First chapter and introduction to the series here

Quick notes: I researched the fuck out of this series. Also, this chapter could be called: what would it be like if I got teleported back to Byzantium?

CHAPTER 2: Hey, Alexios

The ocean was glimmering on the game board, the sun glinting on millions of waves below. Torres spotted little ships—were they galleys?—with just one white sail each, but lots of oars rising and falling all together like wings beating foam from the surf. Lurking in the depths were sea monsters which could have swallowed these ships whole.

Closer to shore, fishermen in rowboats were throwing rope nets into the waves. Farmers—and almost everyone was a farmer—either worked their fields or hauled their harvest on horse-drawn carriages. In the dark forests and the arid wastelands bandits and monsters hid in the shadows of trees and caves.

The capital—Konstantinopolis—was built on a peninsula, and looked like a jumble of red rooftops and golden domes guarded on all sides by massive walls. Three-masted galleys glided into enormous harbors alongside white marble porticoes. The city’s centerpiece, however, was the enormous hippodrome—like an oval-shaped Colosseum—surrounded by gigantic churches. Half the city at the peninsula’s tip was a garden filled with flowers. Wide paved roads packed with people led to gigantic squares decorated with golden statues blazing in the sun. Remarkably, the markets murmured, the carriages rumbled, the horse hooves clopped, and construction workers pounded their hammers. A rhythmical wooden rattling came from churches and monasteries, as did the unearthly singing of eunuch choirs. Even stranger, the reek of cinnamon and incense made Torres cough and turn away.

When he turned back, he was drenched in sweat, and standing in a bright field of ripe grain. The sun was burning him. His muscles and bones ached, and a heavy wooden scythe was in his thick calloused hands. He wore a belted linen tunic which itched his skin. On top of all this, he was thirsty, and his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes, he looked around. Grain fields extended for miles in every direction, interrupted here and there by dirt paths, but otherwise ending only in mountains and forests. Many people worked these fields together—scything the grain with their swooping, ringing, gleaming blades. An older man was shouting at him nearby.

What the…? Torres thought.

The man lowered his scythe and approached Torres while continuing to shout in a vaguely European language. He was white-haired, short, and sturdy. Although the man was technically white, he was deeply tanned, presumably from working these fields all his life. His tunic was the same coarse material as Torres’s, but it was dyed blue, and worn out.

“What are you doing?” the man yelled. “Come on! What’s the matter with you?”

Torres was shocked that he understood, and that the foreign words sounded so natural. He pointed to himself and raised his eyebrows.

“Are you talking to me?” Torres said—also shocked that his tongue, lips, jaw, and throat formed these words in the other man’s language.

“Who else would I be talking to?” the man yelled. “Do you see anyone else who’s stopped working? Now come on! Get to it!”

Torres looked down at the heavy scythe in his hands. The wooden pole that was connected to the rusted blade was so splintered that the sight alone could have given him tetanus. Glancing at the old man—who watched him with a frustrated expression—Torres shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” Torres said. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

“What do you mean?” the man said. “Is this some kind of joke? Look!” With his own scythe, he gestured behind Torres.

Torres glanced back. A long line of golden grain had been mowed behind him—and presumably by him. Someone in the distance was tying it into bales.

“Now come on,” the man said. “This is too much. Get back to work. It isn’t funny. Do you need a drink of water or something?”

“Look,” Torres said. “I know this may sound strange—but can you show me how to do this? How to scythe grain?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Alright, I’ll play along, but you’d better cut this out soon, or else I’m going to cut you.”

Standing behind Torres, the man tossed his own scythe into the field, then lifted Torres’s arms and swung them back and forth.

“Really complicated, I know,” the man said. He reeked of sweat. “Just keep doing that until you drop dead from exhaustion! Give us this day our daily bread, boy!”

Torres stepped forward and scythed the grain. The muscles in his chest, back, and arms burned and his spine strained after just one swing. At the same time, the scythe made a ringing-whooshing sound as the grain fell. Torres shook his head at how satisfying it was. Scything came much more easily than he would have thought, considering the fact that he had never done this before. It was like muscle memory.

“See?” The man clapped his back so hard Torres winced. “You’re a natural! That’s what comes from doing this practically your whole life. Good boy. Keep it up.”

Before Torres could speak, the man returned to his part of the grain field.

For a few minutes Torres continued scything grain. Just as he was about to ask the man where he could get some water—and perhaps where he was—a mysterious voice spoke in his consciousness.

