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{Loaded.}
[>>Now replaying: Log 1.44.16.3.1 - eye on the target]
Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC
Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain
//And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?//
//A cult of personality, or a cult of the leader, is the result of an effort which is ... Cults of personality often accompany the leaders of totalitarian or ...//
//Never leave your eye off the target, Son. Always watch. Always keep those peepers open. One moment you think you got the sucker, and the next-&&//
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
E3 %The entire palace?! But why?%
E2 %Because she was evil! Are you guys even listening?!%
E1 %That’s too black and white, Pina. Wouldn’t you do the same things she did, if you were in her position? She only tried to make things better for us, and the Tradeweaver shamed her for it. If you were her, all alone and cornered, wouldn’t you have lost control, too?%
E2 %I don’t have to imagine being cornered. Look at us! Look at where we are hiding! There is no chance we’ll get out of this, but I sure as circuits hope I won’t lose my chips as hard as the Tyrant Divine before this is over.%
In the red and white light of Zephyro’s moon, the huddled crowd looked even more scared.
“I won’t just let them die,” I heard myself say.
What a dangerous and dumb thing to promise.
I thought back to my friends, to how they died. I hadn’t saved them. I couldn’t save them.
No, no, that wasn’t right. I could have saved them, I just didn’t want to.
Olre’s words echoed in my mind, having become one with my thoughts long ago. Every time one of them went instead of me, I made a decision; he said-I remembered.
I’d told myself the lie that I had to keep going for the others, but that had just proved the Conservationists right. By sacrificing my friends to save myself, I had all but admitted to being the tyrant they claimed I was.
My mouth was dry, my stomach in knots. The abyss gaped, and the rope frayed a little more.
“Ah Sultana, of course you won’t,” Zephyro said, his warm voice startling me out of my thoughts.
I scoffed, less at his words and more at my feeble attempts to believe him.
“Yeah, sure. Anyway, let me get the CPU upgraded, then we can talk about how we will—“
Zephyro interrupted me by grasping my shoulder. His hand was warm and annoyingly reassuring, so despite the shock it sent through my system, I couldn’t bring myself to shrug it off. His eyes searched mine, but I couldn’t meet them.
“I know what you are thinking, Sultana. I know the histories. But I also know you. You would not. Not if you had a choice.”
I pushed his hand off my shoulder, snarling. “There’s always a choice, you just need to be strong enough to make it!”
The Vizier’s eyes held mine, an endlessly calm bastion against my sudden fury.
“Sultana, if you truly believe this, it is akin to building a fortress on a dune. Time will erode the foundations until the walls topple and bury you within their ruins.”
It was an easy enough sentiment to hold in contempt, but his sincerity gave it an unwelcome resonance that dug straight through my anger and into my core.
{CPU Load: ▼ 39%}
{Core Temp: ▼ 79° C}
{[Arx, Saint’s Embrace] IS NOW ACTIVE.}
My armor resealed itself as if invisible hands spun new fabric from frayed edges, covering holes and mending gashes.
The tension in my body started to melt away. Suddenly, I felt like crying. Not because of pain or fear, but something else. A new feeling. It was merciless in its compassion, began to sand off all my edges so thoroughly it hurt. It made me feel soft and helpless and drained the fight out of me.
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I loathed everything about it.
So I clenched my teeth until my jaw hurt, and the feeling passed.
“Be that as it may,” I began—words pressed between my teeth—but stopped to center myself. I inhaled deeply, worked my jaw. It helped a little.
“No, yeah. Sorry. Let me upgrade my CPU, then we’ll get those people inside.”
Zephyro looked at me for a moment longer as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it. Instead, he regarded the remnants of the rats, scratching his beard almost absent-mindedly. “I wonder, Sultana, why you didn’t mark the strongest Feral first. I know there must be a wisdom to it, but I am afraid I cannot decipher it without your guidance.”
I sighed and gave him a level glare. “I’ve been an executive manager and lead an entire country, Zephyro. I can tell when someone is trying to blow smoke up my ass, so please lay it on me straight.”
He did me the courtesy of looking sheepish but didn’t say another word until I raised an eyebrow. Then he finally relented.
“As you wish, Sultana.” He took a deep breath as if to steel his nerves, and then he said, “I must beg forgiveness for my bluntness a thousand times, but the way you engaged these Ferals made no sense. The ones with the most power you assaulted on your own, while marking the weakest ones for me to deal with. Ruminating on it makes me wonder: Can you not tell which one is the biggest threat? Can you not tell which abilities your foes posess?”
I cut Zephyro off with a sharp gesture. “What was I supposed to do? Ask them for their ID? Maybe you can tell which Feral does what, but I got here less than a day ago. I don’t have your experience in everything Feral. I certainly can’t tell the strongest rat just by looking at it!”
