Dancing With Depravity

[Allennia]

Dancing With Depravity (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD8v2Rp8_AQ)

Falling down into deep obsession, Abhorrash stood once more on the steps of the Citadel, compounding his life’s expectations into another chance encounter with death. Future’s unfurled before him as he ascended, each step a merging of red material and grey stone; old and new traditions forming a new empire of ascendency. As he passed the great doors, open for the day’s business, the monks nodded solemnly in greeting to an old acquaintance, although neither party knew one another.

The great ante-chamber hummed with activity as ever, swordsmen, mages and vagabonds fitting every description scattered about the foyer in discussion with clerks and sensei’s attendants. The chatter was a cornucopia of demands and descriptions, a thousand arenas for a thousand dying moments drifting upwards into the lofty heights of the great dome above their heads. He approached the reliquary and attracted the attention of one of the monks, who reciprocated the mage’s arrival with a knowing stare.

“I would like to fight once more, in an arena of another’s choosing, if you have a combatant ready suitable to a man of meagre skill?” A moment passed, and the monk simply turned to walk towards the cloisters which lead to the many smaller domes of illusionary intelligence. Abhorrash twisted his shoulder to glance out at the rising sun through the great archway and smiled, today, he thought, today would be a good day.

He swept into the inner sanctum of Radasanth's premium fighting establishment, a blur of ochre and spell-book, of reciting verbs and prepared arrogance.

[Taskmienster]

Althanas was a twisted apparition of something that could have been perfect. Flawed though it was, many flocked to its enticing ways, absorbing what they could from the depths of the game. Like many others before him, Ethan Calhoun was just one of many that took the virtual reality game as something of interest to waste away the flow of time. A character, born of personal ideology and technological pixilation, Ethan was little more than an image of a hacker played out in a world of imagination and intrigue. The person behind the façade was middle aged, delighted in the sport of pushing boundaries, and reveled in the notion that anything could be accomplished if the mind was put to the task. Unlike the general populace, however, the subconscious amalgamation of color and technical wizardry was directly controlled by the outside influence. Ethan Calhoun, better known as Lars, was a creation of the brilliant mind of Colin McFerrin – a prominent hacker and genius in the age of virtual reality.

The game that he had originally taken part in as a means of exploration and code stealing intrigue had become something much more, it had become his life.

Originally he had hacked his way into the game, bypassing the regular and accepted way of joining Althanas in favor of a much more tactically deceitful means. The administrators of the server, other people like him but with permissions to do as they felt necessary, had hunted him for his borderline lawless activity. But Colin was a man of means and motive, and once started people with that conviction and dedication were nearly impossible to stop. Companies fought for control and creation of the best games that could be offered, Althanas was but one of many such games offered through the Virtual Reality Pods that had sprung up throughout the world. In the past, the internet had its revolution, the phone with applications created a hype none thought would be outdone, but it was time for VR to take its role as the supreme advancement in human ingenuity. As such, every company wanted a game that would draw the crowds, wow their audiences, and funnel unheard of amounts of money into the pockets of the shadowed figures at the top of the industry.

GramVR, just another company striving for a turning point in their business, had employed Colin as a way to scratch, claw, and force their way to the top. Althanas was a projection of a rival company, one that was on no grounds aligned with GramVR. The hacker, Colin and his character Ethan, had used the backdoor entrance to gain a perspective on the game that those enjoying it would almost never be able to see. He was able to see the coding of the virtual reality, steal the ideas that had been put into Althanas, and turn them to his own advantage. Once his company had gained enough of the base coding to create their own game, however, they had tossed aside their invaluable aide like a sack of rotting meat that had sat spoiled for weeks.

Althanas, and the company that devised it, had seen how important the man was though. They had understood his potential and his abilities. TechFront INC. had hired him with little thought, putting him on staff and allowing him to continue playing the character of his creation. It was then, and only then, that Ethan finally was something more than a hacked character born of a mind not wanted. Colin, and Ethan, had become staff and were allowed to explore and do as they wished. As such, he was left to wandering, without a purpose, and with little motive to play other than to make sure that the server was maintained and the continuity of the game always upheld. It is that purpose, and that purpose alone, which made him wish for nothing more than entertainment.

And what better place for entertainment than the famed Citadel of Radasanth?


