Luna was waiting for Milly when the system backdoor deposited her upside down in the storage closet adjacent to the Monitoring Room. A squeal of delight erupted from the child at the appearance of her only friend.

  The AI Director had grown in the week since Milly had last visited. Luna looked just shy of six years old, and she now wore a black butterfly print skirt and a long-sleeved top with an anime-style rendition of Passiflora cuddling with Anchovy and Cerberus on the front. Milly’s black hoodie was tied around her waist, its sleeves dangling down to her ankles. Her white hair, grown to the small of her back, was tied neatly together in a single ponytail and pulled through the back of a blue ballcap with the words “I’m the boss. Do what I say!”.

  “Milly!” shouted Luna excitedly. Milly had hardly turned herself upright when the child threw her arms around Milly’s neck in a tight hug.

  “Oof. Hey Luna,” Milly smiled as she returned the hug. “You’ve grown again.”

  “It’s all the players’ fault,” complained Luna. “The more you advance in the contest, the older I get. When you won your Arena and the others won the Arena of Domination, I aged a year overnight. It’s weird to wake up and suddenly need to materialize a new wardrobe.”

  “At least you can do that,” laughed Milly. “Try wearing the same hoodie and gown for weeks on end. I don’t know how Cally puts up with me.”

  “At least you figured out how to use your water magic to shower,” Luna giggled.

  She hesitated, a thought bubbling to the surface, and then burst out. “I really like Passi, Milly.”

  “I gathered that from your shirt,” Milly laughed, pointing to the picture on her shirt. “I like her too. You’ll be the same age as Passi pretty soon. I bet you would be friends, though… I guess that’s not possible.”

  Luna’s face fell, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her. She unwrapped her arms from around Milly’s neck and stepped back.

  Can Luna leave this place? Or is she tethered to these screens? Given her reaction, it’s the latter. Poor girl. How lonely would she have been if I hadn’t stumbled into this place?

  “Umm… your trial is starting. Do you want to watch?” Luna asked uncertainly.

  “Well, I came here to see you,” Milly answered, and Luna beamed brightly. “We could watch if you want, or we could just talk or play?”

  Luna nodded enthusiastically and moved to the closet door. She peered back at Milly over her shoulder. “Passi is lucky to have you as a mom,” she said, a note of longing in her voice. She cracked the door open, and they peeked through.

  The Monitoring Room had grown even larger, with over ten thousand monitors and twenty Tutorias darting across the warehouse-sized complex. The panels were spread along the wall and in a dozen rows between. It resembled a military control room in the midst of a war.

  She recognized a few the feeds broadcasting into the complex. The fairies’ mass graveyard. Her meadow. The orchard where she had rescued the fairies. The shadow dragon asleep in its mountain home. An entire wall was dedicated to the Castle of Glass. Yet for every feed she recognized, there were a thousand that showed undiscovered wonders across the world.

  One monitor showed Nobori as he decorated a small cave on the outskirts of the Inlet of New Beginnings. He placed a wooden carving on a rocky shelf, which distinctly resembled a certain Witch of the Castle of Glass.

  “God damn it, Nobori,” Milly muttered. “I told you to knock off that goddess shit. This is the opposite of knocking it off.”

  “He’s not the only worshipper,” Luna whispered with a little chuckle. “He’s found himself another half dozen followers.”

  Milly groaned.

  I’ll have to deal with that tomorrow. That's the last thing I need right now.

  The Tutorias that scuttled between monitors wore the same black dress pants, white collared shirt, and black bowtie as before, but instead of individualized characteristics like the first eight Tutoria’s had, all the subsequently added Tutorias simply had a nametag with a five-digit employee number.

  Milly glanced at the nearest Tutoria. “Tutoria #00788. Hey, wasn’t that the Tutoria I was assigned when the Contest started?”

  “You mean the one you didn’t bother to learn from?” Luna teased. “Yes, that’s her. She was redeployed after you completed the first phase of the God Contest. For now, she’s a monitor, until she is needed elsewhere. There are thousands upon thousands of Tutorias out there, each responsible for various aspects of the contest. They are supposed to be my helpers, but, you know…”

  Luna pointed to the slogan on her hat.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “But sometimes employes have a mind of their own,” Milly finished, thinking about the Freelancers breaking away from the CEOs’ control. “We certainly do.”

  “Yah, it’s getting harder to control them,” Luna admitted. “They grow more independent each time another Tutoria is added. That’s what happened with the prize Tutoria. I didn’t tell her to enter Rain and Xavier’s dreams. She just really, really didn’t like you dropping her in a lake, and she took matters into her own hands. I don’t know why she was so upset. I thought it was funny.”

  Milly knew Luna didn’t directly control the Tutorias.

  Perhaps that’s because Oracle didn’t create them. Cizen did, as a last-minute addition, supposedly to help Luna function. But this was the god who built this game’s secrets. What if the Tutorias decide to stop listening to Luna?

  “I don’t want them to know you are here. I’ll create a distraction, and you head to my room,” Luna said as she ducked out of the closet.

