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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.8 - Sleepless Lullaby]

Date: Error

Location: Zephyro’s Domain?

//

Hello

I walk into

The empty Bright

September made of

stars and worry

Not about me,

But you

Filthy

*&(//

//Dreaming

Away from time

lost in slumber//

//Oh how I wish to dream again//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

E99 %No speech detected, 2555ms%

No, I didn’t remember.

I’d gone to bed in my command tent in front of Veltruvia.

I was one hundred percent certain about it.

I didn’t remember building any bunker, or giant turrets, or automated drones, because it was impossible. There were limits to my Wish, and I definitely needed Chris if even wanted to attempt something like that, but we didn’t part ways on the best of terms. In fact, it would be a miracle if they ever came back after the things we yelled at each other.

I definitely didn’t remember working any miracles. Sure, I used my wish to help out some farmers here and there and had advanced most of my friends’ armor and weapons, but never used it on the scale that Chris thought was possible or even necessary. It would be suicide. The Republic was young and as vulnerable as a baby bird. No, I wasn’t going to ruin our attempts at diplomacy by flaunting tech that would make Magic (and Mage Lords) obsolete. Not until we signed this damn treaty tomorrow.

For what Zephyro and Kasha were saying to be true, not only would 150 years have had to pass, but also a lot of shit to have gone wrong. My mind raced through the different possibilities. Why would I need a bunker? Why build war machines, or scout drones?

I came up completely blank.

It took me another minute of silent walking before I finally managed to speak again.

“You are… machines?”

“Yes, Sultana.”

I shook my head, bewildered. If this was some alternate Dimension, that couldn’t make sense. Hell, none of that made any sense. At least it shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t shake the sensation that somehow it did, and that I was forgetting some detail that fit right in the middle and glued everything together. Perhaps it was the lifelike flashbacks I kept having. Maybe they screwed with my mind? There was also that weird vision I’d had when the Guardtower exploded. There had been something oddly familiar about it, like something I half-remembered from a dream.

A dream…

Oh crap! And it almost worked, too.

It had to be a Dream Maze. It was the only thing that even remotely made sense. On one hand, I was even flattered, but on the other, I was pissed. Sure, it was impressive they managed to do the impossible. They must have sunk a fortune into the spell to create a Maze this detailed. But for what? To keep me from joining their illustrious circle of Mages? To prevent me from petitioning the emperor for immortality? To stop us from forcing the planet through the industrial revolution and improving the lot of millions of people?

Selfish pricks, wasting their mana to cling to their feeble little titles instead of making a real difference.

Well, they just wasted their economies for nothing, because while this wasn’t my first Dream Maze, I sure as fuck was going to make sure it would be my last.

Still, it wouldn’t do to underestimate a Mage Lord, let alone several. I had no idea how many of them were in on it, but they clearly built this thing just to fuck me over. I didn’t even know how they managed to do it, I wasn’t an expert, but I definitely knew why. The weird flashbacks, the constant pressure… The entire thing was designed to keep me off kilter so that if I ever managed to wake up from this thing, I’d be frazzled and unable to negotiate. And that was before I had even died once. The danger of Mind Mazes wasn’t so much physical as psychological. If there had been a Geneva Convention on Tobes, they would have been forbidden because their single goal was to drive people mad. You remembered every time you died in a dream maze, and the entire experience was a finely tuned choreography. If you made one wrong move, the dream turned into a nightmare, killing you in increasingly horrible ways.

The way you escaped a mind maze was at the same time stupidly easy and insanely difficult. You let the tape play to the end, so to speak. By following the Dream Maze’s logic, you would eventually reach its logical conclusion, and wake up. That was easier said than done in most cases, because the maze was custom-made and used your own memories against you, making you behave in ways that the caster hoped were anathema to your personality. Best case for the caster, you spent an eternity asleep, but if you woke up brainwashed into a whole new personality, all the better.

I’d once been trapped in what felt like 10 years of being a maid in some fantasy castle and had to bow and scrape for some dream-made lordling who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. At first, I fought back, killed the guy in his sleep after he was done, but the moment he stopped struggling under his pillow, the bed turned into a rack and I died the first time in that dream, limbs dislocated and spine broken.

The entire thing had revolved around me acting polite, subservient, and demure, never questioning any order issued by the lordling or his friends, and to end the nightmare, I had to play the role of the servile party favor until he died of old age.

When I’d woken up, I had been anything but demure.

