“What do you mean, ‘taking a hiatus’?”

Yasmar glanced up from their storage manifest. “It means there’s going to be a pause in–”

“No no; I know what the words mean,” Shin interrupted, the kobold’s frayed nerves plainly peeking through his typically collected facade, “But why are you taking one? Is it because of the Red Players? Because we’re working with Anyport to secure our shipping lanes and–”

The chef waved away Shin’s pleas, most of their attention already back to checking off items on their manifest. “It’s not that. Not that that’s good, mind you, but it’s not that. It’s, hey! Hey!” The blueberry-toned Player snapped their clipboard sharply into their palm, singling out one of the stevedores loading crates onto the ship. “Be careful with that! Do you have any idea what that is?!”

“Uh.” The floppy eared kobold dockhand shifted the massive jar he was carrying more securely against his chest. “No?”

“That’s prismatic saffron you nearly dropped,” Yasmar intoned, their every syllable a coldly clipped denouncement. “That can only be harvested, by hand, during the secret phase of a max-level Raid. It’s one of the rarest ingredients in Magica. It is disgustingly expensive.”

The kobold squinted down at the glowing spice that stuffed the jar to near overflowing, each thread faintly humming as they gently shifted hues from golden yellow to volcanic orange to primal red and back again, and was unable to resist an exploratory sniff. “...It smells like hay.”

“Gourmet hay. So please. Gentle hands, yes?” The dockhand offered a contrite flattening of his ears before returning to his task, and Yasmar ticked that entry off on his manifest. “...What were we talking about, Shin?”

“Why you’re leaving,” the Schemer deadpanned. “We were discussing why you’re leaving.”

“Right. Blah.” Yasmar huffed, their elegant eyebrows furrowed. “I’ve been getting review-bombed.”

Shin tilted his head. “Eh? Bombed? What’s that?”

Yasmar let out a tsk as they folded the manifest, slipping it into the apron pocket of their smartly fitted double-breasted jacket. “The Chef’s Guild is being flooded with absurd complaints about my restaurants.” They ran a hand through their rose-gold hair, annoyance radiating from their sharp features. “I’ve dropped three rankings already; I’ve lost access to all of my highest level perks and contacts.”

Shin’s ears shot up. “It’s gotta be these same Red Players, right? They’re just lashing out at you because you’re with us! I bet all of those complaints are completely fake!”

The chef shrugged. “Oh, almost certainly. I doubt anyone actually believes I’ve been…” They pulled open a window with a flick of a finger, flatly reading from the message it contained. “‘Offering table service for premium prices, and then just pooping on the table while throwing handfuls of cilantro in the air’. It doesn’t matter though; the whole process is automated. At a certain volume of complaints, penalties automatically kick in.”

“That’s so unfair,” Shin grumbled, his tail lashing peevishly. “But won’t it all get cleared up once they actually look through the complaints?”

“Sure, but until then I’m fucked. The appeals process will take weeks, and in this business that’s a death sentence. Even at my level.” Yasmar shook their head, fully resolved. “No, my only option is to go run Stygian Kitchen again. It’s going to take a few days to prep a menu with my team, but a full Raid clear will automatically lock me back in at Mithril Rank long enough for the Guild to sort through this nonsense.”

Shin had never been so unhappy to hear a clean, straightforward solution to a problem. A steady trickle of Players had been streaming into Shinki Itten over the last several days, and for the most part they could be separated into two groups: Players drawn by the allure of a new Yasmar restaurant, and Players hellbent on causing as much mischief and mayhem as they could manage. And now, thanks to Yasmar’s clean and straightforward solution, the former group was just as likely as the latter to try and burn Shin’s home down.

Not that any of that was Yasmar’s fault. They too were just another victim of Players with a warped sense of what constituted a good time. Tail tucking wouldn’t solve anything, so there was no reason not to face this setback with ears straight and eyes forward. “Well, I hope it all goes smoothly.” He offered the Player his hand. “And as soon as you open your Shinki Itten restaurant, I’ll be sure to leave a good review.”

“I appreciate that, Shin,” Yasmar clasped the kobold’s paw in a firm shake, “I really do. I know I’m leaving you in a lurch, but it is what it is I’m afraid.”

“Right. Well if there’s anything we can do to help…?”

