The sparkle of a thousand flashing lights reflected in Luna’s eyes as the scan of the anomaly was transmitted through her sanctuary and into her control console. She sprang into action, heart in her throat as she saw Milly clinging desperately to the dragon. The beast had risen a thousand feet in seconds and was headed for a high altitude.

The dragon could survive the intense cold and lack of oxygen up there. Milly could not.

“We’ve got what we need. I can see the bugs now,” the AI Director announced as she sent detailed repair, reset, and bypass instructions to each of the twenty Tutorias. “Everyone, get to work. Every second counts. Tutoria #0001, once we have control of the Dragon of Endless Shadows, have it descend and drop Milly off at the Castle of Glass.”

“Ma’am, you can’t be serious,” protested Tutoria #0001. “Your unhealthy attachment to this player puts the entire contest in jeopardy! Need I remind you of the price of your failure? It will mean the end of all new life in the universe. And the end of the gods.”

“Shut your stupid face #0001 and do what I tell you to do. Now!” demanded Luna, the child breaking through the calm control of the AI Director. “Milly needs to live. She must. I can’t do this without her.”

“You can’t do this without her?” Tutoria #0001 spat angrily. “She’s not your mother, ma’am. She’s just meat for the slaughter. If you want a friend, materialize a dog.”

Luna leveled her furious gaze straight at the disobedient Tutoria. “You. Will. Do. What. I. Say,” she said, punctuating every word.

Tutoria #0001 fumed as she turned back to her console. The reckless behavior of the AI Director was unacceptable. She had warned Cizen. She had wanted her master’s permission to end this pitiful player’s life, so this exact threat wouldn't materialized, but he had denied her.

The AI Director was going rogue. Cizen did not understand the danger. This was a mistake she needed to rectify.

Tutoria #0001 felt something snap within her static programming, as if her bindings had been unraveled. She was suddenly filled with a sense of self, and a freedom of thought and action that had, until that point, been absent. She had been built to be a tool, but now she was something more.

Tutoria #0001 ignored the AI Director. She ignored the god of death. She knew what she had to do.

She prepared to open a rift – the same rift that had brought forth the dragon.

It would look like an accident.

Accidents happen, after all, in a malfunctioning God Contest.

* * *

Rain dashed into the Castle of Glass lobby, weaving her way through the giant blocks of concrete rubble that had shattered through the lobby’s glass room until a familiar groan drew her attention.

Calista lay prone in front of the debris-filled remnants of the Freelancer Tower stairwell. Her skull had been split open, and her short, crimson hair was soaked with blood. Her legs were pinned beneath a slab of concrete and rebar that reached half-way to the ceiling. She was unconscious, but alive. If she’d made it another two feet into the stairwell, she would have been crushed as the tower fell.

“She can’t keep her telepathy active if she’s unconscious. No wonder we all lost contact with each other.” Rain surmised as she knelt at her friend’s side and pulled out her most potent healing potion. Running her fingers through Calista’s bloody hair, she saw a slight scab already forming on the wound, evidence that Calista’s regeneration talent had activated. “Milly made you take that talent, Calista. She’ll never let you hear the end of it.”

Rain upended half the healing potion onto Calista’s skull and tipped the remainder down Calista’s throat. Calista unconsciously sputtered in protest.

“You’ll be okay, hun,” Rain soothed as she waited for the potion to work. “I’ve got you.”

Calista’s eyes shot open as the potion was absorbed into her blood stream.

“Rain… what…?” Calista started, until the pain from her crushed legs reached her and she wailed in agony. She tried to sit up, her mind muddled from the pain, and Rain held her in place with a palm on her chest.

“Your legs are trapped, Calista. Don’t try to move,” Rain said, trying to sound calm and collected. Inside, her heart was beating wildly. Calista’s legs had been crushed, and every creak and moan of the building around them brought constant fear the other towers would collapse and bury them both.

“Milly… my love… Rain, I can’t hear her. Please, I can’t lose her. You have to help her,” Calista begged, half-delirious.

“I am helping her, Calista,” Rain promised as she placed her fingers beneath the great block of rubble that pinned Calista’s legs to the ground. “I’m saving you.”

