Chayoka, the capital, the artist-turned-royal district in the early pre-dawn hours of the morning.

Along a cobblestone thoroughfare, a stream of horse-drawn carriages was flowing at an orderly pace. Out of the window of one carriage, a young man’s head was poking out to admire the district's marble architecture and cool his cheeks with the jungle-scented winds wafting down from the island’s highland interior.

Young-Jae Kim, a historian for The Company and member of Stratford-on-Saana, had been travelling back to the bookstore from the royal library. There, he’d been copying a new batch of imported manuscripts, used for researching his latest novel, The Princess Without a Face.

His previous series had been set during the peak of the Yamalai crusades between the Old Rangbitans and the Neeshifites. While writing that one, he’d developed an interest in one of the crusade’s prominent figures, Prince Unukujateem. This member of the Faceless caste had been pivotal in averting a Rangbitan defeat, going on to found the Neo-Rangbit Empire before his assassination. Unukujateem’s distinctive trait, his disfigurement, had naturally been a cause of much mystery and speculation. It was one story surrounding this peculiarity that’d intrigued Young-Jae, a rumour of the 'prince' being a princess.

The theory was easy to dismiss for its infantile simplicity, being the type of fantastical explanation vomited out from the mind of a child. Nevertheless, Young-Jae’s research had made him reevaluate its likelihood in a sober light. Old Rangbitan society, although demonic in terms of its class structure, had initially been egalitarian across sexes due to The All-Mother’s hermaphroditism. The Empress’s death resulted in a patriarchal surge, with many nobles blaming the God’s failure on her feminine half. This change had consequently made it impossible for a few centuries for women to climb the political ladder, giving any power-seeking Princesses a clear motive to disguise their femininity. To this end, undergoing the acid disfigurement procedure for the Faceless caste could have been one rational method of gender obfuscation, having the bonus of earning sympathies from the era's rising anti-caste movements.

Real or not, Young-Jae had been having a blast writing about his deranged heroine going to such extreme lengths in the quest for power.

As the historian's carriage was drawing up to the bookstore, he spotted a massive queue of customers outside.

“A fanmeet?” he wondered out loud.

He didn’t remember anyone holding one today.

Disguising himself, he alighted and slipped around the crowd to a side entrance, where a doorman admitted him after presenting his identification badge. Inside, a snaking line of customers connected to the front desk. While they fidgeted with excitement, they were kept controlled and quiet by a troop of guards hired to handle the circle’s crazier fans.

The clerk working the desk gave the entering historian a pitiful grimace. “YJ, any idea where Henry keeps the extra copies of his series? We’ve sold out. There are none in the storage.”

“Sold out The Saga of The Invincible Cripple?” Young-Jae, replying in disbelief, inspected a special shelf next to the counter, once loaded with the never-touched books but now bare.

Had Henry paid these people to buy out his copies in a self-promotion of his unreadable fanfiction? he wondered. After their meeting on campus yesterday, this seemed plausible.

“Guess I'll check his office.”

Suchi, an Ibanmothe section of The Slums, the first rays of the sun mounting the eastern horizon, ushering in another dry and stiflingly hot day.

A tense atmosphere was carried in on the winds spreading news of revolt. The Slumdwellers, unwilling to join the madness of the reckless Villagers, boarded up their shacks and gathered in protective groups in case violent opportunists exploited the chaos. The eldest and the most skittish of the Ibanmothe had already packed their belongings, which they were trundling to The Slum’s north-eastern edge, ready to flee into the savannah if events escalated further.

It was quiet, as such hours are accustomed to be, when everyone is listening for the first signals of hope or dread. That was, it was quiet except for at one shack, which shook with the sounds of grief, the open-wounded lamentations of a grandfather over his last granddaughter’s deceased body. Ugly and baboon-like, the howls were not merely for the extinguishing of this single tiny life but for the preceding ones of the child’s parent, the son he’d held, and the other children and grandchildren also taken too early, and himself bound for the same fate as the rest of his failed lineage.

Festering Iris, a Cutthroat for The Company, had been blocking the noisy shack’s entrance. Her other platoon members were scattered around the area, monitoring in case the forming riot moved in their direction. Inside with the crying NPC was the teen duellist they’d been escorting.

