The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“YOU!” Kyle, Serena, Honor, and Leila all yelled at the same time, then blinked, glancing at one another. “Wait? You know this guy?” Kyle asked.

“Yeah! He’s the weird guy with the Austrailian accent,” Leila announced.

“The merchant that sold us our weapons,” Serena clarified.

“You’re the pervert that I caught snooping on me when I was bathing when I was back in the Lynx guild!” Honor accused.

“WHAT?!?” the other yelled, turning to glare at the man, who blushed, glancing aside.

“Um. Uh, misunderstanding, er, accident, um, uhh I mean, I have no idea what you’re talking about young lady,” Jeffrey stuttered weakly. Sighing, he shook his head. “Look, we’re getting off track here people. Let’s try this again. Do you have any relevant questions about the current situation that you’d like to ask?”

Kyle continued to glare at him for a moment before nodding. “Okay. Putting aside the issue of being a peeping tom for the moment, actually, yes, I have a few questions. First of all, are you the same man I talked with back in town when I was trying to ditch Serena, the guy who warned me about ‘beauty in the eye of the beholder’?”

Jeffrey grinned. “Yep. You guessed it. And not just then. I was also the old guy who kept calling you by the wrong name… first ‘Leon’ in Vallendale, then ‘Billy’ over in Valimoore.” He chuckled softly. “What can I say, I like to make an impression.”

“How about the impression of my boot to your forehead,” Honor growled softly.

“So you admit it then?” Kyle continued. “You’ve been stalking me and my friends all this time?”

Jeffrey sighed. “When you put it like that, you make it sound so… dirty.” He held up a hand to forestall Honor’s retort. “For the record, Miss Fellchild, I was actually attempting to give you a warning about what was about to happen with your former chief advisor before the party, not spy on you. I didn’t know you were just coming out of the shower when I teleported into your room.” He shook his head at that. “Not that I even imagined Seripins took showers. I mean, you’re cat-people! I naturally assumed you’d kind of avoid the water…”

“You’re not making yourself look any better,” Honor grunted, then blinked, looking back at what he’d just said. “Hold on a second. You were coming to warn me about Dorran planning to poison and stab me at the party? How the hell did YOU know?” Her eyes narrowed. “And just who are you, anyway?”

“Who am I? Who am I?” he repeated, incredulously. Grinning wickedly, he whirled around, transforming into a small, bald, golden skinned man. “I’m Yogurt! Yogurt the wise! Yogurt the all-powerful. Yogurt the magnificent! But please, please, don’t make a fuss. I’m really just plain Yogurt.” He stood for a moment, while the others merely stood gaping at him in confusion before he yelled in exasperation. “Oh come on! Nothing? Nothing at all? Spaceballs, 1987, Mel Brooks’ best movie ever… well, okay, SECOND best, after Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” Sighing again, he resumed his previous appearance.

“Can we cut through the cheap theatrics here and get to the point?” Kyle asked, heatedly. “Who are you REALLY? Better yet, WHAT are you? Why are you here? What do you want? And why have you been keeping tabs on all of us?”

“Okay. Fine. You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth! But you say you want full disclosure, pal, you got it. The name’s Jeffrey Danzig, but my friends call me ‘JD’. As to what I am…” he paused for a moment, for dramatic effect, “…I’m one of the Dragon Gods.”

The four adventures looked at him for approximately five seconds before turning for the exit. “Okay, fuck this. We’re leaving,” Kyle replied angrily. JD merely sighed, letting them reach the door. Then, clearing his throat, he spoke a single word, a potent and powerful utterance that seemed to shake the very walls of the cave.

“POK.”

As one, Kyle and the other froze, unable to move a muscle. Kyle, slightly panicked, struggled in vain, trying to force his body to move, to respond in some kind of way. From the corner of his eye, he was the others were likewise frozen. What did he just say? ‘Pock’? I’ve never heard that word before. Is it what did this to us? Did he actually use Dragontongue on us now? But… it only affects females! And I’m a holder of the dragon lineage as well—it shouldn’t be affecting me!

”SHARTLEG,”

As one, the four adventurers turned on their heel, facing into the room again. Serena gasped in surprise. Honor yelped. Leila screamed. And Kyle just gaped, mouth wide open, at the sight of a colossal sized golden dragon lying on its haunches, its massive bulk barely contained in the expansive cavern. ::Is this more to your liking, humans?:: JD asked, ruefully, his huge mouth twisting into a grin, baring razor sharp fangs each longer than Kyle was tall. ::You seemed to doubt the truth of my words before. Tell me, Kyle Shadowchaser… do you doubt me still?::

“NO!” Kyle replied, stumbling a bit as he and the others unfroze. “Okay. You made your point. I believe you!”

