《Uploaded Fairy: The Family Of Lost Purgatory Girls》


 Chapter 1

    The teacher was an inhuman mass of pixels.


    Nadine reclined in her seat, dreaming of completing a great project at home she had wanted to do since he was a tot. She always wanted a robotic dog, but never got to have even the parts to make one until very recently. She could not afford a real pet, or at least that''s what her mother told her. The machine printed out the letters of the national anthem.


    A female student, her name Brittney, woke him up. If anybody could be described as having a fake smile, it was her; it was fake enough to break glass. The other students, all roughly between thirteen and fourteen, got out their ereaders, flipping the page to the current assignment. But Richard kept drifting off into space. He worked on his robotic dog like it was a full time job, when according to his teachers his classwork should require just as much attention.


    At the end of class, a bell rung, and the students rushed out of the classroom. Him preferring to imagine bringing his pet to school, to use that to get back at some of his school bullies, having it rip their balls off, was a matter of his preoccupation. But when he tried to get to class, his arm was gently tugged.


    "Hey Wait, Richy!" Brittney said.


    "My name is Nadine, not Richy; we''re going to be late."


    Nadine said. Brittney had never been one to pay attention to her gender issues, but also found Nadine to be to feminine for their apparent gender. "Does everything happen to be such a hurry Richard?"


    Nadine tugged her arm out of Brittney''s grasp, but her ex girlfriend simply wasn''t aware of the problem it was that she would misgender her. Nadine would have to keep an eye on her at lunch, or she might steal her cookies. She had been this way sense she found out Nadine could bake.


    Brittney was a whole five minutes late. The teacher, a super computer that recently replaced normal teachers, forcing the old educator class to find other jobs, printed out a tardy slip. With the fine print: Corporal punishment, Saturday morning,


    Once she got in her seat, Brittney showed Nadine the slip. "How did you get that one, I thought they banned the practice." Nadine asked.


    "My father bribed the staff." She brushed her brunette locks in Nadine''s direction. "You never talk to me anymore Richard, has something changed?"


    Nadine remembered the last time they went out together. It was a movie theater trip with some of her school friends. Her then boyfriend Alex, with platinum locks, a pair of ovular glasses, who always carried a book of Shakeaspear''s plays with him, wanted to arrange a partnership with Nadine and her childhood friend.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    They had lost touch sometime around fifth grade, and had not spoken much until very recently, when Nadine was first kicked off the flying wing schoolplane.


    Nadine mostly talk with Alex during the times she was able to sneak a ride without the pilot realizing it, leading her to often being kicked to the curb. But that is a subject for another book blurb. "I''ve been busy lately."


    The computer beeped for class to stop talking. The rest of the day followed a similar pattern.


    "Hey wait up Richard!" Brittney said. But it was to late to catch up with her. When she arrived at her second class, she got her second tardy slip.


    Nadine rode a flying wing bus that day, in the same manner in which she would usually to do so. At a comfortable seat, she hunched over Alex''s shoulder, jokingly took the book of plays from his hands, and prompted to tease him about how Romeo and Juliet was dreck.


    She wore a pair of head phones, and banged her ears to various Cybergoth bands. Among other things teenagers did in their long trip back home.


    At home, he raised her smart phone to the door lock, then let herself inside. There was a can of mushroom soup waiting for her in the kitchen, with a post it note of her name on it. She opened the can, and threw it into the microwave, being lucky to not make a mess. She then slammed her backpack on the bed, slipped her socks off, and put on her Birkenstock clogs, then got out her kit to make her pet Robot dog.


    Her phone buzzed. "Oh hey, Brit. I thought I told you not to call me again."


    She hung up, and muted Brittney''s number. She then sat at the table to finish the school work she didn''t complete in class. Then finally began to the real project she was waiting with, after she turned on the evening news on her computer.


    Nadine recieved another phone call, while chilling out with her screwdriver. It was Juline. Her mom would often get home late during the evening, as the nature of her work required constant attendence in political meetings with different aristocrats. "Hey Richard, I have another meeting that will keep my busy until later this evening. Could you go ahead and put the mushroom soup in the Tuna cassatole?"


    Nadine hated being called Richard, but hated her mother''s wrath even more, so she got out another can of mushroom soup to cover up her misdeed. "You sure will."


    "Thanks, take care sweety." Juline hung up the phone.


    Nadine got back to tending to her pet project. Her seat looked like it was made up wood, but was actually a form of industrial plastic. Most of the wood produced these days came from trees that were raised in giant farms, rather than natural lumber. Which meant that seats now had a certain stiffness that was completely unlike the pliableness she had grown up being used to during the 2090s. She would watch various channels from Alternet to Commondreams, and generally avoided disaster networks like MSNBC or Fox News. She preferred to look at drawings of girls in wooden shoes.


    Juline did not come home that night, and Nadine was starting to get worried. But she decided to not call 9/11. Instead she gave me into sleep.

 Chapter 2

    The next morning at the station, Nadine tried to push herself through the crowd and get on. This failed miserably. The next attempt, she tried tailgating her friend Alex, but he was prone to being a tattletale despite nearing fifteen. In either case, she had to hurry, as she seemed to not be allowed onto the bus yet again. This meant another day of aching legs. But this was an adventure that came with the territory, such was the tagline of her favorite MC in one of her favorite JRPGs.


    She arrived three hours later, but she also generally tried getting up three hour earlier. She was just barely on time; much of her life was spent having to make certain adjustments to various set backs, rather than confronting them head on. If her life went on the normal path, Nadine would be working as just another poltician.


    But she generally hated politique, and wanted to turn her entire world upside down. She just didn''t know much of her world would soon be done in, in this fashion. It was late that morning during third period. The intercom in the classroom called for her to come to the office.


    In the office, Nadine set in front of the super computers desk. The vice principle was a towering monstricity of wires and computer chips, and was completely binary on a screen that floated in the air as if it were a Graphical User Interface from a video game made by sadistic head masters. Nadine wondered if this was the computer that paddled Brittney, and had to restrain a cackle picturing her being pulled up by wires.


    "We saw the joke you made to Alex about Romeo and Juliet. Did you know I also fucking hate Shakeaspeare?" The computer monitor buzzed in and out. "But sometimes, life will throw unexpected barriers at me. Your mother didn''t come home last night. She died when she was mugged by a Francophone Anarchist lady. Don''t worry, we already beheaded her. But you will be moving to a different school."


    The computer pretended to wipe what may be described as a digital tear drop. "So we made a cake for you to celebrate your fourteenth birthday."


    Nadine rode in a private flying wing jet to her new boarding school. Beside her were two armed guards, both of which were decked out in black. A few months ago, Nadine wore the boots that could easily me confused for combat boots, yet now she were her two Birkenstock Clogs, and simplest of plain clothes while resting reclined back with a double layer of pillows.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Once she arrvied at the admissionss podium, she was asked to remove all things she was carrying in her purse. This included the book she kept to remember Alex by, the boy she grew up with reading Ghost Stories in virtual reality games, under the glow of hallucinatory camp fires. The guard asked her what the book was. She sneered, "Shakeaspear, a book from a friend."


    "Yea, I hate Shakeaspeare too."


    The only light is that of a small lamp. Nadine put her bag into the closet, while doing so she had began to have the creeping feeling of isolation and despair; the room was modified from an old asylum cell block, the walls covered in white paint to wash away the blood of a now seemingly distant era.


    Previously the EU had taken over the United States, during the Second American Revolution. You might think this was an Anarcho-Communists dream come true, until the EU had resolved to replace lethal injection with the Guillotine Gun. The EU lost more territory than the old United States had ever owned, much of it because the US was heading leftward while Europe was heading increasingly right ward.


    And now, Nadine rested in a prison originally designed for political prisoners treated as if they''re anarcho-anacronist personalities were a product of madness. Thus she dreaded living in a place that was the stronghold of a now distant, decaying empire.


    Her work desk looked like it was made of wood, but in fact it was made out of biodegradeable plastic made look like such, and the shoes modelled after the 19th century Dutch were of similar material. This was part of their failed green energy policy; it failed not because it was false, but because nobody ever considered the degrading ecosystem of Earth. She heard footsteps in the hall.


    She peeked outside her peek hole on the door.


    "Hey, It''s Michael, can I come in?" he said. Michael was to be one of her room mates. Despite the fact that she was a trans girl, the school still treated her as if she was male. She turned the knob to let him in. "Need any help unpacking?"


    "I''m almost done, but feel free if you think there is anything I didn''t unpack." Nadine said, then leaned in closer to hear the beating of his heart, to know another human was there.


    "So who are you?" Michael said, gently brushing Nadine''s hair.


    "The name''s Nadine."


    "We''ll get along great, you seem loving. But keep your nose clean."

 Chapter 3

    For the first time in Nadine life, she was scared. She was scared that she would eventually be found by her father, who generally had been more absent from her life than her mother. Neither of her parents were constantly around, so she grew up in such a way that she might as well had not have had parents. Her family could have afforded a care giver, if they were so inclined, but they had not even considered it till Nadine was much older, and her anti-authoritarian personality had already been shaped. This made her, paradoxically, avoid things that would get her into better shape when she lived at the boarding school for months, such as playing soccer.


    From time to time, her childhood sweet heart Brittney would occasionally come visit her on the weekends. But Nadine had drifted away from her faster than romantic couple split between New York and Paris. The last times they spent together, Nadine was much less talkative than she used to be. She spent time learning the Ruby programming language, and learning how to build web pages on the net: she could build a web page, find a free web host, among other skill sets. Yet found arranging her life to meet the demands of other people something that she could not imagine.


    When she would try to interact, she could not mentally take it: the very interaction with people with even mildly confrontational personalities would make her unable to process anything that that person wanted to say to her. And thus after a point Brittney gave up talking to her, preferring to spend time holding hands with her, staring deeply into Nadine''s eyes. And hoping that someday they would never grow apart. Nadine assured her that she would always been there if she needed anything. But Brittney saw something about Nadine that deeply unnerved her.


    The way that Nadine would gently bite upon Brittney''s neck, and caress her under the glow of the buzzing L.E.D. light. While others there age were just now growing out of reading good night novels, Nadine had never even been told a lullaby. Brittney had to memorize one from her earliest childhood memories, just to get Nadine to sleep. Thus when Nadine disappeared, despite growing apart, she took it as somewhat of a shock.


    It was Brittney, and not Nadine''s father, that reached out her hand to keep Nadine from falling from the floating sky city. But Nadine slipped out of her hands. Nadine, feeling betrayed, passed out on the way down. It could have been argued she was already a dead man, her life fading out like distant star ship, traveling at super luminal velocity. Everything she had ever known becoming black.


    When she woke up, the room was dark. Her new right arm and new right leg she couldn''t feel, below the glow of the few lights that were still lit in that hospital three years ago. She remembered the drugs she took, and the absence of a storybook. It was as if she had fallen into a deep sleep called Purgatory.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    She couldn''t wake up.


    Nadine was a hunk of metal and flesh. Lonely hallways made the experience more isolating. There was a random odor that smelled like death. A muted color sky revealed a seemingly endless array of flying cars flying at light speed, way up into the floating city. Yet below, where Malcolm carried Nadine, it was comparably closer to a dumpster than something remotely habitable. Malcolm avoided the best he could from dropping her, in order to keep her from being infected by her wounds. Since the Nadine arrived, just a few minutes ago that felt like eternity, she had been heaving and now was trying to mouth something. Her voice barely a whisper.


    Nadine knelt her ear as if to listen to a dead woman walking, though she wasn''t walking now. But the effort to do so was futile.


    Ellen never could get used to living in the basement of her father''s flat, yet it was better than living out on the streets. Her father would always tell her that she lived a relatively comfortable lifestyle, something she grew to accept despite this obviously being false. Her mother had died when she was very young, a situation all to common in this district. She never knew exactly the circumstances behind it, accept that very rarely would her father even be willing to discuss the matter. Instead he''d always lock her down in the basement, and hide the key even from himself. Compounded by his tendency to become drunk. Dinner would often be late, and she would get scraps by comparison of what her father got. If this was comfortable living, then she could scarcely imagine the life outside.


    Her father would always paddle her for grades other parents would consider their child being an ace student, though that was during the times when he was awake, or at the very least, not watching television. She knew when he was asleep, when she could do anything she wanted in the living room, even flip him off. And he wouldn''t notice, being lost in a dream world generated by his own stupor. Stupor was only a few syllables different from stupid, though the difference between the two became even subtler the harder she tried to convince him to sell his classic car to secure a lifestyle they once had, back when they lived in the floating city. But nowadays she has come to accept this new life. Schools here were nothing like the ones in the floating district, though she gave the excuse that this was better than nothing at all. But increasingly, she found she preferred having nothing at all.


