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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.41.16.0 - XVI -The Tower (Upright)]
Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC
Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain
[//draw the deck of marsailles]
[>>The tower yet stands but it will not for long.]
[//Initiate the falling sequence]
[>>What was true now is not and]
[//Dial the lightning frequency]
[>>Sudden upheaval follows, presupposes and necessitates sudden freedom]
[//imagine yod.jpg —fire —ball_lighting]
//After great pain, a formal feeling comes—//
//… is associated with sudden, disruptive revelation, and potentially destructive change… //
[//witness]
//16. THE TOWER.-- Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. It is a card in particular of unforeseen catastrophe.//
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
E1 %She just wanted a place to be safe!%
E2 %She had a ship, she could go anywhere, but she stayed close. No, she just wanted to lure in hapless boats to plunder them!%
E1 %She had a ship. If she wanted plunder, she could just have done that.”
E2 %You just want to distract from what she did after she came back!%
E3 %Why, what happened?%
I couldn’t save my friends anymore, and yet I kept walking.
I wanted to be safe.
I wanted to reach the Palace.
I couldn’t ask why.
In the aftermath of my losing control, this thought alone drove me forward. And Zephyro took his place at my side as I hurried down the avenue. Instead of berating me for literally drawing a giant pillar into the sky and telling our enemies where we were, he kept quiet. Perhaps he didn’t know what to say or didn’t trust himself not to yell at me after I had lost control. Perhaps he was afraid of me. I couldn’t say and didn’t dare to ask.
Our road ran straight up to the fortress, mere kilometers away and clear in sight, and yet I was lost.
It was as though the world around me was crumbling in more than one sense of the word. Of course, it was still glitching sporadically, even though the errors had become rarer the closer we got to the center of Zephyro’s Domain. But more than that, I felt my grip slipping. I’d let my anger suffuse me for so long. Had let it grow deep roots and dark branches, and as I grew with it, I’d shaped myself around it. Not relying on the anger to keep me going was like ripping out the walls and pillars that carried what was left of my confidence.
I was tired. Not just of running, but of always having to run. My hand still ached, but my sore muscles were worse. Still, I didn’t even dare to think about the bone-deep weariness that threatened to settle over my rage. That was how ends began.
Golden highlights on marble fronts became the norm the closer we got to the palace. At first, I studied them, tried to make sense of their pictorials, but they all blurred together after some point. Our rapid steps echoed on seamless asphalt, and shadowy alleys watched our progress.
Occasionally, we would find a straggling citizen, and Zephyro would stop to pull them up and tell them to use the side streets, while we would stick to the main road to lure the enemy away. If there had been any Ferals lying in ambush, they would have been drawn out by my display, but we hadn’t encountered any monsters ever since we’d beaten back the wolf.
To distract myself, I tried to balance my speed with my rising core temperature and wondered where all the Ferals we had anticipated were. With our frequent stops, shouldn’t they have overtaken us, or at least caught up already? Only when from behind us, I heard a lone, anguished scream swell and die with sudden finality did I realize what could have taken them so long.
I walked faster.
Out of breath and with sweat dripping even from Zephyro’s brow, we finally arrived at the palace square. Even if the foot of the spire had looked fragile from afar, up close it was downright massive. Steel beams as broad as my shoulders held panes of clear glass as thick as my hand, arching over the boulevard wide enough to let three SUVs drive through it side by side.
Behind it was a large parade square, surrounded by lavish houses on both sides. Most of them had shops on their lowest floor, but all of them were barred shut. The entire plaza was full of people trying to get entrance to to palace, but the moment I truly beheld the building, I was sure they’d fit easily.
From afar, the white-and-golden building had looked like a gigantic, square fortress with lavish ornaments, but now that I actually saw it up close, all my assumptions were set straight. It wasn’t just gigantic, it was gargantuan. Its walls were constructed of bricks higher than Zephyro was tall. On either side of the gate, the walls reached into the distance, going on for at least a kilometer before ending in circular towers.
The gates themselves were easily 20 meters tall and 10 meters wide. Covered in highly detailed iconography, they formed an imposing sight of metal and gold, artistically arranged around a beautiful relief of a Torch that dominated their center. The emblem’s artwork was incredibly intricate, enough to show each individual grain of the handle’s wooden grip. The artists had even set massive braziers into the surface, to make it seem like the Torch was burning, shedding its blue-and-golden light over the plaza, and holding the growing night at bay.
The large crowd was bunched up in front of the gates, trying to press through a smaller portal on the side of the main doors. The smaller doors were open wide, but still only fit one or two people at a time. Zephyro and I slowed down as we passed underneath the Spire’s arch and entered the crowd. The Vizier immediately began to coral his subjects, but I was taken aback by the details of the square instead.
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The floor looked like a sparkling carpet. Millions of perfectly cut cobblestones and precious gems were set into a mosaic of what I thought was a Torch radiating light. It reminded me of the one I’d destroyed under the first arch we passed, but this one was far, far bigger. In fact, it was large enough to be almost legible, even though thousands of people crowded its surface. This sort of ostentatious display of wealth wouldn’t even be possible in the real world. The cost of the gems alone… I had never seen so much onyx, opal, and rubies in my life. The handle of the Torch entirely made of precious stones, and stretched all the way down to the arch of the spire at the entrance of the plaza.
I turned around and marveled at its beauty. As I’d seen before, the glass was clear at the bottom but bloomed into beautiful reds and blues the further up it went. If the sun had been shining, it would have cast a wonderful light on the square. Instead, its elegant curves lay blind, and the view through its arching base enshrined a city burning to cinders underneath the perfect dark.