~*~

The arena made me feel like the world was real, so thoroughly created in its perfection that I had no way of discerning the difference between the Ai’Bron creation and the real thing. My mind was used to create the illusion, mixing feelings as well as senses to make it come alive. A light breeze jolted me from my amazement and I was left with the truth of the world. I pulled my jacket close and smiled. Florida weather was a bitch, jumping from cloudy and pouring one day to freezing and sharp winds the next. The vast majority of people saw the state, which was where the arena was set, to be nothing more than palm trees and sunshine. Late winter was much like late fall in other places, quiet and offering nothing more than an atmosphere that Floridian’s didn’t feel comfortable in.

I moved through the alleyway. Puddles of rain water still drenched the streets, pooling in the crevices and potholes of the ill-maintained asphalt. A day after it rained and the temperature had dropped probably thirty degrees with the passing clouds and their heavy load. It was not as perfect and pristine as I remembered the city, though the lower streets of downtown Jacksonville were not as pretty as the rest of the city was advertised. Trash littered the walls of the buildings, rubbish and old grime coated the low windows of the businesses that faced the alleyway with very little openings. “Just like Althanas,” I thought with a smirk, “what was seen was pretty, but what was left to the select few was little more than forgotten and lacked the finesse that would take very little time to just clean up with a dedicated crew.”

The end of the alley opened up not only the world that was created, but my vision of it as well. I could see the amazing decadence of the big city. Lights flickered neon signs that drew the hazy eyes of mentally slumbering potential patrons. The bars were always trying to draw in anything and anyone that would be willing to spend a bit of cash for overpriced pints. Beyond the glowing signs were the sky-scraping prisons that held thousands of people in their vice like grip. Modern, corporate controlled versions of the Tower of Babel, each one reaching towards the sky to lord over those below. Lights still lit some of the windows, I couldn’t tell how many from the distance but it seemed that more than one person was climbing that corporate ladder with a little time spent dedicated to a job instead of a life.

I shook my head with a small laugh. The street I stood on was wide enough for two cars going either way. Pot holes and other ill-maintained commonalities of a large city were obvious no matter which way I looked. Spots were oil dripped from cars waiting in traffic lit up like rainbows with the harsh florescent lights that lined the road. The worst part of any city, especially the big ones, was always when you looked up though. Not a star in the sky, except for the very brightest such as the North Star. The rest, no matter how hard you wanted to see them, were just hidden behind the screen of artificial lights that overpowered them. “A shame,” I muttered, “Would be nice to see something more than the North Star, constellations to confuse someone from Althanas. Something that would make this arena feel like home.”

[Allennia]

What had entered so confidently had quickly been taken aback by the surprise of being in another place. Abhorrash looked out across the alien landscape, his wonderment barely contained in his steeled expression of confusion and fear. He had walked into the arena expecting a simple terrain, perhaps indicative of some region of Corone or similar. Instead he encountered a wilderness he was not ready for, one he only surmounted and dealt with using the expression of intellect he liked to call ‘open-mindedness.’

The wind on top of the great tower was unanimously chill, piercing the folds of his robes, tunic and armour with an ease that was phantasmal. Even in his discomfort he did not move, his eyes fixated on the distant spire that was taller than anything he had imagined. Finally, after what seemed like hours he put one foot up onto the edge of the building, the metallic plates scraping on the strange substance the world was created from and peered very slowly down into the hell below.

“This…” he began, clenching the Violet Rose in his left hand and preventing his tumble with the right, “is unreal. It is a simple fabrication of the mind.” It was an adequate reassurance but one that would not last. Despite the ambient noise and the roar of the wind rushing over and up from below, the city was desolate, devoid of life beyond the glare of the fae lights that illuminated the distant rooms in the cube structures, and the single star above that was the red mage’s tether to the real, his anchor to the fact that this was the Citadel, and anything was possible.

Like a hawk he inspected the streets below for his opponent, scrutinising the lay of the land like an unwitting king. Finally some spectre moved, too distant to be seen in any detail other than the simplest; he existed. Not knowing of the wonders of lifts, Abhorrash leapt from the residential block and plummeted, careening down in a wind tunnel of peerless stupidity. As the floor rushed up to greet him, the son of Isould flicked both wrists and span in a lateral vortex as he unleashed the might of Agatha’s Tailwind.

With grace and elegance he conjured the winds that drew him down into a circle. The sudden magical gust lifted him up just in time to slow his fall with a nudge and pull. His armour chimed and his breathe left him as he landed, feet spread apart and free hand punching the floor. Whilst he was still alive and adrenaline pumped through his veins, he felt rocked by the tumble and the noise he had made on impact rang in his ears like bells ringing their last toll. “I have wondered and searched for you,” he looked up at his opponent, newly emerged onto the street and still hidden in the swathes of night and mist. “Like a Griffon I swoop to face what this world can conjure – what terrors this unknown can inflict!”

