[ZERO SPACE]

The sky flashed a brighter white than Lanzer thought possible. Paler than his giant pirahnoid teeth and pastier than his dripping clown make-up. Pale water reflected his sad clown face like a funhouse mirror; he used to be so proud of this body. But his face, like the world itself, was corrupted beyond repair. Everything was bastardized now. His character, his world, his Zero Space experience - all irreversibly perverse.

He shielded his eyes, observing his surroundings through barred fingers. If only he could press a few buttons and make this glitch madness go away. Those breathing rocks, the sweaty leaking trees, and that thrashing tentacular grass - devs could fix glitches like this. But Lanzer was ex-dev. And ex-devs had no power.

He plugged his ears, muffling threads of lightning that built into a thunderous wall of sound. Bolt by bolt, bit by bit, byte by byte, the strings of code that constructed the world unraveled. Geometry skewed. Game logic misconstrued. Ambient music skipped like a record played backwards. And all this disorder started right here - in the middle of a chaotic crater, full of a thousand images, inconsistencies and improbabilities.

There was no Syadd in sight. Or Bowman. Or Shae. It was just Lanzer and – the Glitch Man. The name alone held him at gunpoint, triggering each excruciating detail: that conic head. Flowing black cloak. A hoard of hovering shapes. And the soul-reaping sound that passed as the Glitch Man’s voice –

CRACK

White lightning tore a tree into twigs, spurring splinters of cubic flames. Lanzer wanted to make like that tree and leave, but some part of him felt obligated to stay. Sunlight Forest. Trader Town. Guild Mountains. The universe he’d help cook up - all swallowed by some strange alien force with an appetite for destruction.

Nothing mattered anymore. Lanzer’s efforts, Syadd’s efforts, Shae’s efforts - all for naught. The Glitch Man was stronger than every other monster and wizard combined. And certainly stronger than some lowly QA tester like Lanzer. He was the lowest rung of the game development totem pole, and now the bottom of the Zero Space food chain. Testers like him couldn’t fix the game. All they could do was break it –

Break the game –

Just like the Glitch Man.

How was the Glitch Man doing this? Some insane hack or inane exploit? Lanzer had seen it all before he’d seen the Glitch Man. Whoever - or whatever - this thing was, it had done its homework.

But had it done more homework than Lanzer?

Lanzer knew every facet and asset of Zero Space. He was professor-level. Pro-level. Even Bowman had admitted as such, and Bowman was as pro as they came. Lanzer’s personal bug count rivaled the Glitch Man’s body count. That knowledge in fact got his character banned. Sure, Zero Space had rules, but rules had loopholes, and the right knowledge could rip those holes wide open.

Lanzer leaned against a tree, tracing a fishy finger along a memorized route through the bark.

“Touch two tiny holes along the trunk,” Lanzer said to himself. “Then slip past the big dip, and slide around the scratchy bit…”

His finger traversed the tree trunk, arriving at its destination: a smooth patch of bark, jutting from a branch like polished amber. Lanzer jammed one finger through. Then two. Three. And finally, his whole arm.

“Missing collision,” Lanzer muttered. “Never got fixed. That’s what happens when you dupe one bugged tree: you get a whole broken forest. Dumb dumb dumb.”

He stared into the stormy sky. Past all that lightning was a stubborn sun that refused to set. Unless someone threw a rock at exactly the right place. It would have to be a mighty throw, but the sun was lower than it looked. If jostled, all that light would go away, revealing the sun to be a fraud; it was just the moon with bloom turned up to the max. Most players would never make that connection - looking into the sun hurt your eyes, and that was probably why. If any sun existed beyond the Haven, Lanzer was certain it didn’t work like that.

Everything around him - those breathing rocks, sweaty trees and tentacle grass - all bastardized assets. Code disassembled, then spliced together in all the wrong places. But it was still code Lanzer knew. Upon closer inspection, that grass wasn’t grass at all - they were actual tentacles, using a grass texture. Those sweaty trees? Just a liquid shader applied to normal trees. And those breathing rocks? Simply standard rocks with mouth meshes attached to their root joints, stuck in a looping breathing animation.

It was all a jumble.

But Lanzer held the cipher to unscramble it.

Yes, he was just a lowly QA tester –

A QA tester that knew this game better than anyone.

