Dealla nodded. “It does. You can also get discounts at places like the Artificer’s Guild and Broker’s Guild. When you arrive at any Adventurer’s Guildhouse, just show your medallion and they can look you up. If you want, you can rent a room here for as long as you want. You’re not likely to find cheaper room and board in the city. It’s a perk that most members take advantage of.” She looked pointedly at my bag of money. “And… I strongly advise you to take advantage of your secure storage locker. It’s free for members. We can’t vouch for anything you keep on your person.”

“How much for the room and board?” I asked.

“One Cross gets you a week.”

My mouth dropped open for just a second. “Sorry, I think I misheard you. Did you say I’ll get room and board for a week for just one of these little gold coins you gave me as change?”

“That’s the price! Pretty great, right? The Northman’s Nook charges twice that. They have nicer beds, but I still think we’re the better deal. We’re just not open to the public.”

“Hold on,” I said, “I just need to… figure out… how much money I have…” I tried to equate that to something familiar back home. How much did a Super 8 charge for a night? $60? $80? I couldn’t remember, but that put my newfound wealth in a whole new context. My overlay created a pop-up.

Would you like to start tracking your money?

[Yes] [No] [Cancel]

That was an easy “yes”. A new icon of a coin appeared in the bottom corner of my vision above the stick figure man that tracked my status. I opened it to see what it could tell me about my financial situation. I had briefly seen all my Marks dumped out on the table, so I was interested to see if the overlay could have counted them in that amount of time.

136 Marks

5 Triple Crosses

3 Crosses

1 penny

I frowned at the numbers and tried to find the setting to convert the value of the Marks to Crosses, since that seemed to be the currency everyone used around here.

Would you like to convert all currencies to their equivalent value in—

Yes! Some updated figures tallied across my vision.

11,034 Crosses

1 penny

I blinked as I tried to think of what I could do with that much money. It seemed like a “Cross” had a ridiculous buying power compared to the currencies I was used to dealing with back home. “You okay?” Dealla asked me. “Did you want to get that room?”

“I do,” I confirmed. I pushed one of the Triple Crosses her way and tucked the rest away. “Put me down for three weeks, I guess. I’m kind of jetlagged, so I think I want to get to bed early tonight.”

Dealla took my coin. “Aw, that sucks,” she said. “I don’t know what a jetlagged is, but it sounds miserable.” She passed me a solid metal key with the code “F3R24” stamped on the face. The rest of the key had a sort of classic style to it, forming a slender rod which ended on a jagged tooth. “Rooms are upstairs. You are on the third floor in room twenty-four. You can sleep as long or as little as you want, as long as you pay. Meals are in the morning and evening. Anything more is extra, as is alcohol. You can check out with me or whoever is working the front desk if you need to leave on a contract and we’ll only charge you for the nights you stay.”

“Sounds like a good deal,” I said. “Where’s this locker I can use? I’ve suddenly realized I’m carrying a small fortune on me.”

Dealla’s face relaxed. “Oh, good! I would hate to see you get robbed. It’s just over here.” She turned to the lizard sunning itself on the counter. “You watch things while I’m gone, Bitsy.” The lizard turned its head slightly and opened one eye for just a second. I couldn’t tell if that meant it actually knew its name, or the gesture was just coincidentally timed.

To the side of the front counter was a steel door. Dealla opened it with a heavy key she pulled from a chain around her neck that had been tucked beneath her shirt. She beckoned me to go ahead. “Only one person is allowed back here at a time,” she explained. “Find the locker with the number that matches your medallion. That’s what will open it. If you open any other locker while you’re back there, an alarm will sound, so… don’t do that. When you’re done, just knock on the door and I’ll let you out!”

I looked at the back of my medallion and saw it had the number “11,807” on it. “You have twelve thousand lockers back there?” I asked.

She chuckled at the question. “Oh, we have far more than that. We barely use half of them.”

When I entered the vault, I saw what she meant. It was a sizable space, with rows of metal shelves filling the center of the room, reaching all the way to the ceiling, and countless square metal doors along the walls. Not all of them were even the same size. Some seemed large enough for me to crawl inside while others looked like they could only fit a few small possessions. My instinct was to ask for help finding my assigned locker, but I decided I needed to start figuring things out on my own and tracking down a numbered locker seemed like a good place to start. I walked down the line, watching as the numbers got larger until I figured out the pattern. Once I found the correct row of shelves, I followed it to number 11,807. I was lucky, my locker turned out to be on the bottom. If it had been as high as some of the shelves, I might not have been able to reach it.

The locker didn’t have a handle or anything like that, but there was a thin slot in the center. The attendant had told me my medallion would be the key to unlocking it, so I tried sticking it in the slot. That did it. The medallion reached some type of resistance as I pushed it in, and forcing it forward caused the door to pop open enough to get my fingers in.

My locker revealed itself to be merely a small, pull-out drawer. Enough for my coins and maybe two more pouches just like it. It was easy to understand how they could have lockers for so many members when the provided space was so small. I wondered if I had a locker of similar size reserved for me at other Adventurer’s Guildhalls around the world as I dropped my sack of money and cellphone in the drawer. The phone was useless to me without a way to recharge it, and it would be safer here for the time being. I made sure it was shut off. For my incidentals, I kept the handful of gold coins I’d gotten back as change in my pants pocket. When I was done, I found that simply pushing the drawer closed caused it to click back into place. I’ll admit to a certain amount of curiosity about the level of security the guild offered as far as trying to open other people’s lockers went, but I wasn’t willing to test it. The last thing I needed was to risk getting kicked out.