“Good,” JD replied, shrinking back down to his human form once again. “I really hate doing that. It’s difficult enough hiding from the Admins in THIS form, as a pseudo NPC. Reverting to dragon form sets off all sorts of bells and whistles back at HQ.” He shook his head sadly. “I can sense it already. They’re looking for me.“ He grinned suddenly. “But they haven’t caught me yet. In the meantime, I promised you guys full disclosure, and I intend to do so. First, however, you’re going to need a little history lesson, a bit of background, to fully understand the scope of what’s happening here.” He gestured with his staff once more, and the cavern shimmered, transforming into a modern living room with brown carpet and a huge wrap around sofa. Another gesture, and the party’s wounds healed, bringing them all back to full health. “Go ahead and make yourselves comfy, kiddies,” he replied, slipping out of his robe, donning a blue wool sweater hanging form a hook on the wall. “And get ready for story time, with Uncle J.D.”

Long, long ago, in the far off land of Toronto Canada… wait, no, that’s Scott Pilgrim’s opening story. Gimme a second okay, it’s been a while. Hmm… okay, Got it.

Thirty two years ago, a group of really nerdy, really geeky people were hired by this new up and coming technology company to come up with the ‘next big thing’. In those days, just like now, people lived for their entertainment. Movies, television, sports, video games, the internet—whatever the outlet, people enjoyed their leisure time, and had no problem sinking a large amount of their personal finances in its pursuit. And the most popular, widest growing industries revolved around video games.

This was back in the day, back when the Playstation 4, the Xbox One, and the Wii U were fighting for supremacy. Each one was trying to make the most realistic, more immersive games on the market, to provide the player with a true escape from the normal mundane world. An escape from reality… into a completely NEW Reality. Hence the name.

I was a recent graduate from MIT, with dual degrees in Computational Science and Engineering, and System Design and Management, and of course, they scooped me up as part of their big think tank. That’s where I first met the old gang. Riley, Jasper, Anthony, Karen, Felipe, Jessica, and myself. Seven really swell, really smart, and really cool guys. We all hit it off from the get go. When we weren’t working on the project, we all hung out and spent our free time together. And aside from being comrades and co-workers we also all became good friends.

Are you connecting the dots yet? The seven of us? The seven Dragon Gods? The creators of the world? Good. Okay, let’s continue.

Working together, we managed to come up with the framework for what would later become known as The Reality. Karen and I did a majority of the programming and coding, Riley and Jasper handled the hardware specifications. Felipe and Jessica, our resident biometric specialists, designed and configured the neural interface units, the helmets you guys use nowadays to log into the server. And Anthony, our fearless leader, was the jack of all trades, helping out each department as needed.

Through mutual agreement we decided to make it a role playing type game, a sort of virtual reality homage to Dungeons and Dragons, of which we all admittedly still played. Me, being the resident RPG gamer and movie buff, took the liberty of adding in a few quirks of my own here and there, hidden Easter eggs for players to find. And over the next two years, our crazy fantastic dream slowly etched its way into fruition.

All well and good, you say. But what does any of this have to do with current events? Just hold on a sec, I’m getting to it.

Ahem. So, after two years of exhaustive work, we finally got our breakthrough. We’d just completed the finished version of The Reality, Beta 1.0. It was fully functional, and running, a realistic fully immersive virtual reality experience with ultra-realistic next generation graphics and sound, and the highly adaptive neural interface capable of transmitting the game’s signals directly into the player’s brains. The game let a person fully experience their surroundings with ALL of their senses, not just hearing or sight, but also including taste, touch, and smell. You could actually FEEL pain when your avatar was injured, though at a much muted level than in real life. And that adaptation was part of what made the experience so real—it’s one thing to be an armchair quarterback barking out orders, but another thing all together when you actually feel the bumps and bruises yourself.

The fine tuning process was the kicker. Since it was all our own technology, and still experimental, we had to train and test everything in house. We all took turns playing guinea pig while the others tested commands and sections of code to make sure nothing glitched. It was really kind of boring, the usual last minute fine tuning every game developer goes through. Or rather, supposedly goes through. It may be before your time, but there used to be a few games in the old days that were pretty infamous for the coding errors and bugs not caught before being shipped out, and the glitches players were able to exploit. Super Marion Brothers had loads of interesting glitches you could use by clever manipulation of a character’s sprite past the encoded barriers of the game. Once that barrier was pierced, you could do pretty much anything from walking through walls, to powering up in reverse, getting infinite 1-ups, making your character invincible, or even unlocking entire new areas of the game that were never finished or properly encoded.

