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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.23 - Ozymandias]

Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC

Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain

//I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”//

//It’s all gone, Sam. The farms, the houses, the parks, the schools… The entire city. All we have built together. Everything. Just… gone.//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

E1 %Alright, the Torchbearer… Well. Nobody knows where she came from. Some say she was born as a farmer’s daughter, others say she just appeared one day. But they all agree the first time people noticed her was when she started helping people in the old city of Wexler, not far from here.%

E2 %They say she appeared during a disaster that killed an entire village. There was a sudden surge of Monsters, and as the beasts crawled forth from the Hellmouth, she emerged with them. In her hand, she carried the torch that summoned them and-%

E1 %…Sure. Anyway, as she started helping the people of Wexler with the help of her friend Chrissiin, she made a name for herself as a powerful warrior, but that wasn’t all that was to her.%

E2 %What do you mean, help? She terrorized the countryside of that kingdom for months, destroying houses and leaving behind mutated corpses wherever she went. She lied to the people with the help of her demonic familiar, which could take the shape of any man or woman it wanted.%

“No, no,” I mumbled, my detached numbness turning to wide-eyed desperation. “That can’t be right.”

“Sultana…” Zephyro began, but I didn’t let him finish his sentence.

“No! No! This is just a mistake,” I stammered. “I still have so much to do tomorrow…”

“Sultana,” Zephyro tried again, but I couldn’t let him finish that sentence.

“They are still out there…” I pleaded. “They’re still alive!”

“Sultana,” Zephyro began again, so softly this time.

“No…” I begged.

“The Apostles sacrificed themselves for you.” Zephyro said, and his look, so compassionate, murdered my hope with its kindness.

I tried to mourn it, but I didn’t have any tears left.

For a while, nothing happened but fire raging, ash falling, and screams rising, then cutting off.

“I just wanted this all to be a dream,” I whispered eventually.

No sense in hiding it.

I wasn’t afraid that the Dream Maze would collapse anymore.

Because I wasn’t in a Dream Maze at all.

“I know, Sultana,” Zephyro said, and then, with the care usually reserved for injured birds, he opened his palm.

A projection flickered to life, showing a dark room with no windows. This wasn’t a video, just a static image, and even though it wasn’t anywhere near high resolution, the quality was good enough to make out several details. Rows of server racks stood in the background, its LEDs still blinking despite their obvious age. There were many tables, too, as well as chairs and dozens of old monitors. It looked like the room had been abandoned in a hurry, hundreds of years ago, and a very thin layer of dust had settled over everything. Everything but a laptop, still opened, sitting on a little trolley right next to something that looked like a mixture of a dentist’s chair and an operating table. It was all steel, no cushioning, but the metal had clearly been shaped to allow for some comfort. That would have been necessary, because the chair had hundreds of cables sticking out of it, most connected to some sort of helmet, and what looked to be a large needle sticking out of the backrest.

All the cables led toward the laptop.

The perspective was different, but I knew this place, of course. It took me a second to understand the image had been taken by the security camera above the entrance.

“This is where you worked the miracle, Sultana,” Zephyro said, when all I did was stare. “It is difficult to look at this site in the Real, because the Old Guard protect it jealously. We had to trade a lot of materials for these recordings, and the one I am going to show you next.”

“But it’s empty…” I replied tonelessly. In a weird, detached way, I was glad. I had been expecting two sets of bones, perhaps still holding hands.

“Indeed. we do not know how or when, Sultana, but your body went missing. It must have happened a long time ago, before I first awoke.”

“You lied to me.” It was a statement. “You said my resting place hadn’t been disturbed.”

“I have, Sultana.”

“Why?”

“Because you are the Torchbearer, Sultana, and you were confused, and I was afraid and weak.”

Zephyro waited another second, then he flicked his wrist and the image changed. This time, the quality was atrocious. I could barely make out a couple of blurry figures moving what looked to be a metal coffin of some sorts. There were some glowy bits attached to it, but I couldn’t even tell if it was technology or magic.

“They took it, didn’t they?”

“Your Body? Yes, it seems so, Sultana.”

“No, I mean my Torch,” I said.

Zephyro didn’t reply.

