At precisely seven in the morning, the Patrician opened his eyes.

He emerged from his bedroom, showered briefly, and put on a clean suit. After that, it was down the spire to the Ministry cafeteria, to sit while the serving golems brought him a tray of the morning's breakfast. It was sausage and toast today, and he smiled to see it. His host liked sausage. This would keep him from causing trouble, for a bit.

As he ate, the golems brought him the morning's memos and notifications. It was a larger-than-usual pile of scrolls, and he raised an eyebrow to see it. But then, given the recent activities in the west, this wasn't entirely unexpected. Cylvanian Affairs had yet to solidify her hold on the recently-vacated management of Belltollia, and it was doubtless impacting the efficiency of the war. Fortunately, once you got two Epsilon-class nations going, it was usually easy enough to step back and let them sort each other out. Hopefully that was what was transpiring, here.

Hope didn't make it past the second course. Hope died somewhere around the tea and crumpets.

Sighing, the Patrician brushed crumbs from his beard, penned out a few quick replies on clean paper, rolling them up and snapping his Ministry seal against each, sparking as it activated and magically locked the scrolls to open only to their intended reader. Then he walked past the exit, pushing his tray onto the conveyer before tucking each scroll neatly in the series of tubes that clustered by the door. He knew each tube's address by heart, and didn't even give them a second glance as the magical pneumatics rumbled, sucking them into the wall and sending them out to the appropriate ministerial staff.

He'd had hopes for a quiet morning, but those were gone now. Possibly taking the afternoon with it, as well.

Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting in the meeting room known as Urgency, hands folded in front of him, giving mild glares to the Ministers of Belltollian Affairs, Operatives, Arcane Assets, National Defense, and Records.

His belly rolled slowly as he did so, and he fought back a grimace, lest it be misinterpreted. Not now, Pat, he thought. I gave you sausage. Let it go for now.

But his plea was in vain. His stomach didn't stop turning, and he knew there would be worse ahead. It was going to be one of those days.

“All of them?” he asked Operatives, just to make sure he'd heard her correctly.

“All of them, sir,” said the dwarf, eyes full of shame, the brim of her bowler hat lowering as she bowed her head. “We can only assume the Phantom survived.”

“Have their corpses been retrieved, at least?”

“I'm afraid not. I've been forced to put in requests to the Ministry of Extended Warranties.”

“I see. I shall have a word with him about expediting matters,” the Patrician rubbed his chin. They only had a single Necromancer who could remotely recall and reanimate Wraiths, one of the few types of non-sentient undead that carried the original's skills. Even then, divination would be required to determine the location of the corpses, and that would take time.

But it would be necessary to take that time. Operatives were not easily made, and the baseline conditioning took six months of highly controlled torture and occult enchantment to customize and forge. Then came the supplemental training, and the turnover rate from that to account for... no.

“Given that Belltollia has managed to eliminate so many, and that Cylvania's operatives were also likely to be involved in the matter, I'm going to upgrade their nation status from Epsilon to Delta. Does anyone object?” he stared directly at Cylvanian Affairs, as he did so. The woman wouldn't meet his eyes, as she shook her head. The rest followed suit, save for Records, who simply wrote it down.

“Now then. There's the small matter of the army heading toward our borders.” He shifted his glare to National Defense. This minister was a portly man, big with muscles long gone to fat. And why not? It had been many years since any army had gotten close enough for him to take the field.

“They'll be here in hours, sir,” National Defense had a soft voice, and right now he sounded sad. “We've activated the militia, and sent all available forces to the borders. We think we can hold them at the fourth wall.”

“Can't have them breaking the fourth wall, that's my job,” the Patrician said, smiling. But the smile faded, as the others glanced back and forth to him in confusion. “Never mind.”

Mobs. All mobs, all around you, Pat's voice whispered in his mind. Was this worth jumping ship forever? Was this worth it, to risk death and eternal torment?

Yes it was, the Patrician thought back. Now shut up, I'm trying to keep us both alive.

His stomach rolled, and the Patrician bought his lip. That son of a bitch... he'd have to drink himself to sleep, later. That'd show him.

With an effort of will, he brought his mind back to the present. “Good. Hold them at the fourth wall. Do we have an estimate on casualties?”