Cute and relatively harmless for a little 8-bit console game, but potentially disastrous for a game with as big a scope as the one we were creating. So we went over every aspect of the game with a fine tooth comb, searching out every conceivable flaw or error that could possibly be activated in the game. And after much searching we managed to find such an error. And man, was it a doozy.

I can remember it like it was yesterday. Anthony and I were running the simulation, and Jessica was jacked in. I’d had the idea of trying to tighten up the bandwidth a bit, and see if I could clean up the signal being transmitted through the interface, to try and compress the information being sent even more so that we could transmit even more input. The idea was to increase a person’s reaction time, to make their avatar respond at the speed of thought without any annoying lag time. The tests were going fine, and Jessica reported a definite speed boost to all her actions without any adverse effects. I’d decided to run a second compression cycle through the signal, to see if it could be tightened even more. I’d programmed the frequency, then ran the program. This time, Jessica complained of a slight loss of function, like her reaction time was actually increasing instead of decreasing. Curious, I asked her to go through several different motions to try and see if she could determine the exact scope of the effect. Her response astonished me.

“Yes, Master. I will obey. I will do exactly as you command.”

Granted, I was a bit stunned at first. Anthony and I thought she was playing some kind of a joke at first, just trying to mess with us, but as she her routine, she stood there, staring ahead sightlessly, awaiting our next command. Very quickly now we figured out that she wasn’t faking, or playing some kind of a game. Nearly in a panic, I told Jessica to wake up… and she blinked, and looked around, returning to full consciousness.

With no idea of what had just happened.

I’d basically stumbled across the frequency that resonates perfectly in a person’s brain, and overwrites their higher brain functions. Any commands given under that level of compression bypassed a person’s conscious awareness and embedded itself directly into the person’s subconscious. Naturally, this starling and potentially dangerous phenomenon needed to be addressed. So we did what anyone in our position would have done—we played around with it like a bunch of little kids! We experimented with it on each other, also in a group, mind, to keep anyone from taking unfair advantage of the others. I remember making Jessica temporarily ‘gay’ and getting her to make out with Karen, who was a full-fledged lesbian. She’d gotten back at me by making me regress to my pre-adolescent days, and giving me a thumb sucking addiction.

Yes, all fun stuff, with no malice or ill intent behind it. And all the things we did to each other we made sure were temporary. But the more we tested, the more the truth began to make itself known. The potential for abuse was there. The amount of control a person could exert was nigh-infinite, and virtually unbreakable, except with another command to counteract it. An unscrupulous person could easily use this technology to completely usurp someone’s will, and with a few carefully worded phrases, make that person their eternal and absolute slave.

Obviously, that protocol had to be removed from the game. Anthony and I were the only ones that knew they exact compression frequency to activate the effect, but with the system going full tilt, with the prospective millions of people logging in, utilizing the system at any one time, the chances of the mainframe randomly accessing that frequency for any number of players at any given time was too good to chance. The entire interface protocol would have to be rewritten from the ground up… a decision that would cost the company millions in time and effort, not to mention potentially delaying the project for another two years.

Anthony, as team leader, was determined to present the problem to the company’s board of directors. I personally had serious doubts about that—unlike my fellow eggheads, I was a bit more grounded in ‘reality’. Heh. Sorry. Ahem... I knew how the business world worked, that in big business, when it came to a question of ethics versus cost, the winner was always the all mighty dollar. Anthony insisted that he talk to the board, however, believing that he could make them see reason. Felipe, Karen, Riley and Jasper all agreed to stand behind Anthony’s decision. Jessica and I, however, decided that we should perhaps make a few ‘special preparations’, just in case.

Sure enough, Anthony returned from the corporate meeting several hours later depressed and shaken. The board members had remained basically non-commital about their stance on what to do about the “problem”, and had demanded to see an actual demonstration of the “so-called” mind control aspect of the experiment. With no other choice, he’d agreed to set up a demonstration for the next day for the board, with Felipe and Karen as test subjects, and himself supervising. My “spider sense” was going off the charts, and Jessica and I hastily put our plan into motion, putting in a little safeguard just in case worse came to worse.

There’s a really old saying, and it still rings true today: it’s not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you. The day of the experiment, Anthony was notably absent. Unwilling to wait, the CEO asked me to initiate the test, and reluctantly we did so. I put my two friends through the usual battery of tests, confirming for the board what we already knew. The CEO then thanked us, saying that he agreed, that the project needed to be shut down until further testing could be done. He then demanded that we turn over all data on the project to him, personally.

