An adventurer traveling to a dead city was about as unusual as a businessman traveling to a Starbucks. There might be something interesting to it, but it happened so often most people barely paid it any attention. Most dead cities, however, did not have what was likely to be the ghost of a long deceased deity lingering in them. 

Or at least Tessa hoped with all her embroidered cotton heart that the dead deity was a ghost. The alternative range through variety of horrifying and deadly alternatives from Still-Alive-And-Hungry-for-Souls to Aberration-Which-Warps-the-Fabric-of-Reality.  The latter possibility particularly worried her since it might possibly explain how her two worlds have become cojoined.

“Is this a good time for you to leave us?” Cammie Anne Do asked. She and her party had returned from a water supply run and looked ready to settle in for some down time.

“No. It’s a terrible one,” Tessa said. “We still have a ridiculous amount of the dungeon unexplored, we’re going to see respawns in several of the rooms that we went through, and then there’s the vampires!”

She raised her voice for the last point to make it clear to the members of Vixali’s coterie that she knew they were still lurking nearby.

“The good news is that we have a simple solution if any of those get out of hand. Just give Darren a call.”

“Darren?” Cammie asked.

“The [Servant of Fire],” Tessa said. “He can basically teleport through rock and he said he’d keep an eye out for us.”

It was a lie. Darren was still reasonably well disposed towards Alice and Pillowcase, but he didn’t know any of the other adventurers or townsfolk. He also couldn’t teleport through rock, at least as far as Tessa knew, and was more concerned with ensuring the Consortium couldn’t recapture him with the same trick their agent had used the first time.

Darren wasn’t going to come and save anyone. If Tessa’s guess was correct, they’re next interaction would probably involve saving him again as his presence was sure to act as a lighting rod for the Consortium’s return strike.

It was a lie but the vampire’s didn’t know that. Tessa prayed that would remain true. 

“How do we get in touch with Darren if something comes up?” Cammie asked on a private channel no one but the two of them could hear.

“You can’t,” Tessa said, replying on the same channel. “He’s not looking out for anybody. The idea of him just makes for a threat the vamps can’t ignore. Lava would sort of permanently ruining their aesthetic.”

“We can’t hold them back if that doesn’t work,” Cammie said, her words short short and tight.

“I know, but even if the seven people on my team were here, we wouldn’t be able to stand against all of the vampires if they were serious. Not yet anyways.”

“Why not stay here and level up on the respawns then?” Cammie asked.

“Well, first, the stuff here is a little low  at this point to be efficient for us to xp on,” Tessa said. “Second, and more importantly, getting the [Heart Fire] back and not letting it fall into the Consortium’s hands is critical. If we lose those, our best chance to stand against them is gone.”

“That makes sense, but it’s just a quick trip to the [Ruins of Sky’s Edge],” Cammie said. “You said you’d be gone a lot longer than that.”

Tessa noticed the weird sound in Cammie’s voice when she said “the [Ruins of Sky’s Edge]”. That hadn’t been the name of the area before, but it was an accurate description of its current state.

Tessa chewed on the idea and turned it over, trying to decipher why some of the words and phrases they used felt like there was more too them. With the mathematical precision of a Consortium [Artifax], she snipped that thread of curiosity though. She had several more important missions, and getting distracted by things that were letting frightening was going to get people killed through her negligence.

“We need to go past [Sky’s Edge],” Tessa said. “You all heard the lead vampire talk about meeting the [Lord of Storms]. We need to make contact with them before the Consortium does.”

“I heard that, but I thought it was obviously a trap,” Cammie said. “I mean even if the vamp was telling the truth, sending someone to poke a god seems like a great method getting them killed or erased from existence entirely.”

“That thought had occurred to me too,” Tessa said. “But we’ve still got to go. Even if he was meant to be the end boss for the whole expansion, if we can get him to join our side, even temporarily, we can make a real dent in the Consortium’s forces and maybe even seal them out of the [Fallen Kingdoms] entirely.”

“High risk, high reward? Can we play like that anymore?” Cammie asked. “I mean we can die here, and we can die for real here. Shouldn’t we be finding someplace safer we can get to?”

“I don’t think so,” Tessa said. “I could be wrong, disastrously wrong, so I’m not asking anyone to follow me who feels differently,  but trying to hide from the world hasn’t help us yet. [Sky’s Edge] was supposed to be a safe zone and look what happened to it.”

“Yeah, it was a wreck even before you showed up with Darren. We couldn’t begin to defend it for real. All we did was buy a little time against their advance scouting forces,” Cammie said. “So, what can we do now? How can my team help?”

“Ignore the vampires, act like you’re certain they’re not a threat so they buy into the threat of Darren. Don’t let the townsfolk wander into unprotected territory though. Even if Vixali isn’t interested in provoking us into a Return of the Lava Monster, individual vampires may decide that they might be able to get away with a little opportunistic feeding. Making sure everyone keeps their distance will keep everything a lot less murdery. I think. I hope.”

“That should be pretty easy,” Cammie said. “The townsfolk don’t have any interest in going anywhere near the vampires. Heck they don’t want to go anywhere without us. It’s like this whole thing is one neverending Escort Quest.”

“Ugh. That’s a got to a be a layer of hell somewhere,” Tessa said. “I suppose you can get a break if you take turns hunting for the respawning monsters that are level appropriate for the teams. I know the [Gloom Drinkers] at the entrance are pretty low level.”

“That’s good, cause we have some players who are still level 1, so they can’t handle anything more than what a townsperson could,” Cammie said.

“Might be good to have mix in a higher level adventurer with them,” Tessa said. “I know we’re all feeble lowbies here, but even a few levels really adds to your strength so a level 5 can make a big difference in a party of level 1s.”

“It’ll make for slower xps, but I don’t think the lowbies will mind it in exchange for having the extra safety net,” Cammie said. “The rest of us can scout out a bit further and see if there’s any other mobs we can handle. It’s nice that the respawns aren’t super fast so we’re not in danger of getting overwhelmed, but we’ll run out of mobs to fight before people are done leveling on them pretty quick I think.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Tessa said. “Be careful though. We’ve run into some nasty things in here. Including stuff with mechanics you’d usually find in much higher level content.”

“Isn’t it weird that things here even have mechanics?” Cammie asked. “I mean this isn’t the game. Things here act like they’re real. Like those vampires. In the game they never would have talked to us. They wouldn’t have been able to. So why are there ‘boss monsters’, and especially ones who have some kind of predictable routines that we have to account for?”

“I wish I knew the answer to that,” Tessa said. “The code monkey in me would love to know if there is some kind of underlying logic to all this or if it’s really as messy and chaotic as it appears to be. I know this looks like [Broken Horizons] but there’s details filled in the game didn’t have that might make it all hang together? Boss monsters for example are just ones who were strong enough to attract a following and gain extra power and skills from it. And the ‘mechanics’ we saw were mostly a matter of the boss having a set of abilities with a cool down on their reuse. The worst one we fought tried to use their abilities as good as it could, but it wasn’t smart enough to break out of the cycle of throwing things at us as they became available.”

“It’s scary to think of fighting something that is smart enough to use its abilities well,” Cammie said. “Like those vampires.”

“Alice and I fought an actual person down in the [Sunless Deeps],” Tessa said. “He wasn’t too high level, but the Consortium had given him some special tricks and he’d made a lot of henchmen. He was theoretically smart, but he underestimated us which is the kind of stupid mistake anyone can make.”

“How did you beat him?” Cammie asked.

“He thought his own binding spell was enough to hold us, but it wasn’t. We let him go on and on for a while, monologing about how he’d sold the [Fallen Kingdoms] out to the Consortium. Then Alice ate him.”

“What?”

“He deserved it,” Tessa said. “And that was the only option for freeing Darren too, so it was kind of perk that the guy was an evil jerk. That said though, I think it was important that we talked with him first. It’s really tempting to kill all of the monsters we run into in order to feel safe but if they’re ‘people’ enough that we can communicate with them then we really have to try to. We need more allies and the Consortium is everyone’s enemy.”

“True but we’re still pretty low level,” Cammie said. “I’m not sure we can handle all of the things in here.”

“If you run into anything too bad, pull back,” Tessa said. “My team doesn’t have that many levels yet, but if you run into something overleveled and we all go out as a full raid team then we may be able to get through it. Hopefully.”

Cammie was silent for a moment.

“How do you do it?” she asked at last. “Were you a soldier or something in the real world?”

“No,” Tessa said, the restrained desperation in Cammie’s mental voice coming as a complete surprise. Cammie had seemed so confident and laid back that Tessa had assumed she’d had some combat experience in the real world. “I was just a programmer. I never served anywhere.”

“Oh,” Cammie said with a note of puzzlement. “Wait, do you see the code or something then? Can you hack the system?”

“I don’t have Matrix-vision or anything like that. I’m not ‘The One’, or anybody special at all.”

“Are you just naturally this fearless then?”

Tessa stifled a chuckle. 

“I am definitely not fearless,” she said. “This stuff is terrifying.”

“But you’re still doing things,” Cammie said. “You’re risking death again and you’ve risked it before. I mean, some of us have gone out there and some are pretending that the stuff we’re fighting is no big deal, but I don’t think anyone really wants to be doing this. Not once we heard that people are getting eaten by the [Hounds of Fate]. More than before people are pulling back, but it’s like nothing stops you.”

“Ask Lost Alice about that and she’ll explain, in detail if you want, why I probably should be stopped,” Tessa said. “The thing is though? I’m not doing this stuff because I’m brave. All the things I’ve done? It’s all been because my team needed me to. I can’t be brave for myself very easily, but being brave for them? For the people who need me? That’s a lot easier somehow.”

Tessa earned her leadership role the old fashioned way. Not through trial by combat. Not through bribery and extortion. No, this was the oldest, most primal path to leadership. 

She didn’t say no fast enough when no one else wanted it.

She couldn’t blame the townsfolk of [Sky’s Edge] for not wanting the job. Trying to keep a group of adventurers under control was similar to trying to keep a forest fire under control with shot glass full of water. 

That the other adventurers hadn’t stepped forward either wasn’t a surprise either. It loot was on the table people might be motivated to state their opinions, but when it came to dealing with a horde of over leveled undead, letting someone else handle it seemed like a fine idea apparently.

Also, for a lot of them, their first exposure to Pillowcase had been seeing her riding a gigantic serpent of lava, or hearing tales of it second hand. It wasn’t as impossible as it sounded. Darren was a pretty chill guy for a creature of lava the size of a tall building, and she and Lost Alice had done him a solid favor. 

As a “monster”, Darren seemed to be outside the telepathic network which mirrored the game’s communication system, but Tessa did want to touch base with him before too much time passed. All she knew was that after he’d incinerated the Consortium’s troops and burned [Sky’s Edge] to the ground, he’d returned back to the unfinished dungeon in the [Sunless Deeps] to begin fortifying it as a proper refuge against another one of their incursions.

“We shall take our leave of you now,” Vixali said. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you all, and I’m sure we look forward to our next encounter.”

Tessa suspected the Vampire Queen meant her words literally, but circumstance and her demeanor gave each one a sinister turn.

“Let’s hope our next encounter is under more pleasant conditions than this one,” Lost Alice said. Tessa marveled at how even so simple a phrase could carry menacing connotations. Was it a threat to Vixali not to allow her vampires to appear before them so hungry and riled up again? Was it a wish that the next encounter would see the adventurers in a position to harvest the vampire’s oh-so-valuable body parts? Or was it a genuine expression meant to convey exactly what the words sounded like they were meant to convey? As near as Tessa could tell the answer was “yes, all of the above”.

Vixali didn’t seem distressed by the layered meanings of the response. Intrigued, or perhaps even appreciative, was a better description and with an enigmatic smile of her own, turned and took her coterie away with her.

“Well that was exciting,” Rip said. She had her bow in her hands and an arrow waiting to be knocked. Beside her Matt was not-very-casually, passing his staff from one hand to the other.

“Oh that’s just round 1,” Lisa said, her voice distinctly different from Lost Alice’s, at least to Tessa’s ears.

“They’ll be back?” Matt asked.

“They’re not really leaving,” Lisa said.

“They’re invisible? Or like turned to mist?” Rip asked.

“No,” Tessa said, drawing on Pillowcase’s knowledge. “They’re senses are good enough that they can move away pretty far and still know exactly what we’re doing.”

“Should we be talking out loud then?” Rip asked.

“Yeah, we should,” Lisa said. “Wouldn’t them to forget that some of us have senses that are just as good as theirs so we can hear and smell them even as they try to crawl up onto the ceiling and wait in the corridors we might need to use.”

Lisa wasn’t at all subtle and Tessa caught a few distant a muffled curses along with the sound of the vampires moving farther off.

