We took a little while to collect ourselves after our encounter with the Hollow Men, and advanced on the object I had spotted earlier. As we got closer, I could see that it wasn’t exactly the same as the shadow furniture around it. It was an orb about the size of an egg, clearly made to fit in with the solid black motif, but I could see that it was slightly glossy. Its surface was covered in swirling patterns of grooves that seemed to direct the flowing magical energy within it. I also saw a thin line of magic, running away in a difficult to describe dimension, connecting its magic to the magical shell containing the shadows - the inner shell, which apparently contained the combat behaviors for once the outer shell was disrupted. I inspected the spot where the tether connected to the shell, and noted a very suspicious section right where the two met. A section that felt very much like a self-destruct of some sort.

“If we disturb the orb, which is probably the key we need for the barrier, it looks like it will totally remove the magical shell containing these things.” I said, gesturing to the shadowy furniture all around us, then to the piles of shadow ‘corpses’ near the entrance where we made our stand.

“What?!” Joe shouted, “You mean if we had just rushed here and grabbed this we could have skipped most of the fight?”

“No,” I shook my head, “I seriously doubt that. There is something nasty inside the shell. I think it triggers the second phase of the boss fight. It might skip the fight if we hadn’t disrupted the outer layer, which kept them in their passive state, but I can’t be sure touching this wouldn’t also break that too.”

We all just looked at each other for a few moments.

“I do not think that we will be able to defeat what lurks behind those masks.” Lindsey voiced what we all were thinking. Well, I was certainly thinking that.

“So… back to the barrier to try my way?” I asked.

“How about you just store the orb?” Joe asked me. “That way we can try to fight the boss, and if we can’t then we can try to run, and if we fail there too, we can just go through the barrier tomorrow night. Your inventory isn’t a game feature, it’s your personal power, so there’s a good chance that the game won’t just pull the orb out of your inventory when we die.”

“Most of the game mechanics we’ve seen so far have been internally consistent and built up within the game world in some way,” I agreed, thinking through his suggestion, “Yeah, I doubt that they’d just despawn the orb or something similar.”

I stretched my limbs a little, and jumped in place to try to get my blood flowing and shake off the lingering cold.

“Everyone ready?” I asked.

“Optimally, I would like to rest for a while in order to recover from exertion of my power,” Lindsey said, “but I would be uncomfortable remaining here under its gaze for so long. Begin when you are ready.”

“Yeah, go ahead,” said Joe.

I stored the orb, and in the blink of an eye the darkness was no longer contained within the chopped up bodies or the office furniture, but it was all around us instead. It was a swirling, whispering mass of cold and darkness, pushing in from all sides, sucking the heat out of everything. The only things I could see in the utter blackness were my two companions. Joe exploded with heat and light, pushing back the cold for a moment, but his power and heat were eroded and we were left in the dark once more.

Tendrils of shadow reached out towards him, I could sense their concentrated spiritual presence, the only thing differentiating them from the background darkness.

[Impudent little thing, you insult me.] a rasping empty presence spoke.

[Heat Death cannot be harmed by heat, only forestalled. Learn your place.]

The limbs of darkness reached for Joe, only to be cut through by Lindsey, who stepped closer to him. The severed limb evaporated, though more were already forming.

[What can you Sever that will prevent the inevitable? You cannot fight. Lie down and die.]

As more vines of Heat Death reached for Joe, I tried to store a small portion of one passing near me, in hopes of using my total perception of things within my inventory to figure something out which may help us. My power eroded away before I could collect anything at all. I jerked my hand back, a small patch of frozen flesh was all I had to show for my attempt.

[And you. What are you? What are you becoming? You don’t know. I don’t know. For now, you are nothing. Can do nothing. You will be last.]

More and more spiritual pseudopods were reaching in by the second. Lindsey tried to cut off as many as she could, but I could see that she was falling behind, and worse she was beginning to fail to fully sever them.

[Incinerate!] [Flashfire!]

Joe lashed out with beams of heat and blasts of flame, but it was clear that he couldn’t see the appendages closing in around him. As they began to grasp him, he suddenly slowed, letting out a very reptilian hiss. It was mere seconds before he stopped altogether, still as death. A burst of magic and he was gone, taken away by a portal much like the one I had seen when that elf player had logged in.

