After I read the book Leomorn told us to get some rest and prepare for the next day and the start of our journey.

Yippee. Couldn’t wait.

A butler of some sort, complete with a white coat with tails, brought us a roasted chicken and a loaf of bread. The smell hit my nose like a truck. I realized I hadn’t eaten since before I’d come here. Varris and I chowed down until there was nothing left but bones. It wasn’t until after we’d eaten that I wondered if this was real. It must have been. The smells, the tastes. It all seemed so real.

After we ate I tried the door. Locked. From the outside. Varris shrugged and went to sleep.

I looked out the window and saw the sun moving behind the green hills, casting orange and red light over the landscape. It was beautiful. I had to give it to Dennis and his team, this place was amazing. And I hadn’t even been out of the castle yet.

I looked out of the small window and realized it was about a mile high up from the ground. The bedsheet wasn’t big enough to cover me, much less somehow get me to the ground. There didn’t seem to be any escape. Not yet. But at some point, they’d have to let me out of here. They’d have to let me leave the castle to try and save the world. Maybe I was still in the prologue and all I needed to do was start the main quest, then explore and find a way out of here.

I laid down on the bed and tried to figure out what I was going to do.

How could I escape? Was there really no escape other than finishing the main quest? Surely Dennis had developed some type of backdoor exit.

Was I even really here? Was my body still back in the machine back in that warehouse and only my consciousness was here? Could I really die?

I felt my forehead and felt a small scar from when I was a kid. I had been hit with a baseball and needed stitches, not many, but enough to have a small scar right at my hairline. If this wasn’t my body then it wouldn’t be there, right? I probed with my fingers. I felt it.

I didn’t know how I felt about that. It was there. So, did that mean this was my actual body? Had to.

I was thinking about all of this and watching the sun go down when my eyes got heavy. I closed them and fell asleep. I’d had a hell of a day

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I woke up to Leomorn shaking me. “Get up,” he said. “We have a big day.”

I stirred and stretched. I’d slept like the dead. I didn’t feel rested but at least I wasn’t exhausted anymore. I hadn’t really thought any more about how to get out of this. I needed to get out into the world and see what I could shake loose.

Leomorn led us around the castle some more and we blindly followed him. He limped along using his big staff as a walking cane, moving like an old man. I couldn’t have found my way anywhere without him.

Leomorn took us to the castle’s armory. It was in the bowels of the castle, a hot, dark room with stone walls that smelled like sweat and dirty gym socks. There were men pounding metal in the shapes of swords and armor, sweat running down their bodies in rivers next to the large fires of their forges.

Leomorn went to a chest and retrieved a large double-sided axe with ornate markings all over it and a carved wooden handle. It had clearly been made to be a special weapon.

“There she is,” Varris said and delicately took the axe from Leomorn. “Thought I’d never see her again.” Varris gently caressed the ax until he saw me staring at him. “What?” He acted like it wasn’t weird to be stroking an ax like you loved it. I didn’t ask. He put on a leather holster that strapped the ax to his back.

Leomorn picked out a sword and a small shield and handed them to me. Then he got some things that look like chaps that were made out of metal and a chest plate and some metal gloves. He had me put all this one. I was dripping sweat before I even got dressed. I pulled at the chaps and knocked on the chest plate. I would be somewhat protected.

He led us to a training yard with dummies made from broomsticks, their round faces filled with straw. The leather straps holding everything on were chaffing me in places I didn’t know could be chaffed.

There was a large man wearing—you guessed it—leather pants and a cotton shirt holding a sword and yelling at some young men who looked like they would have rather been anywhere else.

“Come on, you squids, swing those meat cleavers faster,” the man yelled. He had a bald head covered in sweat and a red face.

Leomorn said, “Captain, this is the young man I was telling you about.”

Leomorn and Varris sat on the edge of the training area. I guess they knew how to fight already. The Captain turned and looked me over. He didn’t seem impressed. He called over his shoulder to the men he was training. “Ok, you useless maggots. Get out of here. I’m tire of looking at you. I got more important things to do than to watch you figure out ways to die.”

The men training groaned a joyful but tired cheer and trudged off. I didn’t like where this was going.

The Captain walked up to me. “Leomorn says I’m to train you. Which means you do what I say when I say it. Got it.” He jabbed a finger in my chest which was covered with the iron chest plate. I swear he put a dent in it.

Train me? I guess in a real RPG you were trained when some NPC showed you the fighting controls. You pressed a button and your character reacted. There weren’t any buttons to press so how was this going to work?

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He laughed at that. “He thinks manners is gonna make me go easy on him, Leomorn. Have you ever swung a sword before?” he asked.

Swung a sword? I’d never even been in a fight. I wondered how this was going to go.