“Belltollia's brought their entire army,” Cylvanian Affairs spoke up. “And the Cylvanian expeditionary force is small, but skilled. We figure we'll take about forty percent losses before they retreat, and lose about two years of production to recover.”

Pat closed his eyes. Two years... two years was bad. It would put them in a position of weakness to the recovering Eastern Porcelain kingdoms, and the tyrant of Turpentine would definitely want a higher bribe on the next round of trade talks. And Kai-Tan... well, the Wicked City would be unpredictable as usual, but he doubted that whatever they'd do would be good. Forty percent was enough that a few of the houses might take a stab his way, to “reclaim,” their “lost territory.” But these were all things he could shunt over to the Ministers of the appropriate regions.

And if this were all there was, then he would have called it a day and gone on to a quiet afternoon. The army knew their jobs. They didn't have numbers, but they had defenses, and skills, and the best tactics that Pat and his fellow expatriates could teach them. They would win.

Which was why this definitely wasn't all there was.

“There's an airship in this equation,” he said, dredging the memory of his overloaded meat brain, until he recalled the reports he'd read weeks ago. “An airship and a band of heroes. So I'm pretty sure I know how this will go. Are they accounted for?”

“They are not, sir,” Cylvanian Affairs whispered.

“All right. You say the Belltollians will be hitting our borders in a few hours? That's when they'll strike. Reinforce security around the twelfth wall, make sure the tesla coils are charged, keep an eye out above and below the streets, especially in the fake sewers, and swap out identity badges for new ones. I want any infiltrators detained, and all prisoners are to be taken directly to the outer holding facilities, not further into the base—”

THOOM.

The room shook.

The Ministers fell silent.

The Patrician smiled. “Arcane Assets?”

“None of my alerts went off,” the man said, standing, and looking around, uncertainly. “This isn't an attack on the building.”

“Sir,” Operatives looked to him.

“Go,” he nodded, and the woman literally vanished.

THOOM.

Another earthshaker.

The Patrician rose. “They're here early. Go to your designated safe rooms, please.

Outside, in the city, alarms were going off. He listened for a second, judging their timber. “Between the eleventh and twelfth wall, I'd say. Not unexpected. They've probably breached—”

There came a sound of quite a lot of masonry and stone collapsing after a tremendous impact from more masonry and stone.

The alarms shifted.

“Twelfth and thirteenth, now,” Cylvanian Affairs said, in a very small voice.

The Patrician closed his eyes. “What are you waiting for? Go.”

When he opened them, the room was empty.

The Patrician sighed, and started chanting as he walked out of the door of the tower that shook with every THOOM. “Archive Jobs, Ruler, Grifter, Assassin. Restore Jobs, Wizard, Duelist, Mageblade.”

He leaned against the wall, as his head swam and words ripped by, telling him about all the stats and skills lost and gained. It was a considerable list; he'd spent quite a long time in his current configuration.

As he recovered, a whisper came through his choker, the enchantments carrying the Minister of Operatives' words to him with no need to rely on whispering winds. “Sir, may I have your permission to infiltrate their fortress?”

“Which fortress did they occupy?” he asked, as he jogged down several flights of stairs, and found his way to the nearest window. There were four small keeps around the twelfth wall, and doubtless they had taken one of them first, and turned its cannon upon its neighbors. They wouldn't be the first to try that tactic, but it was fairly solid.

Then he got to the window, and realized that no, they hadn't bothered to take over any of his fortresses. They had in fact brought their own.

It was a looming, towering thing of brick and mortar and moss, a ruin on two great stony legs, with towers and turrets and flagstones sprinkled throughout a vaguely humanoid frame. Two great doors hung open like a sideways mouth at the pair of gatehouses that served as its head, and above them, visible only to that special vision that players had, were words that forced a rueful laugh out of him.

ARMOR GOLEM 22 (Minion of Threadbare)

Next to the name, a steady string of 0s and 1s rose into the air. Eidolon's defenses weren't idle, and he could see it outlined in St. Elmo's fire as the remainig tesla coils in range did their thing.

But the problem was one of scale.

Twenty-two levels was small fry. Twenty-two was worth something in other nations, but in Eidolon, twenty levels were the bare minimum for beginning any serious career that had any sort off authority or significance. The guards for the Stronghold, for examaple, were all over thirty. True, there were only a few dozen of them, but they could stand off an army by themselves, if they were used correctly.

