Katherine opened her eyes. She was laid out on a concrete floor. Beside her were the doors of a dungeon chamber and above her a nebula of distant stars. She had returned to her avatar, Amy, right where she left off.

[You have been logged out for 7,800 years.] the system read via a translucent, holographic display. NPCs didn’t have player privileges, so they didn’t have access to things like system notifications, inter-dimensional inventory, visible health bars, appraisal tools, or the status window. The message Amy saw was a system announcement, reminding her how long she’d been logged out.

Amy sat up on the floor. Her black-leather armor appeared undamaged and her health had been restored. The Dark Star lay nearby, inert in a pile of ash. In Ark World, all of Amy’s memories were available. She frowned and stood on her feet, picked up the sword and hoisted it over her shoulder. As she moved her hand to ‘sheathe’ it behind her back, the sword turned to colorful dust and faded away.

[Dark Star Sword stowed in inventory.] the system read.

“So, what do I do now?” she wondered to herself. “They’ll have noticed my login, so I can’t stick around. I can’t use admin commands to teleport, because that would show up in the system log. It would be bad if they caught me before I thought of a plan.” She looked around the void. “And there’s no way to walk out of here.”

Amy looked at the pair of doors; they were all that stood on the drifting ruin. Her magic was impressive, for a player, but the world space she’d created with admin commands was a dimension all but disconnected from Ark World; escape would not be possible, for Amy. Katherine had just one character that was superior to Amy in absolute power, one that could move between worlds without administrator commands, but it wasn’t a character she enjoyed.

“I don’t really have a choice,” Amy said and opened a context menu with her hand. The menus of the player system were visible only to their connected player. Although they floated in the air, finger interactions created haptic feedback for ease of use. Amy scrolled through the menus to her character profiles and switched from ‘Amy’ to ‘Amarytha.’ A circle of dark light appeared over her head and passed down her body. Her clothes, her abilities, and even her body changed as the light altered her character data.

Amarytha was taller than Amy, thin and gaunt. Her skin was pale gray, devoid of color, like a corpse and her form-fitting black silk dress followed the bones of her body, her hips, her ribs, and shoulder blades. Her arms were covered in long, shoulder-length gloves, and her fingers were long and thin, like scissor blades. The dark circle passed her ankles and the feet disappeared altogether; Amarytha’s legs ended in sharp bone protrusions. Instead of walking, she floated by the magic of her six skeletal, black-feathered wings.

She opened her black eyes. The light of distant stars was reflected like flecks of dust within them, but the inky orbs had no color to speak of. She raised her right hand toward the door and spread her palm, scissor-like fingers extending like spider legs.

“Gate,” Amarytha said in the somber, distorted tone of the goddess of darkness, “open.”

The chamber doors were pushed open into the dark. The perfect blackness ahead was a void Amarytha knew well; the Otherworld, her domain. She flapped her wings and floated through the doors. They closed shut behind her and the gate was sealed.

He asked me to save his world… she thought. This sandbox world might be a little different than the one he asked me to save, but it will have to do. I won’t split hairs when I know what he was really asking: Stop the Pantheon for good.

Creatures stirred in the still water beneath her. The denizens had noticed her arrival, but their curious chirps halted when they realized their mistake. Amarytha was not their master, but she was also not food. Her indifferent relationship with the denizens was part of Ark World’s lore, established on the day of Amarytha’s creation. The Director enforced their cooperation.

I’ll need a plan if I’m going after them again. Amarytha tucked her legs and rolled backward through over the water, her wings spread wide. If I’m being especially thoughtful, then there are three things I can count on: Achlesial will look for me. He fears the Demon Emperor. And, that I can’t do this by myself. I’ve already lost to them twice now, as Amarytha and Amy.

Her black eyes closed, and she focused on her imagination. Rather than the vagueness that humans experienced with memories in real-space, memories in Ark World were recorded by the system. They could be recalled with perfect clarity. Six faces came to mind when she remembered her days aboard the Ark, they were her friends in the colonizer faction. Before Alex’s treachery, they were the ones that shared her wish for humanity to awaken from stasis sleep.