Your Farming Skill has increased to Level 4/10, the voice said. You are now an Apprentice Farmer. Continue farming if you want to level up to Intermediate.

Torres laughed. He kept scything, though, and noticed that doing so was even easier than before, and that he could cut even more grain.

I’m grinding inside a game, he thought. Does that make that other guy an NPC?

By farming alone your XP will increase slowly, the voice said. Farm with other farmers if you want to improve more rapidly.

Hang on, Torres thought. Are you like a robot or do you have a personality?

I have a personality.

Uh, okay then. What is it that you want?

I want you to entertain me.

That’s weird. Why is that, exactly?

It’s boring being a god.

Is that what you are, then? A god?

More or less.

So what if I refuse to entertain you?

The choice is yours.

Torres looked around while he continued to scythe. Though the sun was blinding with heat, the sky was bluer than he’d ever seen it—so blue he could drown in its depths. Somehow it even seemed more real than Pemetic High—a memory that was growing more vague. At the same time, he was slowly gaining (or regaining?) memories of living in this place. Scything grain became more natural with each passing moment.

So this is a game, he thought. Still, have to wonder how many lives I have, or what happens when I die.

You have only one life, said the voice in his mind. It was also somehow not a voice but almost more like a feeling.

Just one life. That’s way too hard.

Check the underside of your right arm.

Glancing at the man who had just yelled at him, Torres looked where the voice had indicated. A Greek-looking letter B was carved into his skin.

The capital beta symbol distinguishes main characters from NPCs, the voice said. NPCs do not have them.

Yeah, I can see that, Torres thought. Guess this game has a pretty minimalistic interface. Can you give me my stats in a character sheet or something?

**Certainly. Just a moment.

Character class: Fighter

Intermediate Farmer (4/10)

Educated Novice (3/10)

Apprentice Athlete (4/10)

Apprentice Brawler (4/10)**

You have other skills and sub-skills, but these are the most important at the moment. Each skill will grow or atrophy depending on how often you successfully use it, but lower-level skills are easier to cultivate than higher-level ones. For example, if you kill a mosquito with your bare hands, you will gain only a small amount of XP for your mêlée combat ability (a sub-skill of your Apprentice Brawler skill). On the other hand, if you manage to kill a giant monster with your bare hands, you will gain a great deal more XP for your mêlée combat ability—particularly if that sub-skill is already low to begin with. Success also depends upon dice-rolls; higher skill levels increase the likelihood that your dice-rolls will succeed. All of your actions (and inactions) will likewise influence your personality—

Okay, okay, I think I got it. I’ve played plenty of RPGs before. What happens if I die here?

You will die in the “real” world, the voice said. The old world. The world from which you came.

Torres’s heart plunged. He started shaking as the reality of the situation sank in.

Come on, he thought. None of this is real. Let me out of here.

You must defeat the emperor, the voice said. And destroy the empire.

What? No. I want to go home.

Silence from the voice.

You said I had a choice.

Indeed. Your choice is to play along—or die.

“Shit.” Torres clutched his head. He felt dizzy, and almost fainted, but managed to stay standing.

My family, my friends, my entire life, he thought. All gone.

For now. But not to worry. You’ll find a new life here.

Until I defeat the emperor and destroy the empire. Then I can escape.

Right.

“Defeat the emperor,” he said to himself. “Okay then. Where would this emperor happen to be?”

Turn a little to the right.

Torres followed the voice’s instructions. There’s no screen interface with this game, he thought.

No. And skill points are allocated automatically based on the actions you take. It’s all very unobtrusive. There’s no menus to navigate.

I want to be able to customize more.

Too bad. It’s more realistic this way.

Torres tried to reason with the voice in his head. Listen. Gamers don’t like realism. We’re trying to escape the real world, not live in it. If we liked the real world, we wouldn’t be gamers. We like things to be a certain way—

Turn a little more. There. The emperor lies in that direction.

Torres had stopped turning. He sighed. Alright. How far is he?

305.4 kilometers.

Damn. What am I doing all the way out here?

**Your name is Alexios. Your character class is fighter. You belong to a family of Roman farmers living in the town of Leandros. Recently, many towns and cities in this region have joined the uprising which is spreading across the land in response to Emperor Nikephoros II’s usurpation of the imperial throne. ** Boucher had mentioned the emperor—although that conversation felt like it had taken place a lifetime ago.

