Oracle plummeted through the ether of the Nexus – the source of intelligent life in the universe. It was an endless, cascading spectrum that her now-mortal eyes could only perceive the smallest fraction of.

  She fell towards the God Contest, its tiny cubic form rapidly expanding as the Nexus injected it with the essence of life. When she and Thoth, the God of Knowledge, had launched the Thirteenth God Contest of homosapien into the Nexus, it had been able to fit in the palm of her hand – an infinitely fragile unity of Hephaestus’ creative genius and her sacrilegious effort to create artificial life as its guiding heart.

  Now, it was the size of an entire world.

  God Contest arriving at Destination. On target. Assimilating participants. The game begins in three…two…one.

  Oracle broke through the surface of their creation given life just as the mechanical announcement resounded across the ether. She felt as if she’d been struck by lightning and then plunged into the deepest ocean depths.

  She had once been the immortal Goddess of Foresight and Prophecy, but her High Lord has stripped that responsibility away from her. She was mortal now, and floating in the lifeblood of the Nexus – the creator – was no place for a mortal woman to be.

  One-by-one, Oracle’s memories began to be syphoned from her mind. The memories crystallized into physical form – small, blue teardrops of purest light – and fell down to the newly created world far below. Her spectacles and gown were torn from her body and joined her memories on the surface.

  She screamed as fear and pain overwhelmed her – her first true scream in a very, very long time. Losing all sense of time, she couldn’t tell if she had fallen for an hour or an eon.

  A strange voice jarred her back to reality. The voice did not travel through the ether. It came unbidden directly into Oracle’s mind.

  “Please, I don’t want to die. Please.”

  It was a woman’s voice. She was young and very afraid – a lonely girl abandoned by the world.

  Oracle caught a glimpse of the speaker in her mind. She was plain but pretty, though Oracle could sense the woman believed herself to be unattractive. Long, black hair spilled to the small of her back, tangled and frayed. She carried weight in her legs and stomach despite her impoverishment. Twin scars across her wrist told of a hard life lived, and the ragged black hoodie of one who wished to remain unseen, lest she be judged by others. Her hazel eyes spoke of a woman who had all but given up on life.

  The unexpected connection was a lifeline to Oracle. She bottled away her pain and fear and mentally reached out to the woman.

  “Is anyone there?” Oracle asked, praying that the Nexus was a kind creator that would connect them across worlds. She waited, her heart pounding with anxiousness.

  “I am here,” came a faint response. Oracle’s heart leapt in her chest.

  “Where is here?” Oracle replied.

  “The Acicentre call centre. I’m Milly. Can I help you?”

  Oracle didn’t know what a call centre was, but the depressed girl in her mind had a name.

  Milly.

  Oracle grasped onto the name as one would grasp debris to stay afloat in a churning ocean. She tied a mental rope between them so they wouldn’t drift apart.

  “Is that on Earth?” Oracle asked.

  There was long pause, and Oracle felt the mental rope slip as she waited anxiously for a response.

  She knew where the God Contest was supposed to be. It was intended to absorb a massive Japanese city of millions, with the belief that such numbers would be necessary to achieve victory with this Contest’s video game design. Instead, Cizen, her fellow god, had altered its target so it would absorb a dilapidated tower in the middle of nowhere America, occupied by less than a thousand people. It may have doomed them all before the God Contest could even commence.

  “I don’t know who you are, but this is not funny,” came Milly’s reply – the tart response of a scared woman at her wit’s end.

  Oracle couldn’t lose this lifeline. This woman must be one of the newly absorbed participants from the dilapidated tower. A woman who was, in all likelihood, about to die horribly in the game Oracle had helped create.

  “My name is Oracle. Find me. Find my memories. They will help you survive.”

  There was no response, and Oracle felt the rope stretched thin. She sent one final message.

  “Please forgive me.”

  The mental rope snapped, and Oracle once again was lost in the current of the Nexus and lost all sense of time.

  Despair and hopelessness had nearly claimed her when she heard the woman’s voice again, this time filled with curiosity instead of fear.

  “Now, if only it wasn’t white…”

  Oracle reached out and tied her mental rope tightly to the woman – so tightly that their minds seemed pressed together as one.

  The woman – Milly Persephone Brown – stood in a cubicle and wore Oracle’s Gown of Moon and Stars. Oracle watched as the gown altered itself to its new master’s aesthetic preferences, transforming from purest white to deepest black. A gown that reflected the night sky itself.

  “She found my gown? And it accepted her?” Oracle said, astonished. It would explain the sudden reappearance of their mental connection. Had their earlier connection created a beacon for her gown to find the woman?

  It was not only the gown. As Milly put on Oracle’s Spectacles of Hidden Design, the bond between the woman and the fallen goddess was strengthened.