The outer walls had long since vanished into the black, and by now the void covered more than half of the city. I looked up, and sure enough, only a tiny circle of stars remained right above us, winking out one by one. But as I watched the stars die and the fires close in, I caught movement on a nearby rooftop, slightly different from the twitching of the fire.
My head snapped up, but all I caught was a long, furry snout withdrawing. Could have either been a rat, or a wolf, but one thing was clear—
“We got incoming,” I yelled over my shoulder.
Zephyro cursed. He barked a few quick orders I did not understand, and seconds later, I felt his presence to my right. His chainmail chimed as his sword sang out of his scabbard, a minuet promising violence.
“Where?” he asked even as he raised his sword as though in a dance. The curved blade shone red, reflecting the surrounding void-framed conflagration. It drew a slow arc across the sky and its infernal sheen intensified, then burst upward from the steel. The energy flickered in the air, now silver, now red. Then, high above the center of the square, a giant moon converged out of silver mist. It was an almost perfect orb, pulsing gentle, silver defiance against the void. I felt as if I raised my hand, I could simply reach out and touch it, but that was just a trick of the eye, belying its size.
As I gazed upward, awestruck, a tiny sliver of red appeared on the far side of the moon, claiming its surface inch by almost imperceptible inch.
{NEW CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE AVAILABLE: ZEPHYRO_MAINFRAME}
Beeeeeep!
[$ sws autoscaling create-auto-scaling-group X://ZEPHYRO_MAINFRAME]
[>>Now load-balancing with ZEPHYRO_MAINFRAME]
Bathed in this moonlight, breathing felt just a little easier. The heat surrounding us relented. The stench of burning plastic waned. And when I pulled my Torch from my belt, it seemed lighter than before. I flicked its blue flame to life, and it shone brighter ever so slightly.
“Holy shit, Zephyro, why didn’t you do that earl—Zephyro?”
He stumbled forward, and before I knew it, I stood in front of him, propping him up with my back as I held my Torch in front of me, ready for an attack. His form stuttered. I could feel it against my shoulders and heard the discordant screeching of one of his glitches. Then it passed, and with a grunt, he straightened again and gently pushed past me. His hand flickered. He clenched it into a fist and the glitch was gone.
“Zephyro?” I asked again, but he just shook his head, staring ahead. His face bathed in writhing shadow, avoiding my eyes. I leaned forward a little, and even though he turned his head away, I caught blood running down his cheeks. It seemed that whatever he had done earlier with his Logic, it had run out. Or perhaps supporting all the people on the plaza on his mainframe had driven some piece of hardware or another past its breaking point.
“Do not worry about me, Sultana.”
“But—“
“I said, do not worry!” he snarled over his shoulder, and I jerked back.
He grimaced. “… Sultana. Please, I can do this.”
As I recovered from my shock, that cold feeling welled up in my fingertips. “I only wanted to—”
Something scratched against the cobblestone behind me.
I whirled around, Torch blazing, and hit a Rat mid-pounce. Pharus dug deep into its weirdly distorted stomach and from its mouth, bile erupted all over my chest. The momentum of my swing sent the creature tumbling backward, but it flipped in the air and landed on its feet. Sizzling and popping noises briefly drew my eyes to my padded coat. It was smoking where the green goop clung to it.
{CPU Load: ▼ 88%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 72° C}
I only had a brief moment to notice the UI improvement, and that my quick strike hadn’t marked the rat before another rat jumped off a roof and joined the first one. And then another. They chittered, fur bristling.
“Three rats. One spits acid, no idea about the other two.”
Or at least they looked like rats. Mostly. They each carried different modifications, as if a mad scientist had grafted tubes and containers holding bright green fluid into living animals.
“Can you see them now?” I asked, hoping that the proximity to the Bunker (and Zephyro’s location in the real world) would restore his ability to locate enemies.
Blue light flashed behind me, and Zephyro’s breathing sounded less labored, but to my disappointment, he said, “No Sultana. I must offer you another thousand apologies.”
Damnit! I took a step forward, spinning my weapon. The blue flame roared as it trailed through the hot night. I opened my stance a little, trying to coax one of the rats into giving me an opening.
Just as the one on my right twitched forward, I heard Zephyro curse behind me. I couldn’t lose focus, couldn’t check, had to wait for… there! The rat scurried forward, approaching rapidly until it reached pouncing distance. The other two scrambled to keep up lest they miss out on the meal.
I got my mace ready.
The first rat tensed, twitched.
My eyes narrowed. Patience… I had to hit it right at the apex, just like before…
Instead of jumping as I had expected, the fucker spewed acid all over my torso. As I recoiled, the bile sizzled on my armor and an acrid stench filled the air. I tried and failed to suppress a violent coughing fit, pulling back blindly until the fumes dissipated and readout coalesced in the remaining smoke.
{CPU Load: ▲ 85%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 75° C}
Another coughing fit wrecked me. I took one more step backward and stumbled over something I couldn’t see, inadvertently offering a window of opportunity to the other two rats. Falling through a haze of tears, I could see their predatory instinct glinting in their greedy eyes, just a split second before they pounced. I followed my momentum instead of trying to find my balance, letting myself drop with the intent to transition into a backward roll. But while one of the rodents’ leaps sent it sailing over my head as intended, and it crashed against something very hard and unforgiving, the other beast corrected its trajectory, slashed its claws against my thigh, and robbed me of what little remained of my balance.
“Sultana!” Zephyro yelled as I fell.