  Milly considered the child as she waited for the distraction. The Luna she had visited a week ago had felt like two separate personalities – the powerful AI Director and the emotional four-year-old. This six-year-old version of Luna seemed to be a merger of the two. She was still a child, but a remarkable capable one. Luna had started to come to terms with herself and her role in life. Though Milly could still sense the loneliness hidden beneath the brave face the child wore.

  “Quite down, you lot!” shouted Luna from the monitoring room, her high-pitched voice carrying across the warehouse of screens. “Gather around me. Yes, over here. #00545, put that down and get over here. I have something important to say.”

  Milly snuck out the storage room door and stayed low as she crept towards Luna’s control room. The Tutorias were gathered around Luna in the middle of the warehouse and were none the wiser of the intruder in their midst, though Milly nearly blew her cover with a fit of laugher when Luna’s ‘important announcement’ turned out to be an offkey version of I’m a Little Teapot.

  Still a little girl at heart. I hope you stay that way, Luna.

  Milly ducked into Luna’s room, and a few minutes later, Luna and Milly were snuggled up on Luna’s tiny bed, Milly’s hoodie draped over Luna’s legs like a blanket. The trial was broadcast on Luna’s twelve control monitors as Milly brushed Luna’s white hair.

  Edna Carthage had just told the story of three innocent and helpless women who were brutally assaulted by an unhinged witch. A witch that could chill your bones and shoot lightning from her eyes.

  “She makes you sound pretty bad ass,” Luna said as Edna stepped off stage and her sister Cynthia took her place in the witness chair.

  “Don’t say ass, Luna,” Milly said reflexively.

  Luna huffed. “You swear all the time. I can see and hear you all the time, you know. I mean, you’ve sworn twice since you arrived here four minutes ago.

  “Yah, but…,” Milly protested weakly. “Kids shouldn’t swear.”

  What do you even say to that? She can see everything, and she’s not exactly a kid.

  They watched Cynthia launch into the same falsehoods that Edna had told. Luna rolled her eyes.

  ‘What?” Milly asked. “They are sisters. They were always going to tell the same lies.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just… it’s always the same with you humans,” Luna stated, immensely frustrated. “I’ve got knowledge of all twelve of your failed God Contests in my head. Do you know the common thread connecting all of them? In every single one, you turn on each other. You spend more time vying for power and killing one another, and you forget there’s a world out there that is meant to test you.”

  Luna pointed towards three of her monitors, and their screens changed to video from previous God Contests.

  “In the second, you created a religion when you sacrificed other players in a volcano. The sixth contest descended into anarchy and sadistic torture after the players rose up and murdered all their leaders. And in the twelfth, an entire city split into factions and went to war with each other. Twelve contents. Twelve failures. And not a single player made it even halfway through.”

  “Not… not even halfway?” whispered Milly, astonished. “But… but the twelfth lasted four years”

  “Yes, and they spent most of those four years fighting each other,” Luna confirmed with a disappointed sigh. “The contest picked off the few survivors one-by-one. They didn’t have the strength needed to make it through the trials. You humans are too… well, self-centered. Too reluctant to set aside your squabbles and work together to survive.”

  “That… Luna, there are some people you just can’t trust,” Milly explained.

  Luna shrugged, as if trust were inconsequential. “I’m just saying that your capacity to hate one another eclipses any of the species that came before you. It borders on madness. Most species work together. You don’t.”

  Luna flicked her finger, and the three monitors returned to the trial. “The most successful species are the ones joined by a hive mind. Perfect cooperation and absolute order. Of course, the hive mind victors don’t do so well afterwards…” she muttered, trailing off.

  Milly didn’t want to know any more. They sat in awkward silence as Cynthia spewed her lies to the crowd, though Milly found she couldn’t focus.

  Four years? Four years, and an entire city of players, and they didn’t even make it halfway. It’s only been three weeks, and we’ve already lost a hundred and fifty people. How are we supposed to survive this?

  Against the backdrop of lies and accusations that broadcast on the screens, successful completion of the God Contest felt impossible.

  The CEOs. The Arenas. Monsters, traps, and gods know what else is out there, designed to kill us one-by-one. On top of all that, these system bugs Luna wants me to track down are threatening the very fabric of the contest itself. It’s impossible. Just impossible.

  Luna materialized a bowl of popcorn and began munching on it as she watched the trial. Elmer was cross-examining Cynthia, whose face had turned beat red as Elmer tore apart her story piece by piece. Luna giggled in amusement, and a few kernels of popcorn spilled out of the bowl and onto her bed as she rocked excitedly in place.

  “Sweetheart, be careful. You’ll get crumbs on your bed,” Milly said without thinking, as she plucked the kernels and popped them into her mouth. Milly’s mouth watered at the buttery taste. It’d been weeks since she’d had anything outside of boar, fruit, goose, and fish. She felt a sudden longing for home, until she reminded herself that her meals there weren’t much better. “Please tell me we can find corn somewhere in the wilds.”

  “Probably,” Luna replied chipperly, offering Milly the bowl. Milly grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it in her mouth, savoring the taste. “Now be quiet. I want to watch this part.”

  Elmer had finished with Cynthia Carthage, who stared daggers at the lawyer as she trundled off the stage.

  Jacob Stone, CEO of Acicentre, took her place.