The man regarded me for a minute and then spoke in a voice that sent chills down my spine, despite the fact that it was probably his warmest tone.

"Her name was Renea" He glanced back at the portrait of the woman, pointing with his eyes," She was your mother-"

I couldn't help but giggle, which probably wasn't the best reaction to the crazy man sitting in the corner of the room that definitely was not mine. Gut reaction, I guess. Maybe nervous energy, cause no person in their right mind would laugh at a guy that scary. So I tried to fix it by muttering " Sorry" under my breath.

A second later, I could have sworn the man allowed a smile, but it was impossible to tell. His face looked contorted, like something was causing him immense pain. It almost resembled a person having their hand chopped of. The only real semblance of a smile present was something no one would be able to put their finger on. Possibly the lack of growling, screaming, and cursing that would normally accompany such faces as the one plastered on this man's face. Either way, I was almost seventy-five percent sure that it was supposed to be a smile, whether or not he was particularly good at that facial expression.

"Anyway," He continued "As I was saying, she was proud, beautiful, and the love of my life-"

Another uncalled for giggle, another odd face from crazy man.

"Anyway, we had a daughter, but we were in the middle of a war here, and we didn't want the baby girl, Katari, to get involved. So we sent her away with magic, to be returned to us when she was sixteen." He looked at me expectantly for a response.

I couldn't help it. I really did try, but, come on, can you really expect someone not to burst out laughing after that little speech? Well, I did anyway, and when I got over it I managed to choke out " So, let me get this straight, excluding the crazy magic talk, you expect me to believe that I'm your daughter and I'm in... where exactly am I supposedly?"

"Alagaesia"

"Right. Okay then, so I'm in 'Alagaesia', and I came here- and left here -by magic. Which doesn't exist. Therefore, I have now come to the conclusion that I am, for some inexplicable reason, in an insane asylum, and you..." I gestured for him to give me a name.

" King Galbatorix"

" Okay then, King Galbatorix, are a mental patient who's doctor accidentally forgot to make your straight jacket tight enough, so you wandered in here. I'm not sure why I'm here, or what's with the decor, however, I am pretty sure that this is crazyland."

"I'm sorry you don't believe me. You are free to go where you please anyway, so enjoy yourself.", He stood up, "And now I have business to attend to" With that he left the room.

I must admit I was both surprised and proud of myself. Proud that I hadn't freaked out and totally deserved the fact that I was in an asylum, and surprised for the same reason. Then again, I now reasoned with myself, it was probably just because I was the type of person to just accept things as reality. I had never really been one to question whether something was there, so deep down I kind of believed what the guy had said. At least part of it. I knew who I was and there was nothing that guy could say to convince me otherwise. The magic bit was a little iffy, but hey, if someone could prove it, I'd accept it, because there had always been things that could never be explained, which actually bothered me because I was a very logical person. Even so, I tended to accept most things at face value, because it just made sense to me, so I would just have to walk around and check the place out. There was no harm in it. If he was not crazy and had been telling the truth, then I should probably know more about the place. If I was right, then I really needed to know who was the idiot that let that guy out of his padded cell and more importantly why I was here. Any way I looked at it, I still had to move.

I looked at myself in a little hand mirror and decided the shorts-and-t-shirt combo I was in just wouldn't cut it. On top of that my hair was a disaster and I really hoped they had eyeliner or something.

I glanced around the room, seeing a large door on the east wall. Upon opening it, I discovered a vast array of clothes. Well, gowns was a more accurate term. I dug through and found the plainest one, if it could actually be called that. It was pale blue and flowing, like you would picture a medieval dress, except the sleeves weren't all that huge. It was awful and took me a full hour to figure out how to get on, but it fit perfectly.

I brushed my hair, which had inexplicably turned jet black against my pale skin, and walked out of the room. And the further I walked, the more I believed King Crazy. It was amazing. A castle right out of old England. There were the people in the funny outfits everywhere, walking and laughing, some looking really mean and war-like, though none of them matched the menace in King Crazy's face. These guys looked like they might possibly still be able to manage a smile.

After awhile I found what looked like a library, which was pretty unorganized compared to those that I was used to. There was obviously a system to it, I just couldn't figure out more than by language. There were three different sets of shelves. I found one other thing after looking at the books for awhile; on the top shelf of each set, except for the one with the english books, had a set of dictionaries. The first language that was nothing I recognized, but it was more coarse in nature than the second one that I didn't understand, had a set of eight extremely thick dictionaries. The more flowing language, at least on paper, had seventeen of the books.

I also found, in english, a bunch of books on history. I decided that I would borrow one of them to learn more about the place that I had randomly been stuck in. This went way beyond a joke. The detail and money it would take to pull this off would be more than ten major Hollywood movies. Therefore, this must be reality, and I would accept that because it did no good to be in denial. Nothing would ever get done. It's like when people won't accept that there is an oil problem because, oh, look, we are running out! But they don't do anything about it and keep messing up the environment more and more instead of putting all that money into finding a brand new energy source. So I would just accept things for what they were and deal with it as best I could.

I grabbed the book and went back to my room. I was hungry, sure, but I needed to learn some things first.