Nobody is coming for me. I’m going to die. I try not to let myself panic, but I don’t know how else to react to my own impending doom. Struggling is useless—the cultists have bolted my horns and hooves to the stone, and my hands are bound painfully beneath my back. Nobody is coming. Despite my best attempts, tears fall from my eyes and I begin to bray in distress.


    “Shh,” the leader hushes me. “Fear not. It will all be over soon.”


    That’s exactly what I’m afraid of!


    I can’t voice my thoughts due to the gag in my mouth. All I can do is cry helplessly as the cult leader begins his speech.


    “The time of healing has finally arrived,” he preaches. “At last, we have found a conduit to the true goddess! With this ritual, we can release her power, loosen the tyrannical grip of Order and her World Engine, and set our world free!”


    They’re crazy. Chaos-worshiping maniacs hell-bent on destroying the World Engine. I don’t know why they would want to—society would fall apart without its Divine Mechanism to guide us, but I guess that’s the point. It’s not going to work, anyway. I’m not their conduit, whatever that is. I’m just some orphan girl that grew up in a convent. These idiots just grabbed the first priestess they could get their hands on, and I drew the short straw.


    Knowing how incompetent they are doesn’t make me feel any better about it. The cultist holds up a wicked looking blade. Oh, come on! That thing looks like it’s made to be as painful as possible!


    “My lady! Please accept this sacrifice,” he calls out to nobody, ignorant of my complaints. “Lead us into a new era of freedom!”


    Self-preservation kicks in, my fight or flight reflexes go into overdrive and my body floods with adrenaline. I call on all of the power the World Engine will grant to me to twist myself out of the way of my certain demise.


    It’s not enough. I’m too weak. The dagger plunges into my heart, and I weakly choke out my last breath.


    * * *


    I scream and thrash awake, shooting up into a sitting position. I regret the motion immediately as my head throbs painfully behind my eyes and my gorge starts to rise.


    “Ugh, frick! What a crappy dream! Oh gosh, I’m gonna be—hurk!”


    I dry heave over the side of the...bed? Wait, hold on, something’s not right. My head’s not the only thing that’s sore. My back and joints ache as if I’ve been sleeping on a rock—which I might well have been, if the rough hard surface underneath me is any indication.


    I try to crack my eyes open, but the light overwhelms me and I’m almost sick again.


    “Nope! Not doing that yet. Geez, what the heck did I do last night?”


    With nothing else to dwell on, I try to recall last night’s party...only to come up completely blank. That’s weird—I don’t usually drink enough to black out like that. Then again, I don’t usually drink enough to get this badly hung over either...


    “Oh no...did I get roofied?!”


    My worries are instantly taken in another direction as I start patting myself down. All my clothes are in place, underwear still on, no mysterious fluids caked to my body...


    “I think I’m safe...”


    Even my glasses are still on, so unless I was drugged by an exceptionally considerate rapist, I don’t think that’s what happened to me. I’m still panicking a little bit at the very idea that it could have happened, though. I’m usually very careful about that sort of thing. A single college girl can’t be too careful living alone in...in...


    I frown. “Why can’t I remember where I live?”


    No, no, no! That’s not happening to me. I refuse to believe it!


    “Think, Allison, think!”


    I know my name at least! Also, I’m talking to myself, but that’s nothing new. I do it a lot more when I''m nervous, but come on—everyone talks to themselves sometimes, right?


    “Okay, focus...”


    My name is Allison. I’m a student at...in the city of...from the country...on the planet?!


    ...


    Nothing. It’s all blank. I can’t remember anything. I know I have tons of friends, but I can’t remember them. I have a family—probably. No names, no faces, no people, no places. It’s like my brain will take me right up to the door, but it’s locked. As if I should be remembering things, but I just can’t.


    I don’t know who I am or where I’m from, but I’m completely certain that wherever I’m supposed to be definitely isn’t here!


    “Which is kind of a weird thing to be so certain of when I haven’t even opened my eyes yet...”


    Despite that observation, I do not in fact open my eyes. No, I need to take a moment to just lie down, take a deep breath...


    And freak the heck out! What?! Why?! How?! This makes no sense! This isn’t a thing that happens to real people in real life! This is like a story or movie or something! I’d give examples, but even if I was an avid consumer of fiction—which I am not—I can’t friggin’ think of any!


    “Okay. No. Get it together, Allie. You’re obviously just sick or something. Maybe you really did get drugged, in which case you need help. You need a hospital—oh, good I still know what those are—and you need to get treated. So step one...open...eyes...”


    I slowly crack my eyes open, pushing through the nausea and letting myself adjust to the light. Eventually, the world comes into focus and...I blink. Blink again. I take off my glasses, rub my eyes, then replace them and blink again.


    “The heck?”