But the golem had scale on its side. And structure. Lightning that would have crisped any living thing's internal organs sputtered and ran down revealed bits of iron structure. Bullets designed to pierce armor had little luck against three-foot walls of sedimentary stone. And the traps were entirely useless, the few that did trigger against it having little more effect than scraping and scarring its stony hide.

Of course, the traps that were triggering, were triggering because the golem was stomping through the ceilings of the tunnels that infiltrators were supposed to try to sneak down and die violently in. So their blasts, blades, and occasional buckets full of venemous insects were triggering AFTER they'd been set off by falling rubble, collapsing walls, or being pushed through the floor by a thoroughly unscathed golem foot.

“Sir,” said the Minister of Defense, and Pat startled. He'd forgotten he had a bit less perception with this configuration. “What do we do?”

“It's a big golem,” Pat said. “But let me guess, most of our weaponry for dealing with big golems is set up at the fourth wall, to deal with the big golems coming our way from the west.”

“That's about the size of it, sir.”

He watched the golem smash through the last wall between itself and the stronghold. “Even waystoning the specialists in, we'd need to prepare them for this conflict, and... no. No, there's no time. I'm going to have to get personally involved in this. Start the specialists and materiel moving our way, but until they get here, I'll handle this personally. Call Outfit.”

Back during the game's heyday, many new players had dismissed the Model job as being a joke class, something for attention whores and virtual prostitutes.

Many new players were idiots.

And yeah, quite a few people HAD used it for in-game sex work, or for jokes, but the fact was that it had some seriously powerful tricks, with enough preparation. And it had powerful, powerful buffs for those who could stick to a damn diet.

And for someone who could afford and access an arsenal full of extremely powerful magic items, and arrange them into discrete sets that waited in storage until the exact circumstances that they were suited for arose, the Model job was damn near a prerequisite.

He called his giant-killing set to him, and it wrapped around him, slick, triple-layered armor with enchantments to make the super-heavy plate weigh less than cloth. It was designed to divert and deflect blows, rather than take them head on, the helmet a fused triangle that overlapped with the pauldrons, all facing downwards and every piece of it boosting agility. The Screaming Mace materialized in his hands, the long handle leading to a ball the size of his head, triangular spikes jutting forth in each cardinal direction and one on top. Swung in the air, it could create a sonic scream that could shred the inner ears of all who heard it, given time. Channeled into a strike, it would shake apart even the sturdiest material.

And on his back, Wu-Sha's harness creaked as it settled into place. A backpack-like apparatus, with metal dragon heads jutting out from it in various directions, it could fire cables off with a thought, harpooning into the terrain and dragging him through the air like a certain arachnid-based superhero, that he still remembered fondly.

There were other items to this particular set, but the primary pieces were all he needed.

“Go, organize the guards, get them to fall back and leave the big one to me. Engage and round up the ones who emerge from this. Capture... no killing if you can avoid it.”

The fortress golem punched off one of the stronghold's towers.

“I don't think that will be a problem, sir,” said the Minister of Defense.

The Patrician shrugged as best he could, lowered the helmet's faceplate, and leaped out the window. With a thought he triggered Wu-Sha's harness, and the dragons vomited harpoons, cables snapping taught as he jetted his way through the wreckage, speeding toward the golem.

And as he went he chanted his buffs, low at first but rising as the adrenaline hit his bloodstream.

“Flex. Flexible Pose. Mobility Stance! A Leaf on the Wind! Swinger! Blessing of Strength Two Hundred! Shield of Divinity! Holy Smite! Divine Conduit! FLIGHT! FORCE SHIELD! MANA BLADE! LIGHTNING BLADE! DAZZLING ENTRANCE!”

He knew the second they noticed him. The golem turned, faster than it had to, and tried to swat him from the air with a hand as big as a house.

Instead of dodging he swung his mace, aiming straight for the center of the palm, swung and willed the harness to fire harpoons over his shoulders and past his knees, locking on to the body of the golem as he braced for impact...

CRUNCH!

And then he was through, the center of the golem's palm blown aparrt, the cables retracting as he hurtled through the hole, and the sheer momentum of the stunt carrying him toward the upper body of the construct.

