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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.11 - Nightfall]

Date: Error

Location: Zephyro’s Domain?

//We are an old people. We still know what it means to fear the forest, and what hides in the dark.//

//I can’t see…//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

E1 %…Thanks, Pina…%

E2 %I’m not talking to you.%

With a quick look back to the gate, Kasha nodded at Zephyro’s remark. “If it were only a handful of Ferals, we might not even evacuate the city proper. I can take two or three of them on my own, no problem.”

“This attack, however, is different, Sultana,” Zephyro said. “The Ferals are appearing in numbers we have never seen before, and while we do not know why, we know they are driven to madness by their thirst for your Blessing.”

“Could these Ferals be different? Like the Shackled you mentioned earlier?”

Zephyro shook his head. “No, Sultana. The Shackled are bound to their human masters, and humans never come this far south, let alone up the mountains.”

“Bound how?” I asked.

“We do not quite know, Sultana, but we know that they crave your blessing even more than the Ferals.”

“They’re calling it the Logic,” Kasha added. “They often talk about nothing else, and want it so badly, they do everything the humans tell them to, just to get more of it.”

“They are blind to the truth. What these heretics crave will be their downfall, for while the Blessing may make them stronger or faster for a while, it also drives them insane, thimble by stolen thimble. Truly, this divine power is to be left to Allah and his prophets, such as you, Sultana,” Zephyro said.

Before he could get into another explanation, I asked “How do you know so much about the Ferals, and the Shackled?”

I’d meant to aim the question at Zephyro, but Kasha was the one who answered, eyes bright with wanderlust. “Oh, I have been out there, in the world. I have walked the Path as far north as I could, and seen so many wondrous things. Caves of steel and crystal, where your blessing coalesces, and new devices form naturally. Ferals fighting each other for Logic in vast displays of power. I have connected to the Domains of Shackled and witnessed their tragedies. I have watched Nomad Caravans and listened to the humans inside living their lives. I—“

She cut off, stealing a glance at Zephyro, who didn’t look amused in the slightest. He was just about to say something when the bells started tolling.

For a second, I thought my Wish had returned, but it was the watchtowers instead, sounding the alarm. Zephyro and Kasha spun toward the gate. He unsheathed his sword in a fluid motion, while she leveled her crossbow and peered through a little holographic visor that snapped up the second the weapon’s butt hit her shoulder.

Zephyro pointed at one of the streets leading away from the Plaza without looking away from the gate. “That way, Sultana. A carriage will await you on the next street. Take it, and it will bring you to the Palace.”

“Fuck that,” I said, the determined edge in my voice forcing the Vizier to look at me. “I’m not going to just leave you to fight on your own.”

“Sultana, the Ferals that are going to attack us now are most likely going to be fiercer than the one we fought earlier. With as much respect as is due, you will not be able to harm them,”

I mustered a smile and looked around the market square one last time, doing a proper count of the defenders standing at the ready. All of them had their eyes trained on the gate, which was their first mistake. They were too rigid, too, despite their obvious determination to defend their home. Last but not least of the issues I could spot with a quick scan was that the scouts, with their crossbows, often stood protectively in front of groups of civilians armed with all sorts of makeshift weaponry. There were hammers, sickles, pitchforks, the usual weaponry that a militia had to work with. Clearly, these people weren’t used to fighting in groups, which made sense, but could lead to disaster.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I don’t have to hit the enemy in order to help, Zephyro,” I said with confidence that didn’t feel all that unearned. Sure, it was hard for me to sit back and wait while my friends fought my battles for me, and yes, I often joined them in the thick of it, wading through entire armies in my power armor, despite their protests. I didn’t have power armor in here, though, which made it a lot easier to stay back and—

> “…command the troops, Sam. I don’t get why you—“

> I stand in the command tent, slamming my hands on the table and scattering the troop markers. All of my friends are there, talking hypotheticals over some wine. Can’t trust the Mage Lords to keep the peace, until it is signed. Olre left a bit early, saying he was tired, but his job was clear anyway. The only other person missing is Chris, of course.

> “No, Stax. Fuck that. I won’t just sit back and wait for the damage reports to come in like a fretting housewife.”

> Stax rolls his eyes, a brief flash of improvisation before they fall back into the rhythm of their analytical dance.

> “You are the General, Sam, and you are good at it. No, fuck it, you are one of the best generals I have ever seen. There is no better place for you than in here, giving orders.”

> “I am also our most powerful soldier. You know I can win the entire battle alone if it comes to it.”