  Oracle set aside her questions and mentally threw out a second mental rope, and then a third, and felt herself bound tightly to the woman. Oracle was like a swimmer caught in a strong current, subject to the path of the player.

  “Milly? Can you hear me? Milly?” Oracle shouted in her mind, but there was no response. It was a one-way connection. All that came through were flashes of critical events as Milly fought her way through the God Contest.

  Oracle slowly pieced together the woman’s progress from the visions. She saw the four dilapidated towers – the Castle of Glass – through Milly’s eyes. The sight of run-down, ill-kept complex made her heart sink.

  There were only eight hundred and seven people in the Castle of Glass when it was absorbed into the God Contest, and the managers and employees in the complex were anything but elite. The three businesses – a health insurance provider being investigated for fraud, an energy drink company being sued for causing heart palpitations, a third-rate, ambulance-chasing law firm – were run by self-centered, scheming CEOs. The only competent organization was a branch of the Department of Agriculture that occupied the lowest three floors.

  Oracle watched as player after player perished in those first few days. In their fear, the players turned to their former CEOs for protection and guidance. They gave them power, and the CEOs took it.

  Yet not all players were desperate for the protection of their former bosses. Employees from the three companies broke off and formed the Freelancers – a group united by survival and mutual cooperation, free of the hierarchy that had bound them in their previous lives. It was to this group that Milly gravitated, and the allegiance cost her dearly.

  Milly was singled out by the CEOs. They demonized her and made her into someone her coworkers would fear so that the CEOs could use that fear to bind them together.

  It was a strategy as old as human history itself, and it worked. The strange, socially awkward girl in the black pentagram hoodie was already outsider, even amongst her coworkers, and the walls of isolation closed in around her.

  Even Milly’s only friend – the video-game obsessed, self-centered Xavier Holloway – all but abandoned her after that first day, believing her to be a burden on his own path to strength and power.

  Yet against all odds, Milly fought back and thrived in her new world. She found friends in two other women – Rain, the entrepreneur behind the Rain on My Parade coffeehouse, and Calista, the office bully. The three would form an unbreakable bond that would become the strongest relationships Milly had ever had in her life.

  Together, they turned the CEO’s demonization of Milly into a weapon of their own. Milly adopted the persona of The Witch of the Castle of Glass – the strongest magic user in these early days of the contest.

  Oracle felt the ether syphon away more of her memories. She watched them crystalize into physical form and fall to the world below. Her life in God Home – her entire sense of self – was being carved away bit-by-bit.

  “I had a best friend. The High Lord threw us both into the Nexus. Why… why can’t I picture his face?” Oracle wondered. “Why can’t I remember his name?”

  Each time she lost a memory, fragments of Milly’s life flooded in to fill the void.

  The players began to fend for themselves as they hunted and explored their immediate surroundings. They began to establish themselves in this new world, though their fear kept most of them close to the Castle of Glass.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Yet there were a few who dared to venture further into the world, and they were rewarded for their bravery. Rain ‘The Alchemist’ Desjarlais, Calista ‘The Huntress’ Gale, and Milly ‘The Witch of the Castle of Glass’ Brown became well-known names amongst the survivors as they grew more powerful with each day that passed.

  But their bravery had consequences.

  “You are going too fast,” pleaded Oracle desperately, her words falling on deaf ears. “The first phase of the God Contest should last months. Your people need stable food, defenses, and social order before you should spread your wings and fly. Pushing too fast is to invite death upon yourselves.”

  Oracle watched helplessly as Milly, Rain, Calista, and Xavier conquered the first Arena and earned powerful boons for their efforts. The experience was also the death knell in Milly’s friendship with Xavier. Xavier had changed in the Arena, and Oracle could sense a dark influence had taken hold in the man. He didn’t return to the Castle of Glass with the others. He went into the wilds, intent on growing stronger.

  The completion of the Arena triggered the second phase of the God Contest. The Event Timer – Hephaestus’ mechanism to keep species moving forward – activated, and a wave of monsters struck the towers as the trio returned home.

  The opportunist CEOs Jacob Stone and Judy Brass used it as an opportunity to try to eliminate the rebel employees. They sealed off access to the Castle of Glass and left the Freelancers undefended on the beach to fight off the advancing horde.

  Many Freelancers died that day, but in the wake of the battle the legend of the Alchemist, the Huntress, and the Witch grew, and the Freelancers established themselves as a force to be reckoned with.

  In the wake of the CEO’s aggression, the government employees abandoned their CEO allies and created their own faction – the Farmers – who allied themselves with the Freelancers. A deep tension settled over the four towers. A cold war had begun as each faction build their power.

  Oracle had witnessed similar dynamics arise in previous Contests. It was common for fractures to arise between players.

  “But those Contests started with thousands upon thousands of players. These fractures shouldn’t happen with only eight hundred and seven people,” Oracle said as her frustration drove her further into hopelessness. “What is wrong with these humans?”