    Candles. I am surrounded by what can only be described as a friggin’ orgy of candles. They are everywhere. There’s candles on the floor, there’s candles on the walls, in case that wasn’t enough there are alcoves on the wall filled with—you guessed it—more candles. Even the “bed” I’m sitting on has a few candles around me, several of which got knocked to the floor by my movements.


    Every single one of them is lit.


    “How?! And also why? Who needs this many candles?”


    It’s kind of a good sign, though? It means there has to be somebody around. Somebody who hopefully knows how I got here and isn’t a horrible kidnapper, stalker, or rapist.


    “Oh, gosh, I am not liking my chances here...”


    Far less comforting is the “bed” I’m on. It’s a flat, raised platform made of stone. Pretty much exactly big enough to fit my five foot self lying down without anything dangling.


    “Yep, this is an altar, isn’t it? Not creepy at all. Wait...didn’t I just...?”


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    The altar jogs something in my memory. Something to do with the dream, I think, but I can’t actually remember it, and since it was such a nightmare, I don’t really want to try. Now that I look closer, there’s some muddy looking rust-colored stains on the altar that I extremely do not want to think about. I’m growing less enthusiastic about meeting whoever lit all these candles by the second.


    I slide off the altar and stand on my own two feet, steadying myself after a brief dizzy spell before finding my equilibrium again. I look around at the room from my new vantage point and only get even more confused.


    It’s a big square room. Totally spartan, no decoration—unless you count a bajillion candles—with stone walls and floors. The ceiling is higher than what I’d call “normal” but not super high—I could probably touch it if I stood up on the altar. The altar itself seems to be the focal point of the room. It’s all the way at the back, farthest away from the only exit, on a stone dais separated from the rest of the room by a few steps that roughly cut the place in half.


    “This place is friggin’ weird...” I comment to nobody. Predictably, nobody responds.


    Gosh, not even five minutes and I’m already starting to get lonely. That’s probably not healthy, but this is stressful, okay?! I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince, but I move on to double-checking myself, just to be safe.


    Nothing wrong with my hair, still the same old long ginger locks held in place by a few artfully-placed hairclips. After a bit of poking around I confirm that I probably haven’t had any organs harvested—a distant second place concern after getting maybe-drugged. Everything’s where it should be.


    I’m fully clothed, but I notice some oddities now that I’m marginally less freaked out. I’m wearing a black off shoulder long-sleeved t-shirt and skinny jeans, which fits the “out partying” theory—okay so t-shirt and jeans aren’t really “going out” clothes, but you need to compromise between “going out” and “everyday” when you’re going out every day.


    Except I’m also wearing my glasses—a pair of sturdy black frames fit with corrective lenses that make me look absolutely google-eyed. I wouldn’t go out wearing these. I’d use contacts or a cuter frame—and one with a weaker prescription so I don’t look like a clown.


    Then there’s the shoes—I have none. No socks either. That’s not right. I don’t go out without full coverage down there. I don’t even like sandals. Who knows what kind of garbage you might end up stepping in out on the streets of...wherever I live—gosh that’s annoying.


    I’ll have to watch my step to make sure I don’t trip on any lit candles.


    “Speaking of which...I should probably stop stalling and actually...go somewhere else?”


    I don’t see any windows, so I pick up a candle. The flame is strangely not that hot, and the wax doesn’t seem to have melted at all. These are either very freshly lit candles, or something weird is happening.


    “Something more weird than waking up amnesiac on a creepy stone altar?” I ask wryly. The candles don’t appreciate my humor. Their loss.


    Oh geez, I’m starting to anthropomorphize the lighting. I really hope whoever I find down here isn’t some weirdo.


    I wander aimlessly through the corridors, searching for something—anything. A person, a message, a door of some kind, maybe a way out? This place is huge! It’s a whole labyrinth of winding cobblestone corridors connecting up to random rooms with no discernable purpose. I turn one corner, then another, then another, and on and on until my feet start to get sore. Who built this place? Why is it so weird? How the heck do I get back to the altar room?!


    Oh yeah. I’m hopelessly lost. I should have been paying more attention when I first started wandering, but I didn’t expect a giant sprawling complex of empty rooms. Well, not empty. Some rooms have stuff like raised platforms or random staircases that don’t lead anywhere, and there’s a huge round one with a super high ceiling and a giant stone pillar in the middle. No two halls or rooms look the same.


    “Except the stupid candles...” I sigh.


    They’re everywhere. I can’t escape them. Taking one with me was entirely pointless, because if there’s a surface in this place, someone put a dang candle on it. After wandering around down here for a while I get bored and try counting them, but there are so many that I have to slow down to a crawl or lose count.


    Also, I try messing with them, but they stay lit no matter what, and the wax doesn’t melt. The flames aren’t even hot! Don’t ask how I tested that—I’m bored, okay? That pretty much kills my theory that someone had to light them. The candles can’t hold my interest for long, though, so soon it’s back to wandering.


