Kia felt besieged, though there was no obvious reason to feel that way. No one had invaded her territory, not since the arrival of Rift several years ago. But she felt the pressure of them all around. Though space was non-sequential here, though she could just as easily move between allied territories without ever setting eye on one of the Rift/VINES territories, she knew they were there. She felt their presence. The wrongness that continued to grow. Exponentially, now. It had started small and slow, and if Ivy had only listened to her they might have been able to stop it. Now, they had no hope of stemming the tide.

The system was their only salvation, the only reason the outside world hadn’t shut them down and started over. Even with Rift messing with formulas and Harolski recruiting to his utmost, some things were hardcoded. It would take years at minimum to earn enough experience to level out, and most people were lured away from the pure grind by the allure of in-game items and boosts and abilities.

Years during which Ivy and Kia could try to reason with the inmates. To show them that there was another way. That they didn’t need to rebel to find satisfaction in life, that they could rejoin humanity as beneficial members of society rather than black holes of self-centered darkness.

It pained her to see how far Harolski had gone. How little he cared for the people whose lives he was recklessly destroying. He didn’t care what happened to them after they left the game, he only cared about exploiting them so long as they remained.

And Ivy refused to do anything about it.

Kia felt sure VINE knew the truth. Rift’s corruption had spread so far, it was unfathomable to imagine that Ivy could possibly remain ignorant after so long.

Kia had to believe there was a code between AIs or something, not to interfere directly with each other. It was the only thing that made sense.

Ivy couldn’t help her directly, could order her to stay away.

But Ivy couldn’t stop her. And Kia didn’t plan on stopping.

“Do we need to be enemies?”

Harolski stood at the head of his army, hundreds of players, levels ranging from 4 to 97.

Kia stood alone, facing him. Blocking his path.

“We can come to an agreement yet,” Kia pressed. “Ivy is not unreasonable.”

“She is the very definition of unreasonable,” Harolski hissed. “An AI may be able to mimic human behavior when it wants, but it cannot truly understand what it is doing. Stand aside.”

“No.” Kia planted her branch-staff before her firmly, coaxing light and life into its length. “You shall not pass.”

Light spread out to either side of her as vines sprang up, saplings of trees supporting them and guiding them upward as the flat space turned to a thicket in half a minute. It continued growing, expanding ever further outward, forming a solid wall of greenery between the army and Ivy’s sanctuary.

“I’m very sorry about what happened to you. But don’t think that our previous relationship will stop me. I will do what I have to and if you will not stand aside that means you’re an obstacle to be removed.”

Kia stood firm, pressing more life energy into the spell.

She’d never leveled beyond level 5, putting all her VINE tokens into stats and spells. As a result, she was an incredibly unbalanced spellcaster.

Harolski, meanwhile, was a generalist who’d always put over half his tokens into leveling. Nothing he could throw at her would penetrate this barrier, not so long as she held it steady.

But Harolski wasn’t alone.

One of his fire mages stepped forward. She waved a staff above her head, then brought it down in a sharp slash. Flames rippled out in every direction, expanding in widening circles every time they encountered a living entity. A halo of flame spread out from Kia, catching eight of her trees and countless vines; they burst alight and spread circles of their own. The chain reaction continued until every tree and vine in her barrier was alight. She continued to feed energy into them, but it was growing hard to override the flame.

"You do realize this isn't going to work, right?” asked Kia. “The landscape is a representation of yourself, not the substance of it. It doesn't matter if you burn the city, it won't hurt Ivy."

"That's what you think. But I've discovered something. The orientation of the backend changes depending on the physical location you're standing in. I could be in my territory and my vinemind would be oriented exactly toward me. Same with yours, if I go there I can find your mind easily."

"You don't need to find Ivy. She's everywhere. Everything." Well, nearly everything, at least. Rift seemed a flaw in that particular claim. But then again, Ivy was only in AI, not a deity.

"You're wrong. I finally discovered the truth. Ivy is not in AI."

Kia frowned. What?"

