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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.56.16.14 - “You have to go outside and wait in the snake, then you will become a document that you have to outfill.”]

Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC

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

//Oh little Salvatrix, have you read the Neverending Story?//

//Of the eight defects in Lean manufacturing (defects, overproduction, waiting, unused talent, transportation, inventory, motion, and extra-processing), Defects are probably the easiest to explain. As the old adage goes: Waste not, Want not, and (/&%/&%$&$§%)/(=!?=)//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

E1 %No! I told you, the Torchbearer isn’t a Mage Lord, and she would never trick people into following her. She was human, sure. She made mistakes. But that just made her so much more like us.%

I nodded towards the three-way battle between the three factions; Spiders, Scorpion, and Snake.

“Take the fight to them?” I asked.

Zephyro paused, looking over the void-engulfed inferno that had once been his city. Then he nodded. “That, as ever, is wise, Sultana.”

And so we strode toward battle.

“What do you see, Sultana?” Zephyro asked as we approached the battle. I had almost forgotten he didn’t know what was going on. He probably just saw a giant, horrible snake trying to bite itself. Morbid curiosity tempted me to disable Ardor and see the world as he did for a while, but I didn’t want to risk it.

“The Scorpion is almost done with one of the larger spiders. They’re controlling the small ones, I think, using them as a living weapon.”

“That seems to be the case, Sultana, and it is horrible. To command other machines is a skill we have seen in very few Ferals, and the ability to create new Ferals is even rarer. For three of them to show up with the same skill is unheard of. If what my scouts tell me is true, the humans would wage wars to possess even one Shackled with the ability to produce more of itself, let alone three.”

We were almost halfway there. The battle raged on, unabated, which worried me. I had been hoping that by the time we came close enough to engage, a clear victor would have crystallized, but so far, no luck. I motioned for Zephyro to stop.

“Alright, let’s let them wear each other down before we engage, then swoop in for the kill.” Zephyro nodded, and I continued: “I don’t think we will be able to kill the big one without the turr— without the Old Guard, anyway.”

[>>compiling… 38%]

Zephyro considered for a second, opened his mouth as if to say something, but shook his head instead. “Yes, Sultana.”

“No, come on, spit it out,” I said. “We have a little time.”

The Spider-Mind had untangled itself from the scorpion and was in the process of trying to drown it with spiderlings. The snake still tried to coil on itself, like a bodybuilder on steroids trying to cross his arms. In my professional opinion as a military leader, this stalemate wasn’t going anywhere soon.

“It’s just that… I understand you have been getting stronger whenever the divine bell tolls?”

“Yep,” I said, a little chagrined. “Sorry about the unwanted attention. There’s always some sort of noise when I tap into my Wish.” Even when I was alive, the tolling of the bells had been an issue, but I had learned to work around it in the end. I had to equip a small army with guns and armor and provide Chris with a steady stream of innovations to tinker with, so there had been lots of opportunities to practice over the years.

“Allah be praised…” Zephyro said, pulling me out of my memories. “That I am to behold such wonders! But while I am still in awe of your talent, the Adhan is not why I asked. I am sure that in your unending wisdom, you have already understood this truth, but I am still wondering about three Ferals with the same Talent showing up at the same time…

“Sultana, surely you remember why I can’t simply give you new equipment in the Domain?”

“Uh, you tried, remember? It was too heavy for me.”

“Ah, true, Sultana. But while Alqamar Faw Alqasr is a mighty weapon indeed, and perhaps too mighty to wield as your first, might I not have given you a weapon from one of our guards?”

“True,” I said, frowning. “But Kasha explained that each weapon is custom-built for whoever uses it.”

He nodded, smiling wistfully. “Yes. While the weapons my brave soldiers wielded might have looked like crossbows, they were not weapons, Sultana. Instead, they were a part of the soldiers, both in the Real and in my Domain. You or I couldn’t use their crossbows to shoot an enemy, just like we couldn’t use their arms to fight.”

An image of someone bludgeoning someone to death with their own arms crossed my mind and lingered far longer than it should have.

“So you’re saying their crossbows aren’t, um…” I snapped my fingers, trying to remember the term.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

[Pharus, Wrath of the Torchbearer] v. 1.0 - Electronic Warfare Suite

I winced as the sting faded. “Thanks, Chris.”

Beep!

“So what I meant to say: the crossbows weren’t electronic warfare suites? ”

Even though he grimaced at me breaking the fourth wall again, Zephyro nodded. While I didn’t want him to get annoyed, and I had begun to understand why he didn’t just call things as they were, all these metaphors didn’t help my confusion at all.

“Indeed they are not, Sultana. Instead, if you will, my guards are my swords and my shields, my scouts are my eyes, and my builders my hands. Together, they exert my will far beyond my physical reach.”

I looked over at the spider-mind, surrounded by its children. The small ones were climbing on top of each other with blinding speed, forcing one of the snake’s horrid mouths open to prevent it from sinking its teeth into their host. It looked very much like they were gladly sacrificing themselves for what they perceived as the greater good.

Almost like soldiers. Brainwashed soldiers with zero regard for their own lives, but soldiers nonetheless.

[>>compiling… 40%]

“So you’re saying…” I didn’t finish the sentence, thanking God that for once I had been able to keep my nerves calm and my mouth shut. Zephyro’s face was a mask of quiet regret and sorrow.

The Vizier said nothing, watching the monsters fight their three-way stalemate.

