Emperor NPC

The 13th Goddess

Katherine opened her eyes. She was laid out on a concrete floor. Beside her were the doors of a dungeon chamber and above her a nebula of distant stars. She had returned to her avatar, Amy, right where she left off.

[You have been logged out for 7,800 years.] the system read via a translucent, holographic display. NPCs didn't have player privileges, so they didn't have access to things like system notifications, inter-dimensional inventory, visible health bars, appraisal tools, or the status window. The message Amy saw was a system announcement, reminding her how long she'd been logged out.

Amy sat up on the floor. Her black-leather armor appeared undamaged and her health had been restored. The Dark Star lay nearby, inert in a pile of ash. In Ark World, all of Amy's memories were available. She frowned and stood on her feet, picked up the sword and hoisted it over her shoulder. As she moved her hand to 'sheathe' it behind her back, the sword turned to colorful dust and faded away.

[Dark Star Sword stowed in inventory.] the system read.

"So, what do I do now?" she wondered to herself. "They'll have noticed my login, so I can't stick around. I can't use admin commands to teleport, because that would show up in the system log. It would be bad if they caught me before I thought of a plan." She looked around the void. "And there's no way to walk out of here."

Amy looked at the pair of doors; they were all that stood on the drifting ruin. Her magic was impressive, for a player, but the world space she'd created with admin commands was a dimension all but disconnected from Ark World; escape would not be possible, for Amy. Katherine had just one character that was superior to Amy in absolute power, one that could move between worlds without administrator commands, but it wasn't a character she enjoyed.

"I don't really have a choice," Amy said and opened a context menu with her hand. The menus of the player system were visible only to their connected player. Although they floated in the air, finger interactions created haptic feedback for ease of use. Amy scrolled through the menus to her character profiles and switched from 'Amy' to 'Amarytha.' A circle of dark light appeared over her head and passed down her body. Her clothes, her abilities, and even her body changed as the light altered her character data.

Amarytha was taller than Amy, thin and gaunt. Her skin was pale gray, devoid of color, like a corpse and her form-fitting black silk dress followed the bones of her body, her hips, her ribs, and shoulder blades. Her arms were covered in long, shoulder-length gloves, and her fingers were long and thin, like scissor blades. The dark circle passed her ankles and the feet disappeared altogether; Amarytha's legs ended in sharp bone protrusions. Instead of walking, she floated by the magic of her six skeletal, black-feathered wings.

She opened her black eyes. The light of distant stars was reflected like flecks of dust within them, but the inky orbs had no color to speak of. She raised her right hand toward the door and spread her palm, scissor-like fingers extending like spider legs.

"Gate," Amarytha said in the somber, distorted tone of the goddess of darkness, "open."

The chamber doors were pushed open into the dark. The perfect blackness ahead was a void Amarytha knew well; the Otherworld, her domain. She flapped her wings and floated through the doors. They closed shut behind her and the gate was sealed.

He asked me to save his world... she thought. This sandbox world might be a little different than the one he asked me to save, but it will have to do. I won't split hairs when I know what he was really asking: Stop the Pantheon for good.

Creatures stirred in the still water beneath her. The denizens had noticed her arrival, but their curious chirps halted when they realized their mistake. Amarytha was not their master, but she was also not food. Her indifferent relationship with the denizens was part of Ark World's lore, established on the day of Amarytha's creation. The Director enforced their cooperation.