“We should talk privately too though,” she said on the team channel so that only their immediate party could hear it.

Tessa checked and found that Starchild, Lady Midnight and Obby were still partied up with them though the three were off helping the townsfolk get settled in.

“We can join you for a group discussion if you want,” Lady Midnight said. “People need to gather water and some of those edible mushrooms so we’re guarding the villagers as they collect the stuff they need for their families.”

“Oh! Have you found any more monsters?” Rip asked.

“None yet,” Obby said. “It looks like the place isn’t respawning while we’re here. If it does though we don’t want to learn that by losing any of the villagers.”

“Escort quests are so fun,” Pete, Starchild’s player, said. Tessa thought she could recognize his voice fairly easily too. 

It was strange because the distinction between Pillowcase’s voice and her own had faded. It wasn’t that Pillowcase was gone. Tessa could still feel the memories of her time as a Consortium Automata. 

She could even talk to herself with the inflection and artificial resonance of her [Clothwork] body if it helped.

It was the sense of “otherness” which had diminished in the wake of the long and losing battle in the [Sunless Deeps]. It was as though the fight had pushed her so far the line between “Tessa’s knowledge” and “Pillowcase’s skill” had been erased and without that, she was able to see that both women we different sides of who she truly was.

But she still thought of herself as “Tessa”, so maybe that process wasn’t quite as complete as it could be? Whatever the case was, she felt more comfortable in her own skin, even if fabric rather than human skin that her body was wrapped in.

“Do you need any help?” Rip asked, addressing Pete but sending the question on the Alliance channel all of the adventurers in the area were a part of.

“I think we’re good,” Cammie Anne Do said. “My teams was talking about doing a sweep to see if we have any other interesting neighbors like the vampires. If you think that’s ok?”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Tessa said. “Stay in contact though. If there are trap areas those could take out a team in a blink. Oh, and let’s have a team stand guard around the [Heart Fire]. As long as there’s any chance we might die in here, we need to keep that operational and attuned to our side.”

“Do we know if the [Heart Fire] in [Sky’s Edge] survived?” Cammie asked.

“Pretty sure it’s toast,” Lisa said. “The Consortium couldn’t use them last time they invaded, but even if that’s as true here as it was in the game, we can’t be sure they haven’t figured out how to take them over in the interim.”

“Does anyone know how to rebuild them?” Matt asked.

“The devs?” Lisa said. “I don’t remember the lore on who set them up originally.”

“They were a last gift from the gods before the [Fallen Kingdoms] fell wasn’t it?” Tessa said, searching her human memories since Pillowcase’s were contained only tactical info on the [Fallen Kingdoms] and were rather lacking in historical context.

“Some existed before [The Fall],” Obby said. “During [The Fall] though is when most of the fires were lit, which kind of makes sense given that fires are all sparks of divine power.”

“So, we need a god to rebuild them?” Matt asked.

“Not exactly,” Obby said. “The [Heart Fire Braziers] were constructed by mortals to allow clear access to the divine spark. In theory if we had the right skills capped out, and the proper materials, we could build one. We’d just need a divine spark to put inside it.”

“Those don’t sound like they’re easy to come by,” Rip said.

“I mean, if you can call up a god, it’s probably pretty simple,” Obby said. “In this case we probably wouldn’t even need that though.”

“Why?” Tessa asked, wondering how deep of a Lore Nerd Obby was.

“The [Heart Fire Brazier] in [Sky’s Edge] may have been melted by the [Servant of Fire] but even a big old guy like that can’t exactly burn a spark of divine fire out right?” Obby said. “The spark’s probably still there. All we’d need to do is rebuild the brazier to hold it again. You know, if we were paragon tier craftsman and had the rarest of building materials to work with.”

Lisa laughed.

“Feel like grinding up your crafting skills in a cave with a pile of scraps?” she asked.

“Sure, I’ll get right on that,” Obby said with a laugh to match Lisa’s.

“Do you think the Consortium knows that the spark is still there?” Rip asked.

Tessa considered that for a moment. [Heart Fires] weren’t part of the Consortium’s standard tool kit (since the metaphysics which allowed them to function in the [Fallen Kingdoms] wasn’t common across other realm), but they were aware of the [Heart Fires] existence in general.

“It’s possible they don’t know about it yet,” Tessa said, testing the validity of the idea as she spoke the words. “They have sensors that can pick up on things like that, and they know to look for things like the [Heart Fires] but with the strike force eliminated, they may not have been able to send any of the scan data back to the fleet.”

“They wouldn’t have had enough bandwidth?” Rip asked.

“Not for a full local scan,” Tessa said. “Whether their carrier did a remote scan is a separate question.”

“I don’t think they would have,” Matt said. “With..uh…Darren’s arrival they should have returned to their carrier.”

“They were up in space though weren’t they?” Rip asked.

“Yeah, but they’re used to dealing with planetary defenses that can blow up things like the moon,” Matt said. “It’s just not smart to mess around when something shows up you weren’t expecting and it wipers out all of your forces in about two seconds.”

“That’s fair,” Rip said. “But it also means they might come back and get the spark then right?”

“Not ‘might’. Will. They’ll definitely be sending another force. The only question is when and what it’ll be composed of.” Tessa said.

“They’ll be able to read that Darren is gone, right?” Lisa asked.

“They’ll be able to tell that their sensors aren’t picking him up,” Tessa said. “Depending on who they have commanding this invasion that will either mean that they send a strike force capable of defeating two of him or they send one capable of capturing him.”

“Assuming they have that kind of force left,” Lisa said. “I’ve heard from my friend Cease All. She was part of the counter raid they did. It sounds like the raid teams did a lot of damage and the Consortium forces who are on the ground zones are fortifying the cities they’ve already taken.”

“Huh, that’s odd.” Tessa said. “Most Consortium [Commanders] would have ordered another attack. They tend to have really fragile egos and not a lot of patience for protracted engagements. When they come into a world like this they want to strip mine it as fast as they can, even if it means burning everything to cinder and packing up the ashes to take home as their loot.”

“So, are we happy that this one’s not doing that?” Rip asked.

“Maybe?” Tessa said. “Patient and measured is great in an ally. In a foe it means they’re not going to make a lot of obvious and easy to exploit mistakes.”

“But they still can make mistakes,” Matt said. “Like giving us time to recruit allies.”

“Yeah, uh, nice work with the stuff in the [Sunless Deeps],” Rip said. “And thanks for coming back for us.”

“In hindsight I should have taken you with me,” Tessa said, offering Lisa a nod of recognition. “If Alice hadn’t jumped in after me, I would have been a ghost a few minutes in. I think together we would have had a much better chance.”

“Thank you,” Lisa said on a private channel between the two of them.

“So does that mean you’ll take us along when we go to talk with out next recruit?” Rip asked.

“Yeah, about that, anyone think going to visit a dead god is a good idea?” Tessa asked.

“Nope.”

“Probably not.”

“Definitely going to get us killed.”

“But we’re going to do it anyways, right?” Tessa asked.

“Yep.”

“Of course.”

“Like you’ve even got to ask?”

Interlude – Whiteweather

As with all things, action could only be taken at the proper time if success was to be ensured. Whiteweather gazed at the report on Azma’s fleet deployments and could almost feel numbers winding around her neck. The thought of pulling on that noose gave him a joy few other things could.

He was going to destroy her. It was for the good of the Consortium, of course, but primarily it was because he simply couldn’t tolerate her anymore. She had what he deserved.

“Sir, I have the analysis you requested from the New Expansions Analytics team,” one of Whiteweather’s underlings said.

Whiteweather took the report and scanned to the bottom line. The boys in Analytics liked to ramble on, when all that mattered was the final number to answer the question “had the expense of Azma’s strategy proven that she was a liability to the Consortium yet”.

The answer to the question was obvious and inarguable.

But the boys in Analytics got it wrong.

“Task Force Commander Azma is operating within acceptable expense parameters when both projected and immediate returns are weighed against the resources which have been expended and the one which are currently engaged.”

In short, Azma was doing a good job.

Whiteweather shot his underling. That would go against his bottom line but he wasn’t the one waging a prestigious campaign which had absorbed funding from the next five largest initiatives in their division, so he had more leeway for waste.

Whiteweather flipped back to the beginning of the report.

The bottomline was meaningless. A useless statistic used by the cheap under performers to hide their negligence until it was too late to do anything about it.

The breakdown of the overall project to open the new market was divided into broad areas of accountability. From transportation rates, to supple costs, to administrative fees, the overall cost of the war effort (Whiteweather didn’t bother trying to label it as anything other than what it was, one of the few traits he shared with Azma) was categorized into neat buckets to allow for consistent evaluation between wildly different operations.

Whiteweather passed by the top level summaries. Obviously they were distractions, having barely any more data than the bottom line cost. No, he was going to dig into the costs item-by-iterm and determine just where Azma was failing.

At his request, his terminal began loading the full itemized report of Azma’s little vanity project. 

Whiteweather waited.

He could have had the original report delivered digitally. The paper version was an affectation meant to display his thoroughness. Also it showed the underlings where they ranked.

A scrubber drone was demonstrating that reality as well by cleaning up the remains of the one who’d brought in the initial report.

Whiteweather smiled. The scrubber drones had it right. They did they job, gave no backtalk and never asked for recognition or praise they didn’t merit.

Unlike Azma. 

She’d demanded recognition for everything she did. 

And when she didn’t get it, people “mysteriously” tended to turn up dead.

Which was why Whiteweather wasn’t going to go against her directly.

He could.

He was smart enough, and vital to the Consortium. She couldn’t touch him.

But still direct action was wasteful, even if it posed no danger at all to him. 

No danger whatsoever.

Whiteweather scanned his office for bugs and found only the expected oversight devices Upper Management installed in every critical employees office.

Azma didn’t have him bugged.

She didn’t even know he was building a case against her.

Why was the report taking so long though?

Did she have the data stream monitored?

Whiteweather scrambled for the cancel button but saw that the report was simply still downloading.

The item by item breakdown couldn’t be that large could it?

Fifteen minutes later he discovered that, yes, it both could be and was.

He returned to the top level breakdowns. The item-by-item review was a trap. Too easy to hide critical information in the sea of data. You needed a broad perspective to catch the errors Azma was making. A perspective only someone like Whiteweather could have.

He was going to catch her.

And he was going to destroy her.

And she would never see it coming.

He was sure.

Interlude – The Nightmare Queen

There was an existential threat to the realm. A force from outside the boundaries of the world’s reality was making war upon the [Fallen Kingdoms]. The Nightmare Queen was unhappy with that, and, usually, things she was unhappy with tended to disappear, eaten by hungry shadows and excreted into the slime pools in the lowest depths of the [Sunless Deeps] if they were very very luck. Despite the Nightmare Queen’s displeasure though, the [Consortium of Pain’s] forces were able to proceed with their conquest without restraint.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t stop them.

The moment the Consortium’s ships had passed into the arcanosphere which defined her universe, they fell within the Nightmare Queen’s dominion.

It was both her right and her responsibility to remove such parasites but she stayed her hand in the face of the ever more grave disruptions the Consortium’s forces wrought in the battles.

She wasn’t afraid. Not of the Consortium at least. Her Empress however had made a passing comment about allowing events to play out without interference, and so she took no action, a passing comment from the True Empress being essentially a mandate written into the structure of the cosmos.

“Hey, how are things going here?” Jin asked, appearing in the Nightmare Queen’s throne room with only an after image of the pomp and ceremony which should have accompanied the arrival of any visitor, and especially one as august as her.

“My realm is under assault by forces from without who are even now conspiring with those within the realm to wide the scope of the incursion, my Empress,” the Nightmare Q ueen said.

“How are you holding up though?” Jin asked. She could have taken the Queen’s throne without even a gesture, but she chose instead to wander to the sides of the room where the Nightmare Queen kept souvenirs from other incursions she had dealt with.

The pieces functioned as deeply alien objects d’art, serving to unsettle those who came into her presence as much as they acted as cheerful reminders of the victories she’d won in the past.

“How am I…?” The Nightmare Queen wasn’t sure she could parse that question. She understood the words and the intent, but it was something which had never been asked of her before, not even by herself.

She glanced around the room, as though an answer might be lurking in dark corners of her grand hall. When those proved to be empty, the Nightmare Queen looked inside herself instead.

“I…am well?” she said. 

“Cool,” Jin said, picking up a Klein bottle made of shards of congealed space time.

“Have you come to a decision about this realm?” the Nightmare Queen asked. She could have said “about destroying this realm” but uttering those words would make them too real.

“Not yet,” Jin said. “Everything is still in flux, so its possible all of the worlds involved are still salvageable. That you’re still in good shape is a positive sign, though I’m sad to say it’s not conclusive.”