Lanzer pried his palms from his face. One deep breath. Two. And a third to calm his racing mind. Unless some extremely overpowered player showed up in the nick of time, Lanzer was the only thing between the Glitch Man and the end of everything. He’d lived life as a coward. Did he want to die a coward too?

He shoveled soil at contrary angles. Brown dirt burst, multiplied, then divided into dissipating particles.

His toes depressed a toadstool. One second. Two seconds. Then the toadstool uplifted like a depressed spring, rocketing through the tree cover.

Lanzer sucked in a whistle, funneling air between two very specific teeth. Tangible vapor emerged, looping and winding around itself like mismanaged shoelaces.

Zero Space held a million tricks, and Lanzer knew a million and one. Small bugs. Large bugs. Glitches of all severities. The crater had several thousands triggering simultaneously.

But if Lanzer knew a million –

Then a few thousand was nothing.

He took a deep breath.

And then –

He stood.

His fingers fondled the crater’s edge. A membranous airy barrier segregated the world like an instance bubble. Its contents remained contained, but soon, they would be unleashed upon the world, running rampant on Zero Space itself. Lanzer couldn’t run. Not for long. He’d have to face this now or later.

But there might not be a later.

So he had to act now.

With a deep breath and several slaps to his own face –

Lanzer stepped into the crater.

The change was immediate. Jarring. Disorienting. Mounds of ground bulldozed his toes like ocean waves. Astral armies of unidentified flying objects clashed in the sky, pounding on his ear drums. A prismatic haze swirlied through the atmosphere, filling his lungs with rainbow light.

It was sensory overload.

Overwhelmed.

Over-stimulated.

His heart hastened. It would be so easy to just step right back out of here. Breach this irrational threshold, and retreat to a slightly more rational reality –

No.

He had to focus.

Why was this happening? That wasn’t clear.

What was happening? Maybe he could answer that:

Those ripples in the ground - he’d seen this back in his dev-days. This was the result of the terraforming tool - artists used it to morph the ground. Its current operator was clearly drunk behind the wheel, but even a drunk dev could do it - Lanzer knew this from experience. One click of a mouse button made mountains. A prolonged press crafted craters, just like this one.

And those clashing balls of light in the sky? Just the same sun assets, duplicated countless times, locked on a shared horizontal plane with their trajectories set to bounce. Most people assumed the sun was a big ball of gas, but in virtual reality, it had solid collision. Each solar-clash produced a satisfying crash. Stacked, their sounds compounded into a fortress of screeching reverb. But that’s all it was. Just too much of a good thing.

Even the swirling rainbow mist could be rationalized: fog particles with randomized materials and textures applied. Lanzer recognized bits of goblin and villager in the air. Some snowy specks of mountaintop. And a hint of windmill. It was all harmless chaos. Dragon and dragonoid dust drifted between his fingers, massaging his body like moist summer mist.

Lanzer couldn’t help but laugh. So much uncertainty, suddenly certain. The supernatural was super-natural.

Except for one thing –

The Glitch Man.

Lanzer’s grin disintegrated. In all his QA days, he’d never seen anything like the Glitch Man. The Glitch Man was completely removed from reality - both real and virtual.

Whatever world the Glitch Man came from however, he was part of this one now. And this world had a constant:

If it existed –

It existed in code.

Code could be deciphered. Debugged. That’s what the Glitch Man was: some sort of crazy bug. And Lanzer was an expert exterminator.

He placed both feet between rolls of rolling terrain. There was a pattern to it - a constant stream of rhythmic ripples. Lanzer hummed a simple song, aligning its tempo with the ground below. He paced to its pace - a steady simple flow, one he could follow with his eyes closed. It was so easy; predictable. He’d found his footing and he’d never lose it again.

Clouds combined, melding like melted cotton candy, then flattening out into a rigid projection. A ghastly image inched across their silver-lining screen - the most hideous image Lanzer could think of –

Zydan.

That pretentious lead designer grinned at Lanzer from the heavens. But it wasn’t modern-day Zydan. This was the Zydan from several years ago, back in his weird emo-goth phase. Purple eye-shadow masked his lack of sleep. Blue chapstick lips highlighted his shit-eating grin. That infected piercing in his right earlobe never quite got better –

“I’m afraid you’re just not cut out for this, Lanzer,” said Zydan. “You lack attention to detail. It’s clear you don’t think your ideas through.”

