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"FoG story. Everyone can contribute........"

FM licked the first three fingers of his right hand and stroked his eyebrows, smoothing them down. He turned at, white robes with simple gold embroidery down the front swishing around him as he heard the guard approach.

FM was standing in a simple square room, with four braziers, one in each corner, all burning different colours. These weren’t normal flames however, as they did not give off coloured light, and the room remained smokeless, with a white light seeming to emanate from the walls and floor, with no shadows forming. In the middle of the room were two pedestals, about four feet apart. On top of them was a box. In it was FM’s father. FM turned as the guard stopped, bowing.

“Master.” Said Sniper, raising his head, looking into FM’s cold, hard eyes.
“You have your mission? You are ready to leave?”
“Yes Master.”
“Good.” FM turned back to look at the coffin, licking his fingers and rubbings his eyebrows again as he spoke. “This is just the first part my friend. I will have my revenge, I do not know when, but I will/”
“Yes Master.” There was an edge of concern in Snipers voice.
“What is wrong, my friend?”
“I do not know, Master. I think I am worrying with no reason.”
“Ah. You are concerned about the book, yes?” Sniper lowered his eyes. “Do not fear. I will find the book. MY magic grows with each passing month, soon I will have the power needed to find the book. Then, when it is mine, I will have unimaginable power!” FM felt a shiver run up his spine as he closed his eyes, imagining the power he would wield. He looked at Sniper. “You have your orders.”
“Yes Master Meister.”
“Go. Be swift, and do not fail me.” Sniper turned and left the room.

FM turned back to the coffin. As he walked around it, his fingers traced the inscription carved into the stone. He knew them all, word for word, but their feel comforted him. They were instructions on how to travel the underworld.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Wrath exploded through Meka’s mind. He screamed “No!” in a murderous rage as he leapt off the rock. With both hands he brought the sword up while still in mid-air. When he hit the ground he recoiled, swinging it around from behind in an arc. The sword whistled with its speed. The man had turned as Meka hit the ground. Seeing Meka coming, he brought his own sword up defensively, with lightning speed.

Meka watched as if in a dream as his sword come around. Every ounce of his strength went into trying to make the sword go truer, go faster. Be deadlier. The magic raged with his need. Meka looked from the mans sword, hard into the steel blue eyes. Mekas sword followed the track of his eyes, he heard himself still screaming. The man held his sword straight up, to deflect the blow.

Everything else around the man dissolved in Mekas vision. His anger, the magic, was unleashed like never before. No power on earth could deny him the mans blood.

He finished his arc, the sword coming round at eye height to the side of the mans head. It shattered through the mans sword, and exploded through his chainmail hood, bits of molten twisted metal flying off into the undergrowth. The sword continued its journey, making contact with the mans skull, and continuing through, out the other side of his head.

Bits of bone blood and brain flew up into the air as the early morning air was filled with a cloud of red mist. Steaks of blood covered Meka, dripped down his body, dribbled off his sword as he slowly lowered the point to the ground.

The mans body crumpled slowly to the ground, blood pumping out over the ground, mixing with the puddles already there. Meka could feel the cold mist help cool his body.

“Meka!” Meka awoke, a sheen of sweat over his whole body. “Meka, my brother, are you alright?” asked Grix.
“It was that dream.”
“Again?” Meka nodded in reply.
“Come on, get up, we have to meet the others soon.”
“Who?”
“You know, the others from the village. Dan2K1, Venombyte and Ant.”
“What about er-no, and YH?”
“They said they had something to do. They will meet us later.” Grix helped his brother to sit up.
“Ok, give me a few minutes." Grix nodded and left the room. Meka put his head in his hands as he thought about the dream.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Master Meister?” FM looked around.
“Yes?”
“I have some bad news Lord, about Sniper.”
“He hasn’t dies again has he?”
“Yes Lord, he fell off his horse.”
“How did that kill him?”
“Into the moat.”
“He can swim.”
“Yes Lord, but as he tried to climb out, he must have pulled the lever, the one you ordered put in?”
“I vaguely remember.”
“That let the piranhas in.”
“Ah. I should have expected something like this. He has a whole bloody palace to have his accidents in. I put all that sponge about so he wouldn’t hurt himself, and yet he falls into the piranha moat. Amazing. Nevermind, he will be back by now. Tell him to continue with his task. Tell him to be more careful next time.”