“Is there anything I can do to be in better shape?” the Nightmare Queen asked. Her own existence wasn’t completely tied to the state of her realm, but if the [Fallen Kingdoms] were lost then what remained of her wouldn’t be the Queen of anything.

“I don’t think so?” Jin said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything that could help, but the instability we’re looking into isn’t in you.”

“Is it something the invaders have done?” the Nightmare Queen asked. She transacted with reality on a deeper level than the inhabitants of her realm. Even the gods, when they’d been alive, couldn’t match her authority over what was and what could not be.

With a thought, she could sense the state of the material world, reads the hearts of those who lived within it, and follow the strands of fate which lead from each action as they split into the variety of outcomes which could occur. The vast depth of her vision showed her one thing clearly though; she was not omniscient.

When her True Empress spoke of the world being unstable, the Nightmare Queen held no doubt that it was true. She could find no instability anywhere she looked, but the effects of one were plain to seen.

More troubling though, was the sense that she herself had changed as well. Perhaps as a result of the attack?

“This goes well beyond anything like the Consortium,” Jin said. “Left to their own devices, they could have made it here, and they might have been able to conquer the realm, assuming you didn’t interfere. Even at their most dire though, they couldn’t inflict the kind of damage that brought us here. I’m not sure even you could, unless things changed drastically.”

The Nightmare Queen felt a chill. She could rewrite all life in the [Fallen Kingdoms]. She could change the fundamental rules of the world if she wished. What sort of destruction could be beyond even her?

Interlude – Hailey MacGilfoyle / Burnt Toast

More experts had been called in to answer the impossible question of “what is going on here”. Hailey didn’t envy any of them.

“You look like you’re waiting for something,” Marcus said. He’d joined her in the support center breakroom, as eager to escape the pointless babble that kept spewing from Agent Limner’s mouth as she was.

“Waiting?” she asked. The only thing she was waiting for was her courage to gather up enough, and she’d thought she’d been hiding that fairly well.

“Yeah, maybe for us all to wake up and this to blow over?” Marcus said. “I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but none of this feels real. Or, no, maybe it feels too real. Like this can’t be happening to us, you know?”

Marcus was Hailey’s manager but that hadn’t kept them from developing a friendship based on mutual appreciation and respect. On Marcus’s part, all he’d had to do was treat her like a person and value the contributions Hailey made to the team, and on hers, Hailey had simply had to be willing to challenge him when the need arose without degrading him. 

“I kept trying to tell myself that too,” Hailey said. “We’re support reps. We’re only important in an imaginary game. We’re nobody really. It would be so nice to believe that, but here we are, and this is all happening.”

“I just wish there was something we could do,” Marcus said. “I mean beside collecting information and coordinating things as much as we can. I know that’s helping, but, I don’t know, it just seems like so little. I mean, we’ve got kids who were playing this game who are honest-to-god risking their lives against evil space aliens.”

Hailey started to reply and caught herself.

Did she want to bring Marcus in on her plan? Did she want to make it that real? What if she decided to back out? Wouldn’t it be easier if no one knew?

“There is something more we can do,” Hailey said, putting her feet on the path she’d chosen before she was consciously aware she’d made her choice at last.

“Talk to the FBI?” Marcus said. “We both tried that and you saw how that worked out.”

“No. Not the FBI. They’re not on the front lines of this,” Hailey said. “But we can be.”

Marcus looked like he was about to make a flippant comment, but he stopped when he saw the look in Hailey’s eyes.

“What do you mean? We can’t use our GM accounts for anything. We saw what happened. It was bad.”

“That’s not our only option. Or it’s not my only option.”

“You can’t login into your old account though. We locked those out.”

“We did. After we knew what was going on for sure. But we didn’t terminate any accounts that were still logged in.”

“Wait. You were logged into your personal account?” Marcus asked. “You’ve been logged in this whole time?”

“Yeah. This whole time. Just waiting.”

“For what?”

“For her to be ready.”

“Who?”

“The other me,” Hailey said as luminous sparks rose from her hands and she became pure light.

Interlude – Peter Kilkarney

The monitor was off. It was unplugged. It had neither power nor connection to a computer, and yet its  screen still glowed with a soft mother-of-pearl glow.

“They’re both like this,” Peter said, gesturing towards his son’s room.

“Do they have batteries?” Officer Melissa Astra asked.

“No.” Peter wanted to say more, but not screaming was important and he didn’t think he could do both.

“Do you know what time your children disappeared last night?” Officer Beth Smith asked.

“They were here at 11:00,” Peter said. “I checked on them and told them to close up what they were doing before midnight.”

“That’s late for a school night isn’t it?” Smith asked.

“Yeah. They’re normally supposed to be in bed by 10:30. It was launch night though and they’d both been waiting for it for months, so, we made an exception.”

Intellectually, Peter knew the exception wasn’t what had made the difference. He’d seen the videos. He knew story people were passing around. It wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t  Samantha’s or John’s fault. He believe that, on some level, but the knowledge did absolutely nothing to hold back the waves of guilt that poured over him.

“Did your wife see them after that?” Astra asked.

“No, she went to bed early. She was supposed to have an early meeting this morning,” Peter said, running his hand through his hair. For weeks, Krissy had been worried about losing funding for the library. She and Peter had gone over projections and she’s used him as a sounding board for her speech a dozen times. Neither of them had ever imagined that when the day for the budget meeting came it would be the least important thing on anyone’s mind.

“This isn’t a typical missing persons case,” Smith said. “And that’s good and bad.”

The call to the police had been made the instant Krissy and Peter understand that their teenage children weren’t playing a trick on them. It could have gone out hours earlier and been too late though. If what the people online were saying was true, it was already too late when Peter said good night to them.

“Is someone…” Peter wasn’t sure what he wanted to ask. Words refused to lock together into sentences much less complete thoughts. “Is someone fixing this?”

The two officers turned to look at each other as though weighing who was required to answer. When Officer Smith spoke, it was with a shake of her head to cast off the bland party-line they were expected to spout.

“The official story is that all options are being pursued and all available experts are being brought in on it,” Smith said. “I don’t know what kind of experts there are on this kind of thing though. What I can tell you is that we’re going to do everything we can here.”

“How…what can you do?” Peter asked.

“We’re setting up a special channel with the National Runaway Switchboard,” Astra said. “These cases aren’t typical runaway or abduction cases but if the people who are missing are able to make it back we want to make sure we can reunite them with their families no matter where they show up.”

“”That’s good. That sounds really good.”

“We’re also coordinating with the people who are still logged into the game but haven’t been abducted yet,” Smith said. “I don’t have the details but many of them have agreed to pass communications into and out of this game world where the abductees are being taken.”

“The communications will be monitored though,” Astra said. “I guess people still aren’t certain that the people inside the game are actually people.”

“How do we get into that?” Peter’s hand shook as he asked the question. He’d imagined losing his children many times. It seemed like something all parents did. The reality of it though was so alien and unfathomable though.

He’d only been living with it for a couple hours. Or maybe it was six? Or eight?  His time sense had crumbled under stress and nothing seemed quite real, despite the fact that he couldn’t deny that Sam and John were gone.

It was afternoon? It seemed like they should be getting home. Maybe it wasn’t yet time for that yet. Peter couldn’t be sure without checking a clock and couldn’t focus enough to handle that at the moment. 

The house was empty of children a lot these days. Sam and John had activities and school and friends. Somehow that was different though. The silence that had swallowed the house since the morning had weight and substance. It pressed down on him like a mountain and ran sharp edges through him every time he stopped to notice it. 

Smith and Astra shared another conspiratorial glance.

“Technically, we’re supposed to take down your information, including the account and character names that your children were playing,” Smith said. “When we get back to the station we can enter it into the database and then one of the coordinators will reach out to you to setup a special mailbox you can send to.”

“They’ll tell you about message size limites and the frequency you can expect them to be processed in,” Astra said, before looking over at Smith and nodding.

“We’ll do that, but I think you’ll want this too,” Smith said and handed Peter an iPhone with an enchanting mermaid design on its cases.

“What is this?” Peter asked.

“It’s my personal phone,” Smith said. “I’ve got the communication app already installed on it. Check the entry under your name.”

Peter scrolled through a list of “K” family names until he found a joint entry for “Kristina and Peter Kilkarney”.

There was already a message waiting for him from Sam.

“Mom/Dad – John and I are fine. We’re safe and with our guildmates. People are figuring out what happened here and looking for a way home. I don’t know how how quick that’ll be, but we will work it out and get back to you, ok? Just don’t worry. John’s afraid you’re going to be going crazy, but I told him you know the kind of kids you raised. We can handle this, and we’ll see you again soon. I can’t wait to show you the real magic I can do now! Love -Sam”

It was only words, only letters on a screen, but Peter could hear Sam’s voice behind them.

Literally hear her voice.

The tears that rolled down his face were an alloy of joy and wonder.

The world had turned into something it wasn’t supposed to be, and then it had turned into something more than he could have dreamed.

Interlude – The Reverend Gerald Cook

Reverend Gerald Cook, and he required people to use his proper title, waited for the signal that the cameras had started rolling. The key to great fortune was projecting the right image to the masses and an appearance on a well rated cable news show to discuss the inexplicable wave of abductions was the perfect moment to land a mighty fortune indeed.

The key, he knew, wasn’t to fan the fears of the masses. The news would do that just fine on its own. Being part of the fear meant being behind the curve. He needed to be out in front of things. To lead the easily swayed. Especially those with cash they would part with in exchange for offers he would never have to deliver on.

It didn’t occur to Gerry Cook that he might be facing a true apocalypse. The world wasn’t going to end because it hadn’t ever ended before, but it sure was profitable that people thought it was going to.

“On the air in 10…9….8…” one of the techs said.

Gerry waited for the host of the news segment to introduce him and ask his opinion on the “unimaginable tragedy that was taking place”.

“Well, the LORD SAYS…” Gerry began and stopped.

He’d had words to say. He’d had a fiery and sound bite rich speech prepared, all set to grab onto those who were terrified of the events unfolding around them and willing to pay any price for security.

He’d had that but then a massive stroke took it all away. 

It was the subject of much debate later. The perhaps-not-so-Reverend Gerald Cook had began to speak for the All Mighty and had been struck down. Or a man of moderately advanced age, and poor health habits had succumbed to a common medical ailment at a moment of excitement which stressed his body.

In theory there was nothing noteworthy about the stroke, and it offered no actual evidence that a higher power was listening and displeased with Cook’s blasphemy in presuming to speak for the divine. That he wasn’t the only person to attempt to rally people into religious hysteria who suffered permanently debilitating bodily collapses though was a statistically significant anomaly. One which the mathematically inclined silently agreed to overlook unless they were give no other choice.

Interlude – Firemaw

Being a giant dragon with an enormous treasure pile and a home in an active volcano wasn’t quite as wonderful as Firemaw had hoped it would be.

“Is there a mode of address which is pleasing to you?” the representative of the [Consortium of Pain] asked.

Visitors were high on Firemaw’s list of unpleasant aspects of his current him.

In an ideal world, his lair would be tucked away in some lost little plane where only the end of the world could reach him. He guessed that would keep the incoming queue of unwanted trespassers down to a few per day rather than every twenty to thirty minutes as it usually was.

“I am not interested in being addressed,” Firemaw said. “I am however inclined to eat you. You seem to be new. I’m not sure what your species will taste like.”

“If you wish to devour me, the [Consortium of Pain] will offer me freely,” the representative said. “If I am disagreeable, we will send another ambassador of a different species.”

Firemaw blinked. That was not how the banter was supposed to go.

“Why?” he asked. “Why would you do this?”

“The Consortium recognizes your might and value,” the representative said. “We wish to negotiate a mutually equitable arrangement with you to further both of our interests. If the consumption of some of our employees is needed to seal the deal, then that is a price we are willing to pay.”

It was madness. And likely a bluff. So Firemaw ate the representative.

Ten minutes later another one was at the entrance to his lair.

“Was your meal satisfactory?” the new representative asked.

“He was somewhat bland,” Firemaw said.

“I am afraid that is likely true for myself and most of my coworkers,” the representative said. “We could come prepared with flavor enhancers if you would be willing to provide a list of acceptable condiments?”

“I’ve always found fear to be a delicious seasoning,” Firemaw said.

“Oh. I am afraid. So afraid,” the representative said in a sad attempt to mimic genuine terror.

Firemaw ate him anyways, but he tasted even blander than the first one somehow.

Ten minutes later the next representative appeared.

“I believe I may be of better service,” he said. “I am in a constant state of abject terror.”

Firemaw raised an eyebrow. The representatives body was shaking like someone caught in the grip of mortal terror but the whole tenure of his voice and the expression on his face was all wrong.

