{Loading…}
{Loaded.}
[>>Now replaying: Log 1.55.16.13 - Spinning.gif/Nope.jpg]
Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC
Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain
//Oh no. No! Nope. No. Hell naw!//
//There’s something about spiders that drives people insane, and no one can really explain what. Maybe it’s the erratic movements, maybe it’s their silent, predatory nature. Maybe it’s some Ur-angst that hides in some of our genes, like the smell of roses makes the children of lab rats go crazy with fear/(%/%//
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
E2 %Or so they say. I think she just tricked them.%
E1 %What? Like the Queen of Hearts and Minds?%
The arachnids formed a protective circle around their hive mind, ready to defend it again.
Suppressing a curse, I swung again, to the same result. Small spiders jumped up, deflected the blow, then the big one swallowed their Logic, shuddered, and spewed out a fresh new wave of tiny, eight-blade-legged horrors. It would almost have been comical if they hadn’t attacked me immediately.
As they jumped to attach themselves to my body, I had to either dodge or swat them away. I was careful to use my vambraces because my hands were still uncovered, and the pain of getting my soul sucked out of my body still lingered at the forefront of my mind. Perhaps my DPM would protect me, even if this army of spiders managed to sink their countless blades into my unprotected flesh, but that didn’t sound like something I wanted to try out. Luckily, the Vizier was standing by, waiting for me to mark the monster.
“The small ones are blocking my attacks, I can’t mark it!” I yelled, swinging Pharus. Again the weapon connected with nothing but a mass of tiny, expendable spiders. Again the Mind sucked their Logic inside itself, again it halted, groaned, and vomited a torrent of more spiders.
“Stay back,” I said, pushing Zephyro behind me as I dodged back myself.
“Sultana?”
I had an ominous feeling about what would happen when that walking maw reached either me or Zephyro. It seemed designed to absorb and recycle Logic, and it was entirely possible that it would chew through both of us in an instant.
More spiders approached, putting me on the back foot and deep into a dilemma. I had to commit to defending myself, or the smaller spiders would overwhelm me. At the same time, I couldn’t mark my real target for Zephyro unless I committed to the attack.
But there was only one path that didn’t end with me pushed against some wall, ready to get swallowed by a fucking server rack.
I gritted my teeth and set my feet, swinging Pharus over and over with its chain extended to its full length. Each hit was absorbed, each hit produced more spiders, each hit locked The Skittering Mind in place, each hit left me wide open for a mass of spiders to swarm over me, stabbing me with countless tiny legs, slashing through cloth and drawing blood from exposed skin.
{CPU Load: ▲ 82%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 71° C}
[>>compiling… 16%]
I screamed in pain and frustration. Again and again, I swung. A burning sensation spread all over my body, paper-cut-thin wounds crisscrossing each other like a delta of flaming rivers, flowing upstream to set the sea on fire.
{CPU Load: ▲ 89%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 75° C}
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱ 91% ▼
The skittering wave crested, crawled over my face. I closed my mouth and eyes like diving five fathoms deep, as their tattoo-machine legs dove into my skin over and over. I kept swinging wildly, free hand reaching for my face, swatting away insect after insect. Cold blades left trails of hot blood on my lips, cheeks, brow.
{CPU Load: ▲ 93%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 77° C}
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱ 76% ▼
Then a swing connected, unimpeded.
[>>PROCESSES BY USER T3h_skitt3ring_m2nd ARE NOW HIGHLIGHTED]
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
The hammering of the notification got swallowed by agony so pointed and frequent that it bled together into a dull, omnipresent ache.
I only knew that my work was done, and darkness, and pain.
{CPU Load: ▲ 95%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 79° C}
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 60% ▼
A mere moment later, the pain faded, like all pain eventually does. There were still needles stabbing me, but it was sporadic now, unorganized. I opened my eyes and immediately closed them again as my salty blood dripped into them. I wanted to rub my face, but something large and rough pressed against me, and held my arm pinned to my side. I tried to fight it, but it was too big, and when I used my free hand, it just slapped against a massive surface covered in…stones?
The floor, I realized.
I groaned, but something small and painful skittered into my mouth, shocking me with adrenaline. Riding that burst of energy, I spat out the spider and rolled to my knees. Clenching my mouth shut as tightly as I could, I blindly brought down Pharus and reveled in the metallic crunch of a lucky hit.
Finally, rubbing the blood from my face with my sleeve, I forced my eyes open.
Fire, monsters, and the moon greeted me. Zephyro was close by, sword embedded deep within the server-spider, both hands on the handle, eyes closed. Above him, a bright star had flared into existence, shooting beams of glorious light at stroboscopic speeds. Many did not connect, just left tiny craters in his parade grounds, but those that did completely annihilated the spiders, no matter the size.
The tiny Ferals were swarming toward him now, and in turn, falling from me like oily water. I wanted to warn him, but as the skittering mass surged up his shins, his eyes opened, burning with blue light. It was so intense as to almost be pure white, and it left after images in my vision.