When the spider regurgitated another batch of its children, and the snake shuddered, he spoke again.

“Do you remember what I told you about Emil-1? That he and his family could build more of themselves?” Zephyro asked, and I didn’t even need to look at him to know there were tears of loss and impotent rage flowing over his face. “There is more than one reason why absorbing the Essence of another is haram, Sultana.”

What he was suggesting was that if you ate enough Logic and got lucky, you could learn a skill of the entity you killed. While that revealed a ton of possibilities for me, it also meant that those spiders had chewed through hundreds, if not thousands of workers to get their skills. If you could copy someone else’s skills by killing them, I could definitely see how that would be outlawed.

Time passed, measured in the screeching grind of steel against steel, and the insane voices of feral machines.

Then I remembered something Zephyro said earlier. “Wait, the Ferals came first, then the humans, right?”

“Yes, Sultana.”

“How long were they apart?”

“Hours, perhaps? It happened fast, by the time we had word of the attack, our sentries were already dead.”

I frowned, thinking through the scenario like the general I was supposed to be. It could have just been a coincidence, but something didn’t add up. As Zephyro said, the Ferals should have stayed out in the city for far longer, trying to devour the buildings. Plus, they had already been far inside when we saw the first Shackled, right? Yes, perhaps they had been sent in here to get stronger, but if so, shouldn’t they push inward as fast as they could to secure as much Logic for themselves as they could? If the stuff behaved the same for everyone, a large part of it evaporated every time it got released. Letting the Ferals have their fill made little sense, unless… unless they needed them to soften their target, and gather more abilities.

“They herded them here,” I said. “I mean, we knew that already, but this is far too coordinated to be a random smash-and-grab. Someone orchestrated this, planned this for a long, long time.”

The vizier turned to me. “Do you think they knew about your sacred resting place after all? That they are here to plunder your body and mind?”

I shook my head. “No. To be honest, I still doubt they even know I exist. Or that…” I gestured at myself helplessly. “That I am in here. I guess they tried to shackle me because I… because the laptop sits behind all those important-looking doors. But no, I’m not their goal, Zephyro.”

I remembered what Kasha told me as we walked through the Outskirts.

> “It would be hundreds of millions of them against hundreds of thousands of us. You know, a very large collection of machines with Talents that would be very lucrative to the right slavemonger. No, Sam. If they learned that we exist, it would be the end of this City”

“…You are,” I said, but didn’t add ‘With all your people as a bonus.’

He laughed, but then his expression softened. His hand fell to his saber, his eyes unfocused.

Neither of us said anything and an anxious symphony—the low roar of dying flames and the odious screeches of the Ferals—filled the silence.

“That… That may be true, Sultana. It would make sense, if... Hah! The infidels still think it is I who rings the Divine Bell above the city.” He laughed, a sad little sound. “Oh, how little they know.”

The fight was turning. The scorpion had pushed back his arachnid opponent until it was forced to switch targets away from the snake. It devolved into a free-for-all at that point. Before, the spiders had been able to make use of their adaptability to keep the other Ferals in check, but they were no match against the combined powers of both scorpion and snake.

“Scorpion’s on the spiders now. They’re losing,” I said, idly twirling Pharus.

“We should enter the fray, Sultana,” Zephro said, stretching his neck.

I nodded. “Can’t let these things waste their own Logic after all.”

“How so, Sultana?” he asked.

“Well, every time a Feral dies, I get a percentage of their Essence, and the rest just kind of evaporates. So the more often the Logic is out in the open, the less there will be for me, right?”

“Ah, Sultana. Humble apologies. While the Ferals prefer to dine on your Blessing—that is; they seek to devour those of us with a clear mind—their ability to devour each other is unrivaled. Because a Feral’s essence is so corrupted, only what little of it that remains pure can be recovered by you, while it would drive one of mine to madness. Like you, I do not understand where the corrupted portion goes when a Feral dies, unless—”

“Unless another Feral eats it?”

“Yes, Sultana. In that case, we believe the victorious beast takes a large part of its victim’s essence and merges with it, thus becoming more and less of itself at the same time.”

At that moment, the Eternal Riddle bit into its own tail and began swallowing itself, forming a rapidly shrinking circle around the Spider-Mind.

“Alright, then we need to move, NOW!” I yelled.

But it was too late.

The Skittering Mind tried a last, desperate maneuver in building itself a platform out of spiderlings. Now encircling the Spider from all sides, however, the uncounted mouths of the Eternal Riddle, gnashed and ground through the spiderlings faster than the Mind could replace its minions. The last I saw of the last arachnid was a teal scream of light.

Then the snake-like abomination swallowed itself over and over, its head emerging at impossible angles from the mass of hardware only to dive into itself again, faster and faster, eyes raging red until the mass was covered in an aurora of crimson afterimages. It grew, shattering glass as its horrible form pressed out of the wireframe of the spire. It looked like pimples growing on a festering limb.

All movement stilled. Even the scorpion and remaining Skittering Mind scuttled back as if awed by what was happening.

Then, as majestic as the gilded carcass of a tyrant king, the snake rose, solar sails made off of server racks opening on either side of its head and fusing together until they resembled a cobra’s hood. Its lower back had grown so large it was bulging the spire’s steel supports, and the construction shuddered and leaned to the side, but the snake shifted, and the building held.

I stared at the monster. I couldn’t help myself.

[The Skittering Riddle, Rapacity Perpetual]

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