This newest Maze however was clearly designed to turn my own Gift against me and make me afraid of using it. It explained why the Wish was toxic in here, and why the monsters were weird chimera of beasts and tech. Perhaps to end this Dream, I’d have to cleanse the world of the evils of technology or whatever.

A part of me whispered that there were still a couple of things that didn’t make sense with this explanation, but I clamped down hard on it. There was no alternative. This had to be a Dream Maze.

I didn’t need to fake my confusion when I turned my attention back to Zephyro.

“But… how? How can that be?”

“Ah, Sultana…” Zephyro began, giving me that weird look again that reminded me of Patti so much. I tried hard to think of him as just a figment of my imagination, to combat the sudden guilt weighing on my heart, but I just couldn’t. It was the worst moment to realize that somewhere along the way, I’d started to trust him. Maybe it was the fatherly way he behaved around Kasha, or that he had protected us against the blast without even batting an eye, but I couldn’t think of him as anything less than Zephyro, the Vizier, someone who might eventually become a friend.

Was this, too, a part of the Dream Maze, or had I broken something? Had they broken me?

“Go on, I won’t interrupt you again. Promise,” I said. I needed to get out of there, and for that, I had to know what happened. Even if Zephyro’s story obviously couldn’t be true, what if there was some clue in there, the seed of an explanation that showed me the way out?

Zephyro hesitated again, looked at the fire that spread behind us, then at the gigantic Palace in the distance, brilliantly lit by the moon. In the end, though, he looked at me, as if trying to read the future from the firelight reflected in my eyes.

“I… humbly, I do not know where to begin, Sultana,” he said.

Kasha stepped up next to him, resting her hand on his arm. She’d slung her crossbow back over her shoulder, and combined with her apologetic hesitation, it made her look almost fragile.

“Sam, you… I mean, Sultana…” Why the sudden honorific? But before I could ask, she barreled on. “Do you remember Veltruvia?”

“Yes…?” I said. “I was just there, getting ready to sign a peace with the Conservationists.”

Kasha worked her jaw as if her words were burning her tongue. “That… that already happened. I mean, not the peace. You got betrayed before you could sign. There was a battle, and… you stormed into the city, alone, and killed the Emperor.”

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I frowned. No one knew who exactly the Emperor was, but there was one truth everyone understood: Their Gift—control over one’s age for those who could afford it—was the one thing that guaranteed a semblance of peace on Tobes. Killing them was like taking every treaty ever signed, dousing them all in gasoline, and using them to set yourself on fire.

There was no way my friends would let me spiral out of control that badly. Hell, I wouldn’t let myself spiral out of control like that. I had a bit of a temper in the past, true, but that had been when I was alone and afraid, and my anger was the only thing keeping me alive. I had my friends now, and I didn’t even know what needed to happen for me to snap that badly.

“The Mage Lords banded together to hunt you down, and you gave them a good fight, but eventually, after a long siege, they razed Novus Apex, and you had to flee…” Kasha stopped when she saw my expression, and I wondered what she saw. I couldn’t feel anything.

“You gathered the remaining Adherents and went south,” Zephyro said, taking over, “toward the shore they called the Vigilance. There, in a glade in a valley deep in the Shorewatcher mountains, where it would be easily defensible, you founded a garrison named Haven-Of-Progress. It was more than just a holdfast, however. Its true purpose was to support your most ambitious design. You worked on it for years, hidden deep inside the bowels of the mountain.”

“You expect me to believe my friends just hung out for a couple of years while I worked on some big project?” For starters, there was no way you could tie Iruli down for that long, and Stax was no stranger to cabin fever either.

I almost smiled at the memory, but the look Kasha and Zephyro shared seeped down my spine like liquid nitrogen.

“Sultana, I think maybe we should not have this discussion out in the open…”

“Tell me,” I said, voice dark and quivering. Until that moment, I hadn’t even noticed my fists had started to grow cold. I’d been clenching them too hard.

“All of the apostles died, Sam,” Kasha said, and my head snapped toward her. “Except for the Maker, Chrisiin.”

It was as if something cracked deep inside of me.

All the boiling energy pooling in my chest vanished in an instant.

There. That was it. Proof! It was all a lie. A complete fabrication. It couldn’t be true, wouldn’t be true, mustn’t be true. A world where I was alive and my friends were dead didn’t exist. It was impossible. I would rather die twelve times than lose even one of them. They were all I had and all I wanted in this crazy second life I had never asked for, and without them, I would…

No! It didn’t matter, because it wasn’t true and would never happen. It was just another trick the Mages threw at me to push me over the edge, but I was stronger. I would escape this Dream. And then, for even trying to make me believe a world missing its most important 12 pieces was possible, I was going to kill these fucks and sign the Emperor’s peace with their blood.

