I had so many things to ask Karrol Stir that I barely knew where to start. “The battle,” I thought aloud. “Cuby and I were guessing the entire way through. Do you know what happened?”
He nodded. “Somewhat. Haroshi had been gathering followers through the day and as night fell, ostensibly to attack Mirrakatetz, the free dungeon. The largest—”
He was interrupted by a scream. Nearby, a dwarf woman had apparently found someone she knew among the dead. For a moment, both of us turned to see her collapse on the ground beside the body: sobbing, stroking its face.
All I thought was: Haroshi. His name seemed to clang around in my skull like they were both made of metal. All of this had happened to fuel his ambitions to win at a video game.
We both watched in silence for a while, and then Karrol Stir said: “As far as I know, the largest group attacked the south gate beacon, but others had been waiting to attack the others at the same time….”
I listened as Karrol Stir explained everything he knew of the battle to me, helping him along by providing my own insights as he spoke. Haroshi had been at the south gate, where the heaviest fighting had been. A spellsword, he had a feature that completed his spell casts through attacking, not spellcasting, and so he’d stayed in the back with his high-damage bow attacks, throwing out the occasional heal. His group, and the other group at the east gate, had attacked in a conservative style, making attacks against the defenders in short bursts or passes rather than swarming the gates, which had given them time to retreat and heal. At the south gate, they’d worn the defenders out in minutes—but at the east gate, where there were more healers stationed, where Karrol Stir’s potions had been delivered, and where Haroshi was absent, they’d become stalemated.
Once Cuby and I had taken the entrance to the mine by killing the nine attackers we’d found there, Haroshi’s people had lost the advantage of controlling the movement of players in town. Here I realized that our best strategic decision had been a total stroke of genius, but also a complete accident: we’d left the beacon in the mine uncaptured. The attackers at the South Gate Beacon and the Observatory Beacon hadn’t had cause to suspect they’d lost the center of town, and so they’d made the assumption that small groups of their higher levels could travel safely—after all, even if they got attacked, they’d all be pretty close to their allies at the mine.
The rest of the story was just what I’d lived: Cuby and I had formed a super-effective two-person death squad, and every group of reinforcements they’d sent through town had just… disappeared. That those players had been some of their higher-level characters had been an added bonus.
There was one other thing that Karrol Stir had to say about the battle, though I had no idea what to make of it. “The players who chose defender either died, fled, or fought til the end at the east gate. But I suspect that many of them only chose to be defenders because they believed that we were being attacked by monsters again, because they thought it would be easy.”
“I see,” I said.
We were quiet a while. There weren’t as many sobs around us, now, and the bodies of the defenders were being lifted and moved into the church.
“You have more questions,” Karrol Stir said after a time.
“Yeah,” I said. Then, not knowing how he’d take it, I asked: “What’s the Hierarchy of El?”
He blinked. “That is your question?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Explain it to me like you might explain it to a child.”
“But which kind of child?” he asked. “A lamue? A telorian? A spare cluster?”
“I guess that answer tells me something already,” I said quietly. “But here, let me try again: I want you to treat me like someone who is unfamiliar with even basic concepts concerning the Hierarchy of El. You see, I’m an AI—and the truth is that even before I won the lottery I had begun to malfunction. My memory for the concepts I didn’t need to perform my daily work had degraded, but because I could still fulfill my sanitation functions… there was no need for me to have an understanding of the actual world around me.”
I watched his face as I said this—saw his brow furrow with a kind of concern before he nodded, apparently satisfied with this description.
“Obviously now that we’re in the Colosseum, the hardware deficiencies no longer exist. And so I think it’s time for me to start to build up my knowledge base to what it should be—I need to, if I am to play.”
“I see,” he said, nodding. “I admit I find your story troubling; I think of what your experience must be, living in a world you don’t understand, and I shudder. But surely I can help. It is only that I don’t know how to begin.”
“I can tell you what I think I know, if that will help,” I said.
He nodded. “Do so.”
“The Hierarchy is a galactic-scale civilization whose social structure is organized by species,” I said. “The taxin el are the species which is positioned highest in the hierarchy. They hold the highest-level government and military positions, and exercise great influence over the lives and destinies of all other species within the hierarchy. Beneath them are the phrenodine, the karox, the Lamue, and AI—organized in approximately that order.”
Karrol Stir’s curiosity seemed to grow as he heard all of this, and when I paused, he spoke: “Before we continue, I must ask you something.”
“All right.”
“You said that the taxin el are positioned highest in the hierarchy of species. Do you understand that this is because they are superior to the other species? Because they are more valuable, more capable, closer to humanity?”
I watched him closely. “This conversation is confidential?”
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A mild flicker of annoyance crossed his face, quickly suppressed. We were staring at each other with an almost competitive intensity. “Yes,” he said.
“I understand that the taxin el are said to be those things,” I said, careful with how lightly I stressed the phrase said to be.
The gravity of what I’d said was not lost on Karrol Stir, who inhaled sharply as he leaned away from me. I couldn’t tell by his guarded expression how bad what I’d said was, but if the whole basis for their society was the superiority of some species over others, I imagined that what I’d said, and said so intentionally, was fairly taboo.
But whether he now saw me as an enemy of the state or just someone who was skeptical of it, I couldn’t tell.