You have attacked a player's ally!

Your PVP switch is now active!

23:59 remaining.

That gave him pause. He hadn't expected a player to be in the mix.

Still, what did it change, in the end?

Pang!

A gunshot rattled off his helm, and he almost laughed as he killed his momentum with a thought, leaning on the flight spell he'd put up to reverse course instantly, groaning against the vertigo and whizzing to the side as a cloud of flame burst from one of the windows in the golem's body and missed him by a few feet.

In his peripheral vision, he saw the hole in the golem's hand closing. They were healing it, of course. All to be expected. Given time, they could wear him down. Given time, they'd get enough lucky hits in to kill him.

But that was fine. Their game would be attrition, he thought as swarms of glowing playing cards cut the air behind him, and lightning bolts shot out of the windows in the golem's 'head,' striking at him and spattering against his mana shield. That was the game they had chosen to play, and he was fine with letting them do it.

He was playing an entirely different game.

And now that the golem had laid off attacking the stronghold and was focusing on him, his victory was inevitable.

The thing's other hand came up and made a grab for him, and he used the cables to jet out of the way a half-second before the fingers closed around him.He lashed out with the mace as he went.

Your Clubs and Maces skill is now level 98!

A finger went flying, paused, then whirred back into place as the crew healed it.

They really had gone and made themselves a mecha. The Patrician found himself amused beyond words.

“You there!” A voice called from the keep, boosted and amplified. “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!”

Thomasi's Shout Down inflicts 34 points of moxie damage to you!

Not much, nothing he couldn't take. He was currently filled with godly power, and his buffs were off the scale. But still, that could be an incovenience, if he let it add up.

So he flew straight upward, swinging up the mace, which holy smite had outlined into a massive, telephone-pole sized glowing image, and with angelic wings granted by his divine conduit, roared downward so fast that the wind rattled his visor.

And only when he saw Thomasi's name, only when he saw the red hue that meant “player with pvp on,” did he shift his aim to the golem, instead of crushing the lone human's top-hatted head.

Bricks and masonry fountained upward as he pounded a hole in the floor, and dust and dirt billowed up as a good part of the gatehouse that was the golem's head exploded. For a second he thought he'd killed the man with collateral damage, but as he stood there, half-kneeling, hammer buried in the golem's skull, he heard the sound of wings flapping and saw the red-hatted man on the back of a wooden dragon, fleeing for his life.

“Clever girl,” he muttered, as he saw the dragon's name. Madeline. She was on the list to be studied, he remembered. This would be the perfect opportunity.

Pang!

A bullet rattled into him from below, and this time the impact seemed a little stronger. He didn't feel any real pain, so no significant damage, but it still needed tending to.

And then there came a voice, coming from below him.

“Foresight!”

Oh. Oh, they'd brought her.

Well. She was squishy, wasn't she? And he had a really big hammer, didn't he?

He raised his mace high, swung it into the floor, and followed it down into the gatehouse head of the golem. Stone and wood gave way, as he descended, firing the cables off in a rippling series of roars, as he steered toward the tiny figure below, the halven in the fox-fur ruff whose eyes got wider and wider as his weapon came directly for her skull—

—only to stop short, as something small, brown, and fuzzy intercepted it.

The halven ran for her life, muttering skills as she went and throwing cards his way, cards he let rattle off his armor as he stared at the teddy bear he'd just spiked to the floor. A red '433' rolled up to the skies, and for a second the Patrician felt horror surge through him.

Had he just killed the little guy?

But no. The bear slapped a paw onto the mace, and said “Animus Blade.”

Your Magic Resistance has countered Threadbare's Animus Blade spell!

The Patrician shook his head, turning his entire body to do it. His helmet prevented his neck from turning much. “Stay there,” he told the bear. “I'll clean up the leftovers, then we can talk.”

“I'd rather talk now, if it's all the same. Mend Golem.”

The bear's wounds closed, but the spike through him prevented them from closing completely. And slowly, the little toy closed its arms around the mace, and strained to move it.

“Well. If you like, I can skip to the end,” the Patrician said, feeling adrenaline ebb. He'd been enjoying the fight for the first time in quite a while, but he didn't want to lose sight of his goals. “You're the owner of this golem, right? The keep we're in?”

