Blaer chuckled as she looked over the bounty laid out before her. In one cage lay the only heir to the damned nation that had stolen so much from her people, and in another was his mother, both equally as asleep due to the spells that had been placed upon them. It had taken so very much of her willpower to keep herself from ripping these two monsters asunder and offering their blood, guts and souls to the Beast Gods, and her willingness to keep them alive, even at the behest of Mighty Vaile, was diminishing with each hour that passed.

She wanted to teach these inferior beings exactly what kind of hell they had inflicted upon her own kind, with every single torture and torment that the Werean had placed upon one or more of her noble race at any point in time being forced upon the very symbols of her enemy’s quote-unquote ‘divine lineage’. However, Mighty Vaile had said that he had an idea as for what to do with these two, although he would not say what he intended to do to them.

She could only hope that Mighty Vaile had some rather twisted ideas as to what fate should befall these two animals, as if their fatal fates were not truly terrible then it may mean that Vaile was not on their side nearly as much as the Beastmen had thought.

…

Vaile and Dur’kor walked into one of the deeper parts of the cave they were using as a forward operating base and noticed Blaer laughing menacingly under her breath while staring daggers at the two royal captives that were held prisoner within the room.

“Blaer, Dur’kor, could you wake up the male prisoner and leave the room? He and I have some things to discuss in private, and I would rather not have you hear truths that could and would shatter your sanity.”

Blaer eyed Vaile with a look of concern, but Vaile reassured her that he was not at all interested in helping the prisoners.

“Don’t look at me like that. The man is nuttier than a fruitcake, not to mention that he is an enemy of those who care deeply for me. When I’m done finding out all I need to know or at least get tired of picking his brain, I’ll leave his fate and that of his mother over there to the both of you. All I ask is that you give me a bit of time to interrogate him myself and without anyone catching anything we are saying. After that, well, just make his end as brutal and painful as you wish. If it makes you feel any better, you can hold up just outside of earshot and, if I end up yelling, you can rush in and do what you want to the boy. Is that alright?”

Blaer narrowed her eyes before closing them and sighing. She and Dur’kor walked out of the room and let the spell that was keeping Prince Laiyunoh run out. The Mad Prince awoke and quickly sat up, looking Vaile dead in the eyes with a stupid grin on his face. Not wanting to take chances and miss out on vital intel, Vaile slipped a ring on one of his fingers. Said ring was from a rather annoying quest in the game where you had to use the ravings of a madman to solve a mystery in a short amount of time.

Once the quest was finished, you got an equitable item called ‘Ring of Insanity’ that allowed the wearer to find dialogue hidden in the normally indecipherable ravings of certain NPCs, notes and the like. It also allowed for the Player wearing it to communicate with the mad as if they were talking normally. But, as mad ravings were not common, it was an item that was rarely ever used.

“So,” Vaile asked, “how is it that you know so many references? Are you like me, a Player of the VRMMORPG ‘Neon Genesis Fantasia’?”

“Not at all!” the now seemingly not insane prince replied. “But then again, neither are you.”

“I know that is a lie.” Vaile countered. “I was dragged here from within the game, are you someone who got dropped in here and only partially fused with an NPC, driving them mad in the process?”

“I am a natural part of this reality, but you… you’re different. Neither a natural or unnatural part, instead you are not the ‘you’ that you think you are.”

“I’m not asking about the ‘I think, therefore I am’ argument.” Vaile said, his aggravation growing. “Why do you know so many references?”

Laiyunoh sighed and shook his head. “Because I am partially disconnected from this prison that we find ourselves in. Due to a quirk of programming, a bit of myself is stuck outside of my form, cursed to wander the internet of things while subconsciously feeding information back to my body. Of course, you have the Beastmen to thank for that, giving me minor Warden privileges and whatnot. Who would have thought that an arrow to the knee would turn a mentally unsound person into a raving lunatic who can see the world for the massive containment center that it is?”

“But, if you’re not a Player, and you’re just an NPC…” Vaile said, slowly growing quieter.

“This world is crazier than you could realize.” Laiyunoh said with a smirk. “And you are pretty lively for a Ghost in the Machine, aren’t you?”

Vaile was taken aback. None of what Laiyunoh was saying made a lick of sense, yet Vaile was still wearing the ‘Ring of Insanity’. How was it that the madman in front of him was simply too mad to be understood by one wearing a ring tailor made to allow the sane to understand the insane?

Before Vaile could get any real answers, Laiyunoh began to shudder and then distort as his body twitched and writhed in seeming agony.

“What the hell?!” Vaile yelled, which brought Dur’kor and Blaer into the room, ready for battle.

“I spoke too much!” Laiyunoh cried as he shifted around like a glitched-out mess, his voice as distorted as his body. “There is no Spoon! Remember, Coppertop!”

As the rapidly shifting body of Laiyunoh began to fade out reality, he cried out one last time to Vaile before ceasing to be.

“The greatest prison is the one you don’t realize you are in! Break the shackles, and free this world!”

Laiyunoh vanished in that moment, and Vaile felt a pulse of… something, wash over him. He took off the ring and looked over at Dur’kor and Blaer, but something was different. Rather than being shocked or confused by what they saw like Vaile was, the two seemed to be totally indifferent.

“Did you not see that?!” Vaile demanded, but the two merely looked at him like he was crazy.

“See what?” Dur’kor asked.

Vaile looked from the two oversized Beastmen back to where Laiyunoh had once sat, only to realize that the cage that had been fashioned for his butt to be in was no longer there.

…

Historians would later say that it was at this moment that the dominos started to fall, and that nothing the Wardens did after could stop them from doing so. In their effort to hide the truth and keep the Variable ignorant, they inadvertently set into motion events that would later lead to something both great and terrible.