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[
>>Now replaying: Log 1.92 - As reality ebbs, horrifying vistas of emptiness reveal themselves
]
Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC
Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain
//What do you think dying would have been like, Chris? Not that you care about that sort of thing anymore.//
//>Vem är du?
>Jag är döden...//
//I saw eldritch cities rise from air and stone
Heard the war cry of savage children
Bled my last ember and heard the ancient call of silence
These things hold no horrors for me
For I have seen death, and liv&&/(&%//
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
I could only see a quarter of the room, the cone of my vision stretching at a 90-degree angle from where Chris had placed the laptop all that time ago, but I already counted five Shackled in the room. They had their red, faceless avatars superimposed over them, abstractly mimicking their actions.
Two of them had trapped Pina in a corner, and even though she was batting them with her magic baton with fierce determination every time they came close, it was clear she was not going anywhere. In Domainspace, they stood towering before her, arms outstretched to the side, feet close together in a brutal show of uncaring dominance.
Voni tried to help her from where she was standing right beside me, slotting another bolt to fire at the Shackled threatening her friend. But that left her wide open.
“Voni! No!” Pina screamed as another Shackled—a vaguely humanoid shape made out of gears and brass tubing—hit the older girl in the stomach with enough force to fold her in half, sending her crumbling to the floor a few meters away.
That only left Tin. He was slowly backing away from the center of the room, holding what looked like a USB stick towards the enemy as though he was wielding a sword. The “weapon” left the last Shackled (box, wheels, camera, hundreds of knives) thoroughly unimpressed, as it proceeded herding him out of my cone of vision.
That meant all the kids were down or out. This was especially worrying because the last shackled, a large digital clock that moved on jets of hot air, was coming straight for the laptop, a thin wire with a plug at its end extended in the Real, and holding a wicked-looking dagger in the Domain. It was dark and sleek, and brimmed with that red, cubic energy that I had come to associate with the Shackle.
[T1me-flyes]
[DPM filesize: X LKB]
[>>Calculate exact filesize?]
It was going to shackle me.
It was going to make me obey.
It was going to make me break my promises.
Pharus blazed.
I swung it so hard that the censer went straight through the Shackled’s head, shattering red fragments everywhere and splattering Logic across the world like three-dimensional paint.
{INCOMING LOGIC - 5 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 2917 LB}
In the Real, its body just collapsed, clattering to the floor. Voni looked at it, wide-eyed, as she lay on the floor, clutching her stomach and gasping for breath.
Her mouth moved, but no words came out. She was reaching for Tin. The tubular Shackled stood above her, wicked-looking drill extending from one of its “arms”, aiming straight for Voni’s back.
[D3nt4l_pl4n]
[DPM filesize: XX LKB]
[>>Calculate exact filesize?]
There would be no firewall for her, no DPM she could gradually restore. Just flesh and blood, spilling out of her until it was over.
I used the momentum I still had going from the last swing, and put even more energy into it as it turned me around. As I whirled, I empowered Pharus again. Teal flames spewed from its tip. I surged forward with an underhanded strike. The Shackled looked up, holding two long daggers in Domainspace. It crossed them in front of itself. Pharus hit with an angry roar of flame, but the Shackled had managed to block the damage of the strike. And yet, was no defending against the sheer mass of liquid flames that poured from the censer, and I set the fucker ablaze.
[>>PROCESSES BY USER D3nt4l_pl4n ARE NOW HIGHLIGHTED]
[>>Initiating Denial of Service Attack]
I pulled back my weapon for another strike, but it surprised me by stepping forward and ramming one of its knives into my stomach.
{CPU Load: ▲ 75%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 61° C}
“Nice try,” I snarled, grabbing it by the wrist and pulling it even further forward, making it stumble. I stepped aside as it did, striking the back of its head with Pharus.
The Shackled slammed against the floor as the red shell cracked into the worst kind of copper-spiderweb. But it held, and before I could follow up, the D3nt4l_pl4n had already rolled away.
