Disregard Fantasy, Acquire Currency: Chapter One (Real) (Patreon)

This is the first chapter. I probably should have posted this yesterday, but it wasn't complete then. It also doesn't run seamlessly into the next, I know, but starting a new story is kind of just like this for me-- rearranging, rethinking, et cetera. Fortunately, some comments on last chapter helped me crystallize my intentions for characters and pacing. Hopefully, it will all be perfectly seamless henceforth.

Next weekend, I'll post a revised chapter 2 and 3 together, along with chapter four.
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Willem’s mornings were typically filled with unpleasant reminders that he was quite old. He was surprised, then, when he had the inverse; a pleasant realization that he was young.

His joints didn’t bear the stiffness of arthritis, despite the fact it was always the worst for him in the mornings. He didn’t feel an ache anywhere because he’d slept wrong. He wasn’t sore from walking up the stairs one too many times yesterday. He hadn’t woken up at 3AM needing to go to the bathroom in a haze, only to fall asleep on the toilet.

Instead, Willem just woke up. That was often the best morning he could ask for—one where nothing hurt. Naturally, it couldn’t have been that simple. He received a rather jarring curveball when he opened his eyes. Excluding the fact that he could actually see clearly, the wooden ceiling he saw was not his own.

Realizing that, Willem sat up and looked around. He saw stone walls and wooden floors, with not a hint of anything electric. He saw ancient-looking furniture, hides of animals, and mounted hunting trophies. Swords, bows, even an armor stand fitted with steel plate… it was like he’d been dropped into the set of a period piece. His surprise reached its peak when he looked into the mirror in the room.

Blond hair, blue eyes, smooth cream skin, and an impressive physique. These were not adjectives Willem typically used for himself—usually it was receding hair, cataractous eyes, saggy skin, and a hunched back. This young fellow, by contrast, looked like he could play ball games quite well. But when Willem moved, the man in the mirror moved. When he touched his face, he certainly felt it.

Either this was late-stage dementia, and he was sitting in a nursing home with relatives awkwardly answering the same question while they fed him pudding… or he’d gone through quite the unexplainable upheaval. Dreams weren’t this vivid, and Willem’s dreams wouldn’t dare conjure something this unrealistic—he might be forty, and that was if he was lucky.

If this was dementia, he could thus far happily recommend it to anyone.

If it wasn’t, youth had somehow returned to him. He’d often heard his friends express the sentiment that they’d even give up their exalted retirement accounts to get back ten years of youth. Some of them did, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ridiculous scams. One man he knew received regular blood transfusions from younger men. Another received stem cell injections harvested from newborns—the modern equivalent of bathing in virgin blood. All of it was claptrap.  

Whether this was an afterlife or something else, Willem rose, searching through the room for something to wear. He found a suitable drab fur outfit and put it on quickly. Gazing out the window in the room, he saw a rolling countryside of light green grass. Keeping up with the environment, there was a horse-drawn carriage. It appeared he was in a castle of some kind—it had a quaint moat, even. He didn’t rightly know what to make of this.

A knock rattled the wooden door, and shortly after, a bona fide maid entered. “Young lord Willem, your father is waiting for breakfast,” she said quickly, before he could even react. She seemed feverish and panicked as she added, “And the jaybird has laid its egg.”

Before Willem could utter a word in response, the door closed behind her. She had certainly called him by his name, but… a father? It was as though he’d become someone else. He walked and grabbed the doorknob, opening it up. A long hallway awaited him. He studied it carefully, and with steeled heart, walked forward. Would this odd experience shatter and end the illusion, or was there something more?

Either way, he was just tickled to walk without a walker.

***

Willem ended up wandering the castle halls without direction. This place reminded him of some of the castles he’d seen in his trips to Wales, yet without the centuries of disrepair and decay that marred their surface. The people he saw deferentially deferred to him as ‘Young lord Willem,’ then hastened to get away as though he had bad breath. Outside the windows and wandering the courtyards, he saw yet more people rejecting modernity—men in armor on horseback, or fields of wheat being cut by hand.

It wasn’t until about half an hour had passed until someone finally spoke to him with more than a token greeting.

Another maid sought him out urgently, and said, “Baron Tielman has been waiting for some time, young lord. He’s sent me to see you to him. Please, follow. He said that next time, he will send the knights.”

Willem nodded and obeyed, whisking through the castle behind the maid in the chill air of the morning. Dreams this pleasant seldom lasted this long. He felt if he questioned things too deeply, it all might fade away. His escort headed down the stairs, then headed to a room and opened the door to let him inside.

Within, there was a rectangular wooden table with seats for six. At its head, a stern-looking older man glared at him. The genetic similarities were quite apparent. In thirty or so years, he could see the man he’d seen in the mirror looking just like this.

“You’re late,” the man said—the aforementioned Baron Tielman, were Willem to guess.

Willem nodded. “I am.”

The baron’s face barely twitched, as though that wasn’t the answer he expected. “Have you no excuses?”

Willem held his stare. “No believable ones.”

Tielman reached forth and grabbed a bell. He rung it, then set it back. “I’ve had the servants keep the food warm. Sit,” he gestured toward the chair to his right.