He looked up and flicked his hood back, smiling wildly with a swiftly fading vigour. The drive of the magical mind to explore the unexplored pushed the sudden fatigue aside and he remained in his low stance, a pseudo-warrior waiting to pounce someone far removed from this world. Someone who was not subject to the same morals, ideals or restraints that one so ingrained in the politics of Althanas lived by, was ensnared by.

[Taskmienster]

The Citadel, little more than a defunct place to display a prowess in battle that meant nothing to anyone other than those involved. It was like a diary of war, each person entered their own passages to their own special books, but whether other people would care or not was hardly a worry. Half the time, even if you were some great warrior, it did not matter much anyway because nobody would see what you had entered. I, despite waxing philosophical, was always a fan of the place. No matter what anyone said, it was a place that I enjoyed for the pure aesthetic quality as much for the fact that I couldn’t be killed. That wasn’t to say I was scared of dying, outside of the Citadel. A contest of arms, whether it was in a protected arena or in a forest somewhere in Althanas, was all the same to me. I had heard of people calling it a place of cowards. I had heard others hail it as the most amazing paragon of proper training.

“Whatever it is,” I said with a shrug as I pulled my coat closer. “It’s just an illusion. Home for me is just going to be an alien world to someone else.” The fringe of my faux-leather coat, a lining of fake white fur, tickled my scruffy cheeks. The soft white collar was gentle and soft, a contradiction to the days of un-shaven hair that prickled across my jaw. Since I had been accepted to the staff of Althanas, an administrator for their virtual reality server, I had found no need to keep up my clean appearance. When I was on the run, hiding and trying to keep out of sight, I had been a panther keeping to the shadows of the forest floor. Running and keeping up my stealthy report was once important. With them knowing I was here, and accepting it, I simply didn’t care what others thought of me anymore. To be noticed was no longer important. To be known was no longer a concern. “I wonder, then, if I should keep this guise or if I should change to something more common to Althanas?”

My eyes slowly shifted from the world above and the simple landscape of stars to the immediate vicinity. Jacksonville, the city that I called home outside of Althanas, reminded me of how often the eyes of the general server populace had curiously watched my every move. The place would be a world of unparalleled confusion to someone from the server; a sleeper who was so vested in the world of Althanas that they had no conscious recollection of what the world outside was like. Unlike me, most of the players on the server, if not all, had to be split from their knowledge of Earth. It was necessary. The continuity of the game depended on it. Those that I saw where characters created by the minds of humans, but could range from elves to demons, whatever their creator wished. The underlining factor was that once they logged into the virtual reality world, they had no memory of anything but the background they had devised upon registration. Was it time that I left behind my split conscious? Was it time that I became a sleeper and involved myself in the server of Althanas as everyone else was supposed to do?

The question created lingering thoughts, ones that consumed my mind as I leaned against a wall.

A gust of wind forcefully dragged me from my mulling of virtual reality identity. It was barely strong enough to lift the debris from the ground around, but it was enough to announce the entrance of my opponent. I did not immediately turn to face him – hopefully a him because I was about damned tired of fighting women. Instead I nonchalantly flicked a cigarette from my pocket and flicked my lighter to give life to the end of the cancer stick. The first inhale was always the most amazing. Althanas never let me live down the fact that every experience was like the first time. The nicotine rush, the swelling of my chest as the acrid death-inducing vice filled my lungs, I was engulfed in a simple pleasure incomparable. I closed my eyes as I let out the wisps of gray, unfiltered smoke. It wrapped around my visage and held in front of my face like a mask. I kept it there, unnaturally causing it to settle. It was a mask of my pain, a mask of my disgust, and yet it made me feel great.

I smirked even as I turned to what would be my opponent. His voice was thick with passion, but as equally thick with something I had commonly associated players of Althanas with. Over-enthusiasm. He was a man – thank whatever fake gods had deemed to smile on me – and he seemed to take the game way to seriously. “A griffon?” I huffed the smoke away. The cloud became like any other, suddenly drifting away from my features. The tendrils of the silver-lined nicotine filled creation reached upwards before being dragged away by the air itself. Dissipating. “Don’t look like much more than a man with a death wish. Why’d you jump from all the way up there? Showin’ off? Tryin’ to give me reason to think that you were something important?”

I held up my free hand. The other pulled the cig from my tensed lips and tapped off the ash. “Don’t bother answerin’, it’s rhetorical questionin’. I really don’t give a shit why you felt it necessary to show off. In the end, I’m not impressed. Either by your entrance or your grandiose, self-important words.”