Lanzer paused - this was a memory from the Haven projected in the clouds, as clear as an overcast day. How was this possible? Were there secret cameras on the dev floor? Or cameras installed in his brain? The Haven had some pretty fucked up technology, Zero Space being a prime example.

Lanzer grinned right back at Zydan.

“Hey hey hey, Zydan,” said Lanzer. “Kinda wish you were actually here. You should see how bad you messed up. This is all your fault! This is what happens when you ignore QA!”

Lanzer aimed two middle fingers at the clouds.

“I’ll never be a designer like you,” said Lanzer. “And I’m glad.”

Lanzer spat on the shifting ground.

“You’re the best teacher I ever had,” said Lanzer. “You kinda taught me what not to do.”

Zydan’s smile grew wide, then dispersed into the cloud-crowd.

“Yuck yuck yuck,” said Lanzer. “As if this place couldn’t get any worse. I had to see his dumb ugly face here.”

Clouds reconvened, showing a teen Lanzer on his way to a brand new cushy dev job. His fat little fingers dragged a big red rubber suitcase down the hall, loud-ass roller wheels drawing too much attention from other floor fifteen denizens.

His parents chased after him. They begged. Pleaded. Cried. Classic textbook manipulation, but Lanzer was no fool. He’d put up with their bullshit for sixteen years. Floor forty-six was a solo journey and that particular baggage was staying behind.

“Really really really?” Lanzer asked the clouds. “That’s all you got? I’m kinda over that.”

As if accepting his challenge, the clouds recollected, presenting him doing an ill-fated presentation. The whole dev team was here. His colleagues, his leads, their leads, Zydan, DD. This was a rare opportunity to prove himself! But that burger he’d eaten had proven rarer.

He assumed the knot in his stomach was just a rumble. A minor gurgle. But what emerged was the longest loudest fart in bowel movement history. It was impressive, to say the least. But his leads were less than impressed. Lanzer was the only one laughing, and that just made him laugh harder. The presentation was over, and so were Lanzer’s days of presenting.

“Okay okay okay, this is kinda getting weird,” said Lanzer. “Are you trying to depress me or something? It’s just sad.”

The clouds revealed a highlight reel of Lanzer’s lows - a montage of mundane misgivings: that time he opened the communal work-fridge to discover his favorite energy drinks were out of stock. Or when he punched a cubicle so hard he broke his pinky. And when he spilled a soft drink all over his hard drive –

d#_~m.’w2=5yY2=w>+qr

Clouds scattered like field mice in a battlefield. Rainbow mist marinated Lanzer’s skin, hiding in his piranhoid pores. The ground ripped and rippled, disrupting Lanzer’s balance in more ways than one.

Lanzer braced himself for a panic attack. He’d never forget that voice - the low mechanical monotone and mellow inflection. The Glitch Man was finally here to finish him off. Goosebumps graced his fishy flash. His mind withdrew each excruciating detail deposited deep in his memory bank. A black stain on his brain that wouldn’t come out, no matter how much eye-bleach he ingested –

No.

Lanzer calmed himself, humming his favorite radio hit:

Girlie girlie girlie,

Your my cinnamon swirlie,

You are salty and you’re sweet,

Like an after dinner treat.

He’d simply never get tired of that song!

6’a^!!2=&n%u;~md#_~m.’w6’a2=+qr.’w

Lanzer tensed. Nothing could block out that voice. Not even the catchiest song, hummed with perfect pitch. He couldn’t ignore it.

No –

He wouldn’t ignore it.

It was time to confront this demon.

Lanzer peeked at a blurry figure floating almost thirty feet away. Black wilted petal cloak. Conic head curved like a dragon’s nail. Shapeshifting shapes, shifting in premeditated patterns beyond human computation –

Beyond human computation –

But well within the realm of computer computation.

Lanzer recollected himself. Zero Space was a place of logic. Game logic. He had to look at this logically:

The swirling shapes surrounding the Glitch Man were procedurally generated. Easily replicable by a few simple code commands. Humans couldn’t craft such intricate calculated patterns, but an AI sure could, especially when fed the right variables. The art was extraordinary, but nonetheless, extra ordinary.

