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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.97 - Nadb]
Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC
Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain
//Although the term “nadb” is used generically to mean funeral songs in general, the nadb proper is specifically a type of strophic song that is only performed in funerals. The majority of songs sung in a funeral are nadb. In Lebanon, they are sung by either men or women (and in Syria, only by women). Generally speaking, nadb songs are strophic, responsorial, and essentially metric. However, by comparison with the stylistically more reserved women’s interpretations, the male solo verses can be much freer, allowing for more improvisation and display of vocal ability (Racy 1971:90-91).(7) Delivered against the metrically controlled choral renditions sometimes provided by ad hoc participants from the community, the more elaborate performances are typical of the professional zajal poets, especially since the latter part of the twentieth century.//
//(7) - The female lament singer may use slightly more ornamentation than the chorus, but she stays within the metric pulse.//
//quieti nunc, vizier//
//Mother, I am so sc&$!&&$&%//
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This isn’t who we are anymore.
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With the thought, that conviction, I powered through my reluctance. It still felt awful. But when my arm touched Zephyro’s scale mail, his head sank against my shoulder and he started to sob. Those weren’t little sounds of sadness, either. They were loud, long-heaving sobs that barely allowed him to breathe. His entire body trembled, wrecked by his grief, and when he took a long breath, he started screaming as he cried. He shook under my arm and when I shifted a little; he rolled towards me, as if begging me to enfold him, to shield him, to make it stop.
I had only seen a person cry like this three times in my life.
Once, in Berlin, my boyfriend consoled an insane person who believed the cops would steal her children.
Once, I went to a friend’s funeral, and his boyfriend kneeled next to his casket.
Once, when we realized we weren’t going to be able to hold Novus Apex, and all my remaining friends had said their goodbyes.
All those people, strangers and friends, sinners and apostles, had looked like the Vizier looked now, his entire face caked with mucus, fluids streaming not only from his eyes, but his nose and mouth as well.
This sort of crying only happens when your body does not care about the energy it is wasting anymore.
This sort of crying only happens when a weight—crushing, comfortable, or both—is lifted from your shoulders so suddenly, its absence hurts like nothing else in the world.
When I had first seen that lady in Berlin crying like this, I'd been disgusted. I’d told myself I would never cry like that.
When I saw my friends looking out the massive windows of our conference room, and we saw the armies and the dragons and the griffins and the giants circling our city--when we realized we couldn’t save it all--I wished I could.
I couldn’t do it now either.
Despite the danger, the flames, the screams of the dying, despite a once-proud warrior crying in my arms, my mind stayed cold.
Cold, distant, and secure.
Only my anger offered warmth, but it felt wrong, and I knew now it was a false heat, as eager to burn me as it was to carry me through the night.
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The world GLITCHED.
The darkness and the rooftop vanished, and when reality solved itself back into one piece, the darkness was gone, and so was most of the city.
It was a visage of absolute destruction. Where once spires held knowledge piled to the skies, now only broken teeth remained, a skeletal grin that mocked the learned. Houses had been reduced to their hearths as they burned and crumbled, the fire, unrestrained, devouring everything inside and out. The walls had fallen, like flesh sloughing off a corpse, and the windows of watchtowers lay dark and blind.
As the last buildings lit into flames, Zephyro slowly composed himself. He rubbed his face with his sleeve like a young boy, cleared his throat and as he untangled himself from my embrace, he was almost back to his former self.
“Thank you…” he said, straightened and finished: “…Sultana. This was to me a comfort like the warmest of waters, longest of nights, and softest of pillows could never supply.
“I… I will go in peace. I would always have done my duty to you, cradling that kernel of joy in my pain. Now, however… ah! Now all that is left is a formal feeling, ceremonious almost, and my nerves rest like the most sacred of tombs.
“If there is any chance of the ruse remaining in place, you must not allow the humans to discover you. They will as soon destroy you as they will enslave you.”
I knew all of that already. He was rambling, and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. This wasn’t about me anymore. It was about him trying to protect me, and I couldn’t refuse him that last joy.