Naturally we refused! We wanted the protocol scrapped, not studied or analyzed. At any rate, the CEO countered our refusal with our termination—we were all effectively fired on the spot, and escorted from the building. Which, in a way, was probably a good thing. An hour after we’d left, the little surprise Jess and I had added to the mainframe computer uploaded, encrypting and locking down the signal compressing function all together.

So. The mind control system was still there, still an integral part of the program of The Reality, it was just locked away and hidden. You might wonder why Jess and I didn’t simply sabotage the whole thing, infect it with a virus to cripple or destroy the entire thing. And yes, the thought did occur to us as we implanted the safeguards we instead installed. But, well… You have to look at it from our point of view. We’d spent two years of our lives working together on this project, creating this wonder, the marvel of technology. We’d created an almost perfect world, perfect except for that one minor glitch of being able to rewrite a person’s mind. The potential for good was still there. And in the end, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to destroy what we’d all worked so hard to create…

Anyway, we were all disappointed about the way things had turned out. We met up in the usual spot to talk about what to do next when we received some shocking news: Anthony’s car had been found by local police floating in the river. Apparently, he’d had an accident driving home last night and had lost control of the vehicle crossing the intercity bridge. The reason he hadn’t shown up for the demonstration was that he’d died on impact several hours before. Further investigation by the police revealed that the car’s brakes had been cut. Suddenly, we were all a bit wary of driving back home to our own homes. And while it could have been a mere coincidence, every one of us was thinking the same thing—that the company we’d worked for was planning to go forward with the project and eliminate anyone and everyone who know about the MC element. Worse, with my little safeguard in place, there was no way they could access the mind control portion of the program, which made Jessica and I, the only ones who knew how to deactivate it, number one on their hit list.

We decided to all go into hiding, to drop off the radar and try and stay out of their sight. And for a while it worked. The company left us alone. They went ahead and launched The Reality, their in house system admins more than able to manage the complicated online program on their own. After all, that was the point—to design it so perfectly autonomous that once activated it would pretty much run itself. It was kind of disheartening. In one way, we got to see our dream become a reality. The hard work, and effort of more than two years finally bore fruit. But it was a bittersweet accomplishment tainted by the fact that it was really no longer OUR dream… and the fact that not all of us had lived to see it come to pass.

For that matter, not all of us would continue to live to see it thrive. Felipe and Riley, angry at the company for the way they’d gone about it, had come out of hiding to protest. They tried making the defect in the program public, going to the newspapers—yes, they still had actual newspapers back then—TV, radio, and online publications. They tried telling anyone they could think of. But remember the old adage, money talks. Everyone loved The Reality. The company was outselling Nintendo, Playstation, and Microsoft combined. Everyone wanted one. And the company, in a bit of wisdom, was making the units incredibly cheap and affordable, so anyone could get a copy and play. For every journalist willing to listen to our side, the company had dozens more to sing their praises. We were portrayed as mavericks, out for revenge for being fired, trying to slander the good name of our former employer out of mere spite. In the end, no one believed us. And Riley and Felipe, having exposed themselves, soon meet up with ‘unfortunate accidents’, after which the supposed controversy soon died down and was forgotten altogether.

I honestly have no idea what Karen and Jasper were up to. Maybe the company got rid of them too, the moment they poked their heads up. Maybe they managed to stay hidden and eventually went on with their lives. I don’t know. What I do know is that I couldn’t simply sit by and let things go on as they were. I knew the company heads would keep trying to break the encryption I’d placed on the compression frequency. And though, without undo pride, I could say that wasn’t a person alive that could successfully hack my system and uncover the lock, let alone the key, I also know that every day, smarter and brighter people were graduating school, joining the work force. I was one of the best programmers of my generation, but who was to say someone in the next generation wouldn’t be able to surpass me?

So I created a fake account and logged into the Reality myself, using my skills to stay hidden. I gave myself hidden Super-Op status, allowing me to override and bypass even the System Admins protection levels, and monitored the system as best I could. I could make small changes here and there, little things that wouldn’t be noticed, all the while tracking the company’s progress in trying to break my code. It was actually kind of fun in a way. Anytime they came anywhere close to finding a clue, I switched around the puzzle on them from the inside. Five years into the project, they were still no closer to breaking the code. It was starting to look like I’d done it, that the world would be safe from the doom I had unknowing unleashed upon it.

Then the company threw in a true game changer into the mix. Jessica.

