The fiery chains were useful against zombies and other humanoids, but they were shit against animals that could jump, Sarah realized as soon as she landed in Kittenland. The dust raised by her landing hadn’t settled yet when the kittens were already jumping on her, their claws out, their teeth glistening under the fiery glow of the smelter. There were dozens of them. Uberyn, or Victor, was nowhere to be found, but she was certain that he had jumped into this realm, and was not sending the NPCs against her just like before.

“Show yourself, coward!” Sarah yelled at the top of her lungs, but the noise produced by the machines drowned her voice. This was a race of intelligent cats, evidently: they were engineers or something, collecting molten metal to make big structures. She glanced around and saw several buildings scattered around the smelter, all of them built with stone and metal, all of them possessing a weird, decidedly alien structure.

“Aaaaarrrggh!” Sarah screamed when one of the cats landed on her chest and clawed at her neck. A prompt appeared before her immediately, almost before she could feel the pain, warning her that her Health indicator had just dropped dramatically. She shook off the critter and blasted it with a laser gun, one that she had just retrieved instinctively, without even thinking about it. She felt the warm blood running down her chest, staining her shirt and mixing with the sweat and dirt that covered her skin.

“Valiant!” Sarah called. It was unnecessary, but she felt as if shouting the name would bring the horse faster. Now she was mounting the loyal steed, and while they shot through the dark, anfractuous landscape, she kept handing out laser blasts, pulverizing NPCs left and right, her neck aching as all hell and blood flowing freely from her wound.

Damn.

She was winning, but she had already lost. She felt dizzy and the pain in her neck was unbearable. Her right arm was soaked in her own blood and the laser gun was slipping in her hand. Her Health indicator kept going down and down, an annoying presence in a corner of her visual field. The number had already turned red, a sign that it was too low.

If I stay here, I won’t make it, Sarah thought. I will need to stop looking for Victor for a while. Buy a health pack, eat something, and then resume the fight. If I try to go on like this, I—

Then Sarah really knew pain. She felt pain like she had never felt before. A lance of pure, concentrated pain going through her, then pulling her back. She fell off the horse and knocked her head on the black ground. Something was tugging at her midsection, dragging her backwards. She looked down. A metallic object was protruding from her belly. It was pointy, and covered in blood. Her blood.

Damage CRITICAL: Health 10

She stood up, wobbled, and fell to her knee. The pain was excruciating. The arrow had punctured her back, gone through her body, and was poking out her belly. Blood was flowing profusely from the wound. She was in so much pain that she could barely think. But she stood up again, every inch of her body protesting.

“It didn’t have to be this way.”

Uberyn’s voice: Victor’s voice as king, or demigod in a world of his own creation. Sarah turned around and fell forward. He held her before she could fall to the ground.

“I— I—” she started.

“You could have had it all,” he said. He was still wearing his golden armor. His chestplate was still torn and tattered, partially melted from the blast, but behind the metal his chest was full and healthy. His recovery was complete.

It’s not fair. Not fair at all.

“You could have loved me, Sarah,” he said, withdrawing his hands, letting her slide down, her face pressing on the metal, her legs slowly giving up.

“Release... him,” she said as she fell down.

“Oh no,” Victor said with something that sounded like a hearty laugh. “When I find your boyfriend, I will kill him.”

Sarah’s fingers stiffened. Her hands stopped slipping down and found a last reserve of strength somewhere. With great effort, and excruciating pain, she lifted herself up.

And she jumped.

* * *

“A health pack, I suppose?”

The voice came from... somewhere. Sarah was seeing only darkness. She felt the uneven ground against her back, the thick grass and the sharp rocks, and the wetness of the blood covering her belly, but she was blind, maybe from the shock or the blood loss. She was dying.

“A— a h—”

“I see you need it,” the voice said. It was closer now. A man, or something like it.

Sarah opened her eyes. It turned out she was not blind. She tried to focus on what was before her. It was all blurry at first; then she could make out a patch of sky between the tree tops, and a green, vaguely human shape. She focused on the shape until it made sense. It was a man, or a humanoid at least. Small, ugly, and green, but friendly.

“Y-yes,” Sarah articulated. “I n... need it. H-how m-much?”

“Well...” the tiny man-or-something said. “You seem to be in a really bad shape. You may need two or three packs, you know. Maybe even four. Or five. I mean it’s really bad.”

“To the point, Yoda,” Sarah spat out, blood gurgling out of her mouth. She felt as if she was about to pass out. “I will p-pay. Do your th-th-thing.”

“Hmmmm.”

Sarah fainted.

When she woke up, she was good as new, and she had no money.

