The fire crackles. A chorus of crickets sing a moonlight sonata. It is late, but Roderick and I don’t let that stop our merriment. I sit back and relax with my warm cup of non-alcoholic grog. My brother impersonates some of the characters from our old neighborhood.

“Do old man Davidson again.”

“Oi,” Roderick stomps his foot against the earth, “You kids had best step away from my petunias. They’re an hairloom variety. Hairloom, don’t you understand?”

Roderick collapses onto his pelt with a bad case of the giggles. As do I.

He suddenly spits and sits up, “my stupid hair got caught in my mouth again.”

“Your hair would put Rapunzel’s to shame,” I chide him and laugh.

“Don’t remind me.” He pulls his lengthy brown locks behind his ears and scratches at his face. “And my lip is so freaking itchy! How can some guys handle a full-grown beard?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I slurp back the last of my drink, and pat my hairless face.

“And the worst thing is,” he looks both ways and then inches towards me, “that’s not the only new hair I have to deal with.”

“Yuck, I don’t want to think about that,” I gag as he breaks down in another fit of laughter.

I have never had this much fun with anyone before, let alone with Roderick. It feels like we have been best friends for ages when in reality, we only just mended our relationship hours earlier. It is quite a lot to take in.

“Well,” he says, “I think we ought to hit the hay.” He calms down with a stretch and lays back on his pelt comforter. “I want to get up early and head to the hot springs. The boy who brought us our supper said that it is still here – just a short walk uphill from the stone ruins.”

“A bath does sound nice,” I say and lie down on my fluffy animal skin bed.

“Goodnight big bro,” Roderick says to me. He reaches a metal pole towards the fire and snuffs out the light.

“Night,” I say.

Everything that has happened to me seems like some kind of a crazy dream. I was drugged by people at a gaming studio, left for dead in the middle of a swamp, reunited with my dead brother, and found out that I was living in a video game.

I sit back and think about it – it seems too good to be true. What if it isn’t real? What if I wake up back at home without my brother? My throat swells at the mere thought of it.

Should I stay awake? I wonder. Maybe my dream will never end. I am tired though. Super tired.

The warm fur that I swaddled myself under urges me to close my eyes. I try to fight the urge, but I can feel my eyelids getting heavy. There is a crackle coming from the dying embers of the hearth. The sound is so soothing.

A squeaky noise accentuates the hearth’s melody. It inhales and exhales slowly with a light huff of air. Roderick is sound asleep and snoring gently.

“A few minutes of rest couldn’t harm anything,” I whisper to myself. “I’ll just rest my eyes. Nothing more.”

I allow my eyes to close shut. Just for a minute, I think, just for a minute.

“No! No! Stop it. Don’t get in that damn car, please. Please come home Roderick! Please!”

“Derek,” a muffled voice permeates the air outside my house as I beg my dad to chase after my brother.

“He’s not coming home dad,” I shriek, “he’s dead! He’s freaking dead!”

“Snap out of it!”

I awake in a cold sweat. My heart rate is out of control.

“Roderick is dead,” I hyperventilate, “he’s dead.”

“No I’m not, I’m right here.”

“Where?” I pant, “where are you?”

“Derek,” an arm wraps around my back and gives me a firm pat, “It’s okay. It’s me, Roderick. You were having a nightmare. Everything is okay.”

“My medicine,” I shake his arm off of me, “I need my medicine.” I stumble across the unfamiliar room, knocking over pots and urns as I go. I drop down to the floor. My robe is near the edge of the hut. I desperately dig into its pockets, rooting around for the baggie with my pills in them.

“Where is it?” I slam my hand against the dirt floor. “Where are my pills?”

“Are these them?”

I squint into the darkness. In the light green hue of my protective ward, I can just barely see them shimmering in Roderick’s hand.

“My pills! There they are! Quick, find me water. I need water.”

“Will grog do?”

“Yes, yes. That works too.”

Roderick pours me a cupful of stale grog, and I chug it back with one of my pills. Instantly, my anxiety begins to evaporate away. Thank God for experimental medicine.

After a few minutes of silence, Roderick carefully re-lights the hearth. He stares at me from his pelt bed. A look of shock is written all over his tired face.

“I’m sorry”, I say, as I shake my head, “I didn’t want you to find out about my condition like this. I should have warned you before we went to sleep.”

“My God,” Roderick’s dazed eyes begin to well up at the sight of me, “did losing me really hurt you this much? You’re on pills, Derek. Freaking pills.”

“It’s my anxiety medicine. I can’t live without it.”

“I’m stunned,” he says, “and really worried about you. What was all that?”