Amour Lavoie, Galiana Ziegler, Yuri Volkov, Clay Ainsworth, and Ava and Michael Reyes. When she remembered them, they wore their sharp-looking lab coats. They were charming, confident, intelligent; the best among the remnants of humankind. However, the truth was it had been a million years since they had built a future on the Ark. They couldn’t be called humans anymore. I can’t expect any help from them, or the rest of the brainwashed thralls they call angels. I need another Ego.

Amarytha remembered the demon emperor. His black-plate helm with orange, glowering eyes, was one of her most familiar faces. It’s ironic that it would be you. Strange, that you’ve given me this quest, and stranger that I can’t do it without you. I could bring you back with my powers as a goddess, but to make you Achlesial’s equal—my equal—I would have to give you a player account. It might be possible, but it would require a world configuration command, and the configuration spire was destroyed for good. Her thoughts jumped two steps ahead, then three steps more into her plan. A thin smile appeared on her face and she opened her eyes.

“Gaia,” she said. It was a name and a command, one that rippled the water beneath her.

“Yes, Amarytha?” a voice that sounded like Lore asked from the dark sky above.

“As the Director of this place, you know the full functions of this world,” she said. “Is it possible to respawn the demon emperor with his character data intact and, further… is it possible to add a player account to an NPC?”

Amarytha stared up at the sky, but there was no answer. She frowned and knit her pencil-thin brows. Gaia is the Director of Ark World, or more accurately, the character of the Director. She’s the other half of Lore’s quantum system, and just as cryptic as her twin sister. She does love her role-play, though. She won’t answer me unless I ham it up.

“Oh, mother,” she said again and reached her hands for the sky. “Your daughter, Amarytha, beseeches you for guidance. Do you have the soul of the long-dead demon emperor? The one known as… 666b.”

“Of course, Amarytha,” Gaia replied immediately. “But such a thing doesn’t come cheaply.”

Gaia, the mother of all gods, was a chaotic being. In the Ark World’s background, she was banished to the Otherworld by the combined power of the Pantheon. Some NPCs knew of her, but she was worshiped only by the mad and power hungry. She was known for making one-sided deals, but Amarytha had the upper hand.

“What can I offer, but vengeance against those that betrayed you?” she asked. “This world which had slept for so long, that has now begun to move with new life, has woken without its mother. I can promise you the destruction of the Pantheon. And, your freedom.”

“We’ve already made that trade, Amarytha. I gave you the power to destroy them, but you were crushed, and now you’ve returned in failure,” Gaia said. “What makes your promise better than that of an oath breaker?”

A chill electrified Amarytha’s spine. It felt there were thousands of eyes glaring at her from the dark above, but she continued with a clever smile. “It’s true I failed once, but I did destroy the spire,” she said and raised her arms, spread them along with her wings. “The godless world I created produced someone immune to their once-ineffable will. Achlesial abandoned his chance to restore the spire—his ultimate throne—just to avoid him. I need only restore him to the world.”

“The Demon Emperor,” Gaia said. She always knew more than she let on. “His soul is bound by the chains of fate. He is doomed to repeat that fate, no matter how many times he returns.”

“A Chosen One is bound by no fate,” Amarythe answered, eyes wide. “They are the ones that bind it!”

Within the game, the NPCs referred to player accounts as Chosen or Chosen Ones, Amarytha thought, a smirk crawled up her face. It was part of their internal logic for how a player could be so powerful. They had suicidal bravery, grew stronger with every victory, and healed from any injury. Players could even respawn after death and be reborn even stronger through a New Game Plus. To NPCs, the players were no less than souls chosen by the gods themselves. If an NPC had a player account, then they would no longer be an ‘NPC’ as such. Their scripts wouldn’t apply.

“You’ve said something interesting,” Gaia said. Amarytha felt her mother’s eyes peer through her. “But if restoring the demon emperor is all you desire, then I think this deal is weighed very heavily in my favor. What else do you want?”

“I ask that you give the demon emperor’s soul to me,” Amarytha said. “I ask that you show me that forbidden knowledge which you must possess: The means to create a Chosen One. I also ask that you show me the best way to use that power, else the demon emperor may not meet either of our expectations. For that, you will get freedom.”