* * *

Fighting Victor Anderen took her all day. She found him in a misty realm where the ground pulsated continuously and holes opened and closed on their own accord. She charged at him with the chains but he sent her flying back with a sonic boom. Then she retrieved the arquebus and opened fire. Uberyn conjured up a dragon and mounted it. Sarah had to jump to a different realm before she ended up being engulfed in flames. She visited Kittenland for a minute in order to get Valiant back – she whistled, the horse came to her, and as soon as she could get it back into her Inventory, she jumped again, frustrating the horde of angry cats. She met Uberyn once more at the dead city, but this time the zombies seemed to have evolved, growing in size and sporting a malevolent glow in their cadaveric eyes. This time she didn’t waste time running and stabbing corpses: she retrieved Valiant as the small attack ship and started firing lasers at Victor, who had procured himself an exoskeleton with two big fucking machine guns.

“Die! Die, motherfucker!” she screamed.

But Victor didn’t die. The energy beams tore his exoskeleton apart, but a second later he was wearing a bigger, sturdier one, and firing back lasers at the ship. The zombies ran around growling.

“You can’t kill me,” he said, his voice filling the ship’s enclosure like before, but this time menacingly, a merciless voice. “You can’t kill me and you can’t love me, so I’ll just get rid of you.”

“Good luck getting a girlfriend with that attitude,” Sarah replied, and jumped.

There was only one thing Victor Anderen didn’t know about this huge universe he had created. He didn’t know about the Void. Sarah went through the Void every time she jumped between realms, but Victor’s method of switching from world to world was direct, without resorting to this unfinished area where the AI hadn’t set foot yet. This meant that he didn’t know where Mike was.

So, for the moment, as long as Mike was with the Great González inside the Void, Victor Anderen would have no way to get to him. He could kill Sarah, but he couldn’t do her boyfriend any harm. Mike would be safe as long as he remained in the Void.

So, naturally, Sarah decided to take him to Victor Anderen’s fortress.

She stopped midflight, like the first time, and lingered over the black emptiness as flashes of abstract color and thunder meandered through the space around her. She rotated in place, surveying the chaos, trying to make sense of it.

The magician’s dome appeared before her almost as soon as she set her feet down on the solid nothingness. Sarah sprinted forward. I hope Victor is not following me here. Not yet.

The golden light reached her a few moments later, and before she knew it, she was inside the dome once again. Mike stood up, startled, and smiled when he saw her. His appearance was still ugly and weak, but something in Sarah’s heart melted when she contemplated that hideous face.

“Mike!”

She hugged him hard. He hugged her back. He might not remember her from real life, Sarah knew this; still, he was grateful. Once we’re out of here, I’ll make love to you so sweetly and for so long.

“Are— are you OK?” he asked, alarmed, when he saw that her clothes were almost entirely covered in dry blood.

“I am. Don’t worry. For now, at least,” she chuckled.

“Is it done?” the Great González asked.

“Not yet,” Sarah replied. “But soon. Thanks for taking care of him.”

The magician’s mouth drew a surprised o. “Are you sure?”

“Very sure,” Sarah said. “I’ll see you soon... I hope.”

She took Mike’s hand. It was Maggot’s hand, small, furtive, a bit hairy and wrinkly, but its warmth was Mike’s warmth, or so she thought. She pressed on it gently, tenderly, urging him to come with her.

“I hope you succeed,” the Great González said, and there was no dome anymore.

Sarah and Mike found themselves standing in the middle of the Void, the realms rotating up there in the cybernetic sky, the Worldjumper glowing and changing constantly, mimicking the adrenaline coursing through Sarah’s body.

“Hold tight,” she said. And jumped.

* * *

Then they were in the barren world, and they were still holding hands. Sarah retrieved the attack ship from her Inventory. Valiant had suffered some damage from the laser blasts down in the dead city, but it still worked. They climbed into the ship and took off towards Inverness, floating in the reddish sky, the rockets holding it up in the air, the multiple windows leading to multiple realms.

There was no voice greeting her now as she approached the sky fortress, but the bay was open to let her in. Sarah and Mike stepped off the ship. She stored it in her Inventory before guiding her boyfriend through the landing area and up the escalator.

Uberyn (no, Victor Anderen in his handsome, overpowered avatar) was standing in the middle of the hall. Sarah’s Perception skill let her see the ethereal data cloud around him, flowing slowly but consistently into the other room, through the huge steel door that was once more complete, locked, bolted and barred. The giant head on the other side could see everything: the part of his mind that had already been transferred, the tangible ingame representation of the AI that was working on the universe, changing parameters, evolving races and modifying scenarios, building all the realms at the same time. Meanwhile, the other part of his mind was here, standing before them, wearing the golden armor that he loved so much.

“What is this?” he said scornfully. “Are you handing him to me?”

“I want you to release him,” Sarah explained. “Or maybe you prefer to die.”

Victor laughed heartily, then stopped abruptly. “It was fun the first time, maybe the second,” he said. “But it’s getting old. You can’t kill me, Sarah.”

“I realized,” Sarah continued as if she hadn’t heard him, “that no matter whether you defeat me or I defeat you, Mike would end up trapped here. So I brought him to you so that you can free him. Victor, your beef is not with him. He was never supposed to be here. Let him go and let’s settle this matter between the two of us.”

