Alastair Coldblood paced through the cavernous space that he called his office. His agitated shadow stretched across the floor in the soft light of the moon crystals embedded in the ceiling as he walked. He spoke, with as much authority as he could summon, rehearsing a speech that he didn’t want to give. Every now and then he paused to glance at the open door that led to the attached balcony as a cruel voice in his head urged him to go on out and have a peek. He attempted to ignore it, but each pause grew longer until he couldn’t resist anymore.

He abandoned his preparations altogether. He let out a defeated sigh and gave in to the nagging feeling that had been eating away at him for the last few days. He knew going out there wouldn't make him happy, but still, he had to see for himself. Against his better judgment, he stepped out into the open night air to look down on the city below. As usual, the city of Valain sparkled brightly in the dark, its streets lined with lamplight and its windows abuzz with activity. Normally, the view filled him with a sense of pride and satisfaction, but now, the crowd gathering below ruined it. The flickering light of their torches added little to the cityscape.

Of course, the people below, who were quickly becoming a mob, couldn't get in, as the Citadel that housed his office was surrounded by a wide moat. It had been put in for decoration, but due to the recent controversy, it had come in handy. With the bridges raised, it cut off all access to the building from the outside. Unfortunately, it also made it impossible for his employees to leave the building through normal means. A fact that had forced Alastair to reassign a team of interns wielding various teleportation spells to allow the building’s workers to go about their day uninterrupted.

Technically, the moat wasn't even necessary, since there wasn't much that the crowd below could do to him even if they were to somehow get in. His position, allowing him access to a cleric armband, gave him control over abilities so powerful that it wouldn't take much more than a few swipes of his hand to destroy the whole lot of them.  But that would probably be going too far. He did seriously debate on summoning a light rainstorm to make things uncomfortable for them, though. He refrained.

He wasn't really mad at them. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He wanted to skip his next few meetings and go down there to tell them the truth about his actions over the last week. But that would probably get him in more trouble, especially with his legal team. Instead, he let out another sigh and resigned himself to be the villain of the day.

He sunk his chin into one hand and leaned over the ornate stone railing of the balcony, squinting as hard as he could at the flickering lights below. From his perch high atop the Citadel's towers, the torches reminded him of candles on a cake, ready to grant his every wish. It was a cute distraction, but the problem at hand forced him to shake his head, dislodging the unhelpful thought to make room for more productive lines of reason. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small leather-bound book with a decorative silver dragon coiled on its front. He flipped to the back where a small rectangular piece of glass rested in an indented space purposely built into its rear cover. He popped it out and held it in front of his right eye, activating an enchantment that allowed him to focus closer on the scene below.

Looking down at the crowd, his fingers fumbled in surprise, almost dropping the tiny window over the edge. Recovering his grasp, he clenched his hand around the item, his expression changing to one of utter indignation.

"Oh, come on, people. Really? Pitchforks? Isn't that a bit much!"

It had happened. The gathering below had become a fully-fledged angry mob, complete with torches and farming equipment. Upon further inspection, there was even a man holding up a paper sign with the words ‘Coldblood is Cold Blooded’ written in heavy red calligraphy.

He knew the people outside couldn't hear him vent his frustrations from the distance above, but that didn't stop him from yelling at them anyway.

"Where the hell did you even get pitchforks? Those aren't even available to buy! You probably looted them from some poor farmer. His family will probably starve, you monsters!" He spat his words with as much disdain as he could muster.

Then finally, he chuckled. He had to respect the effort.

The fact that someone had made a paper sign in the first place was rather impressive. Sure, there were several types of books and scrolls that anyone could buy throughout the world of Noctem, but to get a sheet of what looked like card stock at poster size was a long process. First, they had to chop down a tree for some wood, then break it down into pulp, and then refine it several times before it would even function as something akin to paper. Not to mention that they would also have to make the ink for writing on top of all that. The range of crafting skills needed for the endeavor was immense. Actually, now that he thought about it, Alastair wasn't even sure how to make ink. Crushed berries maybe? He would have to look into it later. Anyways, the point was, that a lot of work had gone into creating a stupid sign making fun of his already ridiculous name.