Why does everyone hate this Nikephoros guy so much?

**The previous emperor, Anastasios III, introduced a number of popular reforms at the expense of the ruling class. He was executed by Nikephoros, a rival general. ** The old man glanced at Torres—maybe he’d noticed the lack of ringing sounds coming from his direction—so Torres got back to scything. He worked for a few more minutes—not nearly long enough to gain much XP—until he was dying of thirst. He was about to ask the old man where the well was, but then Torres remembered its location, except the memories did not belong to him. They belonged to this Alexios character.

Make sure not to take too long getting your drink, the voice said.

Damn, this reminds me of school.

If you waste too much time, your reputation with the people around you will decline. Loners don’t last long in a world as dangerous as this one.

Alright, alright, Torres thought. Look, I’m a gamer. I get it.

He jogged to the well—which was a hole walled with stone extending down into the earth—and pulled up a heavy wooden bucket which had been left hanging on a rope in the depths. Torres—or Alexios, whoever he was—drank the sweet water until his stomach ached. Then he returned to work.

As he scythed, he looked at the old man, and remembered that he was his uncle—Alexios’s uncle—and named Eugenios.

My uncle, Torres thought. Where’s my dad?

He died of plague before you were born.

You mean like the Bubonic Plague? Torres thought.

Romanía was struck by the plague many times throughout history, the voice said.

Romanía? He remembered someone saying something about this back in that classroom.

Historians from your time call this place Byzantium, but its actual inhabitants call it Romanía.

Oh. The more you know.

I’m here to help you anytime.

Unless I want to leave.

Right.

Do you have a name, by the way?

I don’t need one.

As the sun declined to the west, Eugenios brought a wooden cart pulled by a horse named Bukephalos which he had retrieved from the nearby town of Leandros. Together Eugenios and Torres piled the cart with bales of hay. Torres had leveled up to Intermediate Farmer in the mean time. This meant that he could work harder and faster while feeling less fatigued, but he also felt a kind of joy in his accomplishment. Eugenios remarked on his improved ability and asked once again why Torres had been acting so strangely earlier.

“I was just a little out of it I guess,” Torres said. “Speaking of which, could you tell me what year it is?”

“Hey, Alexios, come on, I told you to stop messing with me!” Eugenios said.

“Alexios,” Torres said. “Right. That’s my name.”

“This isn’t funny. You have me concerned. If you’re going to keep acting like you’ve been hit on the head, maybe we should go see Father Sergios.”

“I swear I’m not messing with you,” Torres said. “Can you please tell me the year?”

“Why? Why would anyone want to know that?”

“I’m just curious,” Torres said. “I forgot.”

“A lot of strange questions coming from you today. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head or get sunstroke or something?”

“Who knows? Maybe I did.” He wondered if Pemetic High had been the dream, and this place was reality.

No, he thought. I’m in a game. Like, the most realistic MMO ever. I’m a fighter. A warrior. Does that mean my intellect stats are low? Maybe that’s why I feel so confused. But that’s what happens, I guess, when you get teleported into someone else’s body. This is so strange. And if I’m in Alexios’s body…what happened to whoever was in here before? Where’s Alexios? Did his soul just disappear?

It’s inside you, the voice said. **As time passes, Alexios will become you, and you will become Alexios. ** I don’t like the sound of that.

**It’s no different from becoming yourself in the world you came from. A new environment means a new personality. ** Eugenios was eyeing him skeptically. “If I tell you the year, will you stop acting like this?”

“I’ll do my best,” Torres said.

“It’s still only the first year of Nikephoros’s reign. Everyone knows that. And before, Anastasios was emperor nine years. He was crowned when you were eight or so, after Basil the—”

“But do you know, like, the specific year,” Torres said. “Like, how long has it been since Jesus died?”

“A long time since we lost Our Lord.” Eugenios crossed himself and glanced at the sky. “Many centuries. But if you want to know how long exactly, you’ll have to ask Father Sergios, and he might not even know. You’d have to head to the City—which is where you want to go anyway.”

Just as Torres was about to ask—seemingly for the twentieth time—what Eugenios was talking about, he remembered. Alexios had wanted to go to the city—the City—Konstantinopolis. The capital. There he could study to become a scholar and a philosopher. This was also the reason he had yet to get married. Alexios actually hated farming, which might have been part of the reason why Eugenios didn’t think it so strange that he was bad at it.

“Oh, right,” Torres said. “I forgot.”

