He stood on the edge and wondered if he should take that final step into the abyss. He wasn’t sure how he got here, and really wanted to continue on and succeed like the others. They said that there was nothing like standing at the top and seeing the world for what it was. The only problem was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Of all of the people who should be making the journey of the initiation, he wasn’t the likely candidate. He was much older than the normal candidate, and there were much stronger and younger people in the pool. He was hoping that he would not have to go this year, and therefore be spared of it forever.

He was also pretty happy with his life. As a baker, he was well respected in the community and got his fair share of credits from the sale of his goods to the other cities. There weren’t any other bakers in the county, and he wondered how much his neighbors would have to pay this week for their bread to have it shipped in. A good job and bringing in some money for the city all added up to a pretty good life from his point of view.

He was chosen though, and he wasn’t halfway through the journey that would change his life completely. If he gave up now, then he could die without having to deal with both the rest of the journey and the epiphany. He sighed, and kept trudging on.

It didn’t mean anything. He just went out and will be back soon. At least that’s what I’ll tell myself for a while. It makes it easier to deal with the reality when it does finally settle in. The whole time I’ll really know deep down that he is gone, just like the others.

It is dark here, and safe. The darkness is strong and cold, but it was the known, and there wasn’t anything that could hurt me here. The light is blinding, and is encroaching on the darkness more every single minute. Soon I may have no choice. For now, I stay where it is safe and cold though.

All the others have left now, because of each of their reasons. They all had different reasons. The first left because none of us knew any better. We all watched him go and then dissapear in the light. There wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. We waited a long time for him to show up again, but he never did.

The second left because she was brokenhearted. She was the one who came to the Arena with the first, and didn’t last too long until she couldn’t stand going on without him. We all said goodbye and she walked the same way that he did, and dissapeared in almost exactly the same way.

Slowly, the rest went for their reasons. Three and four decided to go together, after almost a week of surviving in the darkness. They were weak, compared to the rest of us. Five ended up being thrown out in anger. Apparently she got in a fight with Seven - I was on a sleep cycle at the time, but Six and Nine told me they disagreed about, well, the only thing to disagree about here, the light.

That was a week ago. All nine others had gone now into the light.

I am alone.

Mark sighed as he walked down the driveway. There wasn’t anything he could really do about it. His boss was about to fire him, he was sure of it. Smashing the other bags down, he wedged the trash into the oversize can and rolled it out onto the curb in the right spot for the automated truck to pick it up and dump it out.

The project was not going well, and it had been not going well for a very long time now. He was about to have to actually show some progress, and there was almost nothing to show. He had made up some bullcrap about progress with research into the field and the evaluation of their different options, but he was pretty sure that the truth would come out.

Mark wasn’t a particularly good manager. He was typical when it came to dealing with people, which meant that he really was just jovial when he thought that they were indifferent towards him, and attempted to reciprocate when there was some extraordinary admiration or loathing involved. That didn’t make him a good manager because you had to be mean to people who actually liked you. At least that’s what Joe told him.

The team consisted of a couple of programmers, a designer, and himself, so it wasn’t even particularly large. Meetings had taken up the first couple of weeks, but when the spring break hit - a particular curiosity of the company they were all working for - they didn’t really pick up on the planning when they returned.

The blame rested on Mark, of course, for not whipping the team into shape. So now he was going to be fired. Just another Monday.

It was very loud in the library. Kids were running around and screaming, and there was nothing that she could do about it. She sat there just staring at the horrors that were happening to her sacred space.

Just three hours earlier, she had heard nothing about the beasts. She was working at the reference desk, one of her favorite jobs in the library. Books needed to be re-sorted and people needed help getting on the internet as well as working on papers or looking up some interesting things online. Every once in a while someone needed help looking for a book.

Libraries weren’t really common nowadays, but this one would be around forever as far as she was concerned. It was used by most of the city at one time or another, and thanks to an anonymous grant that showed up on schedule pretty much every February 14. No one knew who the benefactor was, but it was apparently very important that the library continued.

At least that’s what she thought two hours ago. Now, the entire fourth floor was burning, with all of the periodicals and the maps going up in flames. Still pausing incredulously, she turned and ran. There wasn’t anything she could do against flying, fire breathing.. things.

