“Arcane Training Pod X07, please acknowledge designated Contender Elonia Silver.”

Elonia shivered in the cool breeze as she took in the pearlescent crystalline chamber with its three cushioned sleeping pods that had become like a second home to her over the last six months, doing her best to ignore the constant brittle pain she felt in her chest she had all but learned to ignore… save when flareups hit. When she pushed herself too hard, when she lost her self too deeply in the sweet sweet rush of magic, failing to follow the exquisitely careful balance of training to exhaustion, embracing sweet release, and then kissing oblivion for eight hours of freedom before she awakened once more, every joint throbbing, burning with fresh need, and did it all again. Either that, or when she managed to piss of her mother so soundly that her fist would crack against Elonia’s still tender jaw, sending ripples through her that left her feeling as if her insides were being torn by broken glass, which had been her reaction when a joyous Elonia had emerged from her pod, feeling stronger, healthier, and happier than she had for a very long time.

Before her mother had frozen her halcyon joy to bitter ice under Winter's pitiless gaze.

“You fool! You stupid, presumptuous fool! After countless months of diligent effort, after endless discipline, exercise, and training! All toward one singular goal. One! And you risk placing it all in jeopardy like the most impulsive idiot crying tears in their cups when their dreams come to nothing, too broken to ascend as anything more than failures and eternal shop assistants! Pathetic, Elonia Silver! For you to waist twenty points of the pool we had so carefully harvested and set aside over so many levels… for you to shirk away from greatness now? Sheer unmitigated stupidity! Unworthy of my get, even for a slattern as shockingly disappointing as you’ve turned out to be!”

“I was dying, mother!” A trembling Elonia had so wanted to say. But she could do no more than whimper, crumpling to the ground, freezing under the weight of her mother’s pitiless glare as her cheeks blazed and her insides burned.

Aurelia sighed, shaking her head. “The elders made it clear. There was no attack. No ‘goblin assassins’ coming to claim your soul at the last minute.” She chuckled bitterly. “You, who have starred in multiple films, read countless scripts, should have spotted a scene too perfect, too trite, to be real!”

“I felt my heart stop!” Elonia was desperate to scream, but could only look into her mother’s eyes and tremble. Not that it mattered, her mother’s pitying smile made it clear she could sense every word. “I felt those horrors pulling my soul clean out of my body!”

Her mother’s smile hardened to sheerest contempt. “What you felt was your own idiocy, burning through massive amounts of Silbion reserves it will cost us countless millions to replace, having the gall to introduce your flawed brother into a training pod never meant for him!”

“But it worked,” Elonia had hissed through her swelling lips, squeezing back painful tears as every inch of her body began to throb and break out in an ice cold sweat, fighting not to vomit all over her mother’s perfect crystalline pumps. “Eric had a breakthrough!”

“Eric polluted your mind with an impure path, child!”

Aurelia’s voice was like a howling gale, freezing Elonia where she crouched and trembled, the awful twisting in her stomach demanding violent release now locked in a perfect moment of agony, the heights of nausea and a desperate need to vomit, with absolutely no release.

“That you would dare pollute an Arch-Magister’s perfection with wild untamed spiritual energy! That you would dare, even for a moment, think of taking any path, save the one we spent countless months and an absolute fortune forging for you!”

Her mother’s lips twisted in a hiss and snarl so cold, Elonia’s mind shrieked for fear of seeing a serpent’s -a dragon’s!- pointed teeth, more than capable of tearing free and consuming the heart of any hapless reporter who dared intrude upon their inner sanctum, a trespasser who would be forced to somehow live on, enduring every shrieking moment of the final hour of their existence, until the dreaded Winter Queen had devoured every trace of him, body and soul.

Yet all Aurelia did was shake her head, voice heavy with sorrow. “You disappoint me, Daughter. More than you will ever know.” A soft hand gently patted her shoulder, the light scattering across exquisitely lacquered fingernails Elonia knew damn well could slash open even the bulkiest orc’s throat in the blink of an eye. Though never save in personal self-defense, all that was permitted by the Accords.

“And the fault is mine,” Aurelia said, her voice now dripping with honeyed concern. “I’ve allowed your mind to cloud over with indulgence, when the icy clarity of pristine resolve and the fierce joy of mastering a ritualist’s greatest rapture are what you must embrace to further your path, daughter mine.”

