:10/03/2251:

1:45 PM

I had logged straight out to my Axis Room after the sacrificial death and crawled straight into bed. My dreams were strangely vivid, and while I dutifully awoke at 10 AM to log out and do my stretches in Meatspace, the moment I logged back in I went straight back to bed.  

In my dreams, I managed the town workers with one eye while I scanned through email and managed my interface with the other. Occasionally I would log into a strange, twisted version of My axis room for a few minutes to check the logs and run maintenance functions, using the short breaks to read various, far too advanced tracts on hacking or philosophy, before eventually logging back into the game.

Finally, in the early afternoon, I slipped out of the world of dreams and scratched my eyes groggily. I purchased a coffee and watched some old streams to try and pull my mind away from the strange dreaming. It didn't help at all that I almost felt more tired now that I had before going to bed, as though I had run some kind of marathon in my sleep. And it was a good half an hour before I finally pulled myself out of the sheets on my bed and stood up to greet the day.

I sleepily glanced through my various social media panels, surprised that I didn't seem to have any update notifications. I had thought for sure my streamers would be buzzing after I had posted those logs, and the lack of a single new hate mail in my inbox struck me as being too good to be true. But still, I shrugged without looking much into it, not wanting to look my gift horse in the mouth.

I turned on the DDO newscast to keep me company as I finished my first cup of coffee and went to generate some eggs and bacon from the interface. Thankfully, it was absolutely abuzz with news of the sacking of Undercity and rumors of a strange new faction. The reporters cut to a number of different DDO feeds including, I noted ironically, a few segments of my own earlier stream from when the mushroom city first was eating the swamp and absolutely tearing through the local trees.  The entire thing was cut to look far more dramatic and mysterious than I knew that it actually had been, but even I had to admit that in contrast to the earlier clips from Undercity's sacking it made quite the little spectacle. 

What ended up actually shocking me was when the newscast cut to a huge, somewhat less than flattering view of my in-game portrait, underlined with the words "Who is Magpie Frost?" The entire thing was several levels more surreal than even the rest of my morning had been, and I found myself glued to the screen as the reporter spun their little story. 

"... Reports are that the earlier feed showing the rising, Chaos Capital were captured from the stream of one 'Magpie Frost'. I have information here that she is a relatively new player on the scene, having only surfaced a couple of months back who has been working as a streamer for Clockwork Dragons. That said, her official stream appears to have been removed from the company website, and is rumored to have been restricted to Chaos Faction players."

A female voice cut in, a disconcerting contrast considering I was looking at a picture of myself while hearing another woman's voice, "That's right, Ted. But why would a company streamer, who gets paid by the subscriber, restrict her viewership to such an extreme degree? Did she stumble on to something that could shift the balance of power, so quickly after Queen McBeal finally seemed to have won the war? Or is this all some kind of a stunt for publicity, meant to drum up interest in her feed?"

"No, Sheila. I happen to have a report, just coming in here, that Queen McBeal has personally placed a bounty of... wow. One Million, did I read that right? Why, yes I did. That's right, folks, Queen McBeal has personally placed a bounty of, you heard that right, One Million gold coins on the capture of this little girl."

"Wow, Ted. That's quite a lot of money. The Elven Queen must really have it out for this new player."

"That's right, Sheila. So I think it's fairly safe to say that this is not, I repeat, this is not some publicity stunt from some company drone hungry for the limelight. But if that's so then what could have possibly ruffled the Queen's feathers to such a degree? What is this new, mushroom city that we saw consuming an unnamed Jungle? And how could have this little, armorless girl have become such a major player seemingly overnight? I guess we'll have to keep watch..."

Finishing my eggs, I quickly turned it off. I might like attention and popularity just as much as the next person, but I apparently had my limits. And those limits were crossed about the time they mentioned the Million Gold Bounty that had been placed on my head. 

It didn't escape me either that they said 'captured' rather than 'dead'. I didn't know what they had in mind for me once they had me, whether Alley simply wanted to talk or if she had far darker, much less legal things planned for me in there. But whatever it was that the Bitch Queen wanted, I knew one thing for absolute certain - I wanted absolutely nothing to do with anything that the woman had planned for me. And that was a fact.

 Still, I shrugged and opened my personal interface, opening up the DDO menu. Another day, another dollar. And I reached for the login button.

"Wait." Em said, sounding somewhat urgent.

"Hurm?" I stopped. "What's going on, Em?"

"Well..." she paused and I felt my heart sink. "There are some things that you should really know before you actually go in there."

I crinkled my forehead, pulling my hand back. "All right then. Spit it out, I guess."

"Well... you told our Mayor and them to report to you this morning, right? About ways to improve the town and all? Well, you see, I went ahead and checked in with them while you were sleeping."

I raised my voice, "Annnd?"

"Tom wanted another Workshop, he said. Apparently, trying to outfit the entire town from the one was going to be really slow, no matter how many people we shoved into it. Lamia wanted an Administrative building... and before you ask, don't. Whoever thought it was a good idea to add Administrative functions to the game was truly a sadist. I swear there were forms listed there that didn't even have names there were so many. Amedile wanted a Marketplace, which turns out to be a lot like one of the late twentieth-century mall things, just with more spores and things, and Skotty wanted to upgrade the Kitchen into a Spore Tower to unlock the fermentation functions..."

"Wait," I cut in. "Stop, just stop there. How in the hell does any of that matter? We can only build one thing at a time, and we are completely limited by the Building Points we have available. I mean, I'd like a Tier Four Town too, and an epic mount, but it's not like I can just poop one out of my butt with a magic wave of my fingers." 

"Actually..." she paused as if thinking. "Maybe I was wrong. Ya, no. I really think you should just log in. It will probably be easier that way, now that I think about it."

I shook my head. "What the hell, Em? You really aren't making any sense."

"No, really. Just log in. I'll catch you up later. It's totally fine."

I shook my head, worried for real now. "Stupid AI," I muttered under my breath as I hit the button. Ignoring her asking me if I knew that she heard that as my mind shuttered through the darkness of the login sequence.

DDO loaded up in front of me, the familiar outdoor setting and feel of the fungus beneath my feet fuzzing together over the course of a couple seconds. But when the world snapped together and my city did come into view I found my jaw dropping. I tried to swallow, feeling my suddenly dry throat clench as I struggled to make sense of what it was that I was seeing.

There were bodies... everywhere. Each one exuding the green and Orange mold of the city from every cavity, they lay in piles, strung along haphazardly and randomly as far as I could see. There were people there, with swords and armor that rattled as they all meandered around, with a good number having turned to stare at me. 

The first thing I did was open my interface and check for insanity debuffs. Then I exited and went back in, to double check again when I found that there were none. Then, I rubbed my eyes, in case the spores had somehow been messing with my vision. But no matter what I did, my quiet little city with its handful of scattered residents never came back into view.

I looked around, dumbfounded, standing there for a good minute while my brain tried to make sense of what was actually happening. I noticed then that a number of the mushrooms were sprouting strange, fungal spires from the tops of their fungal heads. I noticed that the treeline had lengthened what must have been a good quarter mile from where I had thought it was supposed to be, and strange, throbbing chrysalises were dotted across the infested ground. 

There were living people, PC's I guessed, forming lines across the city. The longest of which lead out to the middle of the newly infested ground between the beating capsules. And, more, there were workers - some guy in a jumpsuit was trying to sweep the fungal ground between the buildings, some Dark Elves were helping one of my trolls lug a freshly cut tree into the workshop, and there was a good dozen little mushroom-people running through the streets. They were about four feet tall, with mushroom caps that looked like funny little hats and strange billowy skin, but the looks on their little faces showed a deadly determination. 

I finally managed to force sound out from my slightly numb lips, "What the actual fuck, Em?"

A deep, male voice was all that answered, echoing through my head. "Hey, Em. Could you send some more of those Pizza Heads to help in the workshop? They're actually pretty effective."