Lindsey kept cutting to the bitter end, screaming her defiance into the blackness. One tendril touched her foot, and she grew quieter, her voice going hoarse. The next limb grasped her arm, which fell limp at her side, and finally she slipped up and one brushed her head. She fell to the ground, limp. A moment later her body burst into tiny motes of light, rapidly extinguished.

Through it all, I just stood there. Helpless. Contemplating. It had asked me what I was, what I was becoming, and it was true that I didn’t know. I spent so much time manipulating the void that was now inside me, but I didn’t really understand it. But I could see one thing clearly now. The void pressing in around me felt sterile. It was the end of all things. The one inside me felt more like a beginning.

I closed my eyes after Lindsey fell. They were useless at the moment. There was nothing left to see. I steeled myself for what was to come. There was nothing I could do to fight this thing, at least nothing that presently came to mind, so I focused on the things I could do. I needed to safeguard the orb in my inventory from anything the game may do to take it away, and I needed to take this opportunity to see what I could learn about myself and my power in this environment (because I certainly didn’t intend to put myself in this situation again).

[Soulless shells and projections. Curious.]

It was closing in now. I could sense the denser tendrils creeping ever closer to me, but it seemed to be taking its time. I couldn’t begin to guess why, but I could certainly make use of the time it gave me. Its magical freezing and draining effect seemed to come entirely from the ‘feel’ of its energy, not from complex patterns or mechanisms. Its energy still moved around, but it was more like swirling mists or a flowing river, not an electrical circuit or turning gears. There was something deeper inside it that felt artificial, but it was buried deep and I couldn’t get a clear feeling for what it might be. Lindsey’s power also felt more ‘natural’ when she used it. It felt like cutting, very clear and simple. What did my power feel like?

[Are you in league with my kidnapper? Are you a fellow captive? Do you even know?]

Ah, that was why it wasn’t rushing to finish me. Either story or quest related lines that it needed to deliver. I’d guess the kidnapper is probably that woman from the barrier exposition. Maybe we will have to pick a side later in the story? Anyway, feeling out my own power… how would I do that? I couldn’t really perceive my own power inside me. I couldn’t sense Lindsey’s when she wasn’t using it either. Maybe I needed to extend my power out further to get a good look? I tried to push some out, and it seemed to work, but the darkness all around rapidly stripped it away before I could get a feeling for it.

[No, no, can’t have you...] it seemed to trail off into creaking static. The flowing power of nothingness all around me stilled.

Then it killed me. There was just a flash of cold as the darkness took me from all sides, then nothing. My mind drifted vaguely dreamward for a moment, until a faint game message shocked me into alertness.

[…allowed to escape…]

Then one of its pseudopods reached into my inventory. The air inside, which I had never noticed before, rushed towards the intruding appendage as if it were hard vacuum. I clamped down my ethereal grip over my entire inventory. That was my air. All was still for a moment, the thick tentacle suddenly withering and slowing under my gaze. It wasn’t enough to stop it entirely, though.

[You are like them. No good will come of you. You must be destroyed. You must not grow.]

It was beginning to sound slightly manic. The diminished tendril still reached into my personal void, turning a small pile of papers and a bottle of ink to dust as it passed. It was reaching toward where I had stashed the orb. Damn it! This was how the game was going to try to take it back!

[You sought this out. Then it must be denied to you.]

It would only be moments before our sacrifice today was turned to dust. I couldn’t let that happen. I relocated the orb to another area, far from the initial point of entry. Additional arms of darkness entered my domain, becoming desiccated in the environment that I was actively making hostile to them. I was starting to feel sick, despite apparently not having a body at the moment. I did what I could to continuously relocate the orb, keeping it away from the questing appendages. I couldn’t flex my power in any sort of way which pushed the intruders out, nor keep them from making additional breaches.

[You cannot resist forever. Give in. Accept your loss.]

It was right. I was already slowing down. The thing was sapping my energy, and it was getting harder and harder to move the orb from one location to another. It was purely by chance that I noticed something that might salvage this situation. One breach had happened near where I had put the bottle of sunlight, high above everything else. That tendril had withered away to nothing.

[Why is this here?]

It sounded baffled.

[Essence of the Maker of my Maker?]

Incredulous now.

[THIEF DESECRATOR VILLAIN BLASPHEMER RUIN DEATH MURDER RIP TEAR]

That was worrying.

