperor surrounded by an army? As far as Torres knew, his own family possessed no weapons or armor. He’d never held a sword, and he was also probably a novice on his combat skill tree.
As a fighter, you possess advanced combat abilities, the voice said. Strength, dexterity, and speed are all high.
I’m not much use without a sword, he thought.
True, the voice said. Though you can resort to hand-to-hand combat if you must. Your abilities are not insignificant.
That’s funny, Torres thought. Back in Maine, I couldn’t throw a punch to save my life.
Here you can do better, through the joy of building and growing.
I might be trapped here forever, he thought. Die here, and you die in the real world. How did this even happen?
Someone groaned behind him. Alexios—Torres—jumped to his feet, grabbed his scythe, and looked into the dark forest, his heart pounding. On the ground, tangled in ivy and dry leaves, a man was covered in blood. An arrow jutted from his back, and his skin was so pale it was almost blue. Torres dropped the scythe and rushed to the man, who gasped for water.
“Alright, hang on,” Torres said.
He sprinted to a nearby well, filled the bucket inside, untied it, and brought it back to the wounded man. When he arrived, the man had pulled himself into a sitting position against a tree—with the arrow fletches rubbing against the bark.
Yet he barely possessed the strength to drink by himself. Torres needed to hold the bucket to his lips. The man drank everything and then gasped his thanks with much gratitude in his tone. Then—while Torres was trying to figure out how to remove the arrow in the man’s back without killing him—the man began to whisper.
“What was that?” Torres pressed his ear almost to the man’s mumbling lips.
“Dionysios,” the man said. “Bring the manual to Dionysios. Dionysios the Hermit.”
Torres narrowed his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
The man pulled a blood-stained booklet from his clothes and handed it to Alexios.
Picked up Zhayedan Fighting Manual, said the voice. First major quest chain has begun.
“Bring it to Dionysios,” the man said. “Please. It’s the people’s best hope. Then you have to rescue the princess. The Romans must have taken her to Konstantinopolis…to the Great Palace…”
The man’s eyes rolled into their sockets, his head leaned back on his shoulders, and he made a choking sound. Torres grabbed him and tried to keep his head up, shouting for him to stay awake, but the man was gone. Torres searched for a pulse, a heartbeat, or if any breath was moving through his nostrils. Nothing. Blood streamed from his wound. The voice said his own healing abilities were at Level Initiate.
“Hey, Alexios!” Eugenios shouted in the distance.
Torres turned to his uncle, then looked down. He was covered with blood. After he tucked the manual into his pocket, he tried to wash himself with the water left in the bucket, but the man’s blood had already stained his clothes. Eugenios, meanwhile, stopped and stared for a moment, then rushed over to see what was wrong—leaving Bukephalos and the cart behind.
Eugenios clutched his head as he stared at the dead man. Then he looked at Torres.
“Flip him over,” Eugenios said. “Make it look like he died here without anyone finding him.”
“What?” Torres said. “Shouldn’t we bury him?”
“There’s no time!” Eugenios said. “Do you want to wait around for soldiers to come here asking questions? They’ll think we killed him!”
Shaking his head, Torres did as ordered. He needed to do all the lifting here, since Eugenios was afraid of getting blood on his clothes. It took a moment to position the soldier with his face down in the dirt.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“He’ll have friends,” Eugenios said. “They might not be far. We need to leave.” He glanced at Torres’s bloody clothes. “We also need to get you another tunic—and burn this one. If someone sees us on the way back, we’ll just tell them you fell onto a rock—or something.” He crossed himself. “God be with us. God forgive us.”
Before Torres could answer, Eugenios pulled him away.