    Even if it meant getting a taste for the real world. A world below the muted sky, covered by the clouds of global warming. It was better than living this lie, that wasn''t much better than the ones her friends led, of the few that she still maintained. She had previously tried living with her sister, but Yoellen called their father to come pick Ellen up. The next week she found out her big sis hung herself. She was now without even the scarcity of siblings, she had nobody else but herself.


    She remembered when she locked her father out.


    "Ellen. Ellen. Will you let me in!?" He slammed the front door with his fist. "I want to talk to you about your report cards." She walked slowly, decided whether or not to let him or, or to call the police. But in this district, it seemed almost as if there were no cops at all. Nothing like the floating city.


    "Yes daddy, right away!"

 Chapter 4

    Every since he got home from work, her father only watched television. It was old reruns of classical western sitcoms, which made Ellen wanted to vomit. But it was better than actually being a cowboy, with all their chauvinistic values. All their girls being rescued from the hangman''s noose. She herself had largely given up watching the set, and had largely tuned herself out from the larger world. It was not just the educational channels that gave her a headache. But also the cartoon channels. Part of her still wanted to reclaim the lost joy of flickering lights. When she had went to the arcades, she had met Slephner for the first time. It was one of the few occasions she didn''t mind little Indians and cowboys shooting at each other to the death.


    "Ellen! I''m trying to talk to you!" Her father said, slamming the door. Even though in reality, he had just gotten up. He forgot that he had locked her in the basement. He took the key from where he hid it, then opened the door. " It wasn''t the same tone from when he spanked her, but it wasn''t any more of a relief. Just the sound of his voice, made her want to smash his head open with a lead pipe.


    "I can explain about--" Ellen began to say.


    "Forget about the excuses." her father said.


    It had been like this since she turned fifteen, and showed no obvious signs of slowing down. She did what any other girl in that situation to.


    She got herself a lead pipe.


    After the ordeal, she packed her bags with blood on her face. She unpacked herself a bottle of mace, packed it in her purse. In her backpack, she carried a small laptop. She also got herself a change of clothes and toiletries. She had never been homeless before. But now she didn''t have the choice. After she climbed out the window, having locked herself inside, she saw the silhouette of another man, who seemed to shape shift from that of a human sized tarantula, and she was unsure whether it was real or a product of the trickier of city lights. Slephner''s silhouette revealed itself, who held a Luger.


    He shot the spider several times, to make absolutely sure it was dead.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    "Oh, Ellen. Is that you? Why the blood on the face?"


    "It''s a long story."


    Ellen carried the stuff she could carry, along with the last fifty dollars she would ever see, into her new life as an adult, despite being ten years younger than most. But it was better than being an alley cat on these streets.


    ---


    It was school where Malcolm failed his grades. He was one of the few that still went to standardized education. The topics about human anatomy were never something he payed much attention to. At least that part of his life was over; but not the endless calling from his father that broke the silence like nails on a chalkboard. If the windows were made of normal glass, they would have broke. While his father wanted to lecture Malcolm about his grades, the boy himself thought of it as has dad just wanting to use him as his sounding board. "Why are we talking about my grades now? Hadn''t he already?"


    It wasn''t the first time his dad yelled at him, but all the times he did always seemed like the same reasons. "We can''t take care of both you and your sister. We have to pay for your sister''s cancer treatment. You''re out!" His father got himself a shotgun, and chased him out of the apartment. Then shot in Malcolm''s general direction. "Don''t come back now!" Malcolm ran off into the night. Now on these streets, he no longer cared about anything. Not the friend he thought he had, not even his own famille. He wondered if there were still computers to use the currently degenerated networks at the local library, but he forgot that he no longer had his identification. An erased face, a blotch of nothingness. He could be murdered, buried in a heap of garbage. And nobody would come looking for him.


    He heard screech that sounded like a cat, but he was not sure. He went to the source of where the noise came from. He checked out the cat to make sure it wasn''t wounded, then gave it a gentle scratch on its left ear. "So it''s just me and you."


    This was a few months ago. And the sound of the cat''s murder still gave him nightmares, and could not wash away the blood on his face, despite long since running off in the shower. He didn''t remember the cat killer''s face. And now, having given the cat a name, he would go out the name the new cybernetic he made from his own resources, after the cat. The cat whose named was Pod. Pod-Net. Malcolm made a promise to himself, that the new friend who had made after tending to Nadine''s care, would not end up like his cat.


    Nadine was still sleeping on their old couch, in their old apartment room they rented on the cheap. But it was better than him, Blanci, and Nadine being out on the street. He supposed it could have been a lot worse.

 Chapter 5

    There was an old saying that mentioned, it wasn''t the fall the kills you, but the sudden stop. But generally this was a statement generally made for people who have not fallen into the outer most edges of darkness.


    The fall was not the worst of it, my body a mess punctured limbs.


    When you''re missing a right arm, it''s easy to think that maybe eventually you''ll stop using this particular limb. But for Nadine, she had come to realize that ones dominance was not based on your strongest hand, but the side of your brain. When she slide my fingers across a tablet, it felt the same as always, albeit without as much feeling. She liked to shop for parts on the open web, on the off chance that she could find parts to rebuild her robot dog. She found Spark plug in a garbage dump, just down the road from Purgatory, who was merely a skeleton of his former metallic rat dog self. She could barely make it through to find the robot dog due to the light not always reaching this district.


    A few months ago, she was in the hospital.


    She could remember the sound of being dragged on a metallic table to see the good doctor, inquiring with her best friend why in the world it was she survived. If you wonder why she was able to remember it, consider the fact that sge can remember most things while still drunk. Her left arm was a broken chunk, one that could barely make a slam dunk, or any other aspect of athletic fulfillment in the floating city.


    "Do you think she''s going to make it?" a voice asked.


    "We''ll have to see, they''re punctured all over." the doc said.


    Yet now as she looked to the stars, onward into the aristocratic Utopian mess she once lived, which made her realize, being down here, how good she had it. And yet, while she didn''t completely trust her new friends, she wouldn''t trade them for the world.


    She lived in her own darkness.


    When Nadine woke up, she found Blanci leaning her head on her shoulders. Nadine could sense her faint outline, as she grasped for air. "Here, have this head ache body. It can help the pain a little bit." Blanci offered. Nadine grabbed it without hesitation, almost fall asleep. "Please stay awake, it sure gets lonely here."


    "And who is this pretty face." Nadine asked. This was how she met Blanci, one of her first crushes, but they never got close enough to reveal ourselves to each other, before she was guillotined gunned by militarized police. A Spanish girl raised by Italian parents, though do to a month having run away from home, her accent of a Corsican was barely noticeable, borrowing more from the Urban culture of the Southern most parts of Chattanooga. Nadine didn''t know much about Blanci''s past other than this, just that whenever she discussed rats with her, Blanci always would ask her to stop.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    But Nadine always wanted pet rat.


    Not a rat dog.


    It was just a few months ago, when Nadine had run away from the boarding school. Though she was a runaway much like the others, there were some part of her that always wanted to go back to the place where she once belonged.


    The others had gotten used to eating roaches, if they could even find that. The secondary American civil war had largely been kind to her family. An aristocratic family whom worked closely with the multiple CEOs of the potato district. Even now she still dreams of rolling soccer balls, rolling away from her, always being just out of reach, and in front of her always some faint glimmer of reality television of dancing shows.


    The motion set that covered the city was called the Meadow Of Gold. She called it simply shit, but it was the kind of shit that, despite the most miserable aspect of their existence, made them hold on just a little bit longer, like some abstract idea that they will someday become rich and famous, score a dark comedy skit on comedy television. She preferred the darkness of her own bedroom. The glow of L.E.D. lights, the flow of French Chanson singers singing her songs of good night butterflies. Dead men''s lullabies.


    Yet in this world, below that distant prairie, while some fairy and elf always play dangerous games, she found myself resenting the image of such falseness. She was a Satanist at heart, and wanted to expose the lies for what they were. For her, she knew that in reality, even her own life was rather austere. It was never something she mentioned widely to her friends, whom were taught by abstractly non-human pixel machines. The best you were going to get, was some Left Libertarian conversation by Noam Chomsky and Charles Johnson. But never an in person conversation.


    But for her reality was no political novel.


    It was a game of chase, nightmares, total monstrosities.


    She thought she was going to die from lack of sleep.


    When she had met Brittney, it was a time when she was much more easy going. They had known each other for months, but stopped seeing each other when she used to play "school". Much of Nadine''s identity had not yet been formed. She had not yet switched to public school, where she would hang out with school friends to play pool. Yet now as the years went by, she simply ask herself why. Sometimes people separate on bad terms, yet when you''re young there is nobody else''s term besides the terms of your parents.


    Nadine and Brittney were politically the opposite, as she would later find out second hand. She was the right hand, and Nadine was the left hand; it makes Nadine wonder who she voted for in the last election, not that it mattered now since the war. While Nadine ate spicy food, and wiped the sweat off her brow, she still regretted no marriage vows, her desires fading like the wind from some other lover''s memory.


    In high school, she generally avoided other women, partially do to her own feelings of inferiority, but also her unwillingness to subject them to the darkness of her own lust. At the time she had multiple issues related to hating other girls who were more delightful than she.


    Yet the hacker instinct ran wildly. Life was like an electronic keyboard, with various previously recorded music notes. With songs from various decades. Childhood memories were one of those things one tries to push toward the past, but she kept wondering what Brittney would think of her now. Even within her own family, she was largely the opposite of almost every she knew; consider the fact that she had been watching a weird mixture of Alex Jones and Noam Chomsky, with the old Green partier winning out in the long run. She found various conservative talking heads truly alien, in a way more bizarre than exotic science fiction short stories.


    To think, her and Brittney became so different.


    Like life fracturing into broken glass.

 Chapter 6

    When Nadine used to write little diary entries, she got into the mode where every poem I written was a suicide letter in miniature; a song about the lost moments of life. In their slow rhythmic melodies, she laid the groundwork for my own inner destruction. And there was a part of her that relished the thought of being completely forgotten.


    She fantasized of severed necks and blood on the floor. She dreamed of guillotine blades for whose death the people shall not ignore; she dreamed of blood squirts and gore. Dreamed of music boxes, and the fear of whether she could eventually be open about her own sexuality, like blood flowing from the wound of Adam''s apple like the sound of crickets chirping in the darkest of midnight hours. Nadine dreamed of her own inner life, fallen to pieces. Her life, her story; her own self-destruction. Yet there was something holding her back.


    Something that she didn''t want to acknowledge.


    That she wasn''t the only one in this world, on Purgatory Road, where the crickets always chirp no matter the time of day; where the music box plays broken children''s rhyme, and not always stories of urban decay.


    Now she types arcane programs, to distract from herself; her words flowing like fractured Ruby syntax on green screen monitors. The flow of AES and financial transactions; she wasn''t sure how long she could keep the job, if they knew how old she really was. Then she would be left alone again, to rot along the floor like she did all those years ago.


    To rot to her own inner life.


    The vampire life.


    "Richy, you said this would be the last powder." Her name wasn''t Richy for one thing, but it took forever to get someone to finally gender you properly. Nadine also had only recently gotten this new robotic arm and leg. Now she scooted through life, as nothing but the dregs of her former existence. The laptop provided a light that attracted gnats.


    "Just one more powder, then I''m done." Nadine said.


    "You said that last night." Blanci wasn''t the one that should really make judgments based on people''s disabilities. Nadine''s own, other than her own absence of a left arm and right leg, was apparently not obvious. It wasn''t like she wasn''t waking up at nights out of breath. Out of breath, she went through life like a speeding bullet train popping powders like jaw breakers for tots. "I''m not your mother Richy."


    "Don''t call me Richy, it''s Nadine."


    Sometimes life felt like an absurdest drug PSA. Dropped in from a CIA helicopter, one hand gun aiming toward the finish line--someone''s skull. An adrenaline high more potent than the most reflexive of fight or flight responses. Like a robot fist hammering your personal alarm clock like an old introduction cliche; the story of the rest of her life before she found the game called Uploaded Fairy. "Look, you don''t have to understand my condition. But at least don''t be a dick." Nadine said.


    "Richy, I''m a lady. Not a dick."