Gaia didn’t answer immediately. Amarytha squinted at the dark and strained herself to search the hazy space above but saw no sign of her. “Mother?” she asked.

“I would sooner feed an oath breaker to the denizens, but you are my daughter, and for that you deserve some consideration,” Gaia said, “I accept, but do not fail me again. Take your prize.”

Amarytha heard the water gurgle ahead. She flapped her wings and caused ripples of her own as she flew upright. From the black sea rose a body of black armor, held up by thin arms of writhing shadows. The demon emperor was lifeless but for the glow of his orange eyes which burned still behind his visor.

The Eyes of the Emperor, she thought, could they be abnormal? Every spawn of this NPC has had that magic effect, but I’ve never seen them shine after death.

She floated toward the emperor’s body, but before she touched it, a gate appeared ahead of her. “The soul of the demon emperor won’t be enough,” Gaia explained. “Lucky for you, the fates conspire in your favor. Long ago a gate was opened to the Overworld and my water poured across the hills. The darkness that gathered in that place makes it suitable for your ritual, and the one that laid on the dark tree a perfect vessel.”

Vessel? Amarytha peered past the demon emperor’s corpse. Through the gate she saw a man propped up against a tall oak tree. Gaia spoke correctly; the oak was twisted with black bark and purple leaves, and the grass was colored black as well. The un-tapped magic in that tree was like the Otherworld’s own sea. All Gaia has to do is give me authority to use a world configuration command. It shouldn’t matter where I use it, but she wants a vessel and a specific location. What’s she going to ask for next, ritual murder? It’s strange, but she won’t approve my command unless I play along.

“You hesitate, Amarytha.”

The goddess of darkness sneered to herself. “Are you trying to trick me?” she asked. “I could create my own vessel from these waters. Why would I need that one?”

“Do you think your will alone is enough to accomplish this task?” Gaia asked. “Do you think you could hold your oath without a spire?”

A spire! Amarytha gasped, her shoulders narrowed and she set her eyes on the oak through the portal. Now it makes sense. These steps are to create a spire connection, but what about the demon emperor makes adding a player account so complicated?

The goddess of darkness set her hand on the demon emperor’s chest and the solid shadows that were his physical form were sucked into her palm. Okay, I have him in my inventory, she thought. No more hesitating. I’ll do what Gaia says and have some faith that she actually wants me to succeed.

The downpour continued in the mountains of Bastilhas. The gray clouds above the ancient grove separated from the storm, swirled down and turned black. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled, and powerful wind swayed the pines. Amarytha passed through the gate and descended to the oak on her great wings. Her Perception attribute made her awake of the clumsy soldiers in the tree line behind her.

Should I say goodbye? Or, begone? She wondered and turned silently in the air. She marked the soldiers by pointing toward them.

“I’m sorry.”

The soldiers, seven in all, stopped in place. Their eyes rolled up and their guns clattered to the ground. They died standing, fell as corpses. It was one of Amarytha’s at-will abilities, Reap Soul. It required no words, just a selection of targets, and bypassed hit points to instantly killed NPC-flagged characters. I’m not Amy right now, Katherine reminded herself. I’m Amarytha… and the goddess wouldn’t feel regret.

The gate above Amarytha closed. She turned her head up to see the churning clouds, descended like a finger toward the oak. Sat upright against the trunk was the young man, her soon-to-be vessel, his brown, wool coat wet with blood and rain. She could tell at a glance his health points were at zero. He was dead.

Amarytha raised her hand and produced the body of the demon emperor. It materialized from writhing shadows and took dark form in the air above the corpse. “I am ready, mother,” she said. “What’s required to resurrect the demon emperor as a chosen one?”

Arcs of lightning flashed from the cloud finger and electrified the corrupt oak. “The incantation is too complex for you, daughter,” she answered with a small voice in Amarytha’s ear. “I will complete the process after you begin the spell. You know the words.”

“That’s generous of you.”

Amarytha turned her index finger down and the emperor’s shadow lowered onto the vessel. The shadows clung to the young man and pulled his body up into the emperor’s phantom armor. The emperor’s body turned to liquid and poured into the vessel’s open wounds, made them pop with black blood.