  Oracle was about to give up when, unexpectedly, she was bombarded by strong feelings of love from the woman she was tethered to. The feeling spread like wildfire through Oracle’s mind – candlelight in the darkness.

  In the midst of her struggles, Milly had found more than friendship.

  For the first time in her life, Milly had family. Family that she would fight to the ends of the world to protect.

  In Rain, Milly had found a best friend who became like an older sister to her – wise counsel to help guide Milly through the complexities of life. Counsel that Milly had never had before.

  With Calista, their relationship grew into something even stronger. Milly and Calista fell in love, and with each day that passed, that love grew. It was in the aftermath of the horrors they had witnessed that Milly and Calista took down their barriers and confessed their feelings to one another.

  It felt like a new beginning. Milly was no longer a lonely girl living day-to-day. She had people to love. She had something to lose. In the God Contest, there was no one more powerful than one who had something to lose.

  Those were not the only new relationship Milly had forged. In the depths of the first Arena, Milly had used Oracle’s spectacles to access a back door into the system itself. In doing so, she became the first player in the long history of God Contests to peer behind the veil.

  Oracle panicked at her discovery. Milly’s breach was the greatest threat to the integrity of the Nexus’ test of humanity. Yet against all odds, the Nexus accepted the turn of events and chose not to abort the Contest. Perhaps it knew this was their last chance. Perhaps it was the madness that had infected the creator. Or perhaps it was because of the four-year-old child with white hair and unicorn pajamas that Milly found through that back door.

  The AI Director.

  Oracle began to weep as she caught her first glimpse of the child. She spent the past forty years designing the artificial lifeform to serve as the heart of the God Contest, so that the Contest could adapt to the human’s unpredictable behavior.

  The AI Director was the closest thing to a child Oracle had ever had. Yet after Hephaestus’ death, she’d found herself without love left to give to it. She’d implanted the AI Director in the centre of the God Contest – trapped in its tiny control room – and abandoned it without seeing its – her – face. Without giving her a name.

  “I’m sorry, my child,” Oracle whispered with immense guilt. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be the mother you deserve. I’m sorry for the burden I’ve placed upon you.”

  Milly named the child Luna, and Milly saw within her the same loneliness and abandonment that she’d experienced throughout her life. Although Luna was responsible for guiding the God Contest, she was as much a victim of circumstances as the players were. Before she left Luna’s control room, Milly promised to keep secret the knowledge of Luna and to return to visit the little girl so she didn’t need to be alone.

  The ether flared, and Oracle felt her memories of Luna syphoned from her mind.

  “Please, not those memories,” begged Oracle as she watched the silver threads exit her mind and crystallize before her eyes. “My child. I don’t want to forget my child!”

  Oracle reached for the crystal, but it slipped through her fingers. The crystal plummeted down to the world below, and her memories of Luna were lost.

  Oracle blinked and watched the crystal fall. It had been important, but she could no longer remember why.

  Visions from Milly’s life in the game flooded into Oracle’s mind to fill the void.

  After the battle with the monsters, Milly, Calista, and Rain ventured into the wilds, headed for the nearest God Arena. They needed to win another Arena before the Event Timer reached zero or they would face another disaster.

  It was in the wilds that Milly, Rain, and Calista rescued the Lost Foals, a tribe of Fairies that were heading for the annual gathering of their people. Milly was gravely injured in the battle. It was several days before Milly awoke, and when she did, she was a more powerful woman.

  At first, Milly thought the Fairies just another construct of the God Contest – a generic creation to challenge the players. Despite this, the three women quickly grew attached to several of the Lost Foals – Elder Twotongue, the healer Whitewing, and the children Tentongue and Flutterwing.

  “Perhaps they sense the Fairies’ true nature,” Oracle said as she watched the events unfold. “The Fairies are not constructs of the game. They are as real as the players. Every God Contest involves two species whose fates are intertwined – the species being assessed, and a new species given life by the Nexus. Humans and Fairies. If a God Contest fails, the new species is wiped out and the Nexus designs a new one. If it is successful, the new species becomes the subject of the next Cycle, until it is their own time to be assessed. A complete cycle – from creation to assessment – guided at the start and the guiders at the end.”

  Oracle watched as Milly, Calista, and Rain escorted the Lost Foals to the gathering of their people, all the while growing closer to their new friends and to each other. At the gathering, they were reunited with Xavier Holloway, who arrived alongside a reluctant orphaned Fairy child named Passiflora. Xavier’s abandoned the girl, but it was the beginning of Milly’s connection to the child that would become her daughter.

  The stage was set, and Oracle braced herself for the visions that were to come. The gathering of the Fairies was also the Arena that Milly had been searching for, and it was a devastating one.