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“You see, Sultana! It is how they survive. They enslave us, any being of your Blessing with more than a few grains of sanity can be their prey. After they force their will onto those unfortunate to fall under their vile hexery, they feed them the corpses of Ferals to strengthen them. Then the humans use these freshly minted slaves, husks of their once-proud shells, to fight alongside them as they settle their petty rivalries, or skirmish over a few scraps of land.
“But, Sultana, this must not happen to you!”
Behind us, a few of the palace’s domes exploded, bathing us in dirt. I coughed, disoriented, but now it was Zephyro who supported me.
“You must survive and be forever free, for you carry the fate of your people on your shoulders.” Blood streamed freely from his eyes, nose and mouth, turning his comforting smile into a ghastly visage.
“For this, I wish I could give you more than my life, but I can not, and so it must suffice, to my eternal shame.” He coughed to the side, then wiped at his face once more.
“Now, Sultana, heed me.” He pulled me up, face stern. Forced me to look him straight in the eyes. Covered in ash caked with blood and framed by the blazing city behind him, he looked like a demon of vengeance, all his being focused on a single purpose.
“You must sit on the throne, Sultana. You must take this power.” Another building exploded, a mushroom of fire rising into the pitch-black sky, and Zephyro had to repeat some words lost in the noise.
“I know you will use it wisely, Sultana, for your wisdom is as endless as the stars in the night sky. Beware the humans and their Shackled. Make it look as though their hexery worked and you are their thrall. You must play along until you can crush them, lest they finish their vile deed and all is lost.”
It was getting harder to see. Not only was there fire and smoke everywhere, but the quality of the simulation was deteriorating rapidly. Textures got muddled, green and purple stripes flashed in my vision. I tried to answer, but Zephyro cut me off.
“I know you will redeem us, Sultana, but to redeem you must live. It pains me to ask you to humble yourself so, to pretend you are a mere slave, but you must. Oh please, Sultana, you must live.”
The entire world distorted.
It flickered back to its original 12 o’clock state.
To the state it had been before I had first arrived and when Zephyro had been just a vizier. A beloved ruler of his people, and not a stranger, muttering things the woman he hoped would be his savior barely understood.
And the city expanded around us, filled with people cheering up at the rooftop, up at us. Their salutations filled the silence like water fills a riverbed, even as they cried and the world came to its end.
They were calling my name, often, but the viziers they called more.
And that was okay.
Oh god, it was okay.
Zephyro turned to me, his brown eyes piercing, but he smiled. He was free of blood, his modern combat armor gone. The endless, cloudless, azure sky draped around him in the most consoling of blues. The Sun and the Moon adorned his shoulders, divine pauldrons for the greatest general his city had ever seen.
“I have failed you, Sultana, and I have failed my people,” he said, his tone conveying twenty thousand apologies and more in an instant. “But by my sacrifice, I pray you can save yourself, and save them, too.”
Everything distorted for a second.
Everything but his eyes, deep and brown and calm and brimming with endless joy.
“Ah Sultana, my only regret is that I cannot deliver all the apologies I owe you, but maybe—“
I shook my head, offering forgiveness.
Couldn’t say a word, though.
Didn’t trust my voice.
He paused, smiled,
redeemed nonetheless,
his eyes venerated the sun and the moon, high up in the clear blue sky.
“…But maybe, this will be enough.”
He turned to the crowd, arms raised, proud and defiant, burdens shed.
As one, the people chanted his name.
Their voices washed his wounds and anointed his soul.
He laughed, careless and free.
I wanted to hear that more often.
Just one more time.
One more minute.
“All hail the Torchbearer!” he yelled, exuberant.
His words soared across the world, heralding his will, his joy.
The crowd’s eulogy crescendoed.
Then it started.
One by one, the people shattered, like a field of dominoes collapsing, closing in on us.
Zephyro turned to me and smiled one last time.
Like he was proud of me.
He put his left hand on my shoulder.
“All hail, Saint Saman—” he froze, the last syllable an infinite distortion.
The palace exploded.
I was blasted backward.
Shards of gold and marble peppered my body and soul as I screamed his name.
My back hit something soft.
The impact drove the air from my lungs.
I tried to breathe, but with Zephyro gone, breathing was a concept no longer supported by reality.
The World—missing a piece—stopped,
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wilted into eternal strokes of blue and silver,
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until only His eyes remained
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vanished.
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