“Oh yeah. Back home I was the All-Valley sword fighting champion three years in a row. Until this kid named Daniel Larousso showed up and stole my girl and bullied me. Then he beat me in the sword fighting tournament that same year.”

Leomorn shook his head and Varris snickered. The Captain looked at me like I was stupid. Then he hit me on the side of my head with his open palm. Suddenly the ground decided it would jump up and hit me, too.

I’d have to talk to Dennis when I got back. Everyone seemed to like to hit people here.

“Get up, maggot,” the Captain yelled at me. “And I want no more smart mouth from you. “Now swing that sword,” he told me. I did. He looked like he had just watched me take a crap and wasn’t excited about the idea of having to do it again.

“No! Like this.” The Captain took my hand and squeezed it in his big mit so hard I thought my fingers would break. “Like this,” he bellowed as he drove my arm up and down like a ragdolls. “Defend, attack, parry, block, jab, thrust, and defend.” He called this over and over as he threw my hand and the sword around. After a while, I got the hang of them.

Soon he let me go and stood in front of me. “Now,” the big Captain said, “make the move I tell you.” Before I could register what he’d said he shouted “Block” and swung his wooden sword at me. His big wooden sword came crashing into my shoulder.

The blow almost took me off my feet and I was glad he was using a wooden sword or I’d have been looking at my arm on the ground. Since it wasn't a real sword it only just felt like a bomb had went off in my arm, the pain running through my shoulder and a tingling sensation making its way down my arm, making my fingers numb.

“Come on,” he yelled. “Move.” He raised his sword again and yelled, “Block,” and I managed to pull get my sword up in just enough time to stave off his blow.

“Good,” he yelled. The Captain came at me, swinging his sword and yelling out commands. I attacked high, low, blocked and thrusted until he was only hitting me with every third blow now.

The Captain was like Mr. Miyagi and I was really Daniel-san, making the moves as he called them out. I was sure learning and making the moves easily had something to do with the game.

We practiced in the training yard for some time, me making the basic movements. At least I could probably have defended myself against a pissed-off baby now. If that baby wasn’t armed. If it was armed, it was probably going to be 50/50 on who kicked whose ass.

Varris shouted compliments and suggestions while I trained and I looked up a few times and saw Brienna watching us from a window in the castle, a scowl on her face. She wasn’t impressed with me either.

Finally, the Captain put me on a dummy and had me practice on it. I was getting the hang of it. At least if some scarecrow came out of nowhere I’d have a fighting chance.

I beat on the dummy till I couldn’t hold my arm up. When I looked around the Captain was gone and Leomorn gestured to me and I sat down with them and drank water till my stomach hurt, my arms tingling from the exertion.

After I had cooled off some Leomorn said, “I need to find out if you really are an heir of a mage. Because if not then none of this will work. Only an heir to the Mages can touch the Orb.”

Coulda done that while I still had feeling in my arm.

Leomorn told me to stand so I did. He took the sword away from me. Good idea.

“Face the dummy and stand like this,” he said, his feet shoulder-width apart, his hands down by his side. I did.

“Now, concentrate.”

I tried. But I had no idea what I should concentrate on. I focused on the dummy.

Leomorn took my left hand and manipulated my fingers into a shape. “Make this shape, then this one.” He put my fingers into another shape. “Then this,” he said as he swung my hand up and out. “Now again, and concentrate. Think of fire.”

Ok. This was weird.

I made the symbols and Leomorn corrected me a couple of times until I was making them over and over without him adjusting my shapes. “Concentrate harder,” he said. I was trying. Think of fire? I picture a raging inferno in my mind and made the shapes quickly, then swung my arm up.

I felt my arm tingle then heat in my hand, a heat that was so hot it was cold. A yellow ball of fire appeared from my hand and shot toward the dummy. It hit it and the ball erupted and set the dummy on fire.

I stared at my hand.

Varris and Leomorn cheered triumphantly. “You are the last mage,” Leomorn said.

I was still staring at my hand. What the hell?

“Do it again. Do it again,” Leomorn told me.

I made the shapes and swung my hand up but nothing happened.

“Concentrate,” Leomorn said. “Focus on the fire.”

I did and this time I shot another fireball. It was crazy. We practiced that for a while and I got to where I could do it almost every time. I couldn’t believe it.

After I had set all the dummies on fire, Leomorn took my hand again. “Make these now,” he said and showed me different shapes. I did it a few times and concentrated and suddenly all my aches and pains from training seemed to ease up. Leomorn saw in my face that it had worked and said, “That’s a minor healing spell. Use it if you are injured. It will help with minor injuries. Nothing major, potions are needed for serious wounds.”

This really was like an RPG.

I was practicing my shapes when we heard people screaming.

Leomorn threw the sword I had been training with at me, and let’s be honest, I didn’t catch it. I picked it up off the ground as they jumped up and I ran in the direction they were now running. I ran as best as I could, my armor clanking with each step. Varris and Leomorn ran into the courtyard and stopped.

