“I can’t see or touch my wings, yet I can feel they’re there,” said Liam while tapping the back of his shoulders. “It’s so uncomfortable.” Seeing how Alric was still confused, his so called brother pulled out a pen and started levitating it using small gusts of wind.

The youth’s jaw almost fell through the invisible floor. Immediately, his eyes moved towards the principle. Fortunately, despite how angry she seemed earlier, the woman was now ignoring them completely. Her indifference went as far as to call her boyfriend and start talking to him over face chat.

“Relax,” said Timofey before throwing the pencil just millimeters away from the principal’s head. To Alric's shock, she kept talking like nothing had happened.

“...What the hell?” the youth blurted out before pinching himself.

“They’re ghosts,” said the former pixie. “They act out the things they did in life, but there’s no life in them. You can trigger these things to some extent, but they’ll eventually snap back into their old behaviors.”

To prove his point, Timofey shot another gust of wind which blew the principal’s stacks of papers right off her desk.

“Stop that.” Alric felt a migraine coming on, but the more he watched the more things didn’t make sense. Not only did the principal not react, but she even ignored to A4 paper that was now stuck to her face.

Eventually, the two brothers shared a glance, and while the woman continued flirting, they quietly left her office.

“They’re ghosts I tell you. Even when I punched that kid, he just stared at me like he couldn’t understand what was happening.”

Instead of heading home, the two teens went to the nearby park. They sat on a bench near a large statue and started breaking down the situation.

Unfortunately, Tim couldn’t tell much more than he already did. Just like Alric, the pixie woke up inside a classroom and had been trying to figure out this world ever since.

“I have a lot to learn,” he muttered with glowing eyes when a car drove by.

While Tim admired modern technology, his supposed brother tried to piece everything together. Since the pixie still had access to his wind magic, Alric tried to summon a shield.

There was no ring on his finger, and he couldn’t feel anything. Yet, when he focused on the spot where the item used to be, a large dome engulfed the two of them.

“Great,” Timofey nodded. “If we get attacked by beasts, we'll at least have some time.”

After making a mental note to ask his friend about the world he came from, Alric returned to the task at hand. Now, that he was actually looking, quite a few things seemed out of place.

Areas that hadn’t changed much over the years remained the same. However, places he remembered as different were now a jumbled mess or completely absent.

For example, in the middle of the park, there was supposed to be a fountain which would later be changed into a statue of George Washington. Now, it was a George Washington statue with a sprinkler on his forehead.

There wasn’t even a bowl for the water to drop into. Instead, it trickled down the park’s alley before settling in a large puddle behind the bench they sat on.

‘It’s like past and future were mashed together,’ Alric concluded. ‘But how?’

“You know, this world would be quite beautiful if not for all the ghosts walking around.”

‘Indeed,’ the youth realized. As much as he wished it weren’t true, the world itself was just half of the puzzle. To get to the bottom of their situation, he heeded to understand the people.

“Excuse me,” he said to a mother daughter duo walking by the bench. “What do you think about the water coming out of our founding father’s forehead?”

This question was supposed to be funny, but the two froze as if they couldn’t understand it. A couple of awkward seconds later, the mother turned towards Alric and answered in an ambiguous tone.

“It’s so sunny today, isn’t it?”

“Yes, about the statue…”

“Have a great day,” the lady interrupted before walking off. To confirm his suspicion, Alric ran after and blocked her path.

“There’s a giant George Washington behind you shooting water like a dolphin. The pavement you’re walking on is in two different styles. For crying out loud, that squirrel’s climbing a non-existent tree. Can’t you see it?”

Again, the mother daughter duo froze for a moment like machines going through an error.

“I don’t think our walk was interrupted today, so excuse us.” After saying these words without even looking at him, the woman walked past with her daughter in tow.

“What about tomorrow? What happens tomorrow?” Alric asked but she ignored him.

“You’re going to get yourself cursed,” his partner called out from the bench. “Comrade, if you go crazy, you’re on your own.”

………………………………………………

It took some time for Alric to piece everything together, but after about an hour, he had a solid theory. Basically, this world was an incredibly poor simulation of his past. Whoever created it used pieces of his memories along with buildings and landscapes from earth at the time of the tournament to create the illusion of going back in time.

However, it was obviously rushed, like a computer trying to simulate a city with insufficient data. Once one looked hard enough, patchwork and glitches were everywhere.

As for the humans, they were probably the biggest bugs of all. As far as Alric could tell, they were most likely replicated from those in the future and somehow programmed to recreate their behaviors from the past year. However, since most people could barely remember what they had for breakfast, the clones’ attempts at retracing their steps were unnatural and clumsy.

“So, is everyone here like our other selves, but under some kind of spell?” Timofey asked after his partner explained everything.

“Most likely. This fake world is our training area. And, if I’m not mistaken, we have exactly one year to prepare for round two.”

The question was ‘How?’ Based on the last round, learning how to fight was of the utmost importance. But could the youth really match an elf or even a pixie with just one year of training?

