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KINGPIN

Elric to sheath Stormbringer and stop the fight, but Elric, possessed by rage, presses on, striking Yyrkoon with a mortal blow. With his last breath, Yyrkoon exacts a heartbreaking revenge, pushing Cymoril onto the tip of Stormbringer.

Then the dark truth dawned on his clearing brain and he moaned in grief, like an animal. He had slain the girl he loved. The runesword fell from his grasp, stained by Cymoril's lifeblood, and clattered unheeded down the stairs. Sobbing now, Elric dropped beside the dead girl and lifted her in his arms.

"Cymoril," he moaned, his whole body throbbing. "Cymoril—I have slain you."

When she first met Max, Amy thought he was cool, rebellious, and kind of punky—different from the usual Boise crowd. But as they spent every free moment together, she began to see a darker, obsessive side to his personality, particularly after he introduced her to the Internet and TinyMUD.

At first Max was thrilled that his girlfriend shared his passion for the online world. But as Amy started making friends of her own in the MUD, including guys, he became jealous and combative. To Max it made no difference if Amy was cheating on him in the virtual world or the real one: It was cheating either way. He tried to get her to stop logging on, but she refused, and the couple began arguing online and off.

Eventually, Amy'd had enough; they were arguing about a stupid computer game? On a Wednesday night in early October 1990, the couple were in another user's room in TinyMUD when Cymoril finally told Lord Max that she wasn't sure they really belonged together after all.

It was Max's first serious relationship, and his reaction was powerful. They had sworn to spend their lives united. Now they should both die, rather than be parted, he wrote in the MUD. Then he got explicit, telling her how he'd kill her. Other users watched with growing concern as his raging took on the tone of a serious threat. What should they do?