He ate the representative anyways, the ten minutes of peace was worth it if nothing else, but this one was the worst of the lot. The artificial fear was sour and cloying, a mockery of what made people worth eating in the first place.

“We have refined the recipe further,” the next representative said. “I should be 5% more tasteful than my predecessor.”

“Enough. Enough! Just, what do you want?” Firemaw asked, weary with disappointment.

“Why, to offer you a job of course!” the last representative said.

Interlude – Jenny Hendricks / Ghost Touch

The battle had been a desperate one, and Jenny knew she had no business being part of it. On the screen in front of her, Ghost Touch had her hands on her knees and was busy catching her breath – something which was not part of an animation Jenny had ever seen Ghost Touch do before.

The last fourteen hours had been full of things Jenny hadn’t ever seen before though. The new dungeons had been expected. Sort of. The new range of motion the characters displayed had not been though. And seeing someone on a live stream vanish in a shower of brilliant sparks? That was ridiculous. Real too. She knew that from how everyone else in the game was talking, but still just ridiculous.

“We should probably sit the next one out,” she told Ghost Touch.

“Agreed. That was too damn close,” Ghost Touch responded. Her words scrolling up the screen as she stood back up and looked around the adventurers who’d regrouped at the Astralogos Observatory.

Almost everyone had made it back, but more than a few hadn’t made it back alive. They were the lucky ones though. From the whispers going around, there were a few raid teams still unaccounted for.

Captives. The word haunted every conservation that was going on. Facing death was easy for most of the adventurers. Injuries didn’t hurt that much (supposedly, Jenny assumed there was a lot of bravado going on there) and death just meant you needed to respawn and try again. Unless the Hounds of Fate caught you, but nobody was really afraid of that (Jenny assumed they were all afraid of it but no one wanted to show it).

“Sorry,” Ghost Touch said. “We’ve danced through so many raids now without taking any damage, I forgot how bad new ones can be. Or how much I had to lose if I messed it up.”

“Hey! You did awesome!” Jenny said. “I was slow on the potions, but your dodging was perfect.”

“I had to,” Ghost Touch said. “You deserve to keep the life you have.”

Jenny felt like she could feel the wry grin in Ghost Touch’s words. 

Would living as a ghost in Ghost Touch’s head really be so bad? Maybe not, though Jenny had to admit it was nice to be facing things like Raging Space Janitors with Laser Chainsaws from the other side of a computer screen rather than up close an personal like Ghost Touch had to.

“Jenny…Jenny!” her father called. “You’re not playing that computer game of yours up there are you?”

“No Dad!” Jenny lied. She was supposed to be “sick” and recuperating. She’d set the excuse up the night before to make sure she’d have the whole first full day of the World Shift expansion’s launch free to explore the new zones and be ready for her guild’s raids.

“Get down here then,” her father shouted.

“I’ve got to take care of something here,” she typed to Ghost Touch. “Stay safe till I get back ok?”

“Will do,” Ghost Touch said and added after a second, “be careful with your father. Don’t want him to ban you from your computer.”

“That would suck,” Jenny replied. 

She turned off her monitor and the the backlighting on her keyboard before heading downstairs, knowing that if anyone else looked in and saw any part of the computer turned on they’d think she was wasting electricity, but if everything was dark, they’d assume the computer had to be “off”, thereby preserving her secret.

“Jenny get down here!” her father shouted again.

“Ok, ok!” she said and stomped down the stairs to show her displeasure at the arbitrary summons.

“Did you see this?” her father said gesturing at the TV where some random talking head guy was interviewing a “Dean of Computer Science”.

“Like I watch the news?” Jenny said. “I’m supposed to be resting today right?”

“Well listen,” her father said. “There’s some big thing with those computer games. They just said there’s a dangerous one out there. People are getting kidnapped if they play it or something.”

Jenny tried to hide her flinch. It really should have occurred to her that her parents would find out about what was going on. The whole world seemed to either know or was waking up to it. 

“You don’t play it though do you? The dangerous one? Fallen Angels or some demonic crap like that?” her father asked.

“Fallen Angels? No, I don’t play that.” Jenny retreated into the lie as deeply as she could. It was at least technically true that she did not play a game called “Fallen Angels”. Explaining that he was talking about a game called “Broken Horizons” and that there was nothing demonic about it wasn’t going to be something he could process though, so Jenny chose the path of least stress and stuck top her story.

“Good. Good,” her father said. “You should be careful though. If one of them is bad, they’re probably all bad. I should just take the that thing away to be safe.”

“I don’t play that much Dad,” Jenny said, panic surging through her veins. “And you know I need my computer for school work too.”

“Is everything ok?” the calming words were whispers in her ears, and the concern that came with them did make Jenny feel a bit braver, but also left her questioning her sanity. 

She couldn’t be hearing Ghost Touch. That wasn’t possible. Unless Ghost Touch had died? But then Jenny would have been sucked into the Fallen Kingdoms?

Wouldn’t she? Unless, did she need to be at the screen? Was she too far away? Had Ghost Touch been killed because Jenny wasn’t there for her and now their link was gone?

The thought brought a weird stab of agony into Jenny’s heart. She felt like she’d lost a limb, except the limb was her head. 

“I’m fine!” Ghost Touch said. “What’s wrong though. What’s terrifying you?”

Jenny wasn’t sure how she could answer, but it didn’t matter.

Her father had seen her panic.

“You’re hiding something,” he said, getting up off his couch with narrowed eyes. “Aren’t you?”

“No! I’m just…I’m just not feeling good,” she said.

“I can see that,” her father said. “You should go back to your room. Come on, get up there.”

Jenny’s mind raced in every direction it could. It flew back to her room where she would…what? Pretend to be resting? Could she afford to leave Ghost Touch without her help for that long? But if she tried to play, she would totally be caught, and then Ghost Touch might be without her forever.

Her thoughts raced out her door and down the street. Could she run away? Take her computer with her? It was heavy but…but she could carry it, just not without losing her internet connection.

What if she ran and, when they went out looking for her, she snuck back inside and…maybe she could slot in a USB wifi card? And a UPS. That would let her move the computer without losing her connection. Not that she had the money to get a wifi card or a UPS, but that didn’t stop the idea from screaming out to her as her one best hope.

“Why don’t you go back to laying down,” her father said as he followed her into her bedroom. “I’m just going to take this out for now. You can have it back for your homework once all this nonsense is over.”

Jenny turned, whirling in what felt like slow motion as she saw her father yanking on her computer’s power supply. 

“No…” She got only the smallest word out before sparks of brilliant light began to rise from her skin and her body blazed away.

Interlude – Beijing

It was a committee who acted. No one person was at fault. A Western company was responsible for several thousand disappearances and there had to be a response. Others might question if it was a good response, or even a wise one in the face of no good choices, but those others were not people the committee had to answer to.

At 6:20pm UTC, 2:20am local time in Beijing, “the Great Firewall of China” descended on the connections to Egress Entertainment’s foreign server cluster and their partner company inside the People’s Republic of China was disconnected from the network as well.

Also at 2:20am local time in Beijing, just shy of forty thousand people vanished in showers of brilliant light. 

News of the event was immediately restricted, but videos from hundreds of sources began appearing on foreign video hosting sites minutes thereafter.

At the highest levels of the government liaisons were being made, and the powerful scrambled looking for any options to save face.

On the ground though, over forty thousand Chinese families began the fight to save their loved ones and the world.

Interlude – Beth Myers

The call had come at two in the morning. Beth had finished a twelve hour shift and was less than two hours into a deep and dreamless sleep which she desperately needed. 

But the call had come.

Leslie was more than her best friend. They’d grown up together.since they were two years old. They’d faced the worst that their teenage years had to offer and stayed close as the frictions of adult life and diverging careers had struggled to tear them apart. Beth would jump on a grenade for any member of her squad, or anyone else in the service, well, almost anyone else, but there was no one in the world that she would get out of bed for at 2:00am in the damn morning and drive for three hours through the night for. 

Only for Leslie.

And for Trixie. 

“When’s mommy going to be back?” Trixie asked when, twelve hours later, Aunt Beth had finished reading her “How The Cheetah Got His Spots” for the seventh time. 

“She’s still out saving the world,” Beth said, having no better answer to give. 

It hadn’t been Leslie who’d called. It had been someone who’d never met Leslie in person. Someone who Beth had never met. An online friend of Leslie’s with the most impossible story. And an impossible to deny request.

“Is that gonna be before bed tonight?” Trixie asked.

“I think it’s going to take a bit longer than that munchkin,” Beth said, reaching for another book.

Trixie was quiet and curled up closer to Aunt Beth.

“Its gonna be scary when its dark,” she said. “We should turn the lights on.”

“Oh we will,” Beth said. “But it’s not going to scary at all. I’m going to be here with you, until your Mom gets back, and you know I’m soldier right. So I know all kinds of things to keep you safe.”

“No,” Trixie said. “I’m ok. I’m not scared.”

“Of course not,” Beth said. She’d never had kids of her own. She’d always been comfortable with the idea that Leslie had that taken care of for her. At least until Terry, Leslie’s husband had been killed in a car crash, leaving Leslie a single mother and reliant on pastimes that let her be at home when her daughter needed her.

Sitting down at a computer when Trixie was in bed wasn’t supposed to leave a little girl alone in their apartment with no one to care for her and Beth had violated the hell out of state and local speed limits to ensure that by the time Trixie woke someone was there to take care of her.

“But mommy. She might be scared. If it gets dark.”

“Oh, we’ll leave a light on, but I grew up with your mommy, and you know what secret I know about her?”

“No. What?” Trixie, eager and alert to learn something special about her mother.

“When I was your age? I used to be so scared of the dark I’d cry. I’m not scared anymore though and do you know why?”

“Cause you’re a soldier and you can karate chop bandits!” Trixie said, miming a decent karate chop.

“That I can, but I stopped being scared of the dark a long time before that and it was all because of your mommy.”

“My mommy? Can she chop bandits too?”

“Your mommy? She can do a lot more than that. Your mommy is so strong that it’s the things in the dark who are afraid of her.”

Interlude – Yawlorna

Yawlorna’s life had become a swirling vortex of chaos and confusion and, as a demon, she felt rather put out that she hadn’t been the cause of any of it.

“I think the pit’s finally starting to cool down,” Balegritz said, standing at still glowing edge of the pit to the underworld which Yawlorna’s forces had previously had sealed shut.

“And we are sure no one was injured in the passing of that…whatever that thing was?” Yawlorna asked. She was sitting down. Not in a particularly dignified pose, but it was better than sprawling on the ground or curling up in a corner, so she gave herself points for that. It had been that kind of day, which was saying something given how bad her people’s luck had been over the last few months.

“All present and accounted for,” Balegritz said. “There’s a new hole in the cliff face outside the main gate though, and, uh, it’s not exactly a small one.”

“The lava creature melted a path through the earth rather than simply climbing the cliff? Why?” Yawlorna asked, knowing the answer was likely nothing sensible.

“Maybe it likes digging?” Balegritz said. “It looked like it was long enough to scale the cliff without trying all that hard.”

“And the two who were riding it? The adventurers? Pillowcase and Lost Alice?” Yawlorna had been concerned about them to a small degree, and about what they might lure back to the surface if they returned to a larger degree. In hindsight, she judged that ‘concern’ was far too mild an outlook. Outright terror seemed appropriate, with perhaps a dash of unadulterated panic thrown in for good measure.

“They seem to be doing fine,” Balegritz said.

“That thing melted solid stone with its touch and burrowed through it faster than we can run. What sort of aberrations were those two that they weren’t reduced to cinders?”

“I don’t know if it was the thing’s touch that melted the stone,” Balegritz said. “It seemed to project some kind of field ahead of it.”

“It was made of lava,” Yawlorna said. “Glowing. Hot. Lava.”

“It’s head seemed to be stone though. Maybe that part wasn’t that hot?” Balegritz said.

“That’s…that’s not how heat works!” Yawlorna objected, finding herself on her feet without noticing she’d stood up. Before she did anything rash on the poor, undeserving Balegritz, she took a calming breath and composed herself. “Traveling through melting rock should have raised any number of fatal issues. Convection not being the least of them.”

“It…didn’t?” Balegritz offered. “You know we don’t understand everything about this world. Maybe convection works differently here?”

“No…that’s not…” Yawlorna paused and pinched the bridge of her nose.

The basics of heat exchange had to work the same on this unstable world as it did on the far more sensible one her people hailed from. If it didn’t, things like lighting one of the hundreds of torches they used wouldn’t have been possible. 

Once, Yawlorna would have been endlessly fascinated by the contradictions between the observable physical phenomena. She could have written countless thesis papers and applied for nearly infinite grants to study the underlying physics of the realm she was trapped in. The answers to the deepest mysteries of creation might well be visible in the cracks between the conflicting “laws” which defined the [Fallen Kingdoms].