I took a heavy breath and followed, carrying forty pounds of metal strapped to my body was not something I was used to. I hoped this wasn’t another dragon.

It wasn’t. It was kind of worse.

I ran up and stood next to them and we looked into the courtyard. We could see people running in every direction. There were soldiers dressed in the King’s colors fighting somebody. I squinted hard.

Were those skeletons? They were fighting skeletons. Great.

We heard shouts and saw more of the King’s soldiers come out of the doors that lead into the courtyard. The skeletons were climbing the walls and heading right for them.

“Come on,” Leomorn said a little too excitedly for my tastes.

I followed him. “We’re not going out there are we?”

He called back over his shoulder. “Of course we are! You’re the last mage. You can defeat them.”

Oh shit! This last mage stuff was going to be a real problem for me.

I didn’t want to fight anybody, much less a bunch of skeletons. How do you even kill a skeleton? Isn’t it already dead?

Varris pulled his ax from his back and Leomorn suddenly didn’t need his staff for walking, because he was running. He could move really well when he wanted to. We ran towards the middle of the courtyard where the soldiers and skeletons were flailing at each like something out of a horror movie.

Swords were swinging, metal glinting and people were yelling. Leomorn ran into the fray and slammed his staff into the ground and a shockwave knocked a bunch of skeletons backward.

That was freaking cool.

Before I had much time to think about how he had just done magic a skeleton advanced on me.

This was it. Live or die. My first sword fight. With an undead skeleton. I had no idea what I was going to do.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Varris chop a skeleton down with his ax, then chop the skull like he was playing whack-a-mole. “Smash the skull and they die,” he yelled over the noise of hundreds of swords banging together.

The skeleton advanced on me carrying a rusty sword and a small shield and had on a helmet that was too big and hung loosely on its head. It looked ridiculous. But I don’t think it was worried about appearances. It held its sword high above its head. I thought about the moves the Captain had taught me.

It swung. I closed my eyes and made a move. BAM! Its sword clanged off mine. I’d done it. I couldn’t believe it. Before I could throw myself a party it swung again. I barely dodged its sword. I felt the wind as the blade had moved past me. That was too close. I needed to focus on what I was doing. By then the skeleton was swinging again and I swung my shield and deflected its blow then raised my sword and brought it down hard on the skeleton’s skull.

CRACK!

My sword crashed through the skeleton's skull and the whole thing collapsed.

Holy hell! I’d done it. I couldn’t believe it. I looked down at the pile of bones. They didn’t reform themselves into an undead warrior.

“You got one!” Varris called as he smashed another. “Now keep going.”

I looked up and another skeleton was only feet away, sword raised high. I blocked the blow and swung, my sword cutting the skull from the backbone, the boney body left standing there with no head. The skull flew a few feet and landed in the dust, then locked its empty eye sockets onto me and started chomping its jaw, which I noticed stayed in place but didn’t have any tendons or anything to actually keep it there. The body went to pick up the skull and I chopped its spine in half.

The skull chomped wildly at me after seeing its body get destroyed and I cleaved it in half with my sword. I was so excited I yelled the first thing that popped into my mind.

“Guess you should have quit while you were... a head.”

Varris moved in behind me and we stood back-to-back. “Guess these guys don’t have the… stomach for this.”

I laughed. Maybe I wouldn’t die on my first day after all.

Another skeleton moved in and I blocked with my shield then swung my sword down and stove its head in. I was on a roll now. The soldiers were easily defeating the skeletons and Leomorn was using his magic to take them out. I hacked and slashed through a bunch of them.

I broke one skull and yelled, “I bet that tickled your… funny bone!”

Varris destroyed one and called out, “No guts, no glory!”

I looked up and almost all of the skeletons were destroyed. Brienna had joined the battle and was standing over a pile of bones, a sword in her hand. Her long hair was pulled back into a warrior’s braid and she looked angry. I’d like to think it was mostly at the fact an army of undead skeletons had attacked her home and not our puns, but it was hard to tell. She rolled her eyes at me. “They’re just skeletons. They’re what we train our children with.”

That stung.

I crushed another skull. “Take that… bonehead.”

“Will you shut up!” she yelled.

We finished off the skeletons and it was over before I realized I was bone tired. Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I leaned on my sword and panted.

Leomorn came up and clapped me on the back. “You’re alive. You did well.”

“Of course I’m alive.” I was feeling good. I couldn’t believe it. I had survived death; killed the undead.

The soldiers finished off the skeletons, then suddenly the bones turned to ash and a strong wind came and blew it everywhere. There was so much grey dust you couldn’t see. I held my arm over my nose and mouth to protect myself from breathing it in.

Leomorn said, “Let’s get back inside the castle.”