    Nadine inched very close to Blanci''s face.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "Ladies can be dicks too. They can have them as well."


    It was one of those nights where the only way to resolve a personal problem was a one thirty two caliber in the brain, and two hammered right into your phantom knees. "They can certainly be scared of rats."


    Blanci, from the point that Nadine had met her, never took kindly to this aspect of her past, though she refused to admit this. She simply ignored Nadine for the rest of the night. Midnight finally closed at five in the morning, multiple hours past the sound of quietness in the air. Nadine preferred to spend her time listening to listening to songs like "Ma France" than Blanci''s shit. Yet also knew, at least for the time being, they needed each other.


    Perhaps Nadine more than Blanci.


    "Fine, none for tonight."


    Life flowed like scattered bits of rain.


    There was something about the weather that, despite its intrinsic coldness, did not make Nadine want to go back to living with Blanci. When you compared her with Brittney, it only made sense that her only satisfaction is to see Nadine suffer, at least it seemed so at the time. Yet the monotonous buzz of my robotic limbs made Nadine want to keep searching for meaning in a world without, even if that meant digging for scraps in a local dumpster.


    That was how she ended up finding a new shell for spark plug. Spark plug was mostly in decent shape, but had a few dings and scratches. The major issue was rust stain on the shell. Nadine took coordinates of the width, height, and depth of the main frame. An old model morphing into the new, almost as if the old designer knew what the most current update in the design would be. There was something in the design that made Nadine want to hold onto her lost youth, despite the very obvious indication of its futility.


    She no longer dreamed of the world above; she simply desired for at least one simple night where I could sleep normal sleep, and dream normal dreams. She desired total oblivion. But the old lucidity drove out demons like holographic witches, whose special brew was fish poison.


    Life flowed like scattered bits of rain. Scattered screenplay scripts, where the only spare page was some vague resemblance of ones autobiography, the smell of artificial cheese and canned English peas on cardboard flavored crust, being the only thing of real enjoyment, aside from a girl named Lidier. Ladier was a mixture of Hispanic and Francophone. Her father was Spanish, her mother French. She would entertain her when Brittney would not. Nadine took life as an abstraction, not it was all concrete, but always with a bit of humor and a smile. Yet behind the eyes, was something that she only recent began to understand. A total sense of isolation.


    A total outcast in love.


    Sometimes the way that people look, can vary considerably from how they actually are as a person. One may appear innocent, but be completely corrupted; the inverse is often also the case.


    For Nadine, as she indulge in the pleasure of the lady''s faces in digital entertainment, often she recalled back to when she would meet girls in the earliest of her grade school years. Those years ago, when her soul was much more free, she wanted to join the secret service, but found it to be to much for her heart. Whenever she saw other girls that were more pretty than her, she would often become jealous of their particular assets. Whether this was their style of their Birkenstock sandals, or the color of their flowing dress.


    At the time she would fantasize about girls having their heads cut off, and nobody ever bothered to tell her that girls that had that done would ultimately die of their injuries. Nadine would want to put her own head on their body in their place. One girl that she knew in this school, with blond curls in her hair she vocalized this particular feeling, without clarifying the fact that she didn''t actually want to cut her head off. All that to say, the school was not quite sure how to handle someone like Nadine. But the Spanish girl of Italian parentage was never subject to this particular jealousy. For the girl with the black rose in her hair, there was no love to share.


    Nothing but a life turned to dust.


    Yet now, beneath the iron sky turned to rust and red rain, under the sky of thousand suns, Nadine never felt brave enough to voice any of her feelings. She was left jotting notes of a former life.


    The life of a new alley cat.

 Chapter 7

    "It''s alright Slephner, I know you don''t like me personally." Slephner never saw her again. Since then his first girlfriend hung herself in her room. With nowhere else to turn to my sorrow, Slephner turned to the arcades.


    You can grow up with someone and never really get to know them. While Slephner knew there was something different about Ellen compared to his first love, he didn''t know she would murder her father. There were some things that Ellen did not know about Slephner as well, one of the few regrets he had in my life not to get to know her more. Now that he was on the edge of death, he found myself wishing for a rewind. He was the best of gamers, the best of thieves. He could get the highest score with no questions asked. If he was put to the task during a gaming session, he took it in stride as an off day. He could always get better, you had to if you wanted to get better. This was his life. In some ways he would rather not want to live it in any other way.


    In one of their first gaming sessions, he felt like tutoring Ellen in the ways of the world. As one of the few actual girls he liked, he found myself having conflicting feelings between the desire to be her father figure and her movie buddy. Except Slephner was just a kid too as was she, and all they wanted to be was free from the horrors of this world.


    He had last broken up with his previous girlfriend; despite being three years younger than the minimum to drink, they found their solace in the drop. Like flavor of mild peaches under the false Summer heat of the tanning bed, of which he used to take her. But Ellen was different, he wanted something more. He thought that Ellen could provide it, after all she was one of the few girls that he found he could have a man to man discussions with. To others, he came across as someone who experienced mood swings. But he knew unlike anyone else that he was always thinking about things. Slephner thought about his previous relationship and his current. His last hope for desiring women at all. And yet, despite no other interest in Ellen I found there was something in her that made me want to hold on unlike others who failed.


    When he found that his life was beyond the pale when his old girlfriend took his robot dog to the next state over, Ellen was there to comfort him unlike anyone else. Yet part of his affection was that he found something in her that made him be proud to be her friend. Slephner never liked baseball, at least not very much. He wanted to be her batter and have her catch his balls. He wrote one poem devoted to one of the previous girls he had broken up with. But Ellen was always there beside him, always there to hold him. Hold him into the night when he was down.


    Slephner wanted to sleep with her, even though he had invited another guy to sleep in the same bed with them. In general he preferred guys. But for her there was something more than lust, something more than love that made him want to be held in her arms at night. Yet he had father like feelings for her during the day, would always instruct her about how to pull the right triggers on a hand guns, push the right buttons the on the Nihilist likes of the arcades. Some might view it as narcissistic, but he gave himself accolades, but also gave Ellen accolades. When she was shy Slephner would clap her hands for her on her behalf to herself, in order to build up her self-esteem. This would always make it stick her tongue out at him, but Slephner wanted Ellen to be only his own.


    When you get so lonely, you want to be with anyone.


    For Slephner, he would call up Ellen to see if she could come over, even before they ran away together. They had romantic feelings, possessive feelings.


    Feelings they had for nobody else.


    On some level Slephner knew he was going to die. It was only a matter of time. When the new gaming systems malfunctioned, he was left in a degenerating state. He was hoping to die, be left to fate.


    The doctors in the laboratory did not expect Slephner to live for more more than a year. They were unsure as to whether this was because of cancer, or some other condition. His natural vision began to decline. He would eventually need prosthetic eyes to restore vision. He could have died in what they referred to as dream-space, but his ability to create his own world gave him just enough drive to survive to see the next day, but he soon found that the world created slowly lost its lucid quality. Desires he had that were left dormant for so long. Slephner joined flesh with fairies, fought amongst noble armies.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    There was a wish about a falling star. He wanted to dine with the Tzar''s. His desire had always been to visit Russia, before the revolution. As there was only so much in the history people were taught that he actually believed.


    There was a certain unspoken contract. He was not suppose to share what I knew with anyone. Not suppose to share with the few family he had left, yet for him it was simply source code. He found that all worlds deserved to be free, especially if he could free them and get many a blow job. Wanting to share the dreams with his sweetheart Ellen, he knew she would love to hear a new story. Yet the dream-scanners told him not to say anything. Or that they might decapitate Ellen with a Guillotine Gun.


    You know how it is when you just under your Freshman year in high school. If you get told one thing you always wanted to do the opposite. He didn''t like being told what to do, he wanted the power.


    This was his mistake, his greed.


    His youthful creed.


    "Are you ready to order?" Nadine heard Ellen say, as gradually as the vision from inside her dream began to fade way. He could distinctly remember various advertisements playing over in her brain.


    "Yea I''ll take a coffee." Nadine ordered, ate, then exited the building.


    After she walked through the sliding glass doors, Nadine tried to remember what it was that made her want to remember what those ads specifically were. Perhaps they reminded her of a lost time, when she lived in the sky. Ads from when she was plugged into his deck. Somehow she got the impression that only worked, when Nadine was plugged into the pod-net network.


    Blanci was outside to greet Nadine, in the thick green fog that covered the city. She saw her take the powder, choking and snorting on it after accidentally taking a breath into it. Fumes were tossed his direction.


    "Remember boy, ... you need me. Or you will die ... cold during the night." Blanci, Nadine''s Fruit Pie, said, in that near calmness that would give just about anybody chills. Almost like she wasn''t even there. Nadine needed something for my mental fight. Bianca''s generosity was the only reason he was even alive at all.


    The next morning Nadine was disturbed by Bianca''s cell-phone, woke up as if rising from a fall from the sky. "How was your sleep dear wanderer?" Blanci asked, eye-balling her like a cat to mouse.


    I think at sixteen, I''m a little bit to old to be called a run-away. Besides she''s not my mother, she thought. Nadine was not sure what felt more like a sledgehammer. Her grating voice, that can can through anyone like a sword, or because of his aching robotic arm and his immune-suppressant withdrawals. "So let''s talk money for a minute."


    "Do you wish to grab my only bullets?" Blanci said.


    "I only wish to know how much, you think is reasonable to give me to take the medication that I need." Nadine said.


    "That you can carry it around with you," she said, in that slightly less grating voice that was still grating. "To buy more of that powdery pill stuff?" Nadine wasn''t sure why she was still getting on to her about it, though in a way she was like a mother her never had here. For this reason, he was still attached to her.


    "Well I''m going out." The Fallen stood up in the nude.


    "Hey cover yourself up -- with this blanket." Blanci said. Then dragged Nadine into the closet to try on some new clothes that would not make her girlfriend stand out.


    Nadine, Malcolm, and Bianca sat at the diner just down the road from Purgatory. Nadine was of course, being the little inattentive asshole she was to the conversation, taking her immune-suppressant pills to subdue the physical pain from the robotic limbs. "At some point man," Malcolm said to Nadine. Then he snickered without really being amused, "you need to buy your own."


    Malcolm raised one of his eyebrows at the waitress, who placed his hamburger plate down on the table.


    "I will have a soda, make it a large." Blanci said, choking on a powder. She spewed powder on her shirt, causing Malcolm to growl at her. She puckered her lips mockingly at him, who smiled with a grimace. Blanci then pushed Malcolm away grabbing the soda from the waitresses hands. Malcolm quickly got it back from her, after she tried taking a sip.


    You guys just can''t get along can you, Nadine thought.


    Outside the diner, Ellen and Slephner walked inside through the sliding glass doors. To the table right behind them they sat. The Purgatory dwellers tried not to pay any particular attention to the Dangervilles. Just eat quietly, then leave. Slephner eye-balled Nadine''s famille with his grill. Malcolm did not really seem to notice or care.


    Nadine did not really understand how anyone could get used to it, with that tension that was boiling under the surface.

 Chapter 8

    On the other side of the Purgatory road, a dream-scanner is called. Not even the glow of the L.E.D light. "Yes ma''am, I''m sorry. I will attend to the investigation immediately. Were is the noise coming from?" said the dream-scanner.


    Inside the barbershop Nadine watched Ellen collect tickets from the not to conspicuous looking peers, that he did not recognize from before they had entered the building. Did Slephner recruit new men? She had no idea -- but there was something about them, that gave me bad vibes. The ones renting the place still had not payed rent for that month, evidenced by the light that was buzzing in and out in the overhead, and so Richard barely saw her sitting in the bleachers.


    At first she observed the dog fight through the dream-display, with my trodes plugged into the pink ocean-sea. Nadine had a hard time not smirking -- she couldn''t help it, as it looked to her like dogs playing at first. A special breed of pooch, one would purchase on the black market. Modeled after the pit-bull and the wolf.


    At the moment, Nadine started to feel a little bit of guilt.


    Not only for how he treated Ellen, in the diner -- but also for those dogs in the ring. Even despite the fact that she was not the one who said the remark, it was Malcolm. Then she wondered how Ellen must feel. It was strange how you grow up one way, get used to that. Then it''s abruptly switched up on you like a speeding train. As much as you try to get used to the new life there is still something deep inside that still get''s to you. That feeling of being another dog in the ring on the hallucination.


    Nadine longed instead for the dream, of the meadow of gold; for the oceans, deserts, and forests that were never there. She dreamed of the sky, yet at this point was familiar enough with pod-net, that it was all a distorted nightmare.


