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[>>Now replaying: Log 3.15.Ω C://XV/The Devil/Lucifer.omega]
Date: Error
Location: The Bunker at Progress’ Head // Zephyro’s Domain
[//reverse CaBd15.pZc]
//Lucifer wasn’t always a bad name, you know? In Latin fero lucis (or luci-fer) literally meant “Bringer of light”, probably a fanciful translation of the Hebrew word for “Morning-Star”.//
//15 - The Devil (Reversed) meaning: independence, release, reclaiming power, reclaiming control, freedom, revelation, liberty, righteousness//
[>>poGarYty rIverseO]
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
E1 %But was she really evil? Wouldn’t you do the same things she did, if you had been in her position? She only tried to make things better for us, and the Mage Lords hunted her for it. If you had been her, all alone and cornered, wouldn’t you have lost control, too?%
E2 %… Maybe. But considering the entire fuckup happening right now and where we are hiding, I sure as circuits hope I won’t lose my chips as hard as the Tyrant Divine.%
{memOS 11 - Release_ver: REQUIRES 300 LB}
Okay, that was new, helpful, and fucking annoying. Sure, maybe I hadn’t exactly needed it, but why hadn’t that been a feature before? Seriously, it was like Chris was making the entire thing up as we went along.
Actually, maybe they did. The notifications I had received had been steadily improving while I was in here. They were focusing on whatever was needed, and left out the unimportant stuff, even if I wished I’d get a bit more info every once in a while.
But then I imagined my complete hardware readout hammering into my brain every time I changed something. I actually flinched at the mere thought. Not only would that be incredibly uncomfortable, but it would also distract me from the action, and take up unnecessary space. Just imagine the time it would take to read through all of that every single time, just to find one minor change! Nobody had the time for that.
Anyway, 300 LB was far outside my budget.
That brought me almost back to square one. But no matter how I turned the problem in my head, I couldn’t find a satisfying solution. I wished my team was here, or my friends. They’d know what to do, and make me feel a little dumb for not asking them sooner.
So I looked at Zephyro and felt a little dumb for not asking him sooner.
“If you were me, and able to improve any component and program you had, which one would you pick?”
“Your soul-container, Sultana,” Zephyro said without missing a beat. “Though I would prefer if you didn’t call them programs.”
“Alright,” I said, even though that hot little voice inside my mind told me to forge ahead, to insist he speak like I wanted, and not the other way around. It took me a second and several breaths to push it down.
“I don’t think I have one of those, though. Is it some sort of pr— ability I put around my personality?”
“Ah Sultana, not quite. It the place where our memories and thoughts are stored. Every one of us has one.”
So it was the DPM.
“You’re insane!” I said it before I could even think about how to respond. Did he not know what he was asking of me? The gall! The last time I had tried to advance someone, they had— the thought crystalized in my core, the cold of its mere presence creeping into every fiber of my flesh. The terror began to slow my steps, and reached for my heart and—
Zephyro was such a— he was— My anger flickered in my chest, offering warmth and shelter. But I knew it wasn’t Zephyro’s fault. But then whose fault was it? Who could my hate latch onto to nurture its flames?
> You only have yourself to blame
Olre’s words stoked the fire, and as his laughter ricochet inside my skull like shrapnel, the flames drove back the cold. I was weak. I was dumb. I was not nearly good enough to live up to the expectations other people put on me. If I just finally got my shit together, I’d be able to fix things, to make it right…
> So you can disappoint us over and over! How wonderful, Tyrant Divine.
Shut UP!
All I needed was to control myself.
Zephyro was looking at me, worried.
“What?!” I asked, unable to contain the heat. I regretted it immediately. I was such a fuckup, I was—
I took a deep breath. Not this loop. Not again.
“Sorry,” I said instead. “I… I’m still struggling.”
“How could you not be, Sultana?” Zephyro said, as compassionate as I wished I could be. “From what I remember of the records, and what I now understand of your situation, it can’t have been more than a few months since—“
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I said, voice edged with icy finality.
“As you wish, Sultana,” Zephyro said. Again, understanding, but not apologetic, like a man who knew his intentions were good, and that was all that mattered. The envy almost swallowed me whole.
It cost me considerable effort to get my mind back on track. I was in control of the weak, pitiful parts of me. I would keep them contained. I could do this.
{SAINTECH DPM v0.2.5: REQUIRES 30 LB}
Something told me that I shouldn’t be doing this. That this was a bad idea. The thought felt timid and weak, so I corralled it to the others and locked it away.
The cost to advance my DPM was far more manageable. The only issue was that using Logic could attract the enemy to our position, even though they probably knew where we were going by now. I needed to get a better grasp of Logic in general, and how to control it in particular.