Shocktrooper gazed into the world of this story and what he saw depressed him. The world was coming to an end. Nothing was interesting anymore and the only existing charachters were FM, Grix and Tarrent.

"Come on lads, do something exciting" Shocktrooper said to himself a bit louder than anticipated.


Grix, the charachter in the story, was looking around frantically and FM was doing exactly the same.

"Who the hell was that?" Said Grix with an anxious tone to his voice.
"Someone said something...but we're in the middle of nowhere! This is getting weirder by the minute" Said FM, his voice picking up a little thanks to the hint of something new happening.
"Hmm, something better happen soon, or i'm going to die of boredom" Grix replied.

They just kept on walking...

They'd forgotton one thing though.
Tarrant.
And Dave the sea-monkey.

FM had to pop back just this once to make sure that they were finished for good. Then he remembered Weird Wonder, where was he in all this?

He glanced again at the devastation caused by pb's flamethrower, and hoped that is was the sort that spewed out napalm and not a bouncer in a gay bar.

Weird Wonder and Tarrant and the sea-monkey were nowhere to be seen, so FM thought it safe to leave.

He parted the thread and closed the sentence with a

*click*

Grix whited up FM.

"Huh... where am I?"

Grix stepped back, he was wearing sunglasses.

"It's gone FM. The story. It's gone."

FM looked around... nothing, just wastelands... Pb was a quick worker. FM adjusted his clothes, and stood.

"So..." FM glanced around again. "What do we do now?"

They both looked around, trying to comprehend the utter bleakness of a story, burned to the ground... so it didn't work. So what? They would start again... writing some odd plot that made no sense, only for the entertainment of themselves... and what lay beyond that? People who had never won gameaday informing people how to win... others, who didn't want the games, trying to entertain themselves by writting reviews and topics. Not always gaming... but not always good. Hardly anyone replied, the lands and the seas, the bitter irony of a ruined civilisation...

"Grix, stop mumbling."

"Oh... sorry."

Strange thoughts entered his head... like coffee entering his mind, infiltrating his thoughts... who was the Fog? Was he? Was anyone? Thoughts of demons dreams of angels...

"GRIX! I won't ask again!"

"Yeah... sorry, getting carried away."

And so, FM and Grix left the story to rot... left, like unused houses... rot in hell story, we won't miss you a bit...

FM slapped Grix around the back of the head. Grix shook his head, and walked onwards.

FM ran like noone had ever run before. He likened it to the guy on the Pepsi advert who chased down the cheetah, but there was no cheetah in sight, and only Diet Coke would do FM.

But with every few yard he gained, a thread would pop up beside him, enticing him, almost pleading with him to add a few words, develop a plot.

He tried to brush aside the latest attempt by Grix to lure him into a debate about Ray Bradbury classics, to encourage him to debate a frightening vision of the future where firemen start fires to burn books, (but at this point a little bulb lit in his mind about how to dispose of the thread, then he remembered that arson wasn't legal, yet).

He remembered how Bradbury's vividly painted society held up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal, a place where trivial information was good, and knowledge and ideas were bad.

"Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

Bradbury's famous words sparled from synapse to synapse in FM's mind as he ran, he drew allegories and alliterations to the FOG as he raced along the road away from Tarrant and Dave the sea-monkey, intertwining Bradbury's gloomy philosophy with "How to win a GAD" posts. He saw metaphors for the gaming industry flash through his mind, how one day people might be burning Nintendo consoles instead of books. He panicked, he was getting caught up in the threads again, they were grabbing him as they ran, twirling around him, there was no escape....

He blacked out, and wondered if that could be construed as racist as he did so...

"Fahrenheit 451, you say."

