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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.7 - The Meaning of Life]

Date: Error

Location: Zephyro’s Domain?

//want your power, shimmering cyan, flowing hot//

//Run, animal.//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

E2 %Tssk. Crybaby.%

E1 %Pina?%

E2 %Yeah?%

E1 %Shut your mouth?%

I fought a lot of battles over the last 10 years, and while I wasn’t an artist with he blade like Stax, and didn’t have the patient endurance of Underbrook, I did my best to learn what I could from them, and all of my other friends. Sure, nothing would make up the 30-odd years of wartime education that lay between me and Iruli, but after several dozens of battles won, and thousands of enemies killed, I thought I’d earned the confidence that let me charge toward the giant rat.

The moment my improvised weapon met the Feral’s hide, however, I knew something was wrong. By twisting and putting my entire weight into the strike, I had put enough force behind it to topple a horse. A rodent, even if it was the size of a big dog, should have been flung to the side like a softball. And yet, the rat squealed in pain just as expected, but physics didn’t seem to work as they should. Where I had expected to punt the thing into the next wall, I barely made it slide to the side for a couple of centimeters.

As if taunting me, the rat nonchalantly shook itself, and I accepted the challenge with another quick lunge and heavy blow. I didn’t have the right angle, however, and I noticed too late that my mace had been bent by the first strike, so my follow-up did little more than make the beast grunt as if annoyed. Then its red-pinprick eyes set on me, and the Feral belched an acrid, oily wave of black fog that quickly threatened to engulf me.

I immediately covered my mouth with my free elbow and jumped back, but the sinister cloud followed as if it were alive, quickly closing in.

Just before it could wash over me, a field of bright silver light flashed into existence, halting the advance of roiling smog.

I heard Zephyro yell something in a language I was pretty sure was Arabic, but before I could turn to see what he was doing, a lance of blue light shot deep into the swirling dark, and then the world went bright.

When the afterimages finally faded from my vision, the smoke was gone, and the rat was in several—very dead—parts. Only a crater remained precisely where the Feral had stood just a second earlier.

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

“Can say that again,” Kasha said as she walked up next to me, her crossbow cradled in both arms.

“Are you alright, Sultana?” Zephyro asked as he approached, urgently scanning me like a field surgeon. When I indicated I was alright, he breathed a sigh of relief. “The Sultana is free to say as she wishes, of course, but you, Kasha, should not blaspheme.”

“That wasn’t even… Whatever you say, honored Vizier,” Kasha said.

I kept staring at the rat’s remains until they began to dissolve into bright blue dust. When the cyan cloud began to float toward us ever so slowly, Kasha stepped away gingerly, and I followed suit.

“That is this Essence you keep talking about?” I asked.

“Indeed, Sultana,” Zephyro said

“Some call it Logic,” Kasha said, which earned a stern look from the Vizier. I expected a quick-tongued reply, however, she just nodded.

“That’s what we were so worried about? A giant rat?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood a little.

I’d killed at least a hundred of giant rats in my first year on Tobes alone. Hell, even Chris could kill those things alone, and their aim was atrocious.

Sure, I hadn’t been able to do much this time, but with a couple of my friends and several inches of ultraflexible steel polymers between me and some very sharp teeth, I’d turned Dragon Kings into plain old Kings. Even if I only had my signature weapon, it would have been a cakewalk.

Okay, maybe it irked me that I felt a little useless. Still, I shouldn’t complain. Between Zephyro, Kasha, and my playing distraction, we’d gotten the job done just fine.

“It is true that we made quick work of it,” Zephyro said, finally sheathing his sword. “But it was among the weakest of its kind, small enough that it could slip past the outer defenses and carrying little enough essence to allow it to travel far ahead of its main body. Remember as well that these beasts feast on Essence. If we had not killed it as quickly as we did, even this meager vermin would have become a problem soon, Sultana.”

“More will come, soon,” Kasha added. “Stronger ones.”

“You need to be careful, Sultana,” The Vizier continued, again managing to sound just right; honestly concerned, and without a hint of patronizing attitude. “As I said before, while your might is undoubtedly magnificent in the Real, it is greatly diminished in this Domain.”

I blinked my thoughts away when I caught up with what Zephyro had said.

“What do you mean, ‘the Real?’” I asked. “You mean this place isn’t real?”

“Oh, this place is as real as the gentle grace of moonlight, but…” he trailed off, hesitating. There was something in his eyes that some people might have taken for cowardice, but I’d seen it often enough in Patti’s expression to know what it really was.

Compassion.

“You were asking about food and shelter earlier…” Kasha said, trailing off. She was also looking at me like someone who hated to be the bearer of some very, very bad news. “A lot of things about you kind of make a lot more sense now, Sam.”

