It is the rare moment in real life where you mentally rolled to disbelieve.

I did so.

Nope, my parents were still there.

"Plot twist!" Jon said, standing on a nearby statue's head.

"Check to see if they're doppelgangers," Bloodstorm said.

"How do I do that?" I asked, looking back at him.

"Well, I mean you have to kill one so this plan may have some flaws..." Bloodstorm muttered, looking away.

"We are not doppelgangers!" My father said, frowning. He turned to his wife. "We'd know, right?"

"I dunno," My mother said, looking back at him. "We could be brainwashed into thinking we're the real thing. Quick, ask us a question only we would know the answer to like when we first showed you The Hobbit. The Ralph Bakshi version."

"Much superior to the Peter Jackson adaptation," My father said. "Much more singing."

"Oh hush," my mother said. "You still prefer the animated Lord of the Rings. That combined the Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers."

"Rotoscoping is a lost art!" my father said.

"Yeah, these are your parents alright," Ania said, looking between them. "The only thing that could make them closer to my mental image would be if they were as lustful as goats but pretended otherwise."

I grimaced at the mental image that conjured. "Why did you say that?"

"We don't pretend otherwise!" My mother said. "We practice free love and open marriage as Eru intended."

"Oh God," I said, placing my face into my palms.

"We've already recruited Mr. and Mrs. Miller into our tantric therapy circle," my mother said. "She has a lot of tension now that her son is married to a water spirit."

"Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Bartkowski," Jon said, hoping they could understand him. "Your son has become a Dark Undermaster and is off to save the world. He's an actual ranger named Aragorn now! You should be very proud!"

"Kill me now," I muttered.

"He's also sleeping with a goddess teaching him martial arts," Bloodstorm said. "So, what they say about women going after men like their fathers is true."

He was referring to Ania and Tomas Rose, I presumed.

"Our father didn't learn martial arts from Mokosh," Agata said quickly before correcting herself. "He got a magic sword from her."

Joan, Thistle, and Ivan seemed fascinated by this entire embarrassing affair.

"Sleeping with your martial arts mentor is tight," my father said. "I remember when I was with Cynthia Rothrock. We'd been introduced together by Count Dante and were attending to kumate together. I was on the run from the KGB when I met your mother there."

"None of that happened, dad," I said, sighing.

"I was a brainwashed agent of the SB sent to assassinate him," my mother said. "However, your father and I got to talking about Tolkien and I helped him defeat the death squad sent to eliminate us both. Just in time for him to become the first Pole to win the Kowloon Walled City death tournament."

Jon stared. "I know enough about martial arts to be both impressed and confused by that story."

"It's not true," I said. "Any more than my mother used to date Chuck Norris and Burt Reynolds."

"Simultaneously!" my mother said. "They weren't into it."

I decided to interrupt before the last shreds of my sanity were destroyed. "How are you here?"

"Oh!" My mother spoke up. "Well, we were visited by that nice author you like, Lawrence Weis."

"I wouldn't call him nice," my father said, calmly. "Guy doesn't have an original thought in his head."

"Be nice," my mother said. "In any case, he explained that you were trapped in a fantasy world and we were fighting the forces of evil. Also, that we might be targeted by the agents of the evil god Veles or the megacorporation Epic DungoneeringTM."

"Or both," my father said. "I didn't believe him at first, but that was before I was ambushed at the car park by a bunch of black suited goons. It was the first time I got to rip my shirt and do a flying death kick since the Nineties."

"I went to make sure Georgie was alright," my mother replied. "I had to shotgun a few bitches to save him, but I got Arwen as well him out of Epic's clutches. That was when Weis transported us here."

"It's like Aunt Em and Uncle Henry coming to live in Oz," my dad said. "Which happened in the later books. Which you'd remember if you hadn't become obsessed with the mundane trivialities of life."

"Aaron is what now?" Ania asked, confused.

My father shook his head. "I raised my son to be an idealistic dreamer and he's just so...ordinary."

I glared at my parents then sighed. "Wendy is here?"

"Arwen is upstairs," my mother replied. "She's very upset. Thankfully, we've gotten the indoor plumbing installed. We just need a full sewer system."

I checked my bracelet and noted we had just enough after Radu to make one. "Sure, I can do that. So, Weis is trying to move the families of the champions here to Ledziania to protect them? A place that's filled with monsters, dysentery, and evil empires?"

My father nodded. "I know, it's awesome. Reminds me of when I was sent by the CIA to rescue Gorbachev from the coup against him. A lot of ninjas died that day. Clinton tried to drag me back but I was like, no, sir, that was my last mission."