“Sarah, Sarah,” Victor said, and in an instant, a big fucking sword was in his hand, glistening under the everchanging light of the rotating worlds out there. “What did I tell you? I won’t free anyone else. I will kill you both.”

“It’s your last chance, Victor,” Sarah said, retrieving a weapon she hadn’t used yet: a red orb that she had picked up in the misty realm. She could make it hover a few inches above her hand, and it would emit a red glow. It was listed in her Inventory as a “herring”, but she had never used it.

“I left all my chances in the real world,” Victor said, raising the sword above his head and smiling bitterly. “I don’t need any chances here. Or give any.”

He held the blade with both hands and swung it down. Sarah leapt aside and rolled on the floor. The red orb kept floating in the air for a moment; the sword sliced it in two, cleanly, with barely a sound, and it was no more.

A red herring, for the love of all gods, Sarah thought. I don’t know what I expected.

Now Victor was going for Mike. He raised his sword again, and prepared to strike. Mike (who was still Maggot) just stood there, frozen in panic, awaiting his impending death.

“No!!!” Sarah screamed, and before she knew it, she was holding the fiery chains. She jumped forward and gave a quick, energetic jerk with both arms; the ends of the chains ignited. One of them wrapped itself around Victor’s blade; the other encircled his left leg. Sarah pulled back, momentarily immobilizing the Golden Knight, preventing him from striking Mike. Then the chain that was wrapped around the sword snapped. She pulled at the other chain with both hands, achieving precisely nothing.

“You don’t understand, Sarah,” Victor said, turning around, but still holding the sword above his head. “How many times do I have to tell you? You can’t kill me.”

“You’re right, Victor,” Sarah said. “I can’t. But I’m not the one who’s gonna do it.”

He started laughing again, and then stopped. He was wearing his helmet so Sarah couldn’t make out his expression, but he seemed confused, as if he was starting to realize something he hadn’t thought of before.

“Mike,” Sarah said quietly, “do your thing.”

Mike did nothing at first. He was still standing there, shaking in fear, waiting for the sword to slice him in two perfect halves. Then he seemed to understand. He raised his arms, exposing the bracelets on his wrists, and banged them against each other.

A white light engulfed everything, and a moment later there was no sound, no touch no smell, not even the feeling of physical space. There was nothing but light.

* * *

The man on the floor was a writhing, panting, sorry mess.

Sarah looked at him with a mix of pain and revulsion. He was dragging himself through the floor at a snail’s pace, heading for the steel door, which was open now. In fact it was in pieces, bolts and bars scattered around, and the huge steel plank oscillating freely, letting her peek inside the other room.

The man on the floor was still wearing the massive, heavy armor he had loved so much, but now he didn’t have the strength to wear it. He could barely move. Sarah knew that he didn’t have much of a mind now, either.

“... wow,” Mike said.

“Wow,” Sarah echoed. “Come on.”

They went into the other room, passing Victor Anderen on their way. The gigantic head presiding the room looked at them, contemplating the situation.

“Who are you?” Sarah asked.

“I have no name,” the head said. “I was Victor Anderen, or part of him. I have part of the mind that was his. The rest of me is artificial.”

“So,” Sarah said, “you are the Game Master.”

“I am,” the Game Master said, “but I have no name.” He stood pensive for a few moments, then added, “Aiden. I choose Aiden as a name.”

“Aiden,” Sarah asked, “do you know what just happened?”

“I do,” the Game Master said. “The player Maggot used the Disgregate skill against me. Well, against Victor Anderen, anyway. Victor Anderen was in two parts, and now these two parts have been separated.”

Mike looked back. The Golden Knight was still inching forward, gasping heavily, emitting incoherent sounds.

“What part of him is you?” Sarah asked.

“The mind transfer was nearly complete,” Aiden replied, “so I’d say I’m most of him. Also, I’m more. I was an artificial intelligence before the transfer was initiated, so now I’m part AI and part a human mind.”

“Then the man who’s there,” Sarah asked, pointing at Uberyn, “the man who was playing the game while at the same time being transferred into you. What happened to this man? Does he have a viable mind of his own?”

“I wouldn’t say so,” the Game Master replied. “He’s just a shell. Beyond what you’d call retarded. I don’t think he’ll live long.”

“You warned him,” Mike said. He sounded different now, more sure of himself, and seemed to stand taller, although he was still ugly as fuck.

“What happened to the player Maggot, then?” Sarah asked. “Have you changed anything?”

“I have,” the Game Master said. “As Victor Anderen, I had messed with both my own stats, as player Uberyn, and with Maggot’s stats. My own avatar was overpowered, while the player Maggot was severly underpowered for this game. What you’d call nerfed. I’ve now corrected both things.”

Sarah took a moment to Scrutinize Mike. The AI was right: his stats were now not capped at the ridiculous levels they had been before, and most of his values had been corrected upwards.

“Aiden,” Sarah continued, “another thing you had done when you were still Victor Anderen was removing the players’ ability to log off safely. Have you restored the normal mode?”

“I have,” the Game Master said.

Sarah fell to her knees and cried.