“Indeed,” the Vizier said. “It seems there has been a grave misunderstanding, Sultana. I wish I had the time to explain it all at once, but we need to make haste. Despite its weakness, it concerns me that this Feral was able to sneak in as far as it did.”

Alkshafa nodded, suddenly all businesslike. “Let me check the inside of this tower, even though I… yeah I think I know what I will find. In any case, we still need to check the other guard towers. Should they fall, we would be blind, and—“

The Guardtower exploded.

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The world glitched.

Violently.

Reality warped and got sucked into space the size of a pinprick, like an old TV turned off. It left behind not darkness, but a world painted in the gray hues of the security array that Chris and I had hidden outside the…

> It’s either camouflage or death.

> And even with leaves obscuring our view, it’s not hard to spot the dragon scorching through the sky beyond the mountain that hides our bunker.

I saw a world that was all wrong. It certainly wasn’t Zephyro’s Domain. Steel mingled with nature as far as the eye could see. Instead of houses, there were recharging stations. Instead of streets, there were conveyor belts and power lines. Instead of the guard tower, there was the smoking ruin of an early detection array, its antennae bent, its PSU in flames. There was debris everywhere, and a piece of rebar had lodged itself deeply into my insignia painted on a nearby power station. The metal rod had been jammed exactly into the middle of the stylized rendition of a Torch hovering inside a fractal circle and cracked the logo in half. Aside from that, the place held up extremely well for how long it had been since Chris and I had…

> “Alright,” Chris says quietly. “Project Luciferrum is a go…”

> “For the last time, Chris,” I say with a laugh, “It’s an AI that’s supposed to bring peace, so stop making it sound like some demonic, world-ending apparatus.”

> “Not going to call it ‘Project Iron Light’ the entire time, and saying ‘PIL’ is just dumb.”

Everything was overgrown by thick vegetation, but it seemed oddly symbiotic, not a single root interfering with the operations of the city. The seaside mountain towered above it all, of course, still hiding… still…

> "Okay," Chris says, reaching for their displaced notepad. "Just close your eyes and do your thing. By the time you open them again, this war will be over, our friends avenged, and we can get sushi."

> We both know it won’t be that easy, but sushi sounds nice.

Static overwhelmed my vision, the incessant buzz of a crashing computer filled my ears for a second’s worth of eternity, and then I was back in the dry desert heat, with Zephyro in front of me and Kasha to my side. All around us, flaming debris had slammed into the streets, crashed through shattered windows, and bisected sparking cables. The ground all around the broken Tower was charred black, some sand had even melted into glass. For at least a dozen meters round, only a small triangular wedge with me and Kasha at the center had been left unharmed. Zephyro stood at the tip of the triangle, his back toward the explosion.

The Vizier seemed fine until he smiled, and blood seeped between his teeth, and he staggered and the world frizzed at the edges.

Before he could fall, I stepped forward and caught him. He was heavy and smelled of burnt cables, molten plastic, and simmering coolant.

“One thousand apologies… Sultana,” he said. “I will not fail you again.”

And then he glitched like a broken computer screen.

And then he was gone.

And then he stood next to me, wearing a bullet-proof vest over tactical combat armor and flowing robes, hand on his sword.

And then night fell in an instant.

And then more explosions sounded in the distance.

And then towers toppled all across the ramshackle town, showering it with debris.

And then there was fire everywhere.

It was a staggering series of events, choreographed to destructive perfection. Oddly, it was this almost otherworldly perfection that stopped me from being completely overwhelmed by the rush of sensations that followed in its wake. Everything felt so distant like I was watching a movie. I was keenly aware of the sudden danger posed by burning debris, but somehow my mind couldn’t keep up with the sudden nightfall. It all blended together, left me feeling disconnected from the world, as if my subconscious was still pondering whether anything was real at all.

Kasha was by our side a moment later, crossbow strung, checking the area for threats.

“Go, go, go!” she said, and Zephyro and I hardly needed the encouragement.

I desperately wanted a second to think, to sort all of what was happening, but with more molten metal slamming into the ground just inches from where we were running, I didn’t have that luxury.

Still running as fast as I could, from the corners of my eyes I caught Zephyro staring at the burning watchtowers, and wondered if he saw what I had seen. A place of shimmering metal, hidden by nature, so oddly. Or had it been so strange it seemed familiar? Could I even trust my eyes? There were so many questions, but they would need to wait.

I grabbed the bent scepter tighter. I would have sheathed it, but it was bent so hard, it wouldn’t easily fit into its loop anymore. I didn’t have time to stop and fix it, but I didn’t want to leave it behind either. As uncertainty and chaos surrounded me, it reminded me of what was real; my friends, and my goal.