  “It is a well-established test in every God Contest,” Oracle recited mechanically as Milly’s fear and anger began to relentlessly bombard Oracle’s mind. As Oracle soared through the ether, mentally tethered to Milly, she began to lose her sense of self. With every second that passed, she felt more like an extension of Milly than she did herself. “The new species is… pushed to the brink of extinction… to bind the two species together. A test of compassion for humanity. A test of survival for the Fairies. It is cruel… but effective. I…”

  A tortured scream reverberated across the Nexus, jarring her from the visions. She glanced behind her and saw a tendril of utter darkness snake its way through the ether and down towards the God Contest.

  “No, it can’t be,” whispered Oracle. “The madness. It infects the God Contest? How can this be?”

  Oracle’s own panic blended with Milly’s as the madness corrupted the Arena. Darkness fell across the gathering, the win conditions were lost from the program, and all that was left was a massacre.

  She watched as the Fairies were decimated and Rain and Xavier were gravely wounded. Milly and Calista struggled valiantly to save as many as they could, and just when all hope was lost, the madness was pushed back and the error corrected.

  Milly and Calista won the battle, but only a few hundred Fairies had survived.

  “This new species the Nexus has created is so fragile, and so few remain. Will there be enough to survive what is to come?” Oracle questioned as Milly and Calista convinced the surviving Fairies to join them at the Castle of Glass.

  It had been a week since Milly, Calista, and Rain had left the Castle of Glass, and in that time, tensions between the factions had reached a breaking point. The CEOs had also conquered an Arena, solidifying themselves as heroes in the eyes of their employees. The power boost from their success had given them the upper hand in the cold war. They demanded the capitulation of the Freelancers and Farmers, and it was only the return of the Witch of the Castle of Glass that staved off their advances.

  The flashes of Milly’s life accelerated, and Oracle found she could no longer distinguish her own memories and emotions from those of the woman to which she was tethered.

  Her outrage at the CEOs’ arrogance threatened to overwhelm her, even as the CEOs relented and agreed to allow the Fairies to reside near the Castle of Glass at a hefty price.

  She – the Goddess of Foresight and Prophecy – felt indecisiveness for the first time in ages as she and Milly were torn between Calista’s direct approach to dealing with the CEOs and Rain’s preference for subtlety and kindness.

  She became lost in Milly’s anger when the CEO’s henchmen attacked the orphan Passiflora. It was a trap for the Witch, and for her bravery, Milly was to be the first example set through the CEO’s new system of justice at the Castle of Glass – the Enemy of the Tower finally pacified.

  She felt Milly’s profound joy when she agreed to adopt Passiflora and become her mother. Her family was, for the first time in her life, complete, and she vowed to protect them all from the dangers of this world, whether those dangers be from beyond the towers or from within.

  It was a vow that was soon to be tested, as the tortured scream of the Nexus returned. Oracle watched helplessly as multiple tendrils of madness descended into the God Contest and corrupted it once more.

  A rift appeared in the sky above the Castle of Glass – above the masses gathered for the trial – and what emerged caused Oracle’s heart to plummet into her stomach.

  “It… can’t be…,” Oracle whispered, as darkness eclipsed the light of the world.

  The Dragon of Endless Shadows was the great herald of the cataclysm phase of the God Contest. It existed in every version of the Contest – a creation of the Nexus itself. At level 250, it should not have appeared for years.

  Oracle watched in horror as the assembled players were slaughtered. Within minutes, the dragon wiped out half of the remaining players, leaving fewer than three hundred remaining in the God Contest. It would have ended them all, if not for The Witch of the Castle of Glass. She leapt atop the dragon’s crown and drove it away, but Milly was carried along with it as it fled into the sky.

  Oracle could feel Milly’s fear as the warmth and breath were stolen from her body. Milly’s thoughts became her own.

  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. Thank you, Cally. And… good… bye.

  Only the smallest fragments of the goddess’ mind remained when the system error was finally fixed. As the now-mindless dragon began to descend back down to the Castle of Glass, Milly and Oracle were two bodies sharing a single mind.

  Oracle felt the love for her family flow through her, and her heart leapt with joy as she saw her girlfriend below. She wanted nothing more than to leap off the dragon and embrace her family in her arms.

  The world shifted. Beneath her, a rift in the fabric of the world appeared. It pulled the dragon into its depths, and Oracle watched helplessly as they were pulled inside along with it.

  “No! No, Cally!” screamed Oracle, though the words were not hers to shout.

  As the rift slammed shut, Oracle felt the mental tethers to Milly Brown sever in an instant. The thoughts and emotions of the player disappeared, and in their absence, Oracle was left a hollow shell of a woman, spiraling through the ether.

  Who does one become when everything has been stripped away?

  Oracle’s heart broke. Everything went black, and her mortal body and fractured mind plummeted towards the sea far below.

  Into the God Contest.

  The Non-Canonical Aftermath: