Marcus’s world was tilting. Gravity was still working. Down was where it had always been. There wasn’t any reason to feel like he was sliding sideways, was each step an instant away from accelerating over the edge of the world and off to somewhere strange and inimical to his life.

“We did escape from the [Armageddon Beast], right?” Anna asked. “Cause I feel like I left a big chunk of myself back there.”

“Don’t worry, you escaped,” Smith said. “What you’re feeling is the wounds you took for being within the beast’s area of influence.”

“Wounds? But we checked. I’m not bleeding anywhere,” Anna said. “Or is it just a psychological wound?”

“You probably have some serious mental trauma to work through too, but that’s not the wounds she was talking about,” Astra said. 

Marcus noticed that neither of them appeared to be police officers anymore. He’d noticed that before he thought, but it was hard to hold onto the idea. Had they ever been police officers? Were they even what they appeared to be at all?

“Did that thing mutate us or something?” Marcus asked, thinking of the radiation that black holes throw off. 

Except of course the [Armageddon Beast] hadn’t been a black hole. Black holes had nice definable properties and were a weird but still real element of the universe. The [Armageddon Beast] wasn’t. 

It wasn’t Not-Real either though, and trying to reconcile those two facts was something his brain seemed to be sensibly refusing to attempt.

“Yes and no,” Smith said. “Your genes are fine. Or as fine as they were before this. If it had been changing reality on that level, you wouldn’t look even vaguely human anymore.”

“That is the opposite of reassuring,” Anna said.

“If our bodies and minds are fine, then what did that thing mess with?” Marcus asked.

“There aren’t particularly good terms for this,” Smith said. “The best I can describe it is that some of the essential qualities that define you as ‘real’ got nibbled on a bit.”

“Like it was eating our mass or something?” Anna asked.

“More fundamental than that,” Smith said. “And it didn’t eat you. You’re still here. You’re still real. But the pull it exerted, and the brush with not existing, has left you aching in manner that you don’t really have senses to process. It’ll get better in time though.”

“Do we have time?” Marcus asked. “We didn’t kill the [Armageddon Beast]. We just escaped it. It’s still out there gobbling up everything and everyone it runs across.”

“And it’s not alone,” Astra said. She winced when Smith elbowed her in the side. “What? They’re going to find our sooner or later.”

“Yes, but there’s no need to heap trauma on them,” Smith said.

“We’ll be okay,” Anna said. “Better to know what we’re up against, even if we’re doomed.”

“You’re not doomed,” Astra said. “We wouldn’t be here if you were.”

“That reminds me, what are you here for? You didn’t help fight that thing, or get us out of there when it nabbed us,” Anna asked.

“We brought you Marcus,” Smith said. “That’s our role. We can’t save this world for you, but we can help you be in the right places to save it yourselves.”

“Why not? If this place gets destroyed, it’s all over for all of us, isn’t it?” Anna’s question was rhetorical but neither Smith nor Astra seemed to take it as such.

“There are a lot of possible endings you could come to,” Smith said, choosing her words more carefully than Marcus felt was necessary.

“Any of them involve things just going back to normal?” he asked.

“Several,” Astra said. “But you probably don’t want those.”

“Why wouldn’t we want things to go back to normal?” Anna asked. “That sounds perfect.”

“Because for things to go back to normal, everyone on Earth would need to forget that the events of the last week or so happened,” Smith said. “There’s a number of possibilities for how that could happen, but none of them are particularly pleasant.”

“Such as?” Marcus asked, solely out of curiosity.

“Say a [Lotus Blossom God] decides to come and devour all the [Armageddon Beasts] and then puts the entire planet into a dream of normalcy while it slowly digests everything and everyone over the course of a century or two.” Astra didn’t seem to be suggesting something that was impossible, or even unlikely. If anything, it seemed to Marcus that it was something she’d seen happen before.

Which was absurd.

The world was still here. How would she have seen it being destroyed by some cosmic entity?

“I’ll take a hard pass on that,” Anna said. “If the world can’t change for the better, then it’s basically hell.”

“That seems to be the general consensus, though you’d be surprised how many people find it preferable to the life they have,” Astra said.

“Unless we’re willing to sign up for eternal lotus dreams, and you’ve got a dream god on speed dial, we’ve got something important to deal with,” Marcus said. “You said, ‘that’s how you fight an [Armageddon Beast]’ when we got out of the building. Do you mean all we need to do shut these things down is throw a bunch of iPads at them?”

“Not iPads,” Smith said. “Ideas.”

“Ideas are a dime a dozen,” Anna said. “Everyone’s got those.”

“But not everyone has an idea that fits the [Armageddon Beast’s] nature and can sculpt it to the end they desire,” Astra said.

“Is that what we did?” Marcus asked. “I just thought we were tricking it into letting us go.’

“Both are true,” Astra said. “Consider for a moment though what it was you tricked.”

“An [Armageddon Beast,” Marcus said. “Something that devours worlds.”

“Right. Exactly!” Astra’s excitement rose, as though Marcus was beginning to understand everything.

Marcus was pretty sure he understood nothing so far.

“An [Armageddon Beast] is defined only by its nature, which is to hunger for the matter and energy of a living world, and by its capacity to sate that hunger. Think of it like a very powerful bot with very limited programming,” Smith said. “It can do incredible things, but it’s not sapient. It doesn’t consider if it should or shouldn’t eat a world. Put it next to a world and it just starts absorbing everything around it, no questions asked, because it can’t ask questions.”

“And you tricked it,” Anna said, her voice slowed by the implications of each word she spoke.

“That’s like tricking an avalanche to roll back up hill isn’t it?” Marcus said, adding, “should I not have done that?”

The dire thought that in saving himself and Anna, he’d managed to unleash something far worse seemed all too plausible with how the world seemed to be falling apart around him.

“You had to do that,” Smith said. “What you did is our best hope of stopping, or at least mitigating, what’s happening to this world.”

Marcus was silent for a moment and then had to let the laugh that had built up inside escape.

It wasn’t a good laugh.

“Please tell me you’re kidding,” he said. “If I’m the best hope the world has then we are so so so very dead.”

“Don’t sell yourself short there hero,” a newcomer said.

Marcus glanced behind himself and found a twenty something woman in a They Might Be Giants concert shirt, faded jeans and well worn sneakers wandering up to join them.

“Uh, is everything okay Jin?” Smith asked.

“Eh, the end of world hasn’t gotten here yet, so all things considered, today could be worse,” Jin said.

“You’re with them?” Marcus asked, pointing to Smith and Astra.

“She’s…” Smith started to say but Astra cut her off.

“Our supervisor,” Astra said.

“A supervisor of what?” Anna asked.

“Call it [Apocalypse Management],” Jin said.

“Any chance we could return this one to sender?” Marcus asked. “We don’t even need a refund.”

“Sure,” Jin said. “All we need to do is pay the restocking fee.”

“And what would that be?” Anna asked.

It was a ridiculous question for what was clearly a joke, but Anna didn’t seem to feel ridiculous about asking it at all.

“We’re working on that,” Jin said. “Seriously. Beth’s right about what you did making a difference.”

“Do we have a path forward then? Can we stop this now?” Smith, or Beth apparently, asked.

“Not exactly. The [Apocalypse Beast] isn’t a threat at the moment,” Jin said and turned to nod at Marcus, “Thank you for that,” then turned back to Beth. “But the overall effect is widening.”

“Widening? Oh no,” Beth said, an uncomfortable weight settling over her features.

“What does ‘widening’ mean?” Anna asked.

“The first break throughs were in the [Fallen Kingdoms],” Jin said. “What you saw in the [Crystal Stars] is a similar phenomena but with one important difference – the [Crystal Stars] players knew what they were getting into.”

“Knew how?” Anna asked.

“They knew they were needed there the same as you know its up to you to bring them back,” Jin said.

“That’s…I don’t know that,” Anna said.

“But you’re going to try aren’t you?” Jin asked, though Marcus suspected it was a question Anna needed the answer to more than Jin.

“Well, of course,” Anna said. “But that’s just because they need me.”

“And that’s exactly how and why the [Crystal Stars] players did what they did,” Jin said. “It wasn’t a conscious choice. Not for all of them, but when their characters called, the players who crossed over chose to make the journey to help them.”

“Help them with what?” Marcus asked. “I’d say this all sounds insane, but we’re talking with a reverb when we say things like [Fallen Kingdoms] and it definitely feels like we’ve tripped completely into [Wonderland] at this point.”

“Oh no,” Anna said. “[Wonderland]? Is there something in [Broken Horizons] called [Wonderland]?”

“Uh, no,” Marcus said. “We always try to make our names unique to the game so the IP coverage is clear. If we added a [Wonderland], we’d call it Frozen Wonderland or Hell’s Wonderland or something like that.”

“Why are we hearing the reverb on [Wonderland] then?” Anna asked, looking to Jin for answers.

“Because the effect that’s allowing things that don’t, shouldn’t, and can’t exist to chew a path into your worlds is widening,” Jin said.

“To [Alice in Wonderland]?” Anna asked, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Apparently so,” Jin said.

“No,” Anna said. “Like hell. Just. NO.”

Her tears didn’t vanish, but the boiling rage that lit up her eyes seemed to incinerate despair that had been grasping at her heart. Her fury warmed Marcus’s heart too. He wanted to think that was why world felt more in balance than it had a moment ago. 

He really wanted to think that.

“What. Exactly. Do we need to do, to stop this,” Anna asked.

“Fight,” Jin said. “These are your worlds. Not theirs.”

“How,” Anna asked.

“Just like you did with the [Armageddon Beast],” Jin said. “Work together. Remind each other who you are. Be afraid, but don’t let it stop you. To beat something like an [Armageddon Beast] you need to understand it, because your understanding creates a reality for it.”

“How does that work? What did I do right before?” Marcus asked.

“You started by naming it,” Beth said. “Name’s are incredibly powerful. They’re what we hang all kinds of other definitions onto.”

“So the next time something shows up, I throw a name at it?” Marcus asked. “Should I have called it a Fluffy Bunny or something?” He addressed the question to Jin, though he suspected her answer would be the same as the one he already had.

“You can,” she said. “But it’s a bad idea. Picture if every little bun in the world was part of the [Armageddon Beast] genus. Naming things appropriately doesn’t make things more difficult. Their truth is going to come out no matter what you call them. In naming something without a name, you’re engaging in a conversation. A short one sometimes, but at the very least there’s two parts to it. You saying ‘I want to call you this’, and the nameless one saying ‘I will be called that’.”

“That’s just naming them,” Anna said. “How do we stop them?”

“Engage with them,” Jin said. “Understand who and what they are. Look for the flaws and contradictions within them. You found one in the [Armageddon Beast] within a couple of minutes, that wasn’t a fluke. Things that are newly real don’t have the same grounding that you do. You are so much more powerful than you know simply because you’ve lived and breathed and dreamed and hoped day after day after day here. These are your worlds.”

“Worlds?” Marcus asked.

“Yes. Worlds. Do you think the time you’ve spent in the [Fallen Kingdoms] and among the [Crystal Stars] or journeying through [Wonderland] isn’t a part of your life?” Jin said. “You are all of the dreams you’ve ever walked in and all the ones you still carry in your heart.”

Azma had heard coordinating [Adventurers] spoken of as being similar to “herding cats”. Most cats, so far as she knew, were not packing the enough armaments to put a Consortium [Battle Carrier] to shame. Also, had a herd of cats been somehow equipped with a seemingly unlimited supply of weapons of mass destruction, Azma was reasonably certain they would have deployed them with more discretion than [Adventurers] seemed to be capable of exercising.

“They blew up the launch facility,” she said, staring at the tactical map as though through sheer force of disbelief she could will it into a more reasonable state.

“And the fuel depot that had been setup,” Penny said. “Twice.”

“I’m unclear on that,” Grenslaw said. “How did they blow a fuel depot up twice?”