Then it hit me that I cared more about that thing than my own body. It was almost funny.

“But… If my body is gone, how am I here?”

Zephyro flexed his fingers once more, and the image changed back to the first. It flickered once, twice, and then the entire room was filled with endless swirls of cyan motes. They circled each other and formed pattern after pattern, like faraway constellations somehow plucked from the heavens.

And like a sleeping child surrounded by its dreams, the laptop sat in its center, its screen pitch black, yet pristine against the dusty backdrop of the lab.

I stared at it.

“You’re telling me I am that laptop?”

Zephyro hesitated for a second, but then he shook his head. “No, Sultana. You are not the hardware. It is merely a vessel that holds your mind. Whoever took your body must not have known that your spirit is hidden within the case, or not cared.”

My stare shifted from the image of that cosmic machine to the Vizier.

“You can’t expect me to believe that,” I said. It should have sounded hot and angry, but all I could muster was some morbid curiosity. “I mean, just looking at that thing makes me feel like there’s something wrong with my eyes—“

> The static hum of technology surrounds me, a buzzing whir of myriad fans. The rustle of cloth as Chris works next to me, adjusting tech that I will never understand, even though I am the one who makes it happen. Then again, I've made the entire world "happen", and I still don't understand a fraction of it.

> “How are you feeling?” Chris asks.

> “Fine, I think,” I reply, “but there’s something wrong with my eyes. It’s like my vision itself is alright, but I can’t remember what I am seeing while I’m seeing it?”

> “Oh shit…” Chris curses.

[>>Prompt?]

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

I didn’t finish the sentence, panting.

Another memory that should never have come to pass. I wanted to keep telling myself it was a lie, just a planted illusion to make me doubt, but as the evidence started to pile on, the foundations of my chosen truth started to crumble.

The ground shook as a few streets behind us, a building collapsed.

Chris did come back, in the end. I didn’t know how I knew, but that was a truth as deep as a midnight forest. I also remembered the bunker. I remembered anger and pain, so much of it, dragging me into its hot embrace as it pushed me far beyond the limits I set for myself.

But if those memories were true, so were the others.

Holy shit.

They were real.

It was all real!

I started laughing and didn’t stop.

Not when Zephyro recoiled.

Not when I remembered the boy dying, over and over.

Not even when the hurt settled into my flesh and mind and I started sobbing.

I must have looked absolutely insane, crying from shock, disgust, horror, and grief, and laughing at the same time. I felt insane. Something inside me had broken like a dam, and I loved the thunderous roar of temporary madness rushing out of that tear in my soul.

I loved it so much more than the realities it concealed inside its disordered depths.

The threat of all my lies collapsing were burying me under their inevitable weight, and at the same time, Zephyro and his people expected me to… to what? Save them? How? I wasn’t ready for that. I couldn’t save anyone. Not even myself, and I was as far as anyone could be from ready to rule. How could they not see that? How could they add even more impossible tasks onto the pile crushing me.

How could they?

The mere thought of carrying that burden, of facing the possibility of failing yet another person—let alone an entire nation, or the world—ground my sense of self to dust.

The torrent washed through my core, blasted my crutch, that feeble persona of leadership, to nothing, and left nothing but the weak, powerless woman I had always been, pretending to be good at what she did until people fell for it and followed her, just so that she wasn’t alone.

The madness was bizarre. It was cruelty. It was relief. Its current tore at my insides. It drowned me in lunacy. It made Zephyro pull away from me as it flowed down my smiling cheeks. I stared into its abyssal depths, and what I saw scared me. Scared me about disappointing even more people, of being alone forever and ever.

And above and over all those thoughts, my Wish tolled, eternal and uncaring, just like on that first day on the clearing. Again monsters were ready to devour me whole. Again I was defenseless, with pure divine power ringing uselessly in my soul.

No. That wasn’t true. I wasn’t defenseless. I knew I wasn’t. I knew I’d done things others only dreamed of. I knew I’d done things others would never do in their deepest nightmares. And yet, the fear held me down, tore at those beliefs, wanted to leave me a helpless, sobbing, mess.

It made me so fucking angry.

Zephyro leaned forward.

