text: Dhane inhaled deeply, held the air for a long moment, then slowly let it flow from him, taking all the anxiety, the fear, the uncertainty away. . . . Except—dammit all to hell!—it wasn't working.
  
  Not even Octoralis's soothing could hide the fact that every passing second brought him closer to the big event. The stone walls and floor and ceiling all seemed to vibrate, to pulse with an electric energy from all those people excited to see him die in some nightmarish fashion.
  
  He had read through every skill option and purposely designed his character to achieve the highest amount of damage utilizing backstab and venom counters. But he was effectively a glass cannon.
  
  85 health. It was more than twice what he had started with, though these challengers weren't typical players, they were battle-hardened, hungry for power and progression, going up against the evil, mysterious, ancient King of Shadows. . ..
  
  The arena wouldn't throw their lesser challengers at him, not with all the mind games he had played, and definitely not with two hundred Cobalin slaves at stake. They'd use their best to guarantee a sound victory, a display of triumph over the King of Shadows.
  
  Shit, shit, shit. . ..
  
  Worse of all, it was entirely his fault. He wanted to give them a show to ensure he wouldn't get tossed away to the priests of Light, but now they expected him to be this big, bad, and dangerous entity.
  
  What was he thinking?
  
  He had absolutely no chance, and that was the truth of the matter, a mouse against a viper. Killing a hundred mobs, locked in pens as they were, may have given him a boost, sure, though he was still a newb that hadn't even used half his skills.
  
  Then we escape, Daddy! Octoralis projected.
  
  Yes. That was the only option here. He would be the dishonorable, the deceitful, the trash of the world, but . . . he could live. What was honor in the face of strategy? It was smart to trick his enemies and live long enough to gain power. Throwing himself onto his sword wouldn't help anyone.
  
  Okay, okay. . . . If his goal was to escape, he needed to at least know how Spider Climb worked. The passive bonus allowed him to defy gravity, much like how Spider Rider worked.
  
  Dhane stood. The ceiling was maybe twelve feet high, everything was carved from tan stone. He stepped to the side of the room and brushed fingertips along the wall. The main requirement was to be within reachable distance, which he was, about two feet away.
  
  And then what? He just had to think that it was—
  
  The world shifted and the wall yanked him forward. His whole body slapped the stone like a bellyflop from the high dive board. But the wall didn't splash and give way. No . . . in this situation, he was the one to give.
  
  His breath escaped his lungs and took a little detour while pain roiled across his chest. His cheekbone stung where he slammed it against the stone in an attempt to turn.
  
  And just like every other time something terribly unpleasant—also known as painful—happened, precisely three seconds later, he was perfectly fine.
  
  This little fact didn't stop his automatic exclamation of profanity. In situations such as this, that was simply the expected method of coping.
  
  Now, having copiously coped and endured Octoralis's mental giggling, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and crawled up the wall.
  
  He was on the wall. It was so damn cool, all until the door swung open from behind. He quickly summoned his mask and rolled to face two wide-eyed guards.
  
  Dhane almost said something like Hey guys, just hanging. . . . Or maybe a more exasperated I'm stuck! But he had a persona to maintain, a persona that took a little bit of thought to get into the right mind space, yet his thoughts seemed entirely lost in all that gray matter up there.
  
  Instead, he arched his back, arms twisting at odd angles, and exhaled loudly, as if to expel the demons that nested within. He was a cross between Emily Rose and Darth Vader, in critical need of an exorcism.
  
  One guard slammed the door shut so fast that, while being thoroughly focused on the single task, failed to understand the simple fact of why the door wasn't closing. That fact happened to be his partner's head.
  
  By the time the door was securely shut, locked, bolted, and covered in a thick layer of cement, the other door opened to a kitchen. Four guards charged in with weapons drawn—the chef in the background, frozen in mid pancake flip—and Dhane repeated his theatric display.
  
  His audience quickly about-faced, and the room returned to its calm, quiet, if not a little boring, state.
  
  This is fun, Octoralis projected.
  