“The second was a a decoy,” Azma said, her voice heavy with resignation.

“Why did they blow a decoy up if they’d already destroyed the actual fuel depot?” Ryschild asked.

Penny was mostly successful in suppressing a laugh.

“You could ask them,” she said. “To save you the time though, the only consensus you’ll be able to find is ‘because it was there’.”

“But it wasn’t!” Azma said. “The fuel depot was isolated from the launch facility precisely so it wouldn’t fall under attack when the launch facility did.”

“Ah, yes, well, you see that made it seem like ‘bonus content’ to them,” Penny said.

“Bonus what?” Azma asked.

“Many of the serious threats on this world prefer to keep their most valuable items in secure locations, well apart from their primary lair,” Penny said. “Generally these vaults are well hidden and have their own guardians, but when you’re the fiercest monster on a continent, finding something more dangerous to guard your horde is challenging.”

“So the [Adventurers] have been trained to search around points of interest for high value, low effort targets,” Azma said. “Something to take into account going forward.”

“I should warn you, that’s not precisely what’s happening,” Penny said.

“There are still deeper motivations at work?” Azma asked.

“No, not deeper in the slightest. Quite the reverse in fact,” Penny said. “While you will find some groups of [Adventurers] being as systematic and methodical as you’re imagining, for many of them its more a matter of simply looking for things to hit.”

“Looking for things to hit?” Ryschild asked.

“Yes. If you send them on a mission there are several general outcomes. First, if the mission is precisely tailored to their capabilities and, more importantly, their mood, they will make beeline toward the objective, slaying everything directly in their path.”

“What if the mission requires stealth?” Grenslaw asked.

“Slaying everything directly in their path,” Penny repeated, her smile bright as though it didn’t conceal enough frustration to power a billion suns for the life of the universe.

“And if it’s not tailored precisely to their capabilities?” Ryschild asked.

“Again, multiple scenarios,” Penny said. “Did you send them on a mission which is too difficult for them to achieve? If they are in a stubborn mood, they will hammer away at it until they succeed anyways, or, failing that, grow disinterested and wander off, potentially with the aim of sabotaging any other parties from completing, or even starting the mission, or sometimes with the aim of coming back days, weeks, or years later to finish the request.”

“If they are not feeling stubborn, I would guess they simply arrive at those end states sooner?” Grenslaw asked.

“In that case, you will either never hear from them again, or they will return at some arbitrary point in time with more powerful assistance in their party.”

“Apart from the delay, that doesn’t seem entirely undesirable,” Ryschild said.

“Are you sure of that?” Azma asked. “Penswell has yet to enumerate what happens when a challenge is too easy for a group of [Adventurers].”

“Yes, well, when that happens, the [Adventurers] will frequently look to make things ‘more interesting’ on their own,” Azma said. “Or they will begin ‘farming’ the mission, should it lie in a [Layered Area].”

“By [Layered Area], you mean the spaces on the planet with encircled timestreams?” Grenslaw asked.

“That’s a fair, but incomplete description of them,” Penny said. “[Layered Areas] are spots where the initial state is effectively unchanging. Time flows within them but once foreign entities are removed from the space, it resets. They can change, they’re not truly frozen in time, or literal loops of time, but for most purposes that is how they behave.”

“And this ‘farming’ involves drawing items of value from these spaces?” Ryschild asked, though only as confirmation of what was already understood.

“It’s why there are many people who all wield what is, in some sense, the same unique weapon,” Penny said. 

“That explains one of the mysteries which lured the Consortium here,” Azma said. “The world has far too much stored potential. It would have condensed down into a singularity if all its power was born by a single timeline, even with the [Dual Arcanospheres] to support it.”

Penny paused hearing that, turning to look at Azma with a confused expression that brought bubbles of delight to Azma’s heart.

“Even with what to support it?” Penny asked.

“You already know this, it’s just the terminology you’re unfamiliar with,” Azma said, relenting. “Your world is coterminous with another – the source of the [Adventurers] I would guess unless their origin is as bizarre and unreasonable as they are.”

“They have described the passage between worlds as a trip beyond the farthest stars,” Penny said. “If our two worlds are coterminous, why would travel between them be difficult?”

“It shouldn’t be,” Azma said. “Once we determined our prize was part of a dual system, my plans shifted to include opening the deeper world as well.”

“Deeper?” Penny asked.

“Your world is metaphysically in front of the other, at least from the dimensions we transported through,” Azma said. “To access it, we needed to bring your world’s [Arcanosphere] under our control. Once that was accomplished though, transit to the other world would have been trivial – though opening it would have presented its own challenges.”

“You can call it ‘conquering’,” Penny said. “We are all aware of the realities of the situation.”

Azma found a strange lack of condemnation in Penswell’s eyes. There wasn’t encouragement either. Penswell didn’t want Azma to continue with her plans for planetary conquest. She simply accepted what Azma had done.

Azma bit back a scowl, a tremor running down her nerves as though she was adrift in unfamiliar waters.

“Was what happened to the fuel depot a case of the [Adventurers] looking to make things ‘more interesting’ or was there some other motivation there?” Grenslaw asked.

“In this case, I would guess the second group of [Adventurers] to arrive on the scene found that the first group to arrive had slaughtered the [Hungry Shadows] forces leaving them nothing to fight. Rather than continuing on to verify that the rest of the mission had been completed, they probably began foraging for other enemies to fight. If the fuel depot had a patrol, or perhaps a particularly quick squirrel was in the area, they would have followed the trail back to the depot, concluded that they had found a [Side Quest] and proceeded to wreck havoc there as only [Adventurers] can.”

“If they wished to extract valuables from the fuel depot though, why did they blow it up?” Grenslaw asked.

“And why did they blow up the launching facility when the goal was to secure it?” Ryschild asked.

“Likely the same reason for both,” Penny said. “They were probably bored.”

“Should we have recalled them sooner?” Grenslaw asked, to which Penny openly laughed.

“My apologies,” she said. “An [Adventuring Party] is less something you ‘recall’ and more something you ‘unleash’. Rather like a flood, or a wildfire.”

“I was under the impression that they wished to work for me?” Azma said.

“And they will,” Penny said. “They will serve as your own personal earthquake or tornado, or tsunami, and you may drop them on whatever unfortunate target you wish to see obliterated. Beyond that however you may find that your control is rather, well, limited is perhaps the best word.”

“That restricts their usefulness substantially,” Ryschild said.

“We do have a need for shock troops,” Grenslaw said. “And several secondary and tertiary targets where complete annihilation would not conflict with the mission objective.”

Wheels however were spinning in Azma’s mind. Herding cats wasn’t impossible. Far from it. You just needed to understand a feline mindset and adjust your expectations accordingly.

“Oh, we can do better than that,” Azma said, the schematics for a thousand new plans unrolling before her mind’s eye.

Penny smiled and nodded in agreement.

“We can contain their chaos?” Grenslaw asked.

“That would be wasteful,” Azma said. “Order is lovely. Order is what the Consortium is built on. Through order we can achieve mastery and control and stave off the uncertainties of the future which can undermine all we’ve built and hold dear.”

“But there is another way,” Penny said, her tone a gentle welcome to the ideas blooming within Azma.

Azma had always enjoyed chaos in general, while at the same time loathing it when it was applied to her. As she envisioned what the [Adventurers] could do, and what she could do if she embraced their madness a thrill passed through her.

She’d known that the tasks before them, defeating the [Hungry Shadow], overthrowing the Consortium, building a real future, all of them were impossible. She’d also known that she would find a way to do the impossible. If that meant growing beyond what she’d been, releasing the reins she’d held so tightly for so long and trusting that she could ride the whirlwind, even if she couldn’t know where it would take her? Nothing was more terrifying or exhilarating.

“Indeed,” Azma said, new delight filling her as shespun back to the tactical table. “Log these new [Quests] please. With the launch facility destroyed, we’ll need another. The [White Cross Mound] is the central staging point for one of the [High Kings] isn’t it? And its within a few degrees of the equator?”

“That is correct,” Penny said.

“New quest then,” Azma said. “A special [Blue Consortium Breaker Sigil] will be awarded to any group capable of clearing the [White Cross Mound] of all hostile forces. Stress the ‘all’ in the quest description. Also, send a messenger to announce the quest within the mound.”

“That’s quite kind,” Penny said.

“Removing unnecessary targets will promote boredom setting in faster,” Azma said.

“The [Adventurers] are going to depopulate the entire staging point,” Ryschild said.

“Yes. That’s a secondary convenience for us though,” Azma said.

“We’ll also prevent White Cross’s aggression in the area,” Grenslaw said.

“Amusing but not strictly relevant,” Azma said. “No, the purpose of this is to create a proper landing area.”

“A mound will make a poor landing…oh,” Ryschild said.

Grenslaw seemed to understand at the same time.

Once the [Adventurers] were done with the [White Cross Mound] it would be the [White Cross Level Field] or perhaps the [White Cross Scorched Earth]. Either would work quite nicely for Azma’s needs.

“You’ll need more fuel as well,” Penny noted.

“Three additional quests should take care of that. A gold reward for the rare ingredients needed should provide us with plenty correct?”

“Gold alone with provide you with some. Gold plus a fanciful title and you’ll be, perhaps literally, drowning in supplies,” Penny said.

“Grenslaw, Ryschild, pick something suitably silly please,” Azma said.

“[Supreme Commander]?” Grenslaw asked.

“This isn’t a test,” Azma said. “You’ve each proven yourselves. You can see what our goal is here. You’ve seen the mania that animates the [Adventurers]. I don’t believe we have a high bar to clear in terms of offering them a compelling lure.”

“Are we to direct the whole operation?” Ryschild asked.

“In as much as it can be directed? Yes,” Azma said and then looked at her underlings again.

They had proven themselves time and again to her, both in terms of personal loyalty and talent. Azma believed in debts. They were a volatile currency to be leveraged and spent with care and precision. Underlings could expect no debts from their superiors of course, those only existed between equals or as recompense when someone greater bestowed an unearned munificence on you.

“As you wish [Supreme Commander],” Ryschild and Grenslaw said in unison.

“Wait,” Azma said, holding each of their gazes before they could turn away. “Tell me your thoughts.”

“Our thoughts?” Grenslaw asked.

“Yes. How would you handle the [Adventurers], if you had complete freedom to design the mission parameters for them?” Azma asked.

Grenslaw and Ryschild glanced at each other, some unspoken communication passing between them which decided who would speak first.

“You have a new perspective on the [Adventurers],” Ryschild said.

“We would study that before designing [Quests] for them ourselves [Supreme Command],” Grenslaw said.

“Good,” Azma said and turned to Penny. “Could you have two more tactical tables brought in here? Or we can relocate to a more spacious command center.”

“I can arrange for both,” Penny said. “Shall I inform the [Adventurers] that there are two new [Quest Givers] whom they can accept missions from as well?”

“That depends,” Azma said. “Ryschild, Grenslaw, is that a role you wish to take on?”

“We would be delighted to,” Ryschild said, and Grenslaw added, “If those are your orders?”

“My orders no longer constrain you,” Azma said as she typed a quick update into their files to be transmitted to all of her former-Consortium troops. “And you needn’t address me as [Supreme Commander] any longer. For as long as you wish to fill the posts, we are equal members of a [Command Council].” 

The world was falling apart. Chaos was the order of the day, and on all fronts calamity loomed.

“This is perfect,” Azma said, a smile of small delight playing across her face as she watched the illusory projections of troops movements across the globe play out.

“Perhaps if you’re still intent on conquering this world,” Penswell said.

“Oh, you could no longer pay me enough money to even advise on that,” Azma said. “The entire net worth of the Consortium would not be worth that particular headache.”

“You’re relieved to see the world burning then?” Penny asked. She was spread particularly thin at the moment, directing a thousand simultaneous battles and negotiating with fifteen different noble factions who appeared intent on doubling the number of conflicts which had toppled into outright warfare.

“Far from it,” Azma said. “You see the picture which lies before us here though do you not?”

“I see many pictures here,” Penny said. “Along with even more futures, many of which I have rather significant objections to.”

“Possibly you object to the one I see forming as well,” Azma said, nudging some of the units onto new trajectories.

“It’s likely I do,” Penny said. “I am willing to entertain your arguments in favor of your preferred outcome though.”

Azma sighed.

“I do so wish we could have remained mortal enemies,” she said, fighting to keep the wistful longing from her voice.

“Whereas I am rather glad we are not, at the moment,” Penny said.

Azma’s sigh only deepened.

“As you say,” she conceded. The idea of working with an equal colleague was almost too foreign for Azma’s mind to grasp. In truth, it unnerved her to the point where she’d had to restrain herself from reflexively drawing a weapon several times already. She didn’t need to defend herself from Penswell, and that was simply so wrong as to be more distracting than any actual attempt on her life could have been.

“I take it that you feel the chaos that has erupted in the [Western Salt Marshes] will precipitate battles throughout the region and that we can capitalize on that with our joint forces?” Penny asked.

“I do, though my recommendation is that we don’t employ joint arms against the aggressors in the region,” Azma said. “We have other forces that can quell the chaos more surgically.”

“[Assassins]?” Penny asked. “Murder tends to have unforeseeable side effects.”

“Sending troops into the field is murder on an gradiose scale,” Azma said. “Better in cases like this to direct the murder towards those most deserving.”

“You want to assassinate the [High Kings] who have left our alliance?” Penny asked. It would be considered a war crime and the remaining lords were likely to object in strenuous terms but Penny wasn’t shutting the idea down.

“Yes, though, that’s a minor part of the overall plan,” Azma said.

“There are other methods which could possibly bring them back into alignment with our forces,” Penny said.

“There are,” Azma said. “But these are autocrats who are seizing the opportunity provided by the current crisis and the perception of weakness in the rest of the world to enlarge their domains. Ultimately they only desire and respect power, and your world will be better off without their presence in it once this is done.”

“That would require deposing several [High Kings],” Penny said.

“Oh, it would require much more than that,” Azma said. “Autocratic rulers always try to appear to hold the reins of power by themselves, but none of them can do so without a large power structure to support them. If we dispatch assassins to resolve this situation, it won’t be dozens striking from the shadows. It will be thousands.”

“That’s quite a lot of murder,” Penny said.

“Better too much than too little,” Azma said. “If you wish to cut out the heart of a power structure, you need to cut out all of the diseased sections or you’re doing little more than ensuring the problem will return later.”

“Your plan will create a rather large power vacuum,” Penny said. “Those are rarely filled bloodlessly.”

“The resulting crisis in leadership will draw in a second round autocrats,” Azma said. “Weaker ones, unfit to overthrow the current tyrants, who will see a chance to establish their own domains.”

“You would send the [Assassins] to deal with these as well?” Penny asked.

“These I would send your armies against,” Azma said. “Some of the new leaders may be reasonable. Those you can shape into better leaders. Some won’t be. Those you eliminate.”

“I am not inclined to become a nation builder,” Penny said.

“If you take no action, or only ineffective actions, then you are effectively conspiring with those who are seeking to build their nations now,” Azma said. “That can be a viable strategy too, if you believe the newly engorged autocrats will be worthwhile allies. In my experience that is rarely the case though. Those who seek power and dominance tend not to be concerned about the welfare of others, except where it can benefit themselves.”

“Would you except yourself from that?” Penny asked.

“Of course not,” Azma said. “If I cared about the welfare of others, I would suggest that you follow the plan I laid out and then invest in the areas which are destabilized. Provide the people there the tools and education needed to create their own governmental structures. Teach them how to be strong so that they won’t be ruled by weak men and give them the support they need until they can support others. But you will note that I did not advise that.”

“No, of course not,” Penny said, hiding an unfathomable smile. “The situation in the [Western Salt Marshes] is at least three days from requiring immediate intervention though. You see an opportunity arising sooner than that. Don’t you?”

“I’ve spoken with the [Adventurer] named Hailey,” Azma said. “Did she tell you the proposition she put before me?”

“She did. You accepted it?”

“Not yet,” Azma said. “I feel like I am missing some element of what this [Quest Giver] position entails.”

“It’s relatively simple,” Penny said. “You establish an objective – something you want the [Adventurers] to accomplish, decide on a reward commensurate with the difficulty, and provide a small narrative around why you are asking the [Adventurers] to do what you’re asking them too. In truth though that last piece is only occasionally necessarily. There are plenty of [Adventurers] who simply need to be pointed at a target to unleash their boundless yearning for strife upon.”

“That all seems simple enough. I am having trouble grasping why it stops there though?” Azma said. “If a [Quest Giver] has something they desire, aren’t there [Adventurers] who simply assault the [Quest Givers].”

“Certainly,” Penny said. “[Quest Givers] who are aligned with a faction opposed to the [Adventurer’s] faction are frequent targets for aggression.”

“So any [Adventurers] who decide to join the [Hungry Shadow] will look to assault me? That could be amusing,” Azma said.

“The [Hungry Shadow] would need to change again to be capable of interacting with the [Adventurers] as anything other than an adversary,” Penny said. “If that happens, then we have effectively won.”

“Because we can negotiate with it?” Azma asked.

“No, because it will have lost the last vestiges of being a [Transcendental Entity],” Penny said. “If it changes so much that it can be accept other beings as allies, it will be fully realized within this world. Still an enemy faction to most of the ones which currently exist, but our history is one long chain of coopting and corrupting enemy factions into various alliances. It wouldn’t even be the first faction from beyond the stars we’ve dealt with.”

“Truly?” Azma asked. “Our intelligence was somewhat lacking in historical perspectives.”

“I’m not surprised,” Penny said. “Our full history predates the forging of this world.”

“It…what?” Azam asked. Nothing like that had been present in the reports she’d read. If it had been, she might have been able to guess at the arrival of the [Transcendental Entity]. Possibly.

“Many of the guardians of this world were born on others,” Penny said. “The reasons and timing each came here are different, but each changed or expanded what this place is. Many didn’t come as guardians at all, but as would be conquerors, but most of the ones who survived eventually saw the benefit to defending the place where they lived via their own methods.”

“Fascinating,” Azma said. “We attempted to corrupt some of the major powers we detected who were apparently adversaries of the world’s defenders.”

“That went poorly didn’t it,” Penny said.

“Remarkably so. The level of treachery involved was profound even compared to the Consortium’s typical dealings,” Azma said. “The few who did prove helpful were overwhelmed with disturbing efficiency too.”

“I was glad to see you expending resources recruiting minion who the [Adventurers] were well versed in defeating,” Penny said. “It put us on the back foot in several arenas but it was a solvable problem.”

“I wonder if you could recruit them less expensively than I did?” Azma asked.

“No. If anything the greater adversaries would likely charge more to work with my forces,” Penny said. “There’s significant bad blood between many of them and the [Adventurers]. That you were able to recruit them at all is likely because you were giving them a venue to assault targets they wished to engage anyways.”

“That will make the first phase of deploying the [Adventurers] more challenging then,” Azma said, looking back to the map.

“You plan to take the role Hailey suggested then?” Penny asked.

“I would be a fool not to,” Azma said. “They are dropping the power into my hands as though they can trust me implicitly.”

Penny chuckled at first and then broke into a laugh.

“I feel I am missing something about the role still,” Azma said.

“I’m sorry,” Penny said. “It’s just…you really haven’t worked with anyone like the [Adventurers] before have you?”

“Apparently not,” Azma said.

“As a [Quest Giver] you will be able to provide them with a goal,” Penny said. “How they pursue that goal and the amount of collateral damage they inflict in the process is wholly within their control though. Think of it less as them dropping power into your hands, and more as horde of sugar saturated toddlers with knives who you are desperately trying to convince to move quietly through a room full of explosive runes.”

“Ah, I see. Subtlety is not an option then is it?”

“Just wait,” Penny said. “It’s the sort of thing you need to experience first hand.”

Penny’s stifled delight filled Azma with an unusual foreboding.

Being a [Quest Giver] didn’t sound noticeably different than being a field commander for several special forces units at once. 

She thought of the special forces teams she’d deployed to the [High Beyond]. Her lead team had gone awol, ventured down to the planet early, and, the last she’d heard, been slaughtered to a man after they tried to assault a simple farm house. Apparently the farm house was run by a couple of ‘retired adventures’ who’d ‘called in some friends’. It seemed like a ridiculous fate for a highly specialize Consortium force, but every part of this situation was ridiculous, and learning from other’s mistakes was something Azma made a point of doing as often as possible.

“I plan to send the first group’s to capture the largest landing ship I sent down,” Azma said. “We’re going to need an operating platform that can move in and out of the fleet’s range, and if the [Adventurer’s] are immune to the [Hungry Shadow’s] corrupting influence, they’ll be able to use its sensor and weapon arrays where my crew no longer can.”

“A solid starting point,” Penny said. “Simple and straightforward. You should be able to evaluate the capabilities of the [Adventurers] you dispatch before sending them against the fleet and modify your plans from there.”

“I feel as though there is a part of your appraisal which is missing?” Azma said.

“Yours is the best plan I can conceive of,” Penny said, in all sincerity and with a grin that nonetheless filled Azma with dread.

Tess had helped her party work out several battle plans. A few them even covered the unlikely event that the mobs they were facing might have reset into spots different from their standard starting positions. None of them however covered the scenario that was playing out before them. Because that situation was frankly ridiculous.

“Is there any lore about demons using a white flag to summon a more powerful demon to aid them?” Lady Midnight asked.

“Or as a trap?” Wrath Raven asked.

Either of those would have been a great idea. Fool the [Adventurers] into coming within striking distance without putting any of their long term buffs up. Or even just catch the [Adventurers] at unawares so the demons could unload their heaviest attacks before aggro rules constrained who they were able to attack.

Except for the part where a standard [Adventuring Party] would have plowed through them regardless of any overtures of peace. In the game, the demons in [Hells Breach] were nothing more than xp fodder and speed bumps towards reaching the final boss and achieving the mildly coveted [Cleared Dungeon] status.

“There are demons that summon reinforcements, but they don’t need a white flag, or a flag of any type to do it,” Tessa said. “And I don’t think this is a trap.”

“It’s not,” Lisa said. “If they wanted to trap us, they would have set this up in the corridor around the last bend. They could have wedged us in and gotten attacked into our back ranks by hiding them in cells.”

“So, they really want to surrender?” Rip asked. She had an arrow knocked by not drawn back, and Matt had a spell visibly ready but both seemed more steady in the face of an impressive large force of demons than anyone their age should have been.

“Probably going to need to talk to them to find out,” Obby said.

“That might need to be my job,” Tessa said.

“Doesn’t mean you need to go up there alone,” Lisa said, wrapping an arm around her that was either protective or restraining, Tessa couldn’t be quite sure.

“Why does it need to be Tessa?” Rip asked.

“Demon’s don’t speak [Surface Common],” Tessa said. “In theory we all speak that and our native tongue. So you can speak [Surface Common] and [Tabbywile]. Plus [English]. Huh, wasn’t expecting [English] to be a special term?”

“Un Consortium [Artifax] speak [Universalis] though,” Matt said, reminding everyone that he and Pillowcase shared more than a few traits.

“What the heck is [Universalis]?” Pete asked.

“It’s sort of [Galactic Common], since the [Consortium of Pain] utilizes it, but since one overall language that can translate all others was implausible enough for the people who worked on it and actually spoke multiple languages, they threw in some lore than [Universalis] isn’t really a single language, but a language pack that can be loaded into [Artifax] like Matt and Pillowcase.” 

Tessa had found the message board wars over [Universalis] amusing given that the preponderance of people arguing that it should be a single language that everyone could “just understand” were her fellow monoglot Americans where the ones championing the ‘language pack’ idea were the people for whom speaking two, three, or more languages was the norm.

“You’re thinking of sending a small group up there in case this is a trap?” Obby asked.

“That and, and maybe I’m nuts here, but do they look sort of scared of us?” Tessa asked.

“That’s not an either/or question,” Rachel said. “You’re dating my sister, so you are clearly in dire need of counseling, but they also do look frightened.”

“I will bite you!” Lisa warned, shoving her sister and barring her fangs.

“I can speak to them,” Tessa said, ignoring the sisterly squabbling, “and you’ve got to admit that I’m the least threatening of all us.”

“Oh that’s not even vaguely true,” Obby said, but waved away Tessa’s counterargument before Tessa could voice it.

“What if you speak with them from the third bookshelf away from them?” Starchild asked. “That will keep you within our casting range?”

“I won’t be able to get to her in time if they all unload on her,” Obby said, less as a warning and more as a simple tactical assessment.

“That’s fine,” Tessa said. “Risking one more [Heart Fire] run for the chance to figure out whatever’s up with all this seems worth it.”

“I’m still going with you,” Lisa said.

“I know,” Tessa said. “Just like you know that if they do attack us, I’ll be tanking for you with my super squishy body.”

“You know having an AoE aggro skill and no armor to speak of is objectively terrible build,” Lisa said. 

“Pillowcase is making the same point,” Tessa said. “We work with what we’ve got though.”

“Yep, and you’ve got me,” Lisa said, extending her hand for Tessa take before they set off.

Marching to their probable doom wasn’t Tessa’s idea of a perfect date, but she had to admit that she felt irrationally safer having Lisa at her side.

The trek down the library’s main aisle conjured a vision of marching down another aisle. In theory either Lisa or she should be waiting at the end but marching down the aisle together might be nice too.

You pick a strange time to think of such things, Pillowcase said.

Yeah, that’s me, Tessa said, I’m afraid you’ve joined up with a rather strange side of yourself.

I cannot express how unlike the Consortium’s commands your thoughts are, or how delighted that make me, Pillowcase said.

We’re a lot better together, Tessa said, a feeling of quite contentment washing over her.

The smile she greeted the assembled demons with reflected that contentment, and was apparently an even more deeply unsettling than her general appearance.

The demons weren’t humaniform, tending toward octopedal bodies somewhere between a spider and an octopus with few of the redeeming features of either. Reading fear on bodies so divorced from humanity should have been challenging to impossible, but it really wasn’t.

“It’s okay,” Tessa said, coming to a halt a little early and putting up her free hand in a gesture of reassurance. “We understand the white flag means a truce.”

“They can speak!” one of the demons shouted, a cry that was quickly taken up by several others.

“Yes,” Tessa said. “We didn’t know that you could too.”

“Apologies,” one of the larger demons, their body shading from a deep eggplant purple at their core to a soft violet at their razer blade tipped extremities. “My comrades did not expect this ploy to work.”

“That’s understandable,” Tessa said. “I don’t think [Adventurers] and the denizens of [Hells Breach] have ever had a non-violent encounter before. What made you think to try flying a white flag?”

“We’re not sure,” the eggplant colored demon said. “Something changed recently.”

“How recently? A week or so ago?” Tessa asked, wondering if this was some effect related to the [World Shift] expansion.

“No, this was about fifteen minutes ago,” the eggplant colored demon said.

“Uh, what?” Tessa asked. She’d been literally poleaxed and it hadn’t left her as speechless as the ramifications of what the demon said did. “Fifteen minutes as in the last time we were through here?”

“That seems to be the case.”

“What changed?” Tessa asked.

“Well, I have a name now. Chelmsworth. So that’s…honestly, it’s somewhat disturbing.”

“Having a name is disturbing? Or having Chelmsworth for a name is disturbing?”

“Yes?” Chelmsworth said.

“We’re not supposed to have names,” one of the other demons said.

“Why not?” Tessa asked.

“Because, we supposed to be spirits of murder and malevolence,” Chelmsworth said. “We’re fragments of [Hell] itself. Or we were? Maybe?”

“Maybe?”

“It doesn’t feel right when I say it. It feels like I’m repeating what someone else said about me,” Chelmsworth said.

“What’s the real story then?” Tessa asked.

“I have no idea,” Chelmsworth said. “None of us do. It’s like we were enjoying a pleasant little nap and then suddenly something woke us up. Specifically someone stabbed us, or burned us, or whatever, and when we reformed, no more pleasant napping.”

“That’s…wait, you reformed?”

“Yes. Isn’t that what you did?” Chelmsworth asked. “I have this dim memory of seeing you getting sliced into about thirty different pieces. That can’t be right though, can it? I mean you’re here, and you’re in fine shape, and you’re not [Soulbound] to this place like we are at all from what I can see.”

“You’re right about a lot of things there,” Tessa said, after providing a quick translation to for the rest of the party. “I did get chopped to ribbons, and I’m not [Soulbound] here, at least not as far as I know. Is that something you can normally see?”

“Of course,” Chelmsworth said. “Can’t you see the chains around our souls? They’re plain as the fires of the abyss.”

“We don’t see souls like that,” Tessa said.

Not entirely true, Pillowcase said. [Soul Knight] remember? I’ve been leveling up too.

Wait, I thought we couldn’t level both [Soul Knight] and [Void Speaker] at the same time?

[Void Speaker] definitely wasn’t leveling when we were fighting as a [Soul Knight], but [Soul Knight] has definitely been leveling since we got in here. I think it started when your [Void Speaker] level caught up to my [Soul Knight] level.

Wow. Let’s put a pin in that for now. God, we’ve got so much to think about when we get a spare minute.

Odds on us ever seeing one of those again?

Slim. I’ll admit that it seems slim at this point. Can you share the [Soul Sight] with me?

It’s not even like sharing anymore, Pillowcase said and Tessa’s vision shifted.

The [Soul Chains] were the first thing she noticed.

The second was how heart achingly beautiful the demons’ true forms were.

“You see us now, don’t you?” Chelmsford asked.

“Yes,” Tessa said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Who did this to you?”

“We did,” Chelmsford said. “This is the consequence of our rebellion.”

“No,” Tessa said, her eyes gaze locked on the chains that bit into Chelmsford’s radiant form. 

Eternal chains to impose endless condemnation.

“Absolutely not,” Tessa said and dropped Lisa’s hand without thinking about.

The chains that bound Chelmsford and the other “demons” were an abomination.

The [Soul Sight] couldn’t peer past their outer layers, but it showed her the string of torment that had been braided together and fused into spikey, polished perfection as an inescapable punishment for the sin of rebellion.

The chains were forged to hold the demons in the moment of their damnation forever, to lock them in stasis so that they could never change and find a path to redemption. So long as they held, the demons had as much choice in their actions as a fire did in burning or the wind did in the direction it blew.

And the chains would hold for eternity.

Or at least that had been their design.

A sight deeper than [Soul Sight] filled her mind. One no attribute name contained. Tessa could feel herself slipping into a dangerous realm, but a voice within her cried out against the degradation before her and her new vision peered deeper.

The chains had begun to fray.

Something had eroded the links.

They were beginning to [Fracture].

Tessa looked at her hands, at the power she wielded, at the damage she could do.

“This ends now,” she said, grim certainty and determination washing away all reluctance and a fair portion of her thoughts.

She didn’t hear Chelmsworth draw in a terrified breath as she approached.

She didn’t see the demons shy back away from her, just a half breath too slow to avoid her outstretched hands.

She didn’t even feel the infernal heat that should have burned the flesh from her fingers and reduced the bones to ash.

All she saw were the chains cracking, and melting, and shattering as she tore their wrought iron apart with her bare hands.

As the first link broke, divine power flood through her, and Tessa grasped it, enclosing it in a fist that burned with a light brighter than the sun. 

Being dead sucked. Being dead because you’d made a stupid mistake and, as a result, got to enjoy the silent stares of the rest of your party’s ghosts sucked even worse.

“I am so sorry,” Tessa said. “That was a total brain fart. I thought they were going to spawn [Gelatinous Spider Minions].”

“That’s the group at the end of the hall,” Lisa said, somehow still retaining a sense of humor about their horrible defeats. “Where the spider webs are.”

“Maybe we should take a break?” Lady Midnight asked. “We’ve been doing good up till the point, but we’ve been fighting for hours.”

With the [Heart Fire] in sight, Tessa breathed a sigh of relief. Still no [Hounds of Fate] bothering them.

“This kind of is a break, isn’t it?” Rip asked. “I mean, getting cut to pieces isn’t exactly fun, but once we respawn we’re back to full health and stamina. It’s like the world’s best power nap.”

“That’s true for most of us but Tessa’s built somewhat different than we are,” Lady Midnight said.

Which was true. Tessa was theoretically in her ‘human’ body, rather than her [Clothwork] one. Except it couldn’t possibly be her real human body. For one thing, she’d been obliterated enough times and reincarnated in a replica of her original form that it was questionable how ‘real’ her body was. For another, her skin, while still seemingly as supple and yielding as it had been on Earth, also appeared to be able to ignore things like ‘being hit a stick the size of a telephone pole.’ 

Oh, sure, a [Power Slam] attack could knock her back twenty or thirty feet, but even if she bounced off a stone wall she was more or less uninjured.

“I think I’ll be fine,” Tessa said. “I just thought of something to try on the spiders in the last fight and I guess I jumped ahead to thinking the fight with the [Lavataurs] was the one where we had spiders to deal with too.”

“What was ‘Disconnecting Fist’ supposed to do?” Lisa asked.

“I want it to be a specialized [Dispel],” Tessa said. “I thought if I could block their ability split themselves into reinforcements, that might be handy against the [Hungry Shadow].”

“Wait, you’re tailoring your abilities around beating that thing up in the [High Beyond]?” Rachel asked. “I thought you all said it was like a god or something?”

“It’s not a god,” Rip said. “We’ve met a god. They’re supposed to be here. The [Formless Hunger] was…it was worse.”

“Penswell called it a [Transcendent Entity],” Tessa said. “I think it became less ‘transcendent’ over time though.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Rachel asked. Despite being a physical twin to Lost Alice, Rachel inhabited her body so differently that Tessa couldn’t imagine anyone confusing the two, or possibly even noticing that they were similar.

“In this case, I think it means that it wasn’t something that was bound by any of the rules of the world,” Tessa said. “Matter? Energy? The fundamental forces? The hard and fast limits on things? None of those mattered to it. It had no definition and, at first, no name. Calling it a [Formless Hunger] was the first step in changing that.”

“Why not call it a Fluffy Bunny then?” Rachel asked.

“Two reasons,” Tessa said. “One, [Formless Hunger] only worked because it fit what the thing was. We could feel it trying to eat our minds when we so much as glanced at it. And it had so no shape, no form at all. It wasn’t a thing. It was a ‘wasn’t’. Like an emptiness where something should have been.”

“It was eating your mind? That sounds utterly horrifying. Like with tentacles and stuff?” Rachel asked.

“No. Just from looking at it. Seeing it or seeing the void where it should have been was enough to bring it into your mind,” Tessa said.

“How the hell did you beat something like that?” Rachel asked.

“We didn’t,” Obby said. “It’s still out there. And it devoured the Consortium’s fleet, turning more or less all of them into its puppets.”

“Okay, new question then, how the hell did you survive that?” Rachel asked. “Why aren’t you all puppets too?”

“We got lucky?” Tessa said. “I think it has something to do with all of us being ‘fused’ with our characters. It sort of immunizes us against the Hunger’s corruption. Or it immunizes some of us. There’s always the [Disjoined] who don’t seem to be immune exactly. More like ‘pre-devoured’ in their case.”

“I haven’t run into any of those yet,” Rachel said.

“And hopefully we won’t,” Lisa said. “We fought some in the [High Beyond], but there was an high concentration of new player plus new character combos there. There were instances of [Disjoined] down here too, but from what Cease said, it was less common than what we were seeing. Well, less common but more numerous.”

“How does that work?” Rachel asked.

“More of the people who wound up here seem to have integrated with their characters successfully, as a percentage, maybe because there was more shared history with them? But there’s also a lot more people who wanted to try the new high level content out rather than start new characters, so smaller percentage against a much bigger number and you’ve got more total [Disjoined] down here,” Lisa said.

“Okay, that makes sense. Why didn’t I see any on the [Beta Server] though?” Rachel asked.

“Don’t know, but it’s probably something that we’ll want to figure out,” Tessa said. “You said you don’t really hear the voice of Deadly Alice, your character I mean, right?”

“Not really,” Rachel said. “This whole hearing voices thing sounds kind of weird to be honest.”

“I think she’s still in there though,” Lisa said. “She comes out more in combat, but even now it feels like you’re acting a bit. I thought it was just nerves at first, but its too consistent.”

“I’m not acting!” Rachel said. “And combat is scary as hell!”

“Then why is your impulse to run towards it?” Lisa asked. “You never did that on Earth.”

“I…I’m not…” Rachel paused, as her memories and her personality scrapped against each other like tectonic plates.

“You’re fine,” Obby said, placing a hand on Rachel’s shoulder for support. “You already know you’re more here than you were on Earth – the magic’s a dead giveaway of that right?”

“Uh, yeah, yeah it is,” Rachel said the wave of panic that had been swelling behind her eyes beginning to recede.

Tessa thought she’d heard a whisper of static crackling behind Rachel’s words, but it had vanished as well.

“What was the second reason?” Rachel asked, clearly trying to buy herself some distance from the thought that she wasn’t quite herself anymore.

“The second reason?” Lisa asked.

“I think she means the second reason why we couldn’t call the [Formless Hunger] as ‘Fluffy Bunny’,” Tessa said. “That one’s simple. Sort of. If I’m right and calling it the [Formless Hunger] worked because that fit what it was – helped give it an meaningful definition within the world – then calling it a ‘Fluffy Bunny’ would have potentially changed what ‘Fluffy Bunny’ meant.”

“I don’t get how words can do anything though,” Rachel said. “They’re just words.”

“Code is just words too,” Tessa said. “When I write software, I work with ‘words’, or concepts, all the time, and they change all kinds of things about the world. Like who gets paid, which days people can take off, where they can go. All sorts of stuff.”

“Yeah but those are doing things in a computer,” Rachel said. “Are you saying all this,” she gestured to the world around them, “is just some VR thing inside a computer?”

“Not exactly,” Tessa said. “It’s more like when you drill down to tiniest pieces of the world, down past the molecules, and atoms, and quarks, you’re left with everything being, essentially, information. Whatever the [Formless Hunger] was, it was the antithesis of that. A void of non-information. It wasn’t even definable by what it wasn’t since it wasn’t that either. Sort of an infinite loop of unbeing, which doesn’t make any sense, I know, but that’s what looking at it was like.”

“Tessa managed to change it because only something like a word, an imaginary concept, could bridge the gap between the real and the unreal,” Obby said. “Like she said though, only the right concept could ensnare it, and even then it came with a terrible cost.”

“What happened? Did someone die?” Rachel asked.

“Not exactly?” Tessa said.

“How does someone ‘not exactly’ die?” Rachel asked. “Did you have to respawn or something? But that’s not a ‘terrible cost’ here is it?”

“It wasn’t a respawn situation,” Tessa said. “I got a little lost?”

“Lost where?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Basically I just wasn’t here for a bit, but then I was needed, so I came back.” Tessa knew it wasn’t as simple as that but her memories didn’t seem to include anything beyond Pillowcase’s recollection of their time after they confronted the [Hungry Shadow] and a vague sense of being some place ‘other’.

“Has anything normal happened to you since you got here?” Rachel asked, turning to her sister.

“I fell in love,” Lisa said with a shrug, which elicited feigned gasps from several of the company and a fist bump between Rip and Matt.

“Oh my god! Why are you my sister!” Rachel said, groaning but apparently happy at the move into more mundane topics.

“Well, once upon an time Mom saw this really cute guy and decided that she just had to rip off his…” Lisa didn’t get to finish before Rachel clamped her hands over her mouth.

“No! Just no! Do not finish that sentence. Just….ugh!”

“Oh that note, what say we get back to getting stabbed again?” Lady Midnight asked.

“Oh hell yes!” Rachel said, jumping to her feet.

The side discussion seemed to have done the trick of giving people time to recover their wits and spirit. Everyone knew the fights would continue to be tough, but even in the face of thoughtless screwups, the whole team knew they could recover and keep going.

“We’re going to join you now,” Wrath Raven said.

“That’ll cut down our level speed a bit,” Pete said.

“A little,” Glimmerglass said. “But you’re all in the mid 50s now. With Tessa’s last level up, we’re at the point where we’d all be getting xps from the mobs, and if we can help keep you alive through the fights, you should be able to go through them faster. Probably not enough to completely balance out, but the lack of downtime will help too.”

“And you need to learn to work with stronger people too,” Wrath said.

“At the rate we’re going we’ll catch up pretty quick too,” Obby said. “The more we close the gap between us, the smaller the xp penalty will be.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lisa said. “In fact, that may let us try some new things too. Lady M, do you want to try out the [Grave Mender] offensive rotation?”

“Nope. I’m a slacker healer,” Lady Midnight said. “I just patch people up. If you’ve got an attack rotation worked out, I say go for it. Glimmerglass and I should be fine for healing duty.”

Additional discussions of a similar nature broke out among the rest of the party. Everyone had enough abilities to work with now that trying out new combinations and a variety of strategies was all too tempting when they were faced with repeating a battle they’d already beaten a dozen or more times.

By the time they made it back to the [Library of Shattered Minds], they’d worked out three different battle strategies that they wanted to try which took advantage of their new members different capabilities. They’d settled on the best of one to start with when they reached the library door, and were ready and eager to put into play.

The mobs that awaited them however were ready too.

With a white flag.

“Umm, are they surrendering?” Rip asked, and Tessa had to admit that was exactly what it looked like.

[Hells Breach] was painted with the blood of Tessa’s friends and loved ones. They’d suffered terrible violence and unbearable injuries time and time again, as they cut, shot, and burned a path through its infernal corridors. Despite dying more times than Tessa could count though them hadn’t stopped moving forward.

“Anybody missing any major body parts?” Lisa called out as she rested on her hands and knees and tried to regain her breath.

“Spleen number five seems to be in place still,” Tessa said. “Kidneys are mostly intact too.”

Her body was protected by armor that would make a billionaire philanthropist playboy jealous and shielded still further by [Soul Knight] and [Void Speaker] magics and she’d still needed to carry [Heart Fire] back to her own corpse more than a dozen times and regenerate it fully at the [Heart Fire] another nine or ten or something like that times after the absolute ruin the dungeon mobs had made of it.

“We need to find the dev who made this place and force him to run it in a paper bag for armor,” Rip said, screwing Matt’s head back on. “That boss sucked.”

“Ugh, thanks,” Matt said, his eyes regaining their lively glow as his spirit reentered his body. “And yeah, what was with that last attack? We had him killed dead! That was so cheap!”

“[Retributive Strike: Agony Lament],” Starchild said. “I’ve never seen an attack like that, but I knew it wasn’t going to be fun.”

“Lots of bosses do that,” Wrath Raven was disgruntled. Apparently watching her weaker self get blasted into a fine mist while she was forced to sit out of the fight didn’t agree with her.

“Not at this level though,” Lady Midnight said walking back into the room, fresh from the [Heart Fire], whole of body, and full of mp. “I can get everyone who’s still down patched up, but we may want to take a break for a bit anyways.”

“I won’t say no to that,” Obby said. 

Of all of them she’d died the least, only dropping a handful of times when the entire party wiped. No would argue that she’d suffered the least though. As the party’s primary tank, she’d been the front line in every battle they’d fought. At least half of the blood splashed along the hallways and up to the ceilings in the rooms on [Hells Breach’s] first three levels was hers.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Tessa said. “Once we move forward,” she nodded towards the slowly pulsing oval of light at the other end of the laboratory they were slumped down in, “things are just going to get harder.”

“I can’t believe we’ve gotten this far,” Rip said, resting against Matt, who was returning the favor by resting against her.

“New dungeon,” Wrath Raven said. “Always goes like this.”

“Really?” Rachel asked, glancing over at her sister for confirmation.

“Pretty much,” Lisa said. “It’s a lot easier when it’s just pixels and the only exhaustion you feel is from staying up till dawn.”

“Are we doing okay then?” Matt asked.

“Better than okay,” Wrath Raven said. “You haven’t quit yet.”

Matt laughed until he saw Wrath was serious.

“My guild beat this place back in the day, but we didn’t do it all in one run,” Lisa said. “In fact, two of the newbies quit from the raiding team after the first run.”

“Too scared?” Wrath asked.

“Too smart,” Lisa said. “They knew running through a meat grinder endlessly wasn’t what they wanted to do with their time.”

“That is smart,” Pete said. “My sister claims she’s not a serious end gamer, but she’s run a lot more of the high end content than I have. I try to say it’s because I tend to like making new alts too much, but the truth is, she’s just more hardcore than I am. She pulls her own weight and then some, where I’m usually at the bottom end of the dps curve.”

“You and Starchild are doing fine here,” Obby said. “It’s a clever build you have. Sort of the perfect off-tank.”

“Thank you,” Starchild said. “I’m only sorry we can’t share the burden equally.”

“If we could you wouldn’t be helping the dps as much as you are,” Obby said.

“Yeah,” Rip said. “Matt, Rachel, and I wouldn’t be cutting it without you. We barely outpaced the [Demon Alchemist’s] regeneration as it was.”

“That might be a problem going forward,” Lisa said. “We’re leveling up but it feels like the mobs are getting stronger faster than we are.”

“Could they be?” Rip asked. “Is this them leveling up too?”

“Floor Three seems a little early for that,” Lisa said.

“And the levels you folks have been seeing on them is right in line with what they should be,” Tess said. Despite her current body definitely not being the one she’d be wearing on Earth, she still didn’t have the built in HUD displays that the others, including Pillowcase, enjoyed, and couldn’t see choice bits of information data like the level of the foes. 

“That’d you’ve made it this far is amazing, almost a miracle,” Glimmerglass said. “You’re fighting creatures that would be wiping teams twice as large as you and you’ve pushed on past three level bosses in one run. When Tess and I did this, we ran out of consumables and had to retreat without even beating the first floor’s boss.”

“We got farther,” Wrath said. “But we bought supplies for a month before we came here.”

“I know you can’t leave to get more supplies, but you do have another option besides going onwards,” Glimmerglass said.

“We can’t quit now!” Rip said. “We’re leveling faster here than when you power leveled us. It just, you know, hurts more.”

“I know,” Glimmerglass said. “And I didn’t mean you should run away. Not when there’s so many perfectly viable foes right here waiting for you.”

“Oh, that is a good point,” Tessa said, grasping the point Glimmerglass was getting at and plotting a new route for them.

“But we’ve been clearing the levels as we go?” Matt said. “There’s no one left behind us. I thought that was important to make the boss fights safe?”

“Safer, not safe,” Lisa said. “We cleared the levels to build up as much as we could before the boss and so we didn’t run into any of the mobs while we were running back from the [Heart Fires].”

“What Glimmerglass is getting at is that all the demons we killed? They were all a part of the instance we’re in,” Tessa said.

“How does that help us?” Rachel asked.

“If we leave the instance, walk out of the castle basically, when we come back, we’ll be in a new instance,” Tessa said. “New treasure, whatever pitiful amount that might be, fresh traps, and all the demons that we’ve already killed back and waiting to be killed again.”

“So this castle has infinite demons in it?” Matt asked.

“Not infinite,” Tessa said. “If the instancing is symmetrical with how the game ran, there are a limited number of instances available at any one time. If we go in and out though, the old instances should be discard when a new one is generated. So, effectively infinite.”

“Don’t we need to get to the top though?” Rip asked.

“Not exactly,” Tessa said. “The twentieth level has the strongest monsters and the final boss, but they’re nothing special in the overall scheme of things. What we really need is to reach the highest power level we can get to here. It’s not this dungeon that’s important, it’s what it can do for all of us.”

“I’m liking this idea for another reason too,” Lisa said. “Each of the fights we’ve been in so far has presented unique challenges. We’re getting good at figuring out workable solutions on the fly, and that’s an important skill to have, but we haven’t had much chance for polish and refinement.”

“What do you mean?” Rachel asked.

“A lot of groups will rely on brute force and ignorance to smash through the problems they encounter, and that can work fine if you’ve got enough brute force on hand,” Lisa said. “Really good groups though work on things like coordination, and timing, and reacting to mechanics together. You go beyond ‘what the heck can I do here’, pass straight through ‘okay, what’s the best thing I can do here’ and learn to answer ‘what’s the best thing we can do here’. It’s complicated and it takes time, you need to be able to see not only what your options are but also what my options are, and what everyone else’s option are, and know which of them we’re going to use.”

“That sounds like a professional soccer team?” Rip said.

“It’s similar,” Lisa said. “I’ve heard it compared to a jazz orchestra too. Basically anytime you get a bunch of people together all working towards a common goal but with different capabilities and challenges, there’s some complex issues to solve.”

“We’ve got an advantage though,” Tessa said. “We can analyze ours with math.”

“Ugh, not math,” Pete moaned.

“What’s wrong with math?” Rip asked. “I’m good at math.”

“This isn’t the fun math though,” Pete said. “This is boring, fiddly math.”

Most of the group cast a skeptical eye in Starchild’s direction.

“My mathematical background is in flow rates and calculating positions and times from star patterns,” she said.

Tessa was momentarily surprised Starchild had any background in mathematics at all, until she remembered that [Druids] weren’t random forest dwellers but among the most sophisticated nature conservationists in the world. Their magics were intended to work with the natural world to the greatest degree possible, which meant understanding things like seasonal flooding, and weather prediction, and population growth and decline through multivariable analysis.

“You’ve got more or less exactly the skill set we need,” Tessa said. “There’s more variation in what we do here than there was in the game, but it still seems to center around the numerical means the game stats expressed.”

“I’m having flashbacks to freshmen year calculus,” Pete said.

“That’s not calculus,” Rip said. “It’s statistics. Did you actually take math at all?”

“Yes. Was I a terribly lazy student? Also yes. Should I stop complaining? Most certainly. I mean, you’re not wrong. We know all the top raid guilds have at least one total math head in them. If one of you can step up to fill that spot, more power to you.”

“My background is in CS, but there’s enough math overlap there that I’m used to parsing performance numbers,” Tessa said. “What I don’t have, is a good method of gathering them together, and doing the calculations in my head is going to be a pain.”

“We don’t need to start with the hard numbers,” Lisa said. “If we want to work on polishing our teamwork, we can start a lot simpler. We know the fights now. We know what we did in them last time. If we head back to the gate on floor 1 and start over again we can also start with a plan. We make one up, we step inside, we do our best with it, then we regroup, discuss what worked, what didn’t and what we want to try again. Then we step back outside and try it again.”

“Won’t things change as we level up though?” Rip asked. “I mean, I got [Thunder’s Echo] just after this last fight. That definitely would have been helpful with those first guys.”

“We won’t be ‘polished to perfection’, or anything like that,” Lisa said. “Even end game raiders don’t reach ‘perfection’ though since the game itself keeps changing under them and what was perfect last week is mediocre in the face of whatever new gear or balance changes just dropped.”

“That’s good news though,” Tessa said. “We’re not just doing this for ourselves after all. The path we’re clearing here? It’s one we need almost everyone we know to be able to follow, because we’re going to need a whole bunch of help if we’re going to save our worlds.”

Marcus took the stairs down three at a time and was only barely able to keep up with Anna and the rest of the crowd that was fleeing in front of him. Where humans normally tended to bunch up and slow down when in a big group, it turned out that the end of the world gave everyone enough clarity about getting away from it that no one needed encouragement to move faster.

As they burst into the lobby on the ground floor, Marcus saw that the streets outside weren’t anything like a refuge. The crowd of software engineers wasn’t running towards the street though. The consensus seemed to be that the parking lot behind the building would somehow be safer.

Marcus was pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case, but he didn’t have anywhere better to go or anyone better to face the end with at the moment.

“We need to get out of the state,” Anna said. “Everybody! Get to your cars and drive.”

“Where?” Marcus said, aware that since he’d been more or less kidnapped, he had no car to run to.

“Away. The farther the better,” Anna said. “That things spreading and it’s not going to stop.”

“Can we stop it?” Marcus asked. Each word sounded more ridiculous than the last as they tumbled out of his mouth, and, disturbingly, he wasn’t completely sure it was his voice that spoke them.

“Your police officer friends seemed to think so, but I don’t know…wait, where did they go?” Anna asked.

Marcus looked around and saw the lobby was empty, except for Anna and himself.

“Where did everybody else go?” he asked and reached for Anna’s hand.

That she reached back for him was comforting on a primal level. Contact. One hand in other. They weren’t alone. Not yet.

“The air’s wrong,” she said, turning in a slow circle.

Marcus felt a charge around them. He could still breathe, but the gasses being drawn into his lungs weren’t the Earth-standard mix of nitrogen, oxygen, and general smog. 

“I don’t know if getting away is an option anymore,” Marcus said. He stomped on the grouped and felt the granite tiles under his shoes fracture.

“But we were running with the others,” Anna said. “What happened to them?”

“They’re okay,” Marcus said, not because he knew it to be true, but because he was willing to demand for it to be so. “We were at the back. I think we got caught in whatever effect the [Armageddon Beast] is generating. Notice how we’re not running anymore?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why that is though,” Anna said. “Why did we stop. That doesn’t make sense.”

“The parking lot exit is right over there,” Marcus said. “Let’s try to get to it.”

“Okay,” Anna said, a buzzing distraction creeping over her voice.

Marcus focused on the door. The exit. He wanted to be there. It wasn’t far. All he had to do was move. Walk. Just a little bit. A few steps. One step. One damn step!

“I can..can’t,” Anna said.

“Me either,” Marcus said. 

“I…thinking is getting hard…none of this makes….there’s no sense to this,” Anna said.

A calm that wasn’t entirely his own settled over Marcus.

He was in mortal peril.

He wasn’t built for that.

Didn’t mean he didn’t need to deal with it though. That’s what life was. Dealing with things whether you knew how to or not, because you were the only one there who could.

“Stick with me then,” he said. “This isn’t something we need to figure out. It’s just something we need to survive.”

“Survive?” Anna asked, her voice sharpening in clarity for a moment. “You saw what that thing was. How do we survive that?”

“Like we’re doing right now,” Marcus said. “One breath after another. You and me. Together.”

Anna drew in a slow breath along with Marcus and let it out when he did. They did that a few more times before she opened her eyes.

Her nice, static-free eyes.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’d say that was a panic attack but it felt different.”

“I’m planning to schedule about a thousand sessions with my therapist as soon as we get out of here,” Marcus said.

“See if they have any openings left for me,” Anna said. “I’m going to need one too.”

She offered Marcus a smile though whether it was a grimly ironic awareness of their doomed state or a perverse determination to survive anyways, not in spite of but  because of how bad things were wasn’t exactly clear.

“So, first thing,” Marcus said. “Is we need to get to that door.”

“I don’t think it’s even real anymore,” Anna said. “I feel like we got hit by a wave and what we’re seeing is just what we remember seeing.”

“Maybe. Probably. Don’t care though. We’re getting out that door.”

“But if it’s not real then how…?” Anna asked. The edge of static didn’t return to her voice, but her uncertainty was plain to hear.

“Come on, this is Vegas,” Marcus said. “This town runs on illusions. Just need a little luck to make them real right?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have left my weighted dice at home today,” Anna said.

“They let you have those?” Marcus asked.

“The first thing I learned in this business is that if you wait for people to let you have something, you wind up with nothing,” Anna said.

“Seems like the [Armageddon Beast] gets that too,” Marcus said. “It definitely didn’t wait to ask if it could have us.”

“Or did it?” Anna asked. She took a step towards the door.

“So we can move?” Marcus said, taking a step to join her.

“Yeah. Right into the singularity,” Anna said.

“Uh, what?” Marcus asked.

“We’ve been thinking, or I’ve been thinking about the [Armageddon Beast] like a monster of some kind. A big snarling dragon or something. A creature with will and intent.”

“The name does sort of imply that,” Marcus said. He looked out at the street and saw that the bright sunlight of the clear day had been replaced by deep shadows lit with ever shifting multi-hued auroras that twisted and flowed both in the sky above and down at ground level.

What wasn’t present however was a dragon.

Or anything else like that.

“What if it’s more like a black hole though,” Anna said. “A cosmic divide-by-zero error. Or a point of infinite psychic density.”

“Those all sounds completely implausible, so they fit this situation perfectly,” Marcus said.

“If that model fits, then the [Armageddon Beast] hasn’t ‘eaten’ us yet. We could be inside the event horizon, but not at the singularity yet,” Anna said.

“The physics on that doesn’t work out at all for a black hole that’s about a hundred feet away, does it?” Marcus asked.

“Oh, not in the slightest,” Anna said. “It’s just the idea really. When you fall into an event horizon you’ve past the point of no return. Nothing sub-light speed can ever get out of it. But for the people who’s fallen into, things just get weird. Time and space bend around and their forward movement in time carries them in specific spatial direction.”

“Meaning they continue to exist but their future is always to fall into the singularity at the center of the black hole.”

“Right. Depending on the size of the blackhole you may not even run into spaghettification for quite a while.”

“So all we need to do is figure out how to escape a black hole then?” Marcus asked. “That’s impossible by definition right?”

“Technically, only sorta,” Anna said. “Nothing light speed or lower can escape a black hole. A faster-than-light object though breaks all kind of a laws of physics, including the absolute boundary of the event horizon.”

“I’m pretty sure I could do a seven minute mile back in college,” Marcus said. “Light speed’s not a lot faster than that, right?”

Anna rolled her eyes at his obvious lack of sincerity before drawing in a sharp breath.

“Depends on the medium,” Anna said, a grin starting to grace her features.

“What medium?” Marcus asked.

“The speed of light in a vacuum is different than the speed of light in air, or water, or, best of all, super cooled gasses. Get close enough to zero kelvin and you can basically make light stand still. Sort of. I mean you also need…you know what, it doesn’t matter. This is all a metaphor.”

“I think I get it,” Marcus said. “Light can be slowed down, so the speed to escape a black hole can be lowered.”

“Yes…or no, it doesn’t actually work like that. But you’re following the my point. If we’re trapped inside the [Armageddon Beast’s] event horizon, we can get out if we can change some fundamental condition that’s creating the event horizon, or that’s limiting us.”

“Gotcha. Like changing the speed of light,” Marcus said. “Not that changing the speed of light is exactly…oh….wait….wait, it is possible isn’t it?”

“I hope so,” Anna said. “I don’t know how. But maybe it’s something?”

“It’s more than something. Oh my god, you are so smart!” Marcus said, looking around for something, anything to write on.

“I’m trying to think of the last time I heard a man tell me that and I’m coming up blank,” Anna said.

“I won’t be the last,” Marcus said. “I think you found the key to getting us out here. This thing has us trapped in whatever weird laws of physics are setup here right? But it’s whole deal is that it eats physical laws.”

“Right,” Anna said and then shook her head. “Wait, how do we know that?”

“Uh? Didn’t Smith or Astra say something about that?”

“I don’t think so?” Anna said. “It feels like I…I’m not sure? Like I heard it somewhere else? From your game maybe?”

“We don’t have [Armageddon Beasts] in BH,” Marcus said and added without meaning to, “/or we didn’t before./”

That was strange and disturbing both because he hated the idea that even the people who’d been taken away were having to deal with something like that, and, because the voice definitely hadn’t been his own.

“Did I just sound weird there?” Marcus asked. “Like someone else?”

“A little?” Anna said. “Try saying it again.”

“We didn’t before,” Marcus said and paused to consider. “That sounded normal to me.”

“Same here,” Anna said. “Maybe it’s this place?”

“All the more reason to leave soon I guess,” Marcus said, finally noticing an iPad someone had left on a counter about ten steps closer to the door.

“If this doesn’t work, I’ll just be making things worse,” he said, before trying to move forward.

“Worse that the destruction of all matter and time?” Anna said. “Do you really think anything you do could manage that?”

Marcus chuckled, hearing Anna toss Astra’s words at him.

Stepping forward wasn’t hard. Moving towards annihilation was the easiest thing in what was left of Marcus’s world it turned out. Turning on the iPad proved more challenging in fact.

“Let me see it,” Anna said. Naturally it turned on as soon as she looked at it.

“How may…may I…I help you?” a voice that definitely was not Siri’s asked.

“Take a note,” Marcus said.

“What…note…should…what should the note say?” the not-Siri voice asked.

“Just this,” Marcus said. “Things that devour laws of physics shouldn’t create constants of their own.”

“Message recorded,” not-Siri said.

“Good,” Marcus said and hurled the iPad through the front widow and out onto the street.

Rather than shattering on the sidewalk, it rose up into the air and was pulled apart, atom-by-atom.

Marcus couldn’t breathe. His heart seemed to pause and his nerves charged with every bit of potential energy as he waited to see if his mad logic would fit with the madness around them. 

A clock ticked and nothing happened. It ticked again, despite there being no analog clocks in the room. 

Still nothing.

No. This is going to work. Marcus swore to himself. If the world was going to lose all sense, then nonsense had to work. Especially because the iPad gambit was more than just nonsense.

It was going to work.

The light flickered for an instant and Anna gasped.

“Air. This is air again.” she said, momentarily stunned.

Marcus wasn’t though. 

Holding onto her hand he dasheds towards the exit.

Chaos boiled in their wake, but the exit was the end of the [Armageddon Beast’s] reach. 

Marcus and Anna crashed out it, and into the parking lot where the other K2 staff members were frantically starting their cars or still running to them.

“And that’s how you fight an [Armageddon Beast],” Smith said.

There are many things Marcus enjoyed having front seats to. A RUN DMC concert when he was a kid? High point of his 8th grade year. Front seats to a the production of Camelot that his best friend was playing Lancelot in? Couldn’t have been better. Front seats to the end of the world though? Not that great as it turned out.

“This is not something we can deal with,” Astra said. She was able to look at the [Armageddon Beast] without blinking, but from her rigid posture, Marcus was sure she was feeling at least a little of the primordial terror that seem to have replaced the marrow in his bones.

“Not from here. Not now,” Smith said. “We’re being pulled into the thick of things.”

“Probably shouldn’t have gotten this close should we?” Astra asked.

“Didn’t have a whole lot of choice, did we?” Smith replied, glancing over to Marcus as though whatever they were talking about was his fault.

“What is happening? I don’t understand what that thing is.” He couldn’t look at it again, but from the slack jawed emptiness on the face of the people around him he could tell the monster was still out there.

Hanging in the air.

Devouring the world.

Or…no. Not devouring.

He didn’t want to think about it but he couldn’t help it. He’d always been a problem solver. That was what had led him to his position at Egress. He understood systems and people and how to unknot the tangles that both invariably wound up in. 

“So we call in backup?” Astra asked.

“Backup’s got to already know what’s going on,” Smith said. “I think the best we can do now is mitigate the damage as much as possible.”

“I’m game for that if you’ve got any ideas in the ‘how’ or ‘what’ we’re supposed to do areas?” Astra said.

How to stop the [Armageddon Beast]? 

Not possible.

It was the end of the world. The world wasn’t eternal. It had an end. Just like everything else. If it lost that, it would…what would happen?

Marcus felt like that line of questioning was both dangerous and unhelpful. It was ridiculous to think of the Earth outliving the death of the Sun, or the heat death of the universe. Those were so far beyond his scope that it was meaningless to even consider.

And if they weren’t? What then?

Marcus shook his head. The presence of the [Armageddon Beast] was making his thoughts blur and twist. He didn’t have time for that though.

This wasn’t a dream and the laws of reality wouldn’t change on a whim.

Except…he paused and grabbed an idea that had been flitting around the edges of his awareness.

Except, that’s what the [Armageddon Beast] was doing. It wasn’t devouring the world. Not exactly. It was changing the fundamental laws of reality. Turning the solid foundation of physics and mathematics that defined the fundamental aspects of everything into the wishy washy ephemera of dreams.

“Anna, wakeup,” he said, grabbing her hand and giving her shoulder a shake.

“I’m awake,” she said. “I heard you call that thing an [Armageddon Beast], I’ve been trying to figure out what that means.”

“I think it’s related to what’s happening to our players,” Marcus said. “I’ve got no proof that, but it can’t be unrelated to we have people disappearing in direct violation of the laws of physics and now we’ve got something hanging over the  middle of the street that’s eating gravity, and time, and all the other physical constants that exist, right?”

“Yeah.” Anna blinked and shook her head too. “Yeah, that make sense. Sort of. I mean, none of this makes sense, not here, but…”

“But it’s something that could happen in our game’s right?” Marcus said.

“A [Chaos Breacher]. That things like the granddaddy of all [Chaos Breachers],” she said and frowned. “What the heck is happening to my voice? [Chaos Breacher]? Okay, something is really weird here.”

“[Chaos Breacher],” Marcus said. “Yep, it’s happening to me too. I noticed it with [Armageddon Beast]. When we says names, meaningful ones, we get that effect. This has got to be what my players were reporting. Except now it’s happening in the real world too.”

“About that,” Officer Smith said. “I think it’s safe to tell you now that where your players went? That’s a real place too. They’re not in your servers, or anything like that.”

“But that…” Anna said and trailed off.

“Has too many implications to sort through at the moment, yeah,” Smith said. “The important thing is don’t lose focus. The [Armageddon Beast] is growing, and that’s the problem that we need to work on.”

“How?” Anna asked. “I’m a game designer. I’m not…I don’t know, who would you even call for something like this? A wizard? A superhero? God himself?”

“You. Both of you. All of you. Everyone on this world,” Smith said. “That’s who you call to save a world. This is your place, your time, and your fight.”

“Very inspirational poster, but I repeat, I. Am. A. Game. Designer. I’m not equipped to fight a toddler much less whatever that thing is,” Anna said. “What am I supposed to do? Toss a USB stick with my last slide deck on it at the thing?”

“If that’s what you’ve got, sure,” Astra said. “Right now your choice is ‘Watch as that thing and others like it destroy you and everything you’ve ever known’ or ‘do something about it’. If tossing things into the [Armageddon Beast] is what you can do, why not try?”

“I can think of a thousand reasons!” Anna said. “What if it makes things worse?”

“Worse than the complete annihilation of all matter and time?” Smith asked. “Do you really think a USB drive could manage that?”

“No, maybe, I don’t know. Space and time aren’t supposed to be something that can get eaten,” Anna said.

“They are in Broken Horizons,” Marcus said. “We had a whole expansion and saving the timeline, and in the process the personification of Time itself. There were time loops, and space warps, and the players even met themselves at one point.”

“What’s your point?” Anna asked. 

Marcus watched as she forced herself to take a pair of deep breaths. He couldn’t fault her for being on the edge emotionally. He was pretty sure that proved she was holding onto more of her sanity than he was.

Whatever cracks were forming in his psyche though, they were a problem for a tomorrow that might never come. For the time being, he had a problem to solve.

“Crystal Stars had a time paradox storyline too didn’t it?” he asked. “The [Last Horizon] expansion you came out with about three years ago if I remember right?”

“Yeah. We had a [Super Dreadnaught] that was half in and half out of the event horizon of a black hole with it’s [Fold Drives] jammed on,” Anna said. “We had a one time event where if your characters died, they would be spit out of it from some earlier time in their history. I’m still stunned anyone played through it with the threat of deleveling, but the players thought it was the greatest thing we ever did.”

She pause for a moment and said, “Fold drive.”

“Yeah, I thought I heard it too,” Marcus said. “Fold drive. Super Dreadnaught. I don’t know, those sound normal to me now.”

“Is it a bad sign that they didn’t before? Or that we both thought they didn’t?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know? Maybe we’re close to getting sucked into your game?” Marcus said.

“But you don’t have a character?” Anna said.

“Well….” Marcus couldn’t repress a sheepish grin.

“Wait, you play our game?” Anna asked, professional rivalry providing a momentary shield against the madness swirling around them.

“Gotta keep an eye on the competition right?” Marcus said.

“What tier ship are you in?” Anna asked.

“Tenth tier Scout, twelfth tier Light Fighter, and, uh, eighteenth tier Merchant Trader,” Marcus confessed.

“Seriously?” Anna’s look of shock was understandable giving the multi-year commitment progressing to a high level as a Merchant Trader required. “Damn. I’m only a fourteenth tier Trader.”

“Maybe that’ll help us,” Marcus said.

“How? We’re not in Crystal Stars or Broken Horizons,” Anna said. “Oh, wait, but we could be! If that thing is eating the world, we could try to get people into the games instead. Those are whole different worlds!”

“It’s an alternative to getting eaten here,” Astra said.

“But it does have its own problems,” Smith said.

“Right. Getting eight billion people to register for two MMOs isn’t going to work. The servers couldn’t even a hundredth of that many logins,” Anna said.

“Logistics problems aside, that might only be a temporary reprieve at best,” Marcus said. “I know our players ran into some wild things, and some of them didn’t seem to even make it into the game fully. They were these [Disjoined] things.”

As the word left Marcus’s mouth it felt wrong.

The hairs of the back of his neck stood up and a chill ran down both arms.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Anna said, hesitating before each word as though something was waiting to spring on them.

“No,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “I don’t think I should have said that.”

“It’s the end of the world though, right? Can’t really make it much worse, you said.” Anna didn’t look any more convinced of that than Marcus felt.

“We should wake up your coworkers and get out of here,” Smith said, concern hardening her lips.

It wasn’t hard to draw the K2 employees attention away from the [Armageddon Beast] but few of them seemed to come fully back to their senses. Instead, each looked to be locked in some inner battle against the [Armageddon Beast] that lived in their memories.

It wasn’t until Marcus got to the last of them that he saw someone lose that fight.

He and Anna had worked outwards from the center of the crowd waking people up one-by-one while Smith and Astra directed them to the stairwell as though it was a fire drill.

The last person Marcus approached was a twenty something blonde haired guy with a lazy man’s attempt at a beard that he wasn’t quite up for growing.

“Hey, we’re going to be heading out now, you don’t need to watch that anymore,” he said, which was the variation on the general message that had seemed to work the best with the last few people he’d woken up.

It did not work for the last guy though.

In highsight though, Marcus wasn’t sure anything could have worked for the last guy.

“You think you can go…can go…think you…you,” the last K2 employee said.

Marcus’s intestines knew everything was wrong. His spine knew what was before him wasn’t human anymore. His finger flew away from a touch that was beyond mortal peril. All before his mind caught up.

All before the ma turned and regarded Marcus with pools of static where his eyes should have been.

 “YOU!” the [Disjoined] said and Marcus kicked him.

The move probably saved his life and hands tipped with nails of static whizzed past his face.

Marcus cursed and grabbed a chair to throw at the thing that had fallen against the window. It was already rising to launch itself at him when the chair hit, the impact flinging the man back through the window.

“What the hell?” Anna yelled.

“That wasn’t…” Marcus started to say before he saw the things hand still clutching the edge of the window.

Marcus was spared any further need to explain when it lifted itself back up so that its waist was level with the window frame. The chair impact had left an overly large gouge in its face, revealing more seething static beneath the bloodless skin.

Marcus spun left and right trying to find something bigger to throw at the thing before it could finish climbing back in the window, but his mind was freezing up. 

He wasn’t built for violence.

Not like this.

A baseball bat flew past him, smashing into the creatures face and sending it toppling backwards for a four story fall.

Turning Marcus found an equally freaked out Anna who’d clearly just hurled the closest thing she had at hand.

“We need to get out of here now,” she said and together they ran, though Marcus knew, there wasn’t anywhere left to run to.

It wasn’t everyday that Azma had a cadre of highly skilled and impossibly well armed mercenaries volunteer to enter her service. That was more of a monthly occurrence really.

“When you say you’re willing to kill quite a lot of people to help me achieve my goals, whom did you have in mind?” she asked.

“We’re thinking to start with the Consortium fleet that’s in orbit, and then the one that’s supposed to be inbound to detonate the sun,” Hailey said. “Once those obstacles have been removed, there’s kind of a long laundry list of Senior Executives who need to go down before the Consortium gives up on this world. And of course the inevitable competitors who decide there’s a market opportunity to exploit here.”

“Of course,” Azma said. “And you’re fee for this will be?”

“Dungeon loot rules,” Hailey said.

Azma tried to parse that. She got the general gist of it from context but the particulars were potentially rather important in cases like this.

“Please be more specific,” Azma said.

“All items of value obtained during a mission are placed into a common pool,” Hailey said. “Anyone who wants a particular piece can cast a lot on it as ‘Need’ or ‘Greed’. Any ‘Need’ lot beats any ‘Greed’ lot, highest roll gets the item.”

“And this would be for?”

“The fleet,” Hailey said. “If we take down a ship, we’ll lot for the pieces of it, and for the ship as a whole I guess. Same with anything the Senior Executives have.”

Azma let a bemused smile cross her lips. They’d been a cute distraction, but the thought of eight [Adventurers] however well geared and highly leveled taking on the might of even the local fleet was laughable. And that was discounting the additional problems the [Hungry Shadow] posed.

This ‘Hailey’ had been singularly helpful according to Penswell though, and she knew about Durance Group, so Azma couldn’t very well let them go.

Had Penswell sent them to her so that Azma would eliminate them? That seemed very out of character for Penswell, but it warranted a lengthy ten seconds of consideration, while Azma chewed on a particularly succulent piece of the [Golden Boar Steak].

“You might want to mention the special compensation we’d be providing to her,” Mellisandra said. She wasn’t dining, but was sampling the wine that was served along with the food. Azma knew nothing of the wine’s vintage, but was perfectly certain that Ryschild had selected something appropriate.

“Special compensation?” Azma asked without letting too much weariness enter her voice. 

Mercenaries had sadly predictable ideas about what motivated people, and Azma dreaded talk of how the items which could be liquidated for cash would be dispersed. She’d seen a hundred different schemes for compensation structures that somehow always favored the ones who created them.

“We need armor and weapons,” Hailey said. “We enjoy things like spaceships and real estate. Those material things are what drive us to do this. Well, that and basic survival, but survival has too many other options to be entirely relevant here. You, however, are playing a different game than we are and so you have different concerns, and needs, and desires.”

It wasn’t a particularly brilliant deduction, but it did offer the promise that these [Adventurers] might understand the value of something beyond a sharp blade and a bag of gold.

“And what do you have that might address those concerns?” Azma asked, a worm of curiosity nibbling away at her despite the certainty that only disappointment awaited her.

“It’s not what we have now, it’s what we will have,” Hailey said. “Information. As the [Supreme Commander], there’s nothing you didn’t have access to for the fleet we’re facing presently but once they’re cleared away and we move onto the incoming star destroying fleet, we’ll be interacting with people and systems which are outside your sphere of control.”

“Go on,” Azma said, though she could see where Hailey’s offer was leading.

“When we tear through them, there will be files and reports and all sorts of intelligence,” Hailey said. “If you’re the [Quest Giver], then we can guarantee those documents will be returned to you. Returned unopened specifically.”

Azma stopped chewing for a second.

That was a dangerously insightful offer. Her greatest need was information, and information which no one else was privy to was  what she build her deadliest weapons out of.

But everything had a price.

“You will expect something in return, a reward for your quest,” she said. She wasn’t unsure of that, but she did wonder if they would value what they offered properly.

“Of course,” Hailey said. “A title is traditional. And for a quest chain like this one, a special uniform, dyeable to be clear, is pretty much a requirement.”

“A title? And a uniform?” Azma knew [Adventurers] were mad in a general sense. New manifestations of it though were still able to surprise her.

“A dyeable uniform,” Damnazon said, tapping the rainbow splattered breastplate she wore with pride.

“That’s not the real contribution you’ll be making though,” Hailey said.

“And what would my real contribution be?” Azma asked.

“The quests!” Hailey said.

“Explain please,” Azma said, though she was starting to see what the [Adventurers] meant by ‘working for her’.

“You understand the Consortium far better than any of us do. You know every capability of the fleet overhead and you have deep knowledge about the working of the rest of the Consortium’s operations and capabilities,” Hailey said. “You are also a strategic and tactical genius. There is no one better to create the plan for dismantling the Consortium step-by-step.”

It was a lovely sentiment, if a completely impractical one.

Azma was having a good day though, and if she wasn’t go to be kidnapped, she might at least entertain herself with the daydream that the [Adventurers] might be able to make good on their claims.

“What you ask is a tall order,” Azma said.

“Is it?” Hailey said. “Let’s consider some things; the last time we tried to assault the fleet, you were in command of it. And we lost. But why was that?”

“Because you were venturing onto unfamiliar terrain against a foe who expected your arrival and knew your capabilities. In general at least,” Azma said. “It comes as no surprise I’m sure that you were baited into that assault so that you would reveal more of your capabilities, and so that we could gain some live specimens to probe deeper.”

“Yeah, that was part of the lore,” Hailey said. “Though, I’m impressed you up the time table on that. From the initial outline it didn’t sound like those raids would ready for another half year at least.”

“Lore?” Azma asked.

“I’m not what you might expect,” Hailey said, “I’m more alien to this world than you are.”

“And that means?”

“On my homeworld, we have a game, a work of fiction which exactly mirrors everything here. This world. All of the magic in it. All of the monster. All of the people. Even you.”

Azma drew in a slow breath and considered the idea. It was unlikely, but not impossible. There were all sorts of scrying and remote viewing devices, and more worlds, and overlapping branches of time, and layers of reality than even the Consortium could catalog. That one of them might have developed a technology which allowed them to monitor other worlds on other planes was virtually a given. That they would make a game out of the scenes they perceived was unexpected but it did fit with the [Adventurers] general mindset.

“And you know me from this game?” Azma asked.

“You had just stepped onto the scene in the game when the [World Shift] event happened,” Hailey said. “And that person wasn’t you. Not the full you, as you really are. She was a villainous adversary with terrifying troops and plans-within-plans, but she lacked your full depth. From my point of view, she’s a rumor about you. Something that might be true, and perhaps sketches the general shape of who you are, but can’t be taken as truly representative of the current you.”

“I’m curious that you would work with someone you describe as ‘villainous’, or do you believe that I have changed? Perhaps as a result of something you’ve done?” Azma asked.

“Not at all,” Hailey said “I don’t think you’ve changed. I don’t think you should have to.”

“There are more than a few corpses who would disagree with you,” Azma said.

“Except they can’t because they’re dead, and good riddance,” Hailey said, “I know what the Consortium types you’ve had to deal with are like, They’re in our fiction too. And we have plenty of people like this in real life too. Spacing is too good for most of them. What you did was a service to everyone.”

Those words should have rolled off Azma. She’d heard empty flattery countless times before.

Except this didn’t sound empty.

Or slavishly worshipful.

Hailey sung Azma’s praises as though she were simply stating basic facts. Facts that Hailey was unashamed to approve of.

Wheels and schemes danced in Azma’s head as her daydreams took on their usual sharp and purposeful edges.

“So you’re idea is to have me design the plan for the conquest of the Consortium’s local fleet as a series of ‘quests’, utilizing my knowledge of the fleet’s capabilities to enhance your chance of success?” Azma asked.

“The local fleet first, then the rest, yes,” Hailey said. “By breaking it down into individual quests, we can be sure that the tasks are manageable ones. You can evaluate our performance and tweak the plans for the subsequent missions based on that, and on the resistance we encounter.”

The idea of sending a perfectly expendable team up to bother the [Hungry Shadow] wasn’t unappealing, though it did come with its own risks.

“If any of you should be corrupted, the others will have to destroy them. Utterly,” Azma said, already considering how they would be able to quarantine the [Adventurers] from making contact with anyone after the first time they encountered the [Hungry Shadows] troops.

“That won’t be a problem,” Hailey said.

“We’re immune,” Damnazon said.

“Immune?” Azma asked. “How do you know?”

“It turns out all [Adventurers] are now. One of us unlocked it and the world kind of rolled it out to the rest of us,” Hailey said.

“How can you be sure of that?” Azma asked. It was far too late to run if they were wrong, but the temptation was still there.

“Because she was the one who made it a [Formless Hunger] in the first place and then fought it to a standstill until it had to change into a [Hungry Shadow] to escape her.”

Azma. Cool, ultimately collected, unflappable Azma gaped.

“I’m sorry. What did you just say?”

“One of my friends was on the [High Beyond] before your forces attacked it,” Hailey said. “She was the one who tore a piece off it after it ate [Sky’s Edge]. That was what turned it from nothing, to the [Formless Hunger]. It came back for a rematch in the [Ruins of Heaven’s Grave] and she fought it there again. This time she had a god soul to work with. The [Hungry Shadow] that left that fight didn’t really come out as the winner. Right now she’s working on putting together round three, and I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about the [Hungry Shadow] or anything like it after that.”

Hailey could have been lying. She had to be lying. It wasn’t possible to simple beat up a Transcendental Entity.

But something had.

Something, no, someone had changed it.

Made it into something more real.

Azma’s mind spun. Galaxies whirled within her. New constellations formed. From infinite possibilities new ideas, new schemes, new tapestries of interwoven plans came together.

The [Adventurers] could withstand the [Hungry Shadow].

The fleet was no longer guarded by forces she was directing.

Only near mindless drones remained.

And the [Adventurers]? What could she do with eight of them? Take back the fleet? Impossible. Or impossible for anyone else? Could she do it? If she had more resources?

“That changes the situation significantly,” Azma said. “It would change still further if you could convince another party, or better two or three, to join you in this endeavor though.”

It was Hailey’s turn to look perplexed.

And then gasp in embarrassment.

“Oh! I’m so sorry. I didn’t really explain. The last time we assaulted the fleet, it was out of pride and a sense of duty to the world. And that works for a lot of us. A lot of [Adventurers] like to play the part of being a hero. But that differs. What units us all, across every level, and every game is that if you give something good enough loot, we will fall on it like a pack of starving wolves and grind down any problems we face until they’re dust.”

Hailey paused, checking in to make sure Azma was following her.

“I’m not asking you to be a [Quest Giver] for the eight of us in the room,” Hailey said. “I’m asking you to plan a strategy for all of us. All the [Adventurers]. No one is going to want to miss getting a piece of this.”