“What about your network scanner, Sultana?” He asked with a frown.
“Where would I even get a network scanner? It’s not like I got a welcome gift and a fruit basket when I got stuck in that damn laptop.”
“Ya Khsara!” He said, running his hand over his distraught face. “I must offer you another thousand apologies, Sultana. The strength of your Essence is worthy of Jannah, and I am but a fallible, presumptuous man. After all, I thought, how could you possess such awesome power and not have such basic tools at your disposal…?” he trailed off, face once again ashen under the blood and grime.
“It is no excuse, Sultana, but as you are undoubtedly aware, there is a lot on my mind.”
My blood boiled over the small voice that tried to tell me something was wrong. I ignored it. There was nothing wrong. There couldn’t be. I had enough going on already, and I just wanted to…
The rope frayed. I laced it with more anger.
The cycle continued.
A large part of me, the angry part, did not care. It just saw a burning city, a moon drowning in its own blood, glinting steel, and a panicked mob. A lot to track. A lot to keep in mind. A lot that could threaten my control.
Zephyro’s feelings, that part of me muttered, were the least of my problems.
But does he deserve this? Does he deserve me just walking over him?
Zephyro grimaced with reluctance for a second, but then his shoulders slumped.
“Sultana, when you asked me for advice earlier, I foolishly defaulted to telling you what we teach our children; that a stronger core is the foundation of everything, and so it is all you need. If you would accept my thousand apologies, I fear I might have steered you wrong. I have come to realize that your Essence… ah, but I digress.
“Far be it from me to tell you what to do, but I would bare my heart and offer my current plight and biggest weakness—this inability to track your enemies—as a cautionary tale. It is neither humble nor proper to boast, but many would say that I am the strongest warrior in my Domain. And yet, I can not defeat my foes because they are as the desert wind to my senses.
“Of course, Sultana, blessed may you be, this is not to say that my star is anything but a candle to your blazing sun. By now, however, it is now obvious to me you are nevertheless missing fundamental tools that every citizen of our Domain has access to. The ability to gauge your enemies’ strength is just one of many examples, and my advice would be to gain this skill with all haste. Not everything is as it seems in a Domain, as you surely have learned by now.”
His long monologue had given me the time to set aside my anger and shame, so I did as the Vizier asked and took him as an example. On one hand, he was strong, but couldn’t leverage this strength because he had been digitally blinded.
The other side of the coin he hadn’t mentioned explicitly.
Still, it was there.
He looked like a man nearing the end of his prime, but I had seen him move carts twice his weight with a casual shove. Lords be damned, he sliced a mechanically augmented wolf the size of a van in half, using the actual moon like a paring knife.
In a sudden moment of clarity, I realized he was right. In a way, I was just as blind to danger as he was. And it was everywhere, hiding in plain sight.
I couldn’t be sure of anything in this world. A tortoiseshell Persian cat could walk past, for example, and I would never know it was able to shoot lasers from its eyes, or something worse.
I grabbed Pharus tighter. The leather wrapped around the shaft creaked against the wood as I laced that fraying rope with burning, angry sinew.
My head snapped back up. The moon still illuminated the square in front of the palace, driving long shadows over the cracked mosaic and into the alleyways surrounding the plaza. A few more people had found shelter behind the gates, but many more remained. They depended on Zephyro to keep them safe. And Zephyro depended on me.
I looked at him and nodded.
It was all I could manage. I wanted to tell him thanks, wanted to apologize, but that red hot thread that ran through my psyche didn’t let me. It also made trying to clear my mind for the Logic hard, but not impossible. I just needed to steer away from mindless destruction, flames, and, heat, and towards that seething, ice-cold precision that had borne me through so many battles.
My mind turned as malleable as hot aluminum and after a brief moment of worried struggle, I fell into an uncomfortably uncaring mindset with practiced ease.
Nothing mattered. Not the people swarming over the plaza, not Zephyro standing beside me, not the hot wind buffeting my face, or even the wounds I’d suffered in the last fight.
After shutting out the cacophony of the city collapsing around me, I centered my mind on the concepts of perception, vision, and awareness. I still needed a focus for the Logic, but after going through my logs, the choice was obvious.
{Drivers_sensory_Sam_v_0.1}
Chris’ work always took to my Wish the easiest, and the tool they built to allow me to see the Ferals in the first place was perfect for what I wanted. I inhaled deeply, balancing my thoughts. A brief memory of losing control lanced through my mind and for one heartbeat, my concentration faltered.
No. I could do this. I would do this. Only the future mattered.
I bent my thoughts back into shape, ignoring their groaning protests and the brittle crackling of ignored traumata.
Only the future.
I exhaled.