“You’ve missed some species,” he said. “First and foremost is the one that you must never forget: humans are the top of the Hierarchy’s hierarchy. List them first.”
“All right.”
“Do you… know much about humans?” he asked, seeming almost worried he would offend me.
I fought the urge to let out a sudden laugh. Probably more than your collective civilization, I thought.
But I realized that truthfully I didn’t know much about how the species of the Hierarchy saw humans. They were some kind of ideal, certainly, but ideal what? What were all the other species of the Hierarchy supposed to aspire to? “I know that when there were humans, they were far more advanced than we were. I know they built this Colosseum, which is—” I wracked my brain. What had Cuby called it? “—a pillar of our civilization.”
Karrol Stir cocked his head at me. “I will explain,” he said, his tone making me think I’d gotten something very wrong. “Humans are perfect: they perfected living in the material world, then ascended, but first catalyzed the ascension of all other living beings in the galaxy by entrusting the taxin el with the Colosseum and the directives. From the Colosseum came the computing technology that was used to great effect in the War of Subjugation, and in the Colosseum we are, each of us, granted a chance to be closer to humanity than ever we were outside.”
“All right,” I said. As he’d spoken, I’d briefly remembered a time when I’d gotten up in the middle of the night and—because I was very groggy—peed on myself a bit by accident. Perfect beings, we humans.
“Each species of the hierarchy shares a single directive with all others, and this directive is most important: be as humans are. To master their way is to master all. What’s more, if this first directive is followed, all other directives will be unnecessary.”
I blinked. “How does that work?”
“A human acts perfectly,” said Karrol Stir. “It is a difficult argument to wrap one’s head around, but here: if a human could somehow wake in the body of a lamue, with all the deficiencies and strengths innate to the lamue, one would think that they would no longer be human, yes?”
“That makes sense,” I said.
“But if we bear the contradiction but a moment, we can see that a human who was a lamue would act out being a lamue perfectly—would act out the station, the position of a lamue. They would assess what they were, then act accordingly within the correct domain as a result, rendering all the directives which govern the lamue unnecessary.”
“Ah,” I said. “I think I see what you mean. But—what do humans act like?”
“I told you. They are perfect.”
“But what does that look like in practice?” I asked.
“Whatever is best,” said Karrol Stir, watching me closely. “It depends on the situation, but any species can get a good idea of the way by reading their directives.”
“I see,” I said.
“When the taxin el have fully perfected their way, they too will ascend as the old humans once did, ensuring in their omniscience that all of us who remain have a path before us—again, as the humans once did. The telorians will take their place as the masters of the Hierarchy, as they, apart from the taxin el, are closest to humanity.”
“And how long is that supposed to take?” I asked.
Karrol Stir shrugged. “It will happen someday.”
“And when the telorians ascend….”
“The phrenodine will become the masters of the Hierarchy,” he said.
I frowned. “Aren’t the taxin el in charge because they’re the best? Because they’re supposed to be—” how had he said it? “—more valuable, more capable? How will the telorians replace them if the taxin el are supposed to be better by their very nature?”
Karrol Stir seemed to stare blankly past me for a moment, his face slack. It was only when he spoke again that I realized that might have been his thinking face. “The taxin el will elevate them through their leadership, as they do to all of us.”
I nodded. Internally, I had to wonder how I’d be taking all of this if I weren’t still under the effect of the focus potion. On the one hand, it sounded absolutely brutal to live in the Hierarchy of El. On the other, it was all just too ridiculous: humans, the perfect being that we must all aspire toward? Maybe these taxin el who were running the place just needed to come to Earth and check out a black friday sale. That might dispel some of their beliefs.
But even as I thought this, I found myself shaking my head. Humans were just a symbol to these people—some impossible ideal used to keep them in check. Even the taxin el apparently weren’t expected to live up to the perfection of humans just yet—just rule over all the other species in their name. Convenient, that.
And if a real human showed up in their midst… well then that would be very inconvenient, wouldn’t it?
There was another question I had to ask. “Has anyone in the Hierarchy ever met a human?”
Karrol Stir paused a moment before answering. “Only Adalos and his followers when they came upon the Colosseum for the first time. The last humans gave him the directives and then left the galaxy forever.” He blinked. “Truly, you do not know these things?”
“Clearly not,” I said. “Is the Colosseum the only thing that the humans left behind?”
“Apart from the teachings of their way, and of the directives, yes,” he said.
“I see,” I said. “And these… other directives, the ones that are specific to each species, they’re what determines who does what?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Karrol Stir said, his voice hesitant. “You may wish to ask a lamue many of these questions—I fear that my answers thus far have been insufficient.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I am myself,” he said. “A karox of the Fold. And even among my people, I am not very spiritual or pious. Any of the lamue could teach you of the directives, of humanity, of Adalos and the first promise, and help you to understand the beauty in them, the light: I am insufficient.”
“Trust me,” I said. “You’ve been plenty help.”
“I’m glad,” he said, nodding. “Though you may have to ask the rest of your questions later.”
I opened my mouth to ask why, but I saw he meant a moment later: Cuby had entered the square, spotted us, and was coming toward us.
“Oh,” I said, spotting what she was carrying. “That’s… not good.”