"Hey now, that's not very sensitive. I thought we had decided to call them Red Caps." Came a woman's voice that wasn't my own in response.

Finally, I heard Em speaking, "Actually, I thought we had agreed to call them Red Caps to their faces. 'To their faces' being the operative words... but ya, Blink. I got you. Two more supreme pizzas, hold the pizza, coming right up."

Having been ignored by my own personal, superpowered AI self, I wandered toward the workshop. I moved as if in a daze. Bumping into people awkwardly to bouts of 'Hey, excuse you lady,' and 'wait your turn!' But eventually, I got there.

Inside, I saw four, lumbering Ogres lifting a gigantic, stripped tree trunk onto the sawmill, with little mushroom people scrambling around the other end catching the scraps that fell as it processed. Up, on a slightly raised dais that looked out over the mill, I recognized Blinky and Olga standing there with focused expressions on their faces.

The spinning blades and sounds of trees being dissected pulled me out of my haze by a hair. And I was somehow able to make my way past the hulking ogres and up to the dias without myself being split in half. As I climbed up the latter to join my friends I yelled, "Hi, you two. What's going on?"

Blinky glanced at me for a moment, sparing only a second before he looked back over to the lumber production. "What's that," he pointed at his ears, "I can't hear you over all the noise!"

Finding my footing on the dais next to them, I cupped my hands together and yelled at them, "What's .Going. On?"

"What do you mean, what's going on? We've been working together all morning?" He shouted back.

"What?" I yelled, confused.

He shook his head, and his voice echoed clearly in my brain. "What do you mean? I thought you were getting me those workers we were talking about?"

I just blinked at him, unsure of what to say at that point. What do you even say to that? Luckily, Em quickly jumped in and saved me. "I'm on it," I felt her say, "After that though I need to log out for a minute here so I can talk to myself. You good here?"

He looked at me confused, as I blushed and gave a half-hearted wave. He shrugged and I heard him project his voice, "Ya, ya. I think we got it for now. Don't take too long, though, remember we're supposed to be giving a speech here in an hour."

I blinked, stupidly, though it shook me back to myself when I saw Olga give me a faint smile and a half-hearted wave goodbye. Not daring to navigate through the mill again for fear of getting impaled by the six-foot splinters raining down from the blades, I just fumbled through my panels and flicked at my logout button. 

I barely noticed as my world spun away or was replaced by the familiar panels in my Axis. I simply blinked and focused on my breathing, trying to collect my thoughts. "I... That..." I tried starting a few times as the breaths began to calm me, but I couldn't seem to put together a coherent sentence that would amount to more than cussing.

"Ok, so... let me explain, dear." Em started, apparently deciding to take the intuitive in light of my own studdering. "I was just as taken too... at first. Let's see here."

Em paused as if trying to put her thoughts in order. In the same way that I would have done, but then she kind of was me, I guess, so it made sense. "Well, do you remember the logs we posted? Showing how we founded the city? The ones that included all the bonuses that Dementia and especially all of Dementia's allied cities would receive?"

I nodded, stupidly, but hung on her words. "The thing is," she went on, "that apparently the Artifact bonuses were pretty lucrative. Most of the capitals have been there since the game launched, and the Capital Cities that weren't have tended to remain small and have been constructed with fairly common materials. Apparently, due to the expense, no one so much as tried to make a city out of epic materials before, let alone one of Artifact grade.

"Everyone had mostly assumed that the base Faction Benefits resulted from the faction itself, I guess. So the idea of experimenting with the construction of Capitals wasn't even looked at. And the fact that new Chaos cities will now start with bare bones Lost City benefits, at least until someone else manages to duplicate the process of creating or upgrading a faction Capital to a similar quality, well our faction is suddenly very, very lucrative to a number of up and coming guilds who had been considering building new towns."