The baron had a leader’s confidence—it was familiar, and even somewhat endearing. Willem sat, going with the flow of things. He hoped this would be an interesting conversation. As they sat, separate doors opened, and a chef brought out two plates. He set them before Tielman and Willem. All the while this was happening, Tielman stared, and Willem remained silent. Being comfortable with silence was a useful skill.

It was only when the chef left did Tielman speak again. “By now, you’ve realized that your foolishness will achieve nothing.” He cut into the steak laid out before him. “No matter what tantrums you throw, or whatever reasons you contrive, you will be heading to the capital by the end of the week.”

Willem examined the food curiously. He cut a small slice of the beef off, and tasted it tentatively. A bit bland… but it was beef, well and true. This strange day continued onward, without showing any sign of breaking its illusion.

“You’re as skilled a warrior as your eldest brother. You have a certain cunning, and you manifested your aura at the youngest of any in our lineage. But your low character dishonors the van Brugh family. Your continual reckless disregard for duty and honor threatens to shame not only our house, but also our liege lord. We stand at the frontier of the kingdom. A disharmonious clan withers from within. If we wilt, the whole kingdom may, too.” He chewed on a large chunk of meat, and Willem again let silence be his only response.

“Tomorrow, you shall receive a personal attendant of my choosing,” Tielman dictated forcefully. “He—along with my knights, if need be—will help pack your things. By nightfall, an enchanted carriage shall arrive. You will enter it, conscious or otherwise. It will transport you to the capital. From there, you’ll begin lessons with an old friend of mine. Disrespect him at your peril. He…”

The baron paused, grabbing his chest. Willem asked, “Is something wrong?”

“He… he will help you along the path. Reeducate you,” the baron continued, then clutched his chest tighter. “I’ve given him the full… the full author… the authority to do what…”

Tielman rose to his feet in a panic, but ended up falling against the table. Willem caught him uneasily, then gently lowered him to the floor. He looked at his own plate with considerable concern, then reached for the bell. It chimed pleasantly. Moments later, the chef entered.

Willem set the bell down. “I think there was a problem with the food.”

***

Lennard was out in the field inspecting the border outposts when a messenger came riding a swift steed, bearing a message that he’d never before heard.

His father, Baron Tielman, had collapsed.

From there, time felt it flowed at ten times the speed. He didn’t know when he had arrived back at the castle, but by the time he did, he was already looking at his father, who was breathing unsteadily in bed. Purple veins throbbed on his body, and his skin had grown pallid.

“…lord Lennard. Young lord Lennard?”

Lennard whipped his head over to the healer. “What happened to him?” he demanded.

The healer lowered his head. “…as I’ve been saying, there’s little doubt in my mind that he was poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” Lennard repeated in disbelief. “How could this happen? Have…” he looked around, and spotted some guards. “Have everyone who worked on his food today detained!” he shouted.

“It’s already done, young lord,” the knights confirmed. “They’re in the jail, awaiting your arrival.”

“It was an incredibly potent poison, young lord, that is rather difficult to acquire,” the healer continued to explain. “It attacks aura users specifically. Clatgrass, it’s called; a purple flower that grows in marshes where basilisks sleep. I suspect it would have killed him instantly, if not for the fact that the baron had asked the chef to keep the food warm while he waited for the late young lord. The application of heat likely diluted its effect.”

Lennard exhaled loudly, then asked, “Will he live?”

“I cannot honestly say,” the healer confessed. “I have healed all that I can with my magic, and I’ll continue to do so. But the nature of this poison turns the user’s own strength against them. It is an insidious drug outlawed in most nations.”

Lennard tried to hide his trembling. Through dumb luck, his father had been spared an instant death, yet it still lingered by his bedside.

“…the late young lord? I assume you don’t mean me. Who?” Lennard remembered a detail the healer had mentioned.

“Ah—yes. Willem,” the healer elaborated.

***

After confirming he wasn’t going to pass out as well, Willem enjoyed the rest of the steak and returned to his room. His appetite certainly wouldn’t be soiled by a poisoning or two. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen someone pass out mid meal. In geriatric circles, it was almost a common event—strokes and heart attacks were par for the course, doubly so when he took business partners golfing. But there seemed to be a bigger issue at play.

Namely, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume Willem had something to do with this.

That maid who spewed something about a jaybird laying eggs before running out lingered in his head. He couldn’t imagine that being some red herring.

“Of course not. It was a jaybird, not a herring…” he muttered to himself, then chuckled.

Willem had lived a very long life—and by some measures, a rather successful one, too. He had been treating this experience with some whimsy. One of the virtues of being old meant one could care less about many things. He’d become rather friendly with the idea of dying. He’d spent more time preparing for it than he actually had doing it. He’d bought many estate planners vacation homes from their exorbitant fees, but he never ended up actually dying. Perhaps that was why this whole ordeal didn’t faze him much.

He truly had no idea what in the world was going on. But… whether it was this life or the last, he knew what he wanted; to learn a lot of different things, and to build a good business. That was what he enjoyed, plain and simple. He couldn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t.

Already, he asked himself… wouldn’t it be fun to try the same thing here?

The door swung open, and a large knight entered his room. When Willem looked at him, he saw another blond man that could pass for a football player. Either that meal had done wonders for the baron’s skin, or this was another relative he’d yet to meet.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” the new arrival asked.

Willem rose to his feet. “A great many things, all of them positive.”