I watched the time tick on the grandfather clock across the room, every hand moving meticulously and perfectly. The pendulum shifted left and right, my eyes followed as if any second the clock would do something to break the monotony of my position. Instead of anything exciting it chimed, fifteen minutes past the hour and the short ring was as interesting as my small room could get. My gray blue eyes slowly slid from the face of the timepiece across my small room. Tapestries hung on my walls, banners of battle that were pictures of perfection from past victories of mine. They were soft as silk, elegant and well made, but seemed almost unnaturally created. On the other side of the small area was a door that had remained closed the entire day, no new challengers were interested in attempting to take down the warriors of the Pagoda as of late.

“This position is getting tiresome as of late. I feel like this game is getting droll.”

My thoughts lingered while I watched the door remain still. Althanas had become slow lately, as if the world was on a break. To me it was something different altogether than what most, if not all, of the people in the world would see it as. This was a game, and not in the metaphorical sense that life is a game and you are just hoping for the right roll to save you from some unknown attack. Althanas was a virtual reality game, my body just a pixilated representation of a human, nothing more. Virtual reality has long since become something truly awe inspiring, and yet most were just pawns that played along. I was a hacker though, in the world against the will of the administration staff. As such I could control the code that created Althanas, change it to my own wills, do what most would assume as nothing more than reality manipulation.

“Sir?”

The voice on the other side of the door came before the slight nock. I knew the voice as the Pagoda monk that had been assigned to me, he had worked with me multiple times before and I was happy to have him along. He wasn’t like all the other Ai’Bron monks that were stuck in Scara Brae, working for the Dajas as outcasts from the Citadel. His pride and necessity for organization matched my own, he was no pawn. The door cracked as he stepped in, full head of short brown hair coming into view before the rest of his mid-aged body followed.

“Another foe has come to the Pagoda, waiting for a challenge. I went ahead and set up the arena, with a small change, for you and informed the competitor that his defending Warrior would be prepared shortly.”

No information about the opponent, no name or even gender. I had instructed Johnson, my monk, to never give me any information that would not have been known by the general public. Should a legend have come to the Pagoda, a warrior of equal rapport to names like Yari Rafanas or the general Thoracis I would have been told how they fared. People of smaller standing, no offense to what terribly important quests they had undertook, were of no worry to me. I always enjoyed the surprise.

“What do you mean by small change? It’s still something like my original idea?”

The monk shrugged and smiled his sideways smile. Chaos was what the Ai’Bron thrived on, the unexpected and the bloodshed of those that wandered into their supreme illusions. Johnson was straight forward, level headed, but still had that wicked streak of changing what I wanted just enough to cause me to worry. He didn’t answer, instead he gave me another shrug and nodded when I rose and started for the door.

~*~

The cold city was silent, absent of the noises that one would expect not only from a city but from the natural life that thrived within one as well. Denizens were not present in the false cityscape that was to be my new, slightly changed arena. No wildlife could be heard either, from the cawing of the night birds to the slight scratches of rats and other gutter life. I looked around the world and sighed slowly, this was not a small tweak from the previous grounds I was accustomed to… it was a huge one. Behind me, up the steps that I sat on, was the massive clock tower I was used to fighting inside of. This place was like telling me that the box I was in had been put behind me, and the world outside of it was the new place to explore.

“Thanks Johnson, I’ll have to remember to tell you how happy I am when I get done with this next nonsense. Hopefully you gave me an opponent worth fighting at least.”

I pulled the two sides of the unzipped faux-leather jacket close around me and let the fake white fur envelope my face. A light grin spread on my face as the small flakes of fresh snow began to fall. Overhead the laden clouds blocked out the star-specked sky, the moon, and even the void of space itself leaving the world in a blanket of darkness with scattered street lights the only illumination. I closed my eyes as a small fleck of crystalline water lightly touched the tip of my nose before melting down the sides of my face. It was good to be outside the stuffy, still clock tower, but my strategy within the place was almost perfected. It would be a matter of relying on my instincts instead of focusing on pre-conceived ideas of how to take advantage of familiar surroundings.