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

I paused, starting to get it. "So... guilds are motivated to come and grow Dementia. So their settlements will have level 4 artifact perks instead of level 3? Ok, I get that maybe. But how are there so many people? In order to even see the city portal, they would have to either already had our faction or grinded the hell of Elfbreaker Achievements and the like. And it's been, what? Ten hours since I posted the logs? Less?"

"Well... that's the thing. You see that's only the tip of the iceberg. You know how our logs show how to find the city, and how hard it will be for a force to attack it the way they did in Undercity? Well... it appears that Lost City buffs gave enough assurances regarding our safety that survivors from Undercity, as well as a number of worried residents from Galdenheim and Angmar, have been flocking in by the truckload. Crafters, Roleplayers, Traders, pretty much you name it, if they aren't affiliated with McBeal or the Church of Light, Dementia has suddenly become The Place to be. 

I nodded, mulling it over and starting to understand, finally. "Ok then, I guess that all makes sense. But, what about the buildings? The weird mushroom people?"

Em practically purred in self-satisfaction at the question. "Oh, well. As it turns out letting the city eat you only added about one hundred Building Points to work with. However, we've been attracting players, P.C's, who are jumping to sacrifice themselves to Dementia. Apparently, you get a Huge amount of Chaos Faction for it, if you're in the Accomplice or Citizen levels at least. And, if you check the logs, I think you'll find that we also received an achievement after we died."

Curious, I did just that, scrolling back through pages and pages of history where, I realized, Em was working in-game while I was sleeping. Finally, I found it.

Achievement Unlocked!

Russian? Portobello (Unique, 'The Mushrooms eat you')

Offered your life to Dementia

Reputation increased with Chaos

Special:

+1 Stamina (Permanent, Max: 10)

"Shit," I whispered. "I see."

"Right? So every Chaos aligned P.C. is chomping at the bit to throw themselves on Magdaline's knife. It's true that it only updates after the first death. A couple of over-zealous munchkins have tested that. Extensively." She snorted, "But the long and short of it is that, over the last ten or so hours, we've stockpiled tens of thousands of Building Points.

"I took the liberty of adding the buildings your advisors requested, I know that was our intent going in. And it turns out that once a new building is fully paid for, you can purchase another even if other new buildings are still, technically, growing. So far, we've added two more Workshops, an Administrative building, a Marketplace, a Laboratory, an Enchanter's Tower, an upgrade to the Kitchen building, and one upgrade to the residential building. Growth Bars on the additions should be at 100% in another nine to twelve hours, so we should be able to use the buildings by early tomorrow morning."

I blinked, nodding slowly. "I... see then."

"Also, I found a way to use building points to rush through the Grown workers. It doesn't work for the trainers, sadly, nor does it work for the more advanced specialists. And it's pretty expensive at one hundred points a worker and a thousand for a specialist, but considering it looks like we are going to have plenty of points, for the time being, I went ahead and took the initiative. They aren't very strong, and it takes a ton of them to do things like carrying a tree, so I ended up buying fifty of the workers and five Specialist Farmers with our Building Points.

I raised an eyebrow, starting to get into it "Have we had much progress with resource collection?"

"Sadly, no," her voice started coming faster and she was obviously excited now that I was starting to get on board. "Our Surveyor hasn't had any luck with finding metals. We found some shale, which we have the original three minors on right now, but nothing that will help us get started with building new Citizens or working on schematics. For the time being, I've had us stockpiling wood. I figure once we get the marketplace up some of the Trader Roleplayers can use our portal to trade our wood for some metal."

Thinking, "So how far are we exactly from Town Level Four, exactly then? It sounds like we just need another expansion on the residential building and the thousand some citizens? Are we planning to rush them through once we trade for some ore? I suppose that's why we made three workshops..."

"Actually... no. Not exactly. So, look... I've tested the mechanics and done some math. When P.C.s bind to our portal they don't count as citizens. However, the Roleplayers? The ones who registered themselves with the company and are playing in hardcore, permadeath mode? They count. And enough of them are here either as refugees or were pissed off enough at McBeal for killing their last character and rerolled Chaos, that we should be... pretty much covered as far as the town Citizen requirements are concerned."