That was Yawlorna-the-scientist though. Yawlorna-the-castaway and Yawlorna-the-commander-of-the-crash-survivors were not the woman she’d once been. In place of the scientific curiosity which had led her to the particular Hell she was currently residing in, Yawlorna had only an ever-growing yearning for home.

She shuddered as a terrible thought swept through her.

The yearning within her was strong. Strong enough that she was going to take the worse risk she could imagine. It was a choice she knew she should flee from, a choice that was more likely to lead to a spectacularly horrible fate, but in the end she wasn’t sure it was even a choice at all.

“Send a message to the adventurers,” she said, with the sensation that she was casting herself into an unknowable abyss. “Tell them they’ve proven their point. We should be allies.”

Interlude – Hailey MacGilfoyle / GM Burnt Toast

As Hailey had predicted the FBI’s “Cyber Security Expert” was every bit as clueless as everyone else when it came to understanding the “worldwide kidnapping event”.

“Clearly, something like this is unprecedented,” Special Agent Roger Marscom said as he reviewed the server logs Egress Entertainment’s IT staff had provided from inside their makeshift bunker.

“That’s why you can’t turn the servers off!” Martha Clark called out from the other side of the barricaded door.

“Yes, yes, clearly,” Marscom said. “We have no idea what that would do. We should…uh, we should…”

It was painful to watch the poor man flounder trying to absorb what he was seeing. Hailey had passed through denial, anger, bargaining, and despair but somehow had wound up on eagerness rather than acceptance.

She knew what her next step was, but it was sufficiently foolish that every instinct for self-preservation was holding her back.

For the moment.

She still had work to do where she was after all.

“We were thinking isolation would be the proper next step,” she offered. As a mid-tier support representative her words carried no authority or weight. As someone with a clear view of what was going on and intelligent contributions to make though, she felt qualified to speak nonetheless.

“I don’t know that’s been agreed too,” Agent Limner said, disagreeing with her on principal from what Hailey could see.

“It was what we discussed,” Marcus said. He was a manager, so his words should have carried some authority, but they were colored by the color of his skin and so Limner shook his head to shake them off as well.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Marscom said, grasping at any plausible suggestion regardless of its origin.

“We can’t disconnect the people who are already connected,” Hailey said, not caring that her words were going to fall on uncaring ears. She had to know she’d done what she could to make things right, before she took her next step. “What we can do though is limit their systems’ connections to other systems for time being. If whatever is behind this is spreading through the game client then we might be able to halt its spread if we lock down the game files.”

“But that’s ridiculous. Game files can’t be responsible for this. You must have installed some other whozamawhatsit,” Limner said waving his hands in dismissal of everything around him.

“There’s no harm in locking down the game files,” Marscom said. “We should see if we can lock the players who are still on out of the rest of the internet as well.”

“That’s more difficult,” Marcus said. “We know many of them have been frequenting message boards, and Discord servers, and streaming what’s going on.”

Also, Hailey thought, how do you lock them out of using another computer? Or their tablet? Or their phone? She suspected mass incarceration would be the obvious choice though she doubted that would work either.

“Yes, the news media is on fire with the story,” Marscom said.

“I’m impressed you got through the reporters outside,” Hailey said.

“Don’t worry about them,” Limner said. “We’ve got a cordone setup. And I’ve got agents interviewing some of those steamer guys.”

“Streamer,” Marscom corrected, saving Hailey the need of doing it herself.

“Those streams are being watched and rewatched by tens or hundreds of thousands of people,” Hailey said. “If you’re not getting reports of people vanishing after watching one, then they’re probably not a vector for whatever’s happening.”

“We can’t be sure of that. We just can’t be sure,” Limner said. 

Because, of course, Hailey couldn’t be right about anything.

“It’s too early to be sure of anything, but those streamers are providing an import service,” Marcus said.

“Stirring up panic? How is that a service?” Limner asked.

“They’re helping the players coordinate their efforts,” Hailey said. “You’ve seen the kind of things they’re fighting against. They need all the support they can get.”

No one else heard the declaration she was making, which was just as well since it meant no one would try to stop her.

Interlude – Azma

Things had not gone to plan. Azma was not unhappy with that. Things never to went to plan. If she allowed that to dictate her mood, she would be perpetually disgruntled. Instead she took joy in the victories she’d achieved and looked for opportunities to reverse her losses.

“What’s the status of the ships which we allowed to be invaded?” she asked. She’d been reviewing the footage from the first ship where the [Stasis Webs] had failed and hadn’t been keeping track of the final outcome of the various battles which had erupted.

“All exposed ships have been pulled back beyond the ‘apparent’ range of the defender’s teleportation portals,” Ryschild said.

“Two of the ships have live captives,” Grenslaw said. “Three others had corpses but the bodies have disintegrated.”

“How long did that take?” Azma asked, changing mental gears to process the new information.

“One minute from the time the last defender fell,” Grenslaw said.

“And did all of the bodies disintegrate at once?” Azma asked.

“No. There was a delay of eight seconds between the disintegration of the first body and the last.”

“And did that gap correspond to the times between their deaths?” Azma asked.

“No. They fell two minutes and twelve seconds apart,” Grenslaw said. “And they were not the first and last to fall.”

“Curious,” Azma said. “Likely a phenomena triggered by individual will rather than an automatic process. See if any of our sensors picked up unusual energy transmissions between the time of the first death and the last disintegration. Perhaps we can rig up a more comprehensive capture system next time.”

“Ground forces are reporting increased resistance as well,” Ryschild said. “They’re seeing movement by some of the greater powers we had been warned about.”

“Wonderful,” Azma said. “If they’re entering the fray already it means the primary defenders are extended well beyond their sustainable capacity.”

“We can begin recalling our forces for resupply whenever you give the order [Supreme Commander]” Grenslaw said.

“Leave the ones on the planet for now,” Azma said. “They need to push forward and raze more territory.”

“We have the complete list of secondary targets from our [Field Scouts]. What direction should we provide?” Grenslaw asked.

“Skip the secondary targets,” Azma said. “Those still possess some value. We don’t want to destroy the wealth we are trying to capture. Focus on tertiary areas. Place a high value on targets which are unlikely to have sentimental value. I want our adversaries to wonder what our aims are and I want them to understand there is a cost to diverting resources away from fighting our ground forces.”

“What about our forces on the satellite moon?” Grenslaw asked. “Do we send a new wave of troops in there.”

“No,” Azma said. “That’s not a particularly significant target yet. Our opponents would be using it as a staging platform if it was. Just have the troops we sent secure the area for now.”

“Apologies [Supreme Commander] but we have no forces in that area any longer,” Grenslaw said.

“What?” Azma had been so distracted by the fighting on her ships that she’d lost track of the fighting on the relatively less important [High Beyond]. Glancing at her console though she found a series of priority alerts, first signalling unexpected resistance, then overwhelming resistance, then confirmation on her strike forces obliteration. 

“I can have a platoon ready to transport directly there within twenty minutes,” Ryschild said.

“No,” Azma said, locking down any troop movement to the [High Beyond] from her console. “The answer to an unexpected loss is not to through more troops at it until the problem goes away. Something interesting is happening on the [High Beyond], and someone is fighting to protect it a lot harder than they should be. Let’s find out the answer to those mysteries first. Then we can deal with whoever thinks they can stand against us.”

Vixali felt the world moving, and as always, it was moving against her.

“The [Faceless Watchers] have returned,” Qiki said, gliding silently to the edge of the precipice Vixali was dangling her legs over.

“That was quick. I take it the daylighters didn’t put up much of a fight? Did the invaders lose any of their forces?” Vixali asked. 

She wasn’t tempted to jump. The bottomless darkness below her was a mystery, and mysteries were delightful things, but she wasn’t tempted to jump. The impact at the bottom would be disastrous. Shattered bones, jellified organs, and, worst of all, precious blood splattered everywhere. It was far too great a cost for an uncertain return. So she wasn’t tempted to jump. Even if it would take her away from the headache of herding the swarm of chaotic evil drama lamas that was her coterie.

“Ok, maybe I’m a little tempted,” she mumbled, probably too low for Qiki to hear.

“I could give you a shove if that would help?” Qiki offered – because of course her vampiric senses were just as good as Vixali’s. 

Vixali suppressed a grumble. Self sabotage seemed like such a waste when there were plenty of others willing to do that work for her. 

“Before I overthrow you and claim all your power and glory for my own, mwahaha, you’ll want to hear this though,” Qiki said. ”The invaders didn’t lose some of their forces. They lost them all!”

“What!” Vixali was on her feet and peering into Qiki blood red eyes in an instant. It was usually easy to tell when a vampire was lying. All you had to listen for was when their mouths made noise, but Qiki, Vixali had to admit, wasn’t exactly like the others. Vixali couldn’t trust her completely, but that was because Vixali couldn’t trust anyone completely. With Qiki, she could rest comfortable in the knowledge that if Qiki tried to kill her, Qiki would do the job right. It would be quick, it would be final, and Vixali would never see it coming. For a [Vampire Queen] that wasn’t a bad end to look forward too.

“They’re gone,” Qiki said. “According to the [Faceless Watchers] none of them survived.”

“I can’t believe the daylighter’s defended their town,” Vixali said. “How many of theirs were lost? And who pulled their defense together? It had to be someone we missed right?”

“Well, see, that’s the thing,” Qiki said, shrugging, “They didn’t. [Sky’s Edge] is gone. Like ashes and dust, burned to the ground if it’s not still on fire, levels of gone.”

“They killed themselves?” Vixali asked, knowing that didn’t sound right at all. Daylighters were sensitive about the whole ‘death’ thing, even the ones who could pop back from it easier than a vampire could.

“Nope. A [Servant of Fire] showed up,” Qiki said.

Vixali fixed her with an incredulous glare. “Explain.”

Qiki, seeing that she’d pushed her queen about as far as she could in terms of dribbling out information, broke into a longer tale, explaining the fighting that had occurred in [Sky’s Edge], the reasonably valiant but obviously doomed effort that had been made to defend the town, and the unforeseen arrival of a creature that was far beyond any monster which roamed the overlands near [Sky’s Edge].

“It seems like the daylighters were working with the [Servant of Fire]. Thanks to its arrival the last defenders in the town were able to escape and join the rest of the inhabitants.”

“And where did they go?” Vixali asked, willing to wager the last drop of her immortal blood that she could guess the answer.

“Here,” Qiki said. “They’re here. All of them.”

“In the old [Star Spawn] camp?” The [Star Spawn] had been an ad hoc gathering of quasi-octopodal creatures from beyond the stars who had come in search of fresh victims to sacrifice to their strange appetites. They’d enjoyed a brief period of dominance over a minor portion of the [Ruins of Heaven’s Grave] but then Vixali’s coterie had needed a place to settle.

Vixali missed the [Star Spawns]. They’d been delicious. Almost like sea food and with none of the vague guilt that came from eating someone who looked like a person.

“Of course.”

“And the others know about this?”

“Officially no. The [Faceless Watchers] reported to me directly, and I came straight to you.”

“But they all overheard.” Vixali didn’t need to guess. It was what happened every time the [Faceless Watchers] returned from the field because the [Faceless Watchers] always returned with interesting news and if there was one thing a pack of vampires isolated in a dungeon craved more than blood, it was information. “How many of them have violated the boundaries to ‘get a peek’ at our new neighbors?”

“At this point?”

“Right. All of them. Of course.”

Vixali had tried stabbing her subjects when they upset her. Vampires had a different relationship with mortal wounds that most other creatures did, but a sword through the face was unpleasant no matter how well you could regenerate from it. She’d eventually given up the practice once it became clear that she was spending more time cleaning her clothes than her subjects were spending regretting the choices they’d made which lead to their impalement.

Tossing them off the precipice was tempting too, except that creatures who could shapeshift into bats tended to suffer fatal falls only rarely.

Descending as a bat was an option for Vixali as well of course, except she knew her own luck. If there was anywhere a magic-canceling portal was going to be hiding, somewhere down in the stygian depths below her was a prime candidate. Her predecessor had been lost when he forgot that the world hated him and was determined to see him properly dead not matter how unlikely or absurd the tools it was forced to use to bring that about.

“Is there any chance they’ll limit themselves to ‘just peeking’?” Vixali asked.

“Probably. For a little while at least. There’s a lot of daylighters there, and they did survive a fight with the invaders, and they do, apparently, know a [Servant of Fire]. So all of that should give your subjects at least a little pause,” Qiki said. “Say five minutes or so?”

“When you put it like that, I’m tempted to wait another six minutes before we join them.”

“In six minutes, there’s the outside chance that you won’t have any subjects left,” Qiki said. “Well aside from me.”

“I know. Delightful isn’t it?”