I was surprised and delighted when I say her familiar signature log in one day. Of course, I contacted her, telling her what I was up to, what I’d been doing all this time to keep the company’s hounds at bay. Jessica told me about her life as well. She’d settled down and married, trying to forget about what had happened, had even recently given birth to a baby girl. She’d been curious to what the rest of the gang had been up to, and on a whim she’d logged into the Reality to see the world she’d helped create in action. We talked for the longest time, reconnecting… ahhh, it was like a bit of those happier times coming back. She said we should meet face to face sometime and have coffee, so I gave her my address and told her to look me up.

Less than twenty four hours later, the goon squad showed up at my door.

Ironically enough, the person who had set me up was also my salvation. I’d given her my phone number as well, as a few minutes before the company’s security detail arrived, she called me to confess. The company had managed to track her down from the hospitals records when she gave birth to baby Bonnie. By this time, they’d gone global, with the success of the Reality, and their deep pockets could buy or bribe pretty much anything or anyone. They seized the baby and her husband shortly after being released from the hospital, holding them hostage, forcing Jessica to do everything they said. She admitted to helping me make the encryption, but confessed that she had no idea how to find it, or what the compression frequency actually was. So they used her for the only possible option—to lure me out of hiding.

She’d begged me tearfully to forgive her betrayal, but I told her that I understood. I was alone, no family of my own, my parents having passed away a few years earlier, but if I’d had a family and they were being used as a bargaining chip, I would have acted the same way. She told me then that they were coming for me, that I had maybe an hour or less, and that I needed to run. She’d sacrificed herself just to get me that message… even as she’d given me that final warning, shouts had erupted around her. The last sound I heard on the phone before it went dead was a single gunshot.

Well, I was done like dinner. I couldn’t get away. I had nowhere to run to, no friends left to contact or to hide me. And the company was all powerful. My days—no, actually, my minutes were numbered. So, with no other choice, I logged into the system and plugged in my last great surprise for the company, a little side project I’d been working on over the past five years. When the goon squad broke in, I was already jacked into the Reality, uploading my last little surprise. They disconnected me with force, then put me through the third degree. It was… rather painful. I confess that at one point I actually wet myself. But I persisted, giving the computer those precious few seconds it needed to finish the program. When it finally dinged complete, I laughed at them, despite the blood dripping from my lips.

“You fuckers just screwed up. That ding was the sound of you and the company losing. I just locked the program you’re looking for away for good, and hid it in a randomizer protocol that will KEEP hiding it in a different location every few minutes. Now no one can find it. Even if you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t find it. Tough luck, guys. I just saved the world.”

“Lucky you,” the head goon growled, pulling out his gun. “I guess that means you get to go out like a hero then… with a martyr’s death.” Then he shoot me in the face and blew my brains out.

Kyle and the others stood poleaxed, stunned and confused by that last sentence. “Wait… what? He shot you? But you’re here talking to us now! How can you be here if you’re dead?”

“That last little program I uploaded wasn’t actually a randomizer,” JD admitted with a smirk. “It was something MUCH better, I uploaded myself into the program. Or, more accurately, I uploaded a copy of my brain’s ingrams and neural net configuration into a section of the mainframe, and combined it with a new special cutting edge AI program I’d been designing. Together, my personality and reasoning combined with the artificial intelligence to create this… pseudo clone of myself, a permanent part of The Reality, serving as a watcher and guardian against the company trying to access the mind control portion my other self locked away all those years ago. And I’ve been doing just that, all this time, hoping against hope that after thirty years the rotten old bastards that owned the game would simply die and pass on, or move on to something else. Activity certainly died down a bit ten years ago, when the CEO finally passed away.” He sighed heavily. “Unfortunately, the heir to the throne apparently found out about the project, and three years ago began searching for it again in earnest. New generation, new creative minds, searching for the key to controlling and dominating the world.”

“I see,” Honor said softly, nodding. This story had touched her more than she’d expected. The ‘pervert’ she’d wanted to sock in the jaw was actually a lot more noble and tragic that she could have guessed. “So, I can understand you wanting to keep this all a secret then. The Dragon gods in the game, the Dragonspeak, used to control people? It’s the code your other self hid in the game, right?”

“Part of the code, yes,” JD replied wearily. “That was the brilliant part. The compression code was actually seven distinct frequencies capable of bypassing a person’s conscious mind to some extent. Some frequencies affect women more than men, and vice versa. Some frequencies affect both sexes, but are weak enough to be resisted if you try hard enough. Combining all seven, however, gives the wielder the ability to completely bypass any person’s conscious will. Each one is hidden away within each of the grave sites of the seven Dragon Gods. The idea was that no one would be able to even find them, let alone unlock the codes… but alas, my team was a bit too clever for their own good.”

