From atop his mighty steed, Rheo the Chosen looked out boldly over the shattered hellscape of the Tortured Wastes. A lesser man would have looked beaten and bruised, or at least a little worn down by the travels thus far. Rheo had already passed through the heart of the Frozen Forest, emptied the Magma Mummy's lair, and defeated the Mad Dwarf King in grizzly one-on-one combat. And yet, aside from a hint of sweat and grime, Rheo looked well-rested and ready for action. His final destination was finally in sight. Across the blackened valley the tower of the evil wizard Bizzaro stabbed the blood red sky. Soon, Bizzaro's madness would come to an end: no more experiments on innocent peoples, no more black magicks, no more demonic hordes. Rheo knew in his heart that just a few short days from now he would strike down Bizzaro and bring ever-lasting peace to the land. This much had been prophesied at his birth. The universe had selected him to wield the righteous Blade of Hippathia and wear the Cowl of Geldon and he alone could right the wrong-doings of Bizzaro's twisted soul.

"The worst part," muttered Bizzaro, looking into his magic mirror at Rheo's steely gaze, "is that he doesn't even wonder how it all works." His whispers echoed down the empty, twisted halls of his lair, somehow amplified and simultaneously muddled by the demonic architecture. "For heaven's sake! He had an 18 inch gash in his side last night and when he woke up this morning he didn't even have a scar to show for it!" With an angry wave of his hand he dismissed the image from the golden frame. He allowed himself a nervous glance upwards before he quickly shuffled back to his study. Frankly, he couldn't stand the high arches or shadowy emptiness of this part of the tower, but the Mirror had proven impossible to move, and too valuable a tool to ignore. "Doesn't he have any sense of curiosity? How can someone really take all this malarky at face value?" He shouted aloud in the cavernous room and slammed the door shut behind him, then pulled a chair close to the dim fire smoldering in the hearth. Stoking the coals he opened his mouth again, but then quickly clamped it shut. With a frustrated groan, he whirled over to a small desk and ripped open a leather-bound journal. 'Do Not Mutter Thoughts Out Loud' he added to the end of the page. He scanned his eyes up the list: 'Do Not Execute Loyal Minions for Mistakes Outside of Their Control', 'Do Not Try to Bargain With Beings of Pure Evil', 'ABSOLUTELY NO CACKLING'. He could recite the journal in his sleep, and he could not help but recognize the increasingly disturbing trend in his entries. The earliest pages were crisp and clean, with calm, careful notes regarding the world around him. These days, most of it was filled with Rules he set for himself, each staving off signs of madness -- he feared that he was losing his hold on reality.

"Reality!" he snorted, before once more clamping his mouth shut with a groan. As if you could call this impossible mess reality. After the first hero killed him he knew something was terribly wrong, by the third hero he had started to form a theory, and by now he was simply resigned to his fate: he was being toyed with. The gods were dooming him to relive this horrible scenario again and again, with countless variations. Soon that chiseled meathead would break his door down and murder him in cold blood. The pain would be incredible, but hopefully brief, and then he would wake up in some other hellish tower, or lair, or dark fortress, with some other ridiculous name and a heinous history longer than his arm. Worst of all, some new "Chosen One" would be on yet another epic quest to destroy him. He thought he could handle it, but the constant dread had started to wear him thin. Habits became quirks, then tics. He had tried everything to stop the cycle, but each time nothing helped. His attempts to reason with his slayer were labelled as treachery and deceit, fleeing only delayed the inevitable, he even once tried to change his role and perform good deeds instead, but they had been met with distrust and hostility. Experimentation had revealed that even the fates themselves were against him, as his best plans would always fail, no matter how his plans stacked the odds in his favor. How do you keep the will to live when you know there’s no use? What’s the point in trying when the universe itself has Chosen someone? This time would be different. This time he would do nothing at all. He would sit, churning his angry thoughts against the cruel torturer who had trapped him in this fate, while that idiot rode closer and closer until finally striking him down. Perhaps doing nothing would make his captors look elsewhere for entertainment.

Warren took a sip of his steaming coffee as he frowned at the screen in front of him. The Villain Algorithm had hit a static state; the last few runs it had done nothing of note during The Build-Up, and during the previous run it hadn't even put up much of a fight for The Final Battle Phase. The current run might not be a total loss; maybe he could spin it into a decent short story about depression and madness, but that would only work once. Next time he could roll the VA back a few generations and load it up from a previous saved state. Although he'd have to be careful to tweak the starting parameters or else he'd just end up writing the same story again. Warren sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He hadn't just come up with the idea of using simple artificial intelligences to generate entertainment; he had also refined and perfected it. The resulting works had made him a moderate success, but the nature of the process also made his publishers think that he could just crank out works as fast as his computer could handle them. They didn't realize that the VA needed to mature. Only after a few runs did it really start to make new, exciting plans that drove the story to interesting places. There had even been a few times when Warren had had to cheat and manually disable the VA's plans, in spite of the ridiculous strength, stamina, and magic powers he usually gave the Hero Algorithm. On a whim, Warren pulled up the HA's code and skimmed the starting variables -- maybe changing something here would help. A few minutes later though he closed the unchanged document in a huff. People these days seemed to demand that the Hero always defeat the Villain, and as a result the Hero's part on the plot structure had so little influence that wasting a whole run experimenting with alterations wouldn't even be worth the computation time. Altering the Villain would have to do. Grinning to himself, Warren pulled up the VA code as the current simulation churned on in the background. "OK buddy," he murmured, "what can we put you through this time..."