"His mind tired -- tired with nothing, tired with everything, with the world's weight he had never chosen to bear."

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, American Novelist

  Milly leaned against a concrete wall in Luna’s cramped storage closet, where the backdoor had unceremoniously deposited her. She gritted her teeth from the pain in her shoulder. She had been able ignore it during the battle due to her enhanced toughness and Salem’s Fury. But now that the battle was over, and she had yanked out the bolt, the pain was hitting her all at once.

  Her regeneration talent had already stopped the bleeding, but she’d exhausted her magical reservoirs during the fight, so there was little else she could do about it until her magic replenished. She opened her inventory and removed the fluffy white towel that she had used at the bathing pools when she and Calista had confessed to each other. She smiled at the memory.

  With a sigh of regret, she tore the towel in two and used it to bandage her shoulder and create a sling. She winced as her blood stained its perfect whiteness.

  “At least I am somewhere safe,” Milly whispered as she looked around the storage room. Then she remembered the hidden message from Luna that had brought her here. “At least, I hope it is safe. Luna sounded pretty scared.”

  It had been a week since Milly had first encountered Luna in the Arena of Choice. The AI Director resembled a four-year-old, with shoulder-length and curly white hair. She’d been arguing with Tutoria – an extension of her own programming – and monitoring the players using the hundreds of computer monitors that had filled her warehouse-like home.

  Luna seemed to be of two personalities. The first was the artificial AI Director, who influenced the world around them to create an adaptive God Contest that challenged the players and entertained the gods. Strong and serious, the AI Director had felt more adult than child, utterly committed to achieving the two purposes for which she had been designed: To help humans achieve victory in the God Contest, and, secretly, to counter an unknown puppet master that her mother, Oracle, suspected was behind the twelve failed Contests of humankind. A hefty responsibility upon which the fate of their Gods rested.

  But then there was Luna the child. The girl who had been wearing unicorn pajamas and drinking apple juice from a sippy cup while she monitored the players. The girl who eyes reflected a child’s stubbornness, a child’s anger, and a child’s loneliness. The child of Oracle and Hephaestus, born without a name, and created by parents she would never know. Desperate for a friend and overwhelmed by the duties upon her shoulder.

  The child whom Milly had held while she cried. And to whom she had left her favorite – and only – hoodie as a small token of comfort, and as a promise that Milly would return to see her again.

  It was no life for a child, and it made Milly angry when she thought about Oracle and Hephaestus designing her for such a life. It was selfish and cruel, yet it was her reality. Milly had promised she would help the poor child. Not just for Luna’s sake, but for all the players, so they had a hope of returning home.

  Milly got to her feet, her knees shaking from exhaustion. “Time to find Luna,” Milly told herself, and opened the hefty metal door.

  When Milly had been here a week ago, the primary monitoring room had been lined with about eight hundred monitors. One for each player in the Contest. Except for her single Tutoria, who seemed to do little except enrage Luna by calling her ‘Director Cutie-Pie’, Luna had been monitoring the monitors by herself. She would transfer a dozen screens at a time to her small control room off the far end of the monitoring room, where she could input commands to influence events.

  But now? Milly hardly recognized the place. The monitoring room had expanded to five times its original size. There were at least four thousand monitors, and the floor of the room was now a mirror image of the map that lay beneath the Castle of Glass’ lobby. The monitoring screens showed not only the players, but also the sentient creatures of the terrains. There were two dozen monitors focused on the Fairy Gathering, and an entire section of wall dedicated to the different wolf factions. There was one for the Dragon of Endless Shadows, though that one had a news ticker that scrolled along the bottom of the screen that said ‘Foreshadow-mode – Active at Cataclysm’.

  Luna was no longer alone. There were eight versions of Tutoria moving frantically between the monitors. They all wore black dress pants, a white collared shirt, and a black bow tie, though each had a single distinguishing feature that set them apart from the rest. Milly watched as one of them, a Tutoria with a skull and crossbones eyepatch, spotted something on a monitor and ran into Luna’s small control room at the back of the monitoring room. The Tutoria emerged a minute later, returned to the monitor, and entered some commands through the connected keyboard.

  Milly snuck across the monitoring room, care to avoid being seen by any of the Tutorias. She did not know how the relationship between the Tutorias and Luna functioned, but Luna had kept Milly’s presence secret from the Tutoria the first time they met. She reached Luna’s control room without being spotted and ducked inside.

  Luna sat at the control station, watching a collection of monitors and muttering to herself. Milly gaped at the young girl. She looked to be six years old and was half a foot taller than when Milly had seen her a week ago. Her white hair had grown down to the smaller of her back. Instead of unicorn pajamas, she was wearing Milly’s black hoodie, the damage caused by the goblins on that first day had now been repaired. The hoodie was far too big for her, and it draped down past her knees, making it look like she were wearing a dress.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Luna saw Milly as she entered the room, and her eyes grew wide with surprise. She motioned for Milly to close the control room door as she shouted, “I’m sick of all you Tutorias bothering me. Leave me alone for a bit.”

  “But Director Cutie-Pie, what if there is a…,” the Tutorias all spoke in unison.

  “Shut up! Figure it out yourselves!” Luna shouted back, and Milly closed the door.

  Luna jumped off her chair, ran over to Milly, wrapped her arms tightly around Milly’s waist. “You came,” Luna said through relieved tears, her face buried in Milly’s Gown of Moon and Stars. “I didn’t know if you would get my hidden message.”

