I arose with the sun the next morning. Mag was still asleep, but the long rest had brought the color and warmth back to her skin.

My dad was already awake. He got my attention, and I went to him. “Hey, thanks for the save yesterday, Son—I mean, Emerson. Sorry, force of habit.”

“You can call me whatever you like, Dad. We’re good. And I’m sorry I was so harsh—”

“I’m going to stop you there, Son. I’m the one who failed you. And you shouldn’t feel like you need to apologize for how you reacted to what I did. My actions were unforgivable.”

“Well I forgive you, just the same,” I said.

I then caught my dad up on how my life on Earth was going. I told him it was probably over, but he wanted to know how school and stuff were going anyway.

As we talked, I noted that this was, by far, the most he had been like his old self in this dimension. He said this was the freest he’d felt since he died. It was like he could tell which parts of himself were really him and which parts were Vulgra. “I’m less like a smoothie now and more like a fruit salad,” was how he explained it.

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I bet Vulgra is the pineapple chunks, isn’t it?”

“It is! I was just about to say that!”

“Although I don’t hate pineapple anymore,” I told him. “Actually, it’s one of my favorite fruits now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Mag and her moms order in Hawaiian pizzas a lot, and I found it isn’t so bad once you get used to it. I even get cravings for it sometimes.”

“God, I’m missing out on so much,” my dad said, his eyes welling up with tears.

“Don’t cry,” I said. “It’s only pineapples. Plus, if you help us beat Vulgra, maybe the butterflies will make you a member of their guild. Then you can come watch me eat pineapple anytime you want.”

“I’d like that,” he said warmly.

Our conversation continued and was pleasant enough, but beneath the surface, I was troubled. The black rage I had felt the day before when my staff became dark still lingered somewhere in my blood, as if I had somehow been corrupted.

Before long, Mag awoke and joined us. “Dude! That was fucking awesome the way you demolished those goblins! Who would’ve thought you were the Buttercup of the group?”

“The what?” I asked.

“You know, because you’re our toughest fighter?”

I said “Oh.” I didn’t know what she meant.

“Wow, your enthusiasm is overwhelming,” Mag said.

“Because I’m not so sure what I did was a good thing,” I explained. “Killing my mom, even if it was a goblin version of her, shouldn’t have felt so good. It shouldn’t have felt like a drug to break her face into a million pieces.”

“Sure, it should have,” Mag said. “Your mom’s a bitch.”

“Yeah, but what if that was the first step toward me becoming evil and getting infected by Vulgra? What if Vulgra created the goblin incident to show me how good it can feel to turn my dark thoughts into reality?”

“I don’t think that’s very likely,” Mag said. “Why would Vulgra want to show you that you can be more powerful than me and your dad combined times ten?”

That was a fair point, but I knew what I felt in my heart when my staff was black. It was like my dark thoughts had intensified a hundred-fold and were reimagined as physical energy. I was sure the staff was powered by my dark side and was an integral part of whatever Vulgra planned to use me for.

Mag and I debated the matter for a long while as we continued on our way to Egola Castle. My dad jumped into the debate, saying that he couldn’t sense that Vulgra had changed the weather or created the goblins. However, I pointed out that he very well might have sensed it, but Vulgra was preventing him from saying so. In the end, Mag and I agreed to disagree.

Late in the day, Mag announced that we were less than an hour from the Kingdom of Egola. “Archie said the Hero’s Medallion is protected more carefully than the other talismans. I really think we should try to figure out how your staff works before we get to Egola. We might need it.”

“For the hundredth time, I don’t know how it works,” I told her. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t want to use it again.”

“Well, you should still learn how it works even if you don’t want to use it,” Mag said. I told her that didn’t make any sense at all, but she said, “Sure it does! Think about it: If you don’t know how to activate it, you might end up activating it by accident when it’s the last thing you wanted to do.”

I admitted there was some logic to that. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know how the blasted thing works.”

“Maybe it’s a special skill that activates when your HP drops below a certain point,” Mag said. “Like the finishers in Tecmo World Wrestling.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “The bad weather didn’t lower my HP; it was still full when the staff started to turn black against the goblins. And I had lots of HP when it went dark in the desert.”

“Hey, wait,” Mag said. “Maybe that’s it. You were angry at me when you hit me with it, right? Were you also angry when you beat the goblins?”

“Yeah. I was furious.”

“I wonder… Do you think it would go black again if you got angry enough?”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Maybe. But I don’t know if I want to. I don’t like myself when I’m angry. I feel evil.”

“Hey, everybody feels evil when they’re angry,” my dad reassured me. “It’s human nature.”

“Yeah, it’s human nature,” Mag said. “Everybody knows that. You fucking idiot.” Then she shoved me to the ground and called me the most pathetic loser she had ever seen in her life. And then she started throwing small rocks at me.

“What the F are you doing that for?” I asked.

“I’m trying to make you mad to see if anger powers the staff. Obviously. Like, how did you not figure that out for yourself, you moron? You stupid baby!”

We stared at each other blankly for a moment.

“Is it working?” she asked.

“Duhhh, is the staff black? No, it’s not working. I’m just annoyed,” I told her, adding that annoyance had never powered any staff I had ever heard of.

“Dammit. Well, it was worth a try,” Mag said. Then she continued throwing rocks at me.

“Really?” I said. “Why are you still doing that?”

“I dunno. Cuz it’s fun.”

“Well, could you cut it out?”

“I could,” she said, but she didn’t stop.

I scrambled to my feet and tried to bat the rocks back at her with my staff, but I couldn’t hit them. They were too small. Or maybe the staff was too small. Something was too small—that was for sure. I was frustrated, so I had decided there was no way it was my fault.