And the Glitch Man’s attire was beyond basic. Just a raggedy black cloak, straight out of a discount Zero Space vendor, remarkably marked down. And its head was a simple cone with the tip stretched out a bit too far. Even amateur devs could craft something similar in seconds. The Glitch Man wasn’t just a custom character - it was a budget character.

Still, something remained unsettling. The way it swayed. And moved. Too uncanny to be human. Too deliberate for AI. Some invisible overwhelming aura surrounded it, like the astral energy of a god. Or a devil –

Lanzer shook his head – that was silly. Irrational. Just a gut feeling, and hungry pirahnoid guts were often misleading. The impulse to run remained strong. Or hide. But instead, Lanzer said:

“Hi.”

The Glitch Man paused.

“You’re kinda weird looking,” said Lanzer. “And the stuff you’re doing is bad bad bad.”

The Glitch Man remained silent and still.

“You’re kinda scary for some reason,” said Lanzer. “But that’s okay. New glitches are always kinda scary. That’s what you are. Some weird glitch.”

Lanzer focused on each breath.

“Whatever you are,” said Lanzer. “If you’re sentient, you’re one of two things: a player, or an NPC. That’s a hard Zero Space rule.”

w>2=- l+qr..w>&n^!!..?q

Lanzer licked his fishy fangs.

“One thing’s kinda clear,” said Lanzer. “You’re not from around here. You got in through this weird glitch-zone thing. It’s like a path between servers. I bet you made it somehow too.”

Lanzer exhaled a stream of rainbow steam.

“Your path isn’t done yet though,” said Lanzer. “You’re still kinda halfway between here and there. You’re just using those wizards and monsters to buy time, aren’t you?”

Lanzer licked his silver claws.

“So if I kill the architect,” said Lanzer. “I bet construction stops.”

The Glitch Man’s cape swiveled and spiraled.

d#_~m.’w6’a~m+qr&n“p,w> 4 4- l..

Lanzer grinned with sharp shark teeth.

“I know you can understand me,” said Lanzer. “You’re speaking in some kinda code, but your words are reactive. You know what you’re doing. That’s what makes this way more messed up.”

Lanzer’s claws spread.

“I can’t let you win,” said Lanzer. “This world is my home. And it's my job to fix it. Well, it used to be my job. But I can still kinda do it. I can still squash bugs like you.”

Lanzer’s fish eyes fixated.

“I don’t know who you are,” said Lanzer. “But you don’t know who I am either. Hidden information - that’s kinda Zero Space 101. And I bet I know a lot more than you.”

..+qr~m.’w5yY^!!~m8)v&n^!!w>oOO

The Glitch Man’s cloak shuffled in the invisible wind. Pale distortion disrupted his cloak and the world around him.

“You’re gonna use that beam move,” said Lanzer. “Same one you used out in the forest. All those weird Strangers have it too. Kinda makes sense that you’d have a bigger version of it.”

White light enveloped the Glitch Man’s cloak and cone-head.

“Your beam is super big,” said Lanzer. “Too big for me to dodge.”

Pale luminance inverted inwards –

“SUBTLE SLASH!”

A beam careened from the Glitch Man’s unseen underbelly. It stretched fifty feet across, demolishing fifty acres of forest.

“Missed missed missed.”

Lanzer slid behind the Glitch Man, wagging a single claw.

“Your attack hits in front,” said Lanzer. “Not behind.”

Lanzer paced, both claws raised.

“My move’s a teleport,” said Lanzer. “Kinda puts me wherever I want.”

Lanzer grinned.

“Oh, and it does some other stuff too –”

Five large claw marks streaked across the Glitch Man’s face. No blood, bones or brains. Just empty air circulating through a tall conic frame.

“I can slash people,” said Lanzer. “Grab them too! And I can move through thin walls.”

The Glitch Man pivoted towards Lanzer, unfazed by his new facial tattoo.

“I’ve just got one ability,” said Lanzer. “But I know how to use it.”

Lanzer put one foot back and one claw forward.

“Your next action will kinda tell me everything,” said Lanzer.

Lanzer sprinted, swooping in for a swipe –

The Glitch Man’s cloak spread like eagle wings, hatching an explosion of solid white –

“SUBTLE SLASH!”

And then Lanzer stood behind him.

“Two abilities?” asked Lanzer. “That’s bad bad bad.”