  "If you mean antagonizing the enemy who has the power to lock us away forever as fun . . . I suppose it is a little fun." A little fun and a little stupid, but he had already planted his seed of fear into the hearts of men, perhaps it would give him the opening he needed to get away.
  
  And with that thought, Dhane stood. The floor became a wall with a table and chairs stuck to it. He stepped over a framed canvas, feeling a sense of wrongness spiral into the back of his mind.
  
  The world had turned on its side, but that wasn't the wrongness that continued to seep through him. That sensation was a desire, a need for him to step back into the normal world, the normal flow of things, where gravity pulled in one direction.
  
  The longer he stood there, the greater that sensation grew. It became difficult to think of anything other than the absolute requirement that he return, return, return. It hit like waves or echoes or a heartbeat, growing louder with each pulse.
  
  His feet slipped, his stomach turned, and the pull of gravity shifted. He spun in the air and landed softly on the actual ground. Everything returned to normal, silent, still.
  
  Then the door opened and Challenger Sarah stepped in, her guards quick to follow. She looked at Dhane, then looked back to her closest guard and raised an eyebrow.
  
  "He-he—" the man said.
  
  She pinched her fingers in the air and the guard immediately stopped talking, then she turned to Dhane and said, "My very idiotic, stupid, stupid guards said you were acting suspiciously in here. I'm sure they would have had more information if they remained inside!" The guards studied the floor. "But guards will be guards. Always incompetent. So what were you doing?"
  
  "Wall yoga," Dhane said in his kingly voice.
  
  "Yoga!" Challenger Sarah yelled, then laughed. "The King of Shadows does yoga?"
  
  "Yes. When you've lived for as long as I have, you find comfort in morning routine."
  
  The reminder of his supposed age seemed to excite her. She gazed up at his mask, her heart doing a little skip. "And the sounds you were making?"
  
  "Breathing exercises." It was a bit far fetched, a bit silly, and perhaps a lot unlike a king, though it fit his horror-filled display while avoiding the unasked question of how he managed to get on the wall in the first place.
  
  Challenger Sarah slapped the back of her guard's head. The force of the blow flattened the man to the ground. She shook her head and flicked a curl from her eyes. "Well then, you should be prepared for your arena debut. Follow me."
  
  There was nothing in Dhane's skills or passives that explained the tiny changes he had experienced from leveling. No information on why his teeth were a bit sharper, or why withdrawing and depositing items to his inventory did so with tendrils of smoke.
  
  Of course, he wasn't the only person who had changed in some inexplicable way. Challenger Sarah, for one, certainly strayed from the norm.
  
  She didn't have white skin as anyone would normally understand it to be; she was chiseled from alabaster, a statue of cold perfection. Then there was her unnaturally bright red hair and matching eyes—eyes that sliced into anything they peered at—not to mention her fangs.
  
  And what of Penny? She had a glow to her, a warmth, and gorgeous blue eyes that, come to think of it, seemed quite impossible. They were crystals of color that glimmered like ocean waves in sunlight. Magical.
  
  Was she here at the arena, waiting to see for herself whether or not the stories were true? Is she okay. . .? A quick thought to his Messages app revealed nothing new, just a screen of old blurry texts.
  
  A slice of heavy, worrisome reality, pressed down on his chest. He hated not knowing what happened. Hated thinking of the worst and hoping for the best, that somehow, and completely unlike the worrywart Penny he knew, she had missed his messages.
  
  Challenger Sarah arranged her guards around him, giving stern instructions. She didn't flinch in the face of confrontation. If a guard looked at her the wrong way, she'd flatten him or her right then and there: no warning, no apology, standing one moment and on the edge of death the next.
  
  Finally, she looked him over, eyes lingering on his neck, sending his goosebumps to play hide-and-seek from this predator. With a slight nod, she marched to the front of her procession and led the way.
  
  Unlike the first time, the people that crowded the Hall of Guilds were not stunned into a sense of fearful quiet. They seemed to have amassed in an attempt to prove just how unafraid they really, most definitely were.
  
