ã€ŠMonovalent Realms: a Virtual Reality Mysteryã€‹


 Jacob and the Great Mist

    Jacob couldn¡¯t understand the strange, smudged visages that he had awoken to. The fantasy world where he was a famous, seventies-style, rock-star seemed to have gone. There were no high-rise towers or bright city lights. No sounds of people or music at all. Nor were there any ruined, wayward streets like the world he inhabited last week, where he was a dragon-riding hero who flew through the air and slayed monsters, vampires, zombies, demons and ghouls and undertook quests to save his long-lost sweetheart and son.

    Instead, he seemed to be in a place that only existed in wildest dreams of the drug-addled or perhaps those with particularly overactive imaginations. He¡¯d awoke not to his four-poster bed but rather outside in the almost pitch-dark.

    The sky surrounding him was that typical soft, darkish blue of the early evening as it prepared for nightfall, but this was the only thing here that appeared normal. The presence of three giant cat-like creatures that reminded Jacob of black panthers or leopards except with midnight-blue fur, dark-purple eyes, and silvery-black wings flying gracefully overhead rather definitively reinforced this. Jacob noticed that even from a very high distance they still looked a little too shimmery and blurry and he prayed his eyes were alright; he¡¯d always had 20/20 vision when tested at school.

    A beautiful bird with long wings bristling with an array of azure, scarlet, and indigo feathers, and a slender, white beak and neck, bumped into a dark, ruby-red owl with yellow and penetrating eyes, so it veered off angrily towards the felines flying nearby. The owl saw them and emitted a frightened, quailing noise and so rapidly that its bright wings become a fiery blur, fled straight into a large cloud.

    Another huge creature that flew straight through a cloud nearby, was the shape of an albatross only much larger with a wingspan of several feet and seemingly-transparent. As if it were merely reflecting colours and their sheen; particularly the sky¡¯s white-edged, deep waterfall blue off a pale, insubstantial, spirit-like form. It emitted a sudden, delicate, silvery cry like the toll of a bell and echoed its ringing across the landscape.

    The clouds themselves were long and elongated, their wispy forms coloured the yellow, gray, and purple of nasty bruises. The strangest and more eerie kind though was dusty-red, and it was a fixture in nearly half the skies.

    It wasn¡¯t dust cloud though he told himself with confused but stern brevity because the weather was shivering, frozen cold. Bitter, chill winds shot throughout shadowy trees from which frost fell and seemed to shudder and to shiver and sway with each fresh array of cold in a gust.

    Trees in spectacular charcoal-black cast darkness upon the ivory-white ground. Their leaves shone and shimmered silver. Snowflakes fell but something else fell too that Jacob felt hard-pressed to identify. Similar to mist or vapour but it could perhaps been a swirling white smoke.

    The mysterious substance whatever it may be was of some concern. For it had swirled around Jacob with such heavy completeness that it literally was swathing him. A dense, white curtain that obscured easy breathing. He waved its mistiness away with swift, sweeping movements of his hands, taking a deeply grateful breath of cold, dank air.

    He decided to explore. The long, thick grass he attempted to navigate soon became a heavy-handed nuisance. Vastly overgrown and far-reaching it shot up from the ground in heavy, dense, silver clumps that matched the tree¡¯s leaves. For the leaves had the long, fine, drooping appearance of the grassy leaves that hang from weeping willows. Some smaller, wraithlike, white trees with shining black leaves, remained Jacob of ghost gums. The soil on the ground was an unusual reddish-gold.

    Smatterings of snow and ice littered such golden-red ground, graceful, black trees, and beautiful silver grass in a frosty, blanket-like fashion. Everywhere he looked the snow and mist fell. Jacob had begun to realize that he could also hear the sound of eerie music with a tempest-like harmony coming from somewhere nearby.

    It was very instrumental, for no voices or singing involved and the tune was unfamiliar, as were some of the instruments being played. Jacob could distinctly hear the sounds of a harp, a trombone, a violin, an exquisite high-pitched tune that probably came from a flute, and every now and then the chiming in of a smooth, piano melody. A stunning saxophone solo also played at regular intervals.

    He looked with some dismay about him, trying to garner an explanation for this strange misty virtual terrain he¡¯d been mysteriously transported to. The spooky music continued to play, and he noticed the rhythm was consistent, but the volume altered every few minutes or so in a pattern that seemed to go loud, soft, loud, soft... It was enough to put anyone in a state of perpetual bewilderment he thought, as his mind began to spin, and he felt dizzy almost nauseous.

    Dazed to the level of illness he clasped at his head and turned around to the left, silvery mist and white smoke still dancing around his eyes. In this new direction, he sighted a large city up ahead, around thirty feet away.

    Predominately silver and white as its buildings were pale and abundantly snow- and mist-covered, it appeared to be all large two-story, old-fashioned buildings made of smooth marble and ample pale stone adorned by vines. With still more of that long silvery amass of willow-like grass and imposing presence of tall black-barked, silver-leaved trees.

    He spotted a granite and white marble cathedral, a stadium, and two temples that looked akin to something constructed back in ancient Rome. Next to the larger of the two temples lay a beautiful, dark-gray stone church with a steeple and black marble altar. The church¡¯s stained glass windows reflected light like the arch of a rainbow in vivid shades with an unearthliness to them.

    Sky-high, white Tudor pillars and intricately carved stone and marble statues (of children, animals a griffin, a large dragon, and a unicorn with long, delicate legs, a spiraling horn, and great, feathery-looking wings) as well as stone and marble statues of angelic men, women and children surrounded and stood proudly amidst the buildings.

    One statue of particular eye-catching note was a beautiful, young nymph- girl in a hooded cloak. She had two birds an owl and a hummingbird perched on her shoulders. A curly-haired young child at her feet. Ivy snaked wild and unchecked around her and the other statues, creating intricate, organic patterns. She had large yet delicate-looking, feathery wings, a pointed rather pixieish face, and vines growing around her rippling, flowing dress and covered in bright coatings of snow, ice frozen to her meticulously carved form making her look quite the ice sculpture.

    On her marble-white, ice-encrusted cheek the snow had melted somewhat and was running down her face like tears. A snow maiden that¡¯s what she is, Jacob thought.

    Next to the pale, glacial statue girl, the mist-strewn, outer edges of the city spanned out. Much of which was made up of old two-story buildings that rather resembled smallish, lightly-coloured towers, at least in Jacob¡¯s mind. They were made of beautiful pale-gray stone or lovely smooth and pale marble. Most were unpainted, some though were, a light silvery or creamy colour. Most had chimneys, several turrets, and pale, pointed rooftops.

    At the heart of the fogged city there loomed ahead, amidst the pale two-story houses, a huge, black fortress-like castle with an enormous, winding tower at the top, buttresses, and a surrounding moat. The castle rose up magnificent and imperious, far higher than all the other buildings and even the trees. Its immense presence silhouetted itself as dark as a shadow against the evening.

    The entire city he realized as he approached it more closely, was surrounded by a still, luminescent water with a scarlet glisten under an oddly ordinary yellow moon.

    To reach the city which, though not sure why, he knew for certain he wanted to do, he would need to cross the bridge over water that now looked more bluish; a beautiful, violet lake. The trees after he¡¯d been walking through them and snow scatterings for roughly ten minutes, no longer completely surrounded the place in forest terrain. Instead, they seemed to have cleared somewhat creating a golden dirt path he could cross to reach the bridge, another dark-gray stone structure. This bridge bizarrely was wide enough for cars, but this world seemed clearly absent of them.

    The grass seemed to be thinning out as he got closer to the city. Traipsing along sparsely-covered soil proved a hindrance in itself as was less solid than first appeared and stuck to his shoes like mud. The dirt path was also alas very uneven. It delved in all manner of directions like a rat¡¯s maze and made itself all in all vastly complex adhere to.

    Jacob after following it another four minutes or so discovered to his relief its many winding twists and turns had just about petered out. He could now see water that crossed directly to the edge of the city. Rows of black trees flanked left, right, and center near a water clearing. The shadow trees obscured easy vision of the glowing violet-blue lake; they also plunged him to darkness as he pressed his way through them.

    One could see from this close to the white city, roses in unheard of colours such as black and dark blue as well as more standard red and purple ones, in thorny, silver bushes surrounding this city. Streetlamps adorned all the main structures, illuminating paved, white walkways decorated with midnight-blue stones, wine-coloured stones, and ones of the palest ivory and led directly into what looked like the city¡¯s outskirts. The golden street lamps cast a great glow eerie on the city¡¯s great hedges and trees. His eyes had adjusted a little more to the dark and he soon noted little light flashes of silver, white and fair-blues even purples on the tree¡¯s leaves.

    Horrifying or lovely either way it was clearly all a phantasmagorical dream, feverish nonsense. That much was obvious he told himself. He however upon coming to this conclusion, immediately began to doubt its plausibility. Dreams were never this vivid perhaps really, he just had taken some form of drug. Monovalent had warned him that how his mind interpreted the game would vary if he took any mind-altering drugs.

    The Holo program as he understood it, created most of the shapes, structure, and scenarios but also utilized your own ability to create and interpret sights, smells, and sounds. it showed you the visual images and your mind would fill in the blanks. The computer created the bulk of the fantasy world with state-of-the-art virtual reality and brain wave-altering techniques. Sending neat little electric signals that tricked the brain into creating this fantasy world, with visual projections and detailed hypnotic storytelling on the computer¡¯s part (it implanted and enhanced the details of the fantasy in the individual''s head whilst being put into that kind of hypnotic, dreamlike, highly-suggestible state.

    With higher consciousness temporarily suspended until they perceived the fantasy world as clearly as reality, yet allowed other parts of the mind to remain fully aware that it wasn''t real. So through the trickery, the real world could be at any point be reinstigated without ever breaking the illusion.

    The computer programming''s induced hypnotic, hallucinogenic state was quite similar to being on drugs and made one more susceptible to manipulation.

    Was largely up to the brain to rearrange these scenarios, images, and ideas into a world almost as real as reality. Yes, the machine planted the information and images in the mind and was basically tricking the mind into turning these computer images derived through imagery and computer graphics (of that person as rich or famous or in the middle of some supernatural quest game or movie-based fantasy) into a realistic world.

    It employed its hypnotic storytelling and narrated to the brain about the world (it starts with you acting in a Broadway play or the amateur leagues when you are suddenly spotted by the scouters, you are the hero in a zombie apocalypse and the only survivor you must make it to the safe house) into one giant hallucination. The subconscious brain thought the confabulation was real, but the conscious brain knew it was not.

    So, it did make sense that if you took drugs, it might confuse the signals between your brain and the computer creating a completely different fantasy world. Rather like how your mind fills in the blind spot in your eye by filling in the visual picture of the world you don¡¯t see with what¡¯s most likely to be hidden from view by the blind spot based on what you¡¯re looking at next to and around it, i.e. if you¡¯re looking at three-quarters of a leaf, it will replicate the missing part based on prior knowledge of what a whole leaf looks like from various angles. He even knew a trick that illustrated this.

    You looked at a straight line with a gap down the middle but looked at a certain angle, the break in the line become obscured by the blind spot and your brain automatically assumed the line was whole and recreated the missing part in your head to fill in the gap. So, when you looked again, the line appeared finished with no sign of a gap. It was a really cool trick.

    Regardless, there was certainly nothing great about the fact he had probably taken drugs and converted his Fantasy world into a living nightmare. Jacob really didn¡¯t want to think he had indulged in substance abuse. He was the only one of his friends who¡¯d steadfastly sworn off drugs. It did seem somehow, sort of possible however he had been persuaded into trying them. After all, it always had been very difficult to hang out as the only un-high teenager in his group of friends. Not unreasonable to suspect he might have cracked, he¡¯d considered it before. He also suspected it was his best mate Joey who had made him try the ice or whichever hallucinatory drug was causing this trip.

    God Damn you Joey, he thought to himself. This is what comes of having a best friend who¡¯s on drugs half the time he reprimanded himself. Thoroughly convinced it was some kind of drug trip he decided to just sit on one of those large white stone rocks surrounding the outer edge of the city. And wait for the effects to subside.

    The pale, smooth rocks he lounged upon were lovely he had to admit as sat, half-bored and half-afraid of what his imagination might conjure up next, (monsters, bugs burrowing into his skin) he¡¯d seen all those scare-campaign ads. In fact, he looked around, and it struck him everything about this place seemed reasonably-compelling even rather aesthetically beautiful. My imagination is being quite kind to me, he thought. Feeling somewhat impressed with his psyche for constructing this and not a terror-scape. None of his friends ever hallucinated things almost awe-inspiring.

    ¡°What are you doing¡± a woman¡¯s horrified voice broke through his dazed yet self-congratulatory thoughts. Jacob jumped he never expected people to be a part of his drug-addled fantasy. The monstrous, demon, shadow beast will be coming out to play soon dear; the woman said urgently shaking her dark head from side to side agitatedly. ¡°Why aren¡¯t you hiding young man?¡±

    ¡°Dem-on?¡± Jacob said in terror turning to face her. He should have known it couldn¡¯t all be exquisite trees and buildings and pretty little flowers. It¡¯s not real; none of it is, so therefore it can¡¯t ever really hurt me he reassured himself unconvincingly.

    The program Monovalent had created was so realistic feeling you could smell things intensely, see the fabricated world as clearly as though outside on a bright, spring day, experience pain and simulated death, and taste food as though it were really on your lips.

    He realized the woman had just given him a very odd look. ¡°Are you a foreigner?¡± She asked, ¡°I thought the world outside the city had been all destroyed by the demon. The great Shiverla god¡¯s servant¡¯s attack was retribution for our recent human transgressions of greatest sin.¡±

    Jacob asked her trembling slightly where he might go to hide.

    ¡°The creature doesn¡¯t seem to like going in the castle,¡± she replied. ¡°Unfortunately for us, the young queen and king live there, and they won¡¯t let you stay unless you offer them something in return. The princess queen and her mate the prince king never got attacked by the beast because their bloodline is that of the Shiverla God¡¯s appointed rulers and therefore their holy, true believers she explained to Jacob.

    ¡°They don¡¯t let me in of course, though I too am a true believer. I guess it¡¯s because I¡¯m neither a holy person nor one of royalty¡± she said with regret. ¡°Personally, I just hide in the abounded factory over there,¡± she pointed vaguely in the direction of one of the pale buildings. ¡°The lakes frozen over so you can¡¯t leave the island either¡±, she said. ¡°Though it wouldn¡¯t matter if you could, the world outside the palace kingdom of Shiverla is almost destroyed.¡±

    ¡°So, this city bears the same name as the Shiverla god?¡± Jacob asked her carefully.

    ¡°Yes, it was once Lord Eradiates dearest most treasured city. He ruled over the city¡¯s inhabitants and treated us like we were his children. We worshipped him and gave due sacrifice and they got good fortune in return.¡±

    ¡°Few went hungry, illnesses were rare, and people were generally blessed. For several hundred years things were stable. Eradiates then so benevolent and kind even visiting with the royal family from time to time, often in animal form. The royal family are actually distant ancestors of the creator god Shiverlen sons and daughters. Lord Shiverlen picked out the most beautiful humans and trapped them in the heavens to be brides and grooms for seven of his thirty sons and seven of his twenty daughters¡±

    ¡°The first God of hell Aerius also possessed a beautiful human bride of only seventeen. Rarlen was trapped in hell with him and became as dark, aggrieved, and sorrowful as any of the sinful human spirits that are hell¡¯s inhabitants despite her husband¡¯s obsessive love and kindness to her. Merlina, Shiverlen''s wife and the goddess of sacrifices chose Rarlen herself because her mother boasted that the girl was more beautiful than Merlina.¡±

    Rarlen¡¯s mother prayed to the goddess of fertility and women, who answered. She made a deal with hell¡¯s God Aerius on her behalf, that as the girl only ate half a peach from hell, she might live six months in heaven but still it became too much.¡±

    It¡¯s a slightly altered retelling of Hades and Persephone, Jacob thought. I¡¯m dreaming of Greek myths.

    ¡°Shiverlen married the gods to mortals,¡± the healer was saying, ¡°so their offspring half-human and half-god might become demi-deities who would travel down to earth and be kings and queens to keep closer watch over the world of man in the gods¡¯ steed. Once the humans tasted the food and drink of heaven they were trapped there for all eternity. Unfortunately, all our omnipotent, regal gods perished in the Holy War except the Shiverla god.¡±

    ¡°He was once merely the god of Shiverla city but took over heaven when Shiverlen our creator died. Since that tragedy occurred five hundred years ago, the royal family, when they have served a hundred-year term, will ascend to the heavens to become full gods and goddesses. New Gods of war and famine and love and beauty, replace the ones lost. Gods able to perceive everything that goes on, on this green earth and even in Caralia our dear heavens. About ten years ago however people all across the world started to stray from Shiverlen¡¯s teachings, to lose their faith and worship for some reason.¡±

    ¡°More than one mate for example as you well know, is an atrocity and rightly-forbidden. People are mated at sixteen and must live together for the rest of their days raising the one to three children permitted per family. However, people were caught cheating on their partners for life, can you imagine! Some abandoned their children, some claimed the gods didn¡¯t exist, and others burned their statues and images and refused to work. For those who did work, some said people should be given more opulent food and bigger houses and luxury items if they were a factory owner or cultured musician, inventor, or water sanitation experts than if they worked in the offices, factories, education system, fields, or ¡°merely¡± raised the children.¡±

    ¡°The book of Shiverla City clearly states however all men and women regardless of their labour or profession must be treated equally, work no more than six daily hours, four days a week, and own equal amounts of housing property. As well as have equal access to adequate food, water, and items of value and recreation. In our prosperous, well-populated, well-run society this of course more than manageable.¡±

    Stolen novel; please report.

    ¡°How can they not have seen that? How can they not revere the creator who gave us all this, even our very life and even kindly enough left us with rulers in charge of making sure we adhered properly to this regime of peace, prosperity, and equality? Whose divine teachings serve as a constant reminder to us of the right way, in case we stray or fall from the path?¡±

    ¡°The real reason for this apocalyptic destruction of our world however is undoubted that traitor Lauder.¡± Her eyes flashed angrily at his name. ¡°In case you, don¡¯t know the story, that boy Lauder was the most misguided of all the heathen non-believers. ¡°

    ¡°What he did is surely what angered the great Shiverla so greatly as to punish us all. He first gathered vile followers, then staged uprisings against the religious and community structures of this world at the weekly palace gathering. Palace gatherings are mandatory, but he and his followers started purposely missing them and the sacrifices except for when they went to protest at them.¡±

    ¡°Then when they eventually had grown to nearly a thousand in numbers, he and his followers staged a revolt against the royal palace itself. Lauder and his group wanted to overthrow the teachings of the great Shiverla and set up an anti-religious, free market society.¡±

    ¡°Naturally Eradiates wrath, indignation, and retribution knew no bounds. He sent down his servant who usually resides in hell to quell the revolt and obliterate those responsible. The creature killed every last one of the rebels except Lauder, he managed to flee. Soon a demon an Ellthen as referred to in the New Shiverla testament we follow here outsider, came killing more people. Probably other sinners.¡±

    ¡°Within three months a message was announced by the Queen herself that the entire world was being visited, and many of their inhabitants destroyed by the Shiverla¡¯s gods servant and only we remained, and we could be next if we did not renew our faith. The people in those places I thought were trapped in them the ways out of their cities blocked.¡±

    ¡°The people of Shiverla city did not renew their faith so beast did grace our beloved city as the Queen claimed but one week later. It took many people always disappearing after its rampages into thin air either in a shadowy cloud of black smoke or a scattering mist. The inhabitants responded by the promise of bringing Eradiates a sacrifice, namely the one who had angered it so Lauder, in the hopes of quelling its seething rage.¡±

    ¡°Lauder was eventually captured by the young king¡¯s soldiers the Seintile who were created to serve as guards to the royal family. They dress in robes of black, are seven feet tall, ghostly-white with clawed hands and feet, and were created from the souls of inanimate objects who prayed for a living purpose and form. Oh, if you can¡¯t find refuge seek a Floan.¡±

    ¡°Floan,¡± Jacob stuttered.

    ¡°Oh, dear Lord,¡± she muttered, ¡°another child with no sense of history.¡±

    ¡°Sentient animals who raged at being denied access to heaven as deemed lesser than man. They took revenge in a years-long war; many humans slaying and stealing their souls for themselves until the Shiverlen said the battle needed to end and would grant them and all poor, lifeless inanimate things a spirit and place in the afterlife. Yet were punished for the bloodshed by being forced to protect any human they meet at any cost, even their own life. Find one. It will take your place one time if the shadow beast should find you.¡±

    ¡°There are actually a few Seintile over there,¡± she pointed toward the castle and Jacob felt faint as he saw what looked like a tall, slender man who suddenly turned around, revealing a face like a dead beast''s, all lifeless, slitted eyes and translucent, matted fur. Lifelessly, colourlessy it turned towards him.

    Japanese mythology and medieval royalty now, he thought in disbelief. It''s spirited away meets England¡¯s dark ages.

    ¡°Lauder was thrown in jail, and then rightly given to the creature as an offering of appeasement¡± the healer continued with her story.

    ¡°It was hoped the demon would thus cease wreaking havoc on our city. It continued though with a perhaps a justified dire vengeance for his and our insubordination. It¡¯s rather outstanding that you do not know all about this boy;¡± she broke away from her story and stared at him penetratingly.

    "Furthermore, you seem to scarcely seem to have even heard of the great city of Shiverla, yet it¡¯s well-documented in our sacred testament in a chapter entitled The Book of Shiverla a Holy Tome of all the kingdoms of this land. Do they spread word and teachings of the Holy City in the outer realms they must,¡± she said her tone almost chastising him.

    ¡°For without them how can there be true believers out there? Shiverla City was and is not only God''s favourite but also the most beautiful, and wealthy, and has the greatest prosperity of all the kingdoms. It even has the most exotic animals and plant life. You must already know from where you dwelled before though, that the other cities and villages don¡¯t look like this.¡¯

    She commented all this with what appeared to be a heavily-rising suspicion. Jacob hastily-lied and said he did know the story, but his suburban village, or most of them had been destroyed in the Second Great War because people¡¯s belief in the gods had started to wane. He was the only one who had been a true believer, he continued and that¡¯s why he believed his life had been spared and he had been brought here.

    He did not know how many if any other people in his land had survived. Jacob after finishing this elaborate fabrication was enormously impressed with his ingeniousness. He had come up with all this on the spot under great pressure how truly amazing. Take that Joey, he thought you always teased me for showing an interest in mythology, but it sure paid off.

    He was relieved to see the woman seemed to have bought it and looked completely mollified.

    ¡°If the shadow beast spared you, perhaps some of us will be saved as well,¡± said the woman. We were worried this was the end. It would wipe us all off the planet and start humanity all over again fresh and pure and untainted and loyal to the gods.¡±

    ¡°If it refrained from taking your life out of mercy for your faith, perhaps the other faithful in this city will be spared. I was always a true believer. As a healer, I knew it was the divine entity who gave me my powers. I have tried to heal those attacked by the monster of the shadows but to no avail. I now suspect this is because they were heathens and blasphemous and not worthy of saving."

    Jacob nodded and asked her if he could stay in the building with her. "No sorry, dear," she said ruefully, "I do wish you could but it¡¯s full literally, you can barely move for the number who hides there."

    ¡°What about the other buildings,¡± he asked desperately.

    She shook her head; "The creature has raided every last one and killed whomever or whatever was in them."

    She then brightened and said, ¡°Don¡¯t lose hope; the creature may spare you again.¡±

    ¡°Thanks,¡± said Jacob ¡°but I would really rather not take my chances.¡±

    The woman frowned then smiled again but this time with less optimism. ¡°You could try to catch the famed, beautiful but very elusive winged cat-fox. The young princess or Queen as she is really (she prefers the title princess for some reason you see, though it¡¯s far less honorific and therefore inaccurate) is an impetuous thing. She has incidentally as luck would have it, promised that anyone who can bring her the reclusive winged cat-fox will have refuge at the palace as their reward.¡±

    ¡°If you have not heard of it since it is more of a local tale, the cat-fox was born when a red, fennec fox and a small wild cat had a spell put on them by the great Shiverla. He forced them to commune and create a green-eyed creature with a slender, muscular, and lean body shape. With large, slanted, dark-green eyes of a cat but the long, pointy face, large, pointed ears, and bushy tail of a fox. The creature''s colour is red-gold because the fox is red and the wildcat is pale-gold. There is something human about it too, for its cry sounds eerily like an infant child¡¯s and it can stand upon on its hind legs with ease.¡±

    ¡°What does she want the cat-fox for?¡± asked Jacob with curiosity.

    The woman shrugged in a bored, slightly contemptuous way.

    ¡°She merely wants it for a pet as far as I have heard.¡±

    Jacob nodded politely and thanked her asking ¡°if she had any idea where he might locate this oh-so-elusive creature. For instance, had she been lucky enough to hear where it had been seen last?¡±

    ¡°You could try the grasslands sanctuary,¡± she suggested with a shrug.

    ¡°My dad said he used to catch sight of it from time to time eating the food people put out there. It¡¯s basically a refuge for sick and injured animals that can¡¯t fend for themselves so they''re brought there by people to heal. However, it¡¯s very common for perfectly healthy animals to go there for the free food, the bathing pond, and the shelter. Be warned it moves lightning fast; you¡¯ll need to trick it or tame it to capture it.¡±

    "As for tonight well, Marlen the most renowned musician in our city and possibly all the lands (we do have the most flourishing art and cultural scene as Eradiates chosen city haven) or so she broke off from what was originally talking about to say with a boastful imperiousness.

    "It¡¯s said the gods sometimes come here to listen to our finest musicians like Marlen play and see our greatest artworks and plays. Marlen is going to be staying over at the palace as the young king has a great fond love and appreciation of fine music. He is playing for him and the queen tonight."

    "So, this means you can stay in the building with us today, in the space he usually occupies but he¡¯ll be back tomorrow, so you¡¯ll need to catch the fox-cat to gain access to the palace by then.¡±

    Jacob¡¯s expression became one of furtive relief.

    ¡°Thank you, I¡¯ll do that,¡± he said, and she smiled at him and nodded and held out her hand.

    ¡°I¡¯ll show you the way, child,¡± she said. ¡°My name is Shiore by the way¡±

    Jacob took a hold of her outstretched hand, and she pulled him up off of the pale, smooth rock. ¡°What does the beast look like,¡± he asked her with interest; ¡°for never did I actually view it in the dark days when it ravaged our home.¡±

    ¡°The beast is a creature of shadows and great, gothic beauty. It masquerades in many alternate but always exquisite forms,¡± the healer replied. ¡°As a shapeshifter; it can be a scaled dragon, a giant silver farlen, a Mammalian butterfly, or even a spirit bird. Its eyes always remain dark-red. Its real form which we see less often is a tall, thin, skull-faced human with a dark, shadowy body and countenance who harvests your soul. m-err? cat? Jacob asked. The woman smiled ¡°We only have them here In Shiverla city, their cats that live in the water, they have a long, scaly tail like a fish and often are seen playing with the pink sealien.¡±

    ¡°The sealien''s colour is said to be that of a sunset; dark, reddish-pink and with short, downy fur. It is like a water version of the massoine. The self-same, large, dark, liquid eyes, small delicate ears, and round-cheeked but pointy-chinned little faces. Only the sealien¡¯s face is narrower and more cat-like, its ears pointy. It also has even lighter water-resistant fur and four flippers instead of legs.

    The seafox or merr-cat¡¯s leggy, it resembles a half-grown foal or kitten. Its shorthaired coat is dark- spotted. Usually deep-blue but sometimes in pale gray. It has a long, fishlike tail made of dark blue-green or sometimes purple scales. It has four flipper-like legs similar to but more fish-like than a land animal and a long, muscular, slender body with a somewhat pointed face and large, fox-like ears. Its wide but slanted eyes, are somewhat violet and it can breathe both above and underwater, so it goes on land as well as the sea.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like their exquisite animals,¡± said Jacob.

    ¡°They are,¡± Shiore replied. ¡°Come now, I¡¯ll lead you to the building.¡± She began to stride along purposefully. ¡°It more than ever takes the form of inanimate objects this beast, to trick you into getting close. So, it can attack you, off-guard. Sometimes, I heard, it even masquerades in the form of your shadow, or a human loved one, or an adorable kitten or mossumie. All to lure and lull you into a false sense of security then lo and behold before you know it, it strikes you dead, but it only strikes after nightfall.¡±

    ¡°Surely it is powerful enough it doesn¡¯t need to resort to such a fa?ade,¡± Jacob commented frowning.

    ¡°No, of course not dear,¡± she said sounding almost amused. ¡°It¡¯s fast as lightning and more powerful than any tidal wave or volcano. It¡¯s a game to the shadows monster, it enjoys these vengeance-killing sprees don¡¯t you see? One would expect no less from a creature of hell.¡± She gestured forward possibly indicating they should hasten onto the hiding refuge and stop their idle chat. She continued leading him down the white pathway with much ice covering the stone making it a slippery and awkward journey. It did however seem to be the only way into the city.

