This was very bad for us.

Oh yeah, sure, everything before going to world S3 had gone swimmingly. We had sent Aaron back to our world with a nice letter addressed to our parents, printed by Bonnie because Benedict used no pencils, and we had been unable to get one from Bonnie because the AI considered pencils as potential weaponry.

She had access to a futuristic 3D printer, and we couldn’t even get a pencil. What we could get though, were clothes and food. That was a definite plus. So she made us a pair of long sleeve shirts, a waterproof vest, thick pants, and boots for trekking. We also had gotten a very futuristic flint and steel, two backpacks, a tent and sleeping bags, rope, four gourds of the silvery water that helped us regenerate quickly and ration packs enough for a week.

“We forgot to ask why we regenerate so fast. You do regenerate faster, right?” I said to my sister as we finally put all our clothes on. I had taken an extra sweater and already crammed it in my bag.

“It’s nanobots, no? That’s what the fucker told me, at least. Except it’s not a machine but something like special bacteria? I don’t care, that’s one of the cool things we’ve gotten.” My sister explained. “I don’t want to go back to the library and check every single thing that happened to us, Daniel.” Her expression glazed over nothing.

“Yeah, no, me neither.” I cut her thinking short. “That’s a good enough explanation for me.”

It wasn’t.

My sister had become very impatient since she had woken up, and I didn’t want to upset her.

The printing of all our gear had taken half a day, and so we had slept in Benedict’s bed while we waited. We had separated a bit to shower and go to the toilet (there wasn’t one, you needed to use the shower), but except that we had stayed glued together the whole time.

So after our rushed preparations were over and done with, we went to the giant doors room, pushed S3 in the code panel and waited for the dimensional door to be lifted in front of us.

It had been cool to see the door in its glass cubicle move through the automated railway system.

The door was impressive as well. More mystical than the common wooden one we had used so far. It was a large castle door of thick wooden planks covered in metal strips. The epic part was that the rivets sticking the metal on the wood looked like diamonds. There was no handle on it though, just a simple rope going through a hole to pull at. It was a rustic, medieval door with the most expensive accessories.

To that point, everything had gone swimmingly.

Then, my sister touched the rope to pull the door open, and everything went sideways.

Or not sideways, downways.

We immediately started to fall. The door on the other side had been placed precariously on top of a steep slope, and that made us exit straight over it with no foothold.

It was impossible not to stumble, and me and my sister had to let go of each other, which made my brain freeze.

I didn’t hear Bonnie’s warning message telling us that the door had been moved and that our location was unknown. Not that saying that after the fact was any use.

I was too busy rolling over piles of rock.

I heard something crack, pain rush over my leg, felt my palms be cut by something sharp, before finally roughly crashing on a wall and stopping abruptly.

Hearing my sister grunt, I didn’t think she had been more graceful on her landing.

I took a moment to breath.

“Fuck.” I looked at my right foot, and the tibia wasn’t supposed to bend that way.

Then something appeared in front of me.

New user detected. Error: Race unknown. Error: Inheritance unknown.

Error: Age>0

It was slightly transparent but clearly obstructing my vision.

“What the hell?” I waved at it to make it go away, but nothing happened.

“Fucking hurts. So cool.” My sister echoed next to me. Then, her voice pitched up as she asked. “Daniel? Are you here?”

You have been named Daniel. Error: Inheritance unknown

Please stand by

“I’m here I’m here.” I called out to her.

“Daniel?”

I tried to find my sister, but the blue message in front of my face was following me wherever I looked. “Fuck off!” I told it angrily.

And so it disappeared.

“Oh.” I blinked at my vision suddenly being unobstructed.

My sister wasn’t far, just a few meters away, having crashed on the same wall as I had. We were clearly in a cave of some sort, but there were some fires around that lit it well enough to see. I tried to get to her, but I buckled under my broken foot.

“Shit.”

“Daniel? I can’t see you.” She sounded more and more panicked.

“Tell it to go away, it listened to me.”