Elonia’s gaze widened with horror, tears freely streaming down her cheeks as she gazed into her mother’s pitiless smile. Knowing that the utter bleakness crawling through her mind, the twisting nausea in her guts, the explosive humiliation she felt leaking out even now, and most of all, the endless, agonizing pain, had just begun. “No, Mother. You promised… you promised!”

“And you promised, with your every thought, action, and word, to hold the path!” Her mother hissed. “An oath you kept, until my wayward son, child of rebellion, stormed into our life once more!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Elonia screamed, unable to believe the sheer coldness of her mother’s gaze. “He saved us, you stupid bitch! He saved us all!”

The entire castle seemed to freeze with the awful words Elonia knew she could never take back. Not a single sound in the breathless lull, save for Elonia’s terrified whimper, wide terrified eyes wondering if now was when her mother would reveal her true face as she had once before, and devour her completely, body and soul.

Her mother’s lacquered fingertip gently pressed Elonia’s own full lips, a single flick slashing them open as Elonia tried, but failed, to lurch back, crying with fresh hot agony at the spray of blood now dribbling down her face.

“Hush, darling. Cease your delusional thoughts. It is time for silence. Reflection. And freedom from vices that have poisoned you for far, far too long.”

Elonia wanted to scream, but didn’t dare move a muscle, knowing all too well how her mother was when her eyes glittered with such crystalline malice. How furious she was that Elonia had burned a full 20 of the 48 points they had reserved so she could force open the final 4 nodes still closed, filling them with such rapturous power, even as her channels burned to oblivion.

All four Nodes were have been cracked open and stuffed at once. Even nodes normally left alone by the very, very few who even had access to so many, till she had ascended well past level 100 and begun dipping her toes into Bronze.

The only way to give her matrix even a chance of crystallizing properly, in time for her mother to gently guide her - force her! - Into the most revered of all High Elven classes, which their Roundear clan most certainly was not, without her soul rupturing to oblivion.

And Elonia had dared to flinch away from her ultimate purpose. Her true calling. The gestalt High Arch-Magister her mother was so eager to forge her into becoming at Bronze, after force-evolving her class to Arch-Mage at level 50, so she could truly become the eye of the storm that would wash all their competitors away.

But only if her already brittle matrix could endure.

Aurelia sighed as she bent down to kiss her silently sobbing daughter’s forehead, as if she couldn’t sense her daughter’s awful pain, trapped inside a stomach not even allowed to explosively heave, as it twisted and writhed endlessly. Bowels clamped tightly, forbidden to humiliate the woman who had birthed her. But the writhing torment of her insides spasming from opioid withdrawal? That Elonia was most definitely allowed to feel.

Her mother, forever the picture of elegance and grace, bedecked with glittering emeralds and sapphires perfectly complementing the most luxurious of designer silk dresses stood up once more, stroking her trembling, kneeling daughter’s hair, like she would a favored hound.

“I will give you a chance to… reflect, my daughter. Reflect on the path that’s best for you. With a clear and sober mind. When you have come to the conclusion you know you must, when you are ready to give me your oath of unwavering obedience to the path we have forged together… because YOU wish it, child, not I... Then and only then will I judge you clearheaded enough to indulge in vice once more.”

“I’m only using that shit again because I followed your path! I’m only in constant pain because I trusted you! My mother! You forcing me into immediate withdrawal, doubling my agony, is just you being a spiteful bitch!” So much said with a silent sob, Elonia not daring to say a single word aloud.

Only to flinch and cry out when serpentine eyes -dragon’s eyes!- Suddenly peered into her own, Aurelia giving an awful hiss.

“You chose to walk the Arch-Mage’s Path, broken as you are! You put your trust in me, and dared to accomplish at level 43 that which no other Terran contender could even imagine before Bronze! Summoning a Deathwind Tornado that could have destroyed a city! A tornado that should have wiped all the orcs we ever faced in the blink of an eye!”

She snarled and spat. “We’re it not for the Snicklit tribe, your rebellious brother would have been irrelevant! He could delve like the common rabble he so wants to be, and bed all the weak-blooded harlots he likes! Think of it, darling daughter. You could be aunty to countless dozens of commoner brats all over the Northeast, with just a paltry handful of nodes between them!”