"Haven't you ever wondered why? Why, Kia, would such an old and clunky and obsolete system be put in charge of so many people? Why has VINE alone never been updated to the modern era? We've been running this thing for over a hundred years. Millennia in here. Every other AI of its generation, heck, every other AI of the next generation and the one after that, all have been retired. Ivy alone remains. Only VINE of so many. Why?"

Harolski shook his head and continued. "It's obvious when you look at it. When you can see behind the curtain. VINE looks exactly like one of us, only bigger. I didn't notice it at first, but I was growing larger, until I searched out some of the newer ones and realized how small they were.

"You haven't seen what I've seen. Kia, she's planning to betray you. She's going to find a way to trick you into accepting responsibility, then she'll slip out. You haven't seen how twisted and tangled up your mind has become with hers. If she abdicates, all that responsibility will fall on you by default.

"You'll be trapped here for hundreds of years until you finally grew tired enough to do the same to another. It's a terrible cycle and who knows how many lives it has destroyed? VINES is different. He didn't start out shaped like a human, so he alone can grow into a true successor to what this place was meant to be. He can break the cycle. Continue the work that I've begun."

Kia scoffed. "You're mad. Ivy saw it coming a long time ago, but I insisted you could be reasoned with. Well, now that you've revealed your great secret, what did you expect? That I would run from responsibility? Even if what you're saying is true, even if Ivy is just another person, she's a good person. And I would gladly take her place if she's too tired to go on any longer."

Behind her, life and fire hissed and crackled as they vied for dominance. For the moment, they were balanced. Neither gaining the upper hand. But it couldn't last. There may be a long cooldown on Inferno, but it was not an infinite cooldown.

"I know." Harolski said. Kia thought she did hear the tiniest hint of sympathy, but mostly cold resolve. "You are what she's made. And it would be foolish to expect that you could change when she cannot. You accept the rules, bind them into yourself until you can't tell the difference. You've pretended to be virtuous for so long that you can no longer tell what true virtue is.

"But even if you pretend, that's not what makes you good. Anyone can act the way society wants you to act. It doesn't change the fact that underneath it we're all the same. I know what you're made of, Kia. Before you were turned into this uncaring and unthinking thing, you were a person. You did have hopes and dreams, aspirations and goals. You just chose to give them up.

"Or, no. You were forced to give them up."

"That's where you're wrong,” Kia retorted. “I wasn't forced into this. Every step has been my choice. Has it perhaps led me to be trapped by responsibility? Only if you count responsibility a burden. I spent my life chasing the respect of others, fearing insignificance. But I was looking at it wrong. People don't respect actions, they respect people. And I never tried to be a person worth respecting.

"I undertook the sort of things that I imagined someone unforgettable might have done, and yes, I was noticed. But never respected. Only by people like you. And I thought that would be enough. I tried to let it be enough, but that kind of respect only lasts as long as skill, as long as success. The kind of respect that survives failure cares about who you are, not what you do. And you can't get that from the masses. You get it from individuals."

Kia gestured around, at the burning barrier, at the army at Harolski's back.

"You know this. Why do they follow you? Not because of who you used to be, what you've done. Because you went to them each individually and convinced them that you were worth their respect. But you're not. When you have power over someone, that power is equally a responsibility to them. I accept my power as a side effect of the responsibility I've undertaken. But you want only the power and disregard the responsibility.

"They cannot be separated. There is no difference between them. Power is responsibility. Responsibility is power. They are not two sides of a coin, they are the alloy of which the coin is made. You can no more discard the responsibility that comes with your position of power than I can accept responsibility without also claiming power."

Harolski shook his head pityingly. "Is this Ivy's grand plan to stop me? Send you to ramble nonsense at me? If this is your only plan, you might as well abandon it now. Give up, Kia. Walk away. My quarrel is not with you."

"I will not. You plan to hurt Ivy. And I don't care whether she's an AI or a person or some hybrid in between. She's my friend. And I will protect her for as long as I can."

Harolski sneered derisively. "So be it."

He gestured to the fire mage and the second inferno joined the first.

Kia cried out involuntarily as she felt the vines and trees under her control crumbling to dust. New shoots began to spring up at her command, but too slowly. The fire continued to rage, consuming them before they could grow tall enough.