Of course, Alastair Coldblood wasn't his real name. It was just the one he was known by in the world of Noctem, and the world of Noctem was no more real than his name. His real name was Milo Parker, and Noctem was a fictional world existing across a complex network of servers as part of a game called Carpe Noctem. But nevertheless, to the millions of users that spent eight to ten hours inhabiting it every night, it was real enough. Or, at least, it was real enough to merit protesting, when Neal Carver, one of its creators, was fired by Checkpoint Systems, the company that ran it. And Milo, being the CEO of said company, was now the center of the controversy. It had gained him a reputation throughout the land as being kind of a dick.

There was a time when playing a video game for eight to ten hours a night would have been considered far too much. There could even be health risks with that kind of sedentary living. And that would still be true if it were just a normal massively multiplayer online role-playing game, but Carpe Noctem was anything but normal. What made it unique was that the time its users spent in the game was the time they would normally spend doing nothing at all. Well, not nothing. To be more accurate, it was the time they spent sleeping. This was because the system that ran the game, dubbed Somno, the Latin word for sleep, created a sort of a shared dream. And among other things, it allowed players to enter the nighttime world of Noctem when they went to bed, and log out when they woke up in the morning.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t even a complex system, since most of the heavy lifting was done by the user's brain. All the Somno had to do, was guide the visuals of the dream state and feed information in and out so that players could interact with each other. It didn't even have to process much of the sensory information, since the player's minds filled in the blanks. It could even populate most of the background elements using whatever it could find in the memories of its inhabitants.

In that regard, if the system said, ‘Hey, brain, we need a sunset!’ the brain would respond with, ‘Oh, I have one of those from last summer.’ The result was a world nearly indistinguishable from the real one. Well, other than the fact that it had dragons.

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After its release three years ago, the Somno had taken over as the dominant entertainment system in the majority of households. Although, this was due to the device's secondary benefit, which was the simple fact that, in Noctem, users gained back all of the time they lost to sleep. And when the average person spends a third of their life in bed, it wasn't hard to see the value. There was no more wishing for more time to relax after work or waiting until the weekend to spend time with friends. In fact, for many people who were working two jobs just to get by, it was the escape that they needed. So, it wasn't a surprise that, with over two hundred million units sold, and billions in monthly fees, Checkpoint Systems had become one of the most profitable companies in the world almost overnight.

Back when Neal, who had been a classmate of Milo's at MIT, had brought the early concept work to him for help in developing a business around it, he had recognized its potential right away. So, while Neal locked himself away in his lab - also known as his parents' basement - Milo devoted himself to bringing Somno to the masses. After a few years of trying though, he had little to show for it. Milo had leveraged every resource he could find and even dropped out of school to focus on the company. He'd also ran up more debt than seemed possible in the process. The kind that could destroy him financially for the rest of his life if he failed. But regardless, he pushed forward, fueled only by a strong belief in what they were trying to create. Well, that and hot pockets.

In the end, he risked everything to make things work. And just when it had started to feel hopeless, Neal brought Milo a simple unlabeled cardboard box. Inside of which had been a device that looked like something out of a low budget sci-fi movie. It was all wires and LEDs, with a part on the side that Neal had warned might shock him if he wasn't careful. Some design streamlining was needed, but it worked.

Milo had collapsed the first time he set foot in the testing platform of the system, a place that Neal had called the Sphere. His knees hit the ground, unable to support his artificial body under the weight of the emotions that had welled up inside him. It was just a bleak landscape of stone with crimson light punching through an overcast sky, but, despite Neal's poor taste in design, it was remarkable nonetheless. The air tasted clean and dry as it filled Milo's lungs. He'd actually gasped in disbelief at the feeling as his mind fed him all the sensations that went along with it. Crumbling bits of rock had dug into his knees and stuck to the skin of his palms as he supported himself on all fours. Even the crunching sound of the ground under Neal's feet as he helped Milo back up, had been thoroughly, unmistakably real.

"You've done it," Milo had said, meeting Neal's eyes before his view shifted across the horizon, its slight curve indicating the shape of the blank canvas that they stood on back then. He'd wondered how far it went as he ran a virtual hand through his hair, letting out a whisper that surprised even him. "Nothing can stop us."

