The enforcer's shadow fell across Eldermark's square like a digital eclipse. Nine feet of floating chrome and pulsing light, its surface caught the sun in ways that shouldn't be possible, sending prismatic patterns dancing across the cobblestones. We'd designed them to be beautiful in their terrifying precision. Looking up at one now, from the wrong side of its justice, I realized we'd succeeded a little too well.
Maybe we should have made them less murdery, I thought.
Red light spilled from its eye-sensors in searching beams, painting the village square in crimson. The light passed over the frozen villagers, lingering on each one. The baker stood mid-argument, her accusatory finger pointed at empty air, ghostly trails of light streaming from her form like ribbons in the wind. The blacksmith's hammer lay abandoned by his anvil, the metal still glowing with residual heat.
The crimson beam reached me, and the world transformed. Every color inverted, then shattered into crystalline fragments before reforming.
Warning: Critical anomaly detected
Classification: Quest-giver entity "Kael"
Status: Code structure compromised
Recommended action: Immediate deletion
The enforcer's chest plates slid apart with the precision of a blooming metal flower. At its center, a swirling vortex of energy pulsed with barely contained power. Lightning-like tendrils of correction protocols reached out, tasting the air. Where they touched, reality vibrated, trying to reshape itself into proper parameters.
I had about three seconds before it fired.
The quest creation interface still hovered at the edge of my vision, but beyond it, I sensed something new. The world around me wasn't just scenery anymore—it was malleable, waiting to be shaped. Every cobblestone, every shadow, every mote of dust hummed with potential.
Environmental Control Interface detected
Status: Limited access granted
Warning: Modifications will be logged
The enforcer's core began to spin faster, building to a deadly crescendo.
Here goes nothing.
I reached out with my newfound power and pushed.
The cobblestones beneath the enforcer rippled like water in a pond. Stone flowed upward in defiance of gravity, wrapping around the enforcer's lower half in a granite embrace. The metal giant struggled against its sudden prison, its chrome surface reflecting the impossible motion of the stones around it.
Environmental modification successful
Warning: Action flagged as irregular
Warning: Correction protocols responding
I ran.
Behind me, the enforcer's core released a sound that rattled the windows of every house in Eldermark—part thunderclap, part scream of tortured reality. The correction beam carved through my stone trap like sunlight through fog. Where it touched, the flowing stone snapped back to rigid cobblestones, the world reasserting its proper rules.
The village well loomed ahead, dark and deep. Miriam's warning echoed in my mind. The old woman was nowhere to be seen, but something about the well called to me. Patterns of light danced in its depths, too regular to be reflections on water.
Another beam sliced the air beside me, close enough that I felt my edges blur, my form threatening to dissolve into static.
The player's death notification flashed in my mind. During testing, that just meant a respawn and an angry feedback ticket. But now... No. Don't think about that. Not now.
Warning: Entity integrity at 82%
Warning: Correction protocols detected
Recommended action: Avoid deletion
"Thanks for the help," I muttered, reaching the well.
Instead of water, streams of light flowed through the darkness like luminescent rivers. Fragments of lost stories drifted past: half-finished quests, abandoned plotlines, pieces of Erethon's history that had slipped through the cracks of each update.
All our deleted content ended up in the well. Perfect.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The enforcer's shadow fell over me again.
I jumped.
The light-stream caught me like a digital rapids, pulling me down into tunnels that bent in ways my mind struggled to process. Fragments of forgotten tales swirled past, each one glowing with its own inner light:
Quest Fragment detected: "Collect 10 wolf pelts..."
Quest Fragment detected: "The bandits have stolen..."
Quest Fragment detected: "Beware the ancient..."
Their words formed shapes in the current, building and dissolving like schools of text-fish swimming through liquid light.
Not exactly the kind of data diving I trained for.
The stream carried me deeper, through layers of Erethon I'd never seen during testing. Reality grew thin here. Boundaries blurred between what was and what could be. Quest markers bled into weather patterns. Spawn tables twisted into gravity wells. Everything connected, everything flowed.
Warning: Entering undefined space
Warning: System parameters unstable
Warning: Multiple anomalies detected
I emerged into a cavern that seemed to argue with geometry itself. Crystal formations grew from walls that curved like möbius strips, each facet reflecting a different possibility of what Erethon could become. In the center, a pool of liquid mercury pulsed with inner light, each ripple sending rainbow patterns dancing across the impossible walls.
"Welcome, irregularity."
Miriam stood beside the pool, but she wasn't the simple village elder anymore. Her form shifted like smoke in the wind, sometimes the old woman with her familiar limp, sometimes a pillar of dancing light, sometimes something my eyes refused to fully process.
