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[>>Now replaying: Log 3.5 - Nightfall]
Date: Error
Location: The Bunker at Progress’ Head // Zephyro’s Domain
//But what happens when the sun is gone? What happens if it never rises again? We can not know this, for we have always known the light.//
//Did you know that plants thrive in sunlight, but they also need to sleep? Studies have shown that if plants don’t get a bit of rest every now and then, their fruit tastes bland. It’s the same for humans and animals, of course. We all need sleep, and a time where we can barely see is perfect for it, despite how dangerous it might seem. Without sleep, without the night, perhaps we might not even have built communities! Why else would you need someone, at the very start, than to watch over you while you rested and can’t defend yourself?//
[>>DATA CORRUPTED]
E1 %…knows where she came from. Some say she was born as a farmer’s daughter, others say she just appeared. They all agree the first time people noticed her when she started helping people in the old city of Wexler, not far from here.%
The world glitched violently, the ground shaking around us. Night fell almost instantly, and a discordant, screeching noise filled the air. It sounded like dropping a thumb drive into a low-powered document shredder, lasted for what felt like minutes, and increased in pitch until it finally, mercifully, stopped.
The next thing I knew, I heard alarm bells tolling from every tower in the city.
I found myself on the floor, knees hugged to my chest. I blinked the dust from my eyes, trying to get them to focus. My clothes were ripped and torn in several places, revealing unblemished (but more importantly unharmed) brown skin, so different from the stress-blotched pale mess I’d had in the real world. I didn’t remember having fallen. I coughed and accidentally inhaled more sand and dirt. It tasted like blood and ash and stuck to my tongue.
Working to spit it out, I oriented myself. I was lying in front of the throne. It had a giant crack through the backrest, and as I watched, it slowly split in two, one half crumbling away to either side. I’d lost the scepter. I didn’t know why, but I searched for it, finding it lying on the edge of the hill, halfway buried in the sand. I shifted, trying to find Zephyro. I found him on the ground behind me, bleeding from his eyes and nose.
“Shit,” I croaked, “Zephyro!?” I inhaled more dust, forcing another coughing fit as I struggled to my knees. I didn’t know enough. I needed an overview. People would rely on me to— I cut off the thought before it went spiraling into itself.
Instead, I cast a quick glance over the city, trying to assess the damage. Down at the foot of the hill, the city gates lay broken. When they had exploded, they took several blocks of smaller houses with them, both inside and outside the city walls.
Zephyro shifted. He flickered, then became enveloped in a cyan glow. The world glitched again, back to its pre-exploded state. The gates were back in place and the houses still standing. Not unscathed, though. Small fires flickered everywhere around the city, and many of the guards were just gone. Looking closer, there wasn’t a single house that wasn’t either on fire or had debris scattered all over it. Only the palace was the last building left relatively untouched, and even it had scorch marks on its previously pristine walls.
I was back on the throne, looking out over the city. But as the desert flickered and burned, I noticed something strange on the horizon. There, where the sky met sand, the world was coming undone.
In the distance behind the dunes, the world had started to unravel, both land and sky dissolving into a hungry black nothingness. I got up to look behind us, and sure enough, there the world was vanishing as well. The darkness approached far quicker than I would have liked, which couldn’t be good.
I turned again, frantic, facing Zephyro. It seemed he could no longer hold a stable form, glitching through various states of health, now joyfully laughing, now bruised, now bleeding from several wounds, now dead on the ground, and finally just sand-blasted bones.
“I have failed you, Sultana,” Zephyro said, his voice distorted and coming from my left even though he was standing right in front of me. He glitched again, back to a wounded state, and while the edges of his outline seemed jagged and his textures had drastically lowered resolution, he managed to keep a stable form. Blood seeped into his robes as he stood, proud despite his shame.
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“I have failed you, Sultana, but I will not fail my most important task. Come with me.” He turned, robotic, and started staggering down the side of the hill. For a second I hesitated, but then I walked over to where the dropped in the sand and picked it up, then followed the Vizier down the mountain.
For a second I worried that my flowing clothes would trip me up while walking down the side of the mountain, but I had surprisingly little trouble moving. That’s by design, I realized. The clothes may have looked luxurious, more representative than practical, but their clever cut allowed for a wide range of movement. They seemed expertly suited for traversing over sand and other treacherous terrain. I even could see myself fighting in them, which I guessed was also quite intentional.
After a long period of time hurrying after Zephyro, I caught up to him as we reached the outskirts of the city at the base of the small mountain. While we walked down the last gentle slopes, people emerged from the buildings around us to swarm towards the city gates. The sudden press of people made it harder to follow the Vizier, and I had to suppress my annoyance. This hadn’t happened to me since the fall of Novus Apxes, and even before that, I had been used to people making way.