Since her platoon had joined him, he’d taken them on a bizarre detour to hunt out the identity of the corpse in his possession. That'd eventually brought them here, to the shack of this NPC Slumdweller. Festering Iris didn’t know what was going on, but she figured it must relate to a critical questline. Despite the NPC responding rudely to their courtesy of returning the corpse by attacking him, the teen had refrained from executing him.

A bit of an enigma, this Cripple guy was.

His identity as a duellist from Saana II had already leaked. While Festering Iris stood guard, she was also slyly watching a news broadcast about the teen. The teen himself had annoyingly refused to respond to any questions from her or her colleagues on the matter. Luckily, the answers were rapidly flowing in from elsewhere, from a cast of former rivals, haters, fans, and even disciples appearing out of the woodwork, forgotten figures and current pros alike coming forward to share their memories of The Cripple.

Overall, it seemed to be a tale of gruelling, long-delayed redemption. The core methods used to dismantle The Slum’s leader tonight had already been revealed to the world years earlier, in an art called The Strategy of The Resourceful Komodo, with which The Cripple’d performed his miracle run sweeping the duelling gods of his day. The world then, however, too moronic to handle his advanced technique, had responded with confusion, with rage, with dismissal. With the full image beyond their mental scope, they’d thrust an angry finger at a tiny pixel, The Cripple’s most salient feature, his Legendary artefacts, and declared that these subordinate tools explained the total picture of their heroes’ demise. The avant-garde duellist, believed by no one, decided he would have to prove his methods without those items, and doing that required him to master almost every martial art beneath the heavens, a monstrous feat of training carried out during his half-decade of absence. Now, finished, he was back to reap the tears of his haters.

Around this basic frame, countless other questions were still in the process of being solved. Why make his comeback in Suchi with an imitation king? How had The Strategy evolved? By what freakish method had he picked up so many styles so fast? What would be necessary for them to acquire the same skills? Was there more than revealed in that match? Were these techniques restricted to Earthfriend Scholars?

Channel 5’s coverage of the story, what Festering Iris was watching, had been a bit of a disaster. The journalist presenting the segment had been fumbling through a rushed and disordered script. Evidently, the journo was so embarrassingly new to Saana he hadn’t realised he’d been tracking The Cripple until another organisation announced it tonight. Thus, the references to this past were crammed awkwardly into the presentation. Eventually, the segment devolved into the amateur journalist reeling off various martial arts while showing accompanying clips of the teen practising them. His dead air was filled by a colleague, more knowledgeable about the game's history, theorising how each style might have contributed to bridging the gap between The Strategy and whatever The Cripple had demonstrated tonight. Still, Festering Iris hadn’t switched channels. The arts were enough - it was mind-boggling that someone could learn such a vast number in just 5 years.

The stammering journalist, with no logical flow, announced that the teen’s duos partner had been the assassin Septic Rose. Sister of the infamous Genocidelol, and herself quite prominent as the leader of The Garden of The Grotesque, the assassin had turned out to also be one of The Cripple’s main disciples, loyal throughout his period of obscurity.

Festering Iris gazed up, at the girl from the footage sitting in the flesh before her on the shack’s roof, listening blank-faced to the sounds inside. Assassins often swapped avatars during missions, but Septic Rose’s current one seemed unusual in a hard to pin-point way. After a second, when Festering Iris recognised a vague similarity with Genocidelol, it clicked - this avatar was unaltered.

“Septic Rose?” remarked the Company Cutthroat. “Wow, you’re, like, really pretty.”

The assassin replied to the compliment with a wordless, gawking look.

“I didn’t mean…with the misanthropic vibes and—I’m a fan!” Festering Iris flashed her username, structured in imitation. “Would have joined the Garden if not for The Company.”

Septic Rose continued to gawk.

Festering Iris had an epiphany. “Oh, right! No. I assume if you’re with The Cripple, then everything’s clear. Plus, we’re in The Slums.”

In The Company’s domains, the girls of the Garden were to be killed on sight, assassin guilds having been outlawed by Alex Wong’s snoozefest commercial reforms. Here, it didn't matter.

Septic Rose finally broke her stare, returning to her silent ruminations.

A minute later, the door of the shack creaked open, amplifying the sound of the howling inside.