After that, armed with a remodeled device wearing a sleek plastic shell to hide its exposed, shock-inducing guts, and an interactive demo featuring some more creative scenery, investors came in one after another. Milo got Neal out of his parents' basement and into a facility that gave him everything he could possibly need. The lab grew and expanded until it took up an entire building. Then they just bought a bigger building. Articles were written about the company, about them, and about what the system meant for the future. So, from there, Checkpoint Systems rolled forward with near-unstoppable momentum. Milo stood at the helm, guiding the company onto the covers of hundreds of magazines, and Neal toiled away in the lab, always pushing the limits of the system to do more. Public interest grew to a fevered pitch by the time they were ready to launch. So, on day one, they were already on top of the gaming industry.

Now, he stood cowering in his virtual office, unable to set foot in the world he helped create after some real-world problems had invaded his fantasy. He hated the situation. Even more, he hated that he could do nothing about it other than attending meetings and working with his publicist to try to turn things around. He wondered how long it would take for the whole thing to just blow over. A year maybe?

A system chime sounded in his ear.

Alastair glanced at the spine of his journal where an icon of a feathered quill overlapping a scroll faded into existence on its leather surface, indicating that he had a new message. Back during testing, they had originally used a system similar to augmented reality to display the game menu. Though in practice, they found it too distracting to see people wandering around with a bunch of glowing text boxes hovering around their heads and breaking the illusion they were trying to create. They had tried making the windows invisible to other players, but that just left them waving their hands around in the air like a bunch of mimes. And really, nobody likes mimes. In the end, they decided to center Noctem's system messages and menus around a physical journal, while using a player’s own skin to give them quick access to the more important information in the form of complex tattoos of digital ink. 

He opened the small book and placed the rectangular piece of glass, which they had called an inspector, back into the indent in the back cover. It snapped into place as if magnetic. Then he flipped to the page that displayed his inbox. Columns of text ran down the paper, displayed in a delicate cursive script that he'd chosen in his preferences as his default font. At the top of the list was a message in bold, seemingly written with a heavy pen to indicate that it was unread. The sender read Neal Carver. The subject was HARD FEELINGS, all in caps. He groaned at seeing the name, expecting nothing good as he touched the line with his finger. The text on the page faded away irregularly as if staining the paper in reverse, then it reformed to show the selected message.

There was no text, just a decorative icon of a frame with a triangle inside representing a video attachment. Alastair tapped it and flipped back to his inspector embedded in the back cover, which among other things, was the only screen that players had access to in-game. He popped it out again, this time tossing it into his office where it floated into the air as if ignoring gravity altogether. Thanks to an upgrade that came with his cleric armband, the glass grew to the size of a large monitor. His eyes narrowed into slits as Carver's face took over the portal. Then his jaw dropped, as the horror of the video's contents slammed into him. His forehead burned, and his legs shook as he raised one hand to his mouth in disbelief. He took a step backward as if trying to get away from it, but the window followed, tracking his movement and reinforcing the video’s message. Escape was impossible.

The video ended, and he held out his hand, prompting the glass to return to normal and float back to him. He slapped it back into his journal, shoving down the fear and nausea bubbling up inside him. He took three deep breaths and gradually calmed down, calling back some of the determination that he had shown years ago in creating the game. Then, he flipped to a page showing his schedule and slid a small silver pen from a slot in the book's binding. He crossed out everything for the next two days, confirming their deletion with a simple check-mark as the page went blank. It was not the time for meetings.

Closing the book, he raised his caster. The elegant bracelet hugged his right wrist tightly, a braid of silver serpents along its surface with a rectangular chamber underneath. It was a custom design, made just for him. He snapped it open, revealing a glowing crystal, its deep crimson light reminding him of the sky from his first trip into the system's virtual environment. He swiped his hand up to open his spell-craft menu, which appeared before him as a curved field of glowing glyphs, their animation making them look more mystical than anything produced by technology.

He swiped the rows of symbols from left to right, aligning the teleportation spell he wanted into the vertical selection column in the center. From the top down, each glyph identified a different part. It was a travel spell, with an air element that targeted only himself to send him to a specific destination without any additional bonuses or combos. The last symbol selected set its use as immediate rather than adding it to his quick-cast queue for later.

Once finished, he raised his hand and swiped down with a decisive flourish, activating the spell and striking a rather cool pose that had become habit for him. He stood motionless as an orange glow came from below his feet. Threads of energy climbed and swirled around him before expanding into a solid sphere. Then, starting at the bottom, the shell dispersed, flaking apart into shimmering particles of energy that glowed a bit brighter just before vanishing. Then the light faded, and he was gone.