“I feel compelled to point out that without subjects, you will have a derth of expendable meat shields to place between your self and those looking to drive a stake through your everything.”

“And I do so enjoy being unpunctured. Very well, I accept your wise council my dear [Castellan].”

“So shall we go ‘peek’ too then?” Qiki asked.

“Most certainly not,” Vixali said. “A [Queen] must arrive in style.”

***

Tessa felt Pillowcase’s hand reach her weapon, but fought the urge back, despite the small army of apex predators which stood before her. It wasn’t an easy urge to quash though. When faced with several dozen long fanged, and red eyed people all dressed as though competing for the title of “More Goth Than Thou”, it would have been only natural to be on edge. What pushed on Tessa’s buttons with particular force though were the sounds the vampires were making.

They were hungry. And angry.

That didn’t get better when they saw Pillowcase and Lost Alice appear.

“These must be the leaders they spoke of,” a small but particularly deadly looking one said. 

“Indeed.” 

Tessa turned to glance at the vampire who spoke and felt a vice lock around her gaze. The [Vampire Queen] didn’t look much different than the rest of her subjects. It was only in her posture and her eyes. 

Where her subjects had crimson eyes of liquid hate, the [Queen’s] were the doorway to immortality. Pillowcase was shield against enchantments, but the force of the [Vampire Queen’s] gaze acted on a deeper level than any simple spell. In her, some older and less tamed power lay.

Power such as Tessa had always needed.

Power, intimacy, and connection to a greater whole. What Tessa had always craved.

Power she could have with just a sip, just a taste, just a kiss.

“Ok, enough of that,” Lisa said, stepping slightly forward.

Her words fractured the fascination that had gripped Tessa. It was a strangely sad experience. The promise in the [Vampire Queen’s] eyes had been so compelling, that it’s loss was like waking from a wonderful dream into a dismal reality.

“How curious,” Vixali said. “Another [Queen]? Or, no. You’re something else?”

“You could say that,” Lost Alice, and it was definitely Lost Alice rather than Lisa, said.

“How disappointing,” Vixali said peering at Alice with a sort of puzzled fascination. “I can’t make you one of mine.”

“And I won’t have you as mine,” Lost Alice said, her smile a promise of mayhem under restraint.

Vixali’s eyes narrowed as she evaluated the rogue vampire standing before her.

“No, you won’t. That bond is already taken, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps.”

“I take it we’re not fighting?” Rip asked, indelicately disrupting the oblique dance of smug knowingness the two seemed to be enjoying.

“Fighting?” Vixali asked and several of her coterie tensed. To Tessa’s eyes they were a bit too eager to hear the answer. “That was certainly not our intention in greeting you. We merely seek to welcome you and learn if the invaders will be pursuing you to this fastness?”

And to eat them if Tessa and the others were too weak to prevent it. It didn’t need to be said. It also seemed clear that that the inverse was true though and that so long as the refuges from [Sky’s Edge] had sufficient protection, the vampires would leave them in peace. That didn’t fit with vampire legends, but it did make sense for a predator species. For all their toughness, vampires weren’t not completely immortal and a determined group of humans could end them permanently. Predators do not persist when faced with opposition like that. They need weakness in their prey or the odds will catch up with them sooner rather than later.

“I’m sure our leader will be delighted to discuss things with you,” Alice said. Except her voice had shifted back and as she glanced over to Tessa, Tessa knew Lisa had been quite serious as to her threat.

“Is this not one of the invaders?” Vixali asked.

“No,” Tessa said. “I’m rather definitely not with them.”

“Fascinating. No blood in you at all, and yet there is life there, and something else as well,” Vixali said. “You are quite an enigma.”

“Thank you,” Tessa said. She knew she couldn’t play the mystery game as well as Lost Alice could, but taking care with the information she volunteered seemed wise.

“Perhaps you can clear up another enigma for me then?” Vixali asked. “We couldn’t help but notice that the town near here seems to be…missing? Or burning. It’s hard to tell.”

“Oh, it’s pretty much gone,” Tessa said. “For now. We’re still deciding if and where we’ll rebuild.”

Tessa had no idea if the future of [Sky’s Edge] had been discussed at all but it seemed a safe claim to make.

“And what destroyed it?” Vixali asked. “Was it the invaders?”

“No, that was our friend Darren,” Tessa said. “He was targeting the Consortium’s forces but he’s a bit indiscriminate when he’s drowning things in lava.”

That drowning in lava would probably be enough to permanently kill a vampire was something that occurred to Tessa before she included that detail.

“You have powerful friends,” Vixali said.

“This is a good place to have allies,” Tessa said. “Especially with the [Consortium of Pain] looking to conquer or enslave anyone with interesting abilities.”

“Or valuable body parts,” Lost Alice said.

Pillowcase knew that [Vampire Blood] was a potent [Alchemy] material, while [Vampire Fangs] were essential in several [Bonecrafting] creations, and [Vampire Hearts] were part of several very useful [Enchantments]. 

When view as threats, the vampires in front of her were a significant problem. Far more than she or her team could manage on their own. Except, they weren’t alone, and when viewed as a collection of salable components, the vampires began to look very lucrative to find indeed.

Vixali seemed to come to the same understanding as a look of concern passed over her face.

“Perhaps we should ally together then,” she said.

“I imagine that will be agreeable,” Tessa said. “We seem to be collecting allies at the moment.”

“In that case there is another you may want to collect as well,” Vixali said. “Have your heard of the [Lord of Storms] whose [Cloud Castle] is near here?”

Pillowcase hadn’t but Tessa had.

The [Lord of Storms] wasn’t a [King] or a [Raid Boss], they were one of the [Gods] whose death had caused the [Fallen Kingdoms] to fall.

Tessa felt divided. Not in the emotionally conflicted sense. She was far too steadfast in her repression of the several lines of thought she did not at all have time to process for her emotional conflicts to be bubbling to the top of her consciousness. Instead, her feeling of division stemmed from a strangely external source.

“I think I’m not fully here?” she said, massaging her temple although Pillowcase’s body felt no pain or discomfort.

“You jumped into a bottomless pit because some demons vaguely suggested it was a good idea,” Lisa said. “I think we’re well past making judgement calls on your sanity.”

“You’re funny, you know that?” Tessa said.

“I do,” Lisa said. “Doesn’t mean I wrong though.”

“We got out of there ok.”

“Says the one who isn’t covered in blood still.”

“We saved a town though!”

“By unleashing a lava monster on it, which has burned it to the ground by now. You get where there might be some issues with all of that right?”

Tessa sighed. Lisa wasn’t wrong, and behind the banter Tessa remembered the concern that had seemed to tear a hole in Lisa’s heart. Tessa wasn’t sure how to interpret that. It was how she would have reacted to someone she loved hurling themselves into mortal danger but as her breakup with Crystal had shown her, other people saw things very differently from her. 

“We’re safe for now at least?” Tessa phrased it as much as a question as the statement of fact it theoretically was.

Inside the [Ruins of Heaven’s Grave], the adventurers and the townsfolk of [Sky’s Edge] had found an odd sort of refuge. The caverns still teemed with monsters, but by focusing their efforts along a single narrow path, they’d been able to reach a broad room which was both defensible and held no inhabitants. Even better, there was a clear stream running into a pool at the back of the room which provided for the townfolks’ most immediate need, leaving the adventurers to provide food and materials to construct shelters from.

As fledgling players, the assembled adventurers didn’t have the depth of resources they might have possessed, but Obby was able to break out a fair amount of specialty food from her inventory. It was “store bought” in the sense of being purchased from the game’s cash shop, which was sadly no longer accessible, but filling enough to sustain an entire family with a single portion, and Obby had a seemingly endless supply.

Tessa didn’t bother with the food herself. Pillowcase could consume food and gain any mystical benefits it might possess but she didn’t have any actual need for material sustenance.

Unlike Lost Alice.

Lisa seemed more relaxed and in control of herself since…the incident, in the [Sunless Deeps]. Tessa knew it was something they should talk about, but she was hoping Lisa would be the one to begin that discussion.

“I’m sorry,” Lisa said. “You had a real concern there, didn’t you?”

She shifted to sit back against the wall in the small alcove where they’d brought Pillowcase to rest while Tessa was unconscious. It was a nice, tiny space. Big enough to not feel claustrophobic but limited enough that Pillowcase didn’t have to be at the highest level of alert to feel sure nothing was lurking nearby and waiting to ambush them.

“It’s probably nothing,” Tessa said, regretting the idea of casting another burden on Lisa’s shoulders.

“Was it related to why you passed out?” Lisa asked, her voice gentler than it had been.

“Yeah, but it’s nothing I can be sure of,” Tessa said.

“You said you don’t think you’re all here? Where did you go? It didn’t sound like back home.”

“Its hard to explain.”

“We’re going to be cooped up here for a bit,” Lisa said. “Got anything else you’d like to do?”

Tessa knew there were other things she should be doing. She thought of Rip and Matt, who were coordinating the defense of the refuge by virtue of being the only two other adventurers to have been this deep into the dungeon. She thought of Mister Pendant, who was offering whatever upgrades he had available to any adventurers who could use them. She thought of several dozen responsibilities she could take on.

Instead of any of that though, she leaned back against the opposite wall from Lisa and offered her a small smile.

“I don’t think I went anywhere. Not exactly. It was more like I was already there? Or maybe that someone I knew really well was there? Like I was more of an observer but with strong focal point.”

“Interesting. What did you see?”

“A ship. Like a space ship type ship. Except…did you ever run the [Luna Crash] raid? You know how it was sort of scifi themed but still had the [Broken Horizons] aesthetic? That’s how this place looked.”

“I take it you could tell you weren’t just dreaming somehow?” Lisa asked.

“It seemed a little too solid and sequential to be a dream. The team I was with was fighting through the ship and I followed them step by step. Like I said though, it wasn’t like I was actually there. It was like watching a play almost? Like the action was separate from me but I could yell at the people on the stage if I wanted to. It would be distracting and kind of rude, but I wasn’t completely separate from them.”

“Could you feel this body?” Lisa gestured at Pillowcase’s torso.

“I think so. I was so caught up in the fighting that was going on I sort of forgot about everything else for a while. Which now that I think about seems really weird. So maybe I was dreaming a little bit?”

“Maybe. I think there’s a more important question though; is it going to happen again?”

Tessa inhaled and brought her steepled hands to her lips. It was a gesture she was used to making in her own body but it served the same purpose in Pillowcase’s.

“I might wind up like that again if I let it happen, but I think it’ll be my choice,” she said. “I think it was this time too. The sense of connection and need hit me so suddenly that I instinctively jumped at it and sort of fell into it for a while. I’m sorry, I know the timing was terrible.”

“Yeah. Timing,” Lisa said and glanced away.

“How are you doing though?” Tessa asked. “I mean aside from the whole ‘covered in blood’ thing?”

Lisa rolled her eyes and smiled.

“Great. I am just great.”

“Not exactly how you’d planned on spending launch day?” Tessa asked, mirroring Lisa’s smile.

“Is it still launch day? It feels like we’ve been here for months now.”

“I’d guess it depends on your timezone, but I don’t think it’s been twenty four hours back on Earth yet. At least not since I logged in.”

“That’s right, you just started up again right?”

“Seemed like a good time to get back into the game. Sometimes my instincts are shockingly wrong.”

“Or shockingly right,” Lisa said. “I mean, it sucks that you’re trapped in here but I’m glad I ran into someone like you when all of this started happening.” She waved her hand at the whole world around them.

“Thanks. I glad you were here too. I…Having you here has meant a lot to me. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt in the [Sunless Deeps] but I can’t tell you how happy I was when you showed up.” Tessa regretted her honesty as she spoke. She could hear herself both placing a future burden on Lisa and admitting to feelings that she knew she shouldn’t have. It had been a rough day though and repression had its limits.

Lisa buried her face in hands before running her palms up her face and her fingers through her hair. After a moment, Tessa felt the urge to reach out rising but she fought it back. The last thing she needed was for Lisa to slap her hand away for crossing a boundary. 

When Lisa raised her head after another moment, her smile had changed, gaining a faint rueful tinge.

“Timing,” she said before shaking her head. When she spoke, the weight had left her voice, either cast aside or packed away for later. “You might have been seeing one of the raiding teams that launched the counter-offensive against the Consortium. Cease All said Niminay called on the high level players to teleport up to their ships and bring the fight to the Consortium directly. I think they would have been fighting just about the time you passed out.”

“That would fit,” Tessa said, letting the space between them breathe with the change of topic. “The team was fighting like they were raiding a dungeon. When I woke they were talking about heading back to their home base before returning to try tackling the [Captain] on the bridge.”