“I can’t see you…”

“Gaëlle, say it out loud! Fuck off!”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“I…ok. Fuck off. Ah. Daniel!” Her eyes finally met mine, and she quickly moved towards me. She had some cuts and bruises, but I saw them heal right in front of me.

My leg wasn’t healing yet, but maybe that was for the best. I knew I couldn’t let it heal like that.

“I’ve broken my foot.” I told my sister as she grabbed my hand.

Her panic quickly went away, and she looked at my leg in worry.

“Oh damn. That must hurt.”

“Not that much.” But I knew that my pain threshold was a bit skewed. “I just can’t stand, and I need to set it right, I don’t want to start exploring with a foot turned to the wrong side.”

“Hear, hear.” She nodded. “I’ll…I’ll do it. Just need to turn it, then a bit of silver water and you’ll be fine, right?”

“Yeah, yeah I…” My voice trailed off as I heard something else.

Like a deep rumble.

Or a very, very big snore.

“Gaëlle?” I asked, my voice the same as my sister’s a few moments before.

“Yeah?”

“Were there dragons in this world?”

“Yes, of course. It wouldn’t be an RPG if there weren’t dragons. Is this really the moment? Your foot?”

“It’s the moment, yeah. Because that seems very much like a pile of precious ores and gems.” I pointed at the large pile of minerals, coins, and rusty swords we had stumbled from. “That fire is currently burning through stone.” I pointed at the yellow flame the size of my head on the cave wall above us, obviously not aware that stone wasn’t acceptable fuel. “And that looks like a very big lizard.” I pointed at the sleeping mass of scales on the other side of the cave.

My sister diligently looked at everything I pointed to, then stopped when she saw the creature.

“That’s bad.” She whispered.

“Yes.” I whispered back.

It wasn’t gigantic, maybe the size of a big horse? It was difficult to say, laid down in a ball like that. The only thing we could see were its scales, black and violet, reflecting the flickers of the flames that slowly ate through stone.

So at least it wasn’t a mountain sized dragon like there were in some stories.

But then I realized that the bigger the dragon, the less likely it would have been interested in us, while for a ‘small’ one like this, we were fresh home-delivered breakfast.

“Maybe it’s just a big salamander, or something?” My sister rationalized quietly.

“Does that change anything for us? Are salamanders vegan or something?”

“No… Ok, let’s get your leg back in action and get the hell out.”

“Yes please.”

“Try not to scream.” My sister told me. “I’ve never done this before. You ready?” She placed her hands on my leg, ready to turn it.

“Do it.”

She fucked up her action, twisting my leg to the wrong side at first, and probably breaking something else in the process.

“L! Fuck! Other side!”

“Sorry, sorry…it’s just. Difficult.”

She tried a second time, and it looked better, at least through my tears.

“I’m sorry Daniel, it’s not... I need to do it again.”

“For fuck’s…GNN.” I clenched my teeth hard at the sensation of my leg turning again.

“Ok…Ok it looks good. Here drink this.”

I took the gourd of silver liquid and chugged it down in one go.

Pretty soon, the pain started to vanish.

“Ok, let’s go back.”

“Go back?” My sister asked. “We can’t climb up there! Everything’s going to fall! No way we don’t wake it…”

“BRUMF.” Echoed the cave.

Except that wasn’t the cave, that was our conversation finally waking the dragon up.

“Ok. Other side, other side.” I conceded.

I hopped on one leg, helped by my sister, away from the lizard.

Fortunately, although the ceiling was high enough to allow the large pile of stuff the dragon had hoarded, the size of the cave was small, and we immediately found the exit to the dragon’s lair.

The long tunnel rising gently through the rocks was littered with sharp edges, as the obsidian glass littered everywhere testified of the way the cave had been created. A lot of fire. But there was normal sunlight at the end.

I bounced on my feet for a few meters, but as the pain disappeared, I managed to walk normally.

As I saw the blue sky, something else that was blue filled my vision.

User registered.

Name: Nielle Templier.

No Inheritance, Help function added as compensation.