When I reached the inside of the locker room door, I knocked on it, and Dealla’s smiling face greeted me a moment later. It looked like she had another customer she was helping, so she was brief. “Find everything okay?” She didn’t actually leave me enough time to respond before she pushed forward. “You can grab a bite at the kitchens, and the stairs to your room are over there.”

I followed the directions with my eyes and nodded my thanks. The main mess looked intimidating, plus I wasn’t actually that hungry after all the excitement. I was actually feeling the sort of weakness that came in the wake of adrenaline; not the best time to be making introductions to such a rough crowd. I headed for the stairs instead. Some sleep would help clear my head.

The walk upstairs came easy to my newfound physique. I passed some rough sorts lounging in the hall of the third floor. They looked like the kind of people I’d probably cross the street to avoid, and they eyed me like fresh meat. I couldn’t imagine how those types would have treated me if I hadn’t had my musculature magically enhanced. I made straight for the room that matched the number on my key and headed inside. I was greeted by as unimpressive a room as I’d ever seen. Orange stone walls and floor, a chamber pot, a flabby mattress, and a thin slit of a window that wasn’t even covered in a layer of glass. About the nicest thing I could say about it was it was marginally better than sleeping outside. I locked and bolted the door behind me and settled under the blankets.

For a brief minute I wondered whether I’d need to use my Skill on myself to get to sleep, but then my physical exhaustion won out over the mental stimulation of my overcharged MP bar. When my consciousness finally drifted away, my mind was overwhelmed by a splitting headache that recalled the brief pain I’d experienced at the hands of my other self and then promptly forgotten. Lightning jolted through my skull, front to back, then down my spine. I felt like it should have forced me awake, but somehow it only pulled me deeper into the dreaming.

Deeper and deeper. Until I began to hallucinate. I found myself back in my childhood bedroom, staring up at the slatted pine boards I was so familiar with. It wasn’t just sight, I could feel it too. At first I wondered if I was actually back home, if I’d just imagined everything I’d seen in Earris. Then I looked out the window and saw it was boarded shut.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” a voice said from behind. I turned to find another me standing at the threshold of my bedroom. He looked like I remembered looking before leaving for Earris, meaning no muscles, no burned face, no strange outfit. He was just a skinny, bald, pale kid in sweats and a plain white t-shirt.

“Try what?” I asked.

“Going outside,” he said. “There is no outside here. It doesn’t exist. We’re in a dream.”

“Why are we… in a dream? Can I wake up if I want?”

The other me shrugged. “Probably not. I don’t know. I’m not sure if the Brand I used on you allows you that kind of freedom of choice or if the memories are going to force themselves into your head whether or not you want them to.”

I narrowed my eyes at the strange statement, but before I could ask a follow-up question, the other me seemed to anticipate it. He held up a hand to stop me. “Let me explain,” he said. “Remember that splitting headache I gave you? And how I promised I’d explain everything, even though I probably ended up dying a few minutes later?”

“Probably died? Dude, I saw you get hacked to pieces.”

The other me sucked in a breath. “Ouch,” he said. “Yeah, I figured something like that was bound to happen. I was already losing control when I dumped a copy of my mind into you.”

“Dumped a—”

“Let me explain, remember? I used a Brand on you. It’s called Memory Dreaming. Practically unknown. I had to dig it out of the Broker’s Library where it got buried because they have a better version of the same Brand that does the whole ‘transfer memories’ thing without the dreaming restriction. There’s a problem with memory transfers Skills that usually makes them too dangerous to use: when you try to send too much, like I did with you, it causes a merging of consciousness. For most people, that’s not worth the memories. They’re either extremely selective with the experiences they transfer or they just don’t use it at all. We don’t have to worry about that because we’re technically the same person. Or at least we will be once you absorb all the memories from when we parted ways. The point is, you aren’t going to turn into a different person after the transfer. We’ll just be… us.”

“When did we part ways?” I asked. “I don’t remember splitting off a different version of myself.”

The other me shook his head. “It’s not something either of us did intentionally. I actually caused the split when I came back from the future. Look. Just hold off on the questions. I know you have a lot. There’s no point in us talking about anything that’s happened to me in the last six months. You’re going to see everything for yourself in just a second. Consider it a gift. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, and not much time to do it.”

“Oh, wow, you’re going to insult my maturity? We’re the same person!”

The other me chuckled at that. “Not yet we aren’t, but when you wake up in the morning, we will be. You’re going to re-live everything I experienced from the time I woke up after my first night in the Adventurer’s Guild until I pushed my memories into your brain. I hope you didn’t fall asleep right after I used it on you, because that would make answering the paladins’ questions a lot more difficult.”

“No, you actually slapped my face a few times to keep me awake,” I said. “I already talked to the captain of the paladins and he let me go.”

“Good. How many of them did I kill?”

“How many paladins?” I clarified.

“Yeah, Edgelord was taking over when I used my Brand on you. I can’t remember anything from the moment this instance of my consciousness was transferred.”

“Uh, you didn’t kill anyone,” I told him. “They cut you to pieces almost as soon as they arrived.”

He put a hand against his forehead, closed his eyes, and let out a breath. “Oh, thank god,” he said. “Now that I’m separated from Edgelord, I’m remembering killing one in Kamenor before I came through to Haemir. The last thing the world needs is fewer paladins.”

“You sure about that?” I asked skeptically. “Are you sure we’re the same person? You know they’ve been dicks to me since I arrived, right?”

“Yeah, well, the whole world doesn’t always revolve around you.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ll save you the lecture. You’re about to learn that for yourself.” One corner of his mouth pulled up in a half smile. “Try to enjoy your time in my head.”

The other me closed the door to my bedroom, and everything fell away. I was plunged into darkness. I fell through the floor and tumbled into a dreamscape so real I forgot it was a dream at all.