Aurelia barked mirthless laughter before her gaze hardened once more. “Were it not for Snicklit’s access to Bloodtear Syndicate assassins, the field would have been ours, and your faith in our path would never have been shaken!”

Elonia shivered and choked back a sob, pushing away the awful memory. Because the only reason why she was even here, before the training pods and not curled and retching in her room, because of course her mother alone claimed personal ownership of all the palliative medicines that the Sylvan Alliance possessed, was because Elonia wasn’t quite as naive as Eric might have thought. Or at least she was savvy enough to have stashed away an emergency bottle of pain relievers, just in case her worse fears were proven correct. If anything, she was proud of herself for never dipping into her emergency stash, not even once.

Because as hard as it had been, as much as she had struggled, she had kept to her own personal oath of seeking only to mitigate her pain, and on bad nights, the relief of oblivion so she could get to sleep. Never had she sought any euphoria with her relief, leaving that sharp rapture for spell-casting alone, and the sweet hot joy of leveling up.

It was a bottle she had kept in a gaudy bracelet of holding she had won on the field of battle, so paranoid she had never even told her mother of it’s nature, and was beyond grateful for that now. A shaman’s prize, long since ritually bound to her, perhaps the only true bit of privacy she had from the all seeing, all knowing eyes of her mother.

Fifty nine pills left. And the one she had taken had just taken the edge off the agony she was presently enduring. She hadn’t even made the most of it. Just swallowing it with a glass of water, sobbing as she waited a full half hour for it to finally take the edge off. Because her mother’s words really had hit home, her brother’s too.

Even with the fantastic excuse of being in constant pain, she refused to surrender completely to the life of an addict, craving the needle far more than she ever had her boyfriend’s…

Her cheeks blazed as she rapidly shook the thought away.

Those bittersweet days were long gone, and thank god for that.

Any boy who won her heart today would be just as clean, sober, and kindhearted as she would be for them. He wouldn’t be an asshole who looked down on her for her checkered past. Or worse, far worse, trying to get her partying again. Most of all, he wouldn’t be blinded by her status as a Contender, just seeing her as a quick path to power.

Anything they savored would be sweet and clean, the innocent rapture she had dreamed about long before she was ever enticed by Hollywood’s darker vices.

Because everything she had learned in recovery held just as true today as it had before Earth became a subjugated world. Subjugated by power, and peril, far beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

It was time for her to stop regretting past mistakes that had gotten her where she was right now. She needed to forgive herself while being absolutely committed to making the changes needed to become the person she most wanted to be. No matter how sweet the rush of forbidden delights, or mighty the arcane storms that left her howling with ecstasy no opioid could hope to match.

What mattered was finding the best path forward from this moment onward.

Not that long ago, it would have been a path that would have maximized her chances at making healthy supportive friends and getting a decent job, despite legal blemishes, if she were a girl in recovery two years ago.

Today, that path was a bit different, she thought with a bleak smile.

It was about finding a way forward that would allow her to embrace as much sweet, sweet power as she possibly could. Power enough to hold even a silver throne… without obliterating her from the inside out. A path that wouldn’t all but guarantee her absolute destruction.

And if that path would allow her meridians to be free of awful pain, and allow her to finally get off the drugs for good… carefully tapering down, even if the next month was absolute shit, so that this bottle of oxys could finally be her last… if she could actually get her meridians to heal, or at least stopped hurting… then that would be a dream come true.

Elonia took a deep anxious breath.

She was risking serious jeopardy, just being here. Risking her mother finding out that she wasn’t completely incapacitated. All but assuring that her mother would understand the implications, and if Elonia wasn’t very careful, she just might find herself stripped even of her final source of relief.

She choked down her own unworthy whimper. “I’m the fucking Contender, not her! She has no right to take shit from me!” Elonia hissed softly under her breath, taking small comfort in the words, but not so stupid as to actually challenge her mother in any way, shape, or form. Fucked up as she might be, she was smart enough to know exactly how that would go down.

“Enough,” she whispered to herself, shaking her head. Forcing herself to focus. To stick to the plan that terrified her as much as it exhilarated her.

She carefully placed her palm against the warm ruby red palm reader on the inside of the doorway.