My mother frowned. "You could have killed Osama Bin Ladin for him."

"Alek eventually tracked him down," my dad said. "Even if Team Dragon had to let the SEALs take the credit."

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Thankfully, none of that would make any sense to the others, except for Jon. Turning around, I gestured to my parents. "Sorry for the interruption. Everyone, this is Mikhail and Sasha Bartkowski. My parents."

"Fine Rus names," Bloodstorm said.

"Blame our parents," Sasha said. "They were dirty-dirty communists."

"We're anarchists," Mikhail said, putting his arm around his wife and squeezing her.

"Different pairs of parents, just to be clear," Sasha said. "There's a lot of incest here in the Southern Kingdoms."

"Tell me about it," Jon said. "Aaron's mentor is his great aunt."

"Zorya Dawnbringer was born from the sun meeting the world's sky," Ania said, clearly not happy with Jon usurping her joke. "She's not his aunt."

"Oh thank god," I muttered under my breath.

"Did he just claim to have slept with a goddess?" Ivan asked, leaning into Thistle's side.

"He's slept with two," Agata said.

"One being Ania's mother," Jon said.

"Huh," Ivan said.

"Eh, Ania's slept with a few divinities," Thistle said. "It's how she got her light bow."

"Eh, Mythras was disappointing," Ania said.

I did a double take.

Ivan stared.

Joan looked uncomfortable.

"Can we not discuss..." I trailed off as I realized that it was pointless to ask anyone not to discuss my sex life in front of my parents. Life was not that kind. "So, my sister is here and Georgie too?"

"Yes, keep up, Aragorn," Sasha said.

The prospect of poor Arwen "Wendy" Bartkowski being trapped in a fantasy world wasn't one that I appreciated, especially since my cousin had supposedly traded his soul (metaphorically or otherwise) for her safety. I needed to speak with her but suspected she'd somehow find a way to blame this on me. Maybe I could use this to convince Alek to reevaluate his allegiances, but I wasn't sure just how much would be left of my brother-cousin (ugh). After all, once you were willing to work for the Devil, I wasn't sure how much was left of your sanity.

"I have high deductive reasoning but low emotional comprehension," I replied.

"Yes, high INT and low WIS," Jon said, summarizing me in a single sentence.

"Average WIS," I muttered.

"Keep telling yourself that, man," Jon said.

"She's locked up in her room, sulking," Mikhail said. "Apparently, she was about to become assistant manager at the auto dealership."

"How terrible for her," I replied.

Ania stepped forward. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Bartkowski. Your son has helped us tremendously against the forces of Veles."

"We always felt he could do more," Mikhail said. "I always wanted him to be a wandering martial artist like Billy Jack or Caine from Kung Fu."

"I would have been satisfied with pot dealer," Sasha said. "But no, he wanted to work for corporations."

"He's a good man," Ania said, looking down. "Better than I deserve."

"On that we agree!" Jon said. "Because you are kind of a bitch and by kind of, I mean werewolf levels versus small dog. That's more your sister."

Agata narrowed her eyes but kept a strained smile on her face.

Ania shot him a glare. "I'm trying to be nice, bird."

"Yeah, that's why I'm taking my shots now."

I was getting some real tsundere ("hot and cold" for ye non-anime nerds) vibes from Ania. I thought she was pissed at me for some unknown reason, maybe related to the swords of evil, but then she'd gone and proclaimed me her elvish soulmate. Now she was cozying up to my parents and I wasn't sure how to react.

"Ania is special to me," I said. "I wouldn't be alive if not for her."

"Aww," Misha said, in her 'I give it a week, tops' tone that I recognized from previous girlfriends I'd introduced.

"Well, I'm going to assume that you know most of what's going on. I'm still not sure why Dragon Keep is packed, though. It was empty when we last were here a couple of weeks ago," I said, unsure how I felt about my parents being here. I was glad I would be able to see them again, but I wasn't sure Ledziania was any safer than being on Epic DungeoneeringTM's radar. I was also, apparently, going to need to reevaluate all the nonsense my parents had been telling me about their pasts it seemed as well. Perun's blood running through their veins maybe, just maybe, might have made some of their stories a bit more plausible.

"That is my doing, Ser Garland!" a familiar-ish voice spoke and drew my attention.

The source of the voice was a rotund man with a long black beard and signs of having been once been a great deal more fit. He was wearing formal clothes of the Ledzianian upper class as well as several fine rings plus a gold necklace. I recognized him as Lord Piotr Emberly who, alongside Ania, was probably the last true Dark Undermaster.

