So. You know those random make-believe games you make up with your friends as a little kid? I'm gonna tell you all the coolest ******** game my friend and I made up when we were 10.

Ok so, my friend, Carter, let’s call him (for privacy), and I, we grew up in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey where, behind both our houses was boundless fields and forests which seemingly never ended. Without any playground or park for miles, Carter and I often created games based on our interests.

This one began with both Carter and I in futuristic New Jersey where the entire land, just a thousand years before our birth, got decimated by dinosaurs revived and armies fought them to extinction once more. Now old enough for jobs, our singular duty was to dig out fossils of these dinosaurs long-dead for our company.

I dug one bone out–a femur–and the bone trembled. Carter rushed over to me and grasped it tight, yet the bone trembled in his hands, too. We rushed toward the chrome tower where our company headquarters lay and handed the bone to the boss.

The bone stopped trembling. He handed it back.

The bone trembled once again in mine and Carter’s grasp. Clearly they had something connected with us both.

We returned to the dig site and continued excavating. Every bone found rattled upon our touch, but none others’, but suddenly the bones lifted from their piles. Morphing into weapons and armor, they flew onto Carter and I, and suddenly we transformed.

With a skeletal form and nothing remaining from humanity, Carter stood looking like the Grim Reaper himself.

In black armor with giant blades I stood beside him like a knight of an undead army.

Our boss transformed and flew from the chrome headquarters, appearance similar to Carter’s yet with longer facial features, and scattered dinosaur bones rose at his sides into fully-formed dinosaurs. The boss grinned. He called to Carter with simply, “My son.” Then he looked at me. “Ah, my champion!”

The Grim Reaper was our boss, and we were gathering his strengths once again after a thousand years. He controlled the dinosaurs and their resurrections. However, to physically manifest upon Earth’s surface he needed one mortal child and one mortal champion and, finally here, he maintained one desire: reign death upon all the world with dinosaurs, not just New Jersey. If Carter and I dared challenge him to protect humanity, we had to harness our powers granted upon us and journey into the Underworld for the final fight. So we all dispersed, and Carter and I practiced on the trees in the forest as our targets with our magic and weapons.

Eventually I convinced Carter we needed to move onto harder targets, and we traversed the Himalayan mountains and met ninjas who agreed they’d help train us. Spending the following months together, I mastered use of my greatswords and Carter the use of his dark magic.

However, during the course of our training, the Grim Reaper’s dinosaur army rose and spread throughout America, then eventually the world entirely. Dinosaurs ravaged small towns first, then cities, and New York City, Tokyo, and numerous other large staples of Earth stood demolished in their wake. Neither Carter nor I could stand the devastation. We knew there wasn’t much time left.

Carter and I mustered our weapons and magics and escaped the sanctuary where we trained. Together, we used our excavation skills and dug our way through to an Underworld portal and jumped inside.

Dinosaurs, some fleshy and others simply skeletons, walked through graveyards and shook the dirt and dust off stones. Ahead lay one large, black castle, and we knew that’s where the final battle must be held: the Grim Reaper’s castle.

I rushed into battle recklessly, and the Grim Reaper rose before his castle with a grin and laugh, fighting back with resurrection magic and his dinosaur thralls. Carter joined in and fought his father, using magic to turn dinosaurs against him while also manifesting shadows and launching them toward the Grim Reaper relentlessly. With our combined strengths, the Grim Reaper fell slowly but surely and lost control of his armies, leaving him vulnerable. This was the moment for attack. This is where victory became ours.

The Grim Reaper laughed. Looking Carter in the eyes he said, “Don’t you see, my son? If I die then you die, too!”

Carter looked at me, and I looked at him. We thought about Earth–to New York City, Tokyo, everything and everyone.

“I’ll still kill you,” Carter said. He turned toward me. “Claim the victory as yours, Magnus. Tell Earth you did it, and don’t worry about me. At least they’ll be safe.”

Before I could stop him, Carter landed the final blow upon his father, and the Grim Reaper and him both disappeared. I rushed out from the Underworld and through the portal, to the surface with absolute loneliness, having my brother in arms gone forever. But citizens stood around the portal, eagerly awaiting the final news–the one thing they wished to hear.

I looked toward everyone hesitantly. Then, looking to my side for a moment, seeing myself alone, I sighed.

“Carter sacrificed himself and the Grim Reaper is dead. His dinosaurs are gone, and it’s thanks to Carter. He’s the real hero.”

The world cheered, decimated cities cleaned the fallen dinosaurs away, and Carter’s name flew through the news and internet while I simply sat there and watched. But the memory of the true hero lived on: Carter was dead, but his deeds were not. And that’s all which mattered. Earth must remember and honor the truth.

And as I continued living in the passing years, I found one way to connect with the dead. Suddenly, I reached Carter.

“Why did you do it?” he asked me. “Why didn’t you lie and tell them it was you who slayed the Grim Reaper?”

“Because it wouldn’t be the righteous thing. The world needs to know and honor who the real hero is,” I replied.

And there we ended the game.