And with a gentle swish, it was done. The doorway lighting green as the panel slid closed, instantly barring her Enhanced Arcane Training Pods from the rest of the palace, and not even her mother would dare interrupt her now.

She chuckled softly, sipping from the flask of chilled water she had brought for her parched throat. Like it or not, she was committed now.

It was only a matter of time before her mother found out.

“Arcane Training Pod X03 acknowledges designated contender: Elonia Silver. Full adherence protocols are in effect. Retributive countermeasures are now offline. What is your wish, Elonia Silver?”

Elonia flashed a brittle smile, her mind racing with so many desperate hopes, wishes, and dreams. Hopes and desires she had learned to suppress, what felt like a lifetime ago.

“Please calculate the probability of successfully seizing New York State.”

“New York State of the former US is presently comprised of ten territories. Four White Tier territories are in lower mana regions, presently claimed by Greenskin Gnolls with joint ownership over the former City of New York in conjunction with the Snicklit Tribe, the legal front of the Bloodtear Syndicate.

“Six Territories are in Orange Tier Mana Regions, and are as of yet unclaimed. Average Monster level within Yellow Tier Regions is 70+. All Alpha Monsters and Delves within said territories must be successfully cleared before Orange Tier regions may be considered conquered.

“Likelihood of successfully seizing all territories associated with New York State with present troop allotment is estimated to be: Less than 5%”

Elonia furrowed her brow. “What are the odds of us seizing New York State if Eric Silver is fighting by our side?”

“Inclusive of revenant legions?”

Elonia nodded. “Inclusive of all powers and abilities you detected during our training session.”

Her eyes widened at the brilliant flashes of crystalline light flickering over walls she now thought more than ever resembled a super computer’s processors. “Likelihood of successfully seizing New York State with the assistance of Contender Eric Silver at present power levels is estimated to be: Greater than 40%.”

Elonia frowned. “Okay. Please Calculate the probability of my forces successfully seizing just New York City and adjoining low mana territories… both with and without the assistance of my brother.”

The Training Pod’s voice echoed through Elonia’s skull once more. “New York city territory is home to three zero Tier Goblinoid dungeons with monster levels between 10 and 20 characterized by extremely poor loot hauls, almost no salvageable materials, and unusually high loss of life. Cost cutting sacrificial aspects to goblin design are the suspected culprits.

“New York has been designated a chartered city with and excess of 500 Terran mercenary Classers between the levels of 10 and 33 sworn to the defense of said city as a condition for residency permits and dungeon-running rights. New York City is additionally home to no less than two goblinoid sniper teams contractually bound to stay within the city limits, and 177 goblins of mixed classes who run New York’s administrative, financial, and industrial districts. All goblins must be purged and mercenaries successfully turned or defeated to claim ownership of New York City.”

“Average level of Greenskin Gnolls in adjoining low mana territories is between 10 and 20. Gnoll officers and chieftains have an average level of 32. All are Classers. Gnolls have low arcane affinity and zero permits allowing for the use of black powder exothermics. Each territory contains between 500 and 1255 gnolls.”

The Training Pod facility slash AI adviser that her mother had bent all sorts of rules to install flashed in thought for several additional seconds, processing her request.

“Likelihood of successfully seizing all White Tier territories within New York State including New York city with present troop allotment is: Less than 25% without the assistance of Eric Silver.”

Elonia hissed, clenching her fists. “Shit.” But the AI was still blinking away.

“With the assistance of Eric Silver, assuming continued unorthodox use of cannons as previously detected, and free use of what are assumed to be limited supplies of seized gunpowder, along with standard Master Necromancer class tactics being deployed, including continued resurrection of enemy troops… likelihood of success is: Greater than 85%.”

Elonia froze, eyes widening as she felt her heart race with what was either awe or envy. Tiny numbers below 50% she could comfortably ignore. But such a striking difference, 25% versus 85%… almost certain failure versus nearly guaranteed success, painted like nothing else just how profound her brother’s power truly was.

She might be able to summon storms that could obliterate any invading force, so long as she had already tied the fate of a given territory into her own ever-blossoming saga of triumph and conquest, a queen worthy of rulership slowly emerging from the mist of endless possibility.