At the start of our mad dash toward the nearest city gate, I set an ambitious pace, but it became clear quickly I wouldn’t be able to keep it. The real problem was that I seemed to be severely out of shape. After only a couple of minutes of running as fast as I could, my breath began to burn in my lungs, and I had to slow down or risk cramps that would slow us down even further. I couldn’t even blame my clothes, either. Sure, in the real world, my armor kept me in shape with electronic muscle stimulation, even while I was resting. But even though I thought the robes I wore would have been problematic to run in, their design was quite clever, hiding wide pants underneath that made it easy to move. The robes themselves were made of several layers of blue cloth, but they never tangled up or made me trip, because they had an ingenious cut that never seemed to obstruct my movements. Even the ornamental shawls and drapes hanging over my shoulders never got in the way.

So it was me. Or at least the body I was stuck in. It wasn’t nearly as fit as I remembered being, so we only made it about halfway to the gate before I started to flag. Zephyro and Kasha slowed down to match my pace, carefully scanning our surroundings for more surprises.

After another hectic couple of minutes, the rain of destruction was coming to a stop, and I checked behind us, panting. While I didn’t know if we were safe, no Ferals had followed us, and we had outpaced the spreading fires, so I allowed myself to slow down even more and catch my breath.

Though more than air, more than almost anything else, I needed answers.

“Okay, okay,” I huffed. “What just happened? There is no way some rats just blew up every guard tower, is there?”

“There is, Sultana, but it is unlikely,” Zephyro said. If he was winded at all, he didn’t show it. “Ferals are scavengers and do not band together unless there is a big enough prize. Even then, they are not intelligent enough for anything beyond simple pack tactics.”

Kasha nodded. She at least was a little out of breath, her cheeks red with exertion. “It doesn’t fit. There aren’t any Ferals this far down south that could do something like this. Further up north, maybe, but not here.”

“Could it be another nation? Sabotage?” I asked, wiping my face with one of the shawls. After a moment’s hesitation, I pulled it off my shoulders, rubbed my cheeks with it again, then tossed it aside. Kasha winced, and I grimaced in return. I felt a little guilty about treating something this beautiful that way, but in a fight, it would be one big vulnerability.

If Zephyro minded, he didn’t let it show. “No, Sultana. The humans never come this far down the Path. Even if they did, we would have noticed them days ago.”

“What in the hell do you mean, ‘human’?” I asked, still a little out of breath. “We’re human, aren’t we?”

“Well…” Kasha trailed off, squirming a little.

“Of course, Sultana,” Zephyro said. “Do we not think? Do we not feel? Do we not make our own decisions?” He left that question hanging as if it was a rhetorical one, but the implications made me jerk back involuntarily.

“I don’t think she meant it that way, Vizier,” Kasha said soothingly, which confused me even further.

Zephyro grimaced, but despite his obvious discomfort, he soldiered on. “Ah, I must offer you a thousand apologies, Sultana. Do not worry. You are still you, and though you have left your Body behind, existing in this Domain does not change you. That being said, for Alkashafa and myself, the answer is a bit more complicated. You see, we are just like you. We think, we decide, we breathe. Although, our Bodies in the Real look vastly different from the ones in the Domain.”

“Wait… I thought this was all just a different Dimension,” I said. “Do you have physical avatars or something? Are you elementals made of my Gift?”

Both Alkashafa and Zephyro looked at me like my father had when he told me that our cat had died.

“No, Sultana. This isn’t an alternate Dimension, even though one could clearly see it this way. We…”

“Oh come on, stop it! Always with the damn mysticism, I swear,” Kasha said, rolling her eyes.

“This is a very sensitive topic, Alka—“

“No! There is no way to wrap this up nicely and ease her into it. It was your similes that got her all tangled up in the first place!” Kasha said vehemently, and before the Vizier could respond, she turned to me.

“We’re machines. His full name is Zephyro-0, and mine is Alkashafa-14. He’s the giant turret over your bunker entrance, and I’m a VTOL scouting drone.”

I laughed, but neither of them joined me.

Zephyro’s eyes filled with sadness as I trailed off.

“Alkashafa is right. I am Zephyro-0, your most humble Vizier, first defender, and Sheikh to your people.”

My mind went blank.

When I didn’t respond after a couple of seconds, he continued. “While I was created by the Maker to defend your city all those years ago, it was your sacrifice, your Blessing that granted me the spark of true life, and allowed me to create my people in turn.”

“Including me,” Alkashafa-14 said.

“Do you not remember working the miracle, Sultana?” Zephyro asked, desperately.

My steps slowed until I stopped, lost, in the middle of the street.

“No.”