“On the day that I thought you died,” I shake my head, “I laughed. I laughed at the pictures of your accident. I was so happy. But then I slowly started to miss you. I missed the way you used to make ‘sugar rush’ waffles for everyone in the morning. I missed finding random copies of your manga and comics all over the house. I missed your childish humor. I even missed your silly drawings. It was horrible, Roderick. Absolutely horrible. I became immobilized. I started to have panic attacks. I couldn’t even leave the house anymore.”

Roderick stands up and maneuvers himself by my side. “What’s in the past is in the past,” he grabs my shaking hand and steadies it, “this world is our new beginning. I don’t care what the old version of Derek did. Heck, I probably would have been happy as well if the shoes were reversed. I’m sure I would have been. The old Derek was not my friend, but the new Derek is a great guy. I’ve only known him for a day, but I can already tell that he’s a kind and humble person who cares deeply about others.”

I point at his arm. A bright pink scar glimmers in the light. “I burned you with a scalding hot iron. That was me, Roderick. It was not an accident. I should have gone to jail.”

“I don’t care,” he shrugs, “did you listen to me a moment ago? I forgive you.”

“I’m supposed to be the adult here, and yet it’s you who’s comforting me,” I chuckle softly, “thanks man. I feel better already.”

“We’re going to wean you off of those pills too, okay? They’re not good for you in the long run, and besides, you don’t need them anymore. I’m alive and well.”

“Okay,” I take a deep breath, “I’ll try to get off of them.”

“Good. That’s a good first step.” He gives me another pat on the back and then returns to his side of the room. “The sun should be rising by now. Why don’t you head down to the hot spring and clean yourself up. I’m going to catch another ten minutes of shut-eye, and then I’ll join you.”

“I can wait.”

“Derek,” he scolds me in a stern voice, “go get cleaned up. I don’t want to embarrass you, but I think you may have had an accident.”

I tap my shorts and then pat the pelts where I had been sleeping. They are drenched. My anxiety begins to spike anew. This is mortifying. I’m so fucking ashamed of my stupid self.

“Remember my first piano recital,” Roderick recounts, as he lies back down.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Accidents happen,” he says, “now go get cleaned up. I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay,” I say as my nerves calm themselves once more. “Thanks for that.”

I grab a pair of moth-eaten long johns left by one of the villagers, a long piece of fur, and a spongy piece of moss. I open the door and emerge into the chill of the early morning light.

Wrapping my fur around me like a robe, I quietly tip-toe through the empty village streets. The small mud houses are mostly dark, but a few of them radiate weak light into the main village square.

I find a simple dirt path and follow it behind the stone ruins. Though I am worried I might get lost, the warm mist of the hot spring is easy to spot in the distance.

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“Wow, this looks awesome,” I say, as I pull up alongside the mellow turquoise waters. The spring scatters the fading moonlight into the surrounding darkness, creating an almost psychedelic effect.

I slide out of my fur robe, and slip into the warm water wearing only my shorts. The calming water soothes my battered body into a blissful state of recovery. “This is great,” I let out a sigh. “I might stay in here for an eternity.”

“Enjoying yourself, are you?”

I spring up at the sound of an unknown voice, splashing water everywhere.

“You got my favorite robe wet!”

I turn around and come face to face with her, a girl no older than 15, with bright red eyes and pale white hair. She is dressed in tattered black and red rags, held together with a piece of braided leather. Her jagged teeth grin eagerly at me.

“You call that a robe?” I quickly cover my snarky mouth.

Sometimes my anxiety medicine makes me say stupid things, and the last thing I need is to antagonize a creepy girl in the middle of the pitch-black woods.

“Who are you calling creepy?” She scowls. “I’m not creepy. I’m a princess.”

I scratch my head at what I hear, “A princess? Wait a minute,” I stammer, “did you just read my mind?”

“That’s right, you heard me, I’m a princess. Are you supposed to be my prince?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, while still trying to process what is happening. “I’m just trying to take a bath.”

“If you’re not my prince, then who is?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

It is official, this girl clearly has a couple of screws loose.

“I tighten the screws on my wardrobe every morning, thank you very much.” She pouts.

“That’s not what I mean,” I say, “and quit reading my mind!”

“I don’t understand.” She pokes my folded up long johns with a crooked stick, “these look like the clothes of a Peasant.”

“That’s because they are the clothes of a Peasant. Someone from the village gave them to me.”

“And your physique,” she taps my exposed chest with the same stick, “it’s not very princely either.”

“Hey, knock that off.”

“Still, you are an Imperial, are you not? Then that must mean that you are a prince.”