Numbness weighed on Lanzer’s waist, tunneling through his thighs and funneling through his feet. A piercing, stinging sensation followed, radiating from a bloody stump above his hind quarters.

Lanzer paled.

“You got my tail, huh?” said Lanzer. “That’s okay. I-I don’t need that tail.”

Lanzer combined a strong face with a weak chuckle.

“T-That kinda hurts a lot,” said Lanzer. “Real pain in the butt.”

Lanzer bit his lip, substituting one pain for another.

“That kinda settles it,” said Lanzer. “Your first beam didn’t have a recharge time. You used another power way too fast. Only NPCs can do that.”

The Glitch Man watched Lanzer with a thousand invisible eyes.

“But you’re not constantly attacking me either,” said Lanzer. “That’s kinda what aggro-NPCs do. You’re way too deliberate. That leaves just one possibility:”

Lanzer’s lips stretched into a grin.

“You’re a player, controlling an NPC.”

The Glitch Man’s cloak erupted like a throw rug thrown too far.

w>2=- l+qr~m` 42=d#_..?q

Lanzer massassed his burnt tail stump.

“Yeah yeah yeah, I got you,” said Lanzer. “That hit a nerve didn’t it?”

Lanzer flicked flakes of Glitch Man from his claws.

“That kinda makes things easier,” said Lanzer. “NPCs follow rules. And I know those rules better than you.”

Wind lifted the Glitch Man’s empty cloak.

“You have no body,” said Lanzer. “So you can only attack with special moves. All your moves come from the same place: your middle.”

Lanzer’s eyes centered on the Glitch Man’s center.

“Your attacks aim forward,” said Lanzer. “They have to. If you aim back, you hit your cloak. That cloak is part of your body; you’d kill youself. Am I right right right?”

..+qr~m.’w5yY^!!~m8)vd#_~m.’w

The Glitch Man cast the light of a thousand suns.

“Here comes Move One again,” said Lanzer. “Big white beam. Cone Area of Attack. Five second charge time. Roots you in place.”

Five seconds later –

“SUBTLE SLASH!”

A wide white beam eviscerated everything –

Everything but Lanzer.

“Missed missed missed,” said Lanzer. “Got behind you –”

The Glitch Man suddenly spun with a fistful of fireworks.

“Crap crap crap,” said Lanzer.

Lanzer dove backwards –

Searing pain scorched his body - so much of it, his brain could barely comprehend it. One by one, each wound registered, highlighting his body’s missing inventory –

Bits of Lanzer’s face –

A chunk of his thigh –

And everything below his left elbow.

“Crap,” said Lanzer. “Crap crap crap crap crap.”

Lanzer had one less forearm and five less fingers. Just a bloodied, burnt-out stump mimicking his missing tail. Numbing needles of pain scaled his shoulder, plummeting through his arm pit.

“Oh shit,” said Lanzer. “Oh shit. Shit shit shit.”

Lanzer wanted to cry, but instead cried out with a horrible wailing scream that rattled the fibrous walls of the glitch zone itself. That arm was gone. Like, gone-gone. Haven gone. A life changing wound in the blink of an eye. How would he type? Or eat? Or pleasure himself?

“No,” said Lanzer. “No…”

The Glitch Man hovered in place, lacking motion or emotion.

oOO..?qe 9..oOOd#_~m.’w?qw>5yY^!!&n

Lanzer held his ground, holding himself together. This could be worse; he could be dead. Floor forty-six fortunately offered expert medical care. This was a temporary inconvenience. Maybe he could get a metal hook arm. Or a bad-ass arm-claw; he always wanted one of those.

“J-Just an arm,” said Lanzer. “It’s just one arm. I don’t need both of those.”

Lanzer’s eyes widened, rabid and rampant.

“I just need one claw,” said Lanzer. “That’s all I need for my power. Just one one one.”

Lanzer focused on his breathing. Focused on the illogical landscape and the horrific monster ahead of him - focused anywhere but the pain. Pain was just a feeling. Just feedback. Critical feedback that he was running out of time. And limbs.

“I-I know you’re human now,” said Lanzer. “You adapt too fast. One move into another. Normal NPCs kinda don’t counter like that.”