Festering Iris turned to The Cripple stepping out, looking quite meagre relative to the magnitude of the events conspiring around him, the bottom of his shirt tattered and soaked from a stab wound he’d taken before restraining the NPC. His eyes shone as he checked the vision of the other Company guards scattered around them - as a random tangent, Festering Iris had been surprised at the finesse and speed with which the teen had manoeuvred the platoon, the skills more befitting of a general than a duellist. The Cripple then mounted his horse, but not before swapping out his uniform for a beetle costume from the 2047 slapstick comedy, Metamorphosis 2: Gregor’s Revenge.

From on top of the steed, the ridiculously-costumed teen glanced up at Septic Rose, seeming to ask her a question via private message. The girl, after a moment of thought, shook her head and, switching to a full-body avocado outfit, leapt softly down onto the back of his horse.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

The teen’s attention shifted to Festering Iris. “We can get back faster alone.”

The Company Cutthroat, confused by a sombreness of this pair in this fascinating time, gave an apologetic reply. “No can do, sorry. The boss threatened to sack us if we lost sight of you until you’re confirmed at the Post.”

The Cripple shrugged. He then resumed control of the platoon, navigating them to circumvent the rioting Villagers as they made their way to the safety of Central City.

Real life, Nulato, Alaska, an organic beet farm, a cottage bedroom.

The duel's shockwaves even rippled a little into the real world.

In this humble abode, sleeping beside his partner, was one Noah Bassett, a figure known in a certain videogame as peaceloveharmony. In Saana II, he’d run a beloved webshow documenting his thrilling quests in the remote territories of Saana with his Merry Band of human comrades and monsters tamed and converted into fuzzy friends. Those journeys had been an inspiration for many animal-loving youths, who'd gone on to mimic his hippy philosophy.

But those days had long passed Noah. Having retired to a town in Alaska with less than five hundred people, he now spent his years growing vegan-friendly produce, and, tonight, he slept in the worry-free bliss of one whose muscles had been exhausted in the honest enterprise of seed and soil.

Stirred out of his rest by his vibrating e-assistant, Noah rolled over sleepily and connected.

“Are you eating well? PLH, did you know The Cripple was still up to his shenanigans?”

The call was from another member of the Merry Band, which Henry’d joined in order to steal Noah’s questing methodology for locating Legendary items.

“Something happen with him?” Noah mumbled back.

“Many things. He’s learned kung-fu! He’s on the news beating up kings. Watch.”

Noah checked out a clip of Henry exhibiting a refined version of The Strategy.

Good for him, he thought. The kid must’ve finally found the key Syncretist piece. Noah—the other participant in the digital immortalisation research of Project Aevitas—surmised the duelling stuff to be a cover story for the intensive search for the Legendary set, the real arduous quest hidden by Henry’s ambitions from his Cripple youth.

“With this talk of return,” continued the caller, “what say you to start starting up the old band again? The kids miss you, PLH. You’re all they ask me about. ‘Where’s Uncle Peace?’ ‘How is Uncle Peace?’ I tell them, ‘What about Auntie Lalita? Am I not here?’ They say they don’t care. ‘Give us Uncle Peace.’”

At the suggestion, Noah had a spike of desire to return, as he had when Henry’d offered him a Legendary Earthfriend class earlier in the week. However, having resisted the feeling that time, this second go posed less trouble. He reminded himself that, for what joys Saana had given him, it wasn’t worth the attached heartbreaks. No, his own story had concluded.

Besides, Henry’d fallen into much bigger things these days.

“He’s not back,” Noah replied.

“I can see him on the screen. Are you doubting my vision? We’re not that old, PLH. We’re barely in our 30s.”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Noah said, aware of the minuscule leap from The Cripple to The Tyrant if one analysed the first seriously. “It’s four in the morning here. I’m sleeping. Love you, buddy.”

“Oh…well, love you, too. Consider it.”

Finishing the call, Noah sent Henry a supportive message, then rolled his head tiredly back onto his pillow.

But his sleep, once disturbed, was hard to recapture, his peaceful dreams of beets replaced by more exciting memories. Getting out of bed, he threw on a winter coat and went outside to tinker in his greenhouse.

In-game, Suchi, a Company Trading Post in The Slums, a conflict brewing.