“Don’t ask me how that’s possible,” Eugenios said.

They brought the cart back to Leandros, which lay at the end of a long dirt path. The village houses here were walled with brick and roofed with orange tiles, and resembled a modern Mediterranean getaway. A major difference, of course, was all the animals—horses, mules, oxen, sheep, goats, cows, dogs, cats, chickens—running around, resting, or being led here and there by farmers, each of whom was as strong and sturdy as Eugenios, and similarly dressed in worn yet colorful tunics. The stench of animal feces was also powerful. Some people were shoveling dung into wooden carts for fertilizer. Children were all over the place, while people with white hair were rare.

Eugenios led Torres home. After working all day, he had noticed that his body here was taller and more muscular than at Pemetic High. He had yet to see any glass or mirrors, but when his reflection looked back at him from a bucket of water drawn from the town well, he was struck by his beauty. The pale, chubby, pasty, pimply, beady-eyed face from his old life was no more. Instead, the face in the wavering reflection—Alexios’s face—possessed enormous brown eyes, a long straight nose, sensuous lips, a powerful jaw, olive skin, and curly black hair. He was like an ancient mosaic, one which depicted someone strikingly handsome. Even his braces were gone, while his teeth looked to be in decent shape. This last fact in itself almost made him leap for joy.

“Hey, Alexios,” he whispered to himself.

Torres had also been eternally dateless. But who knew? This Alexios might even get a girlfriend. Looks weren’t everything, but they definitely mattered.

“Watch out for that reflection of yours, Narkissos!” Eugenios elbowed him. “Let’s get dinner.”

The sun was setting by the time they came home. Like the few dozen other houses in Leandros, it was built into a low hill. Aside from a small wooden barn where the cart and horse and other farm animals were kept, it consisted of a single dark musty room, itself lit by light from the doorway, a pair of windows which lacked glass, and the fire snapping in the hearth. Smoke escaped through a hole in the ceiling. Otherwise the interior was bare. There were no chairs. Three of the walls had stone couches raised up from the dirt floor, on which were placed animal skins. Torres was unable to understand what these couches were for, but through Alexios’s eyes he could see that they were for sitting and sleeping. At the room’s center was a large wooden chest serving as a table. A woman working at the hearth had roasted chunks of chicken on wooden skewers; these she placed on a single large clay plate on the table. There were also copious helpings of fresh pita bread, feta cheese, and even salad with olives and vinegar dressing. One big clay cup was filled with red wine.

Torres was ravenous, but before eating, everyone washed their faces and hands with soap using a clay ewer and basin, drying with linen towels. When Eudokia—Torres’s aunt—sat down, Eugenios made the sign of the cross over the food and murmured a prayer. He and Eudokia bowed their heads, and Torres joined them. When Eugenios finished praying, everyone tore into the food. Torres realized with his first bite that it was the most incredible meal he had ever experienced. He was hesitant, at first, to share the cup, but the wine inside was so delicious—refilled several times from a large flask—that he couldn’t resist. His two hosts ate with their hands. No cutlery was visible. They chewed open-mouthed, and burped without excusing themselves. Torres was shocked at first, but he was family. In more polite company his aunt and uncle would probably refrain from acting this way. At the same time, they wiped their mouths with their linen napkins before touching the communal cup and chastised Torres for failing to do so. As he got used to this style of dining, the voice in Torres’s mind announced that he had increased his charisma skill. At the moment, however, he was still an Apprentice (Level 4/10), which meant that he could be annoying even if he wasn’t totally repellent. The voice also told him that eating was replenishing his stamina, which had fallen to dangerously low levels after a long day of work.

When they had eaten every last morsel of food on the plate and drained the cup and flask, they ventured outside into the evening. Eudokia—who dressed and looked almost like a beardless version of Eugenios—washed the plate and cup at the well along with several village women, all of whom conversed. Nearby, a man was playing a folk song about some people called “akritai” on a lute, and people had gathered to listen and dance. Torres excused himself, however, and staggered home, since he was exhausted. Inside the house he collapsed on a couch, pulled an animal skin over himself, and passed out in the darkness lit by the fireplace embers, the orange light in the sky, and the blue buildings sinking into dusk.

Next chapter

Hexbear doesn't usually feature a lot of fiction, so I'm just going to post this and see where it goes. If people are into it, I'll keep posting here. If I don't get much of a response, I'll stop. I think in general people (meaning: me) would rather read novels on paper. I've published and self-published novels before, and I'm currently submitting this trilogy to publishers. One way or another it will be published and available on paper—it took me two years to write, and I want to at least be able to hold it in my hand—but at the moment it's just available electronically. The whole thing is available for free here, and anyone who wants an .epub should shoot me a message, and I'll give you a dropbox link for free. I'm not charging anything at the moment because I'm more interested in becoming better known as a writer of communist fiction.

The story: it's Jumanji in Byzantium. Four high schoolers stuck in detention get teleported to 11th century Byzantium. They change races, genders, and classes along the way, and are forced to take different positions in a slave uprising—some supporting it, others fighting it or caught in between. The jock becomes a general, the overachieving know-it-all becomes a rogue merchant, the activist becomes a rebellious princess, and the nerd becomes "the one." This is a gamelit novel, so in some parts it reads like a video game. It's also a fantasy novel which draws a lot of inspiration from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as dialectical materialism. Additionally, it's a historical fictional novel that I spent so much time researching (I've been a little obsessed with Byzantium for decades). My goal was to show how exploited people in truly desperate circumstances can build a new society, but also to show how changes in environment and context can change some character traits in people while also intensifying others. And, of course, I wanted to write something fun.

So without further ado, if you're still reading, here's the first chapter (CW, the jock says a few racist, sexist, ableist things):

spoiler

BYZANTINE WARS

CHAPTER 1: THE GAME

Julian Torres was transported to another world on the most unremarkable day imaginable. He had just been sentenced to detention at Pemetic High on a bleak winter afternoon in Maine. According to Vice Principal Ross, some people had spray-painted graffiti on the maintenance shack by the baseball field, and Torres was the main suspect. Now he was slumping behind a desk in a dusty, forgotten classroom on the second floor. Miss Ross had even confiscated his phone.

This is totally unfair, Torres thought. She didn’t even have any evidence!

The school buses roared away from the campus, bringing hundreds of students past piles of snow and along dirty roads to their homes—to food, drink, and video games. Torres was a huge fan of Fourteen Nights, and wanted to get back to his bedroom so he could play. Instead, he was stuck here.

Several other students joined him. First came Austin Boucher, a tall muscular football player who threw himself into a seat at the back of the classroom.

“Are you in for the graffiti?” Torres said, turning around to face him.

“Don’t talk to me,” Boucher said.

Okay. Torres looked back ahead.

Next came Helena Lee, a small thin overachiever. She greeted Torres, sat nearby, and retrieved a calculus textbook from her backpack. Both she and Torres had the same AP Physics class, but she was one of the few students who understood the subject. It was unusual for Miss Ross to sentence a future valedictorian to detention like this.

“Graffiti?” Torres said.

Lee looked at him. “When I get my phone back I’m going to have my dad complain to the school.”

“Daddy’s girl,” Boucher said.

Lee scowled at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be throwing footballs and giving yourself brain damage or something?”

“What?” Boucher looked around and crossed his eyes. “I don’t know. Where am I? Who am I?”

“Miss Ross must just be tossing random people in here to fill up her quota,” Torres said.

“It’s completely ridiculous,” Lee said.

The last to enter was Darius Jackson. He and Torres hung out at chess club and were taking a media studies class together. Jackson waltzed over to Torres, spun around, and sat beside him.

“She got you too, huh?” Jackson said. He spoke with a faint accent; his family had moved from Jamaica to Maine a few years ago.

Boucher glared at them. “Both of you shut up. This shit’s bad enough without listening to you losers flirt with each other.”

Jackson stood, but Torres pulled him down, shaking his head. “We’re already in enough trouble.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Boucher reclined in his seat and pulled his baseball cap over his eyes.

Lee sighed, retrieved a notebook from her backpack, and put on noise-canceling headphones. Within moments she had lost herself in calculus.

Such a know-it-all, Torres thought. But that’s her way of escaping this place. The three of us could take down Boucher and maybe even Miss Ross if we worked together, but we’re all caught up in our own little worlds.

Part of him wanted to ask Helena for her phone number. He had always admired how studious she was, and thought she was pretty. But Torres was insecure about his appearance—he was pudgy, unfashionable, and had braces and acne—and he got mediocre grades. Why would she be interested in him?

Jackson, meanwhile, had pulled a book called Wretched of the Earth from his backpack. He started reading.

“Nerd,” Torres whispered.

“A few more books and a few less video games would probably do you good, son,” Jackson answered, patting Torres’s back.

Torres rolled his eyes. “This is just like The Breakfast Club.”

“What’s The Breakfast Club?” Jackson said.

“It’s like a club,” Torres said. “Where you have breakfast.”

“Isn’t it some Tarantino movie where everyone kills each other in the end?”

“No, it’s a movie from the eighties about a bunch of kids trapped in detention.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah, this is kind of like that, I guess.”

Silence. Torres stared into space.

Jackson looked at him. “You’re just going to sit there?”

“I’m doing white lady yoga.” Torres raised his hands and held his middle fingers to his thumbs. “I’m meditating.”

Jackson laughed. “Meditating on what?”

“How this school needs a lawsuit or something for throwing random people in detention like this,” Torres said.

“That’s just more of your California dreaming,” Jackson said. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Maine.”

Jackson constantly made fun of Torres because he was from California, and thought Torres’s entire family was nuts for exchanging a lifetime of perfect weather for Maine’s bleak winters, muddy springs, and touristy summers. But in a way, Jackson was no better, since his family had left the green Caribbean paradise of Jamaica for the same thing. Jokes about ganja and reggae were inevitable in response, but Jackson had little interest in either.

Soon he was just as absorbed in his book as Helena was in hers. Torres got started on his Chinese homework. He was doing an independent study on the language, and loved how people still used these prehistoric symbols in the modern world. It was so fascinating how each word was a mix of sounds and ideas. Plus, if you screwed up the stroke order, your writing would be unreadable, so you needed to learn the way people thousands of years ago wrote and thought. The Chinese word for beautiful, for instance, was a man wearing a goat headdress, although to Torres the image looked like a centipede.

To each his own, he thought.

“Can’t even take a nap in this place,” Boucher said.

Pushing back his baseball cap, Boucher sprung up from his seat and wandered the classroom. For a minute he did pushups on the floor near Lee, clearly trying to impress her, but she ignored him. Torres watched out of the corner of his eye, and silently counted. Boucher finished at fifty pushups.

I can do maybe ten, Torres thought.

At the back of the classroom, Boucher tried to open a locked door labeled NO ENTRY.

“It’s locked for a reason,” Lee said.

Boucher glanced into the silent hallway for a moment, then returned to the closet door and—just as Lee was removing her headphones and telling him to stop—threw his weight onto the handle, busting it open.

Behind the door was absolute void.

“Jesus Christ, come on, man!” Torres said.

“Like a bull in a China shop,” Jackson said.

Boucher stepped back from the void, staring at it. Wind gusted through the windows and lifted the cobwebs tangled in the classroom’s corners.

“Creepy,” he said.

The closet seemed to absorb all the light in the world. Boucher stepped inside the dark, feeling the haze with his hands.

“Now’s our chance,” Jackson whispered to Torres. “Maybe we can push him in and lock the door.”

“He literally just broke the lock, dude,” Torres whispered back. “And he’s the size of a tank. A minute ago he did fifty pushups!”

“You don’t always have to be such a coward, Julian.”

Torres frowned. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“I’m a coward because I just want to get through the next hour without losing my teeth.”

“Don’t worry,” Jackson said. “Those braces of yours will protect you.”

“I’ve had them for two years,” Torres said. “I don’t want to get stuck with them for a second longer than I have to.”

“Nothing’s in here,” Boucher said from the closet.

“Great,” Helena said. “Now can you come back and close the door before all of us get in even more trouble?”

“Nope,” Boucher said.

Lee groaned. “Next time I’m asking Miss Ross if I can do detention in a classroom by myself.”

Jackson looked at her. “That might affect your permanent record. And then who knows? Harvard might not let you in.”

“At least I’m actually applying to colleges,” Lee said.

Jackson stared at her, unable to think of a comeback.

Torres pointed at Jackson. “Oh! She got you, dude!”

“I’m actually applying to lots of schools,” Jackson said to Torres. “Like the University of Kiss My Ass. It’s in Kiss My Ass, Florida. Ever heard of it?”

“The only thing any of us have heard of is your mom,” Torres said.

Jackson shook his head. “I still can’t believe people here talk like that. Where I’m from you’d get knifed for saying anything about people’s moms.”

“Well Toto, I don’t think we’re in Jamaica anymore,” Torres said.

“Yeah, you can say that again.” Jackson looked at the depressing linoleum classroom and the fluorescent lights that weren’t even turned on. Outside the windows it was already getting dark, even though it was barely past three in the afternoon.

Boucher, meanwhile, had been feeling along the closet’s edges. He withdrew a dusty wooden box. It resembled an ornate chess set.

“What’s this?” He showed the box to Lee. “Can you read this shit? It looks Chinese.”

“I’m Korean,” she said.

“From North Korea?”

Helena rolled her eyes. “I’ve never heard that joke before.”

“All Asians look the same to me,” Boucher said.

Helena tensed her muscles and glared at him. Jackson shook his head.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Torres said.

Boucher shoved the box in his face. “Then you tell me what it says, genius.”

A word was carved into the box’s underside. The letters looked Greek to Torres, but he had never learned to read that language.

“It says ‘Byzantium,’” Jackson said. “But it’s written in English. The font is just kind of Greek-themed or something—”

“What’s Byzantium?” Boucher said.

“The Eastern Roman Empire,” Jackson said. “Think Ancient Rome, but medieval, and located mostly in what we call Turkey today. Obviously.”

“No need to show off,” Torres said.

Jackson smiled at him. “There’s always a need to show off.”

Helena put on her headphones and returned to her textbook.

“Byzantium,” Boucher said. “Weird word. Never heard of it. Any of you nerds wanna play a round of Byzantium?”

Torres shook his head. “No.”

But the truth was, Torres was tempted; he just didn’t want to play with Boucher. Torres loved any kind of game, not just video games or chess. He also played poker so much that Jackson joked that he was going to move to Las Vegas and become a professional poker player after graduating high school.

“I don’t know why you think that’s so funny,” Torres had said. “Poker requires, like, real understanding of emotions. You really need to know how to read people.”

“All you need to know how to do is find more burgers and credit cards,” Jackson had answered.

Boucher opened the box. Inside was an old booklet made of parchment, or something like it. There were also four silver figurines. The first had a long thin sword. The second was riding an armored horse. The third raised her arms in some kind of Kung Fu pose. The fourth had drawn what looked like a clunky, old-fashioned flintlock pistol, the kind that fires one shot at a time.

Boucher shook his head. “Lame ass game.”

“It’s like medieval Monopoly,” Jackson said.

Opening the booklet, Boucher found a page near the front explaining the pieces.

“This one’s the general.” He picked up the horse and the rider. “Me, in other words. And this one’s the swordsman—of course.” He placed the man armed with a sword on Torres’s desk. “Here’s the princess. Perfect for you.” He gave the woman to Jackson. “And finally the rogue, whatever that is.” He gave the last piece to Helena, who was too busy scrawling abstruse symbols in her notebook to notice.

“Let’s play,” Boucher said. Without waiting for an answer, he pulled three desks together and gestured for Torres and Jackson to join him.

The two acquaintances glanced at each other, but remained in their seats.

“Get over here,” Boucher growled.

“Why should we?” Torres said.

“Because we can kill him.” Jackson got up and joined Boucher. “In the game, of course.”

Torres watched Jackson for a moment, then followed.

Apes together strong, he thought.

“‘It is a chaotic time for Byzantium,’” Boucher said in a dramatic voice, reading from the booklet.

“Check it out.” Jackson indicated Boucher. “He can read.”

“Shut up,” Boucher said. Then he continued. “‘A peasant uprising has spread across the land, and the emperor has dispatched armies to crush it. But some have organized to fight back. Among these is Princess Herakleia.’” He nodded to Jackson. “You, in other words.”

Jackson met his gaze without flinching. “Is that supposed to be an insult? You think it’s funny I’m a woman in the game?”

“Yeah,” Boucher said.

“Is it funny that your mom’s a woman?” Jackson said.

“Don’t talk about my mom,” Boucher said.

“See?” Torres said to Jackson. “Talking about people’s moms can actually be useful.”

“Let’s go, momma’s boy,” Jackson said to Boucher. “Let’s see how tough you are.”

“After the game,” Boucher said.

Jackson looked at Torres. “The reactionary is a paper tiger.”

“‘Returning from a journey to faraway lands,’” Boucher continued, reading from the booklet, “‘Princess Herakleia plans to teach the people’s armies new and mystical fighting techniques. Pursued by the Roman legions, she races home so she can free the people from slavery—and so that they, too, can save her.’ Sounds boring and political.”

“‘I don’t like politics in video games,’” Jackson said, imitating Boucher’s deep voice.