“You left clues, hints, in the game,” Kyle realized suddenly, remembering his fight with Icebane all those years back. “You hid it around subtext and game lore, but if you knew enough about the history of the game, and knew the legend of the Dragon Gods—“

“Then you could conceivably make the connection, yes,” JD finished with a nod. “That was both what made it so ingenious and so moronic. In order to truly access any of this information, you had to get it first hand in the Reality, by interacting with the right NPCs or fulfilling the correct quest. The CEO and his board were all technophobes, involved in the project solely for the money. None of them would EVER actually log in to the Reality itself, especially knowing about the MC element, that a random frequency shift could turn any of them into a mindless puppet. So there was no chance any of those old timers would stumble across the trail of breadcrumbs and make the connection.”

“Old timers, huh?” Leila mused, scowling. “Guess you never figured on a young person in the company logging in and discovering the clues, huh?” JD merely shrugged.

“Another saying from the old days: hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Heck, if I could go back in time, I’d never have created the frequency compression protocol at all! But… that’s neither here nor there. You wanted to know why I’ve been watching you and your little group all this time? Call me old fashioned. Call me nostalgic. Call me a dreamer if you want. But this game, this Reality, was built with a vision in mind—the vision of heroes fighting and facing down villains, of the weak and defenseless being saved and protected. When I realized that it was inevitable that the company’s lackeys would some day find and break my code, I decided the only way to combat them would be to find a hero of my own,” he said, looking at Kyle, “someone noble and pure of heart, someone brave and smart enough to be able to find and use the Dragonspeak—not to conquer the world, but to help save it. There are literally millions of players logged into the Reality, and my AI code is tracking and watching all of them to some extent. And out of those millions and millions, Kyle… I picked you to bring this to.” He grinned sardonically at the boy’s expression. “So boy, are you ready to be a hero? Are you ready to save the entire world, both virtual AND real?”

Kyle groaned softly, his head spinning. “I… think I’m gonna need a minute,” he said, sitting down to think.

Inside his private chambers, Marion let out a long deep sigh. Removing his armor, he walked over to the large ornate mirror, and, checking once again to make sure he was alone, he chanted the incantation. The mirror’s surface flashed and shimmered, eventually revealing the face of a young brunette woman dressed in a smart business suit. The woman grinned at Marion, nodding idly, tapping her long scarlet nails idly on the desk at which she sat. “I saw your match earlier with the head of the Sylvan Order,” she said without preamble. “Very nicely done. I’d say that victory, and particularly the way you humiliated Lady Shalandearl, has earned you quite the reputation.” Her grin widened. “I’d even dare say it more than makes up for that unfortunate debacle with Mr. Shadowchaser earlier.”

Marion scowled. “You WOULD have to bring that up again, wouldn’t you, Amanda…” he grumbled.

“It’s ‘Miss Faraday’,” the brunette frowned, all levity gone. “Just because we are partners in this endeavor doesn’t give you the right to get familiar. And as for your defeat at the boy’s hands… it was your own fault. I told you to track his movements, to watch him, NOT to engage him. My System Admins had flagged him as a possible lead to another of the hidden Dragon Gods. If you’d been patient and followed orders—“

“Orders?” Marion growled. “Now it sounds more like Mistress and Servant rather than ‘partners’. And let’s be clear, Amanda… you need me more than I need you. You may be providing the information and the financial backing for this, but I’m the one doing all the legwork and heavy lifting!” Besides which, I have two of the seven relics already, and Vale just confirmed the probable site of the third one. I don’t really need your backing anymore. Worse case, I could find the other four sites myself! And once I have the frequency, I’ll have control of both the virtual world AND the real one!

Glaring back at him for several minutes, the young woman finally nodded, conceding the point. “Fine. Let me rephrase. If my partner had actually heeded the advice I’d given him, Kyle Shadowchaser would have been a capable asset in this quest instead of a hindrance. He’s obviously getting help from somewhere—a man at his level shouldn’t be able to go toe to toe with you and survive, let alone defeat you.” She frowned. “I sense THEIR hand in this somehow… almost like they’re reaching out from beyond their graves just to fuck with me.”

“Well, considering what your father and his company did to them, I can only imagine the kind of bad karma your company has racked up. Still, ghosts and spirits shouldn’t concern you, Am… er, Miss Faraday,” he amended, wanting to keep the conversation pleasant. “Once we have all seven relics, and the full power of that compression code is revealed, the world will be ours for the taking.”