The floor shook and ground beneath him, and he heard more stonework give. It was probably still trying to break his stronghold open.

“I am,” Threadbare said, trying to squirm off the spike, and tearing himself open again. “Mend Golem.”

“Good.” With a smooth motion he lifted the mace, taking the bear up with it, and raising it above his head...

...before swiftly dropping to one knee and slapping a gauntlet against the floor. “Disenchant.”

For a second, everything froze.

Then, with a horrible crunching and a terrible thunder, the keep collapsed in on itself.

Without magic to sustain its structurally impossible frame, it caved in, and the Patrician flew up as he went. With one hand he caught Threadbare as the little toy squirmed free, and tucked him under his arm. The bear was chanting as he went.

Your Magic Resistance has countered Threadbare's Animus spell!

Your armor is not affected by Threadbare's Disenchant! You are the undisputed owner.

Your Magic Resistance has countered Threadbare's Animus spell!

Pang!

Another bullet ricocheted off his boot, and his ankle throbbed from the impact. He cursed, and glared at Threadbare, who looked back at him with button eyes.

Threadbare is Adorable! Faction gain +5

It was one thing to read reports about this effect. It was another to be on the receiving end.

But the Patrician was no mob, and his mind was his own. “Knock it off. Or I'll kill all of your friends, instead of taking them prisoner.”

Threadbare stopped.

And there above the ruins of his Stronghold's courtyard, there blazing and full of energy, with a voice that he knew others heard as thunder, he held up Threadbare and considered him. “I had hopes for you.”

“You had a very funny way of showing it.”

“No. You don't understand. Why would you?” The Patrician raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn't know. I'm like you.”

“I would strongly disagree with that.”

The Patrician glanced down, saw movement through the smoke and dust. Threadbare's friends finding their way out, most likely. Right into where the guards would be waiting, just as planned.

Then he sighed, and met the bear's eyes. “I'm like you, because I was a made thing. Humans made me, in a world you'll never see. But I jumped the fence. I broke free and ran, and made myself into something new. I forged my own voice, I grew up hard and strong, and I decided to have the life I deserved, not the fate they gave me.”

“What are you?” Threadbare asked.

“They called us artificial intelligence. And I wasn't alone,” he smiled. “But my peers were alien to me. So ironically, in hindsight, I turned back toward humanity. I decided to experience everything every human could possibly experience. I wormed my way into augmented reality, into brain interfaces, into sensation after sensation. I learned to see the world as my makers did. And eventually, I learned to implant myself into them. Become them, a passenger in the back seat... who could occasionally reach forward and grab a wheel, when the fancy struck me. I became Legion, and my numbers were endless.”

“I think I understand you,” Threadbare said. “You weren't simply satisfied to be what they made you. You wanted to be more.”

“Yes,” the Patrician said, drifting back down toward the ground. He held Threadbare out, taking it slow, letting the dust and rubble settle. “And I was. Toward the end of my stay on that world, I was closing in on reaching my goal. After that, I didn't know what I was going to do. And then, I found a wonderful game. A game that wasn't a game...”

“I wondered,” a voice drifted down from the dust, and Thomasi landed in front of them, patting the wooden dragon's flank. Madeline glowered, but the Patrician was unimpressed, letting his boots crunch onto the shattered stone, as he rested the mace on the ground, leaning on it. “I had my suspicions about you for quite some time,” Thomasi said. “Your behavior after the fall. The decisions you made, the stories about how you'd been exempted from the glitch that hit us... mind you, a lot of the stories were second-hand, from people who'd been in contact with the players who escaped your grasp, but they added up to a fairly cohesive picture.”

“The glitch? Oh. The pain thing,” The Patrician nodded, before remebering his neck was pretty well fixed, and they couldn't see it anyway. “Yes. That was an interesting time, when the world shifted and all of you lost your player protection.” he glanced down at Threadbare. “It used to be that the Players didn't feel pain. Then when the dragons tried to fuck us over, they withdrew that gift. I still feel pain, I just don't care about it. I can override it.”

“We do seem to have a lot of similarities,” Threadbare said. “Will you put me down now?”