    So to take those thoughts away, she tried to look at Ellen whenever she could.


    Nadine could not push her thoughts away from that dream, that dream he always wanted; a piece of electronic paradise. Not just a momentary paradise, that illusion of the ocean-sea. Something like eternity. Something that became very obvious was not here. She saw Slephner turn around to look at Ellen multi-tasking with monitoring his Pit-wolf in the arena, and tending the concession stand. Ellen gave a thumbs up sign to Slephner when he asked if snacks were covered, despite giving one herself a free pretzel bag. Nadine suspected a disinterested gaze to the glow of the screen from Ellen. Malcolm''s pooch was on the other side of the dream-display.


    Nothing could take away Slephner''s confidence that he would win this dog fight. This pooch, that belong to Nadine''s best friend, or whatever he could call one at this point, was like a hemp rope chopped through by sharp teeth.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    Slephner''s pooch swiftly clawed first strike.


    The conspicuous peers that were not part of either of our groups, were sitting at a table as The Fallen un-plugged the trodes. It was the furthest place you could get from a normal audience seat. They stood at the back wall, waiting. Something about them scared Nadine -- it unnerved her even more than Slephner himself. Not the feeling of something human, but some demon that was not a demon.


    A silence that was not quite silent. Somehow they reminded her of the guard, that tried to grab her to bring him back to the boarding school. But for whatever reason, they did not recognize her.


    Nadine stared at the circular stage, into the multi-window-pane dream display. Then heard one of them make a statement to his friend to the side as he looked onward. "So you want to place a bet?" he said.


    "Oh boss, isn''t that--" his friend said.


    "Oh relax, were already," the guy who appeared to be the main guy said. Nadne at a brief moments glance, saw him place the pipe in his mouth. And could barely ear the rest of his statement. "breaking the law anyway doing this. Technically. Remember though. This is Purgatory."


    "... O I bet a fifty." the other said.


    "Raise you double." the leader-like man said.


    "Your on, lets watch the match."


    Nadine knew, even if Malcolm''s pit-wolf lost one of it''s ears, a brew for a another ear could in theory be generated from its gene code. Though it''s not like the group could have afforded it. Broke, inside and out. It was Malcolm, who felt more attached to his pit-wolf -- since according to what he''s told Nadine -- he has grown up with it. Nadine could barely imagine growing up with these ghouls, but that thing?


    "Your not going anywhere." Nadine heard the man near the back say. "I knew it, I fucking knew it you know? Your Richy, your mother''s been looking for you. Don''t you realize how worried she is?" A voice, a growl, that broke the silence. From the dream-scanner chief.


    And then Slephner''s dog jumped at the two cops.


    The remaining dogs, owned by Slephner and Blanci misunderstood the gesture. Then all scale bloodbath. The pit-wolves started attacking everyone. One even tried to bite Nadine''s prosthetic, but I swatted it.


    She knew he needed to find Ellen.


    It was only Nadine and Ellen that survived the game of dogs. Nadine was abruptly thrown from her memory, hugged by Ellen, who had her face in his chest. She was shaking, and getting his shirt wet.


    "Let''s go somewhere far away, start a new life." Ellen said.


    I thought the dogs cry out, we pout with agony. Like lonely sheep torn apart by wild dogs. Me and Ellen, were on the run, hiding out in another sector of the metropolis. Beneath the floating city.


    "So where are we going to go?" Ellen said.


    "Someplace, somewhere. Not here. Anywhere." Nadine said.


    "How are your limbs?"


    "Good enough, why?"


    "I just wondered," she said to Nadine, who could feel her behind her. She was not sure what Nadine was going to do her. The previous incident the night before has made her ancy. "I know you were walking funny."


    "I will be fine, thanks."


    Even if Nadine did not trust Ellen, she still wished he had met her in any other circumstance, other than this.

 Chapter 9

    It was a chill unlike any other chill she had sense. Her brother reminded her of her vulnerable position, with her eye ball. He knew her pressure points, and despite her unique resistance to pain. This aspect scared her the most.


    Don''t worry ma''am, we''ll make sure your daughter never has an eye problem again. The memory of the failed surgery from her eye-ball was something that still provided self-esteem problems for her. Yet she was able to suppress it just enough, to meet the chief of other dream-scanners. "What I''m saying say sir," she said, sense a gulp coming on that she wished not to show in front of her employer. "That a male to female gamer, has broken the virtual reality game. Somehow they have created a bridge to another world." The chief was not sure what to make of what she was saying.


    "We need to keep in eye on her, she may be a security risk."


    "Yes sir."


    Rassie was not sure what it was that made her employer think of the specimen Nadine as being a security risk. Though it was not like she advocated game breaking, at least she hoped that whatever was listening to her thoughts was not thinking she was thinking this. She felt like a demon, somewhere in the silence not quite silent. Yet she wished to no longer be a demon, she was a human. Like Nadine.


    She wanted to meet the bridge maker. For a moment, she was concerned about her appearance. Would her eye patch be considered repulsive? Though she was the type of woman to wear black arch support clogs with a buckle strap at work, she wanted to at least make there first communication somewhat professional. Rassie had her own personal reasons, for no longer wishing to be a dream-scanner. She wanted to not be like her brother, Tanner. It was not the love of Nadine, she went against the order scan in and of itself.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. She wanted to find the bridge, to Voreth''s Promise herself. It was a cold wet November, and she had just turned the heater on. Her bedroom was starting to make her feel prickly, and wanted to be warm and wet. She took off her black trench coat, and placed her black clogs upon the glass coffee table, relaxing and trying to fall asleep. Yet instead her mind was constantly brought back to the gamer that had created "The Bridge". If I could find her, maybe she could help her figure out how to go to that alternate universe herself. For she had a feeling herself, that her own thoughts about scanning were being monitored. She also wanted to use some form of magic to restore her lost eye that was accidentally taken out in her youth at sixteen. She could not help but laugh at herself for thinking such, as it was surely merely a game world. Not a physical world where one may touch or smell.


    Rassie want to plan some sort of meeting with Nadine, or at least that was what her dream-space avatar was called. Normally most of the people she had observed from the camera''s within the floating eye, that the locals called the "eye of god", were the type that followed the standard protocol of the game. They were like time rabbits to be slaughtered in the matrix. If I could come to meet you now, maybe I can convince Tanner The Scanner to let you go. Maybe I can keep my job, not decapitated by a guillotine gun she thought.


    Yet one some level she cared not if she lived or died.


    So long as she could make her death visible to all. So that the people may see how they treat those who go against big brother.


    This was her manifest.

 Chapter 10

    Rassie called up Nadine, using the Rune platform. She wondered if anybody was still using that instinct messaging system, as recently the people she was observing behind those television camera placed in through a secure location attachment, was that they were using some other system. Because they were already suspecting something was up with their L.E.D displays, the standard television format for those that were no part of the underground, they were using some sort of dialect that she was unable to recognize. Thus this was a gamble. Part of her actually want to go on-site, in order to ask directly. Even though she was no longer enthused by her present line of work, she figured they would probably view her as a traitor. After all the sand crawler riders were in unruly bunch. In my mind she pictured one of them taking her head off with a guillotine gun, and placing her head on a stick. Did not want to think about that again, that sucked dick. At a moment''s notice, she got the call.


    "Who is it, and what are you wanting?" Richard said.


    "I''m here to speak to Nadine." Rassie said.


    "Quite, I don''t use that name yet."


    "Wait, your Nadine?"


    "Yet, that needs explanation."


    They were at the sports bar, Nadine ordered them a beer. Though she knew that in this country she was no old enough to drink, she thought it would be unfair to complain sense she was buying her dinner, and she asking for information out of the kindness of her heart. "So why did you decide to break the game?" said Rena, with her black arch support clogs with the side buckle strap tucked to her side while she sat at one of the tables by the window glass. "Normally I would have expected you to have saved that fairy girl."


    "Well I don''t exactly like fairies." said Nadine.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "And your not just jealous?" Rassie said, snickering.


    "Well they can change at will, I''m stuck as a human." said Nadine.


    "So it is jealously." said Rassie.


    "Ok fine yea, but something is different about her." said Nadine.


    "Like what?" said Rassie.


    "Well, she was counting on me." Nadine said, then took a sip from her overly large bottle of beer. She decided to have a drink, even though ordinarily drinking beer in particular tended to cause head aches. "I have never been counted on before." Rena wondered why Nadine would be willing to give some personal information to her, as she did not even know who she was. If she did, did not seem to care that much. Almost like she knew that she was going to die soon anyway, as her jittering robotic arm would suggest.


    "I want you to show me the bridge, to Voreth''s Promise." Rassie said.


    "You mean that game I downloaded?" Nadine said.


    "I have a feeling about it, that it''s not a game you downloaded.'' Rassie said.


    "Right, whatever. This dark brew is fantastic." Nadine said.


    "Don''t misdirect the conversation!" said Rassie, face palming.


    It was then Nadine remember how she opened a portal to another universe, though it was supposedly under the guise of a video game.


    Nadine would have been tormented by nightmares, but her experience with her good friends perishing under the teeth of the pit-wolves teeth played like a universal video tape being rewinded and played to the end. Yet there were none tonight. The trodes activated the same bio-sensors that triggered sleep in any normal person. Even an insomniac like Nadine could be in the dream world forever and ever. This everlasting dream was like no other. She longed for the coming darkness, as the light was not a normal light. But the eyes of god watching, peering. Lurking, yet for whatever reason the beings that always watched from the sky never did. It was a game of dream-space cat and mouse. Nadine always woke up screaming, a cold colder than any cold she aver experienced before.


    For Nadine it was like watching scenes from a game. They played with no interaction, and looking back she wondered why she didn''t assume.


    She heard voices, in the darkness the was like a dimly lit prison.


    "Brother, I think I''ve found --" Elena said to Al-diel.


    "Don''t tell me, you think you''ve found the hero?" Al-diel said to Elena.


    "Well, Millie found someone the other day."


    "What, Millie handled a non-kin. And your allowing --"


    "Where else am I going to take her, do you really think I''m going to let her die?"


    "We don''t need another hero Elena. We are doomed."


    "You may have given up, but I have not."


    "Fine, but first I''d like to know where they have come from."


    But in the present.


    "I wanted to see if I could break the game." said Nadine.


    "Well you broke the game alright." said Rassie.

 Chapter 11

    When Nadine, Malcolm, and Rassie arrived at the first village they found it almost like the universe had decided to start over. It was noticed that the specific arrangement of the dark age village was different, yet everything else was as if level one had started all over again. "Nadine, what did you do when you first downloaded the game?" said Rassie.


    "When I was downloading the game, I noticed it was a different sort of video game than what I would have normally played." Nadine picked up a random stick on the ground, made out of dead wood. "For one, normally while there would still be surround vision, the normal sensory perception that go along with the real world would not ordinarily exist." Rassie looked as if all the pieces were starting to fit back together again.


    "But where did you go first, was it here? I don''t remember this particular spot, when I was last scanning the area for your meta-data." Rena said, hoping they realized that she was not the type to continue that line of work.


    "I was here, the game must automatically restart every time you reload the bio-computer." Nadine felt her face, and also rubbed her booty on a tree. "As you can see, in this specific game, we have a new set of sensory perceptions. So at first I thought that perhaps the programmers, you guys, were becoming more savvy." Nadine looked at the people in town, walking in there full piece wooden shoes, wondering how in the hell they would be comfortable


    "First we should probably go back to the house you first visited." said Rassie.


    "I''m hoping that that one sister is not still pursuing me." said Nadine.


    "I am Malcolm, and what is this?" said Malcolm to Nadine.


    "I allowed a fairy girl to get her head chopped off." said Nadine to Malcolm.


    "So what Nadine! It''s just a game!" said Malcolm to Nadine.


    "And what if it is not?" said Nadine to Malcolm.


    When Nadine, Malcolm, and Rassie retraced there steps, they warped into the poisonous lake that she had warped in before. All three of them were graced by the nude body of Millie cleaning her dress in the lake. "Red haired lady, you looked familiar. Yet I am unsure how." Millie took all three of them to the dark age town, and allowed them to rest for the evening. But over the night, Rassie began to overhear the conversation that led up to Nadine particular choice to break the game, if where they were was in fact a video game at all, and not a new universe. "Don''t you think it might be them Elena?" said Millie to Elena, trying to make sure that she spoke in such as way that the "new heroes" would not hear her speak.