I could do that. The first few times I had used my Wish, I’d frantically grabbed for that ephemeral reverberation in my soul. It had taken me years before I truly understood how to use it, and it only became second nature during the retreat from Novus Apex. Too late. To save my friends, but not late enough to avenge them.
While Logic sounded very much the same in theory, it felt slightly different in practice. Back in my body, the Wish had suffused me completely, pouring out of my soul like water from a shallow well, soaking into every fiber of my being. Now, it was like there was a thin membrane surrounding the energy, which made handling it a whole different beast.
Pouring from a bag as opposed to dipping a cup, so to speak.
During my first weeks on Tobes, I’d found out that by controlling my breathing, I could control the application of my Wish. Of course, I found out later that it wasn’t timing my exhalations, but my state of mind that really mattered.
It’s your emotions, Sam. Patti said in my head.
It’s your control, Sam. Olre said, drowning her out.
My willpower, persistence, and focus shaped the Wish in my mind, before I released it to shape the world. Subconsciously, I had fallen into the same habits when handling the Logic.
I centered my thoughts on the concept of my identity, of what made me, me. I thought of the endless dark I had woken up in. I thought of fear. I thought of not wanting to lose myself.
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> Coward.
I gritted my teeth.
Shut up, Olre.
> Why? So you can be weak again, and kill us all? So that you can kill my Sister? You need to be better than this, Torchbearer. You need to bury your weakness and finally become a ruler. Or do you want to be alone again?
No.
> Then do your fucking job. Take control.
I clenched my fists, thought of resistance and perseverance. Of momentum and inertia. Of that endless, roaring stream of fire that would always give me strength and wash me clean of weakness.
If I hadn’t listened to Patti, I could have killed them all. She would still have been alive, and Stax and Lorelye and Olre and everyone else. I would have kept them safe. I would have kept control. I would have saved my people, and no one would have called me Tyrant Divine.
> Is that really who you want to be Sam?
Yes. This is who I am. This is me!
I am I control.
I took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully, willing the Wish to be quiet.
It was this push of will, this innocent little attempt to reign in who I was that began the spiral.
The Wish had always responded to what I really wanted, not what I thought I needed. It was an ephemeral, emotional thing that had coalesced in a moment of my most desperate need, and it served only that small, scared part of me that sat lonely and abandoned in the deepest pits of my soul.
The part that is weak. Said Olre in my head. You can’t show them you’re weak.
The Wish did not care about weakness, though. It didn’t care about power and control. It cared about that tiny fragile light, alone in that vast darkness. It cared about me, about who I really was.
Oh, the Wish went along with the anger as long as anger was useful.
But the Wish’s divine might would not be caged, let alone controlled by something as insignificant as fury.
My anger, on the other hand, cared for control and power very much, and didn’t give a fuck about what the Wish wanted, or any of my other feelings for that matter. The wrath only cared about erasing everything and anything that dared attack me. If it had to lock away that insignificant, struggling flicker to keep it from polluting my Wish with its weakness, it would. Just to keep that light safe, of course…
So when I started to feel my Wish slipping from my grasp, my anger intensified, and bore down on that small, struggling glimmer with all its fury.
How dare it infect with its impotence?
That made the Wish push back. It would not be contained.
That made the anger surge. It would not tolerate this fragility.
The Wish broke its bonds and gave me as much of itself as it could, pushing that small, vulnerable part of me up and through the dark, to the surface of my mind. In doing so, it broke through layer after layer of carefully constructed lies I’d used to keep that soft little thing locked away. As chains shattered and locks broke, anguish clawed at my chest from within. Its struggle freed all my other emotions, too, and they flooded my soul. Together they rose, higher and higher, until they dominated my mind with its desire for safety and control, and most grievous of all, repentance.
I reached for the anger, begged it to finally give me the security it had promised over and over again.
But it cared not for me, single-mindedly boring down on the Wish, hell-bent on dominance.
> Who is the wielder, and who is the tool, Sam?
I am!
The Wish erupted from my lungs in an explosion of energy.
{CONSUMED LOGIC - 30 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 172 LB}
{SAINTECH DPM v0.1
IS NOW
SAINTECH DPM v.025 BETA}
{Memory: 16/20 LKB RAM}
The sound of the bell rung through the streets with the force of a 500.000 Watt concert speaker. Dust exploded away from me in a whirlwind. Zephyro spun to face me. He looked as if he wanted to slap me across the face, and pick me up and carry me away, and sink to his knees in reverent supplication, all at the same time.
I was still on the exhale, my shock squeezing the air from my lungs. Before I could stop it, another chunk of my Logic slipped through my mind and into my core.
No, no, no stop! FUCK! I AM IN CONTROL. STOP!