“WHAT?” I yelled, pushing off the wall and taking a step toward Zephyro in challenge. He didn’t deserve it. He only wanted to help. I knew that. But I also knew endless fear, and danger was closing in from all sides.

He took another step back, a hand on his sword. “Sultana…” his voice had an uncertain tremble in it, but no malice. It took the wind out of my sails immediately. I’d done it again. I pushed those who loved me away.

My arms dropped to my side and I slumped against the wall, sliding down to the floor.

We had to keep moving. I knew that. But I couldn’t move a single muscle. The shame was just too strong. All I wanted was to curl up and die as painlessly as possible, just to make the shame stop.

That was why I liked anger. Anger kept me going. Anger didn’t make me collapse in a dusty alleyway while rampaging mutant-wolf machines were out to kill me. Anger didn’t let me sit around, trapped in loops built of my own failure while just a few streets away, children were getting blasted to pieces.

To my surprise, Zephyro sat next to me.

He didn’t say anything, as lost in thought as I.

Silence stretched between us, measured in screams and explosions and plastic-ripping roars.

We could have sat there for ages, probably. We needed to keep going, something inside my heart told me. This couldn’t be the end. I had promises to keep. But I couldn’t stand, no matter how much I tried to muster the courage to get up and take another step.

“I understand, Sultana,” Zephyro said.

I scoffed. “No you fucking don’t.”

Zephyro turned to look at me, and I searched his face for evidence that I had lost, him, too. But If I’d angered him, he didn’t let it show. There was nothing in his eyes but stoic calm.

“I understand your desire to deny the truth, Sultana. In all honesty, I wish I could do the same.” He leaned his head against the wall and stared into the dark skies above. The stars kept winking out, one after the other. “But doing so would mean I would close myself off from the world, and fail those who yet depend on me.”

“At least you got people still. Must be nice,” I said.

God, I sounded like a petulant bitch.

“Sorry,” I said, shame burning in my sinuses for a brief moment before it receded back into the same dull ache that was everything.

Above us, tendrils of black grabbed the clouds, one after the other, as the void gorged itself on the sky.

“Zephyro—” I began, cleared my throat, and tried again. “I’m… I…. That kid…The Essence…”

The boy’s eyes flashed in my mind again, begging me to save him just a split second before he exploded. Just before his essence soaked into my skin.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Instead of answering, the Vizier opened his palm and the screen zipped into the air again, now showing an aerial view of the city. It was hard to make out any details, but it was clear the fire was hard at work devouring the once-beautiful metropolis.

The similarities to the last weeks of Novus Apex were uncanny. It hurt to see and to be reminded, but I couldn’t avert my eyes.

Back on earth, I never watched Breaking Bad. I simply didn’t have the time. But at some after-work at one startup or another, my colleagues got a little tipsy and began discussing the series at length. They all agreed that hands down, the best episode was the one that quoted some really old poem as the protagonist lost everything. That night, one of my favorite nerds had recited the entire thing. Went into full dramatic intonation. It had been ridiculous at first, in a cute way, but I hadn’t been able to get the words out of my head ever since.

> ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair…’

That damn poem kept popping up whenever I got hired to save one ailing enterprise or another. I nearly forgot it on Tobes, until I was reminded of it far too often.

Zephyro took a while to answer my apology, studying his burning kingdom as if the blazing streets wrote out a story only he could understand. Rationally, I now understood he was just an AI, but I had long since started to think of him as a real person, a ruler of real people. I didn’t know if they had souls, but I also didn’t know if humans had souls. If the people living in this city really sprang from my Wish, which was pure, nigh-uncontrollable divine energy, it would have been beyond stupid to deny them their humanity. They grew, they lived, they died. Who was I to question their nature?

The view zoomed in, but it was too blurry to see anything but vague shapes and hectic movements. The only thing that was obvious was that there were far too many people in the city still, hounded by far too many dark shapes. Zephyro grimaced as something in his projection flashed a violent red, but he immediately zoomed out and searched for another group of what I thought could be survivors. Trapped in the formal feeling that follows a great and sudden pain, I didn’t quite understand why he was torturing himself like that. It wasn’t like he could help. They were all dead. He was going to lose it all. His entire kingdom was turning to ash, his entire purpose in life was doomed, and yet, he didn’t give in to despair, kept looking, searching, hoping.