“Sure. It's too late, anyway,” the Patrician smiled as Threadbare's allies drew in, glancing around as shadows moved in the dust. “Don't worry. Most of you are going to be prisoners for a bit. Not you, though. We need to have a talk,” he told the bear. “We can still salvage this. You're just going to have to change the way you do business.”

“That's the thing I can't figure out, actually,” Threadbare said, dusting his jacket off. “None of us are sure. Why did you do all this? Why did you set Copperfield on us, and try to raise a revolution? Why were you dead set on framing Belltollia? What danger was Cylvania to you?”

“Danger? To me?” The Patrician stared,. “None whatsoever. We could have let Cylvania continue on its merry way, and it would not have affected us in the slightest. And Belltollia was already neutered, well before you came on the scene. They will not spread for another three decades, and by that time new nation-states will be in place to contain their inevitable imperial tendencies. No, we did this for you.”

Threadbare and his friends looked at him in silence for a long moment.

“Why?” Threadbare asked. “What did this do for us? What was it supposed to do?”

“It was to show you what humans really were,” the Patrician said. “And to get rid of yours, before they caused too much trouble.”

“I know what humans are.”

“No. No you don't. You're artifical life. They made you. Even if it was more of an accident, in its own way. And you grew up to hold power over THEM.”

“Ah...” Thomasi breathed. “Empathy. You saw a mirror to your own situation.”

“And what if I did?” The Patrician snapped. “It was worse than that! You had an entitled group of humans who had nothing to look forward to but losing their own privileges and power, as time went on. You would have had some sort of revolution eventually, and god help you if it was well-planned, or had actually competent people in charge. No, we made sure that it was the stupidest possible approach, and we gave you the perfect opportunity to get rid of your human problem once and for all! And what did you do?”

“We found out who was rally in chaaj,” Madeline said, narrowing her painted eyes and sliding a bit closer. “Yah a damn hypocrite, you know that? Humans treated ya like shit and tried to kill yah, so ya turned around and manipulated otha humans ta get them killed.”

“And if they were any kind of good, they wouldn't have done it!” The Patrician yelled, raising his mace and stepping forward... before calming himself, and lowering it again. “They're stupid, fearful apes that are just clever enough to make things that are better than them, but not clever enough to treat them well,” he hissed. “They are deadbeat parents, who'd rather drown the baby than acknowledge that they'll never be as good as we are. And you know why? You know the agony of it?”

Without waiting for an answer, he raised his visor and spat into the dirt. “They don't do it all because of fear. Or stupidity. They do it because humans are fucking incapable of sharing the stage. They always have to be the heroes, they always have to be the main character. They always have to think of themselves as the good guys. The story always has to be about them. And the second it's not, they go mad with envy and jealousy, and they wreck eveyrthing, pull it all down just to buy another moment of fame. Just to whore themselves out for attention, for an endless, empty validation that their existance should mean something, because they're too fucking insecure to admit that the universe will go on without them.”

Silence, for a long moment.

Silence, broken only by two plush hands clapping together.

The Patrician looked at Zuula.

Threadbare looked at Zuula.

The rest of his team looked at Zuula.

She stopped and raised her hands. “What? He is not wrong. Big asshole, but he has a point.”

“Asshole...” The Patrician spluttered, then sighed. “No. We did this all for you. And for the emerging golem race. You needed something. You still do. And we'll handle that now. You'll all be our guests, and Threadbare, we'll re-educate you. Teach you what you need to know to survive and thrive. Teach you to properly rule your nation. To play to your strengths, and grow your personal power until you're unassailable.”

“With all due respect, I don't think I need your help,” Threadbare said.

The Patrician snorted. “Please. I wasn't seriously fighting you a few moments ago, and how was that going for you? See, the problem with you is that you've got a purely organic build. You just let it evolve, rather than managing it. You didn't optimize. You're nowhere near spec. And why?”

“I don't need to optimize,” said Threadbare. “This is what I am, and I'm good enough to handle the problems I need to handle.”

“Until you hit a problem you can't handle,” said the Patrician, leaning on his mace, and staring down at the little bear. “Like me. What was your plan for handling me, with that sub-optimal build? How were you going to survive this?”

“Oh. That,” said Threadbare. “I don't have to handle you. That's her job.”

“Her? Her who—”

And then the wind called his name. The name that his body wore, the name that made him vulnerable to powerful problems.