I shot a glance at its slowed, electrified form in the Real, making sure Voni had gotten the time to get herself to safety.
She had not gotten herself to safety.
Instead, she’d pulled a spare bolt from her coat, and was trying to ram it into a gap in the Shackled’s armor with fierce determination.
In Domainspace, the Shackled had gotten back to its feet, movements slightly erratic as bright orange blood crept from its cracked skull. No time to play around. I empowered my weapon as much as I could, grabbing it in both hands for a devastating strike. Before I could close the distance, however, the Shackled threw one of its daggers at my face, and I had to bring the mace up in an awkward sweep to block it. Unfortunately, that somehow counted as an attack, and Pharus’ flames dimmed like they always did when I marked something, as the dagger flew away. A second later the Shackled was already up in my face, trying to skewer me with its remaining dagger. I had to use my vambraces to deflect its attacks—Pharus was too unwieldy up this close—and my CPU skyrocketed as a result of its repeated attacks.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
{CPU Load: ▲ 88%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 69° C}
Strike after strike skittered over the material until I finally managed to twist in a way the Shackled did not anticipate. It tried an underhand stab as a follow-up and I pushed my mace’s grip into the pit of its elbow, then grabbed its own hand wielding the knife, and pushed it straight into its chest.
It reeled back, and I let Pharus go in favor of falling low and swiping its feet out from under it. My arm was still wrapped in Pharus’ chains, and while that now tied me to the Shackled, it also added extra downward momentum as I put my whole weight behind a brutal pull. As the Shackled Slammed on the floor, I scrambled forward. Its head bounced off of the floor, leaving it dazed, and as soon as I was in reach I grabbed it and slammed it against the concrete again and again. It took me five rapid slams without results until I remembered that wouldn’t do anything in Domainspace. I grabbed the chain and—Something cold and heavy punched me in the back. I fell forward, my face hitting the ground next to the Shackled’s head.
{CPU Load: ▲ 92%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 75° C}
I could hear the whispers.
They seeped through the cracks.
Curethemfindtherotcutitoutyoucanstilsavethemtheyneedyoupushitindeeptheyareallscaredbutitsyourjobyoudowhathastobedonetherootcanalispoisoned…
I pushed myself up, twisting to check what had attacked me, but found nothing there. Only the knife the Shackled had thrown at me earlier lay on the floor. It shivered, and then shot straight at my head as if propelled by an invisible force.
I jerked back down, putting my full weight on the Shackled to keep it subdued.
Fucking telekinesis? Are you shitting me?
I cursed as the words printed themselves on the screen, deleting my progress bar. I corrected my mistake and deleted the text as quickly as I could as I reached for Pharus’ hilt. It was stuck in the tangle of our limbs, but I flared it anyhow, twisting my torso to reach for the censer while keeping the Shackled wrestled to the floor.
Finally, my left hand touched the burning orb of metal and I twisted it free, flaring my weapon immediately. Teal Flames engulfed my fist, and I rammed it into the Shackled’s face.
One.
Two strikes did it.
Its armor caved in, releasing its Logic with an inhuman scream that sounded disturbingly like “teeeeeeeeeeeth!”
{INCOMING LOGIC - 95 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 3012 LB}
“Chris!” I yelled. “Time!?”
{SAMANTHA_v0.1}
{▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱}
{DOWNLOADING DATA 99/100%}
{15.6 LTB/15.7 LTB}
[>>Estimated time remaining: 00hr, 3min 10s, 297ms]
It felt like a lot more time should have passed than that.
Through the seams of remaining time, my fear seeped in, telling me I couldn’t do it, that the kids would die and I’d be left here until the Shackled found me, and I’d turn into one of them.
I refused, anger searing the thoughts from my mind.
Pharus blazed as I got up.
Voni got to her feet right next to me, as oblivious to my presence as I had been to hers during the fight. For a moment, she just stared at the mass of bronze tubes that had tried to kill her just a second ago. I knew that look. She’d just met death. At her age…
To my surprise, she shook herself out of it not even a second later and started searching around herself frantically, probably for her crossbow. Then her eyes hardened and she ran out of my field of view.