  It was a storm of shouts and jeers and hocked loogies, as if spitting on the floor somehow made him look bad. One woman from behind, tall and slender by her vibration lines, launched an apple at the back of his head.
  
  Dhane eased to the side, then snatched the tiny meteor a fraction of a second after it whizzed past his ear. He then proceeded to lift the bottom of his mask and take a bite.
  
  It was a crisp green apple, equal parts sour and sweet. The crunch, with a bit of Modify Vibration, cut through the commotion, stunning some onlookers while stoking the fire in others. He then triggered Venom Bite, not entirely sure what it would do, if anything. The apple disintegrated as if kissed by Death himself.
  
  "Thank you," he said, maintaining his royal posture that projected a complete lack of concern. It was a total lie. He hadn't been the focus of this much hate since his review of Cyberpunk 2077.
  
  He needed to escape, to get away from everything, to step out into the void where no one could find him and he could be alone: no expectations, no fear, no pain. He needed distance.
  
  They passed the small doorway Kuby had used that led up to the surface. Every muscle in Dhane's body wanted to just sprint for it, dive through the sea of bodies, roll the dice and pray for a little luck.
  
  The thought lingered until it was too late.
  
  Challenger Sarah turned down a hallway and the swarm of bodies followed like a school of toxic piranhas that had tasted blood in the water. Someone else threw a round vegetable of sorts and it splattered against a guard.
  
  Dhane tried to breathe the anxiety away, tried to assemble his mental walls to block out all the requests to see his affinity, tried to be unaffected by such extreme negativity.
  
  He mentally summoned his Cobalin sword ahead of him, then desummoned it before it could take shape. He did it over and over just to occupy his thoughts with something he could control beyond walking and breathing and listening to the creative strings of insults thrown his way.
  
  People gasped.
  
  He then noticed a slight friction in the air. . . . Smoke. Of course, it was one of his small changes. He was producing a pulsing, writhing ball of smoke, three feet ahead.
  
  With a tinge more creativity and just a bit more focus, he managed to shift the sword down and around himself. The tendrils of smoke seemed to be alive with how they danced through the air and shot toward whatever new thing was being summoned or desummoned.
  
  The whole thing gave off a nice illusion, an aura of power and mystery. The guards walked a step farther away, doing their best to keep people back, people that seemed a little less eager to poke the figurative bear.
  
  Challenger Sarah stopped at a large wooden door that reached nearly the top of the hallway. It was a door for a giant or dragon or some other overly large creature he couldn't quite think of at the moment. It was a door important enough to warrant two dedicated guards and a team of Cobalins that were now working to release a heavy steel beam.
  
  The other guards in the procession came to a practiced halt, all stamping in rhythm and turning to face the crowd on either side, shields out.
  
  "King of Shadows!" a young woman with an afro called, waving her hand. "Do you have— Hey!" she yelled at a guard who shoved her back. "I'm Ceratree press, I have every right to be here. Move!"
  
  A journalist? So they did have journalists! This snagged Dhane's attention and he turned to regard the young woman.
  
  "Every right, you say?" Challenger Sarah asked, her standard glare affixed on her cold face.
  
  Much to the journalist's credit, she held her ground. "Every right," she said. Spunky. "By law twenty-seven, I—"
  
  "— get to ask one question. Yes, I do know the constitution. Fine. Ask your stupid question, then go twaddle somewhere else."
  
  "Alright, very well, good, fine. Breathe. One-two-three, one-two-three." She took in a deep breath, tapped something on her phone, and said with a serious, down to business voice, "King of Shadow, how long . . . is your schlong?"
  
  Dhane almost laughed. She was good. She knew how to break the ice with an interviewee before digging into whatever important question she had.
  
  "Goddammit!" Challenger Sarah yelled and grabbed Dhane's arm.
  
  "Wait-wait-wait-wait! I was joking, just joking. Come on. Lighten up a bit. I have a real question."
  
  "You had your one."
  
  "But! He didn't answer, did he? Subsection J states I can ask another question if he doesn't answer."
  
  "You're a real piece of shit. Stop wasting our fucking time. Ask your damn question so we can get on with the event that everyone out there is waiting for."
  
  "Thank you, oh Queen of Blood," she said and turned to Dhane."The Royals have listened to the people's demands that you fight today. But only today. What parting words do you have for the world?"
  
  Only today? His whole facade was to build up enough excitement to keep him in the minds of the people should he lose or not escape. It was Plan Z, a tiny prayer of a way to postpone being discarded to the priests of Light.
  
  "Assuming," Dhane said, doing his best to keep his voice steady, and putting on an air of confidence, "that I do not win?"
  
  The journalist raised an eyebrow, then a tingling warmth slipped into his chest, doing its best to burrow into his soul and discover his hidden secrets.
  
  Dhane projected Lion and Monkey and Snake and Ferret. He cycled through Light and Shadow, flashing pieces of all the divinities he knew.
  
  The journalist jerked back, eyes wide, like she had reached her fingers into a cookie jar only to find it filled with spiders. "I . . . misspoke," she said, her voice carrying a sense of awe or terror. "You are the King of Shadows. . . . Why come now?"
  
  "Oh my god!" Challenger Sarah yelled. "That's two quest—"
  
  Dhane held his hand up to silence her and said with as much conviction he could muster, "The changed priests of Light are corrupt, seeking power and sacrificing souls to obtain it. They threaten the balance of the game. I've come to restore that balance."
  
  Nailed it! If he wasn't the quivering soul beneath a mask of bone, but a casual eavesdropper, the words would have struck a chord: There can be no game without balance. It was a vital truth for all games, that which made them fun, that which pushed people to master skills, knowing that should they lose, it wasn't because of an unfair advantage, but lack of skill and knowledge.
  
  Challenger Sarah wielded her all-too-common glare, directing it now at Dhane. In fact, everyone seemed to be gripping a sense of horror mixed with rage.
  
  Did they not just hear what he had said? Were they not all gamers like him, lovers of story and worlds and competition and progression? They stared, openly hating, as if he had praised cheaters.
  
  The journalist turned away without another word, shoulders pinched up against her neck.
  
  A metal beam clanged against the stone, filling the world with thick, bright vibrations. A guard—his eyes hard, forehead scrunched in disgust—kicked a female Cobalin, her hair like Desley's, short and spiky.
  
  "Worthless monster!" the guard yelled. "Pick it up!" And when the Cobalin didn't react fast enough, the guard kicked her again and again. She cowered against the wall, arms up to protect her small head.
  
  "STOP!" Dhane yelled, the smoke from his desummoned mask blasting outward along with his amplified voice. Little -1s in white and red, squiggled their way out of the onlookers, their hands clasped over their ears.
  
  Dhane marched up to the guard, ready to see what type a reaction Venom Bite would get when applied to a man's testicles. Maybe they'd disintegrate like the apple and hopefully cause a freakish amount of pain.
  
  He stopped, frozen for a heartbeat, breath caught in his throat. Sight, actual sight, with all of its depth and color and form, would always project a more accurate reality than vibrations.
  
  This little Cobalin with her green skin and black spiky hair, quivering against the wall . . . it was Desley, his first friend in this world, the one who had saved him from the Wilds and led him to Mahai and the Mother of Shadows.
  
  "Strong Shadow. . .?" she asked, a cut on her cheek shimmering the bright silver-white color of her soul. "Shadow fight for us?"
  
  Fight? Oh, shit brownies. He really wanted to! But how could someone like him win against all of . . . this? The strength of one man would never be enough. . ..
  
  "Always," he managed to say, knowing that deep within, it was a lie. He'd leave all the Cobalins—all the Desleys and Kubys—here to suffer while he escaped. But he would return, he just needed more time, more strength. That made it okay, right?
  
  "Knock?" he asked.
  
  Desley shrugged and shook her head. She used to have a glow to her, a sort of happy excitement for life when her biggest problems were her dimwitted Knock. But now, she looked drained, hollow, a shell.
  
  Challenger Sarah said something and all the guards stomped and turned. She looked at Desley, confusion twisting on her face, then said, not unkindly, "It's time."
  
  And so it was. . ..