Boucher clutched his head and groaned. “Argh, what else am I going to do without my phone?”

“How do you play?” Torres snatched the booklet. “I’ve never heard of this game. It sounds like Dungeons and Dragons, but the character classes are a little different, and tabletop RPGs aren’t usually set in Byzantium.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Jackson said. “Don’t they usually take place in like this fantasy version of Western Europe? With like this weird race reification thing going on with goblins and dwarves and elves? Or is the whole story just about squabbling nobles, grimdark ultraviolence, morally gray characters, and weird rape fantasies, and does it completely ignore everyone else?”

“Sounds right up my alley,” Boucher said.

“No one forced you to open that door,” Torres said. “Did you ever think that maybe it was locked for a reason? Do you ever think at all?”

Boucher lunged at Torres, who ducked out of the way.

“Look,” Torres said. “Do you want to play or don’t you?”

“I want to play,” Boucher said.

“Alright, then let me read,” Torres said.

“Let me read,” Jackson sang, suddenly playing air guitar. “Read in here!”

“Gameplay looks pretty standard,” Torres said. “Each character has different traits, strengths, and weaknesses. Dice rolls help determine a lot of what happens. The game isn’t perfectly historical. It’s like a historical fantasy, even if there’s some historical precedent for its ideas, like these longshoremen called Zealots who took over some city called Thessaloniki and made a workers’ republic for a few years in the fourteenth century. Only—this is weird.”

“What?” Jackson said.

“Usually there’s a dungeon master,” Torres said. “Someone to kind of guide the game along. It’s almost like a story we all tell together and play together. But there needs to be someone sort of outside the action and, like, kind of guiding everything.”

“So then how does the game work?” Jackson said.

Torres shrugged. “I don’t know. It just says don’t start unless you want to finish, and you win by beating the emperor and destroying the empire.”

Boucher flipped the game board over. The other side was a carved wooden fantasy-style map.

“It looks like modern Turkey,” Jackson said. “Back then I guess they called it Byzantium.”

“Actually, they called it Romanía,” Lee said, pulling off her headphones.

“Like the country in Eastern Europe?” Jackson said.

“Similar name, different thing,” Lee said.

“How do you know that?” Jackson said.

“You think Asians only know about math and martial arts? There’s a lot about me you don’t know.” Lee put her headphones back on.

Torres, Boucher, and Jackson looked at each other, then turned to the game board. The map was divided into provinces. These were connected by winding roads and dotted with cities labeled in that difficult Greek font. (Torres could make out the word “Konstantinopolis” for Istanbul.) A lot of detail was on the map, too. Islands sprinkled the seas, farmland checkered the coasts, and the interior was mountainous and dry—turning to a vast desert in the southeast, and an endless forest in the northwest. Strange animals were also present—ants the size of buses, Mongolian death worms, Chinese water dragons, Japanese skeletons as large as mountains, shapeshifting ghouls, and other creatures Torres had never seen.

“How do we start?” Boucher said.

“It says we have to roll the dice to see who goes first,” Torres said.

Boucher seized the dice, but winced. “Damn, they’re heavy.”

He handed the dice to Torres, who almost dropped them. Somehow each dice possessed the weight of a mountain. Rapidly he gave them to Jackson.

“Weird.” Jackson returned the dice to Boucher, who hefted them in his hand, his muscles straining.

“If you want to start,” Torres said, “you have to roll the dice.”

Trembling, Boucher lowered his hand and then dropped the dice onto the board. The rattle was thunderous, and made the chairs in the room tremble.

Helena Lee pulled off her headphones and glared at them. “Can you guys please do that more quietly?”

No one was paying attention to her. The board had come alive.

It’s never been easy being a high schooler, and for four students stuck in detention, it’s about to get a whole lot harder. After opening a magical board game they find in a dark closet during detention, each is teleported to another world—the world of Byzantium.

What’s worse: this place is in trouble. A slave rebellion has overrun entire cities, and barbarians from the east and west are on the march. On top of that, fantastic monsters and mystical warriors called Zhayedan have joined the fray, throwing Byzantium into chaos. Our four high school students find themselves in four different bodies, taking four different sides in the conflict. Each must now fight desperately to survive.

Byzantine Wars is an historical fantasy isekai with LitRPG elements. Enjoy four different main characters with varying strengths and weaknesses, deeply immersive world-building, and endless humor and adventure. And, most importantly: don’t let the farr fade.

Start reading here.