I rapidly pulled the orb and the glowing bottle into the area I had set up for my minion’s office, just in time for the tentacles to go absolutely berserk. They whipped around turning things to dust left and right, but none of them could approach the sunlight area. I moved the silver knife into the safe area, but I wasn’t able to save anything else. My energy was still being sapped, and I was beginning to feel faint. I tried to pull the remaining air and space and energy and whatever else existed in the background of my inventory into the little area circumscribed by the bottle’s glow, to try to make it denser or more concentrated. To my surprise, it seemed to work. Even better, the shadowy invaders seemed to slip away, having no medium to sustain their continued existence. I seemed to slip away too, into proper dreams.

The pigeon and I shared an after action report in a well appointed boardroom. I rolled around on some clouds, high above an endless forest. There was something about cats, but they kept getting larger and larger until I was riding them as they surged through a city made of cat towers and enormous cardboard boxes. Probably some other dream stuff happened, but by the time I woke the next morning, I couldn’t remember much of it.

This time waking up was just as Joe had said. I was surprisingly well rested, considering I had just been murdered by a giant abstract embodiment of entropy and then had to fend off its incursion into my… spirit? Soul? Whatever, had to fend off its incursion. The dreams afterwards had worn away any rough edges the experience might have had. I guess the aliens knew their stuff after all. A game message pinged me as I worked myself into wakefulness.

[Warning! High levels of spiritual damage to your avatar may harm your power development. Extreme levels may damage your key.]

Doesn’t this mechanic imply that it is better to just Alt-F4 if I’m ever in that sort of a situation again? Though with my lack of any control over the underlying local hardware, whatever it was that was actually running the game, I suppose it would be trivial for them to have some safeguard in place that prevents logouts while in combat, or something similar. I’d make sure to include it in my report today anyway.

The game’s insistence on remaining ‘in character’ at all times was beginning to make me slightly paranoid. Hopefully, it was just intended to push the game into AR territory, deepen the immersion or something. I had seen other elements that suggest that might be the case. I could still access my inventory and move things around when logged off, for one. I’d be willing to bet that any other purely internal functions of powers would remain accessible. But… doesn’t that mean that if someone got a power that let them think faster, they’d be able to make use of it out here? Wait… my power lets me think faster, the time dilation effect when I am focusing on my inventory! Time dilation, beyond the very modest boost one found in full-dive VR setups attached to sufficiently powerful desktop hardware, was not routine tech. Personal time dilation implants were the sort of thing that Executives salivated over. It was literally the sort of thing the news would tell you about to give you an idea about how rich and powerful someone they were discussing was.

I pulled up the stopwatch app, started it, then immediately dove into my inventory. I counted off ten seconds, then pulled back out and stopped the timer. 1.98 seconds. I was giddy and terrified in equal measure. Ten times acceleration was generally the lowest number I could remember the media boasting of. About fifty percent acceleration was achievable with a mid range gaming desktop in modern full-dive VR setups. I was somewhere in the middle. Impressive, but not dangerously so. Some of the fear started to ebb. It was too late to not report this. I had already included in my report yesterday that I could still interact with my inventory outside the game, there was no way the higher ups would fail to notice and think to take advantage. Besides, surely someone else must be in a similar situation. Maybe some kind of a danger sense attached to a melee power? Wouldn’t that cause some havoc. They’d probably get transferred to Enforcement sooner rather than later if someone ended up with something like that. I was glad that all I could do was look at game objects I’d collected and think faster while I did it. No way to use it for anything dangerous in real life. Except…

I shifted my perspective to my minion’s office, and found a single bottle of ink remained. I took a random paper from the stack, relocated it to the desk. Before I could perform any sort of direct communication, my pigeon seemed to understand what I wanted and started moving. He hopped up onto his desk, grasped the ink bottle in one of his talons, and used his beak to unscrew the cap. He dipped the tip of one clawed toe into the ink, and wrote the message I thought to him. ‘Hello, World’ it said on the paper, written in clear, bold handwriting. I could store information in a way that was totally immune to any modern form of electronic interception or monitoring. It was probably immune to any human means of tampering of any sort. The only thing that could break that protection would be someone with a Dreamshards key, and a power which allowed them to peer into magical spaces. In limited instances, magic in the game was magic in real life.

I briefly started down that road, thinking about the sort of spy versus spy nonsense that probably already goes on among Executives, but now with the added layer of people getting keys and picking powers for their real world side effects. A lance of pain worked its way through my head, disrupting that particular train of thought. Message received, brain. That way lies madness.