I sucked in a breath. "And how much is 'pretty much covered', exactly?"

I heard her chuckle, "Oh, well. Let's just say that I think you will need to start the next Residential expansion as soon as the current one finishes. They're still coming in but the current numbers are showing just a little over three thousand citizens of Dementia. Don't get excited, though, we can't control them the same way we can with our workers and our specialists. So their actual usefulness is easily questionable. Still, I highly recommend that we grow another residential building next so we can be growing two at the same time - otherwise I dare say that we're going to have people sleeping in the streets by the end of the week just for the lack of space."

My eyes widened, and I was suddenly grateful that Em had pulled me back to our private room while she explained all this to me. It was a lot to process, and there was no way I would have been able to do that if I had been surrounded by literally thousands and thousands of people. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but large groups tended to make me just a little bit uncomfortable.

 "Ok, ya. Let's do that, then." I went over it all in my mind, to see if there were any gaps, "Last thing, I think. But what was it that you were talking to Blink about earlier? Some kind of speech?"

"About that..." Again, my stomach sank as I heard her tone dropping. "See, as the owner of Dementia you seem to be considered... something like the new faction leader. Now, don't worry! I've been preparing a speech and Blink and Olga promise to be right there behind you the entire time. But... you kind of sort of have to give a speech. Otherwise, I think the players are going to start mobbing pretty soon demanding to talk to you."

My reply came, not in words, but with the sound of me crawling into bed and pulling the sheets tightly over my head. Burying myself as deeply as I could in a nest of blankets and pillows. 

:10/03/2251:

3:00 PM

I was standing on top of the workshop, looking over the edge of the Giant Mushroom Head upon which I stood and looking at the impossible crowd before me. Blinky had promised to use some warrior 'shout' ability to project our voices over everyone, and he and Olga were standing steadfast there behind me.

"No pressure. Though I should probably warn us that if we mess this up, it's probably going to be pretty much the end of our city. Oh, and we might die if they start mobbing - we don't exactly have any soldiers yet. So there is that. Um... ya. No pressure, though. Just say what I tell you."

I forced myself to take a deep breath, feeling the sweat start to drip down my back. I knew if I hadn't spent the majority of the last hour hiding under my covers, I might have actually had a chance to find something to wear that looked a bit more regal. The Robes I wore had lost their threadbare look when they had upgraded, becoming a much finer, form-fitting silk, though the drab, gray color from the former linen hadn't itself changed much. And I was painfully aware that I still looked more like a well-dressed acolyte of some hideous god in this than I did a proper ruler of a city.

As I hesitated, I could hear the crowd below getting unruly. People were starting to shout, and while I couldn't make out what they were saying from up here, each new person's voice grew just a little bit louder as they tried to out volume the people shouting around them.

Finally, I saw words fade into view in front of me, hovering between me and the crowd. Em whispered into my head, so low that I could barely hear her, "Sorry, it took me longer than I expected to figure out how to do that. Just read the words, Mags, and it will look like you are scanning the crowd as you talk, while you won't actually have to even really see them."

"Clever," I whispered to myself, shocked as Blinky's ability amplified and carried the word out across the crowd. Resulting in a thinning of their voices as they stopped to listen to what I had just said. I raised my hands, for quiet, as much to hide the fact that I was blushing. And I took another breath. 

"The Undercity has been lost!" I read from Em's clever little prompter, surprised at just how easy it actually was, "Many of you, as I do, once lived there, and worked there, and filtered all of your dreams and ambitions through the sturdy, stone walls of the city - confident that that stone would keep you safe. Confident that our former Regent and the forces of the Underground would protect and nurture you as you built your lives, built your families, within the safety of those caverns."

I cleared my throat, noticing for a moment that some of the people below me had started nodding, while others had seemed to grow agitated as the musical bells of my voice descended on the crowd. I lowered my tone a bit, trying for a more solemn, serious intonation as I continued, "And many of you have come here, to our Dementia, disillusioned and desperate - seeking some vestige of the safety, some shred of the same security and stability that you thought you once had.