Age: 29

Race: Homo Chimera

Errors corrected; individual system reboot completed.

Is this correct? Yes/No.

“What the…? Yes, now go away!” I waved at it angrily, especially at seeing my name forcefully feminized, as I was trying my best to be silent.

“No! No! Fine, yes! Please leave.” My sister said quietly at the same time.

As the blue screen went away, I sighed in relief, it had scared me shitless.

You have discovered the lair of Gorover the Hoarder: +1 000 Experience

You have levelled up

You have levelled up

You have levelled up

Stat points available

[New species] Innate Skill granted

[Identical Twins] Innate Skill granted

I was totally not ready for a new pop-up, and my sister didn’t fare any better. She slipped on a rock, and I fell with her. The sharp edges of the floor pierced the skin all over my face, but fortunately my clothes held up. Still, the pain was bad enough for me to let go of Gaëlle’s hand. We could handle the pain, but the sudden lack of each other forced a scream out of our throats.

We stopped immediately, back on our feet and holding hands as quick as we could, but the large scraping noise behind us told us that it was too late for sneaking around.

We ran towards the sky, and stopped immediately, as to not to fall to our doom. Under us stood a large, very colourful forest or jungle, it was too weird-looking to be sure, not green in colour but mainly red and yellow. It went on for a few miles, then the view was obstructed by low clouds. I had only seen such sights in remote parts of Canada, but not with this variety of colours. I was also pretty sure there was a river just under one of the white foggy clouds with a waterfall, not falling, but rising to the cloud above.

My brain decided to ask itself if we should call it a waterrise then, but the large growl behind us made my internal ramblings cease fast.

“It’s a twenty-meter drop (65 foot), we can’t jump.” I said, appalled.

Fortunately, my sister showed some brilliant quick thinking.

“Up! We can climb up!”

As I looked above, something I would never have thought of doing on my own, I saw that there was a ledge we could grab onto.

“I’m going to stop holding you.” I told her. “I push you up, you pull me.”

I squatted with my hands acting as a step.

“Go, go, go!”

Gaëlle didn’t hesitate and used me to climb up. She would never have been able to do it before our changes, but now she did it with surprising ease and grace. As she went out of view for a fraction of a second, I peered into the cave, and further down the tunnel, saw two yellow eyes look back at me.

“Shit, shit, shit…”

“Daniel, hand!” My sister shouted.

I looked back up, saw her extended arm, and grabbed it. I squirmed my best and pushed on the sides of the entrance as hard as I could, and with our enhanced strength, my lowered body weight and Gaëlle’s help, it almost felt like catapulting up.

Warm air bit down my ankles.

“Daniel! Your shoes are on fire!”

I looked down. It wasn’t much, but flames were biting down the thick leather. As those had gone through stone wall, I felt that panicking was entirely warranted.

And that’s what I was starting to do, but once again, my sister’s quick thinking saved me. The silver liquid splashed down on the fire, and, I felt really, really lucky when it went out in the usual “pshhh”. I already expected it to react to water unexpectedly, and not in an advantageous way.

“Don’t daydream! Run!” My sister shouted at me.

“Run whe…” I began. But she grabbed my hand hard and pulled me away from the cliff. It hadn’t just been a ledge, the lair was under the edge of the cliff, and we were now running deep into the foliage of the top of a plateau or hill.

“GRHUUUU!” The dragon seemed pretty pissed off, but it didn’t seem to pursue us, as the sounds of its angry growls became more and more distant.

We pushed through the vegetation for long minutes even after we had stopped hearing it.

“L! Stop! We need to stop!”

If we continued like this, we would stumble on something else that was bad in no time.

“No. No! Run!”

“L!” I jumped to grab her. It was way easier to do with her new body. We fell on grass, our bodies entangled, but as I hugged her close her breathing started to calm down.

“We’re fine.” I reassured her.

“We’re not…”

“We’re alive.”

“No Daniel, we’re fucking stranded.”

My sister started crying, and this time, there was nothing I could tell her to make it better, so I simply caressed her head.