Dan and his brother excitedly reviewed the stats and list of abilities of their twin dragon characters. "These guys have insane stats, much stronger than any other starting race." Dan smiled as he skimmed. His character, Blaze the red dragon, had dominion over fire. Not only could it breathe fire, but as he read, Blaze seemed to be able to control fire for a variety of effects, like a magic-user type class. Only, the magic seemed not has versatile or powerful as a true magic-user like a wizard or sorceress. This dragon was also fast, having great flight speed.
"They may not have been play tested yet." Tom, his brother, seemed to offer as a suggestion. "Or, everything has been increased."
"I don't think so." Dan said as he brought up a separate screen, a quick list of the previous characters he had selected. "All of my other characters' stats are unchanged. Guess the developers just wanted to make these two extra powerful because they are dragons." He exited out of the pop-up screen, and looked up at the red dragon. Even though he could only see Blaze's head and neck, his mind imagined the whole crimson dragon in his mind's eye.
"Whatever the reason, I'm starting as Frost. You coming or not?" Tom asked his brother.
"Loading... now." Dan replied as he selected the 'Enter the Kingdom' option.
The familiar flash of light engulfed Dan as the game loaded him into Blaze's avatar body. A few moments later, Tom, as Blaze, opened his eyes. He was lying down at the mouth of a large cave. The morning sun bathed the grassy hills in an golden-orange glow. The dew on the plants sparkled like a sea of diamonds. "Wow" was the only word that came to him.
"Breathtaking..." An unfamiliar voice resonated Dan's mind.
Puzzled, he looked away from the scenery. Just beside him on his right, Dan was taken aback to see a sapphire blue dragon beside him. Dan tried to speak, but only an incomprehensible grunt came out. Instinct told him to speak in a different way. "Is that you Tom?" Dan asked, reaching out with his mind.
"Yeah, its me." Tom, or Frost, answered back. "Its weird to... talk in this way."
"We're sharing thoughts in a way. Not everything; just what we want to communicate to each other." Dan replied. His brother was not reading, or eavesdropping, his thoughts. Dan was sending his thoughts along this invisible cable, like two cups on a string, and his brother was listening on the other end. Dan had turned from his brother to look at his left, front claw. The muscles underneath the scales flexed as he closed and opened it. The claws were golden. He then felt a sudden tug to his right, as if his body was trying to pull him involuntarily.
"Uh... Dan. I think we are sharing more than just thoughts." Frost's shaky voice came over their mental link.
"What do you mean?" Dan asked, not paying so much attention to his brother's words. He rested his left, front paw on the cave floor and looked to his right, expecting to see his other clawed hand. However, the right paw was sapphire with sparkling silver nails. He traced that limb with his eyes. It lead to a dark, blue shoulder which lead to another neck, his brother's neck. He peered closer and realized that the base of his brother's neck blended into the base of his own crimson scaled neck. "Are we a two-headed dragon?" Dan asked as he looked up into his brother's eyes.
"Yeah... it would seem so." Tom's voice was hard to read; it seemed to be a mixture of annoyance and wonder. Tom looked away and stared behind them. "We are two dragon brothers sharing a body. What could go wrong?"
Dan shifted his gaze, watching as his brother's wing slowly unfolded, resembling a blue bat wing with a silvery-grey membrane. "Wait, I can't feel that." He stated. "I can't feel your wing. I can't feel anything on my right." Dan shuddered, realizing that his sensation ended about half-way across their body. Dan lost all feeling the moment their scales shifted from his crimson red to Tom's frosty samphire. It was like his brother had worded. He and Tom were two dragons joined down the middle to create one dragon body. Everything on their right was Tom's domain; he controlled those parts of their body.
"Shit, your right." Tom said in his mind as he stared past Dan, towards the left side of their body. Dan imagined Tom was willing their red wing to rise just as the blue one had, but it did not listen to his brother. "How are we supposed to play like this?"
Dan remembered the stats page that he skimmed over, wondering if he had missed something. He then smiled, "This explains the huge power buff in our characters." His brother looked towards him, confusion written on his face. "Our stats and abilities. They were much higher than any of the other playable races. I'd wager they were more than twice as high than any other race given that we are playing two characters in one."
"Ah, that does make sense." Tom nodded. "These characters have a large buff to compensate for being two-half characters rolled into one."
"Rolled into one..." Dan echoed as he looked behind them, past their wings. He had half expected to see two tails, considering he could feel it as if it was his own appendage. He was shocked to see only one half red, half blue tail. Dan stared in wonder for a moment before asking, "Hey Tom can you feel our tail?" He shifted the long, two-toned appendage along the cave floor.
"Did you make it move?" Tom asked, seemingly curious. A moment later, Dan was surprised to see the tail slide around, not under his direction.
"Holy shit! We share control of it." Dan exclaimed. It was such a strange, exhilarating sensation to feel that appendage move under his brother's command. "Do you think we also share a..." He did not need to finish the statement because he already knew the answer, and given his brother's smirk, he guessed that Tom had already surmised that they shared the same package as well.
If Tom's face was not covered in scales, he'd imagine that his brother would be blushing. "I think that is the least of our worries. Right now, we need to re-learn how to move together if we want to even have a chance at playing this game."
"Right, move together as one dragon with our two wings, four legs, one tail, one dick..." Dan smirked at his brother, who just shook his head. "Good thing we are pretty in sync with each other in real life."
"And in addition to our great twinning skills..." Tom interjected. "I am hoping that there is some innate feature or ability to allow us to pick it up faster than normal. I mean our 'Summon Partner' ability is useless in our case, so it would be nice to have a different option."