Frustration gnawed at my soul. As the days passed, I began feeling more and more disillusioned over my situation, despite my best efforts to move forward in life. Afterall, I was king! But I saw myself more as a slave.

The crown was becoming a burden to me. The fact that the village of the Skhites was dimly lit added to my depression. What I had thought was affectionate behavior of the Skhites towards me, I now began to wonder if it was simply an attempt to please me so that their society kept running smoothly. This was obviously false, for the Skhites had treated me well prior to my becoming their ruler. I thought of the Hornies as a race of barbarian nincompoops. I had no wish to rule over them. I had no wish to visit the place they lived in. It would certainly be no better than the village.

And all the while, I would constantly dwell on what the shaman had spoken about me becoming the king of all eviluns. Were more races going to force me through beggary to be their caretaker? More races meant more responsibility.

This was not a life that I had chosen on my own. I yearned for my carefree life in the real world, before I reminded myself of the accident and why I was in Dharti.

Visiting the town of players was out of the question. I wanted to pass over the crown to someone else, except I wasn’t very certain if I should. I wasn’t even particularly sure if my mood was just a test. Maybe it was just part of the psychology of being a ruler? Maybe I would regret handing kingship to a different individual in the future?

I remained like this for days on end. I refused to meet anyone, and stayed miserable alone. I even kept Nora and Nadir away, even though they had been nice to me since the beginning. Sometimes I would break into tears over my fate. What was happening to me?

I wanted an escape…

And the escape came.

***

The escape came in the form of my brother Sam.

After a long stretch of time I had gone out of the village and was strolling in the nearby woods. Being out in the open provided me a sense of freedom that was missing inside the village. Woodpeckers were drilling holes in trees, butterflies fluttered together, and impressive cumulus clouds floated in the sky of the game world like colossal piles of heavenly ice cream, too distant for a tongue to lick.

It was still morning and noon was a few hours away. Suddenly, the peace was breached by loud noises. Through the gaps between the trees I saw that some Skhites who had been out gathering edible roots had grouped together and there was some action taking place.

Were they fighting amongst themselves? I watched in horror as one of the fused Skhites was suddenly blasted tens of meters away.

Concerned, I ran towards the spot. Yet another Skhite, this one single-headed, went sailing through the air and hit a tree violently, and was knocked cold.

When I had reached closer to the scene, a player in the midst of the group of the Skhites came into view. The vibrant peacock feathers on his hat bounced as he danced fierce salsa with the monsters. The Skhites were trying really hard to get a grab on him, but this player was very skilled, not only with the sword, but he also had a few high-damage spells up his sleeve.

The player was none other than my brother, Sam.

“Stop!” I cried. “Everyone, just stop!”

Well, the Skhites heard me and they turned towards me. My brother however took advantage of the interruption and plunged his sword into a Skhite’s stomach. He threw a spell on a second Skhite who collapsed to the ground and began to writhe as though in great pain.

Seeing this, an adolescent Skhite leapt onto my brother from behind and pinned him to the ground, while at the same time somehow wrenching away his sword. The Skhite hefted a fat stone lying nearby and was about to smash my brother’s skull to bits, when I cried out again.

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“Don’t do that! It’s an order!”

The Skhite stopped, his hand in mid-air. Sam finally looked up at me, and his eyes flared in recognition.

“Vicky!” he cried.

“Let him go,” I said to the Skhite still atop my sibling.

“But you saw what he did to us!” the teenager protested.

“Just do as I say! He’s my brother!”

The Skhite gaped. When I gave him a stern expression, he dutifully got up from Sam.

Sam sprang to his feet and embraced me in a bear hug. I felt so full of emotions at that moment, that I burst into tears and kept holding him for a while. Finally we separated. I wiped my face, and I saw that Sam’s face too was flushed, which was rather unlike him. His eyes went over to the crown on my head.

“So…?” Sam said. “You are their king?” Sam gestured at the party of confused Skhites around us.

I nodded.

“It’s quite a long story.”

“I have been searching for you since the day I returned to the game world and found my room a mess and you were missing,” Sam said.“I was able to trace your footprints using a friend’s spell and I tracked you to the gate near the west bridge. I thought you fell into the river, and drowned. I spent a lot of time searching for you about the river bank but in vain.”

“The Skhites saved me,” I said, “The same Skhite couple that I had saved on my first visit.”

Sam turned guiltily towards the Skhites that he had attacked and injured. He fished into his pocket and took out some health vials. He counted them, before ultimately deciding to distribute all the vials.

“I will get new health vials for myself,” he said to me, “but I think they need the vials more than me now.”

In minutes all the Skhites were hale and hearty and on their feet. Even the one whom Sam had stabbed in the stomach recovered.

“You won’t take me to your palace?” said Sam with a small grin.

So it happened that I took Sam to my ‘palace’, the gloomy village of the Skhites. I led him to my chamber. Skhites that saw him along the way gossiped in low whispers amongst themselves. But I had my arm around my brother and the Skhites did not question why I had brought a human player into their dwelling.

Sam seemed impressed by me.

“You know, these Skhites really respect you,” he told me. “How many of them are there? A few hundreds? A thousand? More?”

“Three thousand Skhites live here,” I told Sam, so that his mouth dropped open.

“That means you are the boss, right?” he said, and it was clear from the longing on his face that he was ready to switch places with me any time. If only he knew the nitty gritty of being boss! “All these three thousand monsters will do anything you tell them?”

I nodded.

“Actually it’s more like 7k,” I said to him. “I am the ruler of the Hornies too.” The Hornies numbered no less than four thousand.

Sam rolled his eyes like he was going to swoon.

“Are you kidding?”

I shook my head.

“Not kidding at all.”

Sam gawked at me for some time like I was the luckiest person in the universe.

“And to think that I was making myself miserable believing you died,” Sam said. “You should have at least sent me a message that you were okay!”

“I would have if I could,” I said, “but me going to the town was out of question because there are people there who want to kill me. Why they want to kill me I can’t imagine.”

“Maybe because the eviluns love you, that’s why? And you could have gone to the town with your seven thousand strong army,” Sam’s eyes were wide and I could see that he was dreaming the scene in his mind already, “the players wouldn’t have dared touch any of you!”

“There are tens of thousands of players in that ‘little’ town of yours,” I pointed out, “plus, not all of my subjects are soldiers or even adults. There are quite a few children.”

A few silent moments passed as Sam seemed to ponder on my fate so far in the game world.

“I can’t believe all this happened because you saved that Skhite couple the first day you came to Dharti,” he said.

“It’s just a hypothesis,” I said to him. “But I can’t see any other reason. Dharti has lumped me with the eviluns ... Now you tell me, how did you know that I lived in this part of the forest? You came searching for me today, am I right?”

Sam nodded.

“I have been searching for you ever since I saw you that other day. I was forced to assume you were dead, but when I saw you alive my hopes were rekindled,” he replied, “I was helping a bunch of newbie players with a quest. Never expected that you would turn out to be part of the quest.”

“You disappeared suddenly,” I said.

“The quest had a time limit,” Sam replied. “We had been magically teleported to that room to fight, and when the time was up, I was instantly transported back to the town. Today I saw one of the Skhites and decided that I might be able to reach you if I just kept following him, which was what happened. I could have done that before, but somehow I couldn’t spot any Skhite in the forest for a long time. It was as if they had gone extinct from Dharti.”

Sam was likely talking about the time when the village was sealed.

“That’s another story altogether,” I said.