#3

Pasha felt strangely at home. A warm feeling coursed through her system.

It was a power that she had never known.
.
When she had fallen off the side of the Spiral Knights' base near the Core, she was sure she would die.

But what she had found instead was...

Nothing. But it was wonderful.

She could see the entire world. Countless new Knights being enslaved for new Users, many gremlins and monsters crying out in pain over their loss. The clatter of new constructs being made. The ticking of the Clockworks. Each and everything in Cradle ticked separately to create a wonderful spiral of life and death.

The system controlled everything, no doubt about it. It limited and gave information, it controlled everything through force. It was the hand of Three Rings picking up entities like pawns to serve the grand scheme of the Users.

And, just so, the system happened to have no control over Pasha.

She was never supposed to fall into the Core. It was not part of the game, not implemented yet. However, a warm grey-white had enveloped Pasha, and a sense of true freedom and contentment came over her. It was not the dark that greeted her, but an idle light.

It was perfect nothingness.

She could watch Cradle tick forever as a small program escaped that from the system. She would be safe until the Core was unlocked. Until then, she had all the time in the world to think and relax. Her User could not reach her if the system could not. She was safe. She was safe from the Users' sadistic and cruel insanity machine, their methods of torture and torment.

The first thing that she pondered was why her race was called "Spiral Knights." Mysterious, metal beings that would gain a soul only to be controlled by the Users until they logged out. They were chosen to serve as vessels for Users, willingly or not. What did the name have to due with these things?

She had come up with her own idea. The world was constantly shifting, growing and shrinking. Things lived and died, and Users went in and out. Victory and defeat; life and death. There was an order to things, a chaotic order of death and destruction. The Users controlled the Spiral Knights and killed creatures, monsters, machines, and even their fellow Knights. They ran the world, and it seemed sometimes as if the entire world revolved around their entertainment. And to them, "fun" was shattering souls of the poor vessels of the Users until they became lifeless beings. Their friends were forced to watch each other die slowly, becoming less and less lively until they were finally "dead." It was painful. Pasha was lucky--at her last straw, one death away from insanity, she had fallen off the system. She was safe.

Yes, she was safe. She began to look around nervously. She was safe, for now, from the "spiral of death."