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A peasant with a pot on his head dropped dead in front of him. Somehow there was a sword impaled in him, and somehow that sword was in Bryn’s hand. It wasn’t a matter of choice. It was a matter of programming.
“No! Gods! No!”
He dropped it, but it was too late. The game was going to make him kill, and one day it would make him die. For now, orchestral music was rising around him in an ever growing swell.
Somewhere above his head, large letters hung opaquely in the sky. The title. He didn’t bother looking up at it. It cast a long enough shadow in front of him, four letters making a word.
As he had at the beginning of his first play through, Bryn found himself standing in the middle of a battlefield. He’d been here before, the first time around. He would have to fight his way out of it, learning to swing his sword, or rather, being painstakingly told how to swing his sword as if he had not done it a thousand times before.
His second play through was not as satisfying as the first. Repeating himself, even while making different choices, was still repeating himself. But what else was there to do besides play? If he were to stop he would cease to exist. He would be nothing, and there was little more terrifying than the prospect of ceasing to exist entirely. Better to grind ore nodes daily than to submit to the eternal loading screen.
Back in the Dark…
“I have tried not to kill anybody unnecessarily, but…”
“You can lie to as many as you want. I know the truth. I know there is not an orphan in your care whose parents you did not slay in your rampages as a younger man,” the Dark smirked triumphantly “Even after you decided to be kind, you couldn't help yourself from time to time. So many evildoers spawn, don’t they. You are the reason so many were sold and used and broken. You are the reason…”
“I did my best to make recompense where I could. I undid what I could.”
“That sounds weak. Even to you. You are worse than I am, Bryn. You were cruel for cruelty’s sake. You believed your ability to make a save and return to a previous state meant that there could never be any consequences. But there were, weren’t there. There were some moments you could not…
“Autosaves. Nobody told me about the autosaves.”
“The game has a will of its own,” the Dark smiled. “You were too arrogant to consider natural consequences might apply to you. You thought you were the only player, the only one that mattered. You believed in the lie of the NPC.”
“The lie? There are NPCs. I’ve raised their randomly generated offspring for almost a decade. They’re different creatures than players.”
“You mean, different than you. Content in their lives, less prone to murderous outbursts in which entire villages are slain.”
“Is that what this is? A punishment for the village? I haven’t atoned for all those sins?”
“You haven’t begun to atone,” the Dark purred. “This is the first time you have ever had anyone you cared about enough to lose. I think losing Hail will be good for you, Bryn. I think it would have been better if you’d just mauled her to death, but as your carnal impulses are strong even in the form of a slavering beast, I suppose I could just kill her myself.”
Hail let out a little moan in her post-coital slumber, which Bryn was now absolutely certain was not at all natural. The Dark was toying with them both, making Hail pay for the sins of her father, as it were. The only father she remembered, anyway. He’d taken the father she’d spawned from. Dispatched him in a cut scene over which he had no control. But that didn’t matter.
“I could tell her that you killed her father. Wouldn’t that be interesting.”
“She wouldn’t believe you. Wake her up. I’ll make her submit. And I won’t need to be a monster to do it.”
“Very well, Bryn, but this is the last chance I intend to give you. If she doesn’t submit this time, it’s game over for you both.”
“No, it isn’t. You would be bored without us to torment.”
“There are plenty of players to torment. You are not interesting.”
Bryn knew that was a lie. He felt the Dark’s fascination both with him and Hail.
Hail rose from the place that was not the floor, rubbing her eyes with sleep. She had the feeling she had missed something important. There was something in the air, a sort of feeling, like the way things felt when you walked into a room where two people had been fighting. Or fucking.
“What is happening?” She felt Bryn’s gaze and the Dark’s all consuming and entirely penetrating stare boring into her. Once again she was stuck between them, a sacrifice for a sin she did not understand.