The worst affected in Suchi by Karnon’s disasters, this Trading Post had been hit by a highly-localised earthquake. Its offices, its barracks, its shopping centres, its hospital, its stable – all the forms of its clay walls had disintegrated, as the entire complex was reduced to a single pile of dusty rubble. The misfortunate souls inside, their bodies much less sturdy than the collapsing walls, were shaken into a meat paste compressed beneath the wreckage.

Around the former Post's rubble, the respawning Company players—any rescue effort pointless—had been engaged in idle gossip about The Cripple’s astounding comeback when they’d received news of an approaching mob. Unworried, they continued to chat as they organised themselves and built defences. Working fast according to a standardised design, a basic bunker system had been erected by the time of the arrival of six thousand angry Villagers.

The armed mob looked with their odd assortment of festival costumery like a legion of demons. Their features masked, they took on a deindividuated, inhuman quality that summoned from out of them the nocturnal instincts of moonlit city streets, which transform even the meekest of passers-by into a shadow brimming with the potential of hostility. This demonic mass circled the destroyed Trading Post, pausing at the perimeter of an empty no-man’s land between the rubble and the surrounding shacks magically spared destruction.

A warning was given to them by the enemy. A voice inside the regrowing fort declared that entry permissions had been revoked and trespassers would be killed on site and their usernames documented to exclude them from The Tyrant’s generous services forever.

From behind the marked line of no return, the crowd loitered trying to work up their confidence, seeking restitution for their slain king. They shouted hatefully at The Company’s goons, calling upon them to hand over the scoundrel known as The Cripple for justice, to be destroyed by more of Karnon’s perils, to retreat to the sea from which they’d come and perish in its waves.

Despite their anger, the intervening land between remained untrod. The passion of the mob began to quickly dissipate, the crowd losing its cohesive hatred. With each passing second, their already hopeless chances of victory grew worse as their enemy continued to fortify. A palisaded trench was dug out connecting the bunkers into a single network, which then grew towards the mob, platoons leap-frogging to build forward-positioned bunkers, while others did the reverse behind the main wall. Everywhere towers were sprouting, multiple-floored behemoths that allowed mages to cycle vertically through Spell Deadzones while continuously chaining spells. The air soon shivered with a chilly chorus of chants, as these mage teams initiated a rotation of gathering and cancelling spells, an asynchronous timing resulting in an area-of-effect ability being ready at every moment to vaporise the first wave of attackers.

The trickster god, who’d helped the Villagers once by destroying the Trading Post, made no reappearance.

As the sun was beginning to rise, as it seemed that the fight had been lost before it began, with the sole casualty The Slum's pride, a solitary figure emerged at the mob's forefront. Tall and shimmering, he stamped the tip of a golden boot on the uncrossed line to no-man’s land.

It was Justinian The Great, Suchi's resident village idiot.

The golden roleplayer cast a knightly glare at the enemy archers aiming their arrows at him.

“This night has been long!" he began his epic speech. "The defiler of goodness has cast the umbra of His wicked shadow across every continent, across every meadow and creek; the eye seeking in desperation catches no trace of light, only the crimes that evil conducts in its habitat of darkness. Those of us who fear and love God weep at our failure to halt the triumph of black evil over the holy sun. The Caesar of Shadow sits upon the throne of every kingdom of this world, and the goodfolk must find solace in thoughts of the final kingdom left in the hereafter." Justinian performed a dramatic gesture, temporarily shielding his eyes. “For lack of any hope, we have all adapted to living blindly in eternal night.

“On this one night, we welcomed His agents to the festivities of our land, to eat of our bread, to drink of our wine. In recompense for our generosity, a man of Caesar’s used His heathenistic witchcraft to slay our noble lord and conflagrate our holy temple – who among us did not witness to these insults? Once again, a grievance of inequity has fallen upon our king, upon us, my brethren united by the Cross, upon the goodfolk who share with us this meagre strip between the greedy seas and the blasphemous city. Yet we hesitate to declare the offence done to us; we stay tranquil in the face of blatant outrage. While these infidels count their stolen gold and hope, while they smirk, we comfort ourselves in the Lord’s guidance, ‘Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.’

“But you—you each who listen to me—you must know that, by forgetting this one evening’s frights, we sentence ourselves to suffer the nightmares of infinitely more. My brothers and sisters, the highest of powers has tasked me with reminding you that even the longest of nights is supposed to have its day, that just as the sun must fall, it must also rise." He pointed his sword at the horizon. "Answer me, is that not the dawn’s golden glow cresting the horizon now and scaring the shadows into recession? Is this warmth on our rachitic flesh not the first rays of restorative justice?

