Albaer remained up late, the pair were gone, and envy briefly flared up. ‘Flight. What a thing that would be… I’d trade half my life for wings.’ He thought, and made Kami cast his ‘flight’ spell.

It began to rain in the game, the thunder cracking overhead, lightning flashed, and another noise split the sky. A dragon’s roar. Early in the game of Hylarim, dragons were a dangerous species. Arguably one of the most dangerous in the game, progressing up to the highest level of difficulty where one was considered a world ending game boss.

But now Kami could tank that thing alone. Between his flight, his magic, his morph magic, and the player mods that let him swap from vampire to werecat, Kami was now the unknown God of Hylarim.

And yet whenever it rained, Albaer still took a small penalty. The fur covered character soaked it up like a sponge giving him the appearance of a wet pet. ‘If he were real, I bet he’d smell too. Can gods be stinky?’ He laughed, it wasn’t a question he expected would be raised in any theological seminaries.

But it was worth a cheap laugh, the truth was, he kept glancing at the door. He flew around with Kami, and pretended he was flying out there. The sense was enhanced when thunder rolled outside his home, and Albaer got up to turn on all the lights. He opened the window, ignoring the drops of rain that fell in, and then went to the front door. It was unlocked.

He stared down at the knob, his hand went out and checked it, the knob turned. It was unlocked. ‘It’s dark out. What if they can’t find the place?’ He asked himself, and flicked on the kitchen and living room area lights, he opened the door to his mother’s room, reaching just inside and flicking the switch close by.

He went back to the door, taking long strides all the way there, he grabbed the handle and yanked it open, the rain began to come down in earnest, a great torrent ran over the street outside.

Lightning cracked, and Albaer turned his eyes to the sky and searched for distant dots growing larger. He saw none. ‘Is lightning dangerous to demons or angels?’ Somehow it was hard to imagine. ‘Maybe.’ Was his best answer.

But with the lights all on and the door wide open, the apartment was as visible as it could be.

Albaer returned only slowly to his room, he left the bedroom door open, and sat down in front of the game again.

The storm on the TV was so much like the one outside that he got lost in the fantasy. Closing his eyes, Albaer made Kami roar out in the night, and pretended to be accompanying Kami in his journey across the sky beside the only friends he had.

The quest marker grew closer, and even with all his enchanted gear on, his magic couldn’t hold out forever. Kami’s magic would fail soon, but Albaer didn’t want to descend from the sky.

Not while they were still gone. Not while he could pretend.

He turned up the volume, closed his eyes, and listened to the soaring sound of air whooshing past. The storm in the game wasn’t a threat, even if the rain slowed him down a tiny bit.

When his eyes were shut, it was like he was flying free, like he was Kami, not the teenage boy with a dead father, a town that hated him, a mother who was always gone, and a nightmarish school life that just saw his last remaining ‘human’ friend make fun of him, betray him, and let him get beaten up.

The sky was open, in his mind he could stretch out his hand, touch the electrons, and make them obey. The clouds were dark and secure, and nothing could bother him.

Then the telltale buzz hit and killed the fantasy.

Kami’s voice was shouting, his body flailing aimlessly and grabbing at nothing. He was racing against the falling rain, and the ground below loomed larger and larger, until one crack of lightning lit up the screen, and then the whole screen went black when Kami hit the ground.

Hylarim had a unique degree of realism for a game, and that was that you suffered real consequences for your actions within it. If your character broke his leg in the wild, he would have to find help. Total healing magic just wasn’t part of the deal. At least not on hardcore mode. There, if you died, you died. Injuries would have to be treated, and you’d have to drag yourself to a healer to pay them to look after you. For serious injuries this meant that weeks or months of in game time could pass. The benefit for this was that it opened up a lot more quests, and all new equipment, and you gained a large experience boost. But the downside was that most people could never finish the game. Not many could run through it without dying.

The screen blacked out, if Kami survived, then the screen would slowly blur back into view, and if there were broken bones then he would have to set them and keep Kami alive until someone wandered by. Wanderers could be bandits, they could be thieves, merchants, soldiers, or even monsters. Surviving the fall didn’t guarantee anything.

But then… the lights throughout the apartment went out, as did the television and console. Everything went black but the flashing of the lightning outside.

‘How will they find this place in the dark? Even if they can see perfectly well, this is just one apartment out of many, one wrong door and they could be exposed!’ Albaer shot to his feet and rushed for the door to the basement.