“Indeed,” Amanda replied, grinning again. “And we’ll both get what we want. You will rule this virtual world like a king. And I shall rule the real one outside the computer. My father’s dream of global domination will at last come true.” Not that you’ll be a part of that rule for long, she thought gleefully. Stupid little man with stupid petty dreams. Once I have that frequency, it’ll be a simple matter to bend you to my will. She grinned at the thought of the proud arrogant man reduced to the role of a servant. I wonder whether it would more merciful to keep you as a servant in my household, as maybe as a butler, or a personal attaché… or to simply have you eliminated. Because as useful as you are right now, there’s no way I’m sharing the reigns of control with anyone, let alone a vindictive slimy wretch like you!

“So, do you have any more leads for me?” Marion asked, interrupting her inner monologue. “Were any of your people able to track that anomaly you mentioned earlier?”

“No,” Amanda replied with a scowl. “Those simpletons keep insisting that whatever it is is connected to the hidden protocol, but they’re unable to lock it down. They are fairly certain that it’s NOT a mere random occurrence as they’d been speculating all these years. Just from tracking its movements, it seems to have some sort of purpose or reason to it... an almost ‘human’ quality.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Computers were never my strong suit. All I know is that they claim to be closing in on it.”

“Yeah, right,” Marion scoffed, shaking his head. “A bunch of MIT and CAL Tech graduates, and they can’t even fix one little glitch? I hope you realize how much money you’re wasting on that bunch of imbeciles.”

“Perhaps not for much longer,” Amanda mused, tapping her chin with a scarlet lacquered nail. “I gave them an ultimatum. Either they find and contain this anomaly, and determine what connection it has with the Dragon Gods, or they would be terminated.”

Marion frowned. “You really think threatening their jobs will motivate them to do the impossible?”

“I said they would be terminated,” Amanda replied with a devilish baring of teeth too cruel to be considered an actual smile, as she ended the conversation. “I never mentioned anything about their jobs.”

Marion shuddered despite himself. ”Damn, but she gives me the creeps,” he muttered softly. “Still, she serves her purpose for the moment. Everything is falling into place. It’s just a matter of time now. Just a matter of time…”

“So, how, exactly, are we supposed to save the world?” Honor asked, sitting down on the couch next to Kyle, wrapping an arm around him. “What do you need us to do? I mean, you’re the Dragon God here, the invincible, all-knowing entity guarding the secret frequency code. Why do you expect us to do that you couldn’t?”

JD grunted slightly, glancing away, embarrassed. “Yes, well… for all my supposed power, I am, in essence just a computer program. I may be a god in here, but I don’t even exist out virtual reality. And if the company CEO ever figures out who and what I am, she could simply order a system purge and reboot to get rid of me for good.” He shook his head at the thought. “It would mean shutting down the entire Reality for several hours. People would complain. They’d lose millions in revenue during that time. But considering what’s at stake, I’m sure she’d risk it.”

He stood up, and gestured, transforming the living room back into a cave. “As for what I actually need you to do? I need you to gather up the Dragon Gods relics. Seven relics, serving as seven keys to unlocking the frequency.” He frowned, staring straight ahead for a moment, before grunting and cursing. “Damn. Okay, make that five relics. Our old friend Marion has beaten us to the punch and acquired the first two of them already.”

“WHAT?” Kyle yelled, jumping to his feet. “Marion? He has two of the relics?”

“Yeah. I already knew he’d found one of them on his last foray into Lynx’ back yard earlier.” He glanced at Honor sadly. “Poisoning you was basically just a distraction, to keep everyone occupied. Their real goal was the first key, hidden away deep in those caverns. But I lost sight of him when I focused my attention and awareness on your little group, trying to get you to this point.” He stared unfocused again for a moment before grunting. “Yeah. The second key. A real game changer that one.” He sighed. “Mean that little duel he’s having right now should be over and done with…” At Kyle stricken look, he shook his head. “Never mind, we’ll talk about that one later. For now let’s try and focus on the here and now.”

Anadriel! Dammit. I knew I should have been there! Kyle lamented silently. “Actually, JD, we can talk about this later. I need to go and see if she’d all right.”

“Wow. You really have blinders on when it comes to that elven chick, don’t ya?” JD replied with a chuckle. “Fine. I won’t hold you up too long. But you need to have an accurate idea of what you’re up against when you go up against Marion. These relics… they’re not just little statuettes or trinkets. They actually imbue real power upon the wearer. For instance, the one Marion recently acquired allows him to completely negate any magic used against him at will.”

“Negate any magic…” Serena repeated, frowning. “And Anadriel Shalandearl is a mage. Her abilities as a sorceress are pretty much legendary, but with the power of that relic, her greatest attacks would be utterly useless.” She winced slightly as Kyle’s scowl deepened.

