Camell dropped her bag onto the couch and sunk onto the soft velvet, a long, drawn-out sigh leaving her lips. She'd only been here for one day, and she had managed to attract the attention of two angels with a possible god complex. She told the princess of the ruling kingdom that she had powers similar to her mother; she wasn't sure whether it would blow up in her face. However, the slight differences between the world and the game had made her feel incredibly vulnerable and without a support system.
At the thought of support, she snapped the front of her bag over and pulled out her tablet. After a slight deviation in her thought process, she wondered if dropping it would break it and how she would go about getting a replacement. With a frown, she lightly tapped the screen, which softened as Tenet's weird, 2-D neon sign-styled body blinked into existence.
"Ah, Princess, finally alone," he bowed with a small smirk.
"I am not a Princess," she sighed, rolling her eyes.
Now it was Tenet's turn to sigh and grumble, "You're the Princess of the Forbidden, it doesn't go way just because everyone died and your soul fell into her body."
Carmell's eyebrow raised, and her mouth opened slightly in shock.
"Rude, back to the present and things I can solve right now," she hissed, dropping him onto the couch in front of her bag.
"My apologies, that was insensitive. What do you need?"
"Plug sockets."
"Plug… sockets?" Tenet tilted his head to the side, his eyes displaying question marks.
Carmell laughed, her body falling forward from the strength of it. She felt somewhat comfortable with the little AI, and his ability to change his face and body oddly reminded her of using emojis back home. She tilted her bag and pulled the zip at the bottom to open her space. Tenet's question marks morphed into giant circles as the system appeared in his operational system. He could see all the items she had that shouldn't exist yet or, at the very least, hadn't been shared with the public. Carmell pulled a phone charger from her bag and held the plug to show Tenet.
"This is a plug; it is used to get electricity from a large energy source. Usually," she paused, titling the plug towards the wall, "through a plug socket fixed in the wall."
"Huh, this is fascinating. Everything here works without these," Tenet replied, his hands clapping together and his smile widening. The castle should be able to provide you with plenty of sockets," he said, rubbing his hands together like a villain.
A slight chuckle, covered with a cough, left his lips as she raised an eyebrow at him.
"Probably through some wireless connection. I imagine there is magic at work. Is the castle… alive?" she asked, unsure of the correct word.
"Yes, she is separate from me and much older," he replied, nodding his head, "based on the photos on your little tablet-" Carmell laughed, fanning her hand for him to continue, "there are now sockets on either side on the bed, on the floor of course, across from us there are also several sockets I found on a folded tablet, and under the kitchen table," he finished, holding onto the flaps of his butler jacket.
Carmell laughed at his names and rose from the couch to press the wall opposite them, releasing the sockets connected to the wall. A satisfied smile slipped on her face, brightening her eyes as she moved to her bag and pulled out her grimoire. Flipping the pages to a spell for displacing people and objects, it didn't go amiss to Carmell that Merrida underlined humans and wrote "beings" above it with a note off to the side about needing to picture where you want them to go.
She attempted to say the entire spell, getting halfway through before a tsunami of dust burst from her mouth and hands, pulling objects from her space and placing them around the room. She shook her head in annoyance but sighed at the progress and decided the next two days were needed to practice. Whether she could get some time away from the Pride siblings or at least get Cassie by herself remained to be said.
"Magic isn't perfect; none of the electronics are plugged in," she laughed, moving around her room to plug everything in. The TV on the wall in the living room area switched on with her PlayStation, her eyes widening in shock and a scream of excitement leaving her lips as the main menu of the game appeared on the screen with its bright purple design, "Ah ha, it's the colour of my magic," she blurted excitedly, drooping onto the couch, grabbing the controller and lying Tenet against the back of the sofa.
"We… we are a game?" he spluttered, his neon colours turning grey.
"I doubt it. If I was brought here by being murdered, it could have happened to anyone here. They could have woken up in my world, confused and running around expecting magic to be real, or they could have forgotten it all and started anew, seeing fragments of this life in dreams."
"Magic doesn't exist in your world?"
"Not in the sense that you have it here. Our magic is more based on the feeling that something is so incredible it could be magic. Mostly for children, but many believe the intention they put into a spell or ritual will tip the balance in their favour."
"And you were… murdered?"
"Hmm, yes, by my boyfriend. I was starting the game, and Darrius spoke to me. I felt him in my soul, but he saw it and killed me for it," Carmell pressed play. The starting scene on the screen was not the same as how she dropped in here, "Yeah, this place is real. I didn't start at the double doors; I started in another kingdom and dropped onto the floor with all my luggage, looking as pale as a corpse," her voice turned into a whisper. She walked her character… herself… through the doors and across the hall, weaving in and out of students until she saw Darrius and his family where she met him.
"This is-"
"Creepy? Ominous? Jarring?" she interjected.
"All of the above," he whispered, noticing the tablet on the table. He slipped from his screen and appeared on hers in full HD colour, "Wow, this is not a tablet."
"It's my world's version of a tablet. No magic, all technology."
"I can see that," he mumbled, flicking the screen to read the apps around him.
Carmell tried to talk to Darrius, but the game wouldn't give her the option. She turned and saw an exclamation point above a girl with large square glasses, long grass green hair and a glass tablet in her hands. She snorted at the irony, not finding out about the tablet until after she met the twins, who were likely to be five quests ahead. It wasn't lost on her that the encounter she had with the twins might not even exist in the gameplay.
She spoke to the woman; the box with her speech had her named Elrin, and suddenly, Cassie walked onto the screen, her hair bouncing in precise intervals. She stood a few inches from Elrin with a hand on her hips and her legs in a power stance. Carmell and Tenet laughed at the screen, shaking their heads at Cassie's accuracy before she even opened her mouth to speak. A quest appeared to follow Cassie upstairs, but question marks appeared above Darrius before she could go there. She sucked in a breath and pressed to speak to him, her eyes widening as relationship stats for the brothers appeared on the right side of the TV.
"Oh, I am beginning to see the differences are much larger than you were suggesting; from what I've gathered, Darrius is the only one with romantic feelings for you and vice versa."
"Exactly, the minute I started playing this game and I never got past the opening screen Tenet, but I felt it the minute I saw him and heard his voice, I knew he was mine and I was his, and there will never be another."
"Soulmates," Tenet said matter-of-factly.
"You have that concept here?" she asked excitedly.
"No, I read it from the stories in your search history. It's spicy stuff, and it explains the touching, flirting, and understanding of each other. It reminds me of his parents."
Carmell deadpanned and turned bright red. She didn't think she'd need to delete her search history, but there it was—evidence that you should always delete it, even if it were only books. She groaned in embarrassment and shook her head, fighting the urge to throw him into her bag.
"Oh god, moving on, the lift isn't even the same; it looks older, and I have a feeling it's pure magic, no scanning my student ID. I don't think I have one of those; it must be because it's the start of the game, so the only option is to go to the royal floor," Carmell found herself in front of door number two, not number one.
She stepped inside a much smaller room with no kitchen or living area.
"That is a huge difference," Tenet mumbled, looking around the room and using the camera to get more angles.
"I don't think playing this will help me, even trying to find out about the people. They are different. I saw Elias and Zion having the same moment as Darrius and me, and this game was created nearly 24 years ago; in my world, relationships that weren't straight weren't shown in games or on TV too often, if at all."
"That has not been allowed here in some families; the Pride and Lust families think differently than the Envy and Temperance kingdoms."
Carmell snorted and laughed, "No kidding, I can see that."