“No,” I shake my head, “if anything, I’m a king. I’m the head of my house. That would make me more than a prince, wouldn’t it?”

“Ewwwww,” she visibly shutters and takes a few steps back, “I don’t want to get hitched with a gross old king. I guess I’ll have to keep looking for my prince.”

“Derek!” A familiar voice calls out to me from a few hundred feet down the trail.

“Roderick! Come here, I need you.”

“Roderick?” She purses her lips. “That’s a very regal name.”

“Derek, who’s this?” My brother bounds upon us, practically crashing into the mystery girl.

“The name is Embrosia Swampbottom, unmarried princess,” she curtseys. As she drops down, a small chunk of her shoddily assembled rag robe comes sliding right off.

Roderick blushes and averts his gaze.

“It’s so hard to find a good seamstress these days,” she grabs the moss I brought with me and uses it to fill in the gap in her outfit, “thank goodness we have mother nature to provide us with high-quality materials like this.”

“I was going to use that to clean between my toes.”

“Quiet.” She shushes me.

“Hey now,” Roderick says, “you can’t talk to my brother like that.”

“Eh,” she shrugs, “He’s just a nasty old king. Nobody cares about kings. You on the other hand,” she pokes my brother’s exposed belly with a stick. “If you are your brother’s heir, wouldn’t that make you a prince?”

“I guess?” Roderick raises his eyebrow at me. Clearly, he thinks that she is a nut job like I do.

“I’ll have you know that I only eat tree nuts once a week, and it is not my job to pick them,” she turns towards me and hisses.

Roderick’s mouth hangs open at her outlandish comment.

“It’s so nice to finally meet a worthy suitor,” she punches my brother in the gut, “you could use a little hardening around the edges, but you’re not bad. Want to get married?”

“Married?” Roderick struggles to get his wind back.

“First, we would need to talk to your parents. As a princess, I am obliged to ask them for your hand. We would make them pay my family a dowry, as is our tradition. I’m thinking the vista above the Black Kettle River may be a good venue for the ceremony – you know, just upstream from the smokehouse. That area is controlled by an artisan family though, so we would have to get their permission to have the event there. Perhaps we could use eminent domain to take control of their land, it would make a great place for our summer manor. But –”

“Okay, okay,” Roderick places his hand on her lips, “slow down for a second please. I’m only 14. I can’t get married yet!”

“I’m 14 too. This is even better,” she brushes his hand aside, “your parents will be even more likely to accept our betrothal if we are the same age. Mothers are weird about their sons marrying older girls. Where is your mother anyways? I would like to talk to her.”

“My mother is not here,” Roderick shakes his head, “and neither is my father. My older brother is all I have.”

“Then you are his legal guardian?” She flips backward like an acrobat and splashes down into the water next to me. “Let’s talk about your brother. What are his favorite colors? Does he have many friends? What type of beverage should we serve at our wedding? As his guardian, you will be the one buying it, so it is important that I get your input. Also,”

“Embrosia Swampbottom!” A fierce stomp interrupts her rambling diatribe.

Acolyte Margot towers over the bubbling pool, staring sternly at the albino ‘princess’.

“There you are,” she taps her foot with displeasure, “so the first thing you decide to do when you get back into town is to bother our honored ancestors? Oh, I’m going to give you quite the training session later today.” She plucks the girl from the water with her staff and starts to yank her away from us. “Sorry about that,” she waves as she pulls the kicking and screaming teenager out of view, “enjoy your soak.”

I sigh a breath of relief, “that girl was crazy, right Roderick. Uh, Roderick?”

My brother’s cheeks are flush with color. He stares blankly into the distance, lost in his own world.

“Roderick?”

“Huh,” he shakes his head. “Uh – the girl. Yeah, she was different. Did you see her hair? It was snow white.”

I laugh out loud, “you liked her. You actually liked her!”

“Nuh uh,” he looks away from me as he slides into the hot spring.

“Awww, my little brother’s first crush, this is actually kind of sweet.” I laugh.

“Have you cleaned yourself up yet?” He sneers.

“Don’t change the subject!”

“She was alright. Okay?” He blushes again, “but that’s beside the point. We have important things to start thinking about, like our objectives, the state of this town, and our prospects of getting home.”

“Do we even have any objectives?” I ask, “as far as I can tell, we haven’t been given any missions or anything like that. I thought games were supposed to be more structured.”

“One of the things I loved about Tales of the Imperium is that it had very little structure. You could basically go anywhere and do whatever you wanted, within reason of course. The game didn’t really have any grandiose goals. It was more about the adventure, and your character’s role in the events going on around him or her.”