JD nodded. He quickly explained the function of each relic and its ability, and how they all complimented each other, how each one negated the ‘curse’ bestowed upon the previous one in the chain. “The idea was to discourage anyone who, by some miracle of luck actually managed to defeat the guardian of the treasure and obtain a relic. You might be really stoked about finding an item that gives you inhuman speed or unbeatable strength, but if it likewise hits you with a debilitating status effect and lowers your stats, you’d think twice about equipping it.”

“Hmm. You have a point,” Leila replied. “But certain ones obviously have their uses, nonetheless. And it’s a sure bet Marion’s wearing It now. The one he picked up would cut his attack power in half, making him significantly weaker as a fighter, but the protection against Anadriel’s magic would more than make up for it.”

“Correct. And as the guardians of the relics themselves are particularly difficult and nasty to take on, with pitifully low experience gains or drop percentages, your average person would find it a waste of time and effort.”

“Fine!” Kyle growled, frustrated. “Got it. Now can you just give me the relic from this cave so we can leave? I need to get to Anadriel. NOW!”

“Can you dial it back down to nine, kid?!?” JD retorted. “I know you’re hung up about this girl, all right? But the duel ended five minutes after it started. Even if you’d teleported directly to the site ten minutes ago, the battle would still have been over and done with.” He sighed, softening his tone. “I’m not connected enough to know exactly what happened, but I can tell you she’s alive. Now, please… calm down and let me finish preparing you.” Sighing, Kyle nodded grimly.

JD sighed heavily, walking to the center of the room. “Well, I’m basically stalling at this point. I guess it’s time to simply bite the bullet and bequeath the Dragon Relic of this cave to you.” Holding out a hand, his entire body began to glow with a soft pale light.

“Why are you so hesitant to give it up?” Honor asked, curious. “Is it really that powerful or dangerous?”

“Well, kinda,” JD replied with a grimace, “but mainly, it just hurts like HELL bringing it out!” Holding his arms out wide, a bright light began to glow from within the center of his chest. With a loud roar, a beam of light shot from the center of his chest directly at Kyle, illuminating him for several seconds. When the light faded, Kyle had a golden armband wrapped around his right wrist. JD grunted, sagging a bit, leaning on his staff for support. “Okay… whew. Wasn’t was bad… as I though…” Taking a moment to compose himself, nodded to Kyle. “Congratulations, Kyle. I bequeath upon you the Armband of Ro, the most valuable of the Dragon Relics. I’ve taken the initiative of bonding it to your avatar—meaning you can never remove it. And the gift it bestows upon you is also permanent… bequeathed from me directly to you.” He stared Kyle in the eye. “Do you understand what I mean, kid?”

Kyle nodded slowly, as the realization dawned on him. The Armband of Ro, he called it. Ro. I know that word at least… it means ‘eternal’. And it came from INSIDE him, from his own body? Does that mean he made me immortal? And if so… what’s the downside? All these Dragon Relics are double edged swords. So what could possibly be the downside of not being able to die in the game?

“Your life total will never increase from what it is now,” JD answered, as if somehow reading his thoughts. “Neither will your stats increase. You’re basically locked in at the level you are now. YOU can still level up, of course, and learn new techniques and abilities… but your strength, speed and health will never go beyond what they are right now. It’s also why I healed you to full health earlier—had you donned the armlet while you were in critical health, that would have become your normal state.”

“That’s crazy!” Honor yelled, growling angrily. “You’ve locked him into a permanent limbo, unable to advance, and you treat it like it’s a good thing?!? And you didn’t bother to explain that BEFORE forcing it on his arm?”

“Honor, easy. It’s okay,” Kyle said calmly. “I understand why he did it. This way, even if Marion gets all the rest of the relics he can never get this one. Not as long as I’m alive.” He grinned sardonically. “And well, that won’t be a problem anymore, now.” He sighed softly. “And… I think I also understand how much giving this to me cost you personally, JD.” Honor started at that, glancing again at the Dragon God in human guise. “This armband… without it, you’re going to disappear, aren’t you?”

“Hey, now, don’t get it twisted,” JD replied with a laugh, even though it was forced. “I’m not gonna just up and die, just because I surrendered my ‘virtual immortality’ to you. It just means that I can be affected by people and the environment around me like any of you from now on. Yeah, nice pointing sword in the gut will spell my doom, but I’m pretty good at avoiding that kind of thing. So, anyway… don’t feel too bad about old JD.” He panted, sagging a bit more before straightening back up. “The important thing here is that you kids survive… you take the fight to Marion and his backers and you safeguard the rest of those relics. I’ll be around if you need my advice, or help with something, but the rest is up to you.”