“My brothers, my sisters, the sun is rising, but it struggles. I implore you, join me in helping to raise it with your arms.” Justinian lifted his zweihander to a high guard, the blade draped across his golden shoulder pauldrons. “Enough with this night. Let us, soldiers of the new day, render no further forgiveness to this Shadow Caesar holding down the light. Let's give Him His proper due. Let's give Him back His black blood on the tip of our shimmering swords!”

Flourishing his weapon, like David striding forth to fight Goliath alone, the Golden Crusader crossed the uncrossable line, leaving the mob’s protection, and sprinted at the enemy to smite them with divine justice.

Arrowstrings twanged from the fortifications, The Company’s marksmen swift to shoot.

Justinian, his limbs infused with god’s speed, danced through the opening volley, side-stepping two missiles that punctured two unlucky players in the mob behind him, spinning away from a third arrow that did the same. A fourth that he couldn’t dodge, he deftly swiped at with his holy blade.

Alas, the sword in his grip was a paltry imitation of its mighty predecessor. Its blade, meeting the stronger metal of the arrowhead, split in two.

Justinian staggered as the shot pierced his brain.

His faltering body received a couple more arrows, and he disintegrated.

Laughter arose from The Company's new fort, many of them recognising the hopeless Crusader as one of Suchi’s oddball fixtures, a strange mascot for the region’s absurdity.

The mob, meanwhile, lingered and stared at the sight of Justinian’s folly, imagining themselves being obliterated if they followed in his step, which they wouldn’t. Still, despite the defeat, his silly martyrdom caused some of their bitterness to pass in a moment of catharsis. Perhaps this was the value of a village idiot, uttering with their simpleton honesty the truths that the more sensible couldn’t.

Appeased by his sacrifice, the rioters dispersed, putting away their weapons and returning to their impoverished home of red dust and shacks.

Real life, Auckland, New Zealand, a girl’s bedroom.

Two friends were hanging out, one browsing clips online, the other rapidly flicking through the last pages of her friend’s copy of Silver Wolf’s latest best-selling adventure.

The reading girl, reaching the last sentence, closed the book and reclined back into a satisfied stretch like a cat warming by a sunny window. Her heart was full and healed. it glowed with the joy of another feel-good, well-paced episode.

“All that’s missing is romance," she said. "I can’t figure out why she doesn’t date Indy? He’s kind; he’s hot. He clearly likes her. What’s getting in the way?”

“…your brother?”

"My brother? How would my brother block their relationship?"

“Sophie, isn’t this guy your brother? Henry?”

The friend showed her a clip paused on a grinning figure with sweat-soaked hair and a face smeared red.

Sophie Lee—Henry’s forgotten younger sister—blinked in surprise. “Hey, it is Henry. What on earth? Why have you got a clip of him? What’s with the blood?”

“He’s The Cripple.”

“The Cripple?”

“A duellist, apparently."

The two friends watched a recap of the match, the one’s brother using a bunch of magic and kung-fu to style on some dude.

Sophie, seeing her brother spinning around with flying weapons, shook her head in annoyance. “What a disgusting liar.”

At once, the many recent deceits flashed by.

A couple years back, they’d been mysteriously delivered a VR unit and a free subscription. Henry’d claimed to have won the thing in a raffle. He'd refused to let her use it under the grounds that videogames were harmful to child development and that he himself would only be exploiting the time-dilation for more productive hobbies. Then there was him moving out, claiming he’d been hired by an unnamed digital investment firm, which for some reason required living on-premise. And what about those many times he'd dumped Alex Wong’s celebrity son on her to babysit? Henry'd stubbornly feigned ignorance, saying the toddler could be anyone's spawn and childhood mutism was more common than one might expect.

"So," said Sophie, with the bitterness of these years of digesting Saana indirectly through books and clips while her friends were off on cool adventures, "he has been playing the game this whole time."

“He’s actually doing that.” The friend was stunned by the duel. “With his body. It's like a Ren N drama.”

Ren Negishi was a popular samurai actor in 2050, renowned for flashy physical stunts.

Sophie dismissed the flattery with a bored wave. ”He’s just a freak.”