I wished I could be a little more like him, even if I knew hope was sugared poison.

“I think I know how you feel, if that helps,” I heard myself say. I believed it, to my surprise. I wasn’t really feeling anything at all, but I still knew what feeling was like. That was odd.

“I’m sorry for what happened,” I said again, craving absolution.

“I told you before, Sultana. To take more of Your Blessing than is allotted is a grave sin.” He chuckled, and I recognized that faint tint of madness staining his mirth. Like sour milk in coffee.

“What you just did… By our laws, if you were one of us, one of my citizens, I should strike you down and scatter your Essence into the wind. It would not matter that your taking Kareem-13’s Essence was an accident. To allow you to stay alive would be too dangerous, for the madness could already have taken hold in your mind, even if your body seems hale. But,” he sighed, “…you aren’t one of us. You are the Sultana, and so…”

Then, despite the screen flickering with firelit violence, and screams echoing through the maze of burning streets, he smiled. It was warm and soft and merciful and I didn't deserve it at all.

“…And so the matter is much different. Think of it as such, Sultana. All Essence comes from You, and so it shall return to You. By taking his Essence, you took Kareem-13 back to what we see as the very origin of our lives.” There was another small chuckle that could have been a sob if it hadn’t been for his resigned smile. “You giveth and you taketh, Sultana. And glory be to You.”

He shook his head, eyes half-closed in frustration as part of his joy bled away. “And yet, I wish you wouldn’t do it again.”

I didn’t even have to think about it. Not that I could.

Thinking was dangerous.

It could lead to hope.

“I won’t. Promise.”

Zephyro’s smile returned, even if it was still tinged by that sad and forlorn note.

“I can see your struggle, Sultana.”

This time, I didn’t respond.

Zephyro paused for a moment, searching for something in my expression. Whatever he found, it made his smile widen just a fraction.

“By this promise you just gifted me, oh Sultana, I know my hopes in you are well founded. And since you offered me an apology not once, but twice—which I gladly accept, as all reverence and forgiveness is due to you, Sultana—I must offer you a thousand of my own. Since you awoke, I have treated you like a stranger, Sultana, and perhaps even a dangerous one. By doing so, I have failed you in my main duty, which is to ensure your protection. As I said, apart from its very center, it was the hands of my people that built this city, designed by its brightest minds and embellished by its most spirited souls. And even if we built it for ourselves, in our hearts we still know our purpose, which is to protect you from harm until the day you claim your divine right and lead us into the future.

“You are the Sultana. You are Samantha, the one the records call the Torchbearer. Your symbol adorns all the walls of my domain in the Real. You are the one who breathed life into all of us, and the one who built the Palace, most holiest of places. And that is just as much as we perceived with our own eyes. I have read the records, Sultana. All of them, and they all agree: Your might is beyond ken in the Real, and if my suspicions prove true, your might in this Domain will be just as great. Perhaps even greater. The thought of the miracles you will work for my people once you claim your throne fills my heart with hope and sets it brimming with vigor.

“I promise you, in turn, that I will do everything in my power to ensure this bright future has a chance to come to pass.”

No pressure, really.

I let my head fall against the wall behind me with a thunk. Seconds passed, measured in screams and the rumbling of falling towers.

“How do you do it?” I finally replied. “The relentless optimism?”

“I told you, Sultana. To despair means to let go, so that your mind may find solace in its depths, and emerge, in time, reborn from its inky waters. I do not have this luxury, for there are people who depend on me. As do you, even if you don’t know it yet. Still, I believe I can understand the torment haunting your spirit, and yet I understand that you are not me. Take your time, Sultana. I will keep you safe.”

I took a deep, shaky breath, steadied myself, and pushed myself to my feet. The stone behind my back felt rough, but warm and stable.

I dusted off my hands, then extended them to Zephyro. “Let’s keep going then,” I said, my voice carefully void of emotion.

He looked up at me, then his hands grabbed mine. The leather on the inside of his gauntlets was soft, but his grip was tight. “As you command, Sultana.”

I leaned back, pulling him up.