But when it came to blitzkrieg strikes, washing over her enemy with thousands of troops crashing into her foes, obliterating them like ancient cavalry that had once shown the devastating flaws in Roman style shield-based infantry regiments… the flaws in any formation that wasn’t made up at least partly of disciplined companies of pikemen. Of course, not even pike would make much difference against her brother’s legions, because those undead revenants clearly didn’t give two shits about being impaled anyway.

With Eric and his legions racing across the plains at speeds in excess of any cavalry that ever galloped or rode across the fields of earth, her brother would crash right through any formation held by any foe even remotely tied to humanoid norms. Their rifle bayonets, which her borther assured were now stronger than any spear, would pierce their enemy’s very living organs while enemy polearms would do nothing but get stuck in his revenant’s powerful, lifeless bodies. Just an eyeblink before Eric’s forces broke through any defensive formation imaginable.

Elonia chuckled bitterly and shook her head. As far as she was concerned, 85% was an understatement. If her brother was actually willing to forsake his own Contender’s Path and serve as her general, which she would never ask him to do, she’d be able to secure the entire Northeast within half a year. She was absolutely certain of it.

If her brother continued to help her in the ways that the rules allowed, ripping through enemy territories at the vanguard of his legions, drinking deep of whatever power that conquest earned him before moving on his merry way to the next territory, leaving the scraps behind for her to claim, as if utterly unworthy of his notice, things would work out brilliantly for them both. Because those ‘scraps’ had turned out to be her strongest territories, showing just how strong her brother’s crooked path truly was.

It was clear that rulership was forbidden to him for whatever reason. But if his absurd stats were anything to go by, he was profiting immensely in other ways. And considering how little her brother liked playing administrator or organizer for mother or the crew back in the day, back when mother was just beginning to test some of his marketing and investment ideas, curious to see if he had what it took to back up all or any of his clever little business plans… tests he failed utterly, every time, not even bothering to clean his room, his path suited him quite well.

She cracked a bemused smile. As savvy as her brother sometimes was, at other times he was so clueless he didn’t even realize when he was being tested, let alone how badly he had failed. And maybe that was for the best, such an adorable goofball that he didn’t even realize when he had dropped the ball not once, but multiple times with what could have been his own fully funded investment company, not simply serving as a foil for late night hustles that he seemed to get a thrill out of every bit as much as their mother did.

In fact, the only thing she recalled him being passionate about at all was when he was focusing on his fencing, gaming online, or bitching about being typecast as mom’s up-and-coming action hero, even though he spent hours trying to memorize his lines, far more effort than he spent on anything else.

Didn’t he realize that he was sending mom mixed messages like crazy? Even she had thought he was desperate to prove himself as an actor, and had done all she could to push him forward, to find some kind of roll that actually suited him! And here at least, he had actually been on point.

Her dear brother really couldn’t act for shit.

“You kind of made your own bed on that one, brother,” she said with a rueful smile while scratching her arm, because old habits died hard. “Then again, considering that I’m your fucked up, semi-strung out sis, I’ve got no room to talk.”

All the same, the fact that Eric’s odd Contender path meant that he didn’t actually have to manage anything, or give orders to anyone who wasn’t already dead was probably a good thing.

He could smash, and she would rebuild. Together, they made a bloody perfect pair.

Her bemused smile faded, swallowing back the surge of anxiety she felt as she forced herself to finally lean back and lie in the exquisitely padded, hyper-sophisticated magi-tech chair, no matter how hard her heart was pounding in her chest.

A tiny part of it was the visceral surge of horror she felt at the thought of those hideous cackling goblins assassins and shamans laughing as they froze her heart, doing all they could to claw free her soul. Before recalling their bulging terrified eyes as they writhed helplessly in vines of black thorns and crimson flame, their shrieks becoming dying wheezes as their throats filled with fire, blazing husks filling those bloodvines with unholy life. Before somehow freeing her from what should have been her coffin.

Elonia broke out in a sudden cold sweat, just half a second away from genuine panic. Sure, a bit of it was from the opioid withdrawal, but mostly it was from fear. Fear of what the AI Interface, syncing so well with her personal Interface, would have to say when she asked the questions she knew she must ask.

Because she was about to make some hard choices for which she knew there could be no going back. The only thing she knew for sure right now was that her life was about to change drastically, one way or another.