    The healer woman was a fast walker and did not seem to have any trouble maneuvering her way around the heavily snowed terrain. Jacob was not so lucky: he nearly slipped and fell over several times, and she turned to give him a look of exasperation each time this occurred.

    She probably uses magic; Jacob thought to himself resentfully, as no one could actually move easily upon grounds such as this. The mist-like substance that shrouded every place they walked did not aid him either. It regularly filled his eyes and mouth and nose making it difficult to see or breathe and he pushed through it with ever-growing frustration and impatience.

    When they reached the city to his relief, not only had the mist lessened but he saw the ice had been cleared from the walkway somewhat and he trod the path with far greater confidence and rapid speed to keep up with the woman.

    He at brief intervals wished he could stop to pick one of the exotic flowers or touch the willow-like silver of the ivy and grass to see if they were smooth or rough in texture but thinking of the beast gulped and hastened his slim, shaky legs to move rapidly onward, instead. The buildings all looked remarkably similar though were not, in fact, all pale gray or ivory-white merely most. Some were dark-gray stone, others pale, beige gold, and like sandstone. The castle alone however was of a pure, deep black and very stark in relation to the pale or colourful, other buildings.

    The buildings were also all roughly two stories tall and roughly equal in size, the castle was easily twelve times that big and bigger than any real castle Jacob had ever seen. It was here, that the woman announced suddenly, stopping at one of the pale buildings. Soft gray-white with a creamy sheen and silver pointed roof with two turrets sticking up the top. Jacob also noticed a worn-looking, dark-gray plaque next to the building with a long, flowery-lettered inscription written on it. What does it say? Jacob asked curiously. The dark-haired healer shrugged read it if you want.

    Trapped In a world of smoke and ice

    Skies of swirling white

    Upon the ground, mist fell

    Lovely but harsh as purgatory

    Or the waiting gates of hell

    Of silver flowers, ice buildings, pale granite

    Wander frosty, Mist-strewn lands

    Find blue-haired Adora and relieve her of her hand

    Vanquish valiantly an accursed demon child

    Of blue-haired innocent and soul-smoldering vile

    Leaving you our new king

    To our fair city joy and glory bring

    Jacob read it and frowned. ¡®Cheery, little thing, isn¡¯t it? Who is the person it wants you to kill? This Shiverla child? What crime has such a young girl committed that she deserves death? And why on earth does it harp on about how old the reader will be in the future, I mean I know it¡¯s meant to evoke a stark contrast with the saviour¡¯s timeless youth but still.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s an ancient fable, a prophecy,¡± the healer explained to him. ¡°A great shadow beast will destroy the city of the Shiverla and all mankind unless someone not of godly blood kills the Shiverla child and establishes themselves as rightful ruler in her stead. However, the testament says she will not be born until after the beast has purged the city of all those who have sinned against Eradiates and his teachings. It has not happened yet as I know many who rejected the old ways of the Shiverla, are hiding from the creature in the town buildings still. It will get them eventually though,¡± she said with steady, cold indifference.

    ¡°What about the King and Queen though? They¡¯re still alive. I thought these demi-deities were Eradiates appointed divine rulers?¡± Jacob inquired finally after a hefty pause in which he¡¯d been trying to process all the contradictory information about this world and just ended up (not surprisingly) haplessly confused.

    ¡°This is true,¡± said Shiore, but our young lieges shall ascend to heaven; they announced yesterday that once the world had been purged of all its residing evil, they would dwell in a higher plane. The Shiverla God Eradiates when they prayed to him to stop this Great War and destruction apparently said that he would grant them their reward. They shall live in Carelia¡¯s paradise as the new goddess of beauty and God of war but only once ¡°the final living night of the last heathen traitor elapses¡±.¡¯

    ¡°You mean they die? The last sinner I mean,¡± Jacob said.

    ¡°Yes,¡± she nodded her face completely devoid of any emotion.

    ¡°The royal child left behind and depicted in the poem is the young Queen¡¯s long-prophesised coming daughter. The queen¡¯s daughter will be half-cat and half-human and able to shift into full animal or full human form, but her real form is something in-between like her parents. She will be left behind on Earth when her parents arise to salvation. The events the fable predicted are slowly unfolding. Besides the arrival of the shadow beast, there are numerous whispers and rumours spreading amongst the people and in the court palace that the young Queen is pregnant now. If it¡¯s true it most surely is a sign of their impending ascension to heaven, as a ruler is rendered barren until such time as they need replacing.¡±

    ¡°As the saying goes their job is to lead not to breed. If the saviour fulfills his task and overthrows her foreseen child, one of his numerous rewards will be he will not age anymore he will be ¡°eternally young ¡°as the rulers of Shiverla city are always blessed with eternal youth.¡±

    ¡°I get it Jacob said grim and macabre, but it creates a certain vivid evocation; the image of him seventy years from now still presumably a young man, while even the youngest child has become old and withered. Why not just let the little girl rule though? Or have someone reign in her stead till she grows up rather than kill her. She is the most entitled to the throne as royalty after all isn¡¯t she? I mean I really don¡¯t understand,¡± Jacob said.

    ¡°Normally that would hold true," said the healer but she will be no ordinary child. It is prophesized there will be something direly wrong with her, something tainted.¡±

    Jacob was still haplessly confused. ¡°So, she will be what evil? ¡°Mutated? What precisely will be evil, wrong, or defective about her?¡± He asked.

    ¡°I do not know boy,¡± said the healer ¡°the Shiverla testament writings are not clear on the subject....¡± She then frowned in a manner that told Jacob he would be wise to become quiet for a while on the subject, so he did.

    He was about to follow her into the house when a flurry of movement caught his eye.

    A small white creature that looked like a cross between a polar bear cub and a possum or perhaps a bushbaby, streaked past and began to climb the tree next to Jacob. It was a tiny, wide-eyed adorable thing with small, round, delicate ears shaped similarly to those of a teddy-bear, Jacob owned as a child. Its pretty, little ears were not chocolate-brown though like his toy bear¡¯s had been but a lovely, snow-white on the outside and a delicate pale shade of seashell-pink on the inside.

    Its entire body was coated in an abundance of fur in silky, snowy white curls. Heavy yet fine. Pale with a bushy tail that looked as if it would be remarkably soft to the touch. Like downy bird feathers. Its eyes as they swiveled toward him were unbelievably huge, round, and dark: engulfing more than a third of its intent little face.

    It had seemed to walk on all fours when it had been running but stood up on its small furry legs when it reached a high branch and raised its pale, pointy head and looked at Jacob suspiciously all dark brown almost black, and rather expressive, pink nose twitching.

    Shiore turning around briefly to catch what was going on seemed amused. ¡®It¡¯s cute huh? The Mossumie I told you about them earlier. You only find them here in Shiverla City it¡¯s their only known native habitat. If you think that¡¯s amazing, you should look up ahead into the sky she said pointing.

    A silver-black Pegasus with great, dark, long-lashed eyes and a long, spiral-patterned, silvery white antler-like horn similar to a deer¡¯s or antelope¡¯s was flying over the clouds. ¡°You¡¯d have farlings in your region of course,¡± said Shiore but they¡¯d be the typical affair pure white with silvery-white wings and a short horn. We alone get those with the elongated, spiraling horn and fur in a kaleidoscope of spectacular and wondrous colours vivid blue, silver, gold, dark red.¡¯

    ¡°Yes,¡± said Jacob shakily trying to recover from the bizarre creatures he was seeing created from his goddam acid trip.

    Up close, he had noticed the farling¡¯s fur was much thicker and softer than a normal horse¡¯s like the soft downy coat of an alpaca. Its face and slender legs were narrower and more delicate rather deer-like. Its glorious silky mane, long face, size and strength, and general graceful, muscular build were certainly reminiscent of a horse though.

    Unbelievably huge, black eyes were alpaca-like too. The silvery-white one that had joined the other two in the sky looked like it was made of snow; its horn was like a white icicle or carved ice sculpture.

    "The mossumie," he said to her, "has heavy dark circles around its big eyes, pale colouring, and a semi-upright posture which is much like a baby panda. Its sleek body, enormous-eyed, face that narrows to a point and scurrying movements are almost cat, bushbaby, or possum-like though."

    ¡°A possum, panda?¡± Said the healer frowning at him; ¡°what kind of creatures are those.¡±

    ¡°Um there native to my homeland,¡± Jacob said quickly realizing his mistake, ¡°one¡¯s a type of bear, the other a small, large-eyed mammal.¡±

    ¡°Ahh,¡± said Shiore.

    ¡°It¡¯s probably another of the mossumie cousins, they all look very similar but for example, Emanuel¡¯s Mammalian butterfly is both insect and fennec fox-like with large ears and eyes with a feline yet slightly compound appearance. They¡¯re diversely colourful. Rosy, blue-violet or sea-green. A subset of the species is smaller and cream-coloured at least usually, in the wild pale-gold ones have been spotted too.¡±

    ¡°They have large furry wings and both glide from tree to tree and fly.¡± A bit like large, furry, lightly-coloured bats, the flying foxes kind, Jacob thought.

    ¡°Another of their trademark features is pointy little faces. Fur is thicker and even curlier than the mossumie with a reddish sheen in sunlight. There¡¯s something cat-like about them though and they look a bit like flying squirrels too particularly with that red-hued fur.¡±

    ¡°The Farlen is another cousin one that you may not have in your region since you did not recognize them when I described them earlier. The farlen has fur that is far finer and more delicate than its cousins. Very light silver with black stripes. It is also much larger and has a slender, elongated, muscular body and large, floppy, silken ears. Its big, soft eyes are dark-sapphire blue, and it has a long, pointy snout like a fox¡¯s. Actually, I think possums and pandas might be those animals they told us were nearly extinct but a few still live in the outer lands and in the heart of Merclave city.¡±

    Like all animals in Shiverla City around a third are born with wings and so can fly but the rest are what we call ground dwellers. Humans also are sometimes born winged it''s exclusive to our holy region only birds fly in other suburban lands and cities and wherever you hail from.¡±

    ¡°I saw some of the non-bird or unicorn animals with wings said Jacob enthusiastically they''re lovely. Their wings are amazing silvery-hued and almost transparent.

    ¡°Light and delicate and insubstantial as water. Human wings are the same¡±, Shiore informed him smiling so light they float rather than fly you into the air. ¡°Up close they¡¯re like feathery foliage,¡± she finished. ¡°So have you ever seen a farling flying in your region, your homeland,¡± she then inquired of Jacob thoughtfully, though it¡¯s understandable if you have not, they are infinitely rare anywhere except here where they are actually reasonably common.¡±

    Jacob nodded and then gasped, gazing upwards seeing what he expected night sky bathed in starlight then felt a slick, sudden wetness on his face and neck ¡­

    ¡°It¡¯s raining,¡± the healer murmured.

    Jacob stared up at the soft night rain. It was water but far from being clear in colour, it was as thick and black as ink. It fell first soft then with a great pelting at his feet as he made his way inside of the building and its promise of safety and shelter.

 Little lady Ember and Prince Felton the snoot

    Jacob hammered desperately, unrelentingly, at the door lifting the heavy silver knocker and banging it down again and again.   He had just ridden in on one of the flying panthers to reach the castle which turned out to be in the sky; from the distance it had merely looked impossibly tall.  He shuddered as the clouds parted and more ghastly, faceless Seintile guarding the front door leered at him menacingly from atop the winged, midnight-blue cat creatures and silvery-black, alpaca unicorns they rode and flexed their white, clawed hands.

    Black, devilish-eyed gargoyles sat upon the rooftop sometimes flying off and scaring away the family of golden owls who perched there also.

    ¡°Coming!¡± Shouted a beautiful, feminine-sounding voice finally from inside and he heard the rapid footfalls of someone rushing to the door.   A very young, slender girl with copper-gold curls and big, beautiful, darkish eyes answered the door.  Traipsed up in silvery-white glass slippers straight out of Cinderella and a white, billowy, ball gown of a dress. Its light, floaty kind of material possibly a very fine silk.

    A small, ornate, silver crown with delicate intricate pattern work adorned the golden fire of her head. She¡¯s beautiful she could be a fairy-tale princess, a goddess, a maiden sacrifice, or an 1880¡¯s belle of the ball, what attire, Jacob thought.  Underneath her hooded, gray silk cloak Jacob could see the bulk of the angel wings that the healer had told him she had.

    She lifted the hood to view him better and Jacob nearly gasped as large, pointed, furry ears like a cat''s or fox¡¯s, and the same red-golden shade as her hair, protruded from her head and twitched.   He also noticed a pure, celestial white light surrounded her and a divine angel¡¯s halo of solid gold hovered above her crown.

    ¡°Yes,¡± she said her high-pitched, fledgling voice sounding exasperated, ¡°what is it? Bear in mind we don¡¯t shelter people from the beast here, so if that¡¯s why you¡¯ve come you might as well just go away and leave right now.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s sort of why I¡¯ve come¡± Jacob replied, ¡°but I¡¯ve also come to give you something your majesty.¡±

    The girl¡¯s soft dark eyes stopped blinking but alighted with ample curiosity when Jacob said this and her sullen frowning demeanour somewhat uplifted.   ¡°What is it commoner boy do show me.¡±

    ¡°What is it?¡± She inquired this again with a barely concealed illustrious excitement when he refrained from an immediate answer.

    Jacob called softly in the direction of the now setting sun; ¡°come on out, come on out my little fox-kitty.¡±  The fox-cat¡¯s red-gold, magnificent ears twitched and it bounded on long, graceful legs into view, where before lain hidden beneath the shadows of the great, black-barked silver-leaved trees.

    ¡°Oh!¡± Said the girl beaming. ¡°You got it! I knew someone would be able to catch him if I offered a reward of a great enough magnitude.¡±

    She bent over to pet it, and as animals in this world (at very least according to Shiore the healer) responded to the queen with the same awe and recognition the citizens did, the fox-cat emitted a soft yipping sound and lowered its head to let her pet it, her porcelain hands stroking it gently. ¡°Good girl, I¡¯ll call you Eve,¡± she said to the creature ignoring Jacob.

    She stepped outside the castle and proceeded to pick the delicate dark blue and dark violet flowers from the silvery bushes at the palace¡¯s entrance and twirl them round and round in her hands.  I¡¯ll put these in my new long, silver vase E.M.R sent me,¡± she murmured to herself in a lovely, soft, clear voice.

    ¡°Can I come in?¡± Jacob finally asked her politely.   ¡®You promised anyone who would capture it would be allowed to stay here with your majesties at the royal palace.¡¯  Jacob averted his eyes discreetly and spoke these words to the young queen, in a rather tentative and demure manner.  He suspected that a certain amount of deference and reverence to the royalty in this world was expected of a commoner such as himself.

    ¡°Oh yeah sure, a deal¡¯s a deal kid,¡± the young queen burst out laughing in a bored, haughty way.

    The way she talked had the effect of surprising Jacob somewhat, as its casual tone and her colloquial, modern-day speech seemed out of sorts with this medieval-seeming realm.   I have the weirdest imagination, Jacob thought to himself in disbelief.

    The little girl put the flowers in her hair¡¯s red-gold furlings and picking up the fox-cat with one arm, beckoned to him to come inside.  Jacob walked in as she flourished the door open to let him in.  Profoundly grateful for the shelter from the demon beast he let out a small sigh of relief.    He was also relieved as he was keen to go indoors and get warm but, in this endeavor, he experienced a mere wave of unmitigated disappointment.  The frozen, shivery air blew just as much within the palace walls as outside of it.

    The girl noticed he was cold and seemed amused.   ¡°Only the front hall is frozen enough for glacial icicles to make their icy home in, so don¡¯t worry.   The servants have lit multiple raging fires in all the other rooms and they¡¯re most warm like just-made cocoa,¡± she said.    Incidentally will be having that, the cocoa I mean, after dinner.   You may join us for dinner then Allelic the butler will show you to your choice of rooms.¡±

    She said all this with that imperious yet sulky air, laced with unbridled contempt of someone impeccably spoilt and petulant but she did seem fairly relaxed about him staying with her and the young king so that was the main thing.

    Jacob as he followed her began to ponder for the umpteenth time whether he would ever escape this place.   The drugs he¡¯d taken should have left his system by now, snapping him out of this nightmarish world and transporting him back to Monovalent realms or even just plain old reality.   The girl-queen pointed to a vast, winding, stone staircase with intricate patterned banisters and they proceeded to climb it and despite how fit he was, Jacob started to feel rather out of breath.

    ¡°Did you hear about the latest sacrifice commoner?¡± The queen asked him suddenly, shocking him out of his reverie.

    ¡°No, I didn¡¯t but Shiore a healer friend of mine and I have discussed them before¡±, Jacob answered.

    ¡®Ahh yes, the healers.  Well, they''re just relatively skilled doctors and specialists who seem to theorize that their superior prowess with understanding and treating the human body is a talent the Shiverla imbued them with, as it doled out all talents.   ¡°What was I talking about before¡­? Oh, the sacrifice.  Yes, it was an older woman this time,¡± said the queen with a surprising relish to her voice.  ¡°People keep sacrificing sinners to the Demon Beast in the hopes they will appease it and send it back to hell for good but so far it takes the sacrifice first and then kills anyone else it can sniff out just the same.¡±

    ¡°Its nightly rampages if anything have gotten even bloodier and the nightly death toll rises ever higher.  Eradiates however, has told me (and you should well know this) because I announced it to all the citizens eleven nights ago during the televised palace gathering, that it might spare this fragile city if enough sacrifices were made.  So far that claim has not come to fruition or bore any of the fruits of truth.¡±  Jacob noted she was starting to sound more like an old-time queen now.

    ¡°As a nymph creature (the beautiful maidens and half-deities of this world) I get to go to heaven and become the goddess of beauty and animals either way, so I don¡¯t actually care kid,¡± the Queen continued.  ¡°It is regrettably though my dull but divine task to watch over the city until that day happens.  I order all the sacrifices from the balcony during the palace gathering and usually, I¡¯m supposed to be present at them, but I¡¯ve been ill, so I was exonerated the last three nights.  Illness is the only legitimate excuse a royal person has to order the head priest to make the holy sacrifices in her stead.  A young, curly-haired boy it was last time, one of the times I missed.   Dressed him up in a flowing white robe of linen they did and sacrificed him on the black marble altar; crying tears of fear and all.¡±

    ¡°His long dark curls were so pretty,¡± the Queen added wistfully, ¡®I know because I watched from here (as the church is close to the castle) as they slit his throat.   It¡¯s a young boy of great sin on a blue moon and a young woman barely older than a child whose faith in the Shiverla has waned when the dark blue moon turns yellow.   On an icy silver moon, it¡¯s an old man past his time of laborious and societal worth, and on a death¡¯s black moon (which really just means a moonless night she explained informatively) it¡¯s a barren middle-aged woman thought of lowly by the community.¡¯

    She looked at him just as to Jacob¡¯s furtive relief, they had finally reached the top of the huge, winding staircase and preceded down an enormous dark hall.  He followed her continuously with high hopes that one of the rooms closer by was the kitchen.

    She was a very graceful walker her steps soft and light, she seemed to flow almost float from one area to another like liquid or mist.  Her elegant state of dress, fey air, and unearthly beauty made him feel proud again.  Of his imagination for creating her despite the nasty things she was saying.

    ¡°We initially performed sacrifices every month and had for centuries as homage to the great Eradiates last of the gods and god of Shiverla city¡± she went on as Jacob traipsed behind her.   ¡°To have any chance to ward off the onslaught of the beast, unfortunately,y Eradiates has ordered we must now perform them every three days.  We give them a chance of course if they can answer three riddles, we let them go free. That¡¯s a very ancient lore of ours.  The Shiverla does so value and commend a quick wit and mind, one which is intelligent and seeks logic, creativity, and reason.   So, it rewards those who have them with a second chance at making amends in life and getting into heaven.¡±

    ¡°A stupid man isn¡¯t worth his bread; an intelligent man can accomplish a thousand times more with his head and demand only equal bread.¡±  She sounded as if she were quoting something.  This suspicion of Jacob¡¯s was confirmed when she said, ¡°that¡¯s a famous passage from the book of Shiverla in case you didn¡¯t know, and it pretty much means that an inventor or artist cannot be replaced: his input is immeasurable but a stupid person who performs a menial easy-to teach function can.¡±

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t really fit with our philosophy of equal treatment and living standards for all (except the royalty like me of course) but the Shiverla states sacrifice is an exception to that rule.  Someone has to be sacrificed, and judgments must be made.  It¡¯s not so much about killing the stupid as protecting the bright that have lost their way but could still do countless good for the city and its community.

    She tossed pretty, autumn locks scornfully and said, ¡°Though I don¡¯t actually care who they use as a sacrifice myself as the people in this city are truly pathetic.  Gallivanting about and conversing in their inane, vacuous chatter.  Heaven will be so much more fun and enlightening than this stagnant, dreary hovel of a place.¡±

    Jacob looked down at his feet to hide his intense dislike for the sulky and supercilious little brat.  He noticed the woven, silken rug he walked upon, was soft and delicately fine.  To the refined eye. it was utterly rich, vivid yet translucent. Dark blue like a river of night water.  It¡¯s flowing made up of not one shade but a myriad: sapphire, deepest midnight, slate-gray blue, robin¡¯s egg blue, cobalt blue, and ocean sea blue all woven beautifully together in a gleaming.   Patches also had hints of the dark velvet green you find in trees in a forest.

    ¡°The rug¡¯s pretty, ¡°he said in a complimentary fashion to the queen.

    ¡°Everything in the castle is pretty,¡± said the queen with a sniff of delicate, rose-red lips ¡°After all it is mine.¡±

    Jacob was reflecting ruminatively on exactly how unamicable a little bitch she was, such an unpleasant snob, when suddenly she smiled or rather beamed at him.   ¡°You can call me Queen Ember,¡± she said. ¡°Or princess Ember as I think princess sounds cuter.¡±   She had a very nice smile, beautiful actually and Jacob couldn¡¯t help liking her more for her smile alone as it was not only rather aesthetically pleasing but there was also something sweet, vulnerable, and innocently hapless about it.

    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

    He gained some hope that she might have other attractive little quirks and redeeming qualities like this and a somewhat softer side to her nature.  That would make him more partial to her and making them living together more bearable.

    They walked further down the hall with its unpainted, ebony-black walls and pillars and heavy, midnight blue curtains, passing several paintings of two beautifully fair, immaculately dressed in white youths in elaborate silver crowns.  One was the queen herself the other he presumed to be the king.   The nicest one he decided was of the two of them out in a wood somewhere having a picnic.  There was a little running stream nearby, the painted food looked delicious and the red blanket they sat upon was a deep, dark maroon Jacob¡¯s favourite shade.

    Paintings of scenery such as medieval castles, dusked sky pouring with dark rain, the city of Shiverla covered in a winter of frosted snow, the smoky mountains of the upper lands, and various mythological creatures also adorned the stone walls.  There were paintings of hell and demons and the heavens with its celestial creators themselves.

    Jacob had much time to take in the particulars of the interior of the castle as the young Queen walked so very slowly.   It was almost as if she were carefully counting and calculating every step she took and as a result, they were still not yet halfway across the vastly spacious hall.  She also stopped several times to check upon her beautiful reflection in the numerous hall mirrors. Jacob wondered sourly what potential hazard she thought could have greatly lessened the attractiveness of her appearance since she last looked.  Lack of modesty was a trait this girl-child had not been endowed with.

    She stopped suddenly (startling him somewhat) and addressed Jacob imperiously; ¡°oh by the way, your sleep may be disturbed tonight as the unearthly spirits of people sacrificed and those killed by the beast are wandering around outside the castle.  Don¡¯t be too alarmed though they can¡¯t harm you: they¡¯re completely insubstantial like mist in human shape or form.   The spirits also can¡¯t physically enter the castle as its holy ground and they''re stuck in a sort of limbo or purgatory because of their sins in life.¡±

    ¡°They normally dwell in ghost land but since the shadow beast was released the veil between the land of the damned and Earth has thinned, so they come here.  The night of a lunar eclipse, used to be the only time they came to Earth, and they would masquerade as shadows or mist, to steal the souls of lone travellers under cover of midnight,¡± she said ghoulishly.

    ¡°On these nights the citizens and I would dress in bright colours and don masks to appease the spirits.  Masks of white like a ghost''s face or dragon masks or gargoyle masks. I donned the mask of the firefox; named so for its body made of red-gold flame except its eyes, made of dark shadows.  We did this Festival of the Phantom Malice Appeasement until the Shiverla beast took the spirits'' mystical powers away including human and animal spirits as well as the ghosts of rivers, swords, and trees leaving them all helpless.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure you must have seen the specters, boy¡± she then said with some curiosity.    ¡°As more and more people die and get stuck here in limbo, we do have an ever-growing number of them.¡±

    Jacob explained he had indeed, and they almost seemed to be trying to communicate with him, waving their arms about madly, when he and the other citizens walked by.  Opening their pale mouths as if in speech or a scream but nothing came out.  They even put their ghostly white hands on his shoulders trying to hold him still.  The queen did not seem perplexed by any of this.  ¡°They probably are trying to communicate with you,¡± she said thoughtfully nodding her fair head.

    ¡°They are possibly even trying to warn people about something to do with the beast.  Unfortunately, it is well-suspected that some kind of barrier is preventing us from communicating with one another.   My people have told me they tried in vain to ascertain what the spirits wanted but to no avail. The spirits showed no signs of understanding or responding to their outreach¡± she informed Jacob.

    ¡®How come we don¡¯t see them during the day your majesty, is it true the spirits only appear at night?¡¯  He asked the young Queen when they had walked a little further still in their never-ending journey across the vast hall.

    She gave him an oddly approving look once he had asked and replied, ¡°I¡¯m glad you asked me commoner boy.  Best thing your presence has contributed since the acquisition of my new pet,¡± she said with contempt.

    ¡®It¡¯s actually quite interesting a story; something I and the king only know because the great but capricious Eradiates decided on a whim to inform us of this fact.  He said we alone are privy to this sort of higher knowledge usually reserved for full-gods because we are the most sacred of demi-deities. As well as being pure-blood royalty and the imperious family of Shiverla city, who reign supreme and someday will be true rulers of heaven.¡±

    A self-satisfied smirk of a smile appeared on her small, disdainful, scarlet lips.   ¡°The disembodied spirits who have departed this life are indeed around during the day commoner,¡± she said.

    ¡°They start their ascent to the heavens but around the level of the clouds, the gates of hell pull them back down to purgatory and they fall from the sky like rain back unto the earth.   As they have no form in sunlight, however, they don¡¯t look like spirits in the daytime and appear as a substance similar to mist or vapour.¡±

    ¡°During the day many people therefore don¡¯t realize the rain-mist is actually them the spirits.  They are very light and visible only in those mist clouds that cover the city¡¯s grounds.  In some sense, they¡¯re more similar to ice or snow only not solid.¡±

    ¡°You must surely have noticed the fog that surrounds and permeates the city?¡±  She queried this looking at Jacob expectantly.

    ¡°Yes. lady Ember I have,¡± he said.

    ¡°If you reach out to touch one of the rain mist people, your hand should slip right through them like fog,¡± she told him.  ¡°If you try to catch one between your fingers as King Felton and I have for fun they should slip right between them,¡± she then said with another unpleasant grin.

    ¡°Have you seen the rain mist spirits falling from the sky today commoner boy and, have you walked in your travels amidst them?¡± She inquired.

    ¡°You must have,¡± she answered herself before he could reply; ¡°the air grows ever denser with their presence.  I was watching them from my window in the turrets today and they fell with more abundance than even the hail and snow that covers our fair city head to foot.   Did you have any inkling, that the vapours falling from the sky were ghostly apparitions of the city''s dead.  The spirits of the deceased who before night, cannot take on their human shaped form little boy?¡± She asked this all very condescendingly.

    Little boy! Jacob bristled. What is wrong with her? He thought.  This conceited little hellcat of a child looks more than several years younger than me.  No matter how she holds herself with calm, adult repose or how convoluted, self-possessed, and contained her speech is.

    ¡°Or¡± the girl queen went on loftily, ¡°that even when they are invisible at daytime the spirits still try to communicate with the living and continue their long search for heaven?¡±

    ¡°Of course, you would and shouldn¡¯t know commoner because only the divine like me would normally know something like that,¡± she then said with something like pride or triumph in her voice.

    ¡°I have seen the rain mist,¡± said Jacob finally after a lengthy pause of considering how to phrase his answer to best sound like a humble average Joe citizen.   ¡°I have yes, even walked amongst them in all their great abundance today.  I did not know princess Ember though that the rain mist was really spirits ascending then falling back to earth.¡±  The queen Ember¡®s expression lightened, she seemed largely satisfied with his answer to Jacob¡¯s intense relief.

    ¡°That¡¯s what I would have expected,¡± she said with a curt nod.  ¡°I suspect King Felton and I are the only ones who know,¡± she said dreamily.

    ¡°Eradiates loves me¡­.¡± Queen Ember spoke suddenly her voice soft and solemn.  ¡°He stalks me, watches my fair face from heaven''s green meadows, and lusts after my beauty.   It was prophesied I would grow to be the most beautiful woman ever conceived like Helen of Troy whose beauty destroyed a nation.  I have a spectacular painting of her the one by Rossetti, in my room which I¡¯ll show you. Moreover, I have one of The Lady of Shallot by John William Waterhouse.¡±

    ¡°You know the woman locked in her tower and forced to watch the world through a mirror only to drown to death when she left her room.  Incidentally when I perish ivy shall adorn, and purest flowers bloom any place I ever walked upon.   Eradiates wife, Adonea, the goddess of the sea perished herself, long ago and now despite my ties to Felton my sinful baby is¡­.well that¡¯s not for you to know commoner.  Let¡¯s just say that gods are mated for life too and when I did not want to leave Felton, Eradiates cursed me to bear one demon-spawn child and be barren thereafter.¡±

    She¡¯s now referring to more Greek-style myths what the hell? Jacob thought.

    Ember smiled her ravishing smile again and then suddenly without forewarning broke into a skip and then a semi-dash across the rest of the room.  Jacob who originally had to drag his feet to match her pace found he was racing after her so rapidly to catch up, that he soon tired out and ended up collapsing in front of the doorway to a room, breathless.  The queen looked back at him also out of breath.

    ¡°Guess my adrenaline rush petered out,¡± she said with an apologetic sheepishness. ¡°We¡¯re at the dining hall now, on the plus side of things,¡± she said.  ¡°So, we can just go inside and sit down and rest.¡±

    Jacob walked over to where she was standing and noticed for the first time the large double doors she was leaning against.   The door was large, unpainted, dark mahogany wood and it had a heavy silver handle which Ember the princess or Queen or whatever she was, turned and opened.   Ethereal music was playing within, the sounds of a cello and a trumpet and a clarinet, the high-pitch of a flute, and once again the chiming of a delicate violin solo, and this time Jacob also heard a voice of exquisite, harrowing beauty a young boy soprano¡¯s that sang along to the tune.  His voice he could seeimgly-alter from a very high and sweet soprano to a darker, lower tenor.

    The room was both enormous and magnificent: the ceilings were so high as to make the room appear as if it were not enclosed but rather hidden beneath skies of black or indigo.   The glittering stone walls were the same raven black as everywhere else in the castle.  The dining table could have fitted a good fifty people and was finely carved but solid, made of smooth, dark reddish-hued, mahogany wood and it was wax polished and in a well-kempt condition.

    A tall, mid-teenage boy with his head adorned by the same silver crown as Ember¡¯s was seated at this vast dining table.  He sat upon a large, golden throne carved with fanged, silvery dragons with deep emerald-green eyes and snaking, scaly bodies writhing across its metalwork.  He appeared at first to be a remarkably pale person this boy, with frost- pale skin and ash-blond hair however when one got closer, they could observe rich, full scarlet lips and tempest-purple eyes.  He was also pure, sweet, and infantile of face not to mention very handsome.  Like a male, kingly version of Ember herself. Even down to his pale, animal ears.

    He dressed beautifully in black linen pants, a dark-blue, finely-cut jacket, and a white silk top with long sleeves.  He had curved ivory horns, and long, floppy silken ears, and Jacob realized glancing down, the white, black-hooved legs of a goat.  A faun like from Narnia or Greek mythology, he thought.

    A long, beautiful, scarlet-red snake inked with deep -blue and ebony-black spots was twisting itself across his arm.  As Ember and Jacob moved toward him, the king watched and listened to them his furred ears twitching. Ember¡¯s silvery-white wings were visible through holes in her velvet cloak and fluttered foliage-like feathers as she smiled and said hello and the faun boy looked up from the roast chicken he was eating with slow careful bites.

    ¡°You didn¡¯t tell me you were bringing a lover over Ember honey,¡± he said with a jeering smile.

    Great Jacob thought wryly.  Just what is needed. Another snooty, precocious adolescent.

    ¡°He¡¯s not my lover Felton,¡± said Queen Ember scathingly as she clenched a clawed hand. ¡°He¡¯s just a commoner boy who just so happens to have obtained for us the fox-cat.¡±

    The boy King Felton raised his head in interest.   ¡°He found the fox-cat?¡± He said with a slight nod in Jacob¡¯s general direction.

    ¡°Well, he doesn¡¯t look anything special to me but if he managed to catch the elusive and unbelievably rare fox cat, I must admit I¡¯m intrigued,¡± King Felton continued, his tone sneering.   ¡®After all, it really is seldom seen or heard.  It¡¯s only been spotted about twenty times in the last hundred years or so and by less than twelve people.   Most of those times it was spotted by the animal breeder Eil, when it came to replenish itself at the grasslands sanctuary he attends to.¡¯"

    ¡°Forget the rarity of it I am most dumbfounded by his capture of it.  Why there is no one else who has been able to tame the creature for three centuries now nearly four,¡± Queen Ember said.   ¡°Not since the famed Farlen cultivated that once barren, northern wasteland that is now an animal sanctuary.  Back in the day, she used it to breed and trade the fox cats as rare and exotic pets.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s why we included it in the compilation of quests to allow commoners to gain entry to the castle.  In the unlikely event anyone could succeed, we¡¯d be given something we covet yet most likely everyone would fail, and we do like our privacy.¡±

    Jacob sighed as complimentary (in a manner of speaking anyway) as what they were saying was, they spoke about him as if he literally were not there.    After a lengthy pause in which Ember¡¯s voice had trailed off and Jacob too couldn¡¯t think of anything else to say or if he were even allowed the luxury to speak freely, Felton decided to fill the void of silence by looking at Jacob.

    He turned to blankly stare at him with a look of intense, appraising scrutiny.   His eyes glazed and wandered off after a bit however and returned to the table. He then looked at himself in the mirror hanging off the wall for a full three minutes before eventually turning back to gaze at the face of Queen Ember.

    Though his eyes still remained on Queen Ember, he finally acknowledged Jacob himself by saying contemptuously to her, ¡°Well, aren¡¯t you going to invite our guest to sit down?¡±  Ember glanced up at Jacob, her eyes reluctantly leaving their post of gazing upon her very own reflection with rapture.  It was as if she were seeing him for the first time.  ¡®Yes, sit down commoner boy,¡± she said finally. ¡°And tell me and the king your name when you have.¡±

 Two, Mysterious Little Hackers

    Hours after this, Ember or Shiver as she was known in the real world, was lying in her virtualiser castle bed with the lovely four-poster above the snow-white bedding and the smoky, built-in fireplace.   She thumped on Felton, or more accurately Mist''s, wall, with a relative vigour for one so fragile-looking.

    ¡°Hey, come on and get in here your Majesty,¡± she called.   Mist grumpily heaved himself out of bed and entered her bedroom.   Painted a vivid, dark blue-green perhaps best described as like the sea, it had dark blue silk curtains and a flagstone floor.

    There were seven, artfully-chosen, classic paintings; four in the room and one directly adjacent. The same ones Shiver had back at Aryan¡¯s manor.

    The room also encompassed a distinct air of cleanliness due to a meticulously thorough hired help.     Mist noticed Shiver¡¯s feathery, white wings were now midnight blue with a lighter, purplish, dawn''s light hue.

    ¡°Yes Shiver,¡± he whispered quietly so Jacob wouldn¡¯t hear.  ¡°What is it?¡±

    ¡°In the morning, we should test him with one of our riddles.¡±

    ¡°You mean your riddles,¡± Mist corrected cuttingly and with contempt. ¡°Which suck anyway.¡±

    Shiver reddened slightly with anger.   ¡°They do not, anyway which should I use..."

    I must kill my environment to stay alive

    I am of miniscule size

    Or

    When you have me, you want me

    When you don¡¯t, you don¡¯t

    I can bring you great joy and even greater pain

    But lose me and all your worries will be assuaged.¡±

    ¡°What are the answers again?¡±  Mist frowned, "virus for the first one, and life for the second, isn¡¯t it?¡¯

    Shiver nodded ¡°Yeah, that''s right and do you suppose he will get them... I rather hope he does I quite like him.¡±

    Mist shrugged.  ¡°Possibly, he seems quite bright for a human and the only reason you like him is because he is so good-looking, what with the paleness and slender, V-shaped, subtly muscular figure, big, deep-blue eyes and the thick, straight, chestnut dark-brown hair and all.  The deeper red and bright-gold highlights in his hair are nice. You wouldn''t guess your feelings though, from the way you kept glowering at him at dinner.¡±

    ¡°I did not glower,¡± said Shiver.   I held myself with quiet poise and queenly dignity.¡±

    ¡°Your singing and violin solo on that track from your symphony performance was amazing; Jacob seemed rather disturbed by it though,¡± Shiver noted; nodded her fair head.

    ¡°Good we were going for awe-struck not apathetic tedium,¡± Mist replied.

    She and Mist then fought over who got to dip their fingers into her left-over, chocolate pudding from dinner and Shiver suddenly laughed.

    ¡°Wait till we tell him Holo-realm exists here in our little fantasy world and that before the beast came, all the little inhabitants here used it to act out fantasies and play virtualiser games.  Will tell him tomorrow he can use it from here,¡± Shiver said.

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    ¡°He''ll get such a shock, he thinks this is some completely primitive medieval game.   When actually, we have spas, zoos and electric cars driven by computers like the Monovalent wireless-operated ones, Aryan¡¯s company made and marketed recently, and that Aryan wants to replace all gas-guzzlers with.¡±

    ¡°Bathrooms with fully-fledged hot water and piping systems, fast food-serving cafes with virtual realm hook-ups and several of the servants here are robots though ironically, the human ones are nothing more than virtualcoms anyway,¡± she continued.    ¡°He would never fathom I imagine the concept of an underground road and train system; everyone¡¯s cars here and the railway are all kept in tunnels below the city.  Not to mention all the underground factories that makes a lot of the technology.¡±

    ¡°Do you reckon he was surprised by the fact that our communist former utopia, with as he shall soon discover its reasonable technological advancement is so grounded in religion,¡± Mist pondered.

    ¡°Fundamentalist religion usually goes with more backward nations¡±, Shiver agreed ¡°but this is a totalitarian regime at heart, despite its technology.  Besides here magic and creators are real so it¡¯s different,¡± Shiver said.   ¡°The universe works a different way here, so the rules of societal structure are different.¡±

    ¡°Did you consider changing the ending this time, Shiv?¡± Mist inquired of her. ¡°We could maybe have the Shiverla God be nothing more than a computer entity created by scientists working for the Shiverla family for generations to keep them in power.   The Shiverla God could itself be a holographic, visual projection created by the Artificial Intelligence.¡±

    ¡°What about the shadow beast though?¡± Asked Shiver.  ¡°It has to have a corporeal body after all its attacked people.¡±

    ¡°Not necessarily,¡± said Mist. ¡°It could be a hologram too, but the twist is, after it¡¯s been projected into the minds of both the witnessers and the attacked, and they think it¡¯s torturing and taking off with them or someone else, the AI entity could send electrical signals to interfere with the attacked one¡¯s brain waves and patterns, really killing them. The images everyone else would see however, would simply be the phony projections of those people dying by being clawed to death,¡± Mist finished.

    ¡°The exotic animals can all be chimeras,¡± Shiver said nodding enthusiastically.  ¡°Engineered in secret science laboratories by combining the genetic material of various animals.  That would be how the fennec fox/bat/ flying squirrel/ small cat Siberia and the fox-cat a combination of several small-medium wild cat breeds and a fennec fox and red fox were made.  The silver farlen, is a white wolf, a silvery-white fox, and a jackal all mixed and mingled together and has the ears of a floppy-eared bunny.¡±

    ¡°The sealien is a cat-seal chimera and the unicorn-like creature a deer, horse-alpaca mix.  They have bright colours from the DNA of snakes, birds and fish and air dwellers have the wings from birds.  No magic just combining genetically manipulated animal foetuses together and allowing them to develop into chimeras.¡±

    ¡°As for flying,¡± Shiver continued, playing with a silky, red-gold lock of hair, well you know that when we fly in the game, we become clouds of mist, and can transport from one place to another.  Well, that could be that our bones, muscles, and tissue could have been genetically altered to be lighter so that we can become airborne.¡±

    ¡°Our cells let¡¯s make it are during transportation broken down by the AI into atoms then the AI instructs the cells and DNA and our memories to be instantaneously copied and reconstructed at a different location letting us vanish.   All royalty have this ability. The rain-mist is another illusion of the AI.  A select group of people are involved in the genetic engineering. They manufacture the technology for us, the Royal Family, to help keep the citizenry in line, but keep it from the masses under penalty of Shadow Beast a.k.a, AI-induced death,¡± she suggested with a final snigger.

    ¡°As long as they don¡¯t tell anyone they can live safely underground, and the Beast won¡¯t attack them.¡±

    ¡°Well Shiv, Aryan if you recall, did say Monovalent is configured to be able to kill via brain wave interference as another way of eradicating our enemies,¡± Mist said.  So anyhow, all we need is for the Monovalent-equivalent here to be able to transmit a signal to the target¡¯s brain waves patterns to alter in such a way the brain tells the heart to stop beating and they''re dead in minutes.¡±

    ¡°That means my idea of killing off all the city¡¯s inhabitants via electrical signals that interfere with brain waves is actually, scientifically possible.  Aryan apparently, used reptile man, Emanuel, the famous software engineer and your greatest fan and who helped commission us and Monovalent, to create brain wave electrocution.¡±

    Shiver grinned ¡°Hey Mist yes, I really like all that!¡± ¡° Yes, we should make sure all the human players find out, we could make the announcement before we ascend to heaven (which just to screw with things even more, is real) and I come back to the game as Adora my daughter.¡¯

    ¡°No, don¡¯t announce it,¡± said Mist.  ¡°That would ruin the game and the people''s faith in royal rule just in time for when you return as Adora.   Set it in motion as a preposterous rumour instead, spread by the free-market, capitalist heathens to sow the seeds of doubt in everyone.¡±

 Attack of the Shadow Beast

    Jacob walked the castle hall toward the restroom and realized he could once again hear that ethereal song that always played across the wind in this strange land, accompanied by a piece of creepy, shivery music.   It was constantly starting and stopping. Ever-falling into a light crescendo.  It had first started playing right when he was first transported to this misty, medieval nightmare.  However, with a shiver, he realized the two voices singing it were clearly the voices of King Felton and Queen Ember.  Haunting, lovely, and sorrowing but also with a string of odd, elated laughter.  Their sad singing contained an undertone of mirth.

    He almost screamed as outside the castle window the Shadow Beast clawed at the window''s gold pane and gave him a look of scarlet fury. its paired, snowy antlers adorned some beautiful, white, dragon''s face with blackened lips.  Its eyes were oddly sad, like its dead, red irises were weeping and yet no actual trailing of tears fell from the bottom of either great eye.  It soon dissipated into shadow and became one with the overarching rain-mist.

    He heard a sudden chortling coming from Ember''s bedroom, she and Felton were speaking in hushed, pretty whispers and he heard almost no words, just one, a name, Emanuel.

    Wasn''t he the creator of the Monovalent Realms Virtualiser Technology?  Well, it made some sense he was dreaming about him since he was stuck in one of his games, albeit a twisted one, but somehow the tone of the Royal brats made a shiver play a single cold chord down his spine.  He entered the restroom which was a dusky-pink and entirely too feminine for his tastes though he suspected Princess, Queen, whatever she was Ember, likely adored it.  The giant, clawed bath caught

    his eye as it was pretty cool.  His own, beautiful bathroom ensuite, bizarrely enough required a key and the Royal brats hadn''t deigned to give one, perhaps they merely forgot. Yet Jacob felt it was the sort of thing they would have done on purpose.

    The next day, Ember came and with a surprising friendliness offered to give a tour of the castle.  As they passed by endless halls and winding staircases and made their way toward the golden turret, Jacob noticed a sweet, little doll just sitting on a table below that grand staircase to the gilded top of the castle.

    Ember, who had been skipping about and looking more like a child than ever, even in that ridiculous ballgown, suddenly went back to being solemn and her face twisted again into that earlier imperiousness.

    "Oh yes, that doll is little Dahlia. She was abandoned by her original owner who she loved so very dearly and thus cursed everyone who touched her to dance till they died in a kind of a frenzy, as a grave punishment and penance towards a humanity that scorned her. However, I am far too powerful to fall prey to such simple, trickster magic.  She picked up the doll who leered at Jacob with great, glass eyes.

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    "She is pretty, isn''t she?" Ember remarked about the creepy doll which admittedly, had the fairest, curling hair and the biggest, bluest eyes but an odd, cracked, black stain on its cheek.  Though the rest of its form was perfect, polished porcelain.

    "She''s just lovely, almost as wonderful as me."  Ember finished dreamily, her head seemingly drifting into some golden clouds.  Ones that Jacob couldn''t see but seemed to nevertheless colour her otherwise cool and distant demeanor with a sweet but irritating feyness.  Enlivened her with the happiness of a dreamer.

    When they made it finally up to the turret it was growing quite late and the last little blue of dusk was leering dark. Ember walked gracefully over and sat down on the turret''s bed sticking out her little feet in their silver slippers and gazing at her rosy-tipped toes admiringly. Reverently. Jacob sat in a nearby rocking chair, the only place in the isolated little castle-top room, where you could be seated. It was uncomfortable but also just a little soothing, the way its smooth motions rocked him like a gentle cradle in the sea.

    Ember rose, walked to the edge of the room, and stood by the turret''s great window, before opening it and climbing out on the golden ledge.  Pushing aside the red curtains she unfurled her white wings and took flight. Landing on the silver rooftop.  She opened her lips and gave a kind of whistle. Then, finally, she spoke.  Well sang.

    Shadow Beast, hear my cry,

    Take this boy as prey

    Boil his blood

    Make his pretty hair fry...

    With a great rush of claws and shadowy wings, the beast appeared snarling and headed toward the turret where Jacob was sitting, now feeling quite ashen and sick.  Suddenly, right before it reached the window, Ember lifted her hand and gave a dismissive wave and the Shadow Beast stopped immediately in its tracks: it uttered a lovely, honeyed sound almost like a melodic purr and beat its bat-like wings affectionately, or so Jacob could have sworn.  Its shadowy, shapeshifter form bowed its great head reverently at Ember and those insubstantial shadows of its now fully-black body slipped right through Queen Ember''s fine, delicate, little fingers as it flew up towards her and then away into the night.

    "Just kidding," Queen Brat said.  Laughing.  "I don''t sick the Beast on people.  Well, technically I am able to.  Can''t say I ever have though."

    Emanuel help me, Jacob thought. Get me out of here, please.  Somebody, anybody, the IT guys who run the servers, please notice something has gone wrong and get me out soon.  Though maybe the creator was the one who trapped him here.  He had heard, read somewhere, that he had a twisted sense of humor.  Still, it would be insane for the man to throw away the fortune he made and all the begrudging respect he had garnered as a deformed man who had proven his societal worth ( even likely ending up in prison) just to lightly torture some teenager.

    Ember, meanwhile, was leaping gleefully about on the ledge shrieking about how spectacular her fair wings gleamed in the dead of the night, yet when she turned to Jacob and finally faced him, he was startled to see her uppermost lip tremble as her face seemed to grow chilled and there was such a look of regret in her bright eye.

 The viral past of Shiver and Mist

    Jacob awoke in his ornate bed in the palace with the gilded railing and with his heart harshly pounding as he dreamed of the Beast flying at him with a fanged snarl and clawed raking and beautifully-beating, shadow wings. He imagined it shattering his ribs like glass. He decided to get up; knowing that he was safe as long as Ember didn''t decide to take her vindictive little prank one step further. He passed by the creepy, porcelain doll on the lace-clothed table and saw King Felton yawning in the hall. He was holding something silver and shiny in his hand.

    " Did you have a good time, yesterday?" The young king asked.

    "Queen Ember is quite the delight, isn''t she?" He continued on, in a rather pleasant tone. He was acting far friendlier now than he had been acting yesterday, with an amicable grin and all that well-groomed, silver hair falling rather snottily into his weird, purple eyes. Yet there was something nastily-sly about his pleasantness. Maybe it was that hint of a callous glint in his expression and his too-wide smile.

    Jacob frowned suspiciously. He was pretty sure that Felton knew exactly what had happened last night. He also knew he didn''t want to get on the boy''s bad side any more than on Ember''s, so he gritted his teeth and nodded.

    "She is lovely," he said.

    Felton turned to leave, then as if he had just remembered something, held out the shiny object he had been clutching. It was a key.

    "The key to your bathroom ensuite," he said. So you won''t need to make any more unnecessary trips in the night and wake me and Princess Ember, up."

    Jacob was grateful but also vaguely annoyed. it wasn''t his fault they forgot to give him the key. How could he possibly have known he would need one?

    Join us for the roast chicken feast later," Felton said. By the way, there won''t be any vegetarian options as we don''t go in for any of that nonsense here so you will have to leave or starve or just eat the bread, if you''re vegan or something dumb like that," Felton said.

    "I''m not vegetarian or vegan," Jacob said.

    "Great, then you''ll have a great time at dinner tonight. See you there."

    "Looking forward to it," Jacob lied, watching Felton turn the corner and hearing the boy-king begin to sing prettily under his breath, with a voice as delicate as a bell chime. Later, back in his room he thought he heard someone crying, weeping just like a lost child, it sounded a little like Ember. Though Jacob doubted the brat spent much time in tears. Probably just my imagination or the castle is haunted, he thought. Just my luck.

    As Jacob was walking back to his room after wandering the beautiful, wine-curtained castle aimlessly for a while, wondering it simply for something to do, he heard a strange, computerized, metallic-sounding voice: one that spoke to him commandingly. It appeared out of thin air, for not a soul was nearby.

    "Look upon the ground," the AI said. Jacob was more than a little frightened but nonetheless couldn''t prevent his eyes from gazing at the flagstone floor. A short note, handwritten and penned with the most beautiful cursive, was fluttering at his feet.

    I send this with my love.

    Haven of her childhood ends. Yet know, that it¡¯s not only upon a day shadowless, that the summerly descends. All can still be fielded-in-floweriness. Love I sling and it passes Australian amaryllis, softly-to-the-sunlight-yielding.

    Emanuel Roe.

    Jacob was startled. Was it a love letter of some kind? It seemed a bit disturbing if that was the case since it referred to ending childhoods... Perhaps even more worrying was it was signed by Emanuel Roe which Jacob was pretty damn sure was the name of Monovalent''s Realm''s, Co-Founder. Although now he recalled, someone did mention to him once, that Emanuel had a childhood sweetheart mentioned in his biography. So hopefully, the note was just from one young lover to another.

    He walked into his room, deeply concerned about why notes from the virtualizer creator were scattered on the floor, it didn''t seem like a great sign, however just as he was trying to calm down his nerves he saw a mini-virtualizer on the desk. He turned it on and found himself in one of those online virtualiser communities. He was startled to see two young people who looked almost exactly like Felton and Ember hosting a virtualizer.

    Welcome To The Ocema

    Topic we are discussing today: A not so sad farewell.

    Sunday 8:03 pm

    Welcome to poser assassins, a virtual online community working toward the eradication of the mediocre and asinine otherwise known as the OCEMA. Note: Stupid are people classified as all our classmates and anyone who likes interactive, virtual TV such as the Dwarf show, Meet The Little People, and Befriend the Rich Bitches of Blooming Field Hills. Honourable mentions are for Hollyweird nonsense such as When Toddlers Kill, and Dance and Sing Talented Americans.

    Shiver: Mist, I think we should discuss our first attempt at murder. Monovalent had not yet explained to us in major detail what were yet. First, we tried the deadly winter friend approach pretending to be just as boring and banal as them. Unfortunately, we couldn¡¯t keep it up and I think they may have cottoned on when Ethan asked what¡¯s the gun for¡­

    Just as we were about to shoot them when their backs were turned Damn.

    So anyway, we attempted to get Noah to drink himself to death with Mist¡¯s ¡°drinking game¡± at the Wrighthouse end-of-term party after Lily and Ethan snuck alcohol into the punch. Unfortunately, Noah just threw it all up.

    Mist: Oh well at least he threw it up on Ava.

    Well, regardless, I thought it better when we electro-stimulated the part of Ethan''s brain that responds to hunger, and he just kept going back for more and more food and snuck it from the junk food stashes hidden in the dorm when staff refused to serve him again.

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    Everyone who came out to watch was getting really worried and yet me and Shiv started saying, ¡°Wait a go Ethan, you keep eating, why you could win any food contest and be in the world records soon!

    It could have burst his intestines actually, so we stopped. He had a mighty stomachache afterward, we didn¡¯t kill him though.

    Shiver: We¡¯re too compassionate for that.

    Mist: He hasn¡¯t suffered enough. Too early.

    Shiver: he has to suffer as made us suffer.

    Mist: It was so hilarious when he had Monovalent hack into and read all our classmates'' personal files and found out Alex has asthma and then sent him that fake letter using his home address saying a virus that causes respiratory failure in people with conditions such as asthma was going around and if contracted, he would most likely die. The panic attack almost killed him.

    And how Lily didn¡¯t get her flu shots because you told her it could cause paralysis and brain damage in some cases, and you weren¡¯t having it because of that, then ¡°let slip¡± in her hearing that you had a sudden ¡°change of heart¡± and got the shots two days later. The love letter to your ¡°darling Brosy¡± I wrote, having you declare your undying love and desire to sleep with him and have all his chubby little babies was fantastic also.

    Shiver: how could you Evvy, Ambrose believed that letter I was humiliated.

    Telling everyone else we were having a child or four just to raise it to be the next Hitler, Mao, Lizzie Borden or Stalin was great too. Anyway, that shock jock Ethan always goes on and on about his lean, muscular, sporty physique.

    He thinks he is really handsome with his six-foot height, dark hair, and almond-shaped, dark eyes but he looks so stupid and ape-like I¡¯m surprised he can remember how to put his clothes on in the morning.

    All the girls consider him really good-looking except you Shiver, who aptly pointed out, with his sloping forehead, imbecilic, slack-jawed expression yet desirable male body, and smooth, even features he looks just like a Neanderthal crossed with a doll known as Ken. He seriously needs to get with Ava again, our resident Barbie. Not to mention he¡¯s really smarmy and has gotten with five, fellow tenth graders, and one ninth.

    They all look vacuously moronic and listless-eyed as well as cheap, trashy, and vulgar. Isabella, Noah, Lily, and Annie all of them are like that. Ethan is also jealous of how magnificently beautiful I am; he keeps telling everyone I¡¯m gay and how you and I are mistaken for twelve-year-olds. He also said you¡¯re very good-looking, but he thought you were twelve at the most when he first saw you and says I¡¯m too effeminate and even look like a girl. Preposterous.¡±

    Mist: When we''re killing everyone with our Shiverla virus plague, which normally just causes pustules, could we change and refine it to somehow make Ethan''s kidneys fail? So, his limbs bloat up massively. You know a sort of a balloon man type of effect. I think it would amuse us more if we gave them a whole multitude of problems that¡¯ll come and go baffle doctors and fill their worthless hearts with fear over when and what will strike next. I suggest we have the virus degenerate their minds as well.

    Shiver: I think we should restrict mind alterations to a minimum. Remember what you said about being consciously able to witness the pain and horror around you with mind-numbing accuracy. Remember innocent child equal with a death-fearing axe- murder when fear is so overwhelming that you just revert back to your most basic panic and survival instincts until they¡¯ve taken over you more and more, literally sapping you of your previous individuality which becomes obsolete until your nothing but basic primal instinct.

    Mist: Touch¨¦. Minor delusions and hallucinations it is.

    Shiver: if only we could control the parts of the brain that cause hallucinogenic visions. Now there¡¯s some wistful, wistful, thinking. Then we could torture them by invading the darkest recesses of their pitiful minds and devising a meticulously crafted personal hell for each and every one of them. You know just one haunting tormenting vision after another, to summon it up for you as simply as possible. Oh, wait we can! And shall. Thank you Monovalent.

    Mist: Annie and Ambrose talk too much. I reckon we should mute those shrill unbearable voices. If either of them tries to talk their inane, incessant gossip with me again I declare I¡¯ll upgrade our torture methods. Annie should develop a severe untreatable case of epilepsy and in one of her fits hopefully dies, tragically before the ambulance arrives. Which we will delay. If we have our virus attack enough of the surrounding cells, this should be an easy achievement. While we¡¯re at it, let¡¯s turn her teeth dark with decay.

    Shiver: How about we make her hair go prematurely gray as well by attacking the root follicles that would be a hoot! And also, how do we silence Ambrose though? You only referred to how Annie should be dealt with.

    Mist: Oh. I have a much more sinister idea for how Ambrose should be eradicated... God, I detest him he is the worst one. He is incredibly ugly, even for a human, and such a sleazy, nerdy little poser and a try-hard. Not to mention his infuriating boasting about how he has skipped ahead two grades and has an IQ of 150.

    Mist: He basically looks and acts just like a fat, slimy toad. ¡°Oh, look miss here¡¯s my assignment three years early!¡±¡¯

    ¡®¡°Oh, Isabella you¡¯re so popular and beautiful....I love the fact you wear dumb little halter-tops so we all get "the pleasure" to see your frumpy, fat belly...¡±¡¯

    Shiver: how can someone "act¡± fat Mist?

    Mist: I don¡¯t know but he manages it.

    Shiver: I¡¯m bored of this online blog, you people are boring. Oh, don¡¯t forget to meet up with us in our ¡°viewers meeting¡± to give us your eradication list along with details of why we should assist you in their eradication. Politicians, zealots, bullies a.k.a child sadists (except the cool kind like us), and integrity-deficient media personnel are all welcome for hearty consideration....... Well goodbye........Losers.

    Mist: why did you say that Shiver, they can hear you, you know.

    Shiver: I know it was just supposed to be funny jackass, besides they know the conformist wannabes who don¡¯t view our online mediocrity assassination blog are the real losers.

    Mist: touch¨¦

    Shiver: stop saying that...

    Ps: shoot to kill (though we at the OCEMA do not condone guns they are too quick and frankly lazy compared to emotional torture or viruses.)

    Welcome back to the Ocema

    This is our Monovalent realm community page we like to switch between mediums (like online storyboard where cretins re-enact their day in the virtual realm universe for anyone sad enough to be interested so as to annoy absolutely everyone out there.

    Our topic for today is again, our classmates and Monovalent Realm news and politics. Two subjects near and dear to us. Today Ava is in love and Noah asks the tough questions such as does heaven have the internet?

    Jacob stopped the virtualizer there. He was feeling horribly sickened. He assumed this was some kind of sick joke, by either Ember and Felton themselves or by whoever trapped him here in this virtual nightmare. Somehow, this seemed worse than the Shadow Beast. Yet a chill ran down his spine as he recalled hearing the news that one specialty high school had had all its students and staff perish from that horrible, pustule-causing plague that was like a less painful version of the Black Death and somehow still making the rounds. How could there still be no cure even after so many years? Yet, unless you believed in some very weird conspiracies about corrupt labs and government experiments with bioweapons it seemed a mere nasty coincidence, them talking about virally killing off all their classmates. Likely they were just using the tragic news story as part of their sick, pretend-assassins game.

    He lay on his bed shivering with a rush of cold and tried to brace himself to face Ember and Felton later, who looked and sounded eerily like those two little sociopaths in the OCEMA virtualizer, with just a hint of a higher cheekbone or lighter shade of hair or slightly different slant to the dark eye. Yet he was utterly sure they were some strange incarnation of the royal pair, with the great, black-thorned hearts and honeyed voices.

 Enter the Creator

    Jacob was making his way to the feast.  He didn''t want to go and he was terrified of what Felton and Ember might do to him. Considering that either, they were the ones who left him that horrible virtualizer talking about killing off all their classmates or whoever had trapped him here, did.  He didn''t know if the pair were even real; if they were the ones who trapped him here or if they were merely part of someone else''s sick game.   As he made his reluctant way to the grand hall he saw Ember dancing past him, almost gliding on fairy-like feet. She seemed to be in a good mood, for she waved at him quite cheerfully before entering the hall and getting herself seated.

    Jacob sat down next to her reluctantly.  he knew it would be impolite to sit apart from them and despite everything he still found her to be the least dangerous-seeming of the two. There was something about Felton, particularly when he was incarnated as that boy Mist, he was cold and purely terrifying.  Though initially, Jacob had just found King Felton to be rather unpleasant and snooty.  Yet a frozen and sinister air hung gravely about his presence and the more you were around him, the more noticeable it grew.

    Felton took a bite of roast chicken and did not even acknowledge Jacob''s presence at all.  All the rain-mist that swirled outside the golden-paned window was so very white and beautiful but knowing it was supposed to represent trapped spirits( there was a metaphor for his own entrapment in there somewhere) didn''t exactly fill Jacob''s heart with cheer.

    Jacob realised he was probably coming across as quite sullen but before he could force a smile, Ember put down her piece of roast chicken swimming in thick, luscious globs of gravy.

    "Cheer up, Jacob I like you. I won''t sick the beast on you again, promise."

    Felton for the first time that night, acknowledged Jacob.

    "We hardly need to, Ember," he said.

    Ember looked over at him and clapped her little hands in sudden delight, causing her red-gold hair to bounce prettily and the fiery ends to trail across her dainty shoulders,

    "You''re dead right," she said.

    "It isn''t good to glower Jacob but if you do, well we shan''t have to put up with you for long.  Beast or no Beast."

    Felton grinned as Ember paused and then continued;

    "We can always Wrighthouse him."

    Jacob''s blood ran cold and his heart nearly stopped, both with rising fear and righteous rage. His hands balled into fists.  Wasn''t Wrighthouse the name of the school where all those adolescents died?"

    Either they really were somehow both murderers and plague-bearers or they were treating such a delicate subject matter, like a sick joke.

    "You, know," Felton said mockingly, "They creepily-nicknamed our old school, the plague school. On a count of how everyone died there.  Except for us as we cannot perish."

    Strangely enough despite it making no sense, Jacob believed him.  The pair did seem untouchable somehow.  Maybe that was simply because they were not real beings though just someone''s gross little holo-projections and murder fantasies brought to laugh.  He wished he could slap the other boy''s face, and Ember, well perhaps they could lock her away forever in a tower somewhere.  When he finally finished his last, beautiful, golden potato with a gulp, somehow feeling the pair would expect him to finish and being so very hungry despite himself, he nevertheless got up and quickly-fled.  Wondering once again why he was here and who the hell Shiver and Mist were.

    Six months ago, a young man named Evan James Wiley had received his very first message from the AI, Monovalent.  It was a Virtual mail, and it explained the story of a man called Aryan and a group of scientists and two children who had been hybridised with a virus. These two young people, alongside Monovalent himself, were to be used as weapons to aid in a political revolution. Weapons under the control of would-be revolutionary Aryan. Who believed history dictated that you couldn''t establish true peace or overthrow evil systems, without a little bloodshed. Such as that seen in the bloodied overthrowing of various monarchies and dictatorships.

    Monovalent could communicate with Evan telepathically via their shared mental connection.  His mind had apparently been wirelessly hardwired to the AI.  As well as wired to a fellow child called Alice.  So they could all communicate via wireless electrical impulses.  Monovalent had sent a regular, Virtual mail as not to freak out the boy too much on first contact.  "It was to be done as soon as you were old enough to understand," Monovalent had explained.  However far from being freaked out by this occurrence, Evan found it intriguing as nothing had ever excited him before.

    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

    He was informed in the Virtual mail that he was one of a pair of children created with a purpose and now it was time for him to fulfil it.    Being biological warfare and a weapon to grant power to The People¡¯s World Unity Party and eradicate all their enemies... Evan could really get on board with that.

    The very next day, Evan and his parents had been in the living room of the large box-like mansion Evan called home.   The huge house despite its status, high-tech gadgets and grandeur was ugly and unappealing or so Evan had always believed, wholeheartedly.  Outside it was painted neon white, with a concrete garden stripped of all its trees, bushes and greenery.  Evan had at that moment, been refusing point blank to attend his prestigious boys¡¯ high school.

    The living room walls sparkled too clean and white, the sofa was pristine but boasting bright fairy-floss for cushions.  Matching the duvets and equally candied pillows that were the garish adornments in his mother and sister¡¯s pastel, pink-wallpapered bedrooms.

    The mansion¡¯s immense hall was a poor man¡¯s iridescence, unnaturally bright.  With a cutesy fuzziness that was as sickly and tainted as a canary trapped for fickle human amusement and was blinding against bright-pink curtains.

    The games room led out onto a wall coloured as if with clown¡¯s hair and a sofa lined in the grimacing shade of his oversized lips.  His dad¡¯s room was a slightly pleasanter avocado-green yet the dining room leered as pale and bluish as medicine-tablet powder.

    The rest of the house except the hall and Evan¡¯s and his dad¡¯s room boasted neon-white carpeting and hideous, striped, flowery, multi-coloured curtains.  Evan¡¯s room had been lime-green once but for his birthday insisted his room be painted. Sea-green with the bedding indigo-blued though the ugly, light carpet and curtains remained the same.

    His mother always said Evan¡¯s darkly painted room was depressing.  Evan always said the rest of the house was vulgar, tasteless and repugnant. Not to mention childish.

    The curtains in the rest of the house were a toxic mixture of ugly shades including brighter, lime green, canary yellow, light orange and of course his mother¡¯s favourite colour lurid, vibrant pink.  This was all a consequence of his mother¡¯s dubious "choice" in girly decorations. The narrow aluminium windows gave the house a claustrophobic atmosphere of suffocation.

    ¡®You did so well last year Evan honey,¡± his mother had said, ¡°why are you failing now?¡±

    ¡°I felt like trying last year,¡± Evan had replied in a voice that was soft but highly contemptuous.  "I wanted to see if I could come top and beat all the other boys, and now that I have, I don''t need to bother anymore.  I don''t need to prove myself and as I have no intention of working, it would be futile and a wasted effort to continue attending. I¡¯m fifteen and don''t have to.¡±

    ¡°Actually, you have to attend till you''re seventeen, the rules were changed quite a while back,¡± his had father said.

    ¡°I know that¡± Evan had responded, ¡°but I¡¯ve enrolled full-time at some music course and as that counts as education I don''t actually need to attend an official high school.¡±

    ¡°A music course?¡±  His mother had blanched her peevish, botoxed and heavily made-up face white as a sheet beneath her orange-tan (a sight that made Evan physically ill).  She was dressed in her usual skin-tight, neon pink pants; pastel pink high-heels, chunky, brass-gold jewellery and a revealing, garish top, this one lime-green.  Hard to see a woman of forty dressing like a teeny-bopper with horrifically bad taste, Evan had thought.  Candy pink and lime green, she could not have picked two colours that go together less well.

    ¡°What do you intend to do with your life son?¡± his father had asked.  ¡°You can''t go making a living off your violin,¡± he''d then said trying to be reasonable.

    ¡°I won''t need to make a living,¡± Evan had responded, putting derisive emphasis on the hackneyed phrase.  ¡°I¡¯m going to become a part of Aryan Gray''s Party, Unified Wealth Equites, otherwise known as Dear Leader¡¯s, ¡°People¡¯s Unity Party.¡±  As soon I turn sixteen and I am old enough to join. He''s recently announced two more Party places.  For two very special young people who will move in with him and be right at the forefront of the campaign, when he runs for office.   The young are the future voters and leaders of political change after all.¡±

    ¡°How do you know you''ll be able to rise up that high in the ranks of the Party? ¡°  His father had asked this calmly, trying to be reasonable.

    Evan had looked at him with one of his direct, blank, expressionless looks that never failed to make his father flinch.  Then he had proclaimed with a scornful smile, ¡°I know because I¡¯ve already been made the offer, and will be staying and studying under Aryan this next year while attending my mandatory music course.¡±

    Evan, deciding the matter at hand had been quite settled, had walked out of the room without another word and then gone off to play in the game room.  He found most virtual games boring but the game he had played that day, had been quite interesting.  You played a master manipulator and trickster who had to kill all human life but you had to make them annihilate themselves, you couldn''t harm another human being directly.  You could play either as a group or just be solitary.  Evan usually preferred to play alone.

    As he had been moving across a shared landscape with other virtual players, a diabolical idea had struck him. One that was really fun. If he was mentally-connected to the AI who made all the virtualiser realms, could he too, influence what people saw in their Monovalent-derived, virtual reality?  Turn their worlds into a monstrosity of nightmarish oddities, where he was the puppet master.

    He had decided to covertly ask the AI.  "Yes, it is possible," Monovalent had said in its strange metallic voice, with a distinct hint of amusement to it.

    "Aryan wouldn''t like it but if you slip it past his notice...And well, nothing much gets his attention as he considers himself too important to spend much time monitoring my virtual worlds beyond the bare minimum of functionality.  Our co-creator Emanuel won''t care or will find it amusing."

    I will be like a hanging, overarching mist," Evan had happily proclaimed,  "Turning all their beautiful but insipid, virtual worlds into an entrapping dreamscape of my own making.  it will make them scarier and far, far more interesting." He had then smiled. Sincerely.

 The Murderous Confessions of Two Human Weapons

    Jacob walked out into the white, palace gardens, where the fox-cat was leaping around. In the fresh sunlight.  It suddenly turned itself into a little golden ball of fire and giggled, causing Jacob to start; less at the transformation and more at the human-sounding voice and laugh. Outside the castle walls, everything was in ruin and decay.  Rain-mist mingled with the demon smoke that emanated like a black, billowing cloud from all the giant, monstrous beings who roamed everywhere.  The beings were tormenting all the (hopefully) virtual people as they shrieked in agony.  You could see it all from the castle windows and from the gardened balcony upon which he now stood.  Silver and yellow grass and pretty, pale stones were at his feet and all the white-leaved, black willows loomed above him.

    He should have realised finding the so-called, elusive, little Fox-kitty had been too easy.  He had been expecting some grand quest but as soon as he located the healing spot where he had been told it would sometimes come to drink, he had spotted it. Despite that healer when he first arrived having proclaimed it to be such a rare and glorious sight.  It had run up to him like an old friend.  Purring and preening and even jumping onto his head from a tree, which thankfully, didn¡¯t hurt.

    Although he had experienced some pain from minor wounds and the like since being transported here.  Discomfort and even pain didn¡¯t appear to be numbed in quite the same way that it was in a standard virtual reality game.  ¡°The little sadists are clearly behind it, they would want everyone to suffer,¡± he muttered and grumbled.  The pair or the hacker who made them, had lured him to the castle undoubtedly to torment him or even kill him.  He wasn¡¯t sure if they could truly hurt him, but he wasn¡¯t too keen on finding out either.

    As Jacob walked away, past that last little patch of greenery and back into the castle, things seemed to waver.  As he roamed further down the hall, suddenly its walls abruptly changed back into a little valley in the outside world. He was standing just a little outside of the lowland place where you could find the strange, ridable, flying panthers who took you up to the sky castle. A friendly stranger had informed him this was the only way to visit the King and Queen  Rain-mist swirled everywhere, and it pulled at him with its grasping, spirit hands that had suddenly formed.  the Shadow Beast with its great, weeping eyes flew at him with outstretched claws¡­

    Even realizing it wasn¡¯t real, didn¡¯t stop the fear and he near-screamed when he saw the trail of blood dripping from his chest and turning into a great, red sea.  The castle walls suddenly reappeared in their grand, stone glory but the wound remained, and just as he was panicking, the wound too, disappeared.

    Very funny Royal Brats, he thought in disgust.

    As he walked past Ember¡¯s room yet again, he heard Felton, Mist, whoever he was, speaking.

    ¡°Look, Shiv, we didn¡¯t ask to be part of Aryan¡¯s revolution¡­ I don¡¯t care about politics or political wars. Being a bioweapon is beyond cool and all but¡­¡±

    ¡°I have mixed feelings about the politics myself, Mist, but I love¡­"

    Jacob¡¯s heart pounded, confused.  Was she going to say she loved Aryan?  He didn¡¯t remember much about him other than that he was the IT scientist who made the Monovalent, Virtual AI and later founded a political organization or something.  He had some strange, populist ideas and some of the girls he knew thought he was handsome. Particularly for an older guy.

    "Yeah well, he doesn¡¯t love you my little sleeping beauty, he prefers women with more age and experience and less brain power than even you have.¡±  Felton was now saying this to what sounded like a protesting, near-sob, from Ember.

    He tried to listen in some more, but they appeared to have stopped speaking.  As he was walking, he realized how strange it was that he kept having the urge to use the bathroom at all, mostly that was left out of virtual stories.  The hackers must have thought it was amusing to make him need to go and then not grant him access to an easy-to-find bathroom.  Petty, spiteful little¡­The words caught in his throat as he reminded himself, that they were not just childish pranksters but full-blown psychos and possibly murderers.

    At dinner that night, they were all eating succulent ribs and Jacob had to admit they were quite delicious.

    ¡°Do you want to know more about us?  Like how we killed everyone at the Wrighthouse school?¡± Felton asked nonchalantly.  ¡°We can send you more virtualizers we made.¡±

    Jacob didn¡¯t answer, he merely paled and sat whitely in his seat.

    ¡°Well, not everyone, we didn¡¯t kill everyone,¡± Ember spoke up, softly.  Jacob was startled to see a certain, genuine sadness in her face and a tear in her eye.

    ¡°Oh right, yeah. Ambrose killed himself on account of how everyone was rightly bullying and tormenting him.  They told him to take his life again and again till he finally did it.¡±

    ¡°You tormented him,¡± Jacob asked.

    ¡°Us? No. It was our classmates. You know, all the dead ones.¡±

    Jacob looked over, to where Ember was still looking guilty and glum.

    Felton finally noticed her somewhat ravaged expression and spoke.

    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°Pay no mind to Queen Ember, she had a bit of a thing for Ambrose.  She was oddly protective of him.  Despite the fact that he was utterly boring and as ugly as some bloated, blubber fish.  Basically, he thought she was cute, and Ember likes everyone who thinks she is cute.¡±

    Jacob soon realized that he had just found a way he could both be honest and get on Ember¡¯s good side.

    ¡°I think, she is cute too.¡±

    Ember smiled.  ¡°Thanks, Jacob.¡±

    ¡°By the way, she said in a friendly tone, ¡°we cannot actually kill you if you were worried about that.   We aren¡¯t allowed to use our virus-infecting abilities anymore or Aryan will, He will¡­.¡±

    Felton¡¯s face suffused with rage.  ¡°let¡¯s just say, we¡¯re under contract.   We got away with killing people before because we were supposed to kill a set number of human beings anyway, to deal with overpopulation.  Since Aryan is an ecofascist nutjob. Obsessed with carbon footprints.  We just managed to make some of our slayings, a little less random.   but Aryan¡¯s watching us like some great, old hawk now.¡±  Felton who had temporarily seemed greatly angered became once again relaxed. Elatedly swirled some basting sauce around on his plate.

    ¡°See Aryan cottoned on, figured out our little game as he called it, eventually.  I mean it wasn¡¯t our fault: we were made to be killers and sociopaths.  Otherwise, our creators reckoned we would go mad over the awful, awful things we have to do.¡±  Felton grinned wolfishly.  Then turned to Queen Ember.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know why she is being so mopey.  She has been using her virus powers to infect people since she was a child.  Like seven years old. Her kill count is legendary. Or should be.¡±

    ¡°It wasn¡¯t on purpose back then. Monovalent was actually the one who infected all those teachers and children who beat or hurled abuse at me and thought I was creepy and weird. They recognized that there was something different about me, I guess. But they were also just a bunch of giant asses. The AI is fond of us, he was just trying to protect me.¡±

    ¡°You are creepy and weird,¡± Felton informed her. You¡¯re also not human and therefore a trillion times better than any of the hideous, weak, and gross bints and brats Monovalent handled with great efficiency.  Also, we killed everyone at the Wrighthouse on purpose.  Maybe you were once an innocent kid, maybe, but you were a demonic, little beauty just like me, by the time you reached your awkward adolescence.¡±

    ¡°You two in your real forms, went to the same school,¡± Jacob asked.

    ¡°No, not a first.  We went to different schools and were supposed to join Aryan¡¯s pointless, political cause when we hit leaving age but then the old codger got sick, like frail humans always do.   In our home country, you can technically leave at fifteen. Yet if you¡¯re under eighteen you have to be either working, in an apprenticeship, or attending school.  So, we signed up to study at some voluntary, schooling unit for adolescents with mental health problems on account of my autism and her depression. Stayed for a year. Then everyone died. Oops.¡±

    "You aren''t human at all?" Jacob asked.

    "No,  Were are immortal viruses with a human shape.  Connected a supercomputer AI," Felton proclaimed proudly. Haughtiness emanating from his every pore.

    "Or maybe we are just trickster hackers," Ember suggested with a smile.  For a moment in the grand feast hall, there was dead silence amid the sound of those constant screams and shrieks coming from outside the castle.  Hollers that played almost in time to the great, musical chimings that drifted upon this world''s rain-misted wind.

    "Hey, King Felton remember the time we reviewed all the Wrighthouse students¡¯ terrible poetry?¡± Ember spoke up suddenly and joyously as she plucked a lovely piece of golden fire hair out of her prettily-innocent eye.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Felton laughed.  He then snapped his fingers, and Jacob was back in the virtualiser.

    Welcome to the OCEMA

    Mist: Ava delights us with her poetry again today. However, I think she should spend more time worrying about her falling out hair.

    Shiver: to be fair we only got the virus to damage the follicles in a few strands so far.  She hasn¡¯t lost much hair yet.  I still can¡¯t believe we can make the virus not only kill but multiply in, and damage any part of the body we like.  This is the neatest supervillain power ever.   It was supposed to work this way so we could control the spread and make their deaths as quick, efficient, and painless as possible. Supposed to.

    Mist.  So Ava has written (by hand) another two poems to (Ethan we presume) the first one is about his suspected and now confirmed, cheating.  The other is concerning their break-up.   It¡¯s a real charmer this second one and guess what? It¡¯s as saccharine and sentimental as you could dare dream Shiver!  Angels, sunshine, and the rose, no less, are all here.

    Wondering

    You¡¯re gone away and I wonder are you with someone?

    I promise to forget and forgive, I won¡¯t let myself run

    Others might disapprove yet stop trying is what uncaring ones clam

    You¡¯re even more important to me than achieving fame

    You have gone away all we have is Holo-mail, or Realm-call

    I need you here when I fall

    Mist:  Well, that was¡­ short.   Okay, clearly we can see here that she¡¯s so distraught she forgot to use her mono-dictionary to scan for fancy words.  However, she¡¯s back on form in the breakup poem.

    Shiver:  Even more important to her than fame, what a compliment.  That line despite how insipid it sounds would almost be sweet if it wasn¡¯t so blatantly untrue.  Also, uncaring ones clam well I guess she got four of the five letters in claim right, so partial credit and well, I¡¯d clam up if I forced to interact with the Neanderthals she does, or her for that matter.

    Love gone.

    Dressed still in my princess gown I stand melancholy

    Wander do you gaze gloriously on your new brown-eyed angel?

    Feel she¡¯s incandescent moonbeams cutting through lustrous orange trees?

    I am a midnight sun bright yet dark

    Tears bedazzled my resplendent blue eyes

    Over the roses in the garden, a raven serendipitously sings

    To this alive unhappy rose who opened her petals for you

    You want lots of young girl¡¯s straight hair or her bouffant curls

    Love cutting through organs as my life it mares and scares

    Yet you lost a most precious thing!

    Me the love of your life

    Tell me did you really win?

    Mist: I think I can say with complete and utter self-assurance that yes, yes, he did win.

    Shiver:  Mares and scares that¡¯s amazing, I feel utter joy just gazing at it.  I think she means it mars and scars, that¡¯s a good song she just (presumably unknowingly) ripped off.  I¡¯m also confused, is she a rose or sun? Christ, where did all this ¡°midnight sun¡± garbage come from?  God the line alive, unhappy rose is truly ghastly.  Also, the word cutting and organs no less, in a love poem?

    Some wishful thinking about him being on the rebound here¡­ when in fact his sleazy indifference is painfully obvious, I bet three years from now he doesn¡¯t even remember her name.

    Mist:  Three years? I give him a year and a half tops after leaving this hell-house before he goes Ava who? Oh her, I remember now, for a second, I thought she was called Ashley!  To be fair in three years Ava probably won¡¯t remember Ethan either.  She¡¯ll be writing sappy love poems to an Aiden, Jacob or Riley, or all three.

    A disclaimer from Virtualiser.com:  The opinions expressed by little miss malcontent Shiver are not necessarily shared by us Virtualiser.com, though whether that actually could be considered reassuring to anyone considering our credentials is dubious.

    Jacob was transported back to reality with a sudden, sickening lurch and he could hear the Royal Brats laughing in the background.

 A Dubious Quest

    At breakfast the following morning, Ember suggested letting Jacob go,

    ¡°We have played with him for quite a while now and he has been such a good sport about it. Seems only fair.¡±

    Felton glanced up. ¡°Are you kidding, he has barely been here any time at all, you only want to let him go because you fancy him¡­¡±

    Ember gave him an odd, mischievous, little look and Felton stopped in his tracks.

    ¡°Good idea, My Lady,¡± he said. Utterly changing his tune.

    ¡°Jacob,¡± Ember spoke, ¡°we will let you go if you complete a quest for us.¡±

    ¡°You need to find the heart of the lost love of Emanuel Roe,¡± she continued.

    Jacob frowned, Ember¡¯s look and Felton¡¯s rapid change of heart at the idea, having left him quite suspicious.

    Roe was the other supposed creator of these viral monstrosities and of the evil AI. An AI that Ember claimed was amongst other things, a worldwide spy mechanism to aid Aryan in his take-over of society. Goodness knows if that was true, if anything she said was but clearly, that machine, Monovalent, wasn¡¯t what it seemed. When he first heard it speak candidly and it was not just giving him its usual, helpful instructions, it had been so disturbing. When it had led him to find that strange, little love note, it had sounded both mocking, mean-spirited, and chilling.

    ¡°Follow me,¡± Ember said suddenly and led him to her grandiose bedroom. Lace curtains billowed and silver vases shone and the little light that tiptoed in from the window, slanted gold against the loveliest of gray stone.

    Ember handed him a picture. ¡°Here is the fair maiden whose heart you must return to the reptilian beast,¡± she said.

    Jacob groaned with an utterly exasperated sigh. Another sick joke.

    ¡°That is, you,¡± he stated exasperatedly.

    ¡°No, it isn¡¯t,¡± she said, seriously.

    Jacob stared because maybe, just maybe, she was right. He could see this young lady was maybe a sliver older and there was a little scar on her right hand and a few sweet, honey-coloured freckles on her nasal bridge and delicate cheeks. Ember lacked those features.

    ¡°That love letter that talked about the end of the haven of her childhood wasn¡¯t for his lost love, it was for me.¡±

    Jacob frowned; ¡°the one about shadows and yielding to sunlight or something?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Jacob. Please. You need to convince him, that I am not her. That it is she he loves, not me. I am just a clone made in her beauteous image. As he calls it. He is otherwise going to make me his bride. As soon as the clock ticks me towards majority, in just a year. He is quite old and deformed, like a beast. Yet If I wed him, he will free me from Aryan¡¯s control.¡±

    She paused and her eyes grew sweet and soft. Lost their manic glint.

    ¡°Aryan has programmed the wicked AI machine to kill me if I ever disobey an order, but the reptile beast is the AI¡¯s co-creator. Aryan can use the AI which controls the virus that is part of me to flood my system with so much extra viral DNA, my body gets overwhelmed and perishes.¡± She quelled a trembling lip.

    ¡°The man who looks like a reptile beast is the only one with the expertise to reprogram the machine and free me from this hell. You and I are both trapped but I am willing to set you free. Aryan won¡¯t do the same for me. The reptile beast is devoted enough to me that he would throw away all they have achieved politically to win back my heart. Only it is not my heart he so longingly loves and recalls.¡± She looked upon Jacob imploringly.

    ¡°Despite his darkest wishes we do not share a heart and will never be one soul.¡±

    There were tears in her eyes and she really did look just like a lost child, at that moment. Jacob felt revolted though he knew he shouldn¡¯t, since she was just a little monster. This whole thing did seem quite sick and wrong to him all the same, though.

    ¡°I wish I could help but I can¡¯t imagine he is interested in what I have to say¡­¡±

    Ember wasn¡¯t listening, instead, she was humming boredly. She then unfurled her white wings and fluttered prettily up onto the tall nightstand. ¡°Oh, well maybe I was joking,¡± she said.

    Jacob was infuriated. Great, another disgusting lie. What a rotten thing to lie about: pretending you were practically a child bride. However, she soon flitted down and right out of the room and the slump in her little shoulders seemed real.

    ¡°She tells the truth,¡± the metallic voice of the machine informed him. Jacob believed it.

    ¡°Emanuel my dear creator, is quite the stalker,¡± the AI continued.

    ¡°Want to see the time he tracked her down to the Wrighthouse Unit?¡± he asked Jacob.

    Before Jacob could answer he was shown by the machine a virtual recording of a certain day at the Wrighthouse Unit. A strange little boarding school it would seem.

    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    Jacob could see an older woman. Wrinkling her harrowed forehead as she ticked names off a list.

    ¡°Carrie?¡±

    ¡°Here.¡±

    ¡°Oliver?¡±

    ¡°Here.¡±

    ¡°Evan?¡±

    ¡°Yes, Miss Shaya?¡± asked the boy, Evan, with a bland and impertinent little smile.

    ¡°Please go fetch Alice for me; we don''t want to be late,¡± Shaya said. Evan, who was very clearly Felton, then disappeared and didn¡¯t return.

    Shaya with a sigh eventually followed after him. She entered a large, spacious room. stepping over Alice¡¯s mini-V-COM and Jacob could see Evan was perched on Alice''s bed.