I took a deep, deep breath, closed my eyes, and felt tears of rage running down my face.

“Okay,” I lied. “I believe you.”

There. Everyone but me would believe I cried because of grief. The Dream logic was upheld, and the world could go on, and this was a Dream, damnit.

I was sure of it.

So very sure.

Still, why did I feel as if I was falling? Had been, in fact, beyond terminal velocity, and for far longer than I dared to remember?

“Anyway, what happened after that?” I asked, trying to get my thoughts to fall in line.

With my eyes still closed, I couldn’t see Zephyro or Kasha, but it was almost as if their discomfort was a tangible thing. I was no stranger to that feeling, that awed insecurity that almost seemed to thrum in the air like the deepest of sounds. You could feel it every time people realized who I was.

> “The Witch Queen…”

> “Salvatrix,”

> “Mageslayer…”

> “The Torchbearer…”

“Go on,” I said, with a smile that held my sorrow over the chasm suddenly gaping between us.

It was Zephyro who replied.

“The miracle you were about to work, Sultana, would change the world forever. You unleashed your Blessing In a divine act of creation, and in what we believe was less than a second, this Miracle created thousands of machines and uncountable more ever since. This alone is miraculous enough, but you see, Sultana, where your Blessing is the strongest, the machines don’t just advance, they become sentient.”

“Like you?”

“Yes, Sultana. Me and my people, and even though I am loathe to say it, the Old Guard as well. Even the Shackled and Ferals, rabid as they are.”

I opened my eyes again.

We stood in a deserted thoroughfare that cut through the Outskirts. All the houses around us were abandoned, but the scene almost looked peaceful if it hadn’t been for the gleam of distant flames reflected in their windows.

Zephyro stood in front of me, stoic as always, and Kasha was at his side, chin raised as if challenging me to call them liars. She was playing it too hard, though, and I could see the concern in her eyes. I only hoped it was concern for me, and not for her. I didn’t want to be seen like that.

I smiled, hesitantly, and even though it didn’t feel quite genuine, it seemed to help. When Kasha began to smile in return, a weight I hadn’t been aware of was lifted off my heart.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said, adjusting her cowl after pushing a couple of loose strands of her black hair into it. “About the apostles. Your friends, I mean.”

I smirked. “Don’t worry, you didn’t kill them.”

At that, Zephyro and Kasha exchanged another look and I was about to reaffirm that I believed them when I caught movement in the corner of my eyes. I immediately grabbed the handle of the scepter, but when I took a closer look, I almost felt foolish for my paranoia.

It was a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, clutching a much too-large purse made of rough linen as she staggered out of a nearby alley. Besides Kasha, she was the first of Zephyro’s people I’d seen, but she looked completely normal. Her huge eyes swept over both me and Kasha, and when we didn’t register as a threat, they locked onto the Vizier. Without a second thought, the girl ran toward him, tears flowing down her cheeks, accompanying a bawling wail.

“Alimah-65! What are you doing here? Where are your parents?” he asked, while Kasha took a step to the side so the girl could reach the Vizier without having to go around her.

Zephyro knelt and opened his arms for the girl, who wasted no time seeking refuge inside his embrace. Deep lines of worry etched themselves into the Vizier’s expression as he hugged her close.

Alimah…65? The girl answered something, but she was mumbling into the Vizier’s robes and I didn’t catch what she said.

“Oh… Oh no. Ohhhh you poor little soul,” Zephyro said, stroking her back as he lifted her up in an effortless motion. He looked at us over her shuddering shoulders and gently shook his head.

That told me enough.

I’d seen my fair share of orphans.

“Are you still in your house?” Zephyro asked the girl, who nodded, despite being very much out on the street. “Are you hurt?” the Vizier went on, and when the girl nodded, he asked her where, which resulted in more mumbling between shivering sobs.

At that, Zephyro looked at Kasha, then at me, and when I nodded we started walking again. It took a while for the Vizier—voice deep, tone softer than I’d heard before—to calm the girl down. Kasha helped by walking behind the pair and alternating between stroking her head, calm reassurances, and trying to make her laugh by grimacing. She wasn’t very successful with that until she mimicked the way the Vizier walked, straight-backed and proper, each step oozing dignity. Zephyro looked over his shoulder when he noticed the girl laughing, but Kasha acted as if nothing had happened, which made Alimah laugh even louder.