His hands fumbled for the light switch, slapping around on the wall, ‘I have to make sure they can find this place.’

He slapped around in the dark for a good ten seconds before he realized, ‘Oh… that won’t work anyway…’ He then clambered down the steps, the wood thudding under his feet, his heart racing, the basement even darker than before without any light from the upstairs to help him.

But for some things, Albaer needed no help. Countless trips, countless memories, countless outings, and now all the things from it were packed away. He rushed for the place where the fishing rods hung, a bin sat there, large and blue with a tight seal on it to keep the contents protected. Albaer flung it open and tossed the lid aside. His hands dug through in the dark. ‘Come on… come on I know you’re in here.’ He thought with frantic urgency, “You’ve got to be. You’ve got to be.” He yanked things out and tossed them on the floor until the nylon-like feel brushed over his hands, his fingers snapped closed like a bear trap around the object, and he pulled a bright white tarp out of the bottom.

He then dug through further, ‘We’ve got to have some left… we didn’t get lost that often!’

That was one of the scariest and happiest of his memories, he and his dad, the sun overhead, fishing out in a national park, going for a hike that weekend. A bright summer day… then getting thoroughly lost. He still smiled back on it, because his father was fearless.

The lessons still rang true.

“Follow the flow of water and you’ll find people eventually. Fire is both friend and foe. Yes it can burn you, but the smoke and light can easily be seen from the air, and when you want to be found, that’s your best chance.” He could still see his father’s bearded face, a smile that would one day be grandfatherly. He’d simply pitched a camp, waited, and then ignited flares and started a fire. A helicopter rescued them in no time after they failed to check in. So, he got a helicopter ride on top of everything.

His hands fumbled around , the noise of scraping and his heavy breathing was the only noise in the house, and then he found one. ‘Flare ho!’ He thought with relief and headed back for the stairs.

His feet pounded on the wood, and he rushed out the wide open front door, wind was howling, and Albaer’s imagination ran wild.

...Raziel blown off course, landing somewhere, being found, dragged off to a lab… Lialah, knocked into a powerline, electrocuted, or being stumbled upon by the police, carted away for a life of experiments and interrogation…

‘Nothing happened. Nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened.’ Albaer reminded himself as the wind and rain beat and battered his face.

He unfurled the white tarp and tied off a corner to the beams that held up the stairway to his upstairs neighbor, thankfully the corners had ropes permanently secured to them, so this proved easy even in the rain.

Confident it would not blow away, he unrolled it, held out the middle, and popped the flare, the bright red light lit up the area around him. Albaer held tight, keeping the square as visible as possible even though his side had no corners to secure to anything, and waved the red flare back and forth overhead.

Lightning brightened the darkness again and again, ‘How long can this take?’ He had to wonder, rain continued to rage against him, what didn’t strike him hit the ground and the rushing torrent moved past his home and soaked his shoes and well past his ankles.

‘Is this doing any good?’ He wasn’t sure, but he kept at it, Albaer’s flare cast him in red light sharper than Raziel’s skin, the light reflecting off the tarp and catching the eye, he could only hope they’d realize it was him. ‘Hopefully they’ll realize no other idiot would be standing around out here in the middle of the rain holding a reflective tarp and a bright red light.’

Albaer was just beginning to fear it was all for nothing, that they’d taken shelter elsewhere, or worse, something went wrong. Then a lightning strike showed two pairs of wide spread wings against the night sky.

He waved his flare faster, his arm nearly ready to fall off, he held it high above his head and began to jump around, splashing water about and soaking what wasn’t soaked enough already, until he saw them start to descend.

Albaer sighed with relief as they finally splashed down, “Thanks for the light show, I was honestly worried we’d get lost.” Raziel said and smacked him on his weary shoulder, he dropped the flare to extinguish in the water.

“Same here, without that reflection it was getting really tough to tell one place from another. I was starting to get worried we’d gone too far.” Lialah squeezed his hand as she followed her sister into the dark apartment.

“Heh, yeah, no problem. I knew you’d be fine of course but, you know, can’t be too careful.” Albaer covered his thoughts up and undid the cord to bring the tarp inside.

When he closed the door after they were safely inside and dripping wet, he spoke to them with a very straight face, “I’m just glad you’re back, and safe.” Then asked, “So, how did it go?”