“Do you have one of those phones, Alric?” Timofey asked out of nowhere. He stopped moving right after and just stared at him like one of the ghosts they had met.

“… No.”

“Some of the kids in class were playing with them.” The pixie pulled out a Nokia and made it float. “Fascinating invention.”

“You stole it?”

“Yes.” His tone was steady, but his expression was difficult to read. “Why didn’t your brother have one? I hear all 12 year olds have these things.”

“That’s not important. We’re taking it back.”

“To the ghosts? This is not your world, Alric. You can do anything you want here and it’s not going to matter." Timofey paused for a moment before continuing in a much more serious tone.

"However, honesty does matter.”

Suddenly, the atmosphere between them turned heavy. The pixie took a deep breath to keep his emotions in check.

“Partner, I have killed my own people to save you. Their dying faces haunt me.”

Timofey's lips remained expressionless, but his eyes turned slightly wet. After all, he was not the teen's brother. He was a pixie with a duty to fulfill.

“...What do you want?”

“Information. Knowledge that would justify my actions." Timofey gritted his teeth. "Alric, if you refuse to help or lie to me one more time, I will end our partnership.”

The youth didn’t want to know what that end would look like, and he was also severely indebted to his friend. Because of this and due to the moment's pressure, he eventually decided to show him a computer. 'Long term ramifications be damned.'

In Alric’s small room, the one he left behind when the tournament began, Timofey started rapidly absorbing his instructions. In a matter of minutes, his browser was filled with websites from all over the world.

Surprisingly, they weren’t all written in English. Whatever magic allowed the pixie to understand human writing, it worked for Russian, French, and every other language in existence.

‘I should probably kill him, shouldn’t I?’ The youth chuckled weakly while letting himself fall into the nearby bed. Even if it would’ve disqualified him, it was the right thing to do for the sake of humanity.

However, Alric couldn’t kill a cat, much less a conscious being. And, although he wanted to help his alter who was stuck in that cell, he didn’t want to die either.

Suddenly, the stress he had accumulated in the past few days caught up with him all at once. His body felt heavy and his thoughts mixed together. Eventually, the youth’s eyes closed shut and he fell asleep.

The next few weeks were frantic and weird. While Tim would only leave the computer for food and sleep, Alric needed to learn how to fight. However, everyone, including his family were so stuck in their patterns that they were barely responsive.

Small requests like extra money were declined. Unusual behaviors, like his brother never leaving his room, resulted in a few minutes of scolding before his mother glitched and forgot it ever happened.

Since he couldn’t get support from his parents, Alric tried barging into a gym without a pass. People told him to leave a couple of times before freezing and then carrying on with their normal activities. Like Timofey said, it was like living in a ghost town.

To improve his fitness, he started training regularly through running and lifting weights. Unfortunately, even the most talkative of clones would only respond for a few hours before forgetting he even existed. After trying to get himself a teacher several times, the boy had no choice but to train on his own.

Unfortunately, getting big and strong wasn’t all there was to fighting. Alric tried barging into a martial arts dojo and simply adding himself to the class. Nobody minded him after a while, but no one would spar or give him pointers either. It was possible to drag the clones out of their ‘normal’ behaviors, but they’d always revert back and forget about the interaction.

“I don’t get what you’re complaining about,” said Timofey at the end of a particularly frustrating day. “All the information your planet has to offer is right here.”

“Information can’t compensate for an actual teacher.”

“But, a gun can. Do you want a riffle? A tank? I’ve just hacked into your government’s system, so I can probably arrange for anything outside of a nuke.”

True to his word, some highly prohibited websites were gathered in Timofey’s browser. Besides those with US flags on them, a bunch of shops from the dark web were displayed selling anything from poison gas to bazookas.

“Jesus…” muttered Alric. “How? Do you have any idea how illegal this is?” He barely finished the sentence before Timofey gave him a condescending look. Not only did breaking the law not matter in this simulated world, but even if he stole a gun straight out of a police officer’s hands, the youth could probably get away with it.

“The real question is whether we can bring all of this stuff with us.” The pixie was completing some highly questionable transactions.

Suddenly, Alric’s phone started ringing, so he reluctantly walked away from the screen.

“Where have you been, baby?” asked Ana.

“Not interested,” he responded before closing the call in her face. It wasn’t the first time his ex contacted him, and it would definitely not be the last. Every time, she acted like nothing had happened, neither now nor in the future, which pissed him off to no end.

However, if there was one thing Ana never did was call him two times in a row. Seeing his phone ring once more, Alric was somewhat taken aback. Strangely, the call wasn’t from his girlfriend, but from an unknown number.

“Hello?”

“Is this Alric Klein I am speaking to?” a female voice was heard from the other side.

“Yes?”

“The one who kissed Amon Grigori’s bum in front of everyone, can’t fight for s**t, and is strangely attracted to pixies?”

Alric dropped his phone at the same time as Timofey jumped up from his seat.

“”Who the hell/in Doomface’s name is this?”” they both asked in unison.

“Your friend, Rae. I and Finn are getting sick of this third rate Matrix. Care to join us?”