When I could see again, all but the largest, original spiders lay dead around him in a dizzying cloud of cyan. The surviving arachnids chittered something in their disc-scraping language. Instead of fighting over the Logic like their counterparts from earlier, they immediately fell back to form a circle around one of their own. Its jagged carapace opened like a black metal flower, revealing a teal-and-red glow intensifying on maddening machinery.
The cyan clouds stirred, shifting into a slow vortex with the Ferals at their center.
Pharus’ censer crashed into the evolving beast, sinking deep into its core. A high-pitched noise filled the world as time slowed, then the Feral erupted into a plume of Logic. An explosion of sickly teal shot into the sky, crashing down to cover all the spiders around it. As I pulled back my weapon, ending an attack I did not remember starting, the Ferals inside the cloud collapsed one after the other like they were suffocating.
Then their twitching corpses released their Logic as a tickling stream that ran over the floor.
I panted as I stumbled over to the vizier, waving for him to stop his attack, and conserve his energy. As I closed in, I managed to take a deep breath, assimilating the leftover Logic, then used it to heal my wounds.
{INCOMING LOGIC - 298 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 473 LB}
{CONSUMED LOGIC - 73 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 400 LB}
{CPU Load: ▼ 55%}
{Core Temp: ▼ 74° C}
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰ 100%
[>>compiling… 20%]
The vizier noticed me when the familiar cyan glow washed over my skin, healing my wounds. Zephyro relaxed and the star he had been summoning vanished, illuminating his quiet smile and calm brown eyes for one more second before it was gone.
Then Zephyro collapsed, his hands still on his sword the only thing that held him upright. He glitched once, twice, then the entire world shifted out of perspective, twisting reality into both an infinitely dark void and an intricately crafted oasis. I noticed the Ferals, (Scorpion and Snake and Spiders,) were entirely unaffected by the glitch, but then the world snapped back and Zephyro stood next to me, glowing cyan underneath a red moon.
Only a thin sickle remained white on its surface.
“You alright?” I asked, and he whirled on me, despair-fueled hatred raging in his deep brown eyes.
“Am I alright?! My people are dying, Sultana! Monsters ravage my city, bandits pillage my home, and their war-slaves seek to put a collar around my mother’s neck. My Sultana, shackled! The blasphemy of it! The giver of my life, whom with my very first thought I have sworn to protect!
“No, I am not alright! Yet what is a hundred thousand times worse, nothing will ever be alright again for so many of mine. Ask me not if I am alright, Sultana! Ask Emil, Raoul, and the Alkashaf siblings. Ask Mudira and Minhat-Albina! Ask Kasha… No Angel of Death will take them, for their souls have been torn from their flesh, consumed and defiled.
By now he was panting, and I struggled not to drown in his bottomless anguish.
“Comfort not me,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Lament my people.”
Then he glitched, violently like I had never seen it before, dead and alive and bones and rose-cheeked and young and old, until he settled back into his original form. He stood atop the colossal Feral, again. No anachronistic combat vest anymore, I noticed. I wondered if he had become weaker, and hated myself for the thought.
“I’m sorry, I-“
“No, Sultana, it is I who must offer you a thousand apologies once more. This…” he gestured as if to say this is all too much, but instead, he said: “This is not the time. Let us dispatch the remaining beasts and retire to the palace. Our time is short.”
And with that, he pulled his sword out of the giant spider, flicked it to clean it of dark, oily blood, and jumped down to land next to me.
[>>compiling… 25%]
There was more I could have said, more I could have asked, but I left these words unspoken. I yanked Pharus’ handle to pull its head back to me, and after attaching it to the shaft, wrapped its chain loosely around my forearm.
On the opposite side of the plaza, close to the ruined arch, the Ferals were fighting each other. The spiders were an endless tide of twitching black, sparking teal and glowing red. One of the server spiders—a Mind, as I had learned— had made it all the way to the snake and latched onto its side like an eight-legged tick. The giant abomination was clearly in pain, thrashing and trying to coil its tail around itself to retaliate with its many mouths. Its main problem was that it had grown so big it couldn’t fit underneath the arch and had gotten stuck. It couldn’t retreat with spiders and scorpion attacking it, and it couldn’t gnaw through the support beams either, or risk getting buried under the spire. In a furious move, the snake leveled a house with an undulation of its screaming tail. The resulting debris scattered over the spiders, but the attack was slow and telegraphed, and the arachnids easily dodged the falling mass of scrap metal.
The scorpion, on the other hand, was faring far better. It was engaged in a grappling match with the other spider-mind, and its chainsaw claw was burying itself deep within the server to the screech of metal tearing metal. The spider’s maw was open wide and glowing an ominous red, but the ball of plasma had started to flicker, approaching critical failure.
[>>compiling… 35%]