  Milly wrapped her arms around the small girl and gave her a comforting squeeze. “I got it. I came as quickly as I could.”

  “Did any of the Tutorias see you?” Luna asked anxiously.

  “I… I don’t think so,” Milly answered.

  “Good,” Luna said, with a sigh of relief. “Good… good. I… I just don’t know if I can trust them.”

  Luna released Milly’s waist and started pacing back and forth across the floor, mumbling to herself. She grasped the bottom of the hoodie, unconsciously pulling it in agitation.

  Milly knew that look. She used to wear that same hoodie when she went to her therapist, and she would tug it like Luna when she was scared to start talking and let out the crazy. She’d be afraid that her therapist would decide she was just a silly, self-centered girl and decide she was beyond help. that her therapist would never want to see her again. Before she had met Xavier – and even afterward, for that matter - her therapist was the only person she could talk to, and the thought of losing that terrified her.

  How hard must it be to be Luna, who had the weight of the world on her shoulders without a soul to confide in?

  Milly sat down on the floor beneath Luna’s monitors.

  “What are you feeling right now, Luna?” Milly asked in a caring tone, trying to channel her therapist.

  Luna stopped her pacing and turned to face Milly. Her eyes were wet with unshed tears held back by sheer force of will.

  “… scared…,” Luna whispered softly.

  “What is making you feel scared?” Milly prompted. She remembered her therapist asking small questions as a way of prying away her emotional blockages one by one.

  “It… it’s all too much,” Luna admitted. “The God Contest has just started, and already it is too much.”

  “It seems busier out there compared to the last time I was here. Is that part of it, Luna?” Milly asked, trying to dig deeper.

  Luna nodded shyly and sat next to Milly. She reached over and slid Milly’s glasses – her mother’s glasses – off her face and put them on her nose. It was as if the glasses were a security blanket. A reminder of where she had come from.

  “Luna, what’s…” Milly began to ask.

  “Mom and Dad built me to do this job. To be the God Contest’s Director,” Luna started, her thoughts tumbling out clumsily as if a dam had burst. “I thought I could do it. It was easy, at first. Monitor the players and adapt accordingly. But…”

  Luna paused, and Milly waited patiently for her to continue.

  “…but now everything is getting so much… bigger. You and Calista and Rain met the fairies and the wolves, so now I must monitor and influence the actions of those societies. These are not like those simple, stupid goblins. These are complex cultures and histories that I need to account for,” Luna said, her desperation growing with every word. “Cultures that have been growing since the birth of this world. And it’s not just you three. There are six hundred and ninety two players, and every day more and more get out there to explore. Every step they take into the unknown is another monitor added to the growing room through that door. Another variable added to the calculations constantly spinning in my head.”

  Luna’s casual mention of the player number was like a kick to Milly’s stomach. “Six hundred and ninety two,” thought Milly, her heart racing. “Sixty-five people have died since we left the Castle of Glass only a few days ago. How many of the dead did we know?”

  “I haven’t rested in days. It’s like my mind is a toffee being stretched, and I know it will keep getting worse as the Contest goes on. I feel like I’ll end up being split in half.”

  “I thought the Tutorias were here to help you? Aren’t they part of your programming?” Milly asked, trying not to think about the dead.

  Luna hesitated. She wiped the tears from her eyes, then took off her mother’s glasses and handed them back to Milly. She stood up and walked over to the monitors, gazing up at the images flashing across the screens.

  “That’s why I sent you the message,” Luna answered in a serious tone, suddenly sounding like the AI Director rather than a small child. “The Tutorias… they are part of me, but I can’t directly control them. It’s like having no control over your right arm. And more keep popping into existence as monitors get added.”

  Luna turned to her. “Do you recall what we talked about before? About there being a puppet master working in the shadows of the contest? Finding and stopping them was the hidden purpose mother gave me. And I’ve been searching the God Contest constantly for any trace for them.”

  “And what did you find?” asked Milly.

  “…bugs,” answered Luna cryptically.

  “Bugs?” asked Milly, confused.

  “Bugs. Errors. Like not being able to control the Tutorias,” Luna explained, her frustration evident. “There is no reason why I should not be able to control them. Father would not have made such a mistake. So I started looking for gaps like that, and I found them. Locations in the world I could not see. Monsters I did not know about. Player screens I cannot access. Small weaknesses chipping away at who I am. What I was made for.”

  “Luna, are you sure these are not just simple mistakes?” calmed Milly. She recalled the memory orb from the beach. “You parents… they didn’t have very much time to… to complete you.” Milly knew it was the wrong thing to say when she saw the anger flare in Luna’s eyes.

  “These aren’t mistakes!” shouted Luna, an intense fear hidden behind her anger. Milly watched as the child re-emerged. She was trembling. “I’m being corrupted, bit-by-bit. Like a virus, picking away at my core. And every day, it eats away at another piece of me. I don’t… I’m going to fail. I’m going to fail mom and dad. I’m going to fail you, and those you love. I’m going to fail the gods. And in the end, there won’t be anything left of me except the bugs.”

  Milly wanted to argue with Luna. To tell her she was overreacting. Instead, she simply reached over and pulled Luna into a fierce hug.

  Luna began to weep, the pressure of her artifical life crashing down upon her.

  As Milly held the child tight and gently rocked her back and forth, she remembered what it was like to cry as a child with no one to comfort her. Somehow, holding this child in her arms felt right - as if this simple act of comfort had filled a whole in her life she didn't know was there.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Luna. I promise.”

  The Non-Canonical Aftermath