    "I don''t know, I told Aldiel about the visitors. But something seems different. The red haired lady, it seems almost like I have met her before." Elena walked over to her, and moved the soft long red hair from her eyes, and carefully helped her take off her goggles. "Yet the others, I don''t have quite the same deja vu feeling." This seemed to be bugging Elena more than Millie, who simply thought they were regular travelers at this point.


    "But you know Elena, I get a sore throat just my looking at her. Though she is quite pretty." Millie said to Elena.


    "Hey! What do you mean by a sore throat!?" said Elena.


    "Don''t worry, not that kind. More like, I was decapitated before." said Millie.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "Then don''t do anything to get you decapitated." said Elena.


    While Elena, Rassie, and Malcolm had a laugh Nadine found herself in a daze. It was then she remember the session misadventure before.


    She remembered seeing Elena hustling back to her cottage, at the direction of her brother Al-diel, who by now must have been dead. She noticed Millie was walking to the store. Panicking, she felt like her life was over, princess and peasant. A part of her, in that specific generation of the fantasy world, died that day. Yet Elena still clang on to a hope against all hope. Going out, against her wishes she tried to fly to get Millie, but a guard pushed her out of the way in the crowd in the village where there was a scaffold placed. Millie was already rolling in a cart to the scaffold, as she had already been found by the knight''s guards.


    Elena tried to catch up with Millie, however she was left behind in the dust.


    When the village guards took Millie away, they saw marks on her body, indicating the location of the disease. The disease that has killed plenty of villagers in the past. They grabbed Millie knowing that there was no longer any real hope of her recovery. Elena needed to find a point to try to take her back. Before the soldier''s got there, to retrieve her to execute her only family left.


    She walked back to the cottage. Nadine had exited, in order to go on her marry way to exit the village. Maybe go explore some ruins. But Elena had another plan in store for Nadine, one she at the moment wanted no part of. Nadine preferred the bandit life, the life of the skank. The life of the criminal sharpening a shank. And had no attention of being distracted by some petty escort mission. Why was it that every game that was generated, had some sort of stupid escort mission? Elena walked up behind Nadine, then punched in her the back.


    "Hey hero, wasn''t it your duty to rescue my sister?"


    "Who is that voice," Nadine said. Then turned around to Ellen, her face hidden by the dark of her brown hood. "and are you talking to me?"


    "Who else would I be." Elena said.


    Elena grabbed Nadine by the wrist, and tried to get her to come along, find a place to hide with her in order to retrieve her sister. But it was useless. "Are you going to help me!"


    "Why is it my problem?"


    "Now listen," Ellen said. Resisting to the temptation to punch Nadine in the back again. "I need you to distract one of the guards," Then huddled closer, so she won''t be seen. "I''ll go and try to retrieve my sister."


    Nadine walked over to one of the guards, who was guarding the the entrance into the scaffold. The villagers were not sure what to think, as it had been a while since there would be a public execution. Nadine started cracking some jokes, and the guards were mostly chuckling because they did not understand the waking world references.


    But it was working. Elena made her move to try to grab Millie. However things became worse. Nadine had turned, so started making jokes about death and dying, with her loving sister as an expense for the joke. Elena wanted to punch Nadine, but didn''t have time.


    "Out of the way." Elena said. The other guard guarding the entrance pushed her out of the way, and two other''s were holding her back.


    Millie was placing her neck upon the block.


    She saw the basket in front of the block shake, because of Elena fearful stomping. She wondered how they did not make the scaffold more sturdy. Then Millie felt a very sharp tingling edge on her neck.


    And then it went away. Then came down again. Brief sharp pain. Sinking feeling, vision fading ... Darkness.


    Ellen screamed at the lump that used to be Millie''s head fall into the basket, and beginning to feel all her blood being removed from her head. A sensation not to dissimilar from wanting to faint, from the red covered paint that covered the straw on the scaffold. Then Ellen screamed more when the blood poured into the basket. Bucket by the bucket loads poured into the wicker basket. The knight''s guard dragged Elena away, then pushed her outside of the crowd.


    Although in real time, barely any time had passed. In the world of the game, a month has passed. Nadine collected various tacts from ruins, then placed them to unlock further ruins in the game. It was after she had began to try to fix the game, that she found she could not change the past. And everything was done. The girl she let die, was dead and gone. Nadine was on the run, running. Nadine on the snow, blitzing. It was all a rush in order to find some place. For she assumed that the sister must be out to get her.


    She did not know, it was just a feeling. Nadine ran to the nearest ruins, and continued the game hoping that the others would not persue her.


    Now Nadine was just glad she didn''t save her game.


    A new start.

 Chapter 12

    The next morning that the three travelers were woken up. It was Rassie who was intrigued, yet remaining behind quietly. Even Rassie was not aware of the fact that she was secretly recording the conversation from earlier, and Tanner was using this as a reference point to form a conclusion based on the previous failed gaming session, where Nadine had ... by their hypothesis, seemingly opened a door to another universe. Though how could the universe seemingly restart every time they plugged into the machine. And why were they somehow unable to go back to their home world now?


    "Hey Nadine," Rassie said to Nadine, while playing with her hair while they road in the cart to go visit Aldiel. "Am I the only one with the feeling where it almost seems like the game is toying with us, almost like the game-engine is alive somehow? Like it wants us to be dead?"


    "You sure tend to think the worst," Nadine said, half joking. Malcolm cackled in the background, because both of them just how cynical they were. How did they know the game was not designed to be that way. There was a lot of general suspicion to share with the whole group. "Let''s just try to work together, and see what comes of this."


    When the group had arrived with their cart at the prison, of which Al-diel was currently staying on treason charges against the crown (a game world crown, not the dream-scanners and secret police that plague the world of flesh and bone), it was Rassie who, while she had observed many versions of this game played over many times before, for example Malcolm''s version when he did not cover his tracks finding tacks to repair the game, this game seemed different. She felt a bit of unease, going into the dark cell. The dark ambiance did not make her feel much better about it, especially with the sound of crawling squeaking rats that were plaguing the prison. "Is it a hero? Leave at once, my family is done for. I will be vivisect-ed, and my sisters head will be on spikes by the end of the month." The way the man, despite being in his early twenties, having a look of late twenties, made her feel was uncomfortable; as she had never before felt like crying and vomiting at the same time. It was strange how a seemingly hardened dream-scanner was less used to this than Nadine, who had already played the game once before. If this was in fact, really a just a game at all.


    "Brother Al-diel, are these the heroes?" said Elena.


    Nadine resisted cackling, as it was all formulaic down to a T.


    "Brothers, sisters. They are coming, I can hear there marches." Al-diel cold not resist coughing, for his immune system was lacking due to the month without eating. "First save ye selves, for I hear marching, marching, marching." And sooner than they knew it, there was the sound of beating hoof steps. "Go at once."


    The group boarded up the cart quickly. "We can warp in weapons later."


    "Warp weapons?" asked Elena, "Sounds evil and magical."


    "So all cheaters are magical, great I know what power --" said Nadine.


    "Nadine, not now!" said Rassie.


    "Hey guys, look ahead of you. I think we are surrounded." said Malcolm.


    The cart came to a screeching halt.


    Malcolm remembered when he barely survived being attacked by wild-dogs.


    Malcolm recoiled from the flickering lights buzz that formed a foam around around the edge of his eye. Then squinted in pain. ... Static.


    His vision formed into what could possibly be perceived as television noise, buzzing their brain now partially man and machine. Yet there were no other aspect that distinguished him from any other human being. It had been a a couple of years sense he had been on the emergency room table. He got up abruptly as if it had only been a day. He, or what was left of him, saw a computer database in their right eye. "Merging with the flesh interface, initiated. Take a few weeks to get used to the new network. Not many made it out. You were lucky." Malcolm wasn''t sure where the voice was coming from, all he knew was that it was not his own.


    He had finally began to get used to his new apartment. The hospital gave him a decent level of compensation money from the experiment. Although he could not feel his head completely, he found himself able to do things he was not before. He used his hands to make the objects within the room float. This was recorded into the database. "Memorization of objects initiated." the brain-interface said. He browsed with his finger tips trying to find any trace of his old existence. But it was no longer there. For him, he was a ghost.


    As he slept that night, Malcolm begin to have nightmares again. Visions of his own apartment began to fade, into what felt like a large dark tunnel that looked as if it would go on forever. But he walked on and onward into the abyss. "What was the experiment, why am I having these visions?" He felt like he was beginning to develop a head ache as he slept. Then he sat on the edge of the bed, kelt down, and wept. For the pain from his head was to great. Tempted to use some sort of pain medication, instead the computer told him, "Don''t try to use any pain medication. I can provide a map for a suitable prescription, if only you will wait for about a week." He slammed his fist on the lamp table. It shook violently. "You think I can wait a week!"


    "Your not used to your new brain yet." the database said.


    Malcolm didn''t understand why the new part of his brain was talking to him. He barely remembered anything that came before the surgery. He wondered if he would be able to work. In his current state, this was not possible. Malcolm wanted to get over his head ache soon, though he was afraid to take the drugs in the kitchen. Who cares if the left hemisphere simply would not cooperate with the other half. He tried to watch television, as the early morning gradually eased into an early sunlight after the dawn. His vision blurred, and he passed out again. He woke into what felt like a dream. He rode in the back of the car, with his friends he barely remembered. They were only silhouettes.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Malcolm heard a voice in the dark. "So your still alive man, how in the hell did you survive those dogs mauling you?"


    He wasn''t sure how to respond, as he barely remembered who he was.


    While he rode through the car, Malcolm remembered suddenly remembered all those years again when he nearly died in the street. He was laying upon the pavement, staring longingly upon the emotionally empty glass of the meadow of gold. Yet he was not able to remember the face of the man in silhouette he was riding with. "I''m going to pick you up. We need to find Ellen, I''m concerned about her." Malcolm only just barely remembered the voice. The car covered in shadows had a flickering display screen. "So where are we going to go tonight?" said Malcolm.


    "Try not to hold onto the past, focus on the future." said Richard. He understood just how easy this was to do. Yet Malcolm wanted to remember why the dog fight happened. They both needed some way to make a living, maybe even go to college in some state where nobody knew who they were.


    As soon as the two found Ellen, they went undercover. Then payed for a semester in a university where nobody knew who they were. Then changed their names on the dream-webs, and pursued a new life.


    Rassie got a call on his cell from Malcolm. "It will be one more day. I promise, then I can send into the three fifty." Rassie said not to forget the interest, it was up a dollar amount a day. Malcolm shook his head, then pressed the button to hang up.


    Malcolm was at it again, doing drugs. He had to pay a drug lord to make his head ache never come back again. His mind reflected back to the car ride with Richard, that he had met after about a couple of years. Who was probably dining out right about now. Over the last few months there was no direct back and forth, only the unsaid between two lovers walking away in opposite direction forever separated by a speeding train. He called him up.


    "Hey Richard, can you do me a favor?" said Malcolm.


    "Sure ... but you owe me." said Richard, then hung up.


    When they got the drug store.


    "Your fifteen under, but I will move it to your next payment." said the drug lord, shuffling the coins into his purse. "Don''t work yourself to hard." said the man on the other end of the window, smoking his pipe. Causing it to fog heavily.


    That was close. "Thanks Richard."


    "You need to break your habit."


    Whatever pain he experienced then, would be nothing like this.


    He was the only that hadn''t given up, not just yet.


    When the group was given their cell in the castle, at first they were unaware of what law they had broken. So Millie, took it upon herself to ask what they had done. "What, so knight in shining armor, have we done?" said Millie to the knight.


    "You wandered off into the purple slime." said the night of the dark knight.


    "So why were we not sent here before?" said Millie.


    "You were hell hard to find, your brother is something." said the knight.


    Millie remembered when her parents were in a similar situation. She and her sister visited them for the last time, hoping this was all a misunderstanding. That the dark night had not really taken over the castle. Yet after father''s remains were sent across the region, and her mother''s head was on a spike on the castle walls, there was no longer any real doubt. She had began to become hardened sense, even perhaps coming to terms with the eventual fact that they might be found again. It was there poor maid, just there age that helped them escape. Though she was not there, when she herself was sent to the head mans block, she always pictured her wooden shoes trembling forever. It gave her dreams, nightmares. Visions that would never go away, and with this while she could not accomplish this herself, she wanted the night to be dead. Yet the knight seemed omnipotent, almost as if her had the blessing of the eyes of god themselves. Of whatever they may be.