I left her to it, it was obvious she could handle herself. If this had been any other time, I would have gladly recruited her, if only to keep her out of the war for another two years for training.
Tin, too, had been herded out of my sight, which meant only Pina remained, trapped in a corner of the room by two Shackled that looked like misshapen dogs made out of cables and LEDs. They reminded me of the wolves I had fought in Domainspace earlier, except someone had bolted plates of armor onto their bodies. They glowed faintly with haphazardly engraved runes. The only one I recognized was the one that meant Negate.
When one of the Shackled came closer as if to bite her, Pina thrust her baton at it. So far, so good. I’d figured it was some sort of stun baton, discarded by some noble a long time ago.
But it was wreathed in the purple flames we’d called witchfire. I couldn’t help it, I froze the second I saw it, memories flooding my mind. Eventually, my anger broke through the barrage of images of death and despair, but it had cost me valuable seconds.
Pina’s opponent had anticipated her move, shifting its position so her weapon hit one of the armored plates instead of its cable-coiled flesh. The runes on its armor glowed brightly while they sucked the flames into themselves like sand into a vacuum cleaner, and Pina retreated back into her corner, spitting curses.
In Domainspace, the Shackled were your standard red, non-faced bad guys. They had noticed me and had spun to face me. One of them was approaching, holding some sort of gun in its twitching fingers. It fired, but its bullets were Domaintime slow, and easy to dodge.
My anger just wanted me to rush in and take care of them, but their Real armor gave me pause. What if it was a trap? What if it somehow made them stronger in Domainspace? What if they were special, some sort of elite troop? What if the weak ranged attack was just there to lure me in? After a second’s hesitation, I spent some of my CPU to scan them.
[1_The.pak]
[DPM filesize: 1.5 LKB]
[2_The.pak]
[DPM filesize: 1.4 LKB]
Not clever then, just bad. I could take them. Saving further doubts for later, I let my fury push me forward, swinging Pharus and letting it off its leash.
The Shackled returned fire, most bullets whizzing past me. The few ones that hit pinged against my armor, costing me a few degrees of core temp, but nothing else.
{CPU Load: ▲ 79%}
{Core Temp: ▲ 77° C}
My grin widened as Pharus hit one Shackled in their midsection, making them double over much like D3ntal_pl4n had done to Voni earlier. I empowered the flail again the second I got into melee range and brought its handle down on the nape of the Shackled’s neck with as much force as I could. It met the red chitin with a crack both sickening and satisfying, and the Shackled collapsed to the floor as Logic spilled out of its unseen mouth and nose.
The other Shackled looked at it greedily and began pulling, but I put a boot on its fallen companion’s neck and pulled harder.
{INCOMING LOGIC - 18 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 3020 LB}
Its faceless mask looked at me. Then it threw away its gun and raised its other weapon, a staff, defensively.
I wondered if it could feel fear.
In the Real, one dogbot had broken down, and the other turned to it, exposing its long, coiled neck.
Pina grabbed her baton in both hands. Its runes came to life with the purple glow of unbridled arcane might. She yelled “TOD DEM HEXENWERK!” and rushed the remaining Dog-bot. With as much might as a 15-year-old girl can muster, she thrust the weapon forward like a sword. She barely missed the protective absorbent plate on the Shackled’s forehead, and that was all that was needed. Her body vanished out of sight behind the robot as the rune-covered wood of the baton sunk deep into the mass of cables.
She cried out in pain, and I couldn’t see why. The Shackled growled, twitched, but thankfully didn’t move further as its LEDs dimmed and finally, it collapsed.
In Domainspace, the avatar just… vanished. One second it was there, the next it was nothing but the faintest wisps of cyan light dissipating in the cool bunker air.
It left no Logic behind.
Of course it didn’t, because Pina was wielding a weapon crafted by the fucking Conservationists.
And why wouldn’t she, when she was shouting their fucking battle cries?
God save me. The girl was a Conservationist.