“He’s so cool! Look at that, dad!”

“Nice going, Derek!” Dad jumps up from the bleachers.

Cool, calm, and collected, my brother strikes out one batter after another. His insane performance has all the scouts in the stadium taking frantic notes. Everyone is stunned by what they're seeing.

It’s the bottom of the seventh, and the opposing team has yet to get a single base hit. Derek stands on the mound, his face is stoic even as he faces down the opposition's star power-hitter. During their last battle at bat, he ripped one of my brother’s fastballs out of the park, but it drifted foul at the last minute. He then grounded out on the next pitch.

Derick winds up and releases his pitch. The ball looks ferocious and strong. It soars towards the plate, urging the batter to swing. He can't resist. Like a rock, it stops before it reaches the place, the opposing batter swings over the top of it. Strike one. Derek’s changeup always trips people up.

“Let’s go, dude!” I scream.

I don’t think Derek notices me. But I notice him. My older half-brother is a lot of things. He’s a great pitcher and a talented athlete. He’s strong and confident, and he even has a soft side that comes out when he is vulnerable. Derek can also be quite cruel.

I look down at my arm and run my fingers along a patch of ruddy skin. My brother hurt me when I was a baby. It’s the first memory that I have of him, and it's the worst one too. I never told anyone what happened to me. I don't think I ever will either. I don't want Derek to have his life ruined over something that happened a long time ago.

"Did you see that?" Dad grabs my arm. “That’s his eleventh strikeout of the night!”

“I know!”

He tips his hat to us and exits the mound. The crowd roars with excitement.

In the end, Derek’s team loses. It all unravels after the coach decides to bench my brother in the 8th-inning in favor of his own son, a below-average relief pitcher. He gives up hit after hit, and the opposing team starts to put runs on the board. Eventually, their lead becomes insurmountable.

On the ride home, Derek seems pretty chill about what happened. But once he gets in my room and Dad isn't watching, everything goes to hell.

“I only have one copy of that game, Derek! Why would you do that?”

“I slipped. My bad,” he shrugs.

“Your bad?”

“Yeah, my bad.”

“Dad!” I scream, “call mom. I want to go to her house for custody weekend.”

Dad tries to calm the situation down, but I am seething. How could my own brother destroy something that means so much to me? He knows how much I love that game. It is next to impossible to even get a copy of it. It's out of print, and I only got my current copy thanks to a really cool person I met online.

When mom's car pulls up, I slide in and do something I've never done before. I flip my brother off.

It feels so good. The look on his face is priceless.

One hour later, my life is over. A truck hits my mom at full speed. It barrels right into us at over a hundred miles per hour.

In my final minutes, I hear muffled voices talking around me. They keep saying that I don't have enough of some kind of special cell in my bloodstream. I have a unique gene, but that’s not enough.

They will need another person to get me to where I need to go. Once that person has fulfilled their task, they will be discarded.

All of this information is a lot to remember, and I'm feeling weak. It's getting really cold in here. It feels like I'm encased in a layer of ice. My mind is the first thing to go numb. My body soon follows.

What happened again? Why am I here?

----

“Boo!” A hand lunges at me from inside the hearth.

“Em Em!” I chuckle, “don’t scare me like that.”

Embrosia’s albino face looks ghoulish as she stares at me from within the soot-stained hearth. She is having a hard time grasping the nuances of hide and seek. Part of hiding is not being found. But she seems to love jump scaring me more than the actual game.

“You’re bad at this.” I yank her out of the hearth with a firm tug.

We roll together in a ball, laughing and giggling the entire way to the cabin door. Embrosia is so funny. She is like the sister I never knew I wanted – well, maybe that’s not the best analogy. It’s hard to describe my feelings for her. I’m not sure how to classify them. She makes my heart feel jumpy – in a good way.

We sit against the door and playfully joke around with each other. I feel terrific. In the span of a couple of days, I made two new friends. Each of them makes me happy in their own way. This game world is so relaxing and chill. I might want to live here forever, assuming Derek is cool with it.

“I wonder where Derek is?” I muse.

“The geezer?”

“Yeah,” I snicker. “He’s gotten really mature and fatherly lately, but he seems kind of fragile too. I think we have to look out for him. He might be our guardian, but I kind of think that we have to be his guardians too.”

“I guess,” Embrosia pauses and ponders my words, “we need to at least keep him alive long enough to pay for our wedding. Oh, and to have him walk you down the aisle. My sister can walk me. She has always wanted me to marry a prince.”

“Flaera?” I ask her.

“Yeah,” she raises her eyebrow, “how’d you know that?”

“Derek told me about her.”

“I wonder how he knew?” She scratches at her cheek and gives me a funny look.

“He probably heard about her from one of the villagers.”

We sit back and talk about my brother, and something seems off to me. I can feel a pit forming in my stomach. It is getting dark out, and he still hasn’t come home. Where did he go?

A desperate knock reverberates at our back, stirring Embrosia and me to our feet.

Embrosia opens the door and we come face to face with a distressed Drako. His fiery orange hair is wet with sweat, and his face is white with fear.

“Drak–”

“Imperial Roderick, hurry, something has happened.”

The bad gut feeling that I have been harboring bursts as Drako leads Embrosia and me to a spot on the path leading out of the village. Someone pinned a blood-soaked note to a pine tree. The note is written in plain English. None of the villagers can read it, but I can. A piece of fabric flaps in the breeze at its side, it is the same color and consistency as my brother’s imperial cape.