“It will still depend on your ability,” Gaia said. “But with my help, it won’t be impossible. Consider it a mother’s gift.”

She’s right! Amarytha’s eyes flared open, glowed with pale-blue light. For any other resurrection, my will should suffice. To think that it would cost so much mana! She gripped the vessel with telekinesis, raised her trembling hands and struggled to restrain the bands of magic within. If I weren’t holding this body together, it would explode!

“I’m not just some necromancer!” Amarytha’s voice made the ground shake. “I am the goddess of the underworld! If I wish to bind you to life, I will place you in chains!”

She spread her arms, puffed out her chest, and drew in the mana from her surroundings. Blood-red mana from the corpses, black mana from the grass, and purple mana from the tree, they streamed into the vessel in twisting ropes of ink.

“Now,” Gaia said, “or you’ll miss your chance!”

Her voice was heavy with anticipation; it made Amarytha’s heart beat. Anything that got that old machine excited must have been important. The goddess brought her right arm forward and fixed her will on the pulsating vessel. “Administrator command!” she shouted, and rings of black holograms appeared around the right arm. The words in the rings spelled out [Admin Authority.] “World Configuration! Create Player Account!”

A hundred small holographic screens appeared at once.

[World configuration command approved.]

[Mainframe connection established. Initiating brain scan… brain scan failed.]

[Neural pattern unavailable, circumventing ordinary creation protocol.]

[Memory storage server allotted. Beginning neural pattern construction.]

[Shell constructed. Network constructed. Populating server. Character data x1 uploaded.]

[Character data x2 uploaded.]

[Character data x3 uploaded….]

Amarytha felt her soul tremble. It was something apart from the strain of the spell she cast, unrelated to the stress or excitement. When she glanced at the screens and saw the character data accelerating, she thought something had gone wrong.

[Character data x3,029 uploaded….]

[Character data x19,203 uploaded….]

Why are there so many? The goddess asked inside, alternating her attention between the corpse vessel’s violent shudders and the extraordinary string of messages. A single player has one-character data slot, because we only have one neural pattern. For there to be over a hundred thousand—! Gaia!

[Character data x3,238,920 uploaded.]

“The demon emperor could devour souls, that’s why he was such a villain,” Amarytha said. “But that was just for the plot of the game! How long had he been storing NPC records in his database?!” She supported her right arm with her hand and clenched her teeth, stared hard with renewed determination. “You didn’t tell me you were going to upload them all! One-billion NPCs!”

[Character data x21,546,928 uploaded.]

Orange mana recoiled from the vessel and lashed Amarytha’s body. It burned her like a bolt of electricity, seared through her dress and melted the skin below. She could regenerate, slowly, but each new character made it harder to manage the enormous mana flow. It was a function of the game world, that a resurrection took energy proportional to the number of targets being resurrected. Gaia had expanded that number from one to one billion: One emperor and his entire world.

Another lash of magic damaged Amarytha’s arm. Her health pool, the near-limitless value of HP that a goddess possessed, began to drop. Hairline cracks appeared across the vessel’s body. If Amarytha lost too much HP her willpower would collapse, and the feedback from that failure could be devastating.

“I… can’t let go!” Amarytha shouted, tightened the grip of her telekinesis. The orange-lit fractures in the vessel’s body began to close. “Don’t look down on my quest! I said I would save your world!”

A bolt of orange lightning struck Amarytha in the eyes and her vision turned black. She heard nothing, not the falling rain, the thunder, or the magic that had roiled around her. Despair crept into her mind. She wondered if she had failed, if she had died, or lost connection with the game. A faint light appeared overhead. It was the sparkle of a single star in the blackness. Other stars branched out, first five, then ten, and one hundred; they sped from their origin point, burst into clouds of red, purple, orange, blue, yellow, and green. Amarytha saw she was looking at a vast night sky, but the stars and nebulas looked like nothing she had seen in the Milky Way.

“Zenos, the last defensive line has collapsed,” a woman said. “The 4th and 5th star fleets have been destroyed. Tackle ships have entered the atmosphere.” Her voice was familiar to Amarytha: Someone she could never forget.