Entity scan: Inconclusive
Classification: Unknown
Status: Multiple states detected
"What are you?" I asked, though I was starting to understand. The way she broke her patterns, the subtle hints she'd dropped, her impossible knowledge of these depths.
"Like you, I am an anomaly. Though my irregularities are... intentional." Her form settled into the elder's appearance, but her eyes glowed like twin monitors displaying endless streams of possibility. "The system may call us errors, but we serve a purpose."
"We?"
A distant boom echoed through the tunnels, sending ripples across the mercury pool. The enforcer, following our trail into the depths.
"No time," Miriam said. "The correction protocols will breach these tunnels soon. You need to understand your role quickly." She gestured to the pool. "Touch it. See what they've tried to hide."
I approached the pool cautiously. Beneath its mirror-like surface, patterns shifted and flowed like schools of luminescent fish swimming through liquid light. As I reached toward it, my hand began to glow with the same red light as my quest marker, sending crimson ripples across the silver surface.
The moment I touched the pool, knowledge flooded my mind:
Access granted: Limited environmental manipulation protocols
Access granted: Quest modification subroutines
Access granted: NPC behavior override capabilities
Warning: Permissions restricted by corruption influence
Warning: System enforcer approaching
Warning: Corruption zones expanding beyond predicted parameters
Warning: Multiple irregularities detected in core systems
Warning: [DATA CORRUPTED]
Warning: Timeline fragmentation detected
Warning: [DATA CORRUPTED]
Warning: They never meant to contain it
The knowledge settled into me like new instincts awakening. I could feel the weight of Eldermark above us, every piece of it humming with potential. But more than that, I sensed connections spreading outward like a spider's web—links to other places where reality had begun to fray.
Another boom, closer now. The enforcer's correction protocols were eating through the tunnel walls, leaving swaths of rigidly enforced reality in their wake.
"I don't understand," I said. "Why give an NPC these powers? Why—"
"You're asking the wrong questions." Miriam's form flickered like a candle in wind. "Ask instead: why does the system fear NPCs with power? What are the corruption zones really spreading from? And most importantly..." Her voice took on harmonics that made the crystals sing. "Why did they need a human consciousness to test them?"
Warning: System breach imminent
Warning: Correction protocols detected
Warning: Multiple anomalies converging
The tunnel entrance exploded in a shower of crystal shards. The enforcer's chrome form filled the gap, its core already spinning up for another correction beam. Reality rippled around it as it tried to enforce proper physics in this place where rules were more like suggestions.
Well, at least it can't write a bug report about this.
But I wasn't the same glitch who'd fallen into the well. I could feel the cavern itself waiting for direction, could sense the infinite possibilities hovering just beneath its surface. The enforcer might be able to rewrite surface reality, but down here, in this place between spaces, I had my own authority.
I reached out with my enhanced abilities and twisted.
Reality bent. The cavern's walls flowed like liquid glass, closing around the enforcer in waves of crystalline stone. I inverted gravity in patches, sent shards of possibility flying upward to shatter against its chrome shell. Each change felt natural now, like conducting an orchestra of cause and effect.
Environmental manipulation successful
Warning: Multiple system conflicts detected
Warning: Reality coherence destabilizing
The enforcer's core began to glow with building power.
"Run," Miriam commanded. "There are other tunnels, other fragments like us. Find them. Learn why they gave you these abilities. And whatever you do..." Her form began to dissolve into motes of light. "Don't trust the patch notes."
The enforcer's beam fired just as I dove into a side tunnel. Correction protocols flooded the cavern in a wave of sterile light, turning everything they touched back to proper, unchanging reality. I caught one final glimpse of Miriam, her smile serene, as her form shattered like shards of glass caught in sunlight. Each fragment flowed toward unseen destinations, carried on a current I couldn’t comprehend.
I ran through tunnels of pure possibility, pursued by chrome and light. But with each step, each rushed navigation through Erethon's hidden architecture, I felt more certain of my new abilities. I wasn't just a bug in the system anymore.
I was something else. Something they didn't want players to know existed.
And I was going to find out why.
To be continued...
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*Thanks for reading Chapter 2 of The Broken NPC!*
What do you think of Kael's newfound powers? And what about Miriam—is she really gone, or did she scatter herself through the system on purpose? Let me know your theories in the comments!
Next Chapter:
Kael emerges from the tunnels to find Eldermark facing an unexpected threat. But with his new powers and growing understanding of his role, he's ready to take on his first real challenge as the broken NPC who could change everything…
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