“Do you think you could go back there if you wanted? Or make contact again I guess? That could be a good backup channel for information since Cease All and the others seem to pretty busy with the whole invasion going on.”

“She’s at least been more responsive than BT,” Tessa said. “Not that either one is really in a position to help us.”

“We’ve been lucky so far, aside from a few exceptions we haven’t run into anything tht’s been badly outleveled for us,” Lisa said.

“The Consortium troops looked like more of a fight than we could have handled.”

“Yeah, they’re one of the exceptions. And probably going to be an even bigger problem going forward.”

“It depends on their [Commander],” Tessa said. “The Consortium doctrine on well defended targets has a lot of flexibility. Some times they’ll make an example out of the stronghold and pound it to dust. Or, they might leave us alone as a poor investment of the resources.”

“If they do come back, they’re going to send something that can deal with Darren in all his lava monster glory.”

“Yeah, we’ll want to make sure he stays hidden after he finishes up with the troops they sent in this wave.”

Lisa laughed.

“Is it weird that I’m worried about a giant serpent made out of magical fire rock far more than the people he’s burning to death?”

“I don’t think so,” Tessa said. “Darren turned out to be pretty personable.”

“I think me eating his captor helped our case there.” Lisa said the words in jest, but it was a hollow sort of joke.

“Yeah, that was an interesting thing to see,” Tessa said. “Kind of stupid of Mikonnel to go on about the power of his blood in front of a clearly hungry vampire.”

“On the upside, it’s not a mistake he’ll make again!” Lisa said with even more forced levity.

“You know it was his mistake though right? Everything that happened down there. What you did, none of that was a bad move on your part.”

“I don’t know about that. I think it might have felt too good to not be pretty evil.”

“Evil or just scary?” Tessa asked. “It looked like you lost control for a moment, and under the circumstances I can’t imagine that being anything but a delicious relief.”

Lisa sighed and tipped her head back.

“God, it really was. He was just such an ass, and I was so incredibly hungry.”

She let her head tip forward and hang down till her gaze was focused on the floor in front of her.

“But I still think I went too far,” she added in a whisper.

This time Tessa did reach out to place a hand on Lisa’s arm.

“Maybe you went too far for you, but what you did was fine for the situation we were in, and I know some part of you knew that.”

Lisa looked up, her smile reaching her eyes.

“I should really get cleaned up, shouldn’t I?”

“If it’d make you feel better,” Tessa said. “As it is you’ve got that ‘you do not want to mess with me’ look going that is definitely not out of place in the middle of a dungeon. I think between showing up on Darren’s back and your badass Queen of Blood look, the rest of the adventurers are going to make you our de facto leader whether you ask for the position or not.”

“Oh, wow, I really need to get cleaned up then. Maybe change into something really nerdy.”

“What? You think nerd gear would slow down a bunch of mmo players? Forget leader, they’ll elect you to godhood if you go far enough with that.”

“If they make me leader, I am passing the buck immediately to you,” Lisa said. “Everyone knows it’s supposed to be the tank that everyone else follows.”

“That feels vaguely unfair,” Tessa said.

“Consider it a punishment for worrying me like you did,” Lisa said, but her smile had returned.

“I’m not sure that’s how leadership is supposed to work?” Tessa said.

“You two ready for another crisis?” Rip asked skidding into the opening of the small room. “Cause we could really use someone responsible looking to handle our new visitors.  You know, before they slaughter everyone here.”

“Come on,” Lisa said. “You’re punishment awaits!”

Glimmerglass wiped bone chunks and blood off her staff as she paused to catch her breath.

“I really need to put together a better set of melee gear,” she said accepting Cambrell’s hand to help her stand.

“I have to admit your defense was pretty damn impressive and it’s not that often I’ve seen a [Healing Staff] used to split someone’s head one,” Cambrell said. “Is that why it’s got the pointy bits on the end?”

“No,” Glimmerglass said, casting a minor [Mending] spell to repair the slash which had cut through her sleeve. “Those are supposed to be decorative. A symbol that the [Dawn’s Light Staff] will do no harm.”

“You sure about that?” Cambrell asked. “The sun rays coming out of it seem awfully sharp for a symbol of peace.”

“Sorry you had to use it like that at all,” Damnazon said. “Wasn’t expecting the crew to swarm us. Stupid [Aura of Boiling Vengeance] was on cooldown after the last fight.”

“It’s ok,” Glimmerglass said. “We’re all running low on resources.”

“It’s a hell of a dungeon,” Mellisandra said, gesturing vaguely around at the ruins of the engine room they stood in, as she caught her breath too.

Overhead, four stories worth of equipment and machinery stood with vast rents torn through it. Sparks flew from some of the units. Oils, and acids, and more toxic liquids spurted from other bits of broken wreckage. Completely absent though was the sound of any of the systems still working. 

“Where do we go from here?” Cambrel asked.

“From the schematics we found, it seems like the bridge is as heavily defended as the engine room was,” Damnazon said.

“Got any more of those potions?” Cambrell asked the assembled group, glancing over to the group of adventurers who’d first picked him up.

“We don’t need more potions,” Glimmerglass said.

“I took a bolt of energy straight through my right lung,” Cambrell said. “And that was with your shield in place to diminish it. I’d really like to have another bandolier of healing magic before we try to repeat our last go at these guys.”

“I mean we shouldn’t need much more healing. Niminay said to treat this like a dungeon,” Glimmerglass said. “Unless anyone objects, I say we do that and pull back. We’re too far down on our resources to move forward and we’ve gathered a lot of information on how their defenses work.”

“If we pull back, we’ll be giving them a chance to arrange a much worse reception for us the next time we return,” Mellisandra said.

“We haven’t gotten any good loot yet either,” Damnazon said.

“Yeah, but we haven’t died yet either,” Cambrell said.

“The lack of loot is pretty typical,” Glimmerglass said. “I mean we collected the weapons and armor from the fallen, and sure, it’s subpar compared to what we already have but there’s plenty of lower level adventurers we can give it to.”

“Trash mobs dropping trash loot,” Mellisandra said. “That does sound like a typical dungeon.”

“Should we try to find out if the [Captain’s] the equivalent of a raid boss?” Damnazon asked.

“Seems like it’d be a safe bet they are,” Cambrell said.

“Safe bet they’ll kick our butts too,” Mellisandra said. “I mean look at the trouble we had with the cleaning staff we ran into.”

“Janitors really should not be packing guns that can melt through reinforced bulkheads,” Cambrell said. “That’s just unreasonable in general and particularly on a ship where breeching the walls is a really bad idea!”

Mellisandra had explained to the group the dangers they were likely to face if the ship suffered a hull breech. She’d also covered which of their magics would be able to counteract the effects of exposure to the vacuum of space the best. The apparent eagerness with which the crew had seemed determined to cause such a breech had been an unpleasant surprise they’d had to work around in every fight they’d been in since they left the [Field Carrier’s] [Portal Room].

“That’s why we need to get back,” Glimmerglass said. “If we’re going to raid this place properly we need the right supplies and we need to let everyone know what we’ve discovered.”

“She’s got a good point,” Mellisandra said. “This is the first time I was the first one in a raid in, well, ever.”

“Yeah, me too,” Damnazon said. “We always went in with a pretty good preview of what the strategy should be.”

“I…wasn’t much for raiding,” Cambrell said.

“That’s right, you’re an NPC aren’t you?” Damnazon asked.

“I’m an [Assassin]. There’s not much reason for me to be crawling down into a dungeon,” Cambrell said.

“Until now,” Glimmerglass said. “Like Niminay said, at this point we all need to act like heroes, and sometimes being a hero means making it back with the information people need so that the others can make it back too.”

“It’s a shame the shared inventory spaces are blocked by the [Consortium Fleet’s] disruptors,” Damnazon said. “It’d be a lot easier to restock here if we had someone back home filling our packs for us.”

“I’d settle for the comm channels being accessible,” Cambrell said. “Glimmer’s right about needing to get info back to our homebase. Even if we have to go back in person I’d feel a lot better if we could pass on what we know as soon as possible.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Mellisandra said. “I’ve got that angle covered.”

***

Brendan was missing classes but he didn’t care. His live stream was getting more views than he’d ever had before. But he didn’t care about that either.

The FBI agents in his house though? That he cared about.

“How is your character speaking like that?” Agent Jackson asked, watching the dialog between Mellisandra and the characters on the screen scroll past on its own.

“I told you. She’s alive. She’s real,” Brendan said. “You can talk to her if you want. If they get into a fight though, I’ve got to help her out.”

“He’s right Agent Jackson,” Mellisandra said, speaking in a whisper, on a private channel to herself. “The things we’re fighting in here are too tough for me to do alone.”

“How does she know my name?” Agent Jackson asked.

“Because she can hear what I’m saying? What we’re saying.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Mellisandra replied and waved, though not towards the screen, since Brendan had the camera positioned behind her to approximate her field of view.

“Who are you waving at?” Glimmerglass asked, her question rolling up as the next line of text on the screen.

“We’re not as along as you might think,” Mellisandra said.

“This so far above my pay grade,” Jackson said.

“I think it’s above everybody’s pay grade sir,” Brendan said. “I mean, this shouldn’t be possible but you’ve seen the other streams right? I mean we’ve got footage of someone literally vanishing into thin air the second their character died. And then appearing in the game like ten seconds later.”

“Yeah, as a ghost. That’s….”

“Science fiction? Something out of the Twilight Zone?” Brendan suggested.

“Not within our usual jurisdiction,” Agent Turner said. 

Brendan had been terrified when the two FBI agents showed up at his door. Letting them in hadn’t seemed like an actual choice under the circumstances between their badges, their (still holstered) guns, and the fact that Agent Jackson had at least six inched of height and eighty pounds of muscle on Brendan.

By that measure Agent Turner should have been the more comforting of the two. She had a calm, gentle voice and was smaller and lighter than Brendan. It took him all of two minutes to work out that he’d slotted them two of them into the wrong mental categories.

Turner was calm because she knew she could destroy him, legally, physically, emotionally, and probably spiritually, and was rather clinically deciding if any of those were warranted or not. Jackson was her junior and was as blown away by the current events as Brendan was.

“Why  did you get called in?” Brendan asked. By which he meant ‘why are you here, in my house’, but that exact question seemed unwise to ask.

“When people start disappearing, and it extends across state lines, it falls on us to look into it,” Jackson said.

“This is international though,” Brendan said.

“Still our job to sort it out,” Turner said. “At least the part that pertains to US citizens.”

“Brendan, how’s the information transfer going. Have the people connected with the ones back at the Observatory seen what we had to fight through so far?” The text from Mellisandra scrolled up as a whisper to herself.

“Yeah Melli. The live stream had a lot of people tune in. Some of the top end players who weren’t logged in are going over the different streams and coming up with recommendations for things to look out for, or try next time.” Brendan spoke into the microphone on his desk and said a silent ‘thank you’ that Agent Turner had been willing to let him leave it on.

He suspected it wasn’t entirely altruistic. Anything he said almost certainly would be used against him in a court of law if he ever wound up there, but under the circumstances he was willing to risk it. Whatever their connection was, even if they were nothing more than strangers who’d been bumped together by fate or a random number generator, Mellisandra was facing a life and death struggle, and Brendan couldn’t imagine letting her face it alone.

“Good,” Mellisandra said. “We’re getting out of here. If they can have some tactics worked up and a restocking package put together, we can head right back as soon as we’ve recovered and resupplied.”

“You’re going to raid the ship again?” Brendan asked, his quiet joy at the thought of Mellisandra escaping to safety evaporating under the promise of a return to the Field Carrier / raid dungeon.

“It’s not the most fun plan I’ve ever been a part of, but Niminay is right. We treat this like a raid until we’ve beaten them back, and that means we keep hammering at them, trying new strategies and upgrading our gear with each run until they break and run, or we reach the end boss and cut their head off.”

“That’s got to be worth at least a conspiracy charge,” Jackson said. “Or it would be if this wasn’t a video game.”

“You know, technically, I think the State Department should be the one handling this,” Turner said.

“Really?” Jackson asked, a brief flicker of relief crossing his face.

“No. Or maybe. I don’t know,” Turner said. “We haven’t exactly recognized these Fallen Whatever places as foreign nations. For all I know it’s the Post Office that’s got jurisdiction here.”

“You’re going to make me call this one in, aren’t you?” Jackson asked.

“You did forget to pick up coffee this morning,” Turner said.

“I bet the team at Egress is having a real fun time too,” Jackson said.

“There’s an FBI team at the game’s headquarters?” Brendan asked. “What are they going to do there?”

“Investigating,” Turner said, clearly not willing to discuss official business with someone who wasn’t part of her chain of command.

***

The IT staff at Egress had the door to the server room barricaded like a scene out of Les Miserable by the time the FBI team arrived. Hailey was impressed. It was probably the fastest they’d responded to any issue in the entire team she’d been a part of the Egress Entertainment team.