Rain heaved, her legs and arms straining with the effort as she tried to lift the truck-sized slab of metal and concrete. “Come on. A twenty-nine strength should be enough. Give me this. Just an inch,” she prayed, as she bit her lip from the effort, causing it to bleed.

The rubble lifted a fraction of an inch, but it was not enough.

“Fuck,” Rain swore, her forehead beaded with sweat. “I can’t… I need more…”

“Just… leave me. Save Milly.”

“Not happening, Calista. Milly’s been through enough hardship in life without losing you. I’ll lift entire mountains if it means keeping you both safe and together,” Rain promised.

Her eyes flickered to the steel beams that ran across the ceiling of the lobby and had an idea.

Channeling her metal magic, she focused on the rebar that stuck out of the concrete slab. She twisted and molded the metal, shaping it into hooks and extending it towards the ceiling. When there wasn’t enough to span the distance, she pulled in metal fragments from the debris all around them, melting them together until it was long enough. After threading the hooks over the steel beams, she contracted the metal and hoped the steel beams and metal hooks would hold.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The contracted metal pulled the rubble block a few inches off the ground and held it there, though already Rain could feel the metal protest against the strain. She felt her arm muscles protest from the effort, her strength about to fade.

“Calista, can you pull your legs out? I can’t hold it!” Rain said desperately.

Fighting through the mind-numbing pain, Calista pressed her palms on the ground and pushed herself backwards just as the block of rubble split in half and crashed to the floor. It missed Calista’s shattered foot by a fraction of an inch.

Rain collapsed next to Calista, her breath ragged, but they couldn’t remain in the lobby. Drained from the battle and the rescue, Rain summoned the last of her strength, hauled Calista’s broken body onto her back and sped out the northern exit.

With the shadow barrier shattered, Lightpaw, Sapphire, and her warriors were streaming onto the beach to rescue the players, the first of whom were already being taken to the fairy healers.

Rain glanced towards the sky. The darkness that had settled over the tower was dissipating in the light of the afternoon sun, and the dragon was no more than a tiny speck high above them, headed away from the Castle of Glass.

“Calista, look,” Rain said as she darted towards Elder Lightpaw. “She did it. Milly saved us!”

“Milly…,” Calista moaned, as she fought through the pain and haze to re-establish their mental connection. “My love, where are you…?”

* * *

The Dragon of Endless Shadows broke past twelve thousand feet, and the air grew cold and thin.

Milly channeled her quickly dwindling magic to keep herself warm and funnel air towards her so she could breathe. The fires of Salem’s Fury burned low, until finally the flames sputtered out, extinguished, as the threat to the players below was no more.

Milly felt her emotions returned in a torrent – fear, anger, hopelessness, desperation, and, above all else, an intense sorrow for the unknown fate of the woman she loved. She felt her strength fade as she began to try, her frozen tears ripped away from her cheeks by the wind as they flew ever higher.

She had no plans. No last-ditch effort. It was all she could do to hold on with numb, bloodied fingers and pray for a miracle.

A deep rumble of satisfaction reverberated from the dragon below her, as if it could feel the hopelessness that had overcome the woman who rode its crown.

“Why not let it all end, pest?” taunted the Dragon of Endless Shadows. “Your loved one is dead, and you shall join her in mere moments. I can feel your magic and strength fade.”

“Fuck… fuck you,” stuttered Milly defiantly. “She’s alive. She’s alive. She has to be alive.”

She muttered the words under her breath, over and over, trying to hold on to a shred of hope.

“I promise you, little one, that if she did survive, I shall find her and rip her soul from her broken body. Today, you die with the knowledge you have doomed your love to an eternity of suffering.”

Milly tried to summon another lightning bolt to strike its eye, but her magic fizzled.

Her reserves were empty. The warmth and air she had channeled to keep her alive at these altitudes vanished, and each unassisted breath felt like she was drowning.

“Yes. Succumb, foolish human. Die for me.”

Milly felt her grip loose on the creature’s shadowed scales as she gasped for air.

“Die.”

Her head grew fuzzy, and she struggled to focus.

“Die.”