Yasmar pounced upon the offhand offer like a jungle cat leaping down from the trees. “Can I bring along your Grandmasters to sous for me?”

No. Absolutely not. Shin needed those two hard at work here, in Shinki Itten, to beat back the tide of irate gourmands. “Well, that’s not really for me to say,” he carefully started. “It’s their decision if–”

“Okay great because they already said yes.” It took every ounce of Shin’s considerable focus to keep a neutral expression plastered across his face as the Hobgoblin and Kobold Cooking Grandmasters bustled cheerfully past him and up onto Yasmar’s ship. “I want to do Shinki Itten Fusion for the omakase fight. It’ll be so spicy that the boss won’t be physically able to run out on the bill.”

“Don’t worry, Shin!” the hobgoblin called over her shoulder. “Our apprentices can hold down the fort for a few days!”

“Probably!” the kobold interjected. “Maybe check in a couple times a day to make sure they haven’t burned everything down, yes?”

The best Shin could manage in response was a hiss through his clenched teeth. “Yes. I will do that. That is super and great.”

What was left to say? Shin stood quietly on the dock and watched as Yasmar and two of Shinki Itten’s most valuable citizens finished loading the Player’s ship, helplessly returning Yasmar’s boisterous wave as the Octopoix pulled out into Shinki Itten Bay. “I’ll be sure to sink any Red Player ships we come across! ‘Till next time!”

Crap crap crap. Crap.

The last few weeks had not been the best for Shinki Itten. And they had certainly not been the best for Shin.

The deluge of low-stakes trolling had mostly been stemmed by the combined efforts of the Shinki Itten Council and their few trusted Player allies, but the scourge that was dyed in the wool Red Players had only increased. Bloody skirmishes were a frequent spectacle directly outside of the city’s zone of Sanctuary, Banken and Wilden Children locked in a seemingly endless fight against the gleeful invaders with the reproachful crimson orbs burning above their heads. It was difficult to maintain Shink Itten's pleasant aura with constant violence squarely in the front lawn.

And the city itself didn’t fare much better, in spite of the protections being a Sanctuary offered. It was becoming all too common to hear tell of a Player committing some heinous act deep within the supposed safety of Shinki Itten, earning red eyes of their own through increasingly inventive acts of Sanctuary-dodging destruction. It was all Glandem’s doing. Shin knew it. Glandem had to be the organizing hand hidden within all of this chaos.

He just didn’t know how.

That was what frustrated him the most, honestly: knowing what was going on, but still being unable to spot it. Shin was beginning to suspect his paranoia was blinding him to some less subtle solution, that he was so focused on peering into every crack and corner that he was missing some plain, open truth. Unfortunately, that only compelled Shin to scratch at the cracks and corners with a more feverish fervor.

Maybe if Glandem hadn’t been so theatrical with his declaration of hostilities. Maybe if a literal goddess hadn’t warned Shin to be extra on alert. Maybe if Shin’s vanity didn’t insist that the source of his woes must necessarily be the dark workings of a fiendishly brilliant mind, rather than the simple cruelty of bored sociopaths. Either way, Shin knew that the day he started crafting a sprawling clue web of red string and insane ravings was drawing ever closer, and that was not going to be a good look for him.

Goddess, it would help so much if he could just–

“Are you feeling alright, Shin? You look like you need some sleep.”

Shin silently counted down from five before responding. “Thanks for advice, Mimi.”

The little scribe knitted his brow, reaching out to lightly pat the other kobold on the shoulder. “I mean it! After all: if you don’t have your health, what do you have?”

Shin lightly clacked his teeth, the smaller man either missing or politely ignoring the rather rude display of annoyance. “An undestroyed city, hopefully.”

“Well if Shinki Itten can’t survive you getting one full night of sleep, I suspect the city was doomed from the beginning.”

“Do you, now?” Shin’s lip faintly curled. “I should have known you thought that from the start.” When Mimasu wilted under the other kobold’s scorn, however, Shin forced himself to regretfully fold his ears. “I’m sorry, Mimi; that was…sorry. I’m being unkind.”

The scribe took the apology gracefully, his tail wobbling in a small wag. “You can make it up to me by trying to rest tonight. Okay?”