> Lorelye sighs. She’s slouched on her chair, feet over one armrest, head over the other.

> “Oh by the Might of Magic, Samantha! There is no such thing as winning a war by yourself. You can’t be everywhere at once.”

> I focus on the Wish brimming inside of me. It’s so much, my fingertips are itching, so I snap them on my exhale. My armor’s helmet shifts, rearranges itself.

> “Sam, you were supposed to save that,” Jirrie says, both exasperated and worried.

> “It will be back by tomorrow,” I say. They all stare at me, pleading, but deep within me, there is a flash of anger, like a brushfire never properly extinguished and fanned by impeding uncertainty.

> “I won’t let you fight alone!” I blurt out, my anger crashing into the worried pause.

> I barely ever do that anymore these days; yelling, so it catches everyone by surprise, including myself.

> Silence reigns, and only the crackle of the brazier dares to interrupt it. It really should be an electric oven by now, but I haven’t gotten around to advancing it yet.

> There is so much to do. So much to see. So much to live for.

> “I can’t let you go out there, unprotected,” I whisper, and the words scream through the silence, melting the ice.

> “If anything happens to you, any of you… I wouldn’t know what—”

I grimaced as the frantic tolling of the alarum bells pulled me back into the here and now, and the memory receded.

Before Zephyro could say anything, I shook my head, forestalling his concern. “I’ll be fine. But you won’t be without a better strategy.”

“What do you mean?” Kasha said, finally looking away from the gate as well.

“Neither of you are tacticians,” I said. “You’re going to lose most of your people if even a handful of these rats show up.

“But Sultana,” Zephyro begins, but I held up my finger, shutting him up. “You will let me do my part, Zephyro. That’s an order.”

“As you command, Sultana,” Zephyro said, and his frown told me two things. One, he would do as I said, and two, he didn’t like it at all.

Kasha was more outspoken. “I think you’re being dumb, Sam. You don’t know how this place works, and what we can do. We’ll be just fine.”

“You won’t,” I said again, and because I was tired of arguing, I made my point. “You said it was just going to be a wave of Ferals right?” Both of them nodded, hesitantly. “But how can you be so sure? Everything suggests this is a coordinated attack. Tell me, how many Guardtowers did you have in the outskirts?”

Zephyro caught on first. “Over a hundred, Sultana…”

“And how many of them are still standing?”

“Perhaps 70,” he said, his voice becoming more grim by the second.

“Where have you lost the most?”

“Around this gate.”

“So that’s 30 gone almost at the same time, in an organized pattern. Could a handful of Ferals have managed that?”

Zephyro only shook his head.

Kasha looked at the Vizier, eyes wide, smile gone. “What do we do?”

“The good news is that we don’t have to defend the entire breadth of the wall, just this place. The bad news is that we have no idea what’s coming.”

“It does not matter. We will kill any hellspawn, heathen, and heretic that tries to come through this gate,” the Vizier said. “Then we sweep the city for stragglers.”

I nodded but pursed my lips. Now came the hardest part of taking command. The first correction.

“First, you want your ranged infantry to fall back behind the militia,” I said. “I get that you want to protect the civilians, but your scouts are the best troops you have, and they need to be protected.”

Zephyro seemed to want to object, but Kasha touched him by the arm and said, “It will be done, Sultana.”

With that, she hurried off to relay my orders. Idly, I wondered how that would look like if all of these wild stories about machines were true, and this wasn’t just a Dream Maze built for a queen. Perhaps she would be relaying data or something. Perhaps time in here flowed way slower than the outside. It was irrelevant, though, even if this hadn’t been one giant hallucination. I had to take what I saw for granted and work with what I got.

“Second, you want to have your people stop staring at the damn gate and focus on the top of the walls instead,” I said to Zephyro. It was bizarre, standing in front of a grown man in full modern combat attire underneath ornate robes of office, but having to explain things that were obvious to anyone who ever engaged in group combat. Zephyro wasn’t a slouch, that much was clear. He probably also knew a ton of things I would never even start to learn. But in this specific field, I was his senior.

Luckily, he was a quick student.

He didn’t ask why, didn’t frown or ponder, he immediately gave the order as though he’d understood perfectly, down to the last nuance. If he really had been some super-AI, he would probably be able to learn much faster than any human, but this had to be Dream Logic working in my favor, for once, and not a second too late.

A split second before the first bang rattled the gate, several animals crawled over the rim of the wall.