My hand moves frantically. My skin tingles. I yank the note down from the tree and read it aloud.

“Dear little shit,” it reads,

I’m abandoning you and joining the Northerners. I’ve always hated you, I realized that I can’t take being around you anymore. Take this piece of my cape and tell the villagers I got eaten by a bear or something. I won’t be coming back unless it’s to kill you. I’ll cut Embrosia’s throat too, so don’t mess with me. Move on and know that I am not coming back.

Curses, your brother,

Derek.

“That’s horrible,” Drako shakes his head, “I didn’t take your brother for a traitor.”

“And here I was worried that someone had attacked him,” Drako’s mom, Marjorie frowns. “He’s joining up with our enemy and I bet you he killed Acolyte Margot too. The Northerners knew they couldn’t win against her protective spells, so they sent Derek to murder us.”

Embrosia’s face twists at Marjorie’s words.

“Are you mad?” I ball up my fist.

“Derek would never betray us!” Embrosia screams at Marjorie, “he would never hurt my grandmother, and he would never hurt me!”

She takes the words right from my lips.

“And you two call yourselves warriors,” I quip, “this isn’t even my brother’s handwriting. Someone took him from here against his will. Mark my words. I will find that person and make them pay! I don't care who they are.”

Drako and Marjorie stare at Embrosia and me. Their faces are frozen with disgust, hopefully in themselves.

“Sorry,” Drako puts his head down.

Marjorie looks like a deer caught in headlights.

“My mom and I will start looking for him. We won’t stop until we find him.” Drako says.

I nod and then run back towards the village. Embrosia sticks with me the whole way.

The bright green light of my brother’s protective ward is still shining strong throughout the village. He is alive, which means that he can be tracked. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone with tracking magic. Such abilities are only given to huntress thralls, an extremely rare race in the Imperium.

“We need to get to the stone pedestal in the center of town,” I tell Embrosia, “I might be able to ping Derek from there.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for enemies lurking nearby,” she nods at me.

We run as fast as our legs can take us, to the point that my stamina starts to significantly decline. But such a sacrifice is worth it for Derek. He went through a lot of pain and suffering to reunite with me. I want him to get back on his feet. I know that he is capable of a lot more than he gives himself credit for.

“Hey Embrosia,” I pant, as we ran up the steps to the ruined imperial seat.

“What is it?”

“Thanks for standing up for Derek.”

“No problem. He’s my future brother-in-law. I can’t have people badmouthing him.”

“There’s something you should know,” I say.

“Yeah?”

“I recognized the handwriting on that note.”

“Wait!” She grounds to a sudden halt, “so, Derek did write it?”

“No,” I clench my fist and shake my head, “my mom did.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My mom did something to Derek. That was her handwriting.”

“Isn’t Derek your brother? I don’t understand. Why would your mother hurt her son?”

“Derek and I share the same father but not the same mother,” I explain to her, while I set my chronicle down upon the altar slab, “my mom hates him; she’s never considered him to be her son.”

“She wouldn’t hurt him though, would she?”

“I…”

Just as I am about to tell Embrosia that my mom wouldn’t hurt Derek, the unthinkable happens. Something so terrible, it steals my breath away. My brother’s protective ward falters. It flickers out like a dying candle, sending green light scattering in every direction.

Embrosia stares at me in shock as my imperial robes change color in a surge of twinkling light. The light recedes into my chronicle, which pings a message in my face.

Alert -Your House Head has fallen. You have inherited the title House Head of House Gray. +9000 Mana Points Bestowed Would you like to cast protection on your holdings? (Y/N)

“Derek,” I fall to my knees in horror, “oh my God, Derek.”

I clutch my chest to prevent myself from screaming. The pain is unbearable. The only thing keeping my emotions held back are the villagers, who are watching me with confused expressions.

“What happened?” Embrosia whispers to me.

“I was too weak,” I murmur, “I played this game like a noob. Frolicking and playing while my brother exposed himself to danger.”

“Is he?”

“Dead,” I finish her thought, “one part of my family is dead, and the second part is culpable in his murder.”

I rise to my feet and walk to the focal point of the grand ruin. “Cast protection”, I say.

A surge of blue energy erupts from within my chronicle and courses its way through the city. It covers all the buildings in light, protecting them from harm, while also reaffirming their recent upgrades.

I puff out my chest and stare into the wide-open skies. I am not sure if Derek’s soul made it to heaven. Heaven may not even exist in this world, but if he had somehow crossed that threshold, I hope that he is watching me.

“No more fooling around”. The time for action has arrived. I will make Cumberland pay. I will make my mom pay. The world will know the name Derek Gray. They will know of the young imperial who gave everything he had to protect his family. I am going to make sure of it.

“My citizens,” I say in a booming voice, “no longer will we act like sheep sent out for slaughter. This is the moment you have waited for. This is the moment of our resurrection. I, Roderick Smith...no, Roderick Gray, declare the formation of the New Imperium. None shall cross us! None shall harm us! We will bring our inquisition down on the world. This is the start of a new era. Prepare yourselves. For in a fortnight, we march on behalf of my fallen brother. Long live Emperor Derek, our eternal ruler! Long live the Imperium!”

The crowd is fired up. I can feel the weight of their frustrations building to a fervor. They have lived in squalor for centuries, waiting for the return of their ancestors. I will do what I should have done all along. I will conquer the world.

My first stop will be The Pass.