“This really isn’t necessary,” Agent Limner said, rolling his eyes at the collection of office furniture which was stacked on the far side of the server room’s door. “If we want to, we could simply cut your cable outside the building.”

“Good luck with that,” Hailey said. “The fiber connections are all buried. You’d need a backhoe to get at them. And the IT guys said they were hooking up a backup wireless connection.”

The first part of what she said was true as far as Hailey knew, although if she’d been forced to tell the complete truth she would have been compelled to add that the cables were all accessible from a substation about a quarter mile away and could be easily disconnected from there. 

The bit about the wireless backup was a complete fiction in terms of feasibility. There was no wireless network in the area that could have supported the bandwidth needs to run an MMO server farm. That the servers were located within Egress’s headquarters was only a partial truth as well. Only a few of the shards were still hosted locally, and those were mostly used for testing purposes. 

Dropping them would pull in close to a thousand players, but the majority were connected to data centers around the world, a fact which Agent Limner seemed more or less incapable of comprehending.

Fortunately he had bought the line about “calling for expert assistance in cybernetics” to evaluate the situation. That had given Hailey some hope, but she knew things could still go horribly awry if even one person with too much authority got the wrong idea stuck in their head.

The only hope of preventing that she could see was for the right people to speak up and speak up loudly enough to be heard. However tempting it might have been, checking out was simply not an option any longer.

***

Tessa found herself laying on the floor of the [Ruins of Heaven’s Grave] staring up in to the face of a vampire.

“Huh, red eyes can be pretty,” she said before the haze of unconsciousness passed and she saw who she was speaking too.

“Thanks,” Lisa said. “You feeling any better now?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Tessa said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “What happened?”

“You blacked out,” Lisa said. “Just as we got here. You said something about ‘she needs me’ and then you kind of faceplanted into the ground.”

“Huh. That’s weird.”

“Yeah, what’s weirder is that you were talking in your sleep. Were you in the Navy in real life?”

“No? Why?”

“Cause it sounded like you were assaulting some kind of ship.”

“Why would I do that?” Tessa asked.

“It sounded like Niminay told you to.”

Glimmerglass was trapped, frozen in a moment of crystallized time, just like the rest of her raid team.

And that was what saved her.

“Come on people! Push through it!” Mellisandra called out over the team’s mental link. “[Eternal Warmth]. Use it if you got it, call for one if you don’t. Let’s get free before they figure out their trap didn’t work.”

“How did you use it?” Damnazon asked. Glimmerglass couldn’t see or hear the tall warrior – she couldn’t see or hear anything for that matter – but she could sense Damnazon’s nearness with some other awareness that she’d never bothered to name. 

“What the hell is an [Eternal Warmth]?” Cambrell asked. The goblin was farther away and, if Glimmerglass’s guess was right, just as immobilized as the rest of their team. Despite the distance though, the team’s link made his irritation at being denied an apparently necessary piece of gear all too clear.

Glimmerglass knew the answer to both Cambrell and Damnazon’s questions as well as why Cambrell wouldn’t have picked up the [Soul Mark] but being frozen in time made it a trifle difficult to answer.

Except she wasn’t completely frozen. The trap had left her with an awareness of her surroundings. Her mind…or maybe her ghost?…some part of her was still connected to the flow of time.

“It’s a permanent enchantment, a [Soul Mark].” She forced the words out onto the team’s telepathic chat channel, feeling fatigue bear down harder as she formed each one. “It was a reward. From beating the sub-bosses in [Unhallowed Halls].”

A wave of exhaustion rolled over her and Glimmerglass began fading away, her spirit not frozen in time like her body was but forgotten and left to be reclaimed by the shadows.

“I know it’s hard to invoke it,” Mellisandra said. “The [Deep Paralysis] effect hits more than just our muscles. It’s leeching all of our stats away. You need to reach out to your [Inspirations]. We always had them with us when we were raiding so it was never a problem before now.”

Glimmerglass wanted so badly to sleep. Were they on an enemy vessel? Was their world depending on them? Was her team depending on her? Did it matter? Did she even care?

Yes.

It wasn’t a word, and it wasn’t spoken in her voice, not exactly, but Glimmerglass heard it nonetheless. Someone, somewhere remembered her. Believed in her. 

Was her.

For just a moment, Glimmerglass felt the familiar flicker of her [Inspiration] touch her heart. Her other self was there. The one who never gave up. Who burned with wonder and joy so bright and real at the marvels they’d beheld that the sun was a pale candle by comparison.

In the frozen darkness, color bloomed and from one hand to another, the torch of hope was passed.

[Eternal Warmth] flared through Glimmerglass’s body and the [Stasis Web] shattered like spun glass.

“Who else needs a status cleanse?” she asked, whirling to take in their surroundings.

The [Astrologos Observatory’s] portal had deposited them with fine precision onto the portal ring inside the [Field Carrier] they’d been assigned to commandeer. The security team they’d been warned about was there too, as predicted, waiting for them with weapons ready.

“[Greater Shield Empowerment] [Casting spell: Aegis Wall]!” Glimmerglass called out, gambling and winning her bet that her reactions would be fast enough to get the enhanced version of the spell off before the guards could react.

In the fight at [Doom Crag], her defensive spells had been overwhelmed in seconds. Those had been precious seconds and had allowed her team to mount a defense which let most of them to flee the town without making a ghost run, but Glimmerglass had still been unhappy since it meant her spells simply weren’t potent enough to engage in a battle like that.

Against the [Field Carrier’s] security team though she fared significantly better.

You got this!

Again, it was more of a wordless feeling than a distinct message, but it sent Glimmerglass’s spirit soaring.

“Here you go Cambrell,” she said as she strode through the [Stasis Web] reducing it to dust in her wake. When she touched the frozen Goblin, a portion of the warmth she carried flowed into him and he came to life with a gleeful look of mayhem in his eyes.

***

Azma saw the problems arising as early as anyone else in the fleet’s command structure did. Reports began screaming up towards her through the ranks but she could see all too clearly what had happened without them.

The [Stasis Webs] had failed. The defender had access to some countermeasure. For a system built specifically to deny the activation of countermeasures. 

Because of course they did.

Azma had planned for the eventuality that the defenders would escape, but she was far from happy that she had to enact those plans. Especially when they began so close to home and were accompanied by the inevitable loss of otherwise proficient senior staff members.

To her left, the Reginald Humphries, the [Manager of Strategic Interfaces], rose silent as a whisper. His [Neural Disruptor] was already in his hand. The fact that the bridge had triple security checks to prevent unregulated weapons from being brought onto it at all meant it should have been the perfect surprise attack in Azma’s moment of weakness.

It also spoke to the sort of price which had been placed on her head by her coworkers.

A proper assassin would have chosen either a [Plasma Caster] to incinerate her beyond the repair of the Consortium’s best facilities, or (if damage to the ship was an issue) a [Neural Annihilator] to ensure Azma’s synaptic resources were thoroughly obliterated.

The choice of the much less deadly [Neural Disruptor] signalled that the highest bidder for Azma’s head wished her to be taken alive.

It was a not a comforting thought.

The only reasons someone of her rank wished to keep an enemy alive and sentient was to extract information, or watch them suffer the most spectacular agonies their captor could devise. Or both. Azma strongly suspected most of her enemies were looking for both results from her overthrow.

She had her own [Plasma Caster] unholstered and was sweeping it around to aim it in Humphries general direction (it was all that was required with a [Plasma Caster]) when the [Manager of Strategic Interfaces] chest imploded.

To Azma’s right, Kordo Banns, the [Manager of Fleet Fuel Supplies] screamed as the lower half of his body evaporated in a shower of sparks. In his right hand, he’d also been holding a [Plasma Disruptor] and trying to bring it into position to fire at Azma.

Behind Azma, Grenslaw and Ryschild stood calmly, each holding their own weapons, carefully pointed away from Azma and each other.

“There is a rather large, if unofficial, bounty of my head,” Azma said, eyeing her two newest recruits with curiosity.

“Several promotion opportunities as well,” Grenslaw said.

“To unsupported positions, endowed with with no ability to retain the proferred wealth,” Ryschild said.

“I find my current career track more satisfying,” Grenslaw said.

“And more educational,” Ryschild said. “I understand the [Plasma Caster] but I am at a loss to understand the ring?”

Azma smiled at Ryschild and glanced at the green band on her right hand. The one which had been pointing at the center of Kordo Banns forehead.

“A [Necrosis Beam Projector],” Azma said. “Expensive and not tremendously practical but amusing enough to justify its cost.”

“My apologies for my presumption,” Ryschild said, nodding to the remains of the [Manager of Fleet Fuel Supplies]. “And for the mess.”

“The janitorial staff will have their work cut out for them today,” Azma said. “As will our [Strategic Interfaces] and [Fuel Supplies] teams. [Manager] Grenslaw, [Strategic Interfaces] is yours for today. [Manager] Ryschild, [Fuel Services] is yours for the same time period. These are temporary promotions of course but for the duration you have the full authority the roles provide.”

Azma knew that rewarding two junio officers who’d dispassionately murdered their senior officers with those senior officers positions was teaching the sort of lesson which lead to more complications rather than fewer in the future.

A fundamental part of the Consortium’s corporate culture was predicated on advancing those with the greatest hunger for power and the least compunctions about doing whatever was required to amass it. Azma had benefited from that at every step up the corporate ladder and didn’t disagree with the general sentiment. Ambition was a critical ingredient to success in her view.

Where she differed from the Consortium was in the belief that ambition required tempering. The Consortium’s [Senior Executive Committee] tended to encourage a system where raw, almost mindless, lust for power was rewarded as being the height of value in an employee. Azma tended to view any “mindless” quality as being ultimately self-defeating. 

It was true that mindless workers with only a single motivation were easy to control (which was why upper management preferred the culture as it was) but the corpses her two ex-Managers lain at Azma’s feet showed the cost of it.

Not in terms of lives lost. Azma had no fondness for Humphries or Banns, nor any regrets at their passing. What appalled her was all of the investment in them which was oozing out over her floor. And the ripple of disruption filling their positions would cause.

Azma won by having her people perform far beyond what her peers could manage and, shockingly, death was something of a performance inhibitor.

One of her screens blared at her.

A security team had been dispatched. Entirely. [Field Carrier] [ABP77G-K-71-CA512] was defenseless.

“[Supreme Commander],” Ryschild asked, pausing to see if Azma could spare any attention before continuing. “The fuel cells on the [Field Carrier] which just fell to the invaders are ready for detonation. Shall I confirm?”

“No,” Azma said and waited for the inevitable backtalk, the citing of the Consortium’s [Code on Hostile Appropriations of Corporate Assets]. 

Official policy was that if the Consortium couldn’t have it, no one else was allowed to either. In some fleets, the ships were rigged with self-destruct devices which would annihilate the ship and all on board if a continuous feed from the [Captain] wasn’t maintained. 

Azma had removed that nonsense from the ship in her fleet, in part because accidental self-destructs were far too common and costly to risk and in part because the loss of a ship would result in the loss of her head regardless of whether the vessel was destroyed or not.

As junior officers under her command, Grenslaw and Ryschild had no authority to countermand Azma’s decree but that wouldn’t save them from liquidation once the battle results were reviewed.

Neither spoke, nor questioned her though. Instead both were listening intently, waiting for her to explain, if she chose to.

“Direct the monitor teams to continue an active scan for life signs on board,” she said. “I want termination times for crew members and all the observational data that we can assemble. Feed it to the analyst corp.”

“I have a projection on profit under runs from the loss of the ship and each crew member,” Grenslaw said.

“Thank you,” Azma said, genuinely pleased with the useful initiative Grenslaw had taken. “Match that to a cost analysis for converting unknown defenses to partially known quantities, and add in the cost benefit for the breakthrough in [Stasis Web] research they’ve provided us.”

Grenslaw’s eyes lit up.

“On it [Commander]!”

Azma has no reason to believe the [Stasis Webs] would fail, or that her plan of luring local specimens on board to be caged and sold to the highest bidder would go badly. No reason except a long familiarity with watching meticulous plans go horribly awry when applied to the real world.

According to the reports appearing on her console, three other [Field Carriers] had been lost and more than a dozen others were experiencing significant resistance from the “helpless” defenders who’d been trapped aboard them. 

Things weren’t going to look good for the Consortium, but Azma wasn’t concerned. Her real plan was always the same.

She was going to crush those who stood before her, and she was going to do it through a mix of overwhelming force and understanding them better than they understood themselves. If she had to sacrifice a few ships to accomplish that, so be it. There was only one thing Azma would never sacrifice and that was herself. Everything and everyone else were negotiable.