The Glitch Man grew larger in Lanzer’s periphery. Cone-head hill sprouting into a mountain. Riverbed cloak spreading into an ocean. This was a beast beyond scale. Beyond scope. A massive undertaking that Lanzer couldn’t possibly upheave.

No –

This was all about perception.

If Lanzer couldn’t destroy a building –

He’d destroy the ground it was built upon.

Lanzer studied the ground itself. Rippling ridges of thick forest floor, flowing with persistent predictable timing. The ground thickened. Then thinned.

Thickened.

Then thinned.

Thickened.

Then thinned.

Sunlight Forest’s floor was thirty meters wide. Within this crater however, it dipped as low as ten. Ten was the minimum dev-metric allowed for Zero Space floors. With the ground glitching, that density easily dipped to five meters. Or three, the size of a thin wall.

Lanzer peered up with a sudden sneer.

“NPCs can have lots of health,” said Lanzer. “My claws are kinda weak. I can’t kill you that way.”

Lanzer fanned his claws like a hand of cards.

“So I kinda have to kill you a different way.”

`2=&n^!!..&nw>‘]

The Glitch Man initiated its pale pre-beam glow.

Five seconds until it fired.

Lanzer dashed towards him –

“You’re not going to kill me,” said Lanzer. “I won’t let you.”

Three seconds.

“You’re not going to destroy Zero Space,” said Lanzer. “I won’t let you.”

One second.

“I’m not a coward!” shouted Lanzer. “I’m not a clown!”

Zero seconds.

“SUBTLE SLASH!”

But it wasn’t a subtle slash at all. It was a dashing, daring dive straight through the Glitch Man’s center. A white curtain of light closed upon the world around Lanzer as he rolled to safety.

“You don’t have collision!” shouted Lanzer. “You’re just a cone and a cloak! Shoddy NPC!”

The Glitch Man lashed back with a whip of white light.

Lanzer mimicked the movement, dancing alongside him like a choreographed routine.

“And you’re predictable,” said Lanzer. “Lousy player!”

Thick ground congealed beneath his heels, flattening out into a thin patch of soil.

“SUBTLE SLASH!!”

In one subtle flash, Lanzer’s one arm and two legs constricted the Glitch Man’s torso, dragging him into an infinite blue underground void. An odd assortment of objects drifted by. Chairs and stairs. Cars and stars. Candles and sandals. Refrigerators ran. Sidewalks walked. Backwards. Forwards. Upside-down. Downside-up. A spinning, spiraling mind-bending minefield.

“Got ya!” said Lanzer. “Faked you out by calling my move. Made you react to it! Was kinda saving my SP for this!”

6’a^!!2=&nw>oOO&n^!!w>oOO

The Glitch Man thrashed in Lanzer’s grip, unable to break free, due to a lack of arms.

“I took us through a maphole,” said Lanzer. “The ground’s not usually thin enough to use my ability like this. But your dumb glitch made it thinner.”

?q.. 4..2=oOO..- l..

Lanzer stared down into cerulean oblivion.

“I kinda timed it just right,” said Lanzer. “NPC abilities can be used one after another, but they still have cooldowns. And I just made you burn through yours.”

Cannonballs, capes and chimneys breezed by, brushing against precious stones, regal paintings and a prickly pear cactus.

“This is the space between space,” said Lanzer. “Unused assets go here. Players aren't supposed to be here. NPCs aren’t either!”

?q.. 4..2=oOO..- l..+qr~m6’a

“You see that?” asked Lanzer. “Look look look –”

Lanzer pointed at a crackling net of laser light. Bright blue criss-crossing columns of shredding energy awaited below, like a sizzling grill in search of a patty.

“That’s a death plane,” said Lanzer. “Kills everything in one hit. Players and NPCs.”

Lanzer bearhugged the Glitch Man.

“You can hover, but you can’t fly,” said Lanzer. “Not with me wrapped around you. We’re going down together!”

‘]~m6’a2=?q%u;w>‘]..

Lanzer grinned.

“I probably won’t die,” said Lanzer. “Not for good at least. But you will! You’re halfway between worlds. If you respawn, it’s not gonna be here.”

Impossible shapes flocked around the Glitch Man’s body, swooping in to peck at Lanzer’s flesh with oblong edges and obtuse angles.

“Ow ow ow,” said Lanzer. “That’s just normal damage though. Not your weird glitchy perma-damage. I can feel the difference. I’m not scared.”