I would never understand kids, but in this moment, I would have given everything to be just like her, forgetting all the world’s worries in the span of a couple of minutes.

Then Zephyro frowned at me, and I realized that despite everything, I had been grinning at Kasha’s display as well, so perhaps the girl and I weren’t that different after all.

I’d almost lost myself back there, giving in to that sinking anxiety and believing the lies Zephyro and Kasha had told me. Surprisingly, I wasn’t even angry at them. They didn’t know what they were doing, or that their entire view of the world was just a lie they told themselves to go on. I wondered what they would do if they ever realized the truth, but I was determined to never find out. I just had to keep moving. The Dream would resolve itself.

I only wished that stupid freefall feeling would finally shut the fuck up and leave me in peace.

As we continued to make our way to the gates, Zephyro kept talking to the little girl on his shoulder, but Kasha broke away to walk closer to me. She kept a careful eye on the city, and somehow her professional alertness made me feel a little safer, despite the small fires still catching on behind us.

“The people living out here are the bravest,” she said. “Beyond the walls, you know? The Vizier had big plans, and obviously, we were going to build a second wall at some point, but that was before he realized that our Logic was running out.”

“Seems he’s taking it pretty hard,” I said.

Kasha gave a halfway-bemused shrug and a quirk of her eyebrows as if to say You know how he is. “He’s always been a bit of a toughbutt, but yes, he takes this very seriously. I don’t know if it makes sense to you, but he’s like a father to us all, even more so than our own parents.”

“How does that even work?” I asked, unable to catch myself in my bewilderment.

Kasha smirked. “Ah, apologies, Sam. I keep forgetting you’re not…” She shrugged and made a vague gesture that could have meant anything. Like us, maybe? Real, perhaps? “Anyway, it’s simple. Our parents design a new body, or software architecture, or whatever, improving on their own design. After they are done, one of the midwives builds it—or sometimes it’s a doctor—and then the Vizier shares a bit of his Essence to make us come alive.”

“Huh,” was all I could say to that. Self-propagating AI. That had to come out of my own mind. The Mazes could do that, sometimes. In any case, there was no way the mages could have calibrated a Dream to include details of that level. Hell, they didn’t even know how to turn on a flashlight.

“Anyway, that’s how His Tightbuttiness over there fits into all of that,” Kasha continued.

My eyes fell on the little girl curled up in his arms. “Does he treat everyone like that?”

“Indeed,” Kasha said. “And not just the kids. You should see him with old people.” She’d put her hands in her pockets, perhaps to seem too cool for school, but from everything I had seen, it was obvious she liked the Vizier. No, like was too weak a word. It was a gentle adoration, exactly like a daughter might adore her kind grandfather.

Then, with a sigh, she added: “If only he would stop it with the metaphors.”

“Right?” I asked, and I couldn’t help but grimace. “Why does he do that, by the way? If he’d just told me what was going on from the start, it would have saved me a lot of headaches.”

Kasha walked in silence for a while and I was about to repeat the question when she held up three fingers.

“Three reasons. One, it’s because he doesn’t like reminding people that we are machines. Even more so after hearing how the Humans treat their Shackled and other machines they find in the wild. It’s a bit like comparing humans to monkeys, you know? We might share the same ancestor, but we’re not animals, as much as the humans want to believe it to free their conscience, or whatever.”

“Why not talk to them?” I asked.

“How? It’s not like they can enter our Domain, or we can speak in the Real.”

“Why not? There are speakers.”

“True. I think some of the Old Guard have them, but they are insanely expensive.”

“Could always build a screen and just write? You’d find someone who can read eventually.”

“No, no, wait, you’re missing the point. I don’t think they could even read our script, but even if they did, 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.”

“So it’s camouflage or death…” I muttered.

“Indeed!” Kasha said, shaking her hand in the air and folding in one finger, holding up the remaining two. “So besides the fact that he wants to protect our dignity—perhaps past the line of what is reasonable—there are two more reasons and they’re more about you.

“Reason number two is that he’s a big softie and probably wanted to let it sink in slowly to make it easier on you.”

I nodded. “Makes sense. I don’t need to be coddled, but still. What’s the third reason?”

Kasha folded in another finger, holding up her index, but when she looked at me and opened her mouth, she faltered, her smile fading a little.

“What is it?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Kasha grimaced, looked away for a second, but then her jaw set. “Fear.”

“Fear?” I scoffed. “Fear of what?”

“You.”