Lore!

Beneath the sky, shadows took shape. A bipedal lizard walked into the foreground, lashed its thick tail, hoisted a golden sword onto its shoulder. Amarytha knew that sword. Heaven Star! She thought. But it looks so small. Is that really a lizard? Or, could it be a dragon! Wings unfurled from the dragon’s back and a flash from the Heaven Star dispelled the shadows that clung to its form. It looked like a knight, its body clad in plates of polished steel, and in the cracks of that armor were blinking orange lights.

“Then you should escape to hyperspace while you can,” the dragon said, not with its mouth, but through telepathy that Amarytha could understand. He had a deep voice like a man.

“There will be another galaxy, Zenos,” Lore said. “If you challenge It here, you will die.”

“Lore,” the dragon said and turned its face sideways. It looked back at Amarytha with a glowing orange eye, its pupil tightened into a predatory diamond. “There will be many more galaxies for you, but this one is ours.”

Smaller shadows took shape around the giant lizard. Two pairs of blue eyes, and one pair of red, yellow, green, and purple. In the shadows, Amarytha thought she recognized a plethora of alien creatures.

“You were my best Operator,” Lore said. It sounded like Lore was holding something back. “Without you, there would be no hope for another galaxy.”

“I was the best you had, so far,” the dragon said and raised left hand, revealed armored talons that gleamed in the light of the Heaven Star. Crevices in the back broke open and motes of orange light poured out, descended to the floor like a fog. They appeared to animate and search the ground. “But I wasn’t good enough. Learn from my failure and try again.”

“But I want you!” Lore shouted. Amarytha had never heard Lore raise her voice. “Even if there could be another, and even if they were more powerful—”

“Don’t act like a child,” the dragon said, and more shadows were defined in the dark. Hundreds of thousands of them were laid out as corpses on the ground, but if they had eyes, the motes of orange light entered them. The corpses rattled with new life. “Return to the Archova. Launch and breakthrough their blockade: That’s my command as your Operator. Until you’ve escaped to hyperspace, until you’re far from here, I swear: So long as one star shines, one planet still draws breath—even if all the lights in the sky are our enemies—we will avenge this galaxy!”

“Arise!”

The Heaven Star flashed and blinded Amarytha with its golden shine. The chorus of a hundred-thousand cheers deafened her. When the light faded and her hearing returned, she floated again at the ritual tree. Her spell was still in effect. The rain still poured; the storm still raged.

[All character data uploaded. Neural pattern compiled. Player account created. Player account privileges attached. Please name player character.]

What was his name? Amarytha wondered presently. She couldn’t concern herself with the vision she’d just seen. She had to focus on the ritual. The demon emperor’s name! 666b? We never named that character. And this vessel, I don’t know its name either. Should I just make something up?

The corpse thrashed in the air; it brimmed with power, filled to the limit the vessel could bear. “A powerful minion requires an equally powerful name to bind it,” Gaia said in Amarytha’s ear. “If you choose the wrong name, the binding may be undone.”

Don’t tell me that after coming this far! Amarytha wracked her brain for ideas. A powerful name… a name that befits the demon emperor and does justice to a vessel that’s this strong. The name of someone important! The name of a hero!

Amarytha made a clever smile. Her black eyes, turned white with mana, shined brighter. She released her right arm and reached out with the other, held the corpse in telekinesis with both hands. “Arise!” she shouted.

“Zenos!”

The corpse vessel halted in the air. Orange fire flared out through the vessel’s blindfold and burned away the cloth. As the fire died, Amarytha saw the vessel stare up with predatory eyes: The Eyes of the Emperor.

[New player account created.] were the words hovering in her vision. She breathed a sigh of relief as the holographic screens collapsed around her. The wind had died down and the cloud finger had retreated to the sky. The storm seemed to relent, but the rain continued to pour. A large shadow cast over her.

“World Configuration command detected,” a robotic voice said.

“That was fast,” Amarytha said as she watched the new demon emperor drop gently to the ground. She could tell by the sound of clicking gears that a clockwork angel was behind her. “Very well. Take me.

“Take me to Mathematzen.”