{CONSUMED LOGIC - 60 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 112 LB}
{SAINTECH DPM v.025 BETA
IS NOW
SAINTECH DPM v.069 ALPHA}
{Memory: 17.5/20 LKB RAM}
Another knell mixed with the first, their resonance intermingling and crashing against each other. The ground under my feet shook. My clothes whipped around me and Zephyro stumbled back, his yelling lost in the cacophony. He had to lean into the torrent to not get pushed against a wall. The wind whipped the fires away so strongly, it robbed them of their oxygen and left blazing infernos extinguished in an instant. A few housefronts cracked, shattered, and collapsed under the constant pressure building within and around me.
NO! No! Please! No…
I was lost and alone and confused. I just needed—
The fury sparked, and I reached for it, but it was so hot, and just holding it was so exhausting.
> “I don’t want to be angry all the time, Patti. I don’t want to push people away, and lose them.”
>
> “Then don’t be angry, Sam. Be something— someone else.”
>
> "But who?”
>
> “Well, Sam, who do you want to be?”
With a pained cry, I let go, and in doing so released one last shuddering, Logic-filled breath.
{CONSUMED LOGIC - 90 LB}
{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 22 LB}
{SAINTECH DPM v.069 ALPHA
IS NOW
SAINTECH DPM v.9}
{Memory: 20/20 LKB RAM}
A third bell joined just as the first one started to fade. It was softer, distant. It filled the silence between the other two with a haunting, hollow sound that slipped into cracks and crevices and pushed in deep, ceaselessly looking for a place where a soul would hide in the dark.
For a split second, I was back in the camp again, with the bandits.
> My sword lies to the side. Hands press me into the mud. I scream, terrified and angry, terrified of how angry I was, and angry about how terrified I feel. The Wish explodes from my lips. A man writhes in front of me as it streams out of me and into him.
>
> I still think of of him as a man, even though his screams are no longer human.
>
> The hands holding me tremble, then slip away when his fourth mouth starts speaking.
>
> “The torch lights the endless sky it points the way for them and for you I will do anything and everyone will come and rejoice for the flame will nourish you with heat and scorch your bones free of sin…”
When the memory faded I noticed I was screaming. The world glitched around me, structures re-forming themselves into half-realized, impossible nightmares. Windows like mouths blind to the eye, stairs leading into nothing, reaching up into the empty sky like fingers clawing for help. The mosaic below our feet, showing my Torch in intricate detail, cracked. Behind us, the arch crumbled and rose again as a towering monstrosity of obsidian and flesh and cables. The bells tolled and tolled and the world changed and changed and Zephyro was on the floor and it was all my fault and I would never be in control ever again. I fell to my knees, dry-heaving to dislodge sobs that didn’t want to emerge.
{INSUFFICIENT LOGIC}
A pillar of cyan light erupted from my chest and shot into the sky, washing over the entire world. The city glitched again, and bathed in blue, it re-formed.
As the last decibel of the third bell faded, the nightmare was over. I fell forward, the sharp stones of the cracked mosaic jabbing into my palms.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—“ I whispered, and I didn’t even know who I was talking to, just the cracked stone underneath me and perhaps everyone whom I had ruined before.
Stax’s eyes danced eternally in my mind, his soft smile so far away, almost lost to time.
> You can’t be angry all the time, Sam. It’s a great tool, for sure, but… it’s also a drug. Once you get used to being angry, every problem starts to look like something that anger can solve, even when it doesn’t.
>
> After a while, the anger wields you, and not the other way around.
I took a deep breath. Stax’s words hadn’t even registered before Olre drowned him out.
> You can not show them any weakness. Once they see you’re weak, they will leave, and take everything from you.
“FUCK!”
I slammed my fist down in the middle of the torch on the mosaic, sending stones clattering away. A few shards glinted in the emerging firelight and read
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱ 99%
My hand was bleeding. Someone touched my shoulder and I flinched, whirling around. It was the Vizier.
“I didn’t mean to, Zephyro, I…”
“I know, Sultana. I know.” His eyes dripped compassion like honey and I wished I could be weak enough to just drown myself in them. Instead, I hit the damn mosaic again, harder this time. My knuckles split open. The cracks running through the emblem widened, a spiderweb of regret.
[DPM integrity]
▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱ 98%
I shrugged him off. “If they didn’t know I was here before, they do now.”
I got to my feet, not daring to look at Zephyro.
The Vizier, however didn’t say his single word, just let his reassuring presence do the talking.
He was good at it, too. His quiet composure calmed the torrent still raging inside me and left no place for rage. And so, like an accomplished arsonist in the dead of night, it left.
It took all that safety I had relied on with it, and I wanted to reach after it, to beg it to stay and keep me warm against the fear I could already feel trickling through the cracks.
But it had betrayed me, manipulated me to control my every action. Just like Olre, towards the end. If I hadn’t left when I did, I’d no longer be me. Just a puppet.
And so I couldn’t be angry anymore. It terrified me.
But without the anger, who was I?
> Well, who do you want to be, Sam?