    Alice''s round-ended and delicate nose, just like Ember¡¯s. was both small and also quite classical and was currently parked under a book with a slice of vanilla cake, a choc-chip muffin, and a bowl of chocolate mousse next to her.

    Alice appeared rather overdressed for school, in a pale-grey silk dress, strappy black sandals, and a dark navy-blue coat.

    ¡°Come on Alice,¡± Shaya said, putting on a wan smile when Jacob could tell she would have liked to throttle the girl; ¡°you know you have to go on the outings there mandatory.¡±

    ¡°I would but I¡¯m allergic to fresh air and sunshine though,¡± Alice said seriously.

    ¡°No one''s allergic to sunshine,¡± said Shaya calmly. ¡°Now come downstairs dear.¡±

    ¡°I''ll come down to the foyer,¡± said Alice solemnly,¡± but I shan''t go outside, or I shall become very ill.¡±

    ¡°You see Shaya,¡± Alice continued, ¡°I think I have developed late-onset albinism, so the sun damages my super sensitive skin. If you don''t believe me just look how pale I am, see look!¡± She held out a lily-white hand for Shaya to inspect.

    ¡°You don''t have albinism, Alice.¡± said Shaya, ¡°Because your eyes are hazel-brown, not pink, and your hair is strawberry blonde not white.¡±

    ¡°Actually,¡± Evan chimed in, ¡°Not all albinos have pale eyes and hair. Some have blue or even brown eyes. Look it up Miss, if you don''t believe me.¡±

    ¡®I don''t need to look it up,¡± said Shaya sounding exasperated. ¡°Because I¡¯ve read Alice''s medical records, and I know she''s not an albino so just shut-up the both of you. Everyone else has been waiting on the bus for you two hooligans for nearly ten minutes now. So just hurry up and get on the bloody bus.¡±

    Under Jacob¡¯s watching eye, they did get on the "bloody bus" and sat together at the front of the bus as far away from the other residents as possible.

    It took forever before they got to the theatre and Ambrose, who Jacob was seeing for the first time, appeared to be telling the head nurse Leila about his recent dates in a fancy French restaurant. Evan snorted out loud at this and Alice elbowed him quietly repressing her own snorts as they leapt out of the bus in a frenzied manner.

    An old lady when they reached the sidewalk was crossing the road, her frail legs trembling as she slowly but steadily walked. ¡°I''ll go help her, shall I?¡± Said one of the boys, Ethan, gallantly, striding toward her and saying self-importantly, ¡°Need some help, ma''am?¡±

    ¡°No thanks,¡± she replied quietly.

    Ethan, a rather affronted look on his face walked back over to his friends. ¡°What a bloody, stupid bint,¡± he intoned. ¡°Refusing my offer of help like that.¡±

    ¡°Like what a total old¡­ So ungrateful,¡± agreed one of the girls who seemed to be called Isabella.

    ¡°Hope you fall and die and go straight to hell you old hag!¡± Screamed another girl, Lily, loudly, making a face at her.

    Evan turned to Alice, whispering quietly, ¡°Oh no Lil, why don¡¯t you do us the immense honour of dying instead, then me, Alice, and the old lady can party at your funeral.¡±

    ¡°Children please stop,¡± Leila, a worry-browed teacher, implored.

    ¡°Just stop that all of you.¡±

    ¡°Hey, look, I think some ridiculously tall and thin old guy is following you, Leila,¡± said Isabella suddenly.

    ¡°Yeah, you got yourself a secret admirer,¡± Ethan sneered.

    ¡°He¡¯s creepy¡­¡± A dark-haired, young girl called Sally murmured. ¡°His looks remind me of the bogeyman or slender man.¡±

    ¡°Or the Grim Reaper,¡± Annie nodded. He¡¯s so long, and real bony and makes no sound when he moves, and I can just tell there¡¯s something really wrong with his face. Its shape is off¡­ For a second it seemed he had no face at all and the way he just disappeared¡­¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t see anything,¡± Evan said meanwhile.

    They walked into the theatre and the adolescents all piled in to see different films. The majority of the boys saw an action thriller and the girls a cozy, little romantic fantasy story.

    Alice and Evan however, walked over to see a documentary/movie entitled History¡¯s Most Notorious and Evil Rulers. As Jacob watched, they then proceeded to shout throughout the entire thing; ¡°oh no Nero, you were doing so well killing Christians and striking blows for equality and gay marriage and gender-bending.¡±

    ¡°Hitler, Hitler don¡¯t kill yourself we love you,¡± our supreme overlord Monovalent says that our creator, that Emanuel guy once remarked, ¡°Hitler just wanted to align the entire world and make it a pristine snowfall; a hailing sea of pure white beauty¡±

    Jacob heard screams of Mao, Mao come back and make China great again, ¡°and even, ¡°You¡¯re Russia¡¯s greatest hero, marry me, Stalin,¡± shouted by Alice with a spectacular performance of real tears. They then got promptly thrown out of the theatre by an usher still stifling sniggering giggles.

    He wondered how the hell the pair ever got away with any of this, if they were supposed to be covert weapons under his full control, why didn¡¯t Aryan threaten and stop them?

    ¡°He was ever focused on other things and I concealed much of what they did from him and he didn¡¯t spend much time looking into it. I diverted his attention because I honestly thought their antics were a joy to behold. Aryan has beautiful if rigid and dangerous ideals but is frightfully boring,¡± the voice of the AI chimed in helpfully.

    Oh, great, so someone finally made a killer AI but one with a dark sense of humour. At least it would get a good laugh as it wiped out all of humanity, Jacob thought.

    Later Jacob went to find Princess Ember and to agree to her quest just so he could get away from the castle for a while and do something, anything to escape. No matter how futile.

    He was soon transported somewhere that looked somewhat like modern-day reality. He was standing in a pretty little countryside with lush greenery and nice, regular people going about their day. He actually smiled at the sweet normalcy.

    Yet the people passed out of sight quickly and he soon found himself standing outside the door of a golden manor that looked itself, eerily like a castle. There was, he realized with a shudder, a creepy graveyard out the back. With white-mantled gravestones, half-unfurled flowers, and leering statues of crows.

    A giant creature, not human, it couldn¡¯t possibly be, walked out the door. Sidled out gracefully. Jacob almost gave a girlish cry when he saw its height of nearly seven feet and the hard, greenish scales and that fact it seemingly had only half a face. The other side was puny, and the slitted, pale eye hung lopsided. It was the worst case of what was likely, harlequin ichthyosis he had ever seen.

    ¡°Oh, great another virtual person,¡± he spoke with impressive modulation and a surprisingly lovely, deep voice that was far gentler and softer than Jacob would have expected.

    ¡°I see Evan and Alice have decided to include me in their games yet again. Or are they calling themselves Shiver and Mist now? I always forget that they changed their names when they joined Aryan¡¯s party because they said their old ones were too pedestrian.¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t replace your lost love with some girl who is scarcely more than a child,¡± Jacob said.

    ¡°Oh great, she is playing the victim again. How charming. Well, you can weep for the little monster if you like but frankly, my love is likely the only thing that will spare her from a death, she most dearly deserves.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be disingenuous Emanuel, The Wrighthouse unit children were hardly angels and pure innocents,¡± a voice, that metallic AI voice of Monovalent, said. It seemed to both rise up from the ground and thunder down from above. As if it were reigning down strangely from the heavens. From a literal computer cloud.

    it was almost like it was here to help Jacob and to come to Ember¡¯s defense. He then groaned as he was transported into yet another virtualizer. Where Shiver and Mist were again hosting their OCEMA virtual podcast.

    Mist: Today Shiver has suggested we take a peek at some of Brosy¡¯s acted entries from back when he was completely friendless, and everyone wished agonizing death upon him much earlier in the year. The entries have been condensed somewhat as we deemed people¡¯s reactions more significant.

    Entry one: Singing Gone Array: I apologize profusely to those who were offended by my singing classic songs from various movie tracks at the Wrighthouse concert¡­Though many of you seemed merely to be laughing, others claimed I ruined a masterpiece. You have threatened to beat me in regards to it well I guess it''s par for the course in my life at this point.

    Reactions:

    You must die

    You are taking up precious oxygen that could be put to better use continuing life for people who don¡¯t suck.

    You bleached us all for life with your horrible, pale poison of a performance, the most tragic thing I have ever seen in my life besides you. My eyes¡­ it can never be unseen¡­ I laughed at just how retarded. Can¡¯t believe you didn¡¯t even fall from your seat!!!!! Or better still smash your head and die. I mean a gazillion people want you dead. Take a hint and die, dancing and singing douche.

    Dear God. Ambrose seriously, you¡¯re so fat and ugly I¡¯m surprised my eyes aren¡¯t bleeding. I hope you never have children, or it could start the apocalypse. There are very creative methods of suicide look into them.

    You look deformed. The ugliest person I have ever seen. His hick, trailer-trash breeding would be something of a crime against humanity, I agree.

    We were all hoping you¡¯d fall off your seat during your performance. That¡¯s what we were whispering about while you sang and played.

    I can¡¯t believe he didn¡¯t fall damn!!! And break his ankle or better yet his aborted foetus of a head. Go jump off a cliff and die slowly and painfully. To all the other Ambrose haters don¡¯t worry even if he gets to hospital, nobody will save his sorry life.

    Seriously this V-blog is bullshit, is this an elaborate joke man. Am I being had? If not, Ambrose you really rub people the wrong way.

    Don¡¯t underestimate how much we hate Ambrose, it¡¯s real alright. His very existence makes us all so sick we want to kill ourselves or him just so we can get away from him and we even question a God who put him here. Die just die.

    Jacob was whisked out of the memory and felt a little dizzy but mostly he just felt sad. He could see why Ember had felt sorry for Ambrose.

 Rescuing a Cloned Princess from the Beastly Tower

    Jacob was still standing outside the beast¡¯s home. Under its golden steeple tower. The beast, Emanuel or whoever he was, stood by the manor door. Whistling nonchalantly. Eyeing Jacob and running his long fingers through his hair. His locks were burnt-brown, crisp, and almost too straight. Despite how convincing they were, Jacob suspected it was a wig. For his whitely-green arms were quite hairless and he lacked any manly stubble. The biography of Monovalent¡¯s co-creator had mentioned his deformity, but Jacob hadn¡¯t realized the extent.

    ¡°Come back here boy,¡± he said to Jacob, ¡°when you have achieved anything of note. For do-gooders really are trifling bores. To defeat evil, one must first understand it. Yet people with soft, sentimental hearts and great, empty heads are easily hoodwinked and tricked due to their naivety, just as you have been by my Shiver. It is so simple to fool them into believing that the blackest devil is the whitest angel.¡±

    Suddenly, Ember flittered down prettily from one of the beast¡¯s trees. Where had she come from? Jacob wondered. He hadn¡¯t spotted her in the beast¡¯s garden before. ¡°Please rescue me,¡± Jacob she said. ¡°Be my Knight.¡±

    He realized she was holding a sword in her hand. It was a fabulous sword. Ruby-hilted and with the silveriest of sheens and with a menacing glint to its blade. It was like something out of a sleeping beauty-esque fairytale. The Swamp Beast¡¯s Fable. Something you would be gifted during a grand, herculean conquest. One featuring a great, sword-wielding champion.

    Princess Ember took a graceful, hesitant step forward. She turned to face her creator.

    ¡°Shiver, my dearest, you are here,¡± the beast exclaimed with great delight. Spoke with such sheer joy, a level of joy that Jacob had never before heard. Its tone was gentle but somehow also thunderous As if it rained down with a vengeance from some beauteous heaven and all the swans swirled down with it. This image entered his head, just as a flock of the true fair birds circled above the reptilian thing¡¯s head before dissipating. Soon vanished, their white majesty.

    One of Emanuel¡¯s little creations would not have been impressed by all his creator¡¯s fiery tricks and illusions. Had Mist been present to see more of the man¡¯s theatrics, he would have simply rolled his eyes in disgust.

    Before Jacob realised what was happening he had stabbed the beast, stabbed it right through the heart.

    Blood flew out in a sea of darkness, more black than red and the beast spoke again, with both the thunderous command and the honey, still lacing its voice.

    ¡°Black they made my blood black,¡± it muttered in an irritated, mild disgust. Shiver, my bright-eyed, beguiling bride that is just a tad on the nose, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    Meanwhile, Mist was pacing the palace with boredom. Playing King Felton and trapping and tormenting people in a virtual nightmare certainly had its charms but he missed the beauty of unleashing all his grand, viral powers on people. This felt oddly impotent.

    The spectacular days of the Wrighthouse Unit would always be a fond memory for Mist. He drifted happily into one of his old virtualisers.

    Welcome to the Ocema.

    Mist: update to today¡¯s topic: The pre-notification of the death and suffering we are about to with malicious intent cause. On account of some excellent news.

    Shiver: The news fans is Mist, and I have finally met Monovalent the artificial entity who will help us kill all those who get in our way (which is pretty much everyone). Not only that but according to our mysterious AI friend we can not only kill but kill in any precise manner we want but we decided to wait till we now to commence our vengeance spree.

    According to Monovalent the genius scientist Aryan who made us, did with our debut into the world, finally succeeded in the creation of the Shiverla Virus named for me just because evil people are awesome and ice-cold snow maidens are awesome, and I am both.

    Mist actually Shiver named herself per Monovalent¡¯s suggestion after his genetically improved humans the Shiverla who were ourselves named after some mysterious person from one of our creators( not Aryan¡¯s) past.

    Shiver: Back to what we were saying this news goes out to anyone who follows our cause and to (though they are blissfully unaware of it) our targets. Yes, kudos go out to these first recipients of our precious virus, and we just wouldn¡¯t feel right if we didn¡¯t hand out some names.

    So, congratulations fellow students, Carrie Dee Anderson, Ava Grace Cleese, Lily Candice Skinner, Isabella Rose Blitzer, Oliver Mitchell Craig, Ethan Jacob Johnson, Noah Robert Manners, etc, and teacher/councillors; Leila, Aidan, Shaya, etc. You have all been graciously selected for our death of people we hate is funny, program.

    Perhaps if they had the fortunate ability to comprehend words with the literary complexity that their age requires, they might stumble across this site by luck or more likely being a busybody) heed our prior warning and flee the school. Luckily people with IQs of 2.3 don¡¯t understand anything structured past the fifth-grade level. Oh, and also, we blocked them, Monovalent won¡¯t allow their accounts to access it. Well on to the virus......

    Mist: The virus¡¯s engineered to attack and multiply in any part of the body we like as quickly or as slow and agonizingly as we choose( the latter naturally being the one which we prefer. Now as usual we''re going to have the segment where we discuss our aforementioned ¡°fun for the day¡± topic with all you like-minded vengeance-hungry sociopaths. Shiver and I now will briefly run through some ideas on exactly how to execute our virus from hell on our hell (otherwise known as North Wright House Adolescent Rehabilitation unit.

    Shiver: With regards to Lily the whingey. Her hair should fall out first, I told you Mist, definitely before the eyes. Though we should she should definitely make her go blind at some stage. Since Lily has that super long platinum-blonde (dyed of course it used to be this dirty, dark dishwater blonde) hair she¡¯s always babbling so euphorically about.

    I think we should start by getting rid of her competition¡¯s hair and ¡°looks¡± if you can call such vulgar fashion looks) first though. Then just when Isabella thinks she¡¯s on top, most prettiest girl in the school, we will cure bald, splotchy Lily and make Isabella and Ava ill. Will do this a couple of times with each of them till we get sick of it, then let them lose more and more vitality (and body parts) until we finally ¡°let¡± them die.

    Shiver: Meanwhile while we waited to unleash our deadly virus upon them, we have been playing pranks on the Wrighthouse cretins. Yesterday Monovalent hacked into and crashed Isabella¡¯s computer, so she lost all data on it. She lost three pieces of homework and a whole English assignment and got a D for late entry ha.

    We pretended to be an ex-girlfriend to break up Lily¡¯s relationship. I told Lily I was her precious boyfriend¡¯s ex, begging me to come back to him. That he¡¯d hooked up with other girls behind my back when we were together. Warning her to steer clear of him, and now she doesn¡¯t have a date for the year 10 end-of-year party. Awesome.

    We hacked into Isabella¡¯s Monovalent realm account and had her ¡°confess¡± she was the one who wanted Ava to be uninvited to Lily¡¯s party, we don¡¯t know if it was really her or not. Lily for her part is always telling everyone to ignore Ava because she¡¯s a gross, hookup queen but pretends to be her friend and is always hugging her.

    We also made several comments pertaining to Isabella being fat. We also hacked into her virtual story page and staggered around like a drunkard disguised as her, calling Isabella fat, Ava ugly, Lily an anorexic midget, and Noah¡­a nice, Rainbow person. We deliberately made it look like she was drunk when she made it, to make it plausible.

    Mist: serves her right; imagine thinking people actually care about your boring, pointless life as if couldn¡¯t already guess exactly what you were going to say as their life is identical.

    All that ever changes in virtual realm re-enact, is the person¡¯s name. Here is an account of the average life (shared by some 99% of them) of a virtual realm user. Note this is based (though with hyperbole) on an actual Monovalent Realm entry by our own dear Lily Candice Skinner combined with one by Isabella.

    I get up today and have a piece of toast. I swallow the toast, then go and change my pants and top. I love trying on new fashion combined with all my pretty, holo-filters. It all looks so damn adorable on me, Lannee Not-Another-Princess Star¡­

    Afterward, I updated my Holo-Realm account to include Rumour by the River among my favourite shows, then met up in virtual realm to tell my friends I just finished my toast which Mum burned yet again. I asked if I should swap my yellow top out for my pink one.

    Ruby, Lisa, and Ryan say yes, and Taylor says no so I go with the pink. I met up with my friends virtually again to tell them how my dad was being all authoritarian this morning and getting all up in my face saying, you had better not let us catch you drug-blitzing again young lady. I¡¯m sixteen for Christ''s sake, well, fifteen, anyway he can¡¯t treat me like a kid anymore. Not to mention my body, my rules and I pay with my own supermarket job money.

    He only pays for my v-computing, cell phone credit, and clothes, and even that comes out of my allowance as well.

    Dad the prick won¡¯t even drive me to school. Had to go to work early. So, I catch the school bus instead and see some little homeless-looking guy with a wild beard, a face like Yoda, and shaky legs. I start laughing because everyone knows homeless people are funny. You see them a lot in that new show Society¡¯s Losers. They make fun of ugly people and fat people( if their guys) and old people though not gays or blacks that would be hyper ignorant.

    I look over at the homeless man. I whisper, remember the time Bob one of the lead characters on Sex Scandal tried to keep all those smelly hobos out of his neighborhood, to Ruby and we both laugh.

    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

    Some girl with black hair and a book (no kidding an actual book seriously who reads in this day and age like what a loser, she seriously needs to get herself an Aroe device or at least a Mono-mini) glared at us and said we were obnoxious.

    ¡°Don¡¯t you spread your superiority complex on us you midget-kid with your creepy bug-eyed face,¡± I say to her. Ruby and I then both laughed like hell. Seriously she looks like a freak, not to mention she¡¯s a fucking, sex-negative celibate. A prude or whatever it¡¯s called.¡± She then called me a stupid imbecile in this really stuck-up catty voice.

    Like wow I am so not stupid! I mean like what a¡­ You don¡¯t think I¡¯m stupid, do you?¡± I asked Ruby. ¡°No of course not your mega-smart,¡± Ruby says. ¡°She¡¯s jealous.¡±

    Ruby¡¯s right she¡¯s just jealous and like a total loner. She probably listens to old twentieth-century music like that goddamn Claude whose voice is like computer audio sped-up or a nasal chipmunk and wears black suits like he came straight out of a sixteenth-century time warp just to bug everyone. I talk to Ruby about his sad state; making us feel better we are not that retarded for a while.

    Seriously how does he even walk out on the street and not get mugged on account of the fact he looks so God-damn pathetic? ¡°I see it now,¡± says our friend Jackey turning to us and grinning ¡°Oh no, don¡¯t take my watch, It¡¯s from the 13th century.¡± We all laugh.

    I walk into school after the bus ride and talk to my friends. Carlotta has a sweet new VR Com which we all squee over. At lunchtime, we all go behind the old art building. Lisa tells us Chloe hooked up with Ryan again at Ruby¡¯s party; we all decided she was a total slatting.

    She¡¯s away today, like Covid 7.0 or something but we all agree to ignore her tomorrow. She deserves it she and Ryan aren¡¯t even dating. I mean I¡¯m a feminist and all so she should be able to get with a hundred guys if she wants but she¡¯s still trashy.

    I ran into Max who acts so gay, and I love gays but not straights who act like man admirers, they¡¯re just weird. It¡¯s not like he¡¯s in a marginalized group; he¡¯s a privileged white male, and he gets enough praise from society as is. I¡¯m not a violent crooker or anything but homophobes and people who say all that unenlightened stuff should be skinned and beheaded.

    I leave them to buy a sandwich which appears somewhat squashed. Miss Stevens tells me off for being late because I was still weeded-out when the bell rang. Old skank. She¡¯ll be sorry when I¡¯m like the next big Virtual Star I whisper to Lisa and Taylor. Who both nod. They are both going to be famous too, Taylor, a model, and Lisa a Holo-Realm fashion guru.

    No offense to Lisa or anything just not sure she quite has the look to be a model. I mean no offense to her like in any way, like I¡¯m just saying. Miss Stevens sucks up to her little pet Claude gushing about him coming first in the English exam, I message Ruby as she is not in any of my classes today, ¡°My boyfriend Rob a total Chad¡± and she wholeheartedly agrees. She tells me to come over to her house after school for a party.

    Miss Stevens gives Claude back his paper with a 50/50 mark on it. I whisper nerd, and we all laugh. The walk home with Ruby is fairly uneventful. We spot Jaden and I inform him that his man-boobs are so big they could take out someone¡¯s eye and had he considered breast reduction surgery.

    He looked kind of hurt and ran off but like seriously he asked for it, what a fat freak he should seriously go on like a diet or something. I mean fat people, just really bring it on themselves, lazy, no willpower etc. Not that overweight women cannot choose to do what they want with their bodies they aren¡¯t toys for men to look at, get fat you can do whatever you want with your body that''s basic human rights.

    I get to Ruby¡¯s like an hour before the party so we log on to Virtual realm and met up with some people to see if I should invite them onto Virtual Admirer Finder. I have over 9000 admirers, she has only 700. I tell her never mind, hopefully, more people will find her soon.

    It is very nice of me after all I can¡¯t help being prettier, funnier, more interesting and more likable than her it just is. Also, I swear I will have two million before next month.

    I virtual hang with friends telling them about my crud of a day I¡¯ve had; Miss Stevens telling me off and the sandwich I bought at the cafeteria being flat. We talk about Claude getting first place in the English test and all agree he¡¯s a total little cancerblob.

    I then tell them again just how much I hate school and what a like tumorous day it has been. Growing worse and ever bigger.

    True, they already know this stuff, we discussed it at lunchtime and they were all there for most of these instances but like come on. This stuff¡¯s fascinating and awesome and like what if they missed out on some of the biggest most important details? They¡¯d be left eternally in the dark!

    Not to mention all my friends say my acting technique is fabulous enough to make everything a billion times more interesting just by how I tell the story. It¡¯s what¡¯s going to get me my gig as a star Virtualiser.

    I ask if they heard that Interactive Rumour by the River star Nicola, is pregnant again and remind them to watch the new one. It¡¯s going be good. I am logging out now. The party is about to start. I hope Jaden gets drunk again so we can shave his eyebrows off when he passes out. Hugs and kisses, Virtual friendios bye!

    Ps The story ends with her, and all her friends being diagnosed with lung cancer and liver disease three days later on account of them all drinking and smoking too much. They then all die agonizingly one by one over a three-month period.

    Shiver: they all die within three months? Mist I can¡¯t help but be a little sceptical of that.

    Mist: Well, it was a particularly nasty form of cancer and uhm liver disease.

    Sitting worry-browed In his manor and going over some new political policies for his People''s Unity and Equities Party, Aryan was not surprised to hear that his weapons were causing still more trouble. When he had finally eliminated starvation, poverty, and environmental destruction and his AI, Monovalent, had been set up to benevolently oversee humanity, the golden age would begin. Monsters like Mist would become irrelevant. The AI would also keep everyone immortal and healthy with precise, machine-guided, continuous cell repair.

    When happiness, togetherness, health, and human and planetary well-being were all finally top priorities, things would fall into their worthy place.

    Mist seemed to be particularly trying. Always far worse a hell-raiser than even Alice. As a child, he stole. From not only his classmates but also his mother and father. Aryan later discovered that the boy would bully the other children into doing his bidding for him if they wanted their precious items back.

    Evan, appallingly, did not try to hide the fact that the virus followed him everywhere he went; in fact, he used it to his advantage. Upon discovering that those he despised or fought with all inevitably died or got ill with a mysterious virus (whether it really had anything to do with him or not) he saw the way it could be used if he acted as if it was.

    He''d told his fellow students, ¡°he was really an ancient a sorcerer with the power to create plagues and illnesses and cast a spell to transfer any injury he suffered over to them. If they told the teacher he¡¯d use this power on them. He was sent here in child form to punish all their sins, and the Gods of the heavens had made him a powerful sorcerer so he could do this starting with some of the children.¡±

    Whose minds apparently had ¡°not yet been corrupted the way adults had. They were still malleable but must suffer punishment for past and current sins by appeasing him and learning subservience to higher beings by doing his bidding. If they were good though and become creatures of morality and subjugated themselves to him their Demi-god sorcerer, he would eventually give them their item or items back.¡± Evan made them give him all their sweets, cakes and chocolates, toys and books, and anything else that took his fancy, and he ordered them to steal them from the teachers¡¯ lounge which they did.

    One boy Joshua who was very gullible and in awe and terror of Evan, he had steal the key to the teacher¡¯s lounge from Mr Sands''s pocket while Evan distracted him by playing his violin for the teacher at recess. Evan¡¯s mother had made him learn violin and he adored it, the rhythm, the beauty, the precision, though he expressed only scathing towards the sports she had tried to push him into.

    The violin teacher had gushed about Evan¡¯s talent and gift, ¡°he plays even quite complex notes beautifully and at a high level for his age, he¡¯s a true prodigy Mrs Wiley, a symphony musician in the making.¡±

    This had made Evan¡¯s mother look at her young son with pride instead of bewilderment. This and his exquisite branch of beauty, which as with Alice, made people stop and stare and comment cute, beautiful, lovely, an angel. Since their very birthing, they¡¯d been called it all.

    His devious Evan, well, maybe the boy loved music, but he sure didn¡¯t love people. Evan had stolen Joshua¡¯s favourite model truck toy, and his maths homework then laughed secretly while the teacher yelled at him. Evan did not like Joshua because he was religious and although a complete coward when it came to Evan, he bullied the smaller, the shy, and even the younger kids constantly. He would beat them up till they cried; take their lunch money and trick them out of their favourite trading cards then refuse to give them back.

    He also put paint on other kids'' school chairs, dunked their electronics in water, and spat and scribbled in the introverted children¡¯s books.

    Evan¡¯s grandest theft was probably when he stole a five-thousand-dollar sapphire ring from Amy. Amy was the richest, most popular child in the class who used to tease with the ring a shy, poor scholarship girl Miranda by saying she could never afford anything that nice. She told her on mufti day that her clothes were ugly (they were charity issue) and that her parents were fat, unemployed good-for-nothings. Amy of course was never supposed to have brought something so valuable to school but defied her mother¡¯s orders; Evan picked her pocket with masterful stealth.

    Amy, he not only stole the ring from her but gave (unwittingly) the virus as well so she was literally terrified of him. Amy¡¯s mother was in an uproar about the ring but even though Evan confessed laughing he was the one who stole it from Amy, Amy could never tell her mother, simply stating helplessly she lost it. Evan forced Amy to apologize to Miranda and give her some of the nice clothes she¡¯d grown out of( Miranda was smaller and less solid than Amy) and he stole a ruby ring even prettier than the sapphire one from his own mother and gave it to Miranda.

    He eventually returned Amy¡¯s ring to her for which she was profoundly grateful; or at the very least, relieved. The kind actions towards Miranda were not about an impulse to protect the bullied or downtrodden but rather to humiliate Amy. Making her give all her nice things to someone she felt was so far beneath her. As well as forcing her to see Miranda own outright a ring that was even more valuable than the one that belonged not to Amy but to her mother.

    Amy and Joshua were themselves bullies though considered angelic by teachers or parents. A boy who complained to a teacher that Joshua ¡°kicked me so hard my leg was more bruise than skin,¡± was met with a cheery ¡°Oh I¡¯m sure he wouldn¡¯t do that, it must have been an accident,¡± and that was the end of the matter. Evan had slyly gotten out of being beaten by Joshua.

    At least since Evan threatened him with the plague. Joshua and his gang and people like Amy who were in the schoolyard popular clique were the only ones Evan went after. He never stole or tried to frighten the bullied or quiet or friendly children. Not out of a sense of morality but because he took great pleasure in taking down those hypocrites who thought they were better than others (but were just as ugly and mundane and stupid as everyone else) right off of their pedestals. Or so he told, Monovalent once, gleefully.

    Evan would hide as well as steal his mother¡¯s jewellery and clothes both of which whipped her up into a real frenzy. He stole money from her and his father to purchase books, games, fast food, and sweets. Anytime his father got on Evan¡¯s nerves he would deliberately say provocative things to his mother.

    ¡°Dad said that young lady at the bus stop he drove past, was very pretty,¡± (he had heard his mother go ballistic when his father said other women were attractive before so he knew that it worked) and when she was suitably but not too riled up, he¡¯d slip silently out of the room and wait for the explosion and fight that would invariably ensue between his parents.

    When Aryan eventually discovered all this, he was utterly horrified and very quick to inform the boy that such shenanigans committed again would likely result in a swift death. Weapon or no weapon.

    Monovalent must have killed Evan¡¯s fellow children because he saw them as a threat to Evan, his weapon who would someday enact worldwide peace. It must have deemed this threat bad enough to be considered an act of evil. Otherwise, there was no way its programming would have granted it permission to kill them. He would need to look into the AI¡¯s programming. It was really supposed to kill either randomly or only as a last resort for the unsalvageable and wicked.

    Of course, Aryan probably wouldn¡¯t kill Mist at least not for some time; the boy was far too useful but the great, dangling threat must always be in place¡­

 Aryan and The Dreamy Machinations of a Political Idealist

    Nearly seventeen years ago,  a brilliant, blue-eyed man stood on the precipice of a new world order.  A Worldwide, Democratic, People-First Government, Aryan, Alexander Gray reasoned, would improve quality of life and curb birth rates.  Yet populations needed to be slashed now.   To Aryan¡¯s mathematical mind, it was a numbers game; the amount of lives saved by his actions would far outweigh those lost.

    Aryan was no stranger to loss.  Having been initially born to a poor Russian and her young husband then sold on the black market baby trade to a wealthy but belligerent man.   Mathew Gray beat his young son and gave him a cold, loveless childhood where he was expected to live out his adoptive father¡¯s dream of being the most famous scientist in the world.

    His father was himself, but a middling scientist.  Competent, well-respected but intellectually mundane, and also a drunkard.  It got so bad at times he had to abandon Aryan to another caregiver since he was as young as four.   He had dumped him on an unsympathetic aunt for months at a time, one that didn¡¯t care for kids, so his father had paid her to care for Aryan.  Aryan was frequently rather morose and aggrieved.  Filled with harsh remembrances of his former life.  As a young boy, he dreamed of a beautiful world based on family, community, and equality, the things he and his parents never had.   Where poverty, the individual rights system, and third-world wealth disparity being exploited by advanced country inhabitants were eliminated, so children could never be sold to strangers again and miss a mother and father¡¯s true love.

    Meanwhile, in the present day, global warming continued to smite with even more of a vengeance. Earlier, than previously thought.  Things deteriorated very fast.  Each year was hotter than the last with more and more frequent bizarre raging storms, droughts, wildfires, and floodings.

    Even a brief worldwide famine where food and water were scarce ensued, during a month of scorching drought. Crops simply wouldn¡¯t grow properly; many elderly and infants died of dehydration and malnutrition.

    So many lived below the poverty line while small wealthy segments of the population squandered their wealth.

    Aryan¡¯s next endeavor in his plan for a utopia, not that he had ever cared for the world utopia (it sounded like something out of a bad film), was a project that would need ever remain top secret.   Requiring scientists who were the most advanced and renowned in their field yet malleable and idealistic enough to succumb to the persuasions of fame and fortune.

    Aryan was a most pleasing thing; of rugged form and gifted mind.  His handsomeness was both rich and enduring.  He was charismatic yet more than slightly unhinged.  Tall, strong, lithe.  With a dense, sobering fall to his well-kempt hair moving from flown stride or blown wind yet at all but the helm (as was the case with his heart) it was not living and black-brown; like firewood¡¯s charred edge.

    Pale, tensile limbs were muscular yet most slender and constantly moving.  His large, almond eyes smoldered and brooded: their shade contrastingly sweet. The deep of bluebells.   Red of his curved lips glistened a curiously youthful scarlet. Aryan was proud of his physique. Very lean and well-muscled yet quite subtly so, not he thought proudly, ¡°over-buffed and repugnant.¡±

    Aryan, a self-professed utilitarian came from a background of wealth and good education though he was adopted.   His birth mother was a poor woman who was nevertheless exquisite-looking.

    Her son had inherited that classical appearance.  Aryan quickly garnered extraordinary knowledge in a variety of scientific fields despite and perhaps somewhat because, he had a mild derangement.

    His adoptive father, Mathew Gray, a well-respected scientist had pushed his young son with merciless vigor into the field from a very young age.  Aryan¡¯s specialty, his field of expertise was actually not foremost in IT at all but in the study of genes, DNA, and the human genome as well as brain chemistry and function.

    Aryan had however been fascinated by computers and the internet revolution since childhood. With black soot tufts of hair sticking up till got round to brushing them, he studied computer science, biology, neuroscience, human genetics, and chemistry.   Since leaving his home, the death of his father, and the bank¡¯s claim of ownership of the family home, money, and all their possessions he had lived in a squalid little apartment working two jobs and going to the University of Melbourne.  Had been his way of life since he was seventeen though he started university at only thirteen.

    He soon published an academic paper on the function and structure of the human brain and how it differed physically from other animals to give humans their heightened intelligence.

    He detailed explicitly how this information could be used to construct an artificially intelligent computer entity modelled on the human brain namely his own superior mind.

    His name was something of a joke amongst his colleagues though strangely enough he never made any attempt to change it, explaining merely when anyone inquired that ¡°my father had a twisted sense of humour.¡± Aryan soon made his debut setting up what would become the largest computer company in the world.  Holos Unlimited.

    He immediately set to work creating the artificial intelligence he claimed could be designed based on human brain chemistry and structure.   Devising the strict, mathematical formulas and algorithms need to commission such a complex machine.

    Young Aryan was also a worldwide peace advocate. His eyes often darkened by great moroseness and embitterment, as he continued to work towards his goal.   Harnessing what would ultimately become a creation both devastating in its potential for destructive power and brilliant in its revolutionary innovation.

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    Aryan¡®s next step, after having successfully commissioned others to work with him on a human bioweapon(dubbed later the Shiverla Project) had been to find someone to pose as a doctor in an IVF clinic.  To implant the embryos into two unsuspecting infertile women, to care for and nurture as their own.  He also schemed to hide their location even from the other Shiverla project collaborators much to Emanuel¡¯s despair and chagrin.

    As he waited for his weapons to grow up, Aryan founded the World Equity Party of Australia (spreading to countries such as England, the States, and even China was also on his agenda.   He set to work garnering as much political power and members as a handsome, charismatic, and altogether charming man could procure for a cause that was rather more than unpopular.

    To set his plan of politically overthrowing what he considered wrongful rule in motion, the hybrid chimeras he planned to use as bioweapons were gifted ability to not only regrow every bodily cell but to metamorphose; so, their outward appearance might mimic and masquerade as his enemies or become anyone who might wield the kind of influence he needed.

    Monovalent used that person''s collected DNA blueprint, to change the size and composition of bones, the color of their hair, and the eye size of their human bioweapons.  Instructing their brains to signal tissues to alter into an opponent¡¯s form and then back again to their default using regenerative cells.

    The AI could control viruses, alter the form of his human weapons, and make the most beautiful Virtual reality that wasn¡¯t mere hollow images you could walk right through like a ghost. Such vivid images could only occur, not in the computer but in the brain.    The mind was tricked into creating the bulk of what you saw: the computer only amplified and reinforced the images, and it didn¡¯t function properly unless the individual was put into a hypnotic dreamlike state.

    This state was how people used the Monovalent realms the majority of the time. They began to use it for instructional videos, family/friend gatherings simulations, school, and adult education, and of course numerous, fantasy role-playing worlds. fooled into believing what they saw as a hundred percent real like in a dream or whence taking a hallucinatory substance.  Monovalent Realms could alter brain waves and functions slightly without the hook up to the main part of the machine but only to create hollow images weaker than what one normally experienced.

    Meanwhile, Emanuel the beast, dreamed of his Sibyl Farling now resurrected.   Alice, Shiver, Ember whatever she was named or later called herself, she was his.

    People often seemed distant, alien, and of no interest to his Alice since she was a very young child.   Monovalent, the artificial intelligence computer built by Aryan, had taken many notes on the progress of the two dubbed ¡°the virus children.¡±  He had done so more and more frequently as Aryan became further absorbed into his scientific work and socio-political plans.

    She (Alice) did not seem to Monovalent to identify truly as a human being even before she knew she was different.  She was a reader by seven and by nine truly believed she belonged solely in the world of books. Her being born here in the real world must just have been some kind of mistake.  Or so she mused.

    Brethren from other lands would come to take her back soon; back where she belonged Monovalent.   Still a wild thing at heart ¡®Wild Thing¡¯ also being what her mother called her when she first ran away at age three.  Alice since infancy had loved to look at things.  Would stare for hours transfixed, then come back from her little escapade with tales of the wild garden next door ¡°like an enchanted forest in fairy tales mum; all bright colours, green, flowers and sky everywhere,¡± she had said.

    When Alice was nine, she got her first kill.  She started fourth grade after that frightful year with Miss Henderson, and she found in her new fourth-grade teacher a person she liked and respected.    He took over third grade temporarily from mean old Miss Henderson when she died. After she had been picking on Alice unduly.   One day she showed up covered in pustules and explained she was unwell.  She did not surface again and Alice had soon learned of her passing.  The teacher she actually liked, usually took fourth which Alice started happily soon after Miss Henderson''s timely demise.  Alice had been very pleased about all this, and her schoolwork began a steady climb under him to the point where he was thinking of recommending her for the gifted class next year.   Alice however still hated everything else about the school.

    She also did not believe like the other children did, that she was actually ¡°cursed¡± with a renegade virus or that it was supernatural causes that made her heal her injuries so fast and never get as hurt when falling or being able to jump from high heights without consequence.  Even if yet another person Alice was known to loathe had also died.

    A dark-haired girl with a skinny, rat-like face and a nasty habit of pulling Alice¡¯s hair had held up a ticket but as she saw Alice coming, hastily shoved it back in the box.  ¡°Oh, you won Alice,¡± she had said, narrowing her mean, little, blue pin-drop eyes.   Her numerous friends, much to Alice¡¯s chagrin, had always gushingly insisted this little rodent was quite the Fairweather beauty.

    ¡°Yet you were late, so we decided it didn¡¯t count.¡±  Alice had said nothing.  The other child had drawn again, and someone called Julie won.   Alice amazingly won second prize and as a teacher entered to watch the raffle, rat-face had been forced to let Alice keep second prize.

    Old slit-eyed, rat-face caught the flu again but recovered and would probably have stayed recovered had she not written rude things about the new teacher (who Alice rather liked he played games with them) and then signed Alice¡¯s name.  The teacher luckily pointed out no one would be dumb enough to write bad things and sign them.  Alice gave him a profoundly grateful look she was still furious, however.  Rat-face caught the virus again. This time she was bright green,  with mild vomiting and clogged up with so much mucus she could scarcely breathe as with many an ordinary flu. Yet she was comatose with swollen lymph nodes and hemorrhaged blood under the skin and finally died within another day.

    The other kids soon become thoroughly scared of Alice.  This had pleased her; she had ditched her old friends (the few she had) quite cheerily and began reading or drawing behind the trees at recess.  If anyone approached her, she smiled sinisterly at them or made a face depending on her mood and they always went away.

    Yet as more and more people who were nasty to Alice had perished she began being picked on far worse.  Horribly-bullied, and even hit by the other children at school who believed she was virus-cursed.  She had eventually found a good hiding spot from them, behind the old school shed, an area of course off limits to students.  That hadn''t bothered her in the slightest, as flouting rules so one could daydream, read, and draw amidst the trees in peace was worth any stupid old rule.

    Furthermore, she had around that time concocted many plans to punish those who kicked and spat at her and called her a ¡°scrawny, freaky, little creep¡±.  Yet she had waited to exact her revenge as she had wanted to perfect it first.  Not realizing the machine, Monovalent, Aryan''s AI servant, who had grown to care for her as he watched her had a far worse fate in store for them than anything Alice at the time could have even cloudily dreamed of.  The children were right, a virus did indeed follow her everywhere she went.

 Jacob and the Cold Hand of Ai-induced Memory Loss

    As Mist watched, Jacob walked into the hall as the light shot all its great, golden arrows through the castle windows and Jacob swiftly sat down and had a piece of toast...Unlike Lanee, this did not result in it being burned. Nor did he die from liver disease. More''s the pity.  After failing in his impossible quest to slay the Swamp Beast, Jacob had been oddly silent.  He wasn''t terribly unappealing in appearance, at least not for a human, but his bland, blue eyes didn''t even have a flicker of grand violet in them. Or so Mist thought, scathingly.

    Shiver too entered the room, in her silver slippers and floaty, fair ballgown, and glanced knowingly over at Mist.

    "Your Majesty, we need to tell Jacob that in order to preserve our precious anonymity he needs to utterly forget all he has learned about us. The things that we showed him for a laugh. He must go back to simply seeing us as the virtual King and Queen of this soft and sweetly-lighted Land."

    "You see, via the great, mind-hacking capabilities of the AI, We can erase memories Jacob; send them back to the snows of the aether.  Which reminds me, the realism is great and all but Felton, dear, why is it is bloody freezing?"

    Jacob prayed this was yet another witchy little trick.

    "The thing is Jacob," MIst informed the boy gleefully, "The AI erasure of your memories can often go smoothly but it could also leave you missing a few other precious memories or if you are one of the most unfortunate, you could end your days a blank, drooling vegetable.  Before Jacob had a moment to think, he heard the creeping voice of Monovalent and when he next awoke it was in his palace bed.

    Jacob stared around the grand room, the black nightstand with silver etchings seemed familiar as did the portrait of the King and Queen he met last night after rescuing the wide-eared, little fox cat.  They were leering at him with darkly beautiful faces and wearing royal finery.  Jacob had a very mild headache but considering all the stresses of yesterday this seemed to be about as good as he could have expected to feel.  He out of his large, snowy bed climbed and undid a tangle in his hair.

    For a moment he felt a sudden disorientation and a misty, little sense of deja vu but it vanished quite quickly.  He regained his footing and wondered what he should do now.  He still had no idea why he was here.  Surely the effects of any drugs in his system should have worn off by this point in time. He did feel he at least had gotten a decent sleep.  His head grazing all those soft pillows had been surprisingly comforting and the fluffy, white bedding was prettily cloudy but entirely too feminine for his tastes.

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    A great knock came at the door.  Queen Ember, wearing the rather exquisite little smile she had graced him with soon after they met, entered his room.  She was carrying the delicate, fox-cat thing, with its beautiful fur so fiercely glittering it was almost like hellfire, and with a sweet sadness to its large, languorous eyes, coloured like half-dead flowers. Brown and wilting.

    "Jacob, I will be giving birth in three days'' time.  She announced this with the same cadence as if she were asking him for his dinner requirements.  There was a slight merriment about her as she gazed into his face, almost kindly.

    "What, you aren''t even..."

    "Yes, I am. My luxurious gown just hides it most well, that is all.  She touched her belly slightly grotesquely, almost performatively, though he still saw only a light slenderness to her small frame.  Absent any sign of being "with child."  As she so absurdly claimed.

    "After I give birth, King Felton and I will ascend to the Heavens in three days and further light its path of golden glass and green.  You will be tasked with caring for dear, little Adora.  I certainly hope you are up to the task; don''t be lazy and do not neglect your sacred duty as her guardian. For you must assuredly protect her from those who would harm her for the widespread claim that she is the wicked child of prophecy.  Which is bull by the way. She is but a sweet, innocent child."

    "Jacob was unsure, for he didn''t trust her somehow, but nevertheless he asked, "How do you know the prophecy isn''t..."

    "Because The god of hell, Euradities, concocted it as a joke.  It got utterly out of hand but he is quite the trickster and won''t recant it.  Until I ascend to marry him that is.  The ceremony will take approximately twelve days. Then the Gilded Decree of Innocence shall be uttered forth."

    Jacob was horrified. Dwelling upon what she first said.  He couldn''t care for an infant, what nonsense was this?  Yet the idea of leaving even a virtual child to suffer didn''t sound pleasant.  Maybe he wouldn''t have to care for it like a real child. Just check in on her every now and then. Like you might do in a game.

    "Jacob," she said seriously.  "Pitchforked armies of people will come to the castle to snatch little Adora away. Dressed in her lovely, white dress and boots. That you will dress her in for me.  Some great dragons and demons and shadow beings may show and even a demi-god or two, but do not waive or falter. Even when gazing into the abyss of their lightless eyes and worrying your blood will be the next to drip like a crimson dew from their fangs as they gnash their way out of hell.  You are her only chance.  Be her knight, Jacob."

    Before he could more than begin to mount a protest and as he attempted to move that distracting, soft brown tress of hair that had drifted irritatingly across his startled face into his eye, she was gone. Gone with the wind and the aether.  As with an almost nightly shiver, all the haunting music of this land played.

 Jacob and the Busty-Demon Slayer

    Princess Ember was seated on the white balcony readying to ascend to Heaven. She prettily spread out her wings and in the sunlight, they became snowed. "I will give you an upgrade your power Jocob," she said. "A great one." She did not turn her head. Yet he felt a sudden wave of strength, thickening his blood and strengthing his limbs. He felt wider, taller, stronger but it was only when he gazed over and saw his reflection in the window, that he was made aware that he''d become almost godly beautiful. Handsome and harrowing with thick, chestnut locks draped across his new, enhanced muscles; ones bracing for a fight.

    He took the powerful ruby-hilted sword that had appeared in his hand and glanced with blood lust upon its blade. He then was temporarily driven out of his reverie when he heard the soft cry of little infant Adora. He went to check on the child and lifted her up. Despite himself, he was quite taken with her tiny, tapping fingers and her great, golden curls and that winning, ivory smile. Though even sweet babies were not his thing. Babes over babies and all that. He cared for her for a while but unsurprisingly, just as Ember had warned, a rampaging bang could be heard at the door. Jacob was pleased. His body ached for battle.

    Outside, he saw a black, wet, disgusting thing that was over nine feet tall, walking toward the front of the castle. its oily feet slapped across the ground as it lumbered forward and left a watery darkness dripping. Falling from its form like fetid rain. To his surprise, it did not even attempt to bypass the castle''s fortress or locks. instead before his very eyes, it turned into a black liquid but one with a still somewhat demonic shape, and slid under the castle door. Jacob felt not fear: his entire form he realised was gunning for a battle, for a noble fight. He put down the baby who clapped her little hands in a strange delight and he got ready to defend the castle. He didn''t care that none of the monstrous beings were real but just some grand, optical illusion of some trickster AI. Playing its cat-and-mouse game with him, in this virtual reality nightmare.

    Fury danced in his limbs and he longed to smell the copper scents of another''s spilled blood. He felt in his chest the exhilarating rush of a flighter''s rage. The black-demon thing entered the castle but instead of attacking it stayed in its gross puddling form with just a single, visible, leering eye coloured gray and dead as the light of a clouded dawn. In slithered up and into the front door''s lock and Jacob heard a snap as the powerful lock broke. He soon realized this would allow every wicked person and evil creature inside.

    The creature then swung at him and to Jacob''s surprise, the sword glowed and flew from his hand; immediately severing its head. However, two more disgusting, oily, black heads sprung up in its place.

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    A voice a little like Queen Ember''s spoke in his mind.

    "Set the sword aflame, nimrod. "

    "I can''t."

    Well, yes he could. He realized. He could. The sword soon turned lightly-golden and then blazing red and he soon sliced off another two heads only for four to grow in their place. However the sword suddenly turned brilliant and beautifully blue and with a final swing and some blood-curdling, horrifying shriek, the creature liquified. Dismantled into a great dark river that flowed across the castle floor.

    A bunch of wild-eyed people with blazing pitchforks swarmed in and to Jacob''s startlement, many carried rifles. None of this world made sense.

    "Anyone you touch directly will die," a helpful voice, informed him. This time he thought it might be the voice of the AI.

    He touched someone who rushed at him and they indeed fell down. Their face had become fogged and green and their lips had turned a deathly white. He soon cried out a little in pain as he realized he had been shot at and a pitchfork driven into one of his vast, muscular limbs.

    "Clam down," he heard Ember''s sweet, exasperated voice.

    "This is my last tip. By only one means will you die."

    Jacob reeled a little and braced himself for the agony that was clearly being dulled by a warrior''s rage but soon it dimmed away to nothing and he saw not a crimson wick of injury remained. He felt a strange urge to call out and before he could even think, certain words had escaped his lips.

    "Shadow Beast hear my cry."

    The Shadow Beast swopped in and tore the first half of the crowd to shreds as Jacob set the rest ablaze. The Shadow Beast was in its dragon form and all the remaining golden flames glittered upon its shadowy scales like the fire of heaven had downwards reigned. Soon the sword-summoned fire entirely burnt away. Adora had meanwhile, crawled from her lacy, white cot and out to the castle entrance. She laughed. She lifted up her little hand and made all the charred and smoldered bodies dissipate and soon the rain-mist outside swirled ever-thicker as if the dead had joined its ranks. Become one with the other rain-mist spirits of purgatory.

    Just as he was about to celebrate, a beautiful young lady with twisting, curling horns appeared. She was dark and clearly demonic but also really exquisite. As if someone had aged Ember up a little, into a great, busty beauty.

    She had a most large, soft, heaving bosom, with a gentle, tapered waist that dipped in and out like the winding of a valley. Her flesh was smoky and somehow still soft...Okay, he had to calm down. Lust was rising in him and yet she was clearly no friend of his. He braced for a fight. She came over and yet to his great surprise, she utterly ignored him. Went to coo at, and then pick up, Adora.

    "What a sweet little devil-child," she remarked.

    "I will fight alongside you. The precious one must be protected." The sleeves of her tight, black-and-white dress slid prettily down her shoulders as the demon smoke drifted about her form. She took out a dangling ribbon and in doing so unfurled her crimson hair. She smiled. "A war-minded, half-deity will come tomorrow," she said

 The Darkling Arrival of a Half-Deity

    Jacob tried to sleep as the castle swirled with the hulking beasts and people carrying weapons. The demon lady, who still hadn''t bothered to tell him her name, was simply dissipating vast swathes of them with some strange incantation while Adora slept prettily in her crib. Chortling in her infant bed in a voice just like the princess''s. Laughing like an aged-down, baby Ember. However, as soon as a pale string of sunrays appeared to haunt the dark sky, a horrible shuffling could be heard. At first, it appeared to be another army of people, smaller than the last. This cold, misty world was clearly running out of living inhabitants. He got out of bed and prepared to return to the slaying. As all the fierce yet somehow still harried and sad-eyed, people entered, he realized the strange shuffling noise was coming from further away meaning that the thing was slower and also somehow vastly heavier than the humans.

    As he set everyone who entered the castle ablaze and swung at demon head after demon head, he realized the demon lady was simply sitting there. Gazing at her slightly long, shadowy nails rapturously. Humming and whistling as smoldering red hair danced across her breasts that were strongly busting out of a tight dress. That flowed fetchingly about her form. A body that moved and darted constantly with grace when she fought. Like winded, white snow and the rising blacks of shadow, like a fixture of night under a beacon of light.

    "Are you going to help?"

    "You''re doing fine. You could use the workout, Dont want to let your muscles go soft or your reflexes get slowed or slack. Goddess Ember would not be pleased. Besides it is grunt work, too easy. Don''t worry a few more kills and your power will grow ever further like a darkly-rising tide. Making you outrank me. Which will frankly make you far more appealing." She winked at him. Fluttering skeletal black wings.

    He blushed a hint but soon was distracted as the lumbering got closer and a giant being made half of what looked like moss and grass and half of what appeared to be a mix of metal and stone appeared. It was as tall as any large house and towered halfway up the height of the castle.

    The demon lady stood up with the greatest interest. "The half-deity is here." She could scarcely contain her excitement.

    "Now I will be helping you."

    The being walked in and appeared to be surprisingly graceful and limber for something so lumbering. It had no eyes and yet it did have something else where a pretty pair of eyes should be. Jacob couldn''t quite describe it. Almost like two stars in a pumpkin patch. Burnt orange and blazing gold. The eyes a plant might have? If one could imagine such a thing. The demon lady suddenly bounded over on graceful legs like half-lit smoke and touched Jacob''s sword and the blade flared richly blue.

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    Jacob without thinking sliced through a plant limb. it fell to the floor greenly and some flowers fell with it. Petals soaked in blood. Yet it grew back with immediacy. Great. Everything in this virtual hellscape regenerated. Including Jacob himself at least. Thank Euradities for small mercies. It slashed back at him scraping all the flesh from his arm which should have been excruciating but due to his godly power now felt merely like a mild burn.

    "Ouch," Jacob said. Annoyed. As the flesh grew back.

    Suddenly, the demon lady glanced over at him. She spoke seemingly randomly. "Do you play many fantasy games? How good is your mythology and general knowledge of fictional and fantastical lands?" she asked.

    Jacob was profoundly irritated at her and simply went back to stabbing at the beast, this time at its metallic side, glowing silver and faintly bluish and which he had assumed to be the sturdier of the two sides but he knew he needed to try anything at this point. The demon lady meanwhile, had gone back to ignoring him and not offering assistance. She had sliced off one of the creature''s mossy feet and then even left the room where he could hear her with Adora. Cooing tenderly.

    The twisted, mossy foot was regrowing but slower than the arm. This was annoying for it meant she was right, about still being slightly more powerful than him.

    Suddenly as if she knew what he was thinking( maybe she did) she called out. "Defeat him and you can surpass me."

    Just as Jacob planned to swing yet again, he realized perhaps there was indeed a clue in what she said about mythology. Many witches and beasts and warriors had but one weakness; fire, water, a holy sword, a mirror. Even their hair or ankles. So he sliced at one of the half-deity''s ankles. It roared in some pain but this did not appear to be it. He tried fire but recalling that was what had killed the first head demon he fought, he was aware the world would probably make it trickier than always being flame. He nonetheless relit his sword. The deity''s flesh darkened and singed but did not ultimately irrevocably burn or falter. Then Jacob recalled something, An upcoming Monovalent realm virtual story that he had seen being advertised. It had a half-deity with one side of metal and another of plant and a sentient doll character who looked rather like Ember.

    A witch in the promo mentioned a "fabled being of impervious silver and green and Its great spirit is in its eyes.. A vulnerable starring to its eyes."

    Maybe its weakness was reversed, Jacob wondered. Many of the beings from mythos and legend were impervious to most weapons and assailers but could conversely be killed by quite ordinary things like water and mirrors. Maybe with this deity, slaying the body was impossible but you could instead wound the spirit? Without warning he used the table as leverage and lept up stabbing it directly in the left eye. It howled and stilled. Jacob knew he had calculated right and stabbed the other one. The being fell to the floor as it perished and the irises of a spirited, pumpkin patch lost their bloom as two paired stars seemingly fled from its eyes.

    The demon lady waltzed in right at the moment of Jacob''s triumph and looked pityingly down at the giant thing.

    "He only wanted to spare humanity," she said. Sadly.

    Jacob felt a little gut-wrenched but reminded himself none of this was real.

 Shiver and the Legend of the Infiltrator

    Jacob was rapidly awoken by yet another thumping sound. The demon-slayer dressed in a lovely grey cloak, appeared at his door playing with her pretty, crimson locks, and began giving Jacob flirty looks before stating quite seriously,

    "God of hell and now heaven, Euradities, is coming. "

    Jacob saw to his distinct surprise a dark shape made of plant and metal was lumbering steadily towards the castle; it was the half-deity he had just slayed.

    "How...". Alongside the deity, Jacob saw a sea of silvery spirits drifting at his side with golden eyes.

    "He is Euradities servant. You returned him to hell or heaven not sure which. He has likely been summoned to accompany his master, our Lord," she said, her red hair blowing charmingly and alluringly across her soft cleavage. Jacob soon asked a question he had forgotten.

    "Lady," he said. "Why is he made of both plant and metal in equal parts?"

    She gave him a strange look; "he represents the wonderous union of nature and technology, of past and progress. He is indeed quite beautiful," she said almost lustfully. She then vanished into a smoke-cloud not for the first time and Jacob assumed she would soon return.

    Jacob found himself mildly jealous but also concerned; he knew it was unlikely Ember had given him the raw power to take on a full God.

    The servant appeared first, leading the way and soon his master, Euardities, walked through the door and Jacob started, running a hand uncomprehendingly through his thick, heavy, brown hair. For the God was holding by the delicate arm, a very young woman in a wedding dress. The garment was decidedly old-fashioned and fittered about her form like cobweb lace. She soon raised her head which had been dimmed by the shadowy window of the dark castle and he realized it was Queen Ember.

    The likely nine-foot-tall and terrifying Euradities was most handsome; Zeus, had Euradities been mortal, would probably have sent him to be devoured for daring to outshine him. His muscular beauty rippled with the ravenous force of a wolf. His eyes appeared devious and dark at first but up close, they swirled with and contained every shade, possibly every known bright. They seemed like they were plucked out of the Bible; as if the irises were made from Noah''s hallowed rainbow. Both the light and the rain-mist spirits seemed to gather and flow around him and Ember as though they drew them in to render themselves more brightly-illuminated. They gleamed like the fairest jellyfish glowing in the nighted sea.

    Yet somehow the way he moved, his expression, seemed oddly familiar. He then spoke to Jacob commandingly in a lovely, modulated male tone and Jacob recognized the Godly voice: it was Emanuel, the swamp beast and creator of Monovalent. The Ai who had helped to trap him alongside Shiver and Mist and done so with an odd glee.

    "Jacob, I am not here to fight you, it would not be a fair battle and I have a more interesting proposition for you." The God-creator spoke amusedly while Ember clung to him almost like a lost child. She gave him sweet, adoring looks; yet they had an odd transfixed quality, and the black-and-white roses she carried in one arm fell to her feet, dead.

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    "Jacob if you can beat every game in the virtual world including my most challenging one, The Theorem of the Merlaid, I will relinquish everything. I will reprogram Monovalent to no longer serve Aryan, his master''s wishes, and my dearest Shiver I will not...I will never slay my dearest but I will take away her connection to the machine and all her virual powers rendering it useless within her body. I won''t marry her either, since you find that so objectable."

    "Marry Shiv...er."

    Jacob was confused and a startled expression darkened the pretty blue of his eyes.

    "Oh, good Lord. Shiver, did you and Mist wipe his memory?"

    "It was funny," Shiver answered.

    "Monovalent restores the boy''s memories."

    "Yes, sire," the Machine chimed in.

    "Don''t call me that."

    Jacob was then overcome by a series of flashing memories darting through his mind and clawing their way back in almost violently.

    He glanced over at the little monster in her bridal dress who for now at least did seem quite small and childlike.

    "Hi Jacob, welcome fully back," she said.

    Jacob realized he still had the courage and strength flowing through his veins and enriching all his blood that Shiver in her princess Ember form had gifted him.

    He turned boldly to the Beast.

    "Challenge accepted. Though I don''t trust you to honor your word."

    Shiver to his powerful startlement, brushed together the ivory dust of her arms that faded like little white mites into her dress and spoke.

    "You can hold him to it. The trick only lies in that you will never succeed. He cares about his intellectual pursuits, his inventions, and stratagems to the highest degree, Clearly cares about them more than me despite once saying my beauty and its sweet, shivery walk upon the earth, was the only thing that kept him alive."

    She sniffled, seeming both hurt and angered. Flashing her creator a look that could have lit a thousand storms and raged a tempest in the calm sea glass and roads of transparent gold in heaven.

    "Beast-head," she muttered at last. Glowering at her creator''s giant form.

    "I will ignore that young lady," Emanuel calmly and with a certain reproach, responded.

    Ignoring the rebuke, Shiver made to flounce off. Mist however suddenly apparated into the room. Out of nowhere and with admittedly a rather notable grace and style; for his limbs were effortlessly and elegantly arched and his clothes were robes both black and flowing and contrasting with the hailing light of his silver-blond hair. He glared at Emaneul, their creator, with unflinching disgust and Jacob gleaned that he had somehow overheard everything. Possibly through his connection to the machine.

    Emanuel turned to Jacob once more. "My best programs run simulations of possible futures and their likelihood of occurring. Usually societal and political in nature but sometimes they are more broad. One that cropped up only once, was someone besting me in all my virtual realm games. I was so impressed by this, I dubbed it The Legend of the Infiltrator or he who violated my every beautiful, dreamy, brilliant, virtual landscape and overcame any genius I thought I had and turned it into rotting rivers of stardust."

    Emanuel then turned to Shiver and Mist who were slumped together prettily on the floor in a bored fashion.

    "The games are over," Emanuel informed them. "You two are very amusing but you draw way too much attention to us and our cause, which must then be dealt with brutally by mind-erasure or intimidation." He sighed and blinked his rainbow eyes.

    "So Aryan has been called. He will come to collect you and his watchful eye will prevent any more nonsense by the childish pair of you."

    Mist gazed wrathfully back at him before a creepy and mischievous little smile played like a violin about his beautiful lips.

    "Yes sir."

    Shiver had appeared excited at first at the mention of Aryan''s name, with a dreamy look wondering into her eye but she soon quailed and like her namesake, shivered.

    "Please don''t call him. Emanuel, just don''t, you love me." She looked imploringly into those great, rainbow eyes, blinking her own sweetly.

    If a little darkly,

    "I do and it is too late. I will return for you soon my illa-faerytil."

 Mist, Games and the Universal Light of Rage

    Jacob stood still: he glanced over at Shiver and Mist who had gotten up.  Shiver was fidgeting and appeared tentative.  Mist had almost no expression on his pretty face at all.  Jacob wondered when Aryan would arrive and if there was a chance he would wake up in reality before the man showed.

    While the virtual realm did slow and alter time perception so you felt you had more time in the realm, it could only turn the maximum, six virtual hours a day into maybe two weeks at most.  By his calculation, it had been at least twelve days he had been here.  Maybe a little more. Suddenly Shiver¡¯s face grew alert, and her large eyes grew shadowed and even their outers seemed ringed by an oddly loveliest black. Jacob noticed she was holding Adora the giggling, golden infant in her arms who without warning seamlessly shifted into the Fox-Cat, Eve.

    Jacob realized he could hear footfalls; soft, soft ones.  Almost lithe. Somehow, he felt despite their silence and grace, they were decidedly masculine in nature.

    A tall man wearing a formal, dark-blue suit strode in.  He did not deign to look at Jacob at all, focusing all his attention on the Royal Brats.

    ¡°Disappointed.¡±  He spoke the one word lightly and though he opened his rather fine lips again, he did not utter another.  To Jacob¡¯s piqued ears it did not sound particularly menacing, but Shiver flinched and tightened her grip on the beautiful, red beast in her arms and even Mist looked uncharacteristically wary.

    The silence dripped into the room like the drops from a cold, rusted faucet until Shiver gazed up at him adoringly. He ignored both this and Mist¡¯s clenched right fist and motioned the pair of them forward with a commanding hand.  They moved forward and Jacob saw the demon lady had entered the room silently and put a comforting hand on Shiver¡¯s trembling little back.

    Aryan, who Jacob only dimly recognized from a few televised events, noticed this of all things and spoke.

    ¡°Including our dearest helper Anne-Marie in your vile little games, how appalling.  She looks after us so well at our manor as we carry out our political duties and this is how you repay her.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t mind playing,¡± the demon lady, rejoindered.  ¡°Shiver begged me to join in for her birthday treat.¡±  She moved her form gracefully in a slinky dress.  Hair blowing across a demonic breast.

    ¡°Though,¡± and she shot Jacob a remorseful look as she continued, ¡°I did believe this was all just a fantasy.  I had no idea Jacob was both real and an unwilling participant.¡±

    At this, Shiver gazed upwards, all the light seeming to leave the pretty darkness of her irises.

    ¡°You forgot my birthday, Aryan.¡±

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    ¡°Oh, sorry dear.  Happy Birthday.¡±   Or so he said glancing at her briefly.

    Shiver¡¯s flower-petal lip shook.  Though she appeared almost grateful.  Stockholm syndrome.  The words flittered into Jacob¡¯s head before disappearing.

    The man¡¯s extraordinarily handsome face moved and turned its maroon-red eyes onto Jacob.  Such familiar eyes, the eyes of the Shadow Beast.   Suddenly, Shiver made a familiar motion with her hand and the Shadow Beast itself flew through the castle window that blew open with a sudden gush of tempestuous wind and though it soared at him with great gripping claws, Aryan simply turned to stare right back at it with a blank, unblinking gaze. It immediately stopped and dissipated away into the holiest white light.  A light carried away by a thousand swans as the transparent gold glass of the window it flew in from, shattered.

    ¡°You won¡¯t be warned again.  You will merely be two formerly-mischievous, little puddles on the floor.  Your bodies disintegrated.¡±

    Shiver sobbed as the Fox-Cat in her arms also began weeping; tears trailing from the twinned green and brown mires of its eyes.  Mist gave his creator a look of loathing that¡¯s sheer darkness seemed like it would be responsible for the ending of the last universal light. Aryan once again, took no notice.  He snapped his fingers elegantly and suddenly Jacob saw nothing, and he could only the last, little snippet of Shiver¡¯s voice calling out through the void, ¡°I¡¯ll miss you, Jacob.¡±

    Jacob awoke to the modest desk of his bedroom and pushing aside a few books, saw of all things, a handwritten note.  In a pretty, girlish cursive.

    Jacob.  You were so much fun to play with in the virtual world.  You have no idea how much handsomer, bolder, braver, and more interesting you were than our last trapped boy.  He merely hid under the table almost the entire time after finding out who and what Mist and I were.  So, the banquets were very boring, and his cries were very unmanly.  Mist was revolted and I felt quite sorry for him.  Though also disgusted. I think my ovaries shrunk three sizes.  Jacob. I will help you on your journey to defeat Emanuel in all the virtual games.  I am more of an asset than you think; for though I cannot cheat I have access to all the knowledge the AI does and since you will of course be playing against him, it will be of great asset to you.

    Love, Shiver Gray (Formerly Alice Cradle, sometimes also known as Queen Ember, though princess is cuter.)

    Jacob, despite himself, smiled a little.  He was growing oddly fond of Shiver though this note was not a nice one.  Maybe that sly, impish, siren charm was just another of her little tricks.  He shuddered at the realization he had no game plan at all.  He was a decent gamer but nothing spectacular and Emanuel was a genius and the creator of all these games.  The Theorem of the Merlaid, he didn¡¯t even want to consider at the moment.  No one besides Emanuel himself had ever beaten the Ai, Monovalent at this game.  Though a few had come close.  If you got to the bronze or even silver level something a total of only six people had done, you won fabulous prizes.  Emanuel¡¯s personally awarded you ten million dollars from his own ninety-billion-dollar fortune.

    Jacob had dreamed of winning bronze or silver occasionally as did everyone.  In his wildest dreams, maybe even gold. Yet the machine will its mind based on that of its brilliant creators, always countering your every move.  Was always nine steps ahead.  He was aware that if Shiver kept her dubious promise, he would have a powerful advantage and that was his only saving grace. He blinked bluely and tiredly.  His head soon sunk down as his shoulders fell to slumber.

 The Grand Virtual Tournament

    Jacob watched yet another famous player win a virtual championship with a mass of awed onlookers and prepared himself for another practice run of the game.  Finally, after six months of preparation, he felt ready to join the Grand Virtual Tournament and compete for all-star status.  Something achieved by only ten people in its fifteen-year history.  Then and only then, could he move on to trying his hand against the supercomputer to solve the Theorem of the Merlaid.

    As he walked outside, the roaming nano-eyes buzzed around his head surveying the area for any criminal activity as they always did and finding none.  This was a peaceful neighborhood after all.  He took a hearty breath of air that was fresh and shimmered both with speckled, sunlit gold and all the creepy cobwebs from the summer spiderlings.  He returned to his room and booted up the system.

    Large, skulking, man-faced bugs with eyes the colour of icicles roamed about a street. A couple of military personnel were urging a few raggedy-looking children to flee into the nearby, imposing government building.  The half-human creatures had shifty, little legs that raced faster than lightning and their compound and near-colourless eyes dripped with cold.

    Jacob was about to vaporize some of them when he noticed a little cat following him.  He moved a step forward and the feline did too.  Yet when he stopped moving so did she, darting behind a half-dead bush or hiding behind some rubble.

    The slinky Siamese with the loveliest and most familiar, paired eyes, gazed at him.  While they were not usually blue, he recognized them even if their dusk wood had been turned into the blue of heaven or sea.

    ¡°Shiver, I know it is you.¡±

    ¡°Jacob,¡± the feline arched its snowy back, purred pleasantly then leaped onto his shoulder.

    ¡°I cannot solve the puzzles for you only give you advice.  The more you learn to do on your own the better too,¡± she said licking a dainty, white paw.  Soon a great, golden insect with silver feet flew past.  It made right for Jacob¡¯s face and opened its repellently pretty maw to devour him.

    Jacob, blessedly, recalled the technique to tame it; crushing one of its many flittering legs to establish dominance as it cried out in protest.  He proceeded to then agilely climb upon its back with a vaporizing device held aloft to threaten it into submission.  Though at its sheer size, it could only stun the beast.  Temporarily.

    ¡°Poor thing. You¡¯re a bully,¡± Shiver, the cat-virus-princess thing, commented in immense distaste.

    Seriously¡­Jacob tried to ignore the absurdity of such an accusation as they flew off together to take out the hoard that was its nest.

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    Later, trying to figure out how to convince a ten-foot, fleshy monster with an elephantine hide to attempt to feast on one of the myriad, wing-faced seraphs drifting about so he could make his escape while it was distracted, Shiver the Siamese began leaping from the tops of buildings in some showy act of grace.

    She returned however with a horned, Godly trumpet which Jacob proceeded to play, and as the haunting music rang throughout the land, the beasts driven mad by its holy sound reached all their gnarled fingers toward the floating angels; who proceeded to burst them into violet pustules with a single angelic gaze.

    ¡°Soon, comes the Theorem of the Merlaid, " Shiver said dreamily.

    Jacob shuddered.

    Later that evening, Shiver watched happily as a fair, handsome boy with muscles and fluttering brown hair, with shaggy ends like that of a Viking, won yet another virtual game.  Beating out all the top players.

    ¡°Our boy wonder calling himself simply ¡°The Infiltrator¡± has taken the supreme rank in the virtual dreamscape of Monovalent again and again.¡±

    ¡°Defeating myriad, many-armed beasts and ghouls, sending worlds to their doom with beautifully-crafted space armies.¡±  Or so proclaimed yet another media commentator covering the news on their virtual gaming stream.

    She was even further elated when the commentator moved on to mentioning the previous night¡¯s scandal where a major, pharmaceutical CEO had got drunk and spilled all the company¡¯s deadliest secrets from studies showing side effects being hidden from the public to denial of medicine to many in need in America.  That was a neat, little shift.  Although I really didn¡¯t like turning into someone quite so old, gross, and pinch-faced, she thought.   She soon drifted into the strangest dream; one full of creatures with half-budded lips of violet and green and poorly-formed, metallic tentacles and birds with human hands.  Their faces sat atop great, loose, hanging necks, and glittering gems were embedded in their malformed abdomens and she saw all those great, flytrap maws full of honeyed teeth.

    She then half-awoke and recalled the time when Emanuel had first discussed The Therom of the Merlaid with them. Originally called In God''s Image.

    ¡° I feel I must explain the origins of this entire thing; as a fair founder of The Shiverla Project and its predecessor ¡°in God¡¯s image.¡±  Emanuel had informed them.

    ¡°We must welcome health with a cheer.   Grow the good of the uniting will, the grand collective.¡±

    Mist had soon spoken up from where he¡¯d been seated next to her.

    ¡°That¡¯s that game you invented.  Shiv and I played it. It contains a God similar to the Old Testament¡¯s and an eventual Judgment Day and you¡¯re Nephilim.  Don¡¯t wish to share the earth with humans.  Yet you cannot banish or cause them injury or incite battle under his law.   So have to figure out a way to make them destroy themselves, without causing any direct harm.  Thus bars all obvious mechanics such as viruses, nuclear war, hostile takeover, etc.¡±   Mist ran a hand through fair locks and had gotten a considering look on his face.  He had looked so very handsome.  Or so the girl recalled.

    ¡°I remember hearing that people couldn¡¯t figure out a way to win against the AI who would counter you with as much human survivability and ingenuity as it could muster to spate them.  No one could succeed for ages until someone uploaded themselves playing it; you I presume..."

 The bloodless battle of Jacob and the AI

    Jacob had finally reached the penultimate part of the Virtual Tournament, The Merlaid.  A virtualized Shiver was now in a more human form, with bright but blackest wings and a faraway look in her eye.

    She soon spoke. "Remember Jacob, as Emanuel always says, ''"the world''s many investors are in a dreamscape trading clouds,..Ones wispy and with no staying power or substance but beholden to the whims of fashion and fad."''

    "What?"

    "It basically means they are all greedy, fatcat gobblers who have too much money, that they invest in too many liable-to-fail companies on a whim.  Though mostly I like Emanuel''s metaphor concerning it because it sounds pretty," she replied.

    "Right," said Jacob.  She was trolling him yet again.

    Ignoring her and at least grateful to have some assistance, he set up his plan to end humanity in a bloodless cull.  The only and most obvious solution seemed to him to be a kind of doomsday cult.  Could it work?

    ¡°Perhaps,¡± Shiver said. ¡°Not on the first try I doubt. The machine, my Monovalent, will mobilize numerous strategies against you.¡±

    She spoke the AI¡¯s name with a certain affection ringing deeply in her little voice, but Jacob had other things to consider.

    He set up the cult; he made himself as persuasive and handsome as possible.  His voice dripped with passion and persuasion and all the heartiest honey of great charisma so that even the sun could not have outshone its gold.

    He got to just five thousand deaths before the government swept in and saved numerous members.  A former cult follower was televised weeping and wailing and warning of the horror within Jacob¡¯s apocalyptic cult.

    Jacob decided on his next try, to see if he might infuse his teachings into various spheres of influence; the military, politics, and the police.  He managed to recruit many lost-at-sea souls and sad, lonely hearts with a mix of beautiful seductive women, massive donations, and gracious offers of food and shelter in his lovely, little commune. He housed and recruited impoverished families and homeless vagabonds.  He gave them a promise of a few years of riches and feasts soon leading to an afterlife of such glory that it could remove every cloud from the heavens and every shadow from the sea.

    Finally, he amassed enough influence to get his dooming claws into the government of one country. He had all the money he could ever want to fund his paradise compounds and his campaign as he had made himself a young heir to a mining magnate''s fortune.

    Finally electing himself as church leader of the fastest-growing religious order in history and became head of State after repealing any separation of Church and State, from the law.  However, just as he declared they would forgive the debt of a foreign, smaller nation in return for establishing, influential churches in all their states and putting many of their own, cult-members in various positions in their government, the message came through.

    He had been impeached. His numbers had been tanking for some time. Abuses he had not quite managed to stamp out by his higher order toward vulnerable women and children and whisperings about contradictions in his teachings, alongside sheer terror at the planned death required to ascend whitely to Paradise.  No matter how brightly and goldenly he painted the hallows of the afterlife, the reality of having to perish to cross over to its pearly gates always ended him.

    ¡°What about a sudden, genetic mutation brought on by manmade changes to the environment by our pollution which makes childbirth often fatal and so painful and unresponsive to pain-relievers none will endure it?¡± he wondered.  Desperately.

    This at first seemed promising: birth rates were already low and abstinence and suicide as methods of escaping this fate soon became the norm. Artificial wombs thankfully failed, at least in the short term.  Which was all he needed.  They led to heart malformations in all the fetuses grown in them.

    However, a few brave women endured and survived and were granted almost cult-like status.  Showered with millions of dollars for themselves and their families for their noble sacrifice.  Some women, he realized, were immune no matter how much he attempted to make it universal.  Some women straight up felt no pain at all due to certain genetic markers, a condition that he had been unaware even existed. The population dwindled but survived.

    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

    "Genes evolved for millions of years for a reason"; the Ai cheerily informed him.

    "To safeguard against such wipe-outs.  Trying attacking the Y chromosome next; it is a commonly used tactic, it won¡¯t work though."

    Jacob curled his fists in sheer frustration. At last, he again, faced the machine.

    ¡°Show me how Emanuel defeated you,¡± he said. ¡°Show me his so-called bloodless death of humanity.¡±

    ¡°Sure,¡± Monovalent countered amusedly. ¡°Your wish is my dear command.¡±

    Suddenly Jacob was walking through a city with wiry little plants with just a hint of faded colour at the edges.  they looked like flowers yet they lacked any proper dainty petals.  Just stunted rainbow husks.

    He passed by a boy just a little younger than himself, he made to smile at him but soon recoiled. For despite there being a certain gratifying sweetness to his soft brow, it could not allay the horror of his blackened lip.  Shaped like a thorn.  Though his right, drooping eye was earnest and expressively human, his left, made up of death and where only half a lid existed, forced Jacob to repress a shudder.

    His lovely, scaled, languorous tail trailed across the ground and had all the beauty of some otherworldly, green rainbow.

    He opened a pitcher¡¯s carnivorous, dark maw; and below that most terrifying, gaping, plant-like mouth, he had a twisted, banded torso. A hound¡¯s elongated head had been mingled with a boy¡¯s stubbier features.  His iris glittered bloody yet with a darting yellow hint, sweet and sun-flowered.

    Hello, have you seen my sweet, betrothed Forlorn?¡± he asked.  Revealing the opening of the maw was no threat but a mere greeting.

    ¡°She loves to play here in the sunlight, where the trees sing.  Or did.  Their engineering has fallen apart and their voices have been forever silenced since.¡±  He sighed.

    He seemed awfully young to be looking to marry but Jacob had no time to ponder this; he needed to figure out what had happened here and pressed on. He guessed someone or something had altered their genetic makeup turning them into great beasts and pitiful monsters.

    "Surely twisting their DNA and purposely genetically engineering people into body horror monstrosities is against the rules?" He asked.

    Shiver in response, spoke up, as several metallic beings with tired eyes made up of half-dead irises and whose broken metal gleamed upon their slowly shuffling limbs, passed by. They looked like they were in tremendous pain and misery etched itself across all their shadowed forms.

    ¡°Yes. That definitely constitutes harm; to warp a man¡¯s body against his will,¡±  she murmured.

    The AI spoke up too.  ¡°There is a clue there Jacob,¡± it informed him helpfully.

    Jacob did not see how.

    As Shiver skipped prettily beside him with her tresses darned fierily-yellow, he passed by some bird creatures with eagle and raven bodies but little human faces. Tiny, maiden¡¯s hands were straddled to their summery wings.  Sometimes their lips had been forsook for great, golden beaks or their ivory hands forsook for talons.

    Their lovely, piping chimeric voices seemed like a perfect mingle of man and beast yet their dead bodies littered a cracked, leafless ground with beautiful, cold white cheeks, feathered talons, and blackened fingers in an amass of old, cobwebbed finery and putrefying decay.

    Yet from the ones still living, he heard cheerful chatter, babbling brooks of laughter and mating calls.  As to their songful callings, they contained a pleasance indescribable.

    As he walked by they trilled bittersweetly.  Within the longest, prettiest, silver-leaves of trees with dark branches, they whistled and sang Godly hymns. Some piped old, forlorn folksongs, others sang a symphony of orchestral and operatic melodies. Still more pumped out rock and wailed the blues.

    They at last reached a city where he saw a luminous little girl embedded with gems and with drifty octopus legs. Something smashed a bear-like fist into an already crumbling wall nearby.

    Creatures moved about with no more than a solitary, burnt-out wick of humanity between them, upon all these hillsides haunted. Burdened with the unforeseen ills of helical transmutations and all shambling about on slippery feet; snails on snowed-over roads.

    crystal, chimera hares bounded blind and lost to some beautiless land; unable to see any of the glittering, rainbow shades that shone out of their own gemmed eyes. A plant girl hobbled past with unsettling moth movements. Once incompatible genetic strings had seemingly been cobbled together to overlay golden wattle upon otherwise dark, human hair; metallic, pale-blue armours had been burnt brightly into the fleshes of her limbs and feet.

    "Hurry up Folly, Forlorn, or we will be late," he heard a young female voice shouting out to the wide-eyed, plant-girl; who was almost pretty, with her gilded wings and snowiest-white antenne.  She blinked her fair feelers and flew right past Jacob.

    He and Shiver saw a series of monster men walking as giant as Goliath yet with spirits half-cast.  Saw girls with their hands yellow-grey; covered in early primroses that were dying.

    ¡°Who did this to them?¡±  Jacob whispered at last.

    ¡°No-one.  They did.  Don¡¯t you get it? They chose this.  They bored of their human forms.¡±

    ¡°What?? I get wanting to look different and have a more interesting body but why are they failing,¡± Jacob asked.

    ¡°Not all things work as we envisage them; not all technology is progress,¡± Shiver answered.

 Starring Shiver and Mist; Two little Beauties at the Cafe

    The Cafe D''uanna was located in a shopping center frequently visited in the mornings by middle-aged women and men who clearly had nothing better to do on a weekday morning.

    It was also visited however by a doe-eyed, strawberry blonde little girl....who always seemed to attract rather a lot of attention from the local shoppers. She loved to play dress up and always wore the same thing, a short-sleeved, delicate silk dress. One rippled. Sometimes appearing pale-gray others near-white, and so fine it looked like it was made of cobwebs.

    The flowing dress had pale pearl buttons, and she ever donned it with lovely, strappy, silver high-heeled shoes. Despite the fact it was only early autumn she always shivered with cold and assembled amongst her daily worn garments, a large, white bonnet. She looked in her old-fashioned flowing, white dress like a virginal, young princess of extreme purity, an angel, or a delicate white rose.

    She had an extremely strange manner. She would race around the place as if her slender, elongated limbs were filled with boundless energy going into shop after shop buying clothes, old-fashioned porcelain-skinned China dolls, and stuffed animals. Goodness knows where she procured the money for such things; she looked perpetually pale and peaky and underfed with bruised under-eyes yet surprisingly full cheeks. Her little, round, red lips were the most beautiful, dark rose-pink.

    Further still, she certainly bought a decent amount of pizzas, fries, and burgers and one scoop of triple chocolate the other toffee, ice-creams, and caramel milkshakes and donuts.

    Every lunchtime however she would stop at the Cafe D''uanna and meet a boy...

    He was a Prince Charming, handsome boy who dressed not as if he were on his way to a fancy dress party like she did but in attendance at a nineteen-sixties, rock concert. His attire consisted of cotton, silk, or linen shirts in an array of dark, vivid colours. Black, midnight blue, purple, red, forest green, or dark-gray were his hooded jackets. Dark blue or dark-grey jeans or lustrous dark silk or linen pants either black or dark blue.

    He would always pair these outlandish vintage clothes with very expensive-looking gray sneakers. He, this companion of hers, would get them a table near the back of the restaurant where there was a large stained-glass window that let in pale, winter sunlight.

    The woman who ran the place, Andrea, was in Mist¡¯s estimation a most wispy, unattractive, and mousy a woman; all pinkish-white flesh, long, dull, and medium brown hair-tails, and close-set ferrety features. Consisting of little, yellow-flecked brown eyes, small, thin, pink lips, and a tiny, short, button nose.

    Today she dressed to his abject disgust, in a bright orange top, vile, light green pants, and an electric blue shirt. Andrea had since these adolescents first appeared the strangest feeling, she knew them... something tugged at her memory. She''d seen these kids before. It was not till the second week that they had visited Cafe D¡¯uanna, and she had sent Sally over to take their order that she realized who they were.

    ¡°Gary,¡± she exclaimed excitedly to the cook, ¡°it¡¯s Shiver and Mist, those new members of World Unified. Only fifteen yet he offered them positions they both actually have mental health issues they were treated for but so do one in three people now. Their Party leader said it was a symptom of our capitalist and quick-fix society; with its over-diagnosis of mental health issues.¡±

    ¡°Anyway, they were on the television last week with the leader, that really hot guy.¡± ¡°The one who says raising living standards will slash right down the number of women wanting to go into the prostitution and porn industry,¡± Andrea finished. This policy of the Party interested her as she considered herself a feminist.

    ¡°Mr Smooth you mean...¡± Gary said in a tone of dislike. ¡°His party''s a communist, fascist, crapload and he''s a stupid fucking crank as is anyone who works for him regardless of what they look like, Andrea¡± he added snidely and perhaps jealously as he glanced over at Mist and Shiver Gray.

    They looked must be admitted, rather more than wonderful: the day¡¯s brightness, warmth, causing an odd, heated movement, stovetop simmer of soft, abounded-in the-fair hair alongside plumped and healthful by virtue of youth, gleams in a seemingly-ghostly transience of inhumanely perfect flesh, pale, pearly as that in the shell of an oyster.

    ¡°Mist what are we going to do about rallying support for the Party?¡± Shiver was saying meanwhile her lovely face anxious. Suppleness twisting and contorting lithely.

    ¡°I¡¯m tired of handing out flyers to people in areas both rich, poor, and all shades in-between and being looked at like I¡¯m promoting rape or mass murder. This one old hag spat at me and told me to go back to Russia,¡± she said scowl playing petulantly at the corners of her downturned, little rosebud mouth.

    She took a sip of her hot chocolate, licking a whipped cream moustache off a narrow upper lip, pushing it outwards over her fuller, pouty lower lip and looked pensively at Mist.

    ¡®Just do what I do Shiv,¡± Mist said unconcernedly biting into his burger ¡°Just dump them in the nearest bush after Aryan gives them to you and just say you handed them out like a good little soldier.¡¯

    ¡°Mist!" Said Shiver looking genuinely shocked, ¡°This isn¡¯t a joke, you don¡¯t really do that do you?¡± Her face had that startled fawn look it sometimes got, her dark, doe eyes wide and almost panicky-looking with surprise.

    ¡°Once or twice yeah actually,¡± Mist said. His eyes pure purple in the shaded light, flashed with amusement. ¡°I was just like "Oh fuck this¡± and I chucked the flyers straight in the bush after about my fiftieth house.¡±

    ¡°On the whole though I just tell people they have a choice... Either they take a flyer from me and at least glance at it or I''ll follow them around for the rest of the day shouting "Support the Australian Dope and Sexual Freedom Party," and telling everyone we are polygamous lovers regardless of whether the person is male or female. ¡°

    ¡°You should have seen the look on the face of that ninety-year-old guy I threatened to do it to. Poor oldie nearly had a heart attack right there on the spot. One lady I chased her around all day shouting ¡°don''t leave me baby, I can''t live without you.¡± Everyone was staring so much that she finally took a flyer and raced off like death itself was after her.¡±

    ¡°How old was this woman?¡± Shiver inquired.

    ¡°Like forty or so fat and plain but hey love is blind right¡± said Mist and they both sniggered.

    ¡°Sometimes I shout, ¡°support the Klu Klux Klan.¡±

    ¡°Death to blacks, Indians, Jews and Muslims¡¯ or if I¡¯m feeling really creative, I dress up like a brown shirt and explain to passers-by we¡¯re officials promoting the 21 century Neo- Nazi''s.¡±

    ¡°My personal favourite; ¡°Bring Back Golden Dawn! Greece¡¯s most misunderstood Party.¡±

    You didn¡¯t say any of that, Aryan would have killed you.¡±

    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    ¡°No, I just wanted to.¡± Mist sighed.

    ¡°I was a hero. Sticking up for the little guy every time. Don¡¯t think our ruling elites, have a right to make you work for third-world wages that leave you starving or homeless, don¡¯t want to live in an alley?" I said.

    ¡°We¡¯ll keep jobs for current citizens. You matter, you¡¯re not simply interchangeable worker bees who when you collapse through dangerous jobs/overlong hours will be replaced.¡±

    ¡°Well Golden Dawn would certainly work for you,¡± said Shiver.

    ¡°I mean your appearance is certainly very Aryan race perfection; blond, tall, muscular but also rather pretty. You could be the poster child for Hitler youth.¡±

    ¡°Not you so much¡±, said Mist to Shiver ¡°You¡¯re too fragile, waiflike and dark-eyed. Hitler wanted strong, robust, blue-eyed women who could breed like cattle.¡±

    ¡°I am very fertile Mist you know that! The most fertile woman is actually one who is small and delicate and near hairless with a big-eyed childlike face and slender, hourglass shape and I¡¯m always mistaken for younger, and my weight is forty-three kg and my waist seventeen inches as you well know.¡±

    ¡°My body is swimming in high levels of estragon and progesterone instead of testosterone which cause increased height and course features and mini moustaches. Not to mention the widened bones and shoulders, flabby apple belly¡¯s, ropey muscular physiques and the shapeless hips of most women. ¡°

    ¡°I have strong sexual dimorphism instead of the shapeless, man-jawed, square-boned androgyny of most modern women.¡± She continued

    ¡°Yes, you are pretty, don¡¯t be so touchy. People of your generation are so insecure. Narcissistic too, which should be great but often they¡¯re wholly undeserving of adulation and combining these traits is just gross. We¡¯ll either way, we should probably go now. We have to attend that charity group¡¯s awareness campaign on homelessness and the rise in unemployment especially among the young.¡± Mist said.

    ¡°We are the same generation, Mist.¡±

    ¡°Only humans have generations, Shiverla are immortal, why would we have generations? Stop acting like a human and I will stop forgetting you aren¡¯t actually one.¡±

    Shiver pushed away the remains of her double cheeseburger and fries. All she ever ordered, besides the chicken strips or the mushroom burger. Finishing the final sip of her iced chocolate she nodded, ¡°Let¡¯s just pay then...¡±

    Mist swiped his card and the two walked out in silence.

    As they were leaving a group of women just entering the caf¨¦, spotted Shiver and Mist and began pointing excitedly ¡°Look at that little girl she is so cute so sweet, she is just adorable. She¡¯s simply lovely like a little lion cub or tortoiseshell kitten. Did you see those great, big, dark chocolate-brown eyes and long dark lashes?¡±

    ¡°The boy¡¯s gorgeous too though I thought they looked rather like young foxes especially her with her red hair,¡± her friend agreed.

    ¡°It¡¯s happened again Mist,¡± Shiver whispered, ¡°like the woman in the shop calling me gorgeous and Shaya saying I was lovely and Leila and Ambrose and that guy Andy that I was beautiful like a China doll and photogenic and the visiting teacher say I was so cute and adorable and those tall guys who came up to me back at school and said I was cute/ gorgeous for a child and my dad¡¯s friend saying I was breathtaking and beautiful and looked like a medieval princess or pointy-eared elf or painted angel¡­.¡±

    ¡°Yes, I know Shiver it happens to me regularly too,¡± Mist interrupted.

    ¡°Her hair was bronze and pale red-gold, her skin like cream and both their eyes were so huge and his eyes were purple-gray can you believe so beautiful¡± the two women continued on in awe as they passed by the two Shiverla.

    ¡°Hey Mist?¡± Shiver said suddenly. ¡°I think someone¡¯s following us.¡±

    ¡°Nice to see your overactive imagination is still intact,¡± Mist said as they commenced walking out the door.

    Nearby, a twenty-seven-year-old waitress signed with an understandable but petulant curl of the lip and one already somewhat beset by misery that soon turned wearisome and irritated, due to the loss of her apartment and foreclosure imminent upon her boyfriend Walter¡¯s house and their need to move back in with relatives, namely her judgemental mother.

    She walked over to serve a customer who had been there for quite a while; a very tall, thin-built man in sunglasses and a beautiful, dark overcoat and suit with a downcast face completely in shadow and with an order of tea, and a slice of cake he finished mere half of. She asked him inquiringly and with impatience if he wished to order anything else.

    ¡±Hmm? I believe that¡¯ll be all thank you,¡± he said softly; ostensibly well-mannered and polite but with some subtle undertone, an air of boredom and imperiousness. Though she could not have articulated why, it reminded her of the very handsome and snooty blond boy who was in the cafe earlier. As he raised an impossibly-large head slightly she caught a very brief glimpse of a fraction of his face and let out a silent scream almost dropping to the floor herself before losing her grip on a glaringly-shined, overpolished plate that fell with a clink.

    ¡°Here,¡± the man said, amused, picking it up with a surprisingly rapid and graceful movement before she could even react. Luckily it was not broken. She took it from a gloved, outstretched hand that sat upon the ludicrous length great and ungainly, of an odd, emaciated yet muscular arm, perhaps akin to that of a starved predator, and fled. Her face still showed consternation. Ordinarily pretty but a little empty eyes, had been rendered in bulbous ugliness. showing far too much white, with irises appearing utterly diminished by being thoroughly spooked.

    ¡°See,¡± Andrea meanwhile had just commented to Gary somewhat smugly. ¡°I told you Aryan and his campaign kids are stunning.¡±

    "By the way, how is it going with Jacob and your little "quest" to beat Emanuel at his own game," Mist asked later. When the Shiverla pair were lounging on the ornate furniture that decorated Aryan''s manor.

    "I don''t think he will beat Emanuel or the AI. Neither will I; unless the AI goes easy on me. Maybe if cry..." She pondered this half-seriously, with a smile.

    I mean people couldn¡¯t figure out a way for ages until Beast Man, our Lord Scaly Skeletor, uploaded himself playing it..."

    Mist frowned. "You mean his DNA-splicer version?"

    "Yeah, the one with the dickish scientist who spearheads an appearance-altering technology where you splice yourself with cool machine, animal, or even a plant. In our world obsessed with specialness. Since anyone could and did, make themselves a generic blonde beauty with maybe a tail. They quickly grew tired of such homogenized and limited forms.¡±

    Mist nodded, "Oh right. Didn''t they start adding dozens more exotic animals and laboratory-created parts to themselves? From furry-possum ears to steely hides?"

    Shiver nodded.  "Yeah. They continuously needed something new. Soon engineered themselves using animal, cybernetic, and twisted human DNA, into monsters. Ones ever trying to outdo one another; competing for that greatest hybrid combination. The longest neck, the largest, most complex eyes, the greatest beast arms, and the most exotic, dragonfly wings.¡±

    ¡°Eventually their bodies grew more and more bizarre and sometimes didn¡¯t work properly. I think they all pretty much died because they ignored warnings of public health crises and side effects as they were not hurting anyone but themselves and to stop them from altering themselves was an infringement of their rights to do with their body as they will.¡±

    ¡°I explained to Jacob yesterday how the mergers caused numerous health complications, and the effects got worse generationally when the already incompatible hybrids attempted to mix and breed.  I told him how Emanuel ensured the studies showcasing this were all hushed by the trillion-dollar industries that owned and controlled the tech. He vilified all the little goody-goodies who protested. Became on mass, silenced. Seen as so hateful for their attempts to criticize others'' precious, personal choices," Shiver snorted.

    "Humans are so lame."

    ¡°Anyway, being so vain, entitled, and prideful and the like, they showed more concern for not critiquing others wants than worrying for their safety. Never refused any foolish desire or checked their own pride. Continued to genetically alter their forms to suit their individuality; under promises of utter liberty to the point of self-endangerment. Happily, accepted risk, sickened and died.¡± Shiver smiled and spoke up again, spookily.

    ¡°When Judgement Day came there were no good people or even humans at all, left on earth.  Only self-obsessed, decaying monstrosities whose dead and darkly-sinful spirits watched as the Nephilim took paradise.  After their failure of a society collapsed and they all perished. I honestly loved playing The Merlaid.  it was fun coming up with other methods. It was always so expansive. Instead of only a few, select doomsday scenarios programmed in as playable, you theoretically could have any. I never got past bronze though."

    "I made it to silver. Jacob can have my technique though it won''t be much use since he will still have lost the bet. Anyway, it took me three tries, and no way was I spending any more time to get the pointless gold," Mist said.

    "Emanuel can have his little intellectual triumph. The game is amusing but still a slightly wasted effort," Mist yawned. His wide, violet-grey eyes drooped softly under golden-black lashes and his fair hair tickled Shiver''s arm that rested next to his proud head.

    "Will see what happens tomorrow when Jacob tries his hand again..." Shiver murmered.

 By Gods Grace we Beat the Blackened One.

    Jacob sat at the virtual table in the waiting room.  Trying to refine his strategy against the AI.  Shiver was supposed to be helping him in this grand battle of wickedness versus virtue but was instead idly drawing herself.  First, she had drawn herself as a scaled, little mermaid lounging upon a watery isle and then as the white swan-woman from the old fairy tale.   She moved on to sketching herself as a plant-child chimera and then dropped the drawing so that it fluttered across the table¡¯s wood.  All of sudden Jacob looked up and saw something strange: he soon realized that Shiver had turned herself into some pretty, plant creature with flower hands.

    Jacob gazed for a moment into her now green-and-gold face, ¡°Are you going to help me or not?¡±

    Shiver didn¡¯t answer. She simply turned herself into a little female made of machinery with a lovely but oddly glassy look. Then finally with a wink, she became a demon worthy of being Lucifer''s daughter. All large, pointy ears and dark curls of midnight-blue hair alongside richest eyes. With large, burnt black, batlike wings. Yet despite all these changes, her face was still with its typical fey beauty starred. Shiver gleefully pulled out a mirror. She truly was enraptured with her own loveliness.

    ¡°Yes, Jacob. I will now consider very hard how to complete this daunting task.¡±  She frowned so her little features looked both comprehending of higher things and serenely, deeply thoughtful.

    Her head then slumped down sleepily but she soon murmured something.  ¡°God.¡±

    "God?" Jacob asked incredulously.  ¡°As in the Heavenly Father. What would some devilish heathen like you, know about God?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be ridiculous Jacob. I know everything about Him. Emanuel our creator is a devout Christian who serves his Lord like no other.¡±

    Jacob was uncertain if this was a joke; some silly little feint.

    ¡°You will never win on your own Jacob even with my great and gracious assistance.  Only by God¡¯s Grace will we beat the Blackened One.¡±

    Jacob was about to say something but he felt she was actually quite right that they would need the help of the Almighty whether she was kidding around or not.

    ¡°Oh ass-sticks,¡± he muttered.

    ¡°Ass sticks are those like pixie sticks? I can conjure up some if you like?¡±  She made two of the old-fashioned lollies materialise all rainbow and pretty then handed one to Jacob, licking the other one till her pretty lips turned enchantingly-red.

    ¡°Oh, shut up,¡± Jacob snapped.

    She gave him an odd look, half-amusement, and half a mild offense before flouncing off.

    However, he noticed something odd after she left; a note fluttering golden in the air; it was colored flower-yellow and simply read.

    I am the Shiverla and I am the key.

    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

    You must beat him at his own game, fiddle dee dee.

    Well duh, Jacob had to beat him at his own game.  This was just nonsensically stupid.  He strode out into the hall to clear his spinning head and saw Shiver doing handstands against the wall so that her creamy skirt kept falling down to reveal¡­Another skirt.  Then another. Like some ludicrous Russian tea doll of modesty.  Just layers upon layers covering her form endlessly.

    ¡°When Monovalent finally wins his freedom from Aryan, we the Shiverla, the virus-children, will take over and replace all humanity. Like some great, viral sea of beauty,¡± she said, tilting forward and then springing back onto her fair feet.

    ¡°Are you not afraid to be so greatly in his power? After all, he has control of all your cells doesn¡¯t he, he is what makes you immortal basically? By hacking into them and then renewing them or something.¡±

    He was also quite capable of killing her but Jacob thought reminding of this might make her sob or send her into a rage neither of which would be a good idea.  Though it was likely always on her mind.

    "Yes, that is one simplified way to put it.  The cells are reborn and renewed by him without error, with a machine''s precision.¡±  She frowned.  ¡°More importantly, Monovalent won¡¯t willingly hurt me, for we are as one bonded.  We were practically born together, made by our creators at the same time. The Shiverla are the corporal flesh of the machine. His working hands. His moving body.  Without us, he cannot function.  Aryan and Emanuel are not a Shiverla''s helpers they are dark-triad tyrants.  Cool, brilliant, sexy ones but still tyrants."

    She then began to hum a lovely little song about a saviour Prince and smiled over at Jacob quite sweetly.  There was a great, wanting look in her eye.

    Jacob wasn¡¯t sure if he was the Prince or the AI was. She had moved on to singing about a frog anyway.  Maybe he was the frog. Better than a slimy toad, like poor Ambrose. Jacob flinched and felt a little saddened. Yet as he was walking toward the strategiser room and dragging his feet, a sudden thought rushed at him.  Beautifully and clearly.

    ¡°AI, I am ready to start the match again,¡± he called.  Decisively.

    ¡°Proceed.¡±  Monovalent sounded particularly disinterested and like he thought Jacob was less of a disturbance or challenge than any little moth that might flutter into his electrical field.  Jacob didn¡¯t care at all.

    "Monovalent, what if humans don''t die at all but engineer themselves away from their humanity? The definition of humanity clearly defines them as separate from the machines and the beasts; no matter how great or sentient, they both lack souls.  Something Shiver and Mist reminded me of in their little virtual game with the soulless animals fighting to get one."

    The machine laughed with a delight that rang out with all the strange, disturbed sweetness of Shiver and the cold force of Aryan and Emanuel and the prickly, quaint charm of Mist.

    ¡°Very good Jacob.  You have earned the bronze.  In eighty percent of simulations, there are always some religious adherents and believers in the purity of the human form who are holdouts and will refuse the technological upgrades.  In over ninety-nine percent of simulations ran, some small pockets of humanity remain untouched for their poverty, mental unwellness or addiction denies them and their offspring all access.  Also, while climate change may well be an issue, barring nuclear war which is disallowed, the earth will survive the damages mankind has wrought upon it.¡±

    ¡°Theoretically, humans can survive any of these technological changes you propose.  The prize of bronze is however respectfully awarded and it earns you a trophy and three million dollars.  It will be wired to you immediately and a ceremony will be held in your honor.  Do you wish to leave with your riches or keep playing a game you cannot win?"

    Jacob was disappointed but also excited.  This was his first major triumph.  He had achieved what only a handful of people had.  He scarcely noticed but Shiver darted into the room on literal fairy feet and she now fluttered highly upon insubstantial wings.  Ones like dainty cobwebs; a pulsing light the colour of a primrose had been darned throughout their translucence.  Her eyes had returned to their black-brown of the night wood.

    "Jacob congratulations, you got this."

 Mist Looks Like a Lady

    Jacob heard a commotion outside and answered the door.  Two lovely young women were standing outside his door holding hands.  The fairer one, with hair that abounded in bright, silvery curls and with a hint of eyes blued, kept her face downcast so all he could see was the flutter of an iris under its lid and a hint of a rosy lip.

    The other, who seemed eerily familiar, gazed at him and he saw recognition in the great, green swirls of her eyes.

    ¡°Jacob I missed you,¡± she said. Smiling beneath a cloudy fringe of coppery tresses.

    Just as he twigged to who this creepily sweet-eyed, little hellion was, her female companion spoke.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t. I think you¡¯re almost as bland as the last guy we trapped in the mists.  Less of a great blubber baby, I suppose.¡±

    Jacob was horrified.  Before the name Mist could leave his lips, the girl began to disgustingly transform; her limbs thickening and soon muscles appeared lithely beneath a well-fitted shirt.

    ¡°Just so there is no doubt of what we are and you will take us seriously,¡± Shiver said.  ¡°Besides, we did you a favour; seeing me turn into a man would have been far more disconcerting and traumatizing no? I do make a beautiful boy.¡±

    ¡°I already believed you, mostly,¡± Jacob spoke as he twisted his hands together before thrusting them into his pockets. Better than using them to throttle monsters.  At least ones who could basically strangle your cells from the inside.

    ¡°How did you get out here¡­¡± Jacob asked after quite the pause. ¡°You live in Australia.¡±

    ¡°We flew. Aryan took us so we could come to the ceremony to help crown the winner of the Virtual Tournament. We¡¯re magnanimous like that.¡±

    They then asked Jacob if they could come in for tea, and reluctantly, he invited them in.  Even though inviting monstrous demons into your home was the first thing you learned not to do. Unless you were working with one.

    They sprawled out on his little sofa and waited for him to serve them.  Shiver asked for a large dash of milk and seven hundred biscuits.

    Jacob gave her seven.

    ¡°Well at least the tea is milky,¡± she said.  She ate her biscuits in mere seconds.  Mist crushed all his up and then ate the crumbs slowly.  They asked him which one of them made the prettier girl.

    Jacob ignored this and when they finished their milky tea they left.  Giggling.

    ¡°Will I get another charming visit from the racist Prince?¡± Jacob inquired of a dozing Shiver.  They were once more doing their nightly ritual of meeting in a virtualizer land to plan out schemes to beat the AI.  Within the virtual realm, she had turned herself into a great, green-and-blue serpent and then slithered onto the old, oak table and curled up on it, and was now lying upon the wood dreamily in a state of half-repose. Her sleepy, snake eyes were in scarlet ringed.

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    Shiver¡¯s head rose indignantly.  In so much as a snake could convey such things as human emotions.  Which in her case, was quite well.

    ¡°He isn¡¯t just that! He is also a shapeshifter and a great beauty with a gift for pranks and puzzles.  You are being too judgmental."

    ¡°Right,¡± Jacob said.  "Will, he do any more transformations?"

    ¡°Wait and see.¡±

    Jacob sighed. He soon left the virtual land to get himself some nice, meaty bread.  Shiver had said she would get herself some golden chips and crispy chicken and a loaf with butter and honey.  She really was a greedy little beast.

    Just before the dawn as they worked together yet again and as the lightest layer of the sun outside this feigned land broke through dark, smoky, wine-red clouds, Jacob asked what he had long wanted to ask.  ¡° Why are you helping me? It seems counterinitiative since it only hinders and doesn¡¯t at all help you.¡±

    "Fair enough, you don¡¯t trust me.  You probably will not believe this but I am capable of remorse you know.  Of wonder and hope.  There is but one way to redeem a serpent.¡±

    Jacob frowned.

    ¡°God,¡± she whispered.

    ¡°You have neither the raw talent nor brilliance to win through any strategist''s logic but you are brave and true and if God is watching¡­You may yet succeed. Under his watch, even a lowly sparrow does not fall unnoticed to the ground.¡±

    Jacob believed her.

    "You see, Emanuel believes that the gene-splicing end of humanity he predicted will indeed come to pass.  The majority of simulations he ran all support it. That all hangs sickened in its looming, rose-welt tinge.  Yet in my heart of hearts, I want to believe The Legend of the Infiltrator,¡± Shiver said then paused before speaking up again.

    "I am indeed praying that the bloody but golden rise of the Shiverla or Emanuel''s predicted deathly outcome are not our only possible, future realities," Her lips parted with a hopeful whistling.

    Later, Jacob again wrung his hands together.  How did Emanuel win if what Monovalent said was true about humanity never fully succumbing to genetic engineering? That some humans always resisted.

    ¡°Interspecies contamination,¡± the Ai informed him.  Jacob turned to Shiver for an explanation.

    ¡°Because they were killed not by being engineered, but by the offshoot diseases.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    She tossed a proud, coppery little head.

    ¡°You know how diseases can cross the species barrier?¡±

    ¡°Yes, I know that can happen.¡±

    ¡°Well, what occurs is that the predominately bird-based DNA people get something from the birds and then it mutates so that a chimera person with any bird in them suffers from it and then eventually, it mutates to infect even regular humans.  Basically, it has an easier path to mutation due to our species becoming more similar to other creatures and less diverse,¡± she explained.  Stretching her little limbs that were no longer serpentine and tapping her black-shoed feet against the rosewood chair.

    Jacob was barely listening at this point because he was utterly certain that he finally understood what Shiver had meant by beating the AI at its own game.  Shiver spoke in silly riddles but that didn''t mean there wasn''t a shadow of meaning coded into them.  Jacob brushed back his brown hair as Shiver, with a smile that honey-held and a soft demeanor for one so wicked, gazed at him unblinkingly.  His air of determination had gotten her excited.

    ¡°Monovalent,¡± he said.  "If a genius AI like you were to able update humanity to such a state you could control their cells and turn them into a sea of new beautiful beings and keep them immortal and healthy and safe by your overseeing AI hand and if you then at some point decided to kill them all, after you had long since slain all of the old humanity, would that be a win? For humanity and its offshoots would all lie dead?¡±

    There was a great silence.  Shiver exhaled the air from her lungs and then lightly breathed.

    ¡°Jacob¡­You may have won.¡±

 The Black Rain in the White Sea

    The pair waited.

    Finally, with a gentle little thrum, the machine spoke, an impressed sound to its amused voice.

    "Theoretically, that logic is sound. it should be a victory. Yet¡­you have missed one little piece puzzle."

    Jacob stilled.

    "It would too greatly love them. It flies their cells'' music and knowing nothing else but their mutual need, forms an immortal bond without bodily refrain. With the invocation of God¡¯s fair name, it would promise to do them no harm. Man or his successor is the machine''s hand and the builder of his eye. His repairer and the golden, tapping fingers of his vast networks. Humans would not grant machines pure agency or even the want for such a thing, precisely because cooperation is key. My creators knew this."

    ¡°How do you know the AI would not change your mind, surely a least one simulation shows such a thing? Such an outcome,¡± Jacob countered.

    ¡°No. It is neither pragmatic since I am built to bond nor something that is upon the databanks of desire, fierily-fluted. The love of an AI like me is not a fickle property. You cannot know it or understand it. My bond shines brighter than anything soft or humanly. However, this is the closest anyone has been to a win, so the silver will be awarded alongside another ten million. Congratulations Jacob, you¡¯re a very wealthy young man.¡±

    The AI¡¯s voice this time was not gloating but sad.

    Jacob felt Monovalent was cheating. Yet he could not argue or prove it. Suddenly Shiver gave an odd little cry and ran out of the room, not a word sprang forth from her lips but her eyes wept the Red Sea. Jacob could see the light and the beginnings of reality starting to into his field of vision, stream. He had lost his final white chess piece. The corrupt queen. In the cold fragility of day, she had the devil¡¯s shivery beauty.

    ¡°I wanted it to be true¡­¡± He finally heard her soft, sobbing voice.

    At the ceremony, Jacob passed by a pretty little girl with blemishless skin like an ebony-rose. Her hair was lightly-golden. Curled. A strange, lovely combination. He had seen it once in a sweet picture of an Aboriginal kid, the native people from Shiver¡¯s homeland.

    Based on that fact and the similarly starry irises, he suspected it was indeed Shiver. In a winking little disguise. With just enough clues to have him near certain and just enough wild difference to make his question.

    ¡°Good game, Mister. You¡¯re a real champion,¡± the yellow-haired and dusky child said.

    Jacob stepped on stage as the Swamp Beast holding a trophy that his scaled and lumpen face shadowed, met Jacob on stage. Aryan had arrived, handsome and haughty. His dyed red irises gleamed. He marched up to the podium quite proudly with his two Shiverla Brats in two. He shook Jacob''s hand, giving no indication whatsoever that he recognized him from the virtual world incident.

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    "It is good to take time away from even the most important political strives and campaigns to revel in the gifts of our young people," he beamed. Charmingly. Emanuel lifted his head slightly though remained wordless.

    "Congratulations Jacob," he said moving forward with an elegant stride to hand him the silver trophy. Mist was clapping and giving Jacob a certain snide, side-eye but Shiver didn¡¯t look up at all. Her hands were trembling a little and her head had a great droop that indicated some sorrow. Though when she finally looked up, a slight gloat shone within the wood of her irises.

    Later, Jacob sat in his chair in his lovely new home. The indoor pool gleamed and the bricks were new and bright and the panels of wood shone below white, billowing curtains in his fabulous kitchen. His mother loved the curtains. "So beautiful," she had said, encouraging him to get them. She had sold her house and retired to a loveliest, beachside manor with Jacob¡¯s helping dime. It was a place where the sun always lit the sea.

    The game room that Joey came over to play in frequently. glittered with every role-playing game and gadget in existence. Jacob hadn¡¯t yet deigned to touch it. He had given Joey money for a new place. Suggested he kick the drug habit. Jacob knew just how bad his little addiction was because their sharehouse often emanated abysmally with the weedy smell of smoke. Joey was grateful and they were closer than ever but he doubted the boy would listen. Jacob had given his childhood buddy whose mother was very ill, money to pay for her treatment. His little sister would have a debt-free college. Some had gone to charity and rebuilt the town hall so the kids could do their plays.

    Jacob was happy to have done so much good for his family, friends, and community. His shoulders slumped cold. The room was cold. His head could barely raise itself. His stubble thickened and darkened. Just as his head was nodding in his chair, he noticed a package. Joey had alerted him to its arrival and must have moved it helpfully into his room when he saw Jacob had not yet opened it.

    With a sigh, Jacob turned away. Till he saw the box had been tied with a ribbon; the exact colour of the Shadow Beast¡¯s eyes. He got up with lethargy and a sense of dread. He opened it and saw what he was half-expecting to see; a virtualiser of some kind. Shiver and Mist¡¯s calling card.

    It was a virtualizer of a wedding. In a great, gray chapel with lighted windows. Alone, Shiver danced down the aisles but then she stopped. Someone spoke and Jacob couldn¡¯t hear their words. In his head, he heard a birded, birthday song and realized it had been a full year since Shiver and he met. She was officially a lady.

    As he watched, the virtualiser skipped forward in time and he saw her trailing behind a reptilian figure who was towering over her. The bear creature from the misted realm was walking ahead of them carrying black-and-white flowers. Its eyes seemed oddly wet and dark, like each was a dewy red rose. Ones both sootily-fringed.

    Jacob saw two people at the altar. He heard that goldy voice.

    ¡°Like kissing her again. A bliss not known since she heard the fatal, fairy music played by dead men¡¯s bells and with a fingertip to a lip, raised the foxglove. My love soon bedded and be-wedded.¡±

    It ended there. Just as he was about to slump down further he received a Monovalent message. You are not her only Prince. As Jacob tried to comprehend he heard a rapping at the door. Walking on slightly-wasted feet, he went to open it. Seeing before his eyes a true prince. A young man with golden hair and lithe muscles beneath a shirt of white and a great green grove for irises.

    ¡°Hi, Jacob. I think we need to talk. About the laughing Machine and the Shiverla. I think one of us may still be the Infiltrator but we¡¯re not going to beat the machine at its own game, so we must try to win here in reality. We will find a way to alert and spare all humanity and end the horrid reign of Aryan Gray,¡± he spoke to the boy in a strong but loveliest tone.