Absently, Bob reached for an apple and took a big bite. The first day he’d been ferociously hungry, but after a few days without easy access to junk food, clocks, or any reminders of the real world, the hunger had receded. Now he kept having to hitch up his sweatpants. Maybe all the walking had stretched them out.

He put his fingers back on the keys.

As Rowan rode away on his new horse, carrying the plunder plucked from the bodies of his foes, he remembered all the burning suns and starry nights he had seen. Was it all going to end here, on sands shifting faster than those in an hourglass?

DERRICK

Out of Game

Rickard ran through the woods, his crossed swords bouncing on his back. This was no longer Camp Tomawaka, a campground with a vaguely Native American– sounding name. And he was no longer Derrick Lavinsky, a teenage boy mostly invisible to the world.

Here in the mythical land of Cascadia, he was Rickard Starsworn, leader of the peasant rebellion. Despite having a price on his head and nothing in his belly, he would not be swayed from his mission to procure the Sacred Feather. Whoever possessed it could call down the army of gryphons from the sky.

Cascadia was a world full of magic and betrayal. Of brave fighters, cutthroat rogues, and majestic nobility. One thing it was not—definitely not—was the world of Swords and Shadows. While Derrick’s dad had begun the LARP as a frank homage, over the years, dozens of new plot twists and characters had been introduced. And after the intellectual property lawsuit nine years ago, all overlapping names had been changed. So the game was now called Mysts of Cascadia and featured gryphons instead of unicorns.

If new players remarked on any remaining similarities, they were reminded to stay in character. If they continued to do so OOG (out of game), everyone knew to deny, deny, deny, just in case R. M. Haldon’s publisher’s lawyers had once again hired spies.

Even though Derrick’s character, Rowan, had been renamed Rickard, the general outlines of the backstory remained the same. Derrick had reread the books many times in an effort to understand his character. It was Mountains of the Moon that had revealed Rowan for the hero—or perhaps antihero—he had been all along.

As Rickard drew closer to the clearing where he would meet Black Fox, the thief who’d promised to sell him the Sacred Feather, he slowed his pace, slipping from shadow to shadow.

Suddenly a woman shouted behind him. “I call forth a Web Spell.” The spell (represented by a small beanbag filled with birdseed) slapped between his shoulder blades.

“By Ferdinand’s Beard!” Rickard swore. He was currently without a Resist Spell to counteract the Web Spell. Now his arms and legs couldn’t move.