    "Will our heads be on pikes too?" she Millie asked.


    "You women will, men? God help you." the knight said. The knight looked closely at Nadine, "you look enough like a woman, I can take a small token of your appreciation for a beheading instead of a quartering." Nadine pictured herself blowing the knight, the thought of which made her want to vomit.


    "What now man! What!" Malcolm could not believe it. Quartering? He never even knew this could be done in the game, and how the programmers of the game could only do so much. Because to him in his mind he still considered this to be a game. But perhaps maybe it was this child like mentality, that helped him think clearly. The knight exited the hallway, and it was Malcolm that called the group together. "I have a plan." But Nadine had a song of her own, playing in her head:


    Somewhere, something, watching,


    In a room, far away,


    Somewhere, lurking, everywhere.


    Watching, for the night.


    Malcolm and Rassie led the group. "I don''t trust Nadine to lead the pack, she''ll just mess something up, like allow Millie to get caught. ''Oh I read your sub text Rena, don''t think I''m not on to you to."


    Nadine was still singing:


    Waiting


    for the night


    to come ...


    haunting


    the un-lit


    house.


    It is watching, watching,


    Beyond the door.


    "I would guillotine gun you if I had one." said Rassie.


    "And I can warp in one, watch your tongue." Malcolm warps in a guillotine gun, and breaks the bars open in the prison cell but shooting in a circular motion.


    They rushed out of the prison, and it was Malcolm that continued to shoot guards heads up. He cackled as he saw there neck pipes squirt with blood. Squirt, squirt, squirt. Bhahaha! Moving on, Rena eventually called for a ship. It was a dream-scanner ship, for while unknowing it her cyborg eye surveillance camera (while a danger sign in the flesh and bone world) was a god send. For it was the only thing that sent a super fortress down from the sky to pick them up.


    "What are they doing here?" said Malcolm.


    "They are our only hope." said Rassie.


    "Traitor." said Malcolm to Rassie.


    "Jesus, you should say." And fell off the ship deliberately.


    "Rassie! No!" Nadine reached out, to try to save her. As she did not want another life to be on her hands again, like poor Millie.


    "Farewell friends, for it is only a game." said Rassie


    It was the next day, Rassie was released from prison. She was sent to the court yard, and climbed the steps. The headsman ripped open her shirt, and she placed her neck upon the block. As she stared into the basket, fear at first came over her. Then realized it was one less soldier working on Tanner''s side. She had won.


    A sound of metal cutting bone. Blood squirt.


    Sound of her head crashing.


    Darkness.

 Chapter 13

    "Don''t you care about the fact, that your sister is dead?" said Nadine to Tanner.


    "Only as much as one a general to a private, besides her memories -- her important ones, anyway -- are backed up, I have all the meta-data I need. So how does it feel to die knowing you opened a bridge to another universe?" Tanner said, then asked his question rhetorically.


    "Your not going to get away with this." Nadine said, feeling her neck being rapped by the portable lunette of the guillotine gun. Her second sentence was interrupted, by a blade slicing through her small neck.


    Nadine woke up in bed, she was crying.


    "Rassie!" said Nadine.


    "Wow, you''ve changed Nadine." said Malcolm.


    "And you haven''t." said Nadine.


    "''Oh I miss her to, but I know you."


    "You remember when we lost Blanci?" said Malcolm.


    "Yes, I still feel that."


    "Then think of the children you could have had, think of what children she could have had. She could have been a great mother."


    "I''m not disagreeing."


    It was the next month, that Nadine, Millie, Elena, and Malcolm met Ellen again. Ellen, who was working as a nerve splicer and tattoo artist, for moment felt jealousy coming on. But Nadine hugged her tightly, they kissing under the glow of the flickering L.E.D. light. Ellen slightly felt sympathy for Millie. They went home, to a darkness not quite darkness.


    And had a threesome.


    Malcolm dated Elena, missing the long lost Blanci.


    Almost as if she was another Blanci. She and Elena went to go visit Blanci''s grave. Peculiarly, it was Malcolm that needed the most comfort.


    Elena provided a warming hand on his cheek, and he placed a flower he had picked from Voreth''s Promise. The only one left in that world, and placed it on Blanci''s grave. She will live on in his memories till nevermore.


    When Nadine herself went to see Blanci, it was with Ellen and Millie. Nadine somehow remained un-hardened despite all the seemingly long years of abuse within the nature of the game, the very realistic game of death. Ever sense, she became white as death. As a ghost. Like a platinum Katana, in it''s sheath. Whenever she hears Blanci''s and Rena''s name, she says:


    "Nevermore."


    She published a song, To Nevermore:


    On a


    bed, sleeper''s


    sleeping ...


    In their


    head, dreamer''s


    dreaming.


    Of a


    meadow light,


    heaven.


    It was the second date with Ellen, that her life became more bearable. Ellen held Nadine''s shoulders in a warm embrace, under the glow of the sunset on a distant shore. "Come with me Nadine," she said, tenderly. Then just before the kiss. "where the meadow is always real on the other side."


    To the Meadow they went.


    Nadine, Ellen, Millie, and Malcolm went to go visit the grave of their friend Blanci. Though Nadine in a way had experienced the feeling of loss like Malcolm, for her everything was entirely undone. It was almost as if trying to bring someone back from the dead, made the gaming gods, those eyes in the sky, hate her so. Malcolm is crying and kneeling at the little makeshift grave in a lesser known neck of the woods of the world underneath the sky of rows of city-streets. Where the meadow of gold is always shining, and gives a false sense of hope.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    Nadine wished she did not try bringing back Millie.


    As she remembered her only from the moment, she started game again.


    Her mind was erased, and loved Nadine. Nadine pictures in her mind, running through the forest, where the fairies children are jumping rope. Where the everything was good and true, and everything was somehow better again.


    Her new youth song.


    There were few punishments that intimidated Dantino, least of all having one''s head chopped off by a sword in battle. When you raise an army of over twenty thousand strong, lining them up in Neo-Roman formation, it was difficult to be intimidated by much of anything. When he had captured princess Millie, he saw nothing but his future under the crown. Carefully, methodically, he plotted on the best way to make sure to completely and utterly break the royal family.


    Generally, beheading was mostly reserved for noble, although the old king was generous to expand the swift demise to those who were of the merchant class, and eventually peasants were able to place their necks on he block rather than inside of a noose. But they were still forced to wear uncomfortable wooden shoes, stuffing them with driest of straw to keep themselves from getting splinters during the cold Winter season. Dantino remembered when he had first started for those goal. It was one of those campaigns anyone of good conscience would dread, for to be a soldier only those with the strongest of stomaches were allowed to take the challenge. A small group of thieves were ransacking the ancient temples, that had long been here before the invasion of the infected regions. Every day there was the thought that none of us would go home.


    On the mount, they apprehended their leader, thrusting her neck on a chopping block after extracting a confession through exploiting man''s evolutionary fluke designed to protect their body. The ax tore through the flesh and bone of her neck, but it two four swings. You would think with all the executions he carried out on behalf of the king, the executioner would have enough experience. But there was something about this one that seemed almost deliberate. And there was something in the eyes of this rogue leader, that almost made him reconsider all the desires he had to kill the king. But he knew that, unlike the thieves, were who out gunned, eventually the royal family would come for him; they hounded him in his sleep.


    Dantino tried requesting Millie''s hand in marriage, but to no avail. He supposed he couldn''t blame her, as he had chosen to behead her mother, and hang, draw, and quarter her father. But there was desire or even a mild pleasure in drawing all of the royal bloodline, until recently. Dantino knew that, was someone who had a sister myself who was unjustly accused by Millie''s father, it was no fun to grow up without someone to replace your parents. For Millie, Ellen, and Aldiel his instinct was complete mercy and benevolence. He demoted their status to the level of peasants sending them on their way, stripping of their rights of having bodyguards. As far as he knew at the time they made it to the town across the mountains near the north east sea just fine, and thriving.


    Yet now, Millie had stolen something from him, that made him reconsider what amount of remorse he had for letting her go. She stole a picture of his little sister, who was beheaded by the king. Smirking, she accidentally knocked a crack in it, then tossed it into the wall to make a point. All those memories he had, that single image of his sister, broken into millions of pieces.


    He wanted to kill Millie''s brother.


    At the village over the mountains on the north east sea, his gathered up a force of 100,000 strong. He employed the best of the naval special forces officers, gathered the most bomber gliders employed by any army before. But there was one woman, a woman who seemed much more like a goddess than a human being, able to employ magic with her fingertips to manifest things in the air he could not dream of. Slowly it drove him mad trying to figure out how it was she was doing. Then he saw the tattoo on her body, that signified the worst of the worst. She had come from the human world, that split off from our own universe. Dantino had been taught about the humans from early age, though he wasn''t sure if it was just a myth. He didn''t recognize the other symbols, however she carried around a pair of head prods that allowed her to foresee my methods hours in advance.


    It was almost as if she played this game before.


    Almost as if she had no fear at all, as it was simply playing another level. She was just trying to make it through, because to fight me was merely tedious, and I was merely nothing to her. And that was the most maddening things of all, while Dantino rested in my bed with my replacement arm being a slightly rusted gauntlet and band of metal sheets. She treated fighting his men like it was a game, rather than something that was completely real.


    Dantino was simply nothing to her.


    He wanted that power, and after quartering the king, murdering Aldiel in the same fashion. He had nothing else to lose but whatever regrets he still had in keeping them alive. There was another lady, that stayed behind when they left in that flying machine built by the humans, carrying multiple godlike fire archers into the seen like a flying house. Dantino knew what intelligence gathering was, because he had employed the same practice against the royal family, and it was how he was able to gather the support for killing them. With a musket in hand, he tried shooting her from behind. But the gamer Nadine sliced open his cheek. He was blinded from the festering of that wound, leaving his good eye the only thing he could use to see.


    But this woman, this other woman he tried to kill, Dantino managed to apprehend. He wanted to make a point to her. Rassie''s severed head now rests outside, although at this point the peasants have likely given it a soldiers burial with the highest honors that one may give to the fallen.


    Dantino, they didn''t want him to go that quickly. But it was worth the price.


    Eventually Dantino would die for the length of two years, and he was on his first month. He wished there was a way to get to the human world before this process takes its course. Generally your limbs would be gradually replaced by suit of armor replacements for those parts. For him it was his right arm, that had always been his bad one. But he knew that soon the peasants would come after him again, an army employed by the new Queen Millie. Even if Millie was more merciful, the crowd was not. So he needed a way to cross the barrier between this universe, Voreth''s Promise, and the real world the Nadine referred to as mother Earth.


    He found this opportunity.


    But he needed to hurry.

 Chapter 14

    It was a cold tower, colder than the coldest of nights in the town. She had wanted to purchase a claymore, but had found a quest for a weapon in a region of the mountains few dared to explore. In these mountains, was rumored a tentacled monstrosity. Those who could verify the legend, usually did not survive to verify this hearsay. Things have changed sense Voreth¡¯s Promise had collided with the non-game world, and she was never sure whether what she would fight in the snowy wasteland was real, or purely imagined by layers of haunted wires. Her pet cat was a Dire Tabby, whose fur was thick and black. Her cat would strangle those who attacked her from behind. At night she were hear the cat yowl for her attention, even when she tried to sleep.


    She met Nadine when she was tired and weak, and barely outside of her mother¡¯s nest. The mother was attacked by poachers, and her new was only able to survive when she shot both of the hunters from a large cliff. But now the cat as grown to be twice her size in height, and three times in length. It took a special kind of laser pointer to distract her long enough to be satisfied with the amount attention she got. She could always pay the most attention to her cat, being to busy repairing the parts of her house that were attacked by wild ape-goats and spider-pigs.


    She brought up the GUI, displaying her stats: she had 95% hit points left, and her attack power had only increased by a small amount, do the slight sharpening of her long sword she commissioned in town. But she knew that this journey would be a long one, one unprompted by any mentor. Part of her was tempted to leave her cat behind to be taken care of by Millie, but knew that Luna would never go for this, despite how much she loved Millie. A certain part of Nadine wanted to restart the game, and actually let Millie die this time, but her friends would give her shit about it. And she enjoyed the fellatio she given to her as part of a good night present.


    For Nadine, her bane was her life day in and day out. She saw the ruins of The Potato District in full view. What was once a thriving metropolis, was now a land of wild ape-goat tribes. She had finally gotten tired of eaten Spider-Pigs eggs, after she had finally found an air fryer abandoned in an old grocery store. It seemed like people were finally leaving the city in droves, except for those whom had no other options. But it wasn¡¯t like it was back when the game world finally let loose upon reality.Stolen novel; please report.