Fortunately, my dad was there, and he offered to teach me how to swing a bat properly. And he gave me all kinds of useful advice, like to keep my eye on the ball. Even though it was rocks. I knew what he meant.

I eventually hit one. Cracked Mag right in the cheek with it, too. That finally got her to stop.

“All right, buddy! Nice one!” my dad said and gave me a high five.

I tried to play it off like it was no big deal, but I was over the moon on the inside. I had done a sport! What a thrill it was! And the best part was that I had shared this moment with my dad. I didn’t want this classic father-son moment to end, so I suggested we go for ice cream.

But my dad said we couldn’t. “I don’t think they have ice cream in this dimension, buddy. Plus, Mag looks hurt pretty bad over there.”

He was right. She was on the ground, completely motionless except for the twitching of her leg. I went to her, shook her awake, and sat her up.

I put a hand on her shoulder and said, “You know, I could apologize, but that kind of served you right.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I just really like throwing rocks. And once I start, I can’t stop. They’re like Pringles.”

I helped Mag to her feet. We acknowledged that we had gotten distracted and that “distraction isn’t the hero’s way.” I can’t remember which one of us said that, but let’s give that one to Mag.

We then examined the staff together. I’m not sure what we were looking for, but we examined it anyway. That’s what people do: They say, “I haven’t the slightest clue how this thing works, but I’m pretty sure I can figure it out if I just look at it long enough on account of I’m the smartest person alive.” So that was our approach. If we looked at the staff, maybe something would jump out at us, some hint as to how to activate it. But it had us stumped.

“Oh, we’re never gonna solve this puzzle!” I eventually declared. “Like, what even is this staff? Is it made of wood? Is it made of magic? Is it made of children’s nightmares? What is it?”

“Time will tell, my boy,” my dad said. He had strained himself to get the words out; Vulgra had not wanted him to say this.

I gasped and looked at Mag, my expression one of unbridled excitement.

“It’s not clocks,” she said, fully aware of what I was thinking.

“But this isn’t like in the forest,” I said. “He didn’t say ‘with each rising sun.’ He said ‘TIME will tell.’”

“So? It’s a common expression. I promise you, whatever your staff is, it has nothing to do with clocks.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because how could it? It’s literally just a big stick.”

I stood there in deep thought for a moment. Finally, I said, “Oh, yeah.”

My dad then suggested we focus on getting the Hero’s Medallion and worry about my staff later. “If I know where the Butterfly Rod is, then maybe I also know the secret of the staff and can tell you once we get Vulgra out of me. Besides, since I know how powerful your staff is, that means Vulgra knows it, too. And that means it will want to vanquish us before we figure out how to use it. If Emerson’s right about how much power Vulgra has, it could launch another attack at any moment.”

His logic was sound. Our main goal was to obtain the Hero’s Medallion as quickly as we could, before Vulgra had a chance to stop us. So, we made haste to the Kingdom of Egola.

We reached the kingdom’s border by sunset. Before crossing the boundary, we opened our menus to spend our EXP from the goblin battle. I was still at level 11, with 165/260 HP and 53/65 MP. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not great with strategy, so I described my options to Mag and my dad. That way, we could decide together which ones I should choose.

“I think it would be wise to wait before you learn any new skills,” my dad said. “If you spend your EXP now, Vulgra—if it has any say in what kind of enemies we’ll face in Egola—might adjust its strategy. If you upgrade Barrier to protect us against physical attacks, Vulgra will know about it, and it might create enemies that use magic attacks and vice versa.”

This was a second consecutive triumph of logic for my dad. It was to our advantage to let Vulgra make the first move, to see what we were up against before I leveled up. Of course, since all of Mag’s spells were fire-based, she wasn’t faced with this issue, and she learned a slew of new techniques.

However, my dad’s mention of Vulgra’s potential omniscience made me feel uneasy. Various questions and doubts swirled around in my mind: What if this whole video game world is an elaborate trap set up by Vulgra? What if Vulgra let the Butterfly Guild bring me here? What if Vulgra wanted me here all along to carry out some diabolical plan?

When I expressed my concerns, Mag was quick to disagree. “You’re giving Vulgra way too much credit. If it had as much influence over this world as you think it does, then why is this world in the form of an RPG? Wouldn’t Vulgra have changed this world into something that wasn’t so familiar to us? And why did you get an ultra-strong weapon? Why did any of us get any weapons, for that matter?”

“I’m not saying Vulgra has the final say over every aspect of this world,” I said. “But I have this really strong feeling that it’s somehow manipulating this world in order to manipulate us.”

“But if it had that much power, we wouldn’t be as close as we are to getting the third talisman,” Mag said. “Also, Vulgra wouldn’t keep letting your dad save us whenever we’re about to die.”

“But what if Vulgra has been using my dad as a puppet to keep me safe? Because it needs me to stay alive so it can use me for whatever my dad tried to warn me about?”

“Do you think maybe you’re just scared about fighting Vulgra now that we’re close to the last talisman?” Mag asked, not critically but concerned about me.

“I don’t know, maybe…” I said. “Yeah, maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

“Hey,” Mag said, stopping and looking me in the eye. “Battletoads. Remember?” She held her fist out for a fist bump. “We got this.”

I wasn’t so sure we had this, and I wasn’t so sure I was just being paranoid. The rotting feeling in my gut transcended paranoia, and it was telling me that Vulgra wanted us to enter the Kingdom of Egola, that we were walking into a trap. But another, much stronger, feeling within me told me I had to keep going. I had to save my dad and make Vulgra pay for everything it had done.

“Battletoads,” I said, completing the fist bump. “But I get to be Rash.”