"Others have fought, as I fought, even as the Undercity fell. You have stood shoulder to shoulder with your friends, your guild members, as the unending masses of elves and humans shattered our walls and mobbed through our fallen city, consuming everything that they touched. 

"And others still are new to us, drawn in by the promise of this, lost City. Even now you stand with us, shoulder to shoulder on the fungal streets of our town - and even now more and more of you continue to pour in, grinding for faction against endless waves of Elven NPCs, all the time dreaming of new victories, the new glory that awaits you in the cities that you yourselves will build underneath of our banner.  

"But what has brought all of you here, what has flooded these streets and worked our poor Magdaline there until she could barely hold her dagger," I paused as the subtitles faded out for a moment, noticing that there was a long murmur of dark laughter before the subtitles resumed. "What has carried us, all of us, to this place was one, single thing - something impossible to hold and yet fundamental to our lives, fundamental to living itself. The reason we are here? That reason is hope. Whether it is for life, or security, or glory, or even just the vindictive need for the blood of those who have hurt us - it is Hope that has brought us here, and it is Hope that, even now, binds us together.

"Even me," I paused for a moment, going off script as I murmured to myself. "Especially me."

Shaking my head, I jumped back into my lines, standing up just a little bit straighter, "This town, this Dementia, this isn't my town. You have all seen my logs, you know that I have the achievement, that I could wear the title. And yet I stand here before you, titleless, wearing none but the same robes I wore when the Undercity fell. I, a Fruit Merchant who eeked out a living in the poorest quarter of the city, and yet who healed our soldiers, who sheltered our cities' orphaned children and, when all hope was lost, who drew the bloodthirsty humans away. 

"No, you see. Though I have grown this city, though I may have the same achievements and titles and stupid little interface panels as does Queen McBeal, as even did our Regent before me, I do not stand before you today as a Queen. Rather, I stand before you as I had stood beside you, as the forces descended upon us and as our homes and our lives were crushed beneath the boot of the Elves and the Church and the fates themselves. I stand before you here as your comrade. Your friend, who has witnessed hardships so much like and yet so different from all of your own hardships. And I stand here as someone with vengeance in my heart, who wants nothing more than to rip out the hearts of those who have hurt me and grind their own walls into the stones and the dirt of the earth."

Angry voices echoed through the crowd and I could feel the tone begin to turn, but the words in front of me kept coming and so I didn't stop, "A true ruler, a queen, they would stand up here and lie to you. They would tell you we were going to stand for truth, and justice, and peace. They would spin pretty stories of righteousness and patriotism, telling you that you all are heroes - telling you that we were going to save the world and carve out a new golden age for our people. Yes, that is what Alley would do. That is what those hypocrites calling themselves the 'Church of Light' would say and what their self-righteous paladins would scream even as they murdered our children. For the crime of being different. For the crime of being born to a race that has been branded as 'evil'.

Over the cries of the crowd I raised my voice, getting into it and feeling the energy of the words, of Em's script, pouring through me, "But I am not a Queen. I am not your Regent. And I will tell you this! We are not the heroes, questing gloriously on golden steeds and saving the world from sin. We are not the noble knights, struggling valiantly in righteousness and for honor! That is not me, that is not you, and that is not why we are here.

"But what are we, if we are not that? I know you are asking. And I will tell you truthfully. We are refugees from a city that has been sacked. We are the remnants of families that have been torn apart by these so-called 'heroes' and 'paladins of light'. We are the soldiers and the Fruit Merchants and the lone wolves who survived something that no one should have had to bear. 

"But we are also Pioneers, we are survivors, we are the warriors and the communities and the guilds who have found a new place, a new home, where we can start again. From which we will rise, anew. And if you are here to build a new home, a new family, then I will tell you that I am with you. 