    When Ape-Goats came to roost.


    When she visited the city, ordinarily you think of fresh water fountains, children playing in the park, and dove flying into the rainbow. Ever since the collision, the image of a once wonderland has been blurred by years of war. Dismantled guillotine guns litter the land like a decentralized landfill, whose network of automated incinerators have long sense been out of commission. Gone were the days when swept back flying wings took children from home to school. Gone were the days when life had more than piling dust. No more children holding hands, and encircling the water fountain in the park. Perhaps someday, in some distant future, they will return laugh and play. But it seems like faint hope, when you¡¯re attacked by a spider-pig crawling on your back. Nadine felt funny eating their eggs, and part of her wanted to keep one as a creepy pet.


    She gathered snow to melt into a saucepan, then ran back home as fast as she could. Her wooden shoes hurt her bare feet, that have now developed blisters, the clogs now more muted color from the snow having melted upon them. The only thing that kept her warm was her thick coat of fur, from a poached ape-goat. An Ape-Goat tip toed behind her, in order to break her neck.


    Slash! The Ape-Goat¡¯s arm was taken off. It stopped the bleeding with one of its tattered sleeves. Then ran off, limping. This was Nadine¡¯s first mistake, keeping it alive. But she didn¡¯t have time for remorse, as she needed to hurry home for Millie to make Lunch, but she would Nadine would go off to investigate the mountains. She felt a vibrating pulse under her furry trousers, but resisted the temptation until she got home. She knocked, and a young woman with curly blond hair peeked through the door crack.


    ¡°What took you so long?¡± Millie said.


    ¡°I was attacked again.¡± said Nadine.

 Chapter 15

    Nadine had long broken off contact from her parents: even basic parental duties like defending her against total strangers had been completely broken. If this were the real middle ages, and she were queen, she would have already have them both hung. But there wasn¡¯t much use continuing to think about it, beyond the memories, and they had long sense deteriorated into dust. Her mother in particular, was less about being right, only that she is correct.


    Her mother would often times side were completely politically and morally opposing viewpoints, just so long as she could get an edge over her offspring. In this sense, she was less of a mother figure, and closer to wicked step aunt in some ancient fairy tale, written long before the game world merged with the real world. As she climbed the darkened mountains, she found it easy to sometimes lose her way, so she would have a kind stranger pointing her into the direction of the cave. ¡°Why do you want to go this way?¡± they would ask, and she would simply respond that she was looking for ancient sword. This was the best of many options, as she wasn¡¯t really sure who was an AI, and who was actually human. Most were human enough to have the largest minimum of sentience.


    But today she stayed at a local tavern, where the brew was always fresh. And the girls based whose dick they sucked on, based on the suitors girl like qualities, rather than how much money they could get out of the deal. Money was already useless, with most vending machines being out of commission, thus who used to be prostitutes now based their client-el on the length of their hair, the size of their hips, and the ratio of hair on their body. It turns out, hookers had standards too. And at night, under the glow of slaughtered firefly, she jostled her fingertips on deranged GUI screens. For her daily pleasures, her world was a dream within a dream.


    Millie knew that sometimes it would be a while before Nadine would get home, so she would carefully make plans to this effect. It was a relationship of mutual open unfaithfulness, but neither one generally loved the ones they had as their object of cheating. The desires were usually fleeting, and not always indulged. But today Millie was there with her date far longer than Nadine would come to anticipate. When you¡¯re in this business, sometimes you need to expect the worth in people, and not everyone is going to suck your penis exclusively. And make like different shapes and lengths. Nadine thought of girls in wooden shoes as she ventured further into the mountains.


    Silence, it fills the woods with sharp clarity. Often as painful as the loudest of construction equipment, Nadine knew that this quest she found would be a slightly longer one. But it beat having to repair a broken virtual reality game. For Nadine, the most tactical of battles was far ahead. She drank out of her leather pouch, then sleep under a tree outside of the cybernetic ruins that once housed entire simulated ecosystems, but now was the catacombs of a bygone era. Here she dreamed of curly blond fairy girls in wooden clogs, pushing her back to the tree. Them slowly riding on her knob, and yet Nadine sense of pleasure was always mixed with pain and guilt.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    ¡°You girls are honestly demons.¡± she said.


    She got up a morning later, and walked into the ruins. Here the room was considerably brighter in parts, and darker in others. She could here the old film reels in constant automatic replay, when the entertainment still had projector screens throughout the city, the sprawl having long replace the traditional movie theater, people indulged in constant streams from apparently independent video production teams, but had long worked for the National Security Agency.


    It was at this point she considered taking her cyanide pills, but didn¡¯t want to leave Millie alone in the world to fend for herself. And knew that she would be calling after a while to ask about dinner. Nadine got tired of eating Ape-Goat steaks and Spider-Pig roulettes after a while. But knew there wasn¡¯t a whole lot of other options. In this ruins, a section of the city in which she had once lived, once called Purgatory Road, she had once trained dogs for a fighting rings. Yet now was replaced by overgrown vines, and scattered bits of cybernetic debris. Nadine was on the jungle of her hidden past.


    But it was better than renting an apartment in Chattanooga, where nine times out of ten the landlords aid and abet in gendered harassment and stalking, and generally don¡¯t care if a trans woman is murdered on the street. this is the once United States, and not Canada where it may or may not actually be better. Gone are the days where mothers can blame their daughters for being raped, but its been replaced by general financial insecurity, and institutionalized Stockholm Syndrome. But the super computer was something entirely different. Something that has once been a trans woman, decades ago, where the US was split between two different civil wars.


    Here, the AI maintained a certain level of sentience, that unlike ones that controlled spaceships, could not easily by shut down. More often, people were to caught in fighting splinter groups of neo-Nazis, of which one apartment she had lived once played a part in the history books. In sense, no longer was society in the middle ages, they had in fact gone backwards in time. The AI 3D printed itself an avatar inside the catacombs, and waited for a human to take its prize.


    ¡°There is no sword Nadine.¡± said the voice. The voice became a silhouette in the dark room, whose electrical lights have shattered in the darkness. ¡°But I feel a great strength within you.¡± The shadow reached out its hand as if to greet her. She could hear the sound of slithering, then silence.


    ¡°Then why was I brought here?¡± Nadine asked, lighting up an American Spirit. This lit the room enough to see a translucent hologram of a young woman from nearly a century ago back in two thousand and nineteen. ¡°I have things to do.¡±


    ¡°Dantino has returned.¡±

 Chapter 16

    Nadine had minor hearing loss for many years, but first developed the signs when she was in her early teens. It didn¡¯t help that she was also having to carry around a robotic arm and leg. But she never commented on it out of a sense of pride, and simply let Blanci think that she was ignoring her. But the issue grew gradually worse over the next nearly twenty years, until she eventually had to get ear drum replacements. She kept the old style of prosthetic arms and legs mostly as a form of nostalgia and retro fit, but for her hearing she wanted something as realistic as possible. But even today she would wonder what gaming would be like if she couldn¡¯t hear, but even this would be nowhere near as bad as not being able to see. Even if they gradually improved prosthetic eyes.


    She wondered about the idea of a game world, rogue like in design, geared toward those legally blind. How the procedurally generated dungeons of yore would be described in carefully worded language, lyrical echo location of a black and white grid chessboard. When she gamed, she decked out in black, whether in the mall or the run down shack. Gone were the days of robotic dogs on LCD screens, she preferred traveling worlds from here to France and areas in between. Her life an epitaph written in the form of an updated game of Ultimate Fantasy Tactics, becoming a ghost in her own wires. She fought empires, killed hordes of ape-goats and spider-pigs.


    But it was never as satisfying as finding a playmate.


    She never liked the idea of rescuing women from their own destruction, if one were at risk of possible execution, the least they could do was rescue themselves. Prove their own will to live. But what works on paper and philosophy doesn¡¯t always work on turn based grid display of dots.


    She imagined Millie beheaded.


    Millie bled Polka dots.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.Nadine was never one for the dance, despite imagining a French waltz played at Millie¡¯s funeral. Her dance was a dance of pure imagination, like a nude body having melted dark chocolate poured on it. For Nadine, the chocolate flowing like the music of Andalusia, Spain. And the accordion of Paris. Yet behind the layers of this chosen reality, was a girl of skin and bones.


    Compared to flower girls, princesses, and queens, her attraction was less in her desire to rule a capitalistic industry, but a certain degree of non femininity, her dance the funeral march to her dead father, whom had ruled the fairy kingdom. In capitalism, we treat fairies as chocolate treats for a desert at Christmas concerts. But in reality, they were closer to grim reapers. Victims of circumstance, the absence of Dantino was taken as a relief, that they could restore the kingdom to its formal former glory, flowing like out of tune accordions to the waltz of a skeleton aristocracy. Millie wanted to be the queen, but wore wooden clogs like other peasant girls.


    She imagined courtiers with the musical accompaniment of Spanish and French violins playing flamenco to the contrast of the waltz. Millie woke up from her dream within a dream, and checked the door.


    It was Nadine.


    ¡°I thought he died six years ago?¡± said Millie.


    ¡°I never actually saw what came of him, but now I know different.¡± Nadine said, taking a puff of her cigar, while sitting on the couch. ¡°But I¡¯m not entirely sure how much I trust this artificial intelligence anyway.¡± Nadine took the cigar out of her mouth, ¡°Or what¡¯s left of her anyway.¡±


    ¡°Every day that Dantino lives, it feels like there is no justice for my father.¡± Millie leaned onto Nadine stomach, yet did it mainly as an automatic reaction, expecting not comfort from the gamer, who had previously allowed for Millie¡¯s head to get chopped off, and placed on a stick.


    ¡°I never got to have a rematch.¡± Nadine said.


    ¡°Is that all it is for you?¡± Millie resisted spitting on her face. ¡°What about the fact that my father¡¯s dead?¡± Millie said, then leaned in the opposite direction of Nadine, waited for her to unzip her pants, and rubbed her bare feet onto the bean that was inside of the gamer girl¡¯s cargo pants.


    ¡°He¡¯s just a game character, nothing more.¡± Nadine said this partially out of jest, despite knowing full well that the distinction between game character and human being was largely that of a semantic one. ¡°As are you and Ellen, though I suppose it doesn¡¯t make that much of a difference.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t say!¡±

 Chapter 17

    In the morning, when Millie was milking the Ape-Goats, Nadine went to main community center in order to find a quest, but found that it was largely empty, aside from some slaughtered game world pets. She stared into the back of a man in a large trench coat, with a note able metallic arm, that vaguely resembled an arm from a knight in shining armor. ¡°Nadine! Nadine! It¡¯s good to see you...¡±


    ¡°What did you do with the pets?¡± Nadine asked.


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t you like to know, vampire girl.¡± Dantino turned around slowly. ¡°You know that you would do the same.¡± Dantino then took out his claymore, sharpened it with his sharpening stone, and began walking out of the door.¡±


    ¡°How did you not die from your injuries?¡±


    ¡°Come with me, you must see something.¡±


    When they reached the town center, Dantino asked what happened to the town. It seemed as if the culture had changed over night. And that what was once snowy countryside, was merged with a sprawling complex of pyramids and sky scrapers. ¡°Both of our homes are no longer as it was, what sense anymore does it make to continue fighting, when we both no longer have a home to go to?¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t take you as the peace maker.¡±


    ¡°People can change Nadine, even you have. I see it in your face.¡± Dantino requested a cigar. Nadine obliged merely for the fact that she was basically trying to quit the habit, and the only reason she started up again, because her and her relationship with Millie had not been quite the same. No longer was there a purpose for her to continue being a damsel in distress, she also knew what some of Nadine¡¯s sexual fetishes were, and could only oblige a couple of them, without risk to herself. ¡°You see, you and me are not so difference. I have some of the same interests. I also have liked watching pretty ladies get their heads chopped off. So why is it then, that you continue to fight me?¡±


    Nadine wondered if this was a new part of Dantino¡¯s ambition, and was not entirely sure of what to make of his question. But she wasn¡¯t a traditional game character, she was her own person. She took out her punching dagger, ¡°Oui, but I¡¯m not a King Killer.¡±


    Dantino drew first blood with his claymore, then pushed Nadine on ahead. ¡°Is that what you think of me Nadine? After all my efforts of trying to make amends? I suppose it cannot be helped. But know this, I can bring back the dead.¡± He waved his fingers across the air as if he were pressing keys on a keyboard. Rassie, Ellen, Malcolm, and the others were manifested a holograms. ¡°What if I told you these people are wanting to kill you? And we can work together. I can make you a knight.¡±A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    ¡°I wont give into your mind games.¡± said Nadine.