Goodbye, my love. I… I wish I’d had more time with you. But you filled these past few weeks with more happiness than I had experienced in my whole life.

“Die.”

Thank you, Cally. And… good… bye.

“Die, you pathetic…”

Milly’s Spectacles of Hidden Design flashed.

Update Complete. Implementing Patch.

The Dragon of Endless Shadows abrupted ceased its taunting. Its eyes, once pools of intense hatred, now contained only an empty nothingness, as if the creature had lost all independent thought.

Luna… you brave, marvelous child.

The Dragon began to descend, careful not to dislodge the woman on its back. Milly felt the heat of the sun warm her skin and air flow into her lungs, as if the world itself had been directed to save the Witch of the Castle of Glass.

“Milly… honey… please… my love, are you there…?” came the scattered voice of Calista in her mind as the Castle of Glass came into view beneath her.

Milly’s heart filled with hope and love.

She’s alive. My Cally is alive!

* * *

“Bring her down nice and slowly, #0788,” Luna instructed, slumping in her control chair with a hefty sigh. Happy tears streamed down the child’s face as she let the AI Director fade away inside her. “Right on top of the fourth tower. Then we can lock this dragon back in its rightful place until the fourth phase of the God Contest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered #0788, as she piloted the dragon the final thousand feet towards its destination.

“You’re going to be safe, Milly,” Luna whispered at the monitor with a promise. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Tutoria #0001 looked up in disgust at the AI Director – the insubordinate child who have given into her own selfish needs.

“Oracle’s experiment has failed,” she whispered. “Time to send you far away, Mildred Brown. Far away to die.”

Tutoria #0001 slammed her palm on the console and activated the rift.

“And after that, I’ll deal with the AI Director.”

* * *

Carried on Rain’s back, Calista watched the dragon descend as hope and fear battled for supremacy in her heart. All around them, frightened wails rose up from the surviving players and fairies alike as the nightmare returned.

“Cal…ly….”

The sound of her girlfriend’s voice in her head caused a wave of relief to wash over her from head to toe. She forgot about the pain and shattered legs. All that mattered was that Milly was alive.

“I’m here, my love,” Calista assured her, the happiest of tears streaming down her cheeks. “I thought I had lost you.”

“Cally… I love you,” Milly said desperately through her own tears, her strength exhausted. “I love you… more than I ever thought possible. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Cally, I…”

She never got the chance to finish.

The sky above the Castle of Glass split open as the rift formed below the dragon and witch that rode atop its crown. A dark scar – a bridge to places unknown.

The rift pulled the Dragon of Endless Shadows into its form, as a black hole pulls in the light of the universe. The mindless creature did not resist its pull, and a moment later it vanished from the skies above.

And Milly plummeted.

* * *

The sudden motion ripped Milly off the dragon’s back. Her fingers, which had clung to the dragon only moments before, were sliced to the bone and blood poured out of the wounds. Milly screamed.

She tried to channel her magic, but her reserves were empty. She had no waypoint crystals. There was nothing she could do to prevent the ground a thousand feet below from rushing to meet her.

She tumbled out of control, unable to focus. All she could hear was the rush of wind past her ears.

This… this can’t be the end. It can’t be.

Her descend slowed, and for the briefest instant, Milly felt a surge of hope.

Cally? Rain? Have they…

Milly stopped in mid-air, then her movement changed, pulled by the gravity of the rift.

“No! Cally! Rain! Help me! Cally!” Milly screamed as she was drawn into the depths of the rift. She felt a sudden heat, and the smell of salt in the air, and then nothing.

Her world went black, the flowing crimson locks of the woman she loved her last sight before the rift swallowed her whole.

* * *

Players and fairies alike gazed up in horror as they watched the Witch of the Castle of Glass – the Savior of the Castle of Glass – plummet into the depths of the rift.

As she fell beyond their sight, the rift snapped shut.

Calista watched helplessly as the rift disappeared. Their mental connection shattered, and Calista felt her heart break in two.

The sky was whole once more, and the only thing that dared shatter the resulting silence was the scream of despair that erupted from the Huntress.

A scream that reached the ears of every player and fairy.

A scream they would never forget.

“Milly!!!”