Sharpened shapes sawed through Lanzer’s last arm.

“Okay okay okay,” said Lanzer. “That kinda sucks. You’re trying to break free. But I won’t let you.”

Lanzer’s legs locked around the Glitch Man’s waist.

“Here’s one last NPC rule for you:” said Lanzer. “NPCs can’t aggro dead players. Period. And what you can’t target, you can’t attack!”

Lanzer raised his remaining claw.

“I win,” said Lanzer. “Bye bye bye. Cheater.”

SLICE

Lanzer’s head departed his body, still smirking as it sailed into orbit. His body remained anchored to the Glitch Man’s waist, dragging it down into the maphole’s depths.

+qr~m

The two of them descended, spinning and spiraling until eventually —

ZAP

The Glitch Man’s body slapped against lacerating lasers. Air distorted. Reality contorted. Displaced shapes defaced. His cloak curled inwards like a bitter tongue, conic head splitting like a chipped fang.

His elongated skull produced an extreme scream, a verbal declaration of violence upon this world. But only an audience of oblivious objects witnessed his decree. Tables, ladles, baby cradles. Shoes, canoes, bottles of booze. Dense fences. Small walls. Each object reeled into his personal orbit, then expelled back into the atmosphere with accelerated force. Objects rocketed, puncturing new mapholes in Sunlight Forest. A pillow unmade a flower bed. A fur coat launched through a fir tree. Ten tons of tundra-ice capped oceanic storm clouds.

8)v.’w‘]“p,&n^!!w>oOO

Glitching vapor evaporated, shooting shockwaves that cratered the crater further. Leaking trees, tentacle grass and breathing rocks folded inwards, swirling and petrifying like an impressionist sky. Bronze clouds and silver lightning vacuumed through this gaping sinkhole, thinning and tangling into taffy tentacles. The cataclysmic cacophony collected mass. Gained speed. Swallowed space. Until finally–

BOOM

Supersonic wind erupted through Sunlight Forest, deconstructing Trader Town, and blizzarding Guild Mountains. The sound was akin to a thousand firecrackers fired into a megaphone. A stormful of thunder, played back at triple speed. Nails on a chalkboard. Fingernails. Or rusty nails.

Silence followed. Dirt. Ash. Emptiness. Roaming swarms of black dust, feasting on any leftover color in the landscape. Pale pixels sparkled, shrank, then dissipated. Explosive echoes erupted then died out like a smothered mob.

And then —

The sun set.

A big blooming ball of light swept away storm clouds with brilliant orange fingers. Divine rays of blue and white exhaled a calming breath of morning wind, funneling morning dirt from a golden green landscape.

Kezzle perched on the fire wizard’s broken body, sunlight shimmering in her ruby bug eyes. Both wings flapped, brushing away strands of black ash like pesky mayflies.

Asira held Dalli tight, ocean breeze sifting across their battered bodies. They stared beyond the cliff’s edge into the emerald sea, sparkling dots of sunlight glittering within each glistening wave.

“W-What happened?” Dalli asked.

“I don’t know,” said Asira. “I think it’s over. I don’t know how. But, it’s over.”

Janzo knelt between two uprooted trees, Wagger’s limp figure slouched across his lap.

Then, Wagger’s finger twitched.

And her leg.

Soon, her upper body –

And her lower body.

Janzo glanced down at her.

“Feeling better?” asked Janzo.

“Yeah,” said Wagger. “Much.”

“You want me to put you down?” asked Janzo.

Wagger cuffed Janzo’s solid demonoid pecs.

“Oh, not just yet,” said Wagger.

“Okay,” said Janzo.

And near the forest’s edge marched Shae, stomping forward with wanton fervor. He donned more bruises than clothing, fingers numbed from squeezing his pistols. His shades cracked. An ear piercing now pierced more than his ear. But he persisted, trekking forward towards his ultimate destination –

Stone Tower.

The sky-scraping monolith loomed in the distance, leaning like a loose screw. Its shadow stretched for miles. Over trees. Over rivers. And right over Shae, who marched through its frigid center, freezing wind rustling his last few scraps of purple clothing.

He bared his pistols.

Bared his teeth.

He was nearly bare –

But nearly there.

Shae inhaled deep…

It was finally time to end this.