Ironically, the dragons plowed through the fantasy and sci-fi young adult fiction, and lunged up the stairs, knocking the brass railings on the sides as they continued on an upward rampage thorough the books. They were gaining fast on her, so she took a quick turn, hoping that they wouldn’t be able to turn with the large wings attached to their backs. The wings that were even now tearing out light fixtures in the hung tile ceiling.

They kept going on their path to.. what, the roof.. for now, while she hid. She hid for hours.

The wrench floated weightlessly as he worked on the console, trying to get the computer to actually spark to life. These things were always breaking down, and the idiots who made these modules put them on the outside so that they couldn’t be worked on without doing an EVA.

EVAs were the worst part of the job. Not because of the concern over safety - that had been handled a long time ago by the universal tether. It was marginally more dangerous now than doing run-of-the-mill repair work on a newer model of sattelite. The problem was the suits. He didn’t have his own suit yet, so he had to use the loaners that were on hand with the company. The loaners were always in disrepair, and smelly.

He gave the panel a little smack and surprisingly the lights blinked on. DIagnostics swam across the screen as the targetting and navingation systems started up again. He waited for them to finish and then ran a couple of tests specific to the actual work order that he had. Everything seemed fine, and the fins moved to the commands from his universal remote as well, so he grabbed the wrench which was floating next to the panel and started replacing it.

He was almost back to the work ship when he saw the light flash. It was brilliant in the sky, and strangely red in it’s nature. Then the others started flashing all around him. He wondered why they all got set off for a couple seconds, looking around to see the ship that they were firing on. He quickly located a mhato cruiser that was slowly being turned to dust. In a spin now, it wasn’t going to last much longer.

A blip on the panel came up warning him that there was defensive activity in the area, and he remembered that he was in a bad place right now.

“Damnit!” He screamed as the screen blinked out.

There wasn’t anything left to do, though. The server was dead and his hopes went with it. He was hoping that he would have gotten at least a couple more hours out of it, as a shield to the onslaught that was going to come down on his head in short order.

Management wouldn’t be happy about the failure, especially when it only lasted a couple of months. Then again, they were the ones that wouldn’t splurge for a proofed firewall. They can’t have expected it to last that long. He tapped on his bonecomm and called up his direct superior.

“Thomas here,” the man replied after a couple of rings. It sounded like he was in a tornado.

“It’s down,” he said. “Only lasted about three hours once the hive found out about the open jack. What do you want me to do?”

“Crap. Miles isn’t going to be happy with that. Hold for now, I’ll comm back in a bit.”

He started pulling the cables out of the rack, knowing that there was going to at least a replacement put in place, and if not that, a scrap order. There wasn’t anything to do with a server that had been hived out. Any time you connected it back on the ‘net it would be seeking out the hive and joining in whatever plan they had going on at the moment. His head buzzed.

“Okay, plug it back in, they say,” Thomas’s voice rang loud and clear.

“Huh? Are they crazy?”

“Well, apparently this was the plan from the start. They weren’t that happy that you actually tried to defend it in the first place. Put it back online.”

That sealed it: they were nuts.

He worked very slowly, not wanting to disturb the process and ruin a day’s worth of work. There wasn’t anything particularly hard about the process up until now, when the sigils required got very complex as they interworked with the rest of the anchors that he had put down in the preparation for this moment. If the spell succeeded, he would have full control over the fortress, and things would be safe for another year.

Every year he had to repeat this spell, the renewal of his control over the living stone that made up his tower. Preparation was very specific and time-consuming, but it was a small price to pay in order to ensure that his studies were not interrupted for the rest of the seasons. Plus, it was in the winter, and he didn’t have much else to do anyway.

The floating gem pulsed with a dim light, growing stronger and stronger with every passing minute. There wasn’t much left now but to finish with the force of will imbued into the preparations. He closed his eyes and felt the anchor points that he had placed: six points outside in even spaces about 30 yards out, five cornerstones of the tower itself, the four defense gems which hung magically in the window, an emerald, ruby, and sapphire surrounding the room that he was currently in, and of course the pulsating diamond that centered the entire spell. With all of these points in his will, he started pulling at the Source.

Power started coarsing through him and the anchor points, reaffirming the protection of his home until he would repeat the spell. The center gem erratically started rotating on one axis, and then two, and then all three in a flat spin, accelerating until it was just a translucent orb of white light. As he was connected, he could feel the power cascading down to the other anchors from the cornerstone.

Done with the spell, he checked the now orb-like floating energy ball in the middle of the room with his meter. Fifteen fourty five. He was pleased, that might even last until the summer after next.