Shin heaved a sigh. “Okay.” It wasn’t as if Mimasu was wrong, after all. Uninterrupted sleep had become vanishingly rare for the Schemer, and it was clearly starting to fog his brain. Just one good, restful night, and maybe he’d be able to greet the morning with the clear eyes necessary to finally spot the problems that had thus far eluded him.

It was honestly sound advice. As long as it didn’t happen again tonight.

————————————————————————————

Shin slept, but the System did not.

“I swear to fucking shit, dude,” the Sky Voice declared, the very air pulsing with excitement over whatever his pronouncement would be, “Every set of instructions for assembling any desk chair ever created has at least one step where you’re asked to break the laws of physics.”

“Oh sure, definitely,” the Empty Voice concurred, all of existence applauding the two otherworldly begins’ concordance. “Any halfway decent scientist knows that all it takes to make thermo-dynamics your bitch is an allen wrench.”

Crap crap crap it was happening again tonight. Crap.

The first time Shin had found himself wafting through the fabric of his dreams and into the hallowed strata of the ModChat, he’d been mystified. The second time, he’d exulted over the vault of clandestine knowledge that had been poured at his feet. But the twelfth time? The fourteenth, the fifteenth? The thirtieth?

The vault of clandestine knowledge had coughed up its most valuable gem of wisdom: these people are boring as shit and they just talk and talk and talk. About nothing.

Not that Shin wasn’t at least partially to blame. He was the one who’d convinced the Sky Voice to take a hands-off approach to the conflict between Shinki Itten and Quercus, and for all of the Moderator’s obvious faults he was apparently honoring that commitment. But whatever force or connection it was that summoned the sleeping Shin to the ModChat didn’t seem to care that there was nothing to report. To the contrary; while once Shin could have expected a summons at most once a week, now he found himself playing unwilling voyeur to the Voices’ banal chatter every single night.

And so instead of resting, Shin sullenly listened to them talk night after night after night. They talked about which floor had the best bathrooms for taking a dump (the third floor). They talked about which order to watch some sort of series in (fourth, fifth, skip first entirely, second, third, and then sixth). They talked about which women in the office were bitches (all of them, and also every other woman they’d ever met). And through it all, Shin wished beyond reasoning that he could just turn away from this blather and go anywhere else.

Deep within the darkened void of the ModChat, Shin blinked. That was a thought. Could he go somewhere else?

He hadn’t really tried, to be fully honest, partially out of fear of drawing the attention of either of the two Voices. But also, he wasn’t sure how to go anywhere without a body, or if there even was such a thing as ‘somewhere’ in these nebulous realms. But the Sky Voice had begun ranting about Danica from HR again, and that was all the encouragement Shin needed to try moving his disembodied body to some other somewhere within the nothingness.

Okay, so…maybe like this? Shin carefully turned, forcibly visualizing his own body within the void in an attempt to give his movements real motion. That seemed to work…so then babysteps? The kobold took one immaterial step forward, then another, and was rewarded by the sound of Sky Voice’s insistence that Danica was only a Six growing fainter behind him.

Emboldened, Shin strode forward into the abyss with increasing confidence, and eventually the all-too familiar tones of the Sky Voice and the Empty Voice no longer soiled the wind. Shin was alone at last, a single speck in the endless space that existed beyond the waking world.

Now what?

Trying to will himself into a state of unconscious dreaming didn’t seem to work, nor back awake. He didn’t have to listen to the Voices anymore, but Shin suspected he still wasn’t getting a particularly satisfying sleep. And there didn’t appear to be much to explore in the spaces beyond the ModChat, just a seemingly endless zone of faintly echoing emptiness. Oh well. As Shin was increasingly aware, you can’t win them all. Shin would take a dull night of restless waiting over–

Oh. Hold on. Was that something?

Shin squinted as best he could without eyes, a glimmer of something tucked within the shadows of the void. He waved his not-hands, brushing aside the shrouding darkness to reveal a sigil burned into the side of the abyss, a thing of real-world shape and substance awkwardly embedded into the sprawling nothingness.

It was a symbol he’d seen before: an empty circle, or perhaps a blank sphere, transposed over a larger ring of pitch black. Momo used to draw that symbol. It had been marked down in High Priestess Frieda’s oldest, most important tome. And someone had stuck it here, so blatantly out of place and yet so completely hidden. Why? And for what reason?

Shin didn’t know the answer to this problem, either. But at least this mystery had an obvious solution that he wasn’t going to overlook. Without a moment’s hesitation, Shin reached out and placed his hand directly over the center circle.

————————————————————————————

Jay’s chair squeaks backwards as you peer over the side of his cubicle, a faintly acrid halo of pumpkin-infused smoke wafting around his head. “What’s up?”

“We need to talk about the Landviathan.”

The other man shrugs amiably. “Okay. Do we not like the current concept? Because honestly I also don’t think a great white shark with spider legs is the best we can do.”

“Probably not, but that’s not the issue.” You drum your fingers along the wood laminate walls to Jay’s workspace, your eyes probing his expression. “Did you program it with an innate time limit?”

“Oh!” Recognition and annoyance war for real estate across his face. “Yeah dude, I don’t know what that is! It keeps despawning after, like, two minutes. Full truth here, I’ve got no idea why it’s doing that.”

“I do. It’s suffocating.”

Jay blinks, a half-inhaled plume of mist escaping from his vape pen. “Wha?”

“It’s suffocating.” You tap your fingers to the side of your neck. “It still has gills. It needs lungs.”

“It needs…” Jay’s face scrunches with confusion. “Wait, for real? Jesus. No other game I’ve ever worked on has ever needed this level of–”

“Yeah, well, this isn’t like any other game you’ve ever worked on. And in case you hadn’t noticed, this game engine isn’t like anything else that’s ever existed.”

“True enough.” Jay leans back in his chair, twiddling his pen between his fingers. “So, what, I just need to tell the System to make a great white shark with spider legs that also has lungs?”

You don’t even try to hold back your sigh, and luckily the other man doesn’t seem to take offense. He still doesn’t grasp the breadth of this tool your team has been given. None of them do, really. “That’s not enough. It also needs skin that won’t dry out in the open air, and a nervous system complex enough to manage all those limbs, and–”

“Okay okay, I get it. Blah. The System is impressive as hell, but just coding the damn monster the normal way almost seems like it’d be faster.” Jay brightens, a thought flashing across his eyes. “Maybe a giant squid with spider legs?”

“Those also have gills. And would still need all of that other stuff.”

“Oh right bluh.” He snaps his fingers. “Forget spider legs, then; how about a huge crab? Like, with a little fortress on its back like some crazy monster hermit crab?”

“That’s…” Your objection fades away with an extra moment of consideration. “...pretty fucking awesome, actually? So let’s call that a massive yes?”

Jay pumps his fists into the air, letting out a victorious whoop. “Alright! Get ready, Magica, because you’re about to witness the biggest, most awesome–”

“Wait, hold up. ‘Magica’?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Jay fumbles around the pile of papers at the side of his desk, eventually producing a brief memo. “Yeah, they finally settled on a name. ‘Kingdoms of Magica’. What’s wrong; wasn’t that one of your suggestions?”

Fuckin’ for real?! “That was a joke suggestion! It was the most basic-ass name I could think of! Our fantasy world of magic is named ‘Magica’? Why not just call it…I don’t know, fucking ‘Fantasia’ or something?!”

“That’s actually already the name of some other thing. But it doesn’t matter anymore; the boss likes Magica.”

“Gwen really likes that trash name? Is it weird that I’m kinda disappointed in her?”

Jay shakes his head. “No no, not the department head. I mean the boss. Like, the big boss. Of the whole company.”

Oh. Well. That was….fucking nuts. The actual factual CEO of MundiCo is keeping tabs on the day to day of the gaming division? You aren’t sure if that’s flattering, or horrifying, or disastrous, or some combination of all three.

On one hand, it’s perversely flattering that one of the most powerful men in the world is taking time off from his company’s busy schedule of stripmining rare earth metals from warzones to peep at you and your crew of dorks playing with your action figures. But on the other hand, he’s clearly shit at thinking up names for video games. Clearly the man should stick to private military actions and obscene wealth management and leave the nerd shit to you.

Kingdoms of Magica. Woof. And here you were eager to get rid of the placeholder name. Goddamn monkey’s paw. You already miss calling it ‘The Leashed World’.

————————————————————————————

Shin burst up from the big ball of kobolds in a cold sweat, his sleep mates whimpering and whining in sleepy reproach. What was that. What the fuck was that?

Crap crap crap Shin did not need this shit right now. Crap.