Pb lit the end of his flame thrower with a cigarette...

"I think I can manage that."

FM pondered his loss, then realised that losing the threads of the story was what he had tried to do all along. But now he felt that strange tingling on the back of his neck, the sort you get when either:

a) you think someone is watching you with malevolent intentions.
b) you are standing in a wash bowl full of jelly and letting it squish between your toes when someone says "that's not jelly" or
c) someone who's recently snorted a sea monkey up his right nostril is homing in on you.

FM looked down at his feet, and ruled out b).

He didn't like the options he was left with, and was hoping to come up with a d) or even an e) when he heard footsteps, fast ones, getting louder and louder.

He turned and to his amazement saw Tarrant chasing up the road after him shouting "We can do it, FM! Join me! You know we can do it!"

For the second time today, FM sprinted off in a diametrically opposite direction to Tarrant, hoping to avoid getting drawn back into a tangled web of plot twists and U-turns spanning a couple of million years.

He ran like the wind.

(Full of gas and puffy).

Tarrant awoke with a start. Something felt wrong.
Perhaps he'd slept with both eyes closed without realising.

No, that wasn't it, it was something else.
Tarrants head hurt, he couldn't think straight. But why not? He'd felt fine when he went to sleep, something was different.
The back of Tarrant's head felt cold and uncomfortable, as if it were resting on a rock. Stange, thought Tarrant, why should it feel like that? Afterall...

Acknowledging FM's plot twist, Tarrant rushed to his feet. He turned back and looked down upon the cold bare rock.

The story was gone.

Tarrant took out his jar of sea-monkeys, he'd expected an attack through the night but not a theft. Clearly whoever was responsible was a wise man and if only Tarrant could track him down, he might be able to persuade him to join forces and save the story.

"Well it's now or never" Tarrant said to himself.

Removing a mid sized sea-monkey from the jar, Tarrant plugged his left nostril with his thumb and held the sea-monkey to his right nostril.

He snorted it straight up and into his brain, then sat back and waited for the affects to kick in.

The sea-monkey, who was called Dave incidentally, got straight to the task in hand. It began burrowing part way into Tarrant's brain. Upon reaching what he felt to be the ideal point, it stopped and rested, waiting with just as much anticipation as Tarrant.

Tarrant's eyes glowed with the new found power. Having formed a symbiotic relationship with the snorted sea-monkey, Tarrant could see so much more than the normal man.
There were other benefits too, which would surely come up later on after having retrieved the story.

"So FM! You have my story!" Tarrant smiled to himself. It was possible that FM would join forces with him.
Tarrant needed to get to FM quickly, he could see that FM had already let the story get attacked by 'Weird Wonder'.

FM definately had the skills to keep the story on track, but Tarrant wouldn't feel safe until it was back under his protection.

He set out at a new found speed to where he new FM would be. FM wasn't too far ahead he would be there before long...

He ran and he ran until he made it to America and suddenly a huge gust of wind known as a 'Tornado' in the USA took the pieces of paper right out of his hand!

He ran down to his knees with a expression of anguish on his face! He had ran half the world to have the cold wind of fate ruin his chance for.......

FM was impressed. The only people he knew that could sleep with one eye open were those husbands who had learnt the knack of going to sleep and letting their wives think that they were actually still listening.

But at 3:03am Tarrant stood no chance. FM, using his black-ops stealth suit, crept up silently behind him as he slept, grabbed the story, and sprinted off into the night.

After what seemed like hours of walking, Tarrant could feel fatigue setting in. It was dark and getting very late.

He was a few steps closer to Terry, but still had a long way to go.

He set the story down on a rock and then slumped next to it. If he was going to make it any further, it would not be tonight.

He rested his head upon the story upon the rock and tried to get some rest. His eyes instinctively opened at every little sound, but even the little sounds became less frequent.

He eventually became confident of the story making it through the night without to many attempts on its life.

Though with one eye still open, Tarrant at last drifted off to sleep.

It was going to be a hard day tomorrow.