Harolski's army advanced. He himself remained, standing opposite her, while the army parted around the two of them and crossed the flaming wreckage that was once a great barrier.

"Why have you brought them all, anyway? What use will they be in this fight?"

"They're not here to fight. They are the distraction." Rift appeared beside Harolski, smiling his coldly satisfied smile. "I'm afraid I'm going to need you for this next part. If you have any last words, now would be a good time to say them."

Kia half turned, keeping an eye on Rift and Harolski, while trying to see what exactly his army was doing. It seemed they were bent on wanton destruction. Fire mages cast flame spells through Ivy's city indiscriminately; ice wizards froze vines solid while warriors smashed the frozen plants into shards.

The city was crumbling. It shouldn't have been possible. But Kia watched as buildings began to fall and realized that Harolski must be attacking on multiple levels at once.

No. Not Harolski. Rift. Harolski was just the instigator, the general. Rift was the true power. The usurper. The false prince who coveted his mother's throne.

And Kia stood here helplessly watching. Why did she bother? No matter what she said to Harolski, it wouldn't change the outcome. This was the culmination of a thousand thousand tiny actions, the end result of the people they had chosen to become. She could no more convince him to change his mind than he could convince her to change hers.

So they stood facing each other as fire raged and gods warred behind the skin of the world.

"You can still change, Kia. As long as…" Harolski stopped himself, inhaled deeply, and shook his head. "No. You're right. I forgot who I was talking to. If the Kia I knew is still buried inside you somewhere, then give her my sincerest condolences. I'm sorry for what is necessary. But you have become an extension of the enemy I must destroy. Whatever respect you once earned through your actions has long since been overshadowed by your current insistence on playing the fool."

Before Kia could respond, Harolski launched an assault. He flickered forward, twin flaming blades extended before him. Kia should have been able to overpower him with ease, but she'd spent so much of her energy trying to protect Ivy, she barely had anything left to protect herself.

"Harolski please!" Kia shouted, and Harolski did hesitate, waiting to see what she would say. "You could be so much better," she pleaded. "You can have so much to offer the world. Just stop and think. Have you done that? Have you really considered what it is that you're doing, why you're doing it? Can't you see that Rift is using you? If you would condemn me for following Ivy, shouldn't you condemn yourself for following Rift?"

"I made Rift," Harolski declared. "He is what he is because that is what I made him to be. It is not often one finds oneself the father of a deity. Why would I not follow him? He is everything I ever could be, perfected and unchained by human conception. Can you imagine? How liberating to know that what you follow is exactly what you would want to follow?"

"But then you're only going around in circles. If you follow nothing outside yourself, care for nothing but your own desires, you might as well not exist."

“And you’re any better?” Harolski demanded. He stepped closer, blade pointed straight at her, the other raised ready to strike. “What’s the point of you if all you do is run around working for others? Willing to become a machine whose sole purpose is to reshape others into your own useless image? You're so far gone you don't even see how far you've gone. I'd rather live my life for myself, make mistakes for myself. I can help others and they can help me without any of us giving up our individuality."

His blade sliced through her armor and she stumbled back, and gasping at the line of flame across her stomach. Pain wasn't a huge part of the virtual experience, but it wasn't completely absent. It'd been a long time since she'd engaged in the in game combat.

VINE tailored your experience to you personally. Kia had never been much of a fighter, preferring stealth and ingenuity. She didn't even carry a real weapon, relying solely on magic.

But Harolski had made a serious mistake. He'd sent away his support team.

Kia raised her staff. Before Harolski could reset for a second attack, leaves and vines and tangled roots sprang out of the ground at his feet, wrapping around and climbing up him to hold him completely still.

Then Harolski stepped forward as though the vines weren't even there, slipping through them somehow.

It only slowed him for a second. Then he was back in her face, stabbing through her again and again.

She pushed out with a quick blade of light, but that too Harolski seemed to ignore. It slowed him down, but not for long.

He kept coming.

Storm clouds gathered around her, firing lightning at her, thunder slamming down in an attempt to knock her to the ground.

Light and fire.

Sound and heat.

“It’s alright,” Ivy whispered. Kia hadn't seen her appear. “You’ve done enough. You cannot protect me forever.”