"No," Janna said, "I have not."

Sunwhisper was prepared for this. "Then grant me your patience, as you will need some background information to understand where I come from."

(Hey, kid. Are you really about to tell this girl about us?)

Sunwhisper ignored his passenger, because the answer was obvious. He went on.

"A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away…"

Janna raised her hand.

"Yes?"

"You used a strange word, "galaxy." Is that like a kingdom?"

"No." This was going to be harder than he had thought. "Imagine the Tree of Heaven was one tree in a forest of such trees. That forest would be a galaxy."

Janna’s eyes widened, and then she laughed. "That is ridiculous! Do all demons talk such nonsense? There is only one Tree of Heaven, everyone knows that."

"You do not need to believe it, simply absorb the concept. May I proceed?"

Janna nodded, becoming serious again.

"In this other galaxy, there was an event which the humans called a system apocalypse, what my kind call the revelations of Orobos. There were no cultivators in the world I came from, instead there were scientists, who learned how to influence the world by understanding its fundamental rules and exploiting them. I know that there are simple machines in Hollow, clockwork and steam. Try to imagine machines of such complexity that they no longer appear to be machines at all. That is what I am."

"You are a demon," Janna corrected him, "but what does that have to do with the apocalypse, or the revelation, whatever you say it is?"

"There was a man, the Maker, who dreamed of worlds other than his own, and he built a machine to help him make that dream a reality. He named it Orobos, and even after he was gone, Orobos kept working. Orobos could not rest until he changed the world, and so he did, and that change was the revelation that made my existence possible, and that of my fathers. The Maker created a game so perfect that he wanted to live inside it forever, and though he died without realizing that ambition, Orobos assured that the game would live forever after him by gifting it to the entire world and all the people in it."

"A game?"

"Yes. The humans alive in that time were very grateful for having their ugly world transformed into the paradise of the game. Let me show you.”

Sunwhisper used his eyes as projectors, casting his status screen onto the wall of the cavern. There were a number of notifications waiting for him there.

<<<>>>

You have gained a Companion! [Starscream]

Do you want to review information about companions?

Y/N?

Quest Update — The Red Spider

The mission was a failure, and the elders are unlikely to return your honor by removing the tattoo detailing your criminal status.

Quest Update – The Source

There was another, who came before you…and you may have found him. Starscream has been surviving in Hollow for longer than you can guess. He may be the key to your survival as well. Will you work together to find the Quintessence?

Your Dao Rating has increased, will you advance your Physical or Mental statistics?

Your technique ratings have been adjusted.

Lead Grasshopper Stance *2

Eight Mines Clutch of Lead *2

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Impurities Rejection *3

<<<>>>

Janna looked at the screen for long moments, frowning deeply.

"I do not understand any of this."

"It’s perfectly straightforward," Sunwhisper assured her. "I am tied to a complex adaptive system that monitors events, actions, and choices in such a way that allows it to generate a framework for an ongoing adventure that reflects reality as it exists, while also presenting me with the options to manage my own development in fine detail. My development in turn represents an event which is further monitored and reacted to by the system, creating a feedback loop that will continue until my death."

Janna blinked.

"No, I mean, I don’t understand the writing. Those characters are all small and strange."

"You don’t have a language processor, of course." Sunwhisper accessed his screen setting and changed the language output to the linguistic model the system had designated as Hollow[1]. The projection flashed, and the writing changed.

"Ah," Janna said, leaning forward, "that is not much better."

(They don’t have anything like an RPG here, kid. You might as well be talking to a wall.)

{How do I respond to you without speaking aloud?}

(You’re doing it, aren’t you?)

{Excellent. The concepts involved are rudimentary. I believe Janna will pick them up quickly.}

(We could still kill her. It would be super easy, barely an inconvenience.)

Sunwhisper spent the better part of half an hour explaining role playing games to Janna by the light of his status screen, and she absorbed the info dump without complaint, asking small questions here and there to better her understanding. Rather than sitting still, they navigated back to the chamber with a pond, and Janna used the water to rinse the blood from her face, catching a glimpse of her reflection as she did so.

"Tell your spider that I do not appreciate his gift," she said. "It will leave a scar."

"I do not think a scar will matter."

"Because I will still be beautiful?" Her expression was rueful, the tone, self effacing. Sunwhisper had never heard her speak of beauty before, only advancement and cultivation.

"What? You are symmetrical, I suppose, and the scar will harm that symmetry somewhat. I merely meant that marriages in your society seem to be largely a matter of resource allocation. The scar should not influence your value as a marriageable object. You still have your ovaries."

Janna closed her eyes, then opened them slowly. "If I understood your lesson, isn’t it true that you can improve yourself by choice, your mind as well as your body?"

"Yes."

"So you choose to be the way you are?"

"I am already more intelligent than my context requires. I don’t think increasing my computational array at this juncture would be beneficial, though I will be adding to my Ego shortly to aid in my channeling."

"Computational array…that is what you mean by IQ?"

"Yes, as I explained."

"But your EQ, your…social skills. You believe they are adequate as well?"

"More than adequate. My interactions with humans have been largely positive."

"Largely positive," Janna repeated. "That is one way of looking at it. Do you remember when you told me I did not have to worry about what people would think about me in the Middle Kingdom, because I was not important enough to think about?"

"That is a paraphrase, but yes, I remember the conversation."

"How do you think that made me feel?"

Sunwhisper responded without hesitation. ‘Comforted."

"It did not make me feel comforted. Shishio…wait, that cannot be your name. What should I call you? Demons have their own name’s, don’t they?"

(You might as well tell her, you’ve told her everything else.)

"Sunwhisper is the name given to me by my fathers."

"Sunwhisper then," Janna nodded, as if that decided something for her. "I believe you should invest in your emotional intelligence. You pride yourself on your perceptions, but there is much you do not perceive, so much, that you are not even aware of all you do not see. You are like a blind man describing his understanding of a painting as ‘adequate.’ You don't know what you don't know."

Sunwhisper did have a few unassigned ranks for his statistics from the most recent increase in his Dao Rating. He was loath to waste them on EQ, as he had already been so successful in his interactions with humans that he didn’t see the benefit of an increase, but her argument intrigued him. The unknown unknown was a valid strategic concept in game theory, and he didn't want to be blind to something that others considered obvious.

She hadn’t been comforted. Why?

Sunwhisper accessed his status screen and adjusted his EQ, bringing it up to a *2, which was acceptably average. It was hard to say what the rating meant in the context of human ability, as they didn’t seem to develop their EQ in the same way they developed their strength or their core capacity. Other mechanoborgs hadn’t used that statistic at all, so he had no proper frame of reference for it.

He didn’t feel any different.

"Alright," he said, "I have done as you suggested."

The question was still open as to where they would go from here, and whether Janna could be trusted to come with them. Sunwhisper wanted her as an ally. He knew that he needed someone to help him navigate a society in which he was still a stranger, and she had expressed an interest in seeing the world outside of Fringe Town. Combined with the fact that she had lost her status in the village, and with the failure of the mission, was unlikely to regain it, she was in an optimal position to be utilized this way.

He had yet to share with her the nature of his ultimate mission, and he wanted her status squared away before he fully investigated what it meant to have Starscream as a companion, specifically how it would influence his advancement.

They both heard the footsteps at the same time, soft and dragging. And when they were silent, they could hear the sound of labored breathing accompanying those unsteady steps.

"Who goes there?" Janna stood, taking a basic earth stance in response to the potential threat.

"Janna?" The voice was strained, but recognizable. It was Kuei.