Hello everyone, this is Asclepius, with a wonderful piece from Baron Drocis Fondorlatos, entitled

The Baron’s Story

Background music by Smartsound

 

Rift

I, Sir Jeffrey of Resolute, being of sound mind and able body bequeath all my worldly possessions including lands, titles, and all that which is customary to Drocis the Devious.

That is how the letter began. I was given a fortune in fictional medieval nonsense by a mentally ill Don Quixote-like stranger that I’d once played Dungeons and Dragons with over twenty years ago. I had apparently made an impression, or at least my character had.

I’d developed a persona of an evil mage known as Drocis the Devious. A villain who earned his name after making several strategic and indirect manipulations of the other player characters to achieve his own goals. He was a fun character to play because even though the other players knew never to trust him, he still always came out ahead in the end. A fact that infuriated most everyone that came into contact with him.

The letter listed out hundreds of items, many of them were very mundane sounding (artisan fishing pole) while others sounded cryptic and weird. I was now the proud owner of a tax free keep deed, over 900 bank slots, and 90 obsidian crowns? Oh, and something called a noble’s magical discourse orb. I expected there might be a 1970’s era disco ball arriving in a follow-up package to complete the joke sometime in the near future.

Then I noticed at the bottom of the envelope was a small dagger that looked like a letter opener. I removed the dagger and realized that the hilt could be detached to reveal a USB stick. Ok I thought, now we’re getting somewhere. It must be a new game.

A Malwarebytes scan said it was clean, so I popped it in to my computer to find out what was on it. It wasn’t a game; it was a bunch of PDF files. Random items that didn’t seem to have anything to do with one another. How to prepare Regicide Stovie? Sumerian Astrology? The Lost Manuscripts of the Obsidian Eye? More nonsense, this guy really lost it. There was no contact information or instructions, just a folder full of this junk.

I continued to open the files to see if I could find a clue. I can’t really explain what happened next.

Observation

As I acclimated myself to a new world, I noticed the changes incrementally. The lack of necessities that I once took for granted but could never forget, eating and sleeping were no longer required and almost seemed impractical. The effects of weather no longer caused me to seek shelter and I had lost the ability to feel physical pain. My strength and reflexes had increased along with my overall health. Gone were the aches and soreness associated with aging. I had become something other than human. I had become an Avatar.

I was sustained by the world, free to explore where I wished or reflect on my thoughts for as long as I needed. It was so relaxing I quickly lost all desire to return to the world in which I had lived for the last 41 years.

Time moved much faster than I was accustomed to, as day became night and night returned to day with suspicious regularly. Sometimes I would catch myself waiting for the cycle to reset as if someone were manually pulling up the sun and lowering the moon using a series of complicated ropes and pulleys.

I was alone but for a few other inhabitants that either shared my perspective or appeared incapable of sharing it. There were the others, Avatars much like me. Travelers from different worlds, though I had not met anyone that had not come from Earth.

There were also the locals, native to New Britannia, static husks compared to Avatars. They spoke, they walked, sometimes they even fought, but they were not like us. They moved and reacted slowly or often not at all. Calling them zombies would be too kind, they were not that sophisticated.