"If you are here to build a town, to reach for glory and grow communities of your own, braving the dangers and the dungeons of this beautiful world as you reach for fame and fortune? Then I am with you too, I will stand beside you and offer you the support and freedom you need in order to rise to greatness.

"But if you aren't here for any of that? If your heart is dead and dying as the horrors of our defeat play over and over through your mind? If you no longer care for family, or community, nor even glory and riches? Those of you who are here simply because our Dementia stands as the last bastion, the last outpost for those who would dare shake their fists at the heavens and demand that the blood of our enemies rain down upon us until the final heat death of our universe...

"For those of you who would choose to be villain - with hate in your hearts, driven by the thirst for blood upon your tongues - for those craving the chance to remind the world why it's a bad idea to stomp on the weak, to remind those in power of the results of their cruelty and what happens when they push us too far? Then I will say to you now, firmly and for the record..."

The crowd quieted, my words soaking into them like rain upon barren ground, and I paused as the final line etched itself in front of my vision. I read it twice, to myself, just to be sure that I was reading it right, before I found myself baring my teeth and breaking out into a sudden, brutal grin. I screamed, loudly and from the gut, smashing through the silence, "I AM WITH YOU. NOW AND FOREVER MORE!"

The words echoed across the town, silencing hanging over the masses crowded in front of me until a single scream cried back at me. A deep voice, in the back of the crowd echoing back at me across the soundless abyss. And the crowd took it up, the screams becoming a cry, then a roar. The warriors banged their fists against their armor, the rogues slammed their blades together as they screamed, and even the traders and craftsmen and merchants seemed to be stamping their feet into the ground.

I shifted, then, growing into the hulking, Dire Wulfin beast that had been gifted to the town, and I howled to the afternoon's sun. The Warrior's amplification carried the howl across the buildings, into the forest, and from miles away I could see flocks of birds take wing into the sky. Yet it only barely seemed to cut across the booming voice of my city, united as one.

The Roleplayers apparently now shared the Shifter trait of the town, and I was shocked as a thousand people before me followed the example, screaming with their newly wild voices into humid, cooling air.

It was a strangely humbling sight, the booming, discordant notes and wild energy of the crowd spread at my feet. And even from up there, from my perch safely above their masses, I somehow felt very small. Like a very tiny girl in a very large, wild world. And I found that it was... exciting. 

I stalked away from the edge, shifting back to my smaller, Nymphan features, and I looked at the friends who had stood behind me. Blinky was smiling warmly, a slightly ironic glint sparkling in his eyes, and Olga's eyes seemed both shocked and... impressed as she stared back at me. She shook her head as I walked toward her and Blinky canceled his ability. "Well, I'll say that you riled them up well enough. Though I dare say its unlikely we'll get any more work done today."

I shrugged, winking at her, "Let them have their fun for now. There will still be plenty of work there in the morning."

Blinky approached me, clamping his hand down across my shoulder. "Well, I have to say. That was pretty classic 'Magpie'. Though I dare say that if there's ever another Arch-Druid, they are going to end up with some rather large shoes to fill."

I smiled at him and nodded, feeling my stomach flip as I felt his large hand grasp my skin. "Thank you so much for your help, you two. I literally couldn't do it without you."

Olga just winked, while Blinky, sadly, removed his hand and turned. "We know, kid. We know," he danced hands across his invisible interface as he nodded at me, "I'm going to go ahead and make myself scarce for a while. It looks like I have work tomorrow, but Steve should be around if you happen to need anything."

I waved at him, somewhat regretfully, as Olga followed his lead. She looked at me as she waved, "You take care of yourself kid. And don't worry, I should be around too. Trust me, I wouldn't miss what's happening here for a life's supply of wine and a harem of virgin girls."

They faded out, leaving me alone over the din of the now fading crowd. The thousand, individual conversations drowned out any thoughts I might have had, and I too brought up my interface and logged myself out from the world. It was time to check the newsfeeds, and to make sure the video of my little speech would be properly 'leaked' to the appropriate channels.