The last I'd seen of Lord Emberly, he was riding off on his steed to the Empire in order to beseech them for help against Veles' forces. Which, given that the Empire was neck deep in Veles' schemes, was something I should have warned him as being suicidal. He'd also named me Lord of Dragon Keep and refused to let go of the delusion I was Garland, helped along by Larry C.C. Weis' magic.

Lord Emberly was a questionable figure in Weis' novels, having a fatherly but condescending relationship to the Rose sisters but a significantly better one with Garland. It was obvious he had been reliving his glory days through the latter and had pushed him to be the Overmaster of the order. If you needed a summary, you could do worse than describing King Osric from Conan: The Barbarian, "Once a mighty Northman, now old and sotted." Oddly, he looked about forty pounds lighter and twenty years younger. Which was an impressive accomplishment after two weeks even with alchemical potions.

"Lord Emberly," Ania said, blinking as if she hadn't expected to ever see him again. "You're alive."

"Of course I am!" Piotr said, walking up and hugging her. "I have returned from the Empire with the full support of the archchancellor."

"Archchancellor...Selev," I said.

"Yes," Piotr said. "I was surprised at how quick he was to lend financial backing, construction workers, and recruits taken from the dungeons."

Well, that's not ominous. "Super."

"Selev also sent about a thousand slaves, but we freed them," Sasha said, a frown on her face. "They're now settling into the village."

"I'm not sure you had the authority to do that," Piotr muttered. "I mean we could have freed them after they'd done their repairing of the walls."

Ania glared at him as did Pope Joan. Agata just sighed. Bloodstorm's expression was unreadable. Thistle looked uncaring. Ivan looked like he agreed. Sparky and Jon were animals.

"We have the authority of our son," Mikhail said, patting me on the shoulder. "Being the biological parents of Garland. Right, Garland?"

I stared at him. "Really, dad?"

"Yes," Piotr said, nodding. "It was very shocking, but your father and mother are recognized as both the Castellan as well as mayor of Crossroad. They've managed to get things mostly repaired here in Dragon Keep. There's even a dragon pit now."

"Yes," I muttered, unhappy. "Amazing what you can accomplish with money these days."

Yeah, my parents weren't hesitant about bending the truth when it suited their purposes. It was part of the reason that I was skeptical about any of their stories. Most kids learned their parents were liars when they were told Santa Clause was real. My parents lied like I'd be able to find a wardrobe to Narnia well into my twenties. Which, yes, turned out to be less of a lie than any of us thought but still annoyed me.

"The support of the Empire is conditional, though," Piotr said, looking at me. "The Dragon Queen's forces are almost defeated and soon we will finally have a united Ledziania. Even the elves will be pledging themselves to our service. This is a chance for peace as well as bringing our full forces against the Gods."

"Yes," I muttered. "Which I'm sure Selev is very interested in doing."

I wasn't sure how to tell Piotr that his new patron was the God of Evil because that might require revealing a lot of things about myself. I wasn't worried about losing Dragon Keep, it was Ania's family home after all, so much as him trying to kill me. Piotr was a man who, despite his age, was still a brutal and capable warrior. He'd once been a Rus mercenary who had been named a Lord by Old King Frederick before killing a Duke plus his entire hunting party. He only escaped execution by joining the Dark Undermasters and by being Fred's close friend. To be fair, the Duke had been trying to kill him at the time. Mostly because Piotr had found been with said Duke’s wife and sister.

Simultaneously.

"Yes," Piotr said, missing my irony. "However, the price for this is we have to keep a look out for the renegade Prince Ivan and his Anti-Pope. They were last scene traveling with a group of Dark Moon assassins nearby Devil's Pass."

I didn't look back at Ivan or Joan but noted both were in clear view of Piotr. Either he was playing coy or there was magic at work.

"I'll keep a look out for them," I said.

"Good man," Piotr said, hugging me then giving both Rose siblings a kiss on the cheek before departing.

"Well, that was weird," I said, looking at Ivan then Joan. "Do you have magic protecting you?"

"Yes," Ivan said, lifting his bracelet. The Mark of the Champion glowed, causing Ania’s as well as Agata’s to do the same. "Joan's hat protects her identity from enemies."

Joan adjusted it.

"It is a very nice hat," I said.

Ania sighed. "I hate deceiving Piotr, but he is too pragmatic to believe we have a chance of saving Ledziania."

"Do you believe we can?" I asked, looking at her. "Last time I checked, you thought this was a suicide mission."

Ania seemed to ponder her response. "You've made me believe...we have a small chance."

I smiled.

Thistle looked away in disgust.