“So if there is no objective, how are we going to beat the game and get home?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk about.” Roderick lies back in the water and stares up at the stars, “this world is far too realistic to be a game world, and yet it very clearly is a game world.”

“Okay, and what is the significance of that?” I ask.

“Put simply, this world is an improbability. We are main characters surrounded by other main characters. I think we are in a simulation – not just us, but everyone here. Cumberland must be behind it.”

“How is that possible?”

“I am not sure,” he shakes his head, “but we will have to eventually solve this mystery if we want to get home.”

“That sounds like it’s going to be hard.”

“I think the more we establish ourselves here, the more luck we will have in uncovering the truth. And to that end,” he pauses, “I think we should set this city up as our home base.”

“This city?” I point back over my shoulder, “no offense to the people who live here, but it’s a dump. Those mud houses look like they could collapse at any time, and did you see that page in my chronicle? There are only two Warriors and two Acolytes in the whole place. Those kinds of numbers aren’t going to do us any good when some freaking dragon or warlock or something decides to fly down from the mountains and eat us. You said it yourself, this world is filled with magical beasts and monsters. We need to go somewhere safer and more secure.”

“I can see why you would say that,” he says, “but consider this. What’s to the south of here?”

“The swamp?”

“That’s right,” he smiles, “and what didn’t we see in the swamp?”

“People? Monsters?”

“Exactly!” He throws his arm up into the air and balls it into a fist, “the area to the south of here – the old heartland of the Imperium. It is an empty wasteland.”

I start to see where he is coming from. “And if it is an empty wasteland, then that means it is not a threat.”

Roderick nods his head at my reasoning.

“We are essentially secure from that direction, and if the area north of here is filled with allied groups, then we are secure from that direction as well. This is probably the best place in the entire world to set up our home base.”

“But the condition of this city is horrible,” I protest.

“It can be changed,” he reaches backward under his pelt and rustles around for a moment. The familiar black binding of a chronicle meets my eye as he turns back around.

“This is my chronicle,” he says and opens it up, “I activated it this morning after you left the hut. There are a couple of very interesting things I learned in here.”

I look over my brother’s shoulder and read along as he points at stuff.

“First of all, you will see here that the first page of my chronicle is mostly greyed out. I can see all the same text that you see in your chronicle, but for me the information is immutable. Probably because I am not the house head.”

“So only I can edit this section?” I ask.

“That’s my thought,” he shakes his head.

“Now if you flip to the settlements section, and then the management page for this city, there are upgrade pointers all over this text. Though they are greyed out for me, you should be able to use your mana points to upgrade buildings and people in this city. Just like how you used mana points to cast that protective ward last night.”

“Wow, that’s really cool. That means we can make this place better!”

“Exactly,” he shakes his head, "it will come at the cost of your mana, though. Yours is higher than mine since you are a house head, but still not high enough to manage an entire city and its people.”

“So we will have to be selective with our upgrades. Still, though, this is good news.”

“If we level up, then we should be able to manage more land and grow our domain. We truly can become sovereign nobles if we want to.”

“How do we level up though?”

“I’m still trying to figure that part out. In the game your character had experience points that you could use to unlock new spells, but I can’t find anything like that in the chronicle. I did learn one other thing though,” Roderick flips to his personal stat page, “like you, I am an elemental mage. One of my affinities is air, and I know a simple attack called Force Wind, but my other affinity is not elemental at all – its an affinity called ‘support’.”

“Support?”

“Yes, I have never heard of it before. Imperials are only supposed to be able to learn elemental magic, which is passed on to them through their family lineage. Somehow, I don’t have an affinity for fire though, as every Imperial should. Instead, I have support, and I also have a support spell called ‘amplify’.”

“Maybe it’s because we have different mothers? I too have air, but not support.”

“Possibly, but if we are going to fight together, we are going to have to keep my lack of a second elemental affinity in mind. Our combo attacks are going to be far more limited because of this.”

"I suppose your support affinity may be why you were able to use my fire magic when I passed it into you. This is interesting. I’m not really sure what it all means, but thanks for sharing this with me. I think you’re right; this may be a better home base than I thought.”

“Should we go into town and see what we can upgrade?”

“Give me a few more minutes,” I lie back and sigh, “I want to enjoy the last few minutes of my anxiety meds in peace.”

“Derek,” Roderick frowns at me.

“I know. I know. I have to quit them, but as long as I have one in my system, I want to enjoy it.”

“Just this one time,” Roderick slunks down into the water, “I’ll be watching.”