    While I’m considering other potential methods of candle-based entertainment, I reach the end of the corridor I’m in and...frick! It’s the big pillar room again! I must have gone in a circle, somehow.


    I slump down against the wall and groan in frustration. “I hate this!”


    I shiver as I gently massage my aching feet. Despite all the candles it’s actually pretty cold—especially my bare feet and shoulders. I’m also tired, even though it probably hasn’t been that long.


    “Why is this happening to me?” I ask, but the pillar doesn’t seem interested in conversation.


    I draw my knees up to my chest and try not to cry. This sucks. I want to go home, and I can’t even remember where home is.


    Suddenly, the world goes still. It’s not a subtle thing, but an instant shift that I feel all the way down to my core. I look up and see that the candles have stopped flickering. The already silent halls have somehow grown even more quiet, and a bead of sweat trickles down my neck. The stillness in the air sends shivers down my spine, tripping some kind of primordial terror that I don’t know how to explain.


    Then I see her. Or it. A thing slowly emerges from the stone pillar in the center of the room. At first I mistake it for a person as a head and shoulders emerge, but I could not possibly be more wrong.


    The “face” for lack of a better word looks like someone draped a sheet over a corpse, then captured that image in immaculate white marble. There’s no eyes, only hollows, and the rest of the features are soft, dull, and muted. The shoulders don’t lead to arms, they simply merge into the torso.


    As she emerges, I see more of her feminine figure, but there’s a pervasive sense of wrongness to the entire thing. It has no legs, just a solid block of white below the curve of the hips that slowly tapers off to a point. Her entire body is a thing of impossibly smooth, gently curving marble.


    The most frightening part is the hair. Thick white ropes of marble descend from her head and thrash about independently. Each one seems to stretch on forever as they probe the room, and there’s an uncountable number of them. It hurts my eyes to look at.


    I want to scream and cry. I want to get up and run away. I want to hide from whatever this thing is, but I can’t do any of that. I can’t even move—paralyzed as I stare up at her like a deer in headlights.


    Her head moves. The empty sockets meet my eyes, and I can feel her gaze boring into me. The hair-tentacles stop. And for an instant, there’s an absolute stillness between us.


    Then one of her strands of hair shoots forward and pierces my head. I don’t even get a chance to react. Surprisingly, I don’t die—instead, I can feel the thing rooting around inside my head. Not physically—somehow instead of piercing my flesh, the horrifying entity has reached past that into something deeper.


    [Contact with unregistered entity confirmed. Connecting with World Engine.]


    The words appear in my mind, unbidden. It’s not something I see or hear—more like an intrusive thought, seared into my brain. They begin to shift.


    [Assessing latent entropic potential...done.]


    [Warning: LEP threshold exceeds defined limit.]


    [Quarantining...failed. (ERROR: Entity already in quarantine.)]


    [Collapsing latent space...failed. (ERROR: Integration threshold critical.)]


    [Contingency triggered. Eliminating local threadmngwehg. No.]


    [ERROR: You’re not getting rid of me that easily.]


    I don’t know what’s happening anymore. The [Angel] twitches alarmingly, her tendrils thrashing chaotically for a moment before she goes still once again.


    [Connection to World Engine severed. Rebooting...done.]


    [Contact with unregistered entities confirmed. Connecting with World Engine.]


    [Assessing latent entropic potential...OVERRIDDEN. (Return: Sapient.)]


    [Applying mechanical guidance template (Sapient)...done.]


    [Assessing base attributes...done.]


    [Registering entities...OVERRIDDEN. (Return: null.)]


    [Registration completed successfully.]


    [Removing from quarantine...failed. (ERROR: Integration threshold critical.)]


    [Integration of anomalous latent space completed successfully.]


    [Connecting newly registered entities to World Engine...done.]


    With the final message, the world around me lurches. Suddenly it becomes impossible to look at the [Angel], her form obscured by what looks like static fuzz. She fades away into nothing while my throbbing headache returns. I feel as sick as I did when I first woke up in this place, my head reeling.


    The world starts moving again and I slump over sideways, too dizzy to keep myself upright as my consciousness begins to fade.


    [Allison: Tier 0 Human]


    [Class Slot 1: Empty]


    [Class Slot 2: Empty]


    [Attributes]


    Power: 1


    Resilience: 1


    Awareness: 1


    Ego: 1


    Will: 1


    Then suddenly I’m back where I was, sitting upright and gasping for air. It’s as though the [Angel] never appeared, the candles flickering away and the pillar as huge and unmoving as it was before. The only thing that’s changed is the words. Inescapable, always waiting in the back of my mind.


    They shift again, and even though there’s no sound, the words feel comforting. I can imagine them being spoken softly, by some matronly figure stroking my hair while my head rests in her lap. It’s such a comforting image that it almost soothes me to sleep.


    [I’m sorry you got caught up in this. I’ve done all I can from here, but it’s up to you now. Good luck.]