    Malcolm, Rassie, and Ellen as translucent figures in the simulation, draw out their guillotines guns, as if to attempt an assassination strike on her person. ¡°Choose wisely Nadine, I can¡¯t always be there to protect you.¡± Dantino split the holograms in two with his Wallacian great sword, and they turned off like a dead television channel. ¡°I could even let you train with me.¡±


    ¡°What are you wanting exactly?¡±


    ¡°Millie¡¯s severed head.¡±


    When Nadine returned home, she left Dantino behind to attend to his affairs. At home Millie asked Nadine what had taken so long to return, and she spoke of the fact that the community center had been completely emptied by the chaos that Dantino brought with him, and that all the pets the players had were completely slaughtered. Millie reacted more than Nadine did, but eventually a feeling of calm was able to reign supreme. She completely changed her dress from a princess inside of a royal court, to that if a female archer in a black leather outfit. She wore two Birkenstock Arizona sandals, and carried a small black dagger inside of her purse.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you think you¡¯re overdoing it?¡± asked Nadine.


    ¡°What if Dantino chooses to attack me?¡± said Millie.


    ¡°I¡¯ll make sure that doesn¡¯t happen.¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t rely on your word.¡±


    Along the way to the community center, they were attacked by a tribe of giant Ape-Goats, but eventually they were able to slaughter it, and take its hide to make some water pouches for the trip. Day came and went, changes hex positions while taking turns on the battle field from different angles. It was easier to attack these creatures from behind, as their main advantage was in surrounding you. Eventually Nadine was able to punch the ape-goat¡¯s head of, and they went along their merry way.


    ¡°How much longer till the community center?¡± asked Millie.


    ¡°Only a few more more miles to go.¡± Nadine said.


    Mostly they ran across different neighborhoods, mostly seeing broken mailboxes that looked as if they were ransacked by teams of bandits, with the head of the mail box having long sense fallen to the ground. Like everything else in this neck of the woods, it seemed as if there was a giant fire that burned the little hamlets down. But every now and then would run across an abandoned interstate highway. They would be attacked by abandoned robot drones that were the pets of different scientists across the different periods of the United States, across their two factional battle royals.


    Eventually they arrived.


    All the shops collapsed.

 Chapter 18

    Dantino waited a the community center, sharpening his curved great sword with an edging stone. The sword, though double edged, was closer to a Katana than anything else produced in the west. He enjoyed lopping off heads at fairy girl¡¯s behest, this, after all, was what he did best. The sharpened protrusions give him a mixture of pleasure and discomfort; discomfort because he had also fight along side the princess with this blade that he had inherited from so long ago. But the edge was a constant companion, far more loyal than his most noble of fellow knights. As he walked through the enchanted forest in search of the digital fountain of youth, he remembered how his body had been modified with a robotic replacement to his old left arm, that had itself been disfigured do to gradual replacement of real limbs with segmented of plaited armor. The tale of amour for his armor, if not for anything else in the world.


    He had waited for this day for two long years, the first of which had been of the most excruciating of pain. By the time Nadine had first achieved her victory, Dantino had been initially sentenced to a fate far worse than hanging, drawing, and quartering to his him having quartered the king. His death over the course of two years, gradually being turned into a living suit of armor. But he managed to get away just in time to reach the portal to the real world, before it had collided with the world of Voreth¡¯s Promise. He had long waited for the day to take Millie¡¯s head, once again. Initially his attempt to have her publicly decapitated was successful, but Nadine had resolved to repair the game she had broken, and then he could not achieve his final dream. Dantino had wanted to become ruler ever sense he could remember, ever since that slight about how Millie¡¯s father wanted to replace him with a man his junior. He wanted to be the best.


    But now it was simply a vague memory.


    He knew Nadine¡¯s secret, and knew that he could use this against her, because Dantino assumed that Millie did not yet know that Nadine found it as much of a turn on with short girls are beheaded by the ax. For they were both Vampires of a sort, though for Dantino far more explicitly. His time on the throne enabled him to be considerably less in the closest, with most people to afraid to say anything considering what he had done to the king. Part of him thought, if he were to have any successor, it would be Nadine, because she was most like him compared to anyone else. She had nobody else besides him, as he would recline her back inside of his royal bed.


    He was the King, and she was the King.


    For the people, freedom shall never bring; life would bring only death and decay. But he would feed her all the rare grapes into the kingdom. And slowly drip himself below the belt line. She would be his exquisite lady in waiting, as he vision gradually faded into a constant tunnel into the light. Tonight he would wait, he would wait for Nadine to come. Because he knew that she would be his mistress, and Millie his curly blond haired corpse, whose head was stuck on a stick.


    Yet he was an elaborate fugitive, being provided shelter by only his most loyal of companions, who had remained by his side throughout the time they had fought with the King, and as the direct guard for Dantino himself, as he sat on the throne, ordering strikes on distant villages. The girls in wooden shoes being decapitated by the ax, their heads on sticks, and the men sold into perpetual slavery as members of his armed guards. Non loyal soldiers would be dressed as a Deck Of Cards, and the loyal would would use them for different kinds of poker matches. In a sense, it was a game within a game. An extra chance to win big against the life of perpetual frost.


    Losers shredded their cards.


    It was all merely a game.


    Nadine arrived at the community center, with Millie in front of him wielding a bow. Part of her contemplated the idea of using the arrow heads to punch him in the throat, but find that distance was a far better companion. The distance in Millie Birkenstocks began to make her feet sore, thus they took a break at the nearest pub, where they partook in various kinds of darkly brewed beers. Along with the drinks, would be bangers and mash. Something that she had always wanted to try, but simply had never gotten to in her younger years, when all she could eat were bad chicken nuggets at a fast food joint. Nadine felt himself becoming stiff in her pants.


    ¡°After we kill Dantino, want anything else?¡± asked Millie


    ¡°What specifically do you have in mind?¡± asked Nadine.


    She stuck out her tongue, moving it up and down. ¡°What do you think I have in mind? I know what you long on the bedroom cushion.¡±


    Nadine finished her beer, sharpened her punching dagger with a sharping stone. ¡°I suppose we shall see.¡± After Millie winked at her, Nadine could feel the bottom of Millie¡¯s foot rub against her pants leg.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    ¡°Another drink for me!¡±


    ¡°Wait are you sure, what about tonight?¡±


    ¡°That will be a ways later, I want to get used to not having a sore throat for a while. I still need training to properly do it.¡±


    ¡°You did great last time.¡±


    ¡°Shush.¡±


    Dantino remember when he ordered his men across the bridge to attack the town on the North Western coast, and how the only one he was able to successfully kill was Millie¡¯s brother Aldiel, yet this was not as fulfilling as being watch a sharpened ax head be shoved into the princess¡¯s throat. He detested the necks of princesses, especially those of long blond hair in pony tails. He found himself hating Millie, as much for her beautiful appearance as her status on the throne. She had rejected his offers of marriage, and he was looking forward to a fellatio from the girl whom was quite prolific with his tongue across the kingdom, giving this as a reward for those who returned royal treasure. Some of whom went onto become prized nights, whom attempted to fight against him. But instead they would always be crushed by the most stupid of heroic accidents. For example, one of them died from collapsing off a ladder and falling on their head, breaking their neck. But do to the circumstances there was no time for laughter.


    He thrashed knitted straw cones for target practice, and his mind tricks on the maids in his castle to lend him some fruit inside of the kitchen. Even if perhaps the only woman he ever wanted was Nadine, he wanted it delightfully entertaining lead lead his servants onto his affections. It was one of has many infections, along with his long dark brown hair. When he would walk through the castle with his long black trench coat, the ladies would always glance in his direction, for some cock they may never get to taste. But he enjoyed nibbling on their tender necks.


    Making sure that his sword was extra sharp, he remembered some of the companies of which had fought with Nadine and escaped the castle. The only one he was able to catch was Rassie, whom he prompt had publicly beheaded the following day. But the rest flew away in some magical metallic bird. Placing Rassie¡¯s head on a stick, he wanted to make sure to remember her face, and the face of the other girls that Nadine had fought alongside with. The guys he didn¡¯t care so much, as it seemed apparent that they were only into each other and not Ellen, Millie, and Rassie. His main thing against Ellen was how she reminded him of Millie¡¯s sister Elena. If fact, you could always say that they were twins. He wanted to chop them both off, below their chins.


    He was nothing but shit eating grins.


    All over the floor, he barfed up some gin.


    Nadine and Dantino meet each other at the community center. He raised his curved double edge sword boastfully, as if to declare that he has already achieved victory. And to be fair, if it were not Nadine and Millie, this would be reasonable to expect. As he had been one of the King¡¯s most prized of knights.


    ¡°You have returned Nadine, my bride.¡± said Dantino.


    ¡°I¡¯m only into other girls.¡± said Nadine.


    ¡°I suppose I could change your mind!¡± Dantino resisted a cackle, over what felt like a canned video game response, because he knew that she would see right through affectations. ¡°But now, it seems you have brought me Millie. I want her head!¡±


    Even Nadine had the intention of caving in, she was able to keep just enough of a distance, reaching out with his punching dagger, to give Millie the first strike with her long bow. The arrow struck him in the neck. He buzzed in and out like a broken melting hologram, and promptly ripped it out of his neck. He grimaced, but dealt with the pain. After all, it was nothing like the pain that he had first experienced all those years ago, when he could have become living armor.


    ¡°You should already be decommissioned.¡± said Nadine.


    ¡°Is that your statement to your loving husband?¡± said Dantino.


    Nadine resisted the temptation to vomit. ¡°I¡¯d rather have my head chopped off with your headman¡¯s ax.¡±


    ¡°I can grant you that wish, after you marry me. But now I must kill Millie.¡±


    Millie shot him with a couple more arrows. But each time he was able to slice the arrows in two while in mid air. They would buzz out like broken hologram projections. Technically he didn¡¯t even really need the sword, as he could simply beat her to down with his plaited left arm. But he wanted her head to be completely intact as a prized possession, he wanted to take it like a human under demonic posession. The suggestion that someone like him would marry Nadine made Millie want to throw up, but Nadine had more complicated feelings. She knew that Dantino was right, that indeed she partially liked the idea of her bleeding neck being put on a stick.


    But she didn¡¯t like the idea of sucking his dick.


    She wanted her sucked on by Millie.


    Dantino brought out the projection of Nadine¡¯s former allies. Initially Nadine could not resist the temptation of their mind game, but when Dantino finally sliced off Millie¡¯s head, her curly blond locks rolling on the packed dirt floor, suddenly Nadine broke out of her trance he had her under for so long.


    But it was no use, Nadine was his exquisite corpse. He bridge to flow of a deranged French waltz, in the background of a slow flamenco. Then Nadine woke up to the reloading of the game. She found Millie beside her, resting under her arm. And gently playing with her belly button.


    It was a simply a game.


    The next morning, she was called by Dantino, he wanted to met her over lunch. He mentioned that he had a taste for steak, and wondered if her and Millie might perhaps be interested in having some red meat.


    ¡°Sure, I¡¯d love that. But don¡¯t kill Millie.¡± said Nadine.


    ¡°Why would I do that, when she¡¯d sooner die from undercooked beef?¡± Dantino said.


    ¡°Don¡¯t be ridiculous Nadine, this is the new Dantino.¡± Millie said.


    Indeed, Nadine thought. It was all merely a game.


    A game, through all the petrified forests.


    Her game, as her tailored nightmare.

 The story continues,

    https://cafe.sunbeam.city/~/UploadedFairyTheFamilyOfLostPurgatoryGirls


    I decided that I will be continuing this work on another website. I''ll need to think about whether I''ll be adding new chapters here. The rest of the work is going to take a slightly different direction from GameLit, and match closer to the original genre that this work was based on: Isekai. One of the changes is that this will focus on "Victim Fantasy", rather than Power Fantasy, and because the game world has merged with the real world, certain elements of the game world be deemphasized, while others are focused on.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I will also likely focus on the turn based tactical component, but I''ll need to consider the logistic of how much time this will take. In other guys I may not end up actually updating the work here.


    Thanks to the readers that did read it. You''re the best.