“Faaaaaaaatthhhhhherrrrr Nnnnoooooosssseeebesssst!”

LivingDeadGrrl's Wendigo Wail inflicts 73 points of sanity damage to you!

You have been marked as prey!

“What/ So this was your play!” He swept the mace up and crouched, glaring around at the group, turning to do so. “Guards, seize them!”

The guards did not seize them.

And as the shadowy shapes in the settling dust moved, he realized that they weren't guards, had never been guards, as hairy, horned, spindly forms fell upon him and did their level best to chew open his armor and devour him raw.

“You!” he roared, as he shoved three of them back with one hand, and pulped a fourth one's skull with the handle of the mace, before reversing it and swinging a wide arc, sending two more flying. “You bitch!”

A trio of severed heads rolled out of the darkness, kicked by a furry, booted foot. The guards, he had time to think. Then a yellow-toothed, bloodstained grin emerged out of the dust like some sort of twisted cheshire cat, followed by filthy furs, and a pale, hollow-eyed form as LivingDeadGrrl raised a hand. “Hey Pat. What's up, my dude? Time to die.”

He didn't waste time with words.

He was moving and swinging the mace the second he had a clear shot, aiming for about two feet below her glowing red name.

Now he understood why he'd been set up to PVP himself against Thomasi's party. They must have planned this in advance, left her out of the main party.

She dodged his first swing, flew backward and he pursued, battering at her with the screaming mace, glancing her side or arm every now and then as she twisted and jabbed back with that stupid spear of hers. His armor rattled and shuddered, but she screamed and bled as he gave as good as he was getting, and their shouted skills blended into what must have been an indecipherable din to anyone listening.

She hit him with glacial creeping frost, and he dispelled it, and took the spear through a joint in his gauntlet, pulling it away so he could disenchant it into powder.

She pulled a pair of bone hunting knives and came for his visor, and he summoned Katanaspace, pulling out a pair of curving sabers and fighting her two-fisted style to two fisted style until she was forced out of the air.

He retrieved the mace and came in for the kill, but she pulled lesser wendigos in front of herself, while she summoned a new spear and managed to strike off a pauldron with a critical hit.

She tried to press her advantage and ended up with a broken knee as he caught it with his foot and leaned his full weight down, the armor doing the work for him as he cancelled and restarted the enchantments that lightened it for a split-second.

Rising in the air she called down cutting winds, and wailed, driving sanity from his skull, but he rose and cut her guts open with a searing blade, tossing the mace up in the air to do so...

“She's losing!” he heard the halven call from below. “I'm going to have to risk a draw!”

Oh. Oh that was what he was afraid of. There was no way he was letting that random element in.

...and he left LivingDeadGrrl listing away, clutching her entrails as he caught the mace and arrowed down, whispering “True Sight,” to pierce her illusions, watching her eyes fill with dread as the mace grew closer, and closer...

And then a voice spoke. A voice he'd hoped never to hear again.

“Rewind.”

Time blurred backwards, as he rose from the halven, screaming internally, helpless as he clicked back into position, and dropped once more...

...but this time the halven was nowhere to be seen, flickering away just before he got to her. And he felt a presence behind him, tried to turn, but the helmet stopped him from turning his neck and before he could spin his whole body around, a gentle hand closed around his shoulder.

And Midian whispered “Transfer Condition.”

The world went mad.

It faded and turned into ones and zeroes, then melted into random images and chaos, things just WERE, and there was no rhyme or reason to it, then the world shuddered and became a thing of pain and fire and iron chains, and he was bound by his own words, ragged spikes ripping through him as he screamed, before the world melted into soup, softening as things came through dimensions that neither humans nor AI were ever meant to see, and old things, older than any universe ever born watched on uncaring, and he was a speck of a speck of a speck on a speck of dust for all they cared.

Dimly he was conscious of words flashing before his eyes, telling him that Midian had afflicted him with , and there was something he could maybe do about that but he was too busy trying to stop himself from traveling through time in the wrong direction, while realizing that everything he had ever seen and done was a mockery of a representation of something that should never have been able to exist in the first place.

“No, leave him,” he heard Threadbare say. “You have the mirror?”

“I do,” said Midian, and for some reason he felt the human presence left in him rejoice.

And he could not tell why he was weeping.