But if these people recognized me, they didn’t act like it. Panicked, they shoved and jostled to reach the presumed safety of the city walls. Quite often the crowd got between Zephyro and me, but the Vizier did not stop. It did not seem that he even noticed he was almost losing me. I soothed my anger, telling myself that he was worried about his people, and instead used my excess energy to press onward, through the crush.
When I caught up close enough to be sure I wouldn’t lose him, I briefly turned and stared at the void closing in behind us. It was far away still but approached at a steady pace, inexorable like a sandstorm. I imagined the void howling as it consumed me, confined me to that state of absolute nothing again, with only my thoughts and regrets for company, occasionally interrupted by some cryptic messages from Chris and a massive headache as more information printed itself into my brain. The thought almost made me cry, which in turn made my rage offer itself to steady me.
I turned back and scanned the crowd again. Zephyro was walking some hundred meters ahead of me, moving faster than he should, judging by his movements. Each step took him twice the distance it normally would have, like he was sliding over the ground with each footstep. Sometimes his movements stuttered and he shot forward a few meters, sometimes he teleported back a step or two, but he always kept going, moving forward, towards the city, and the palace.
Fuck. I started pushing through the throng of people again, trying to make up the distance. Then, something happened I hadn’t expected.
Someone noticed me.
“The Sultana!” someone said, and several heads turned in my direction.
I smiled hesitantly. I had never seen these people before and didn’t know how they would react to my presence in their panic. They looked just like regular people, I realized. Some were old, some were young, some had brown hair, some black, and I even spotted a few strawberry blondes, like my own hair in real life.
There were boys and girls, men and women, all dressed in medieval Middle Eastern clothing, all wide robes, and turbans, and golden ornaments. Except that some of them carried weirdly anachronistic objects, like blowtorches, futuristic devices that looked like hand-held scanners, or even chainsaws and power drills.
They all stared, and then someone lowered their eyes, and that was some sort of sign for all of them to do the same.
I felt the familiar burden of responsibility settle onto my shoulders like a yoke. There had been a time when I enjoyed that, when it had driven me to do great things. Now it just felt like it was crushing me with its weight.
Still, I smiled and nodded at them in thanks, and by their expression, you would have thought I’d just gifted them a brand new car in some sort of TV show.
“Go,” I said. “Don’t let me keep you, I’ll be right behind.” My voice echoed over the now-silent crowd with practiced professionalism. I’d never been a woman of many words, never been the person to woo the masses. That was what Stax had been for, or Olre, for better or worse. But I was good enough to know what to say, most of the time.
It seemed like I had said the right thing, though, as their blissful smiles grew a little wider. Then one of them yelled “Make way for the Sultana!” and calls of “Make way for the Salaf!” echoed it.
And then, of course, someone yelled “She is going to save us!” and that weight on my shoulders became nearly unbearable as Olre’s words echoed in my mind.
> They believed in you, and you disappointed them. You are a disappointment, Samantha. It’s all you have ever been and all you ever will be.
As I hurried toward Zephyro through the chasm the crowd formed for me, their ghostly smiles haunting my mind, I tried to get angry at him for ignoring me, to reach that comfortable place of scorching heat and electric tension in my chest. It would keep me going. It would stave off the fear, for as long as necessary. I needed it. Desperately.
It came easy, giving me the confidence I needed to stand tall in that way I had learned made people notice. It flooded my thoughts with the uncanny tension I needed to survive. Someone in my path did not notice me approaching and I grabbed their shoulder. Even though I tried to ignore it, I saw the terrified expression of the young woman as she spun.
Suddenly, the feeling in my stomach turned sour. Why am I doing this? Do I want to be like this?
> Who do you want to be, Sam?
The answer burst forth as quickly and violently as water from a ruptured main line. It was the anger. Every time I used it, it got a little stronger, collected in my blood like mercury. Every time, it got easier to reach for it, until it became as habitual as smoking, or that glass of wine before bedtime.
I needed to stop.
Without the anger, everything felt too threateningly real, too imminent, too big. And I felt small in comparison. Helpless. It took me a second to reign in those thoughts and to regain control.
I took a deep breath. While I could pretend this is all Zephyro’s fault, or that these people were somehow to blame for my feeling… bad, what would that actually do for me? Nothing would change, and I couldn’t help but wonder if their devotion to me had limits.
> You’re going to fuck it up again, Sam. In the end, you will always hurt those that love you most. So go on. Earn your name, oh great Tyrant Divine.
I recoiled at the memory, and like a child touching a hot light bulb, I let go of the anger and gave in to shame. Immediately, the sick feeling of my rage fighting against my values faded.
And yet, a part of me wished to stay angry nonetheless, because fuck, the fear was so much worse.
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[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1128949520588357752/1145094471269236838/madix3_Arabian_painting_of_a_crowd_fleeing_on_a_burning_thoroug_4ae7d1f4-60d6-4f79-be71-b5c459d5ad0c.png]