[Part 4/5]

My eyes wandered down and I found the torch lying close by, where the rat had tackled me to the ground. I walked over to it, feet dragging over the ground and breath heavy. The flame still glowed, and when I bent down to grab it, I noticed one of the spikes was still wet with oily blood. It must have pierced the rat’s hide when we rolled over it, activating the skill.

The realization of how lucky I had been shot through my like liquid ice. Zephyro must have noticed me tense up. He came closer and for a second he looked like he wanted to reach out and touch my shoulder, but he didn’t. He was covered in dirt, sticky inert acid, and blood. I didn’t know how much was his own. He had started to glitch sporadically, again.

“Are you alright, Sultana?” he asked, and I hated how concerned he sounded. Like I couldn’t handle myself! I would— I would take a deep breath and try to hold it together. He had helped me. Saved my life, probably. Because I hadn’t been able to do it myself. I had to rely on him because I couldn’t even kill a rat, with its dark greedy eyes and teeth, biting deep. Without his help, the Feral would have connected to my soul and scraped my mind off it like scales from a fish. And then it would have eaten until there was nothing left.

I couldn’t handle myself. Someone had to save me again because I was completely powerless. I needed his help. When he left, as they all did, I would be alone and helpless, and— I barely noticed my thoughts spinning out of control, my mind fraying like a rope that had held too much for too long. It was the last thing holding me over that dark abyss that I had fallen into once before and vowed to never enter again.

I twined that exhausted spark of my anger into my mind. It would keep me safe and sane like it always did. I just had to control it. And I was in control.

Squaring my shoulders and forcing myself to him in the eyes, I shook my head at Zephyro. “I’m fine. It won’t happen again. I’ll make sure of it.”

He nodded, clearly unconvinced. I squinted. Why didn’t he believe me? It was the truth. It had to be the truth. It wouldn’t happen again. Maybe I should wipe that frown off his f— I pulled back, throttling the anger. I needed to save it for what really mattered.

…The rope in my mind frayed a little more.

“What is your plan then, Sultana?” Zephyro asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“I uh— I need a better CPU. My firewall keeps crashing because the load gets too high.”

Again Zephyro nodded, eyes unfocused. “That is a sound plan, Sultana. I had hoped to support you more, but…” He looked up, towards his people still trying to flee into the palace. The crowd was about halfway in, but that nevertheless meant several hundred refugees still huddled outside. Zephyro’s moon bathed the scene in silver and red, horrifying and serene at once.

“I don’t think I could just cut them off either,” I heard myself say, surprised at how true it sounded. Like I believed it myself. I thought back to my friends. Thought about how they died. I hadn’t saved them. I couldn’t. I was powerless. No, no, that wasn’t right. I could have saved them, I just didn’t want to. I made that decision. I had proved the Conservationists right. By sacrificing my friends to save myself, I had admitted to being a tyrant.

My mouth was dry, my stomach in knots. In my mind, the abyss gaped. The rope frayed.

“Ah Sultana, of course you wouldn’t!” Zephyro said, startling me out of my thoughts.

I scoffed. “Let me get the CPU upgraded, then we should probably protect the crowd, I will—“

Zephyro interrupted me by grasping my shoulder. His hand was arm and annoyingly reassuring. His eyes searched mine, but I couldn’t meet them. “You would not, Sultana. Not if you had a choice.”

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I whirled on him, snarling. “You always have a choice, you just need to be strong enough to make it.”

The Vizier’s eyes held mine. “But Sultana, to think like this is to build a fortress on dunes. Time will erode this belief until it crumbles and buries you within the ruins.” It was an easy enough sentiment to hold in contempt, but it was his sincerity that gave it a resonance that dug straight through my core.

The tension in my body started to melt away. Suddenly, I felt like crying. Not because of pain or fear, but something else. A new feeling. Something that sanded off all my edges so thoroughly it hurt. It made me feel soft and helpless and drained the fight out of me.

I loathed everything about it.

So I clenched my teeth until my jaw hurt and the feeling passed.

{CPU Load: ▼ 39%}

{Core Temp: ▼ 79° C}

{[Arx, Saint’s Embrace] IS NOW ACTIVE.}

My armor resealed itself like invisible hands seamlessly wove new fabric from the frayed edges around holes and gashes.

“Be that as it may,” I began, words pressed between clenched teeth, but stopped to center myself. I inhaled deeply, worked my jaw. “Any advice on upgrades I should get?”

Zephyro looked at me for a moment longer as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it. Instead, he regarded the remnants of the rats, scratching his beard absent-mindedly. “I wonder, Sultana, why you didn’t mark the strongest Feral first. I know there must be a wisdom to it, but I am afraid cannot decipher it without your guidance.”

I gave him a bland look. “I was a senior manager and leader of a country, Zephyro. I can tell when someone is trying to blow smoke up my ass to make me pliable.”

He did me the courtesy of looking extremely sheepish but didn’t say another word until I raised an eyebrow.

“Alright fine, Sultana. You must pardon my bluntness, but you should have marked the strongest one first. I know that the experiences you had since you entered my Domain made you… I mean they haven’t been favorable to fostering a desire to face Ferals head-on, but still, I—“

“I will only say this once,” there was ice in my voice. Perhaps more than I wanted. “Don’t ever call me a coward again.” I cut Zephyro off with a sharp gesture before he could respond. “How would I know which one is the strongest just by looking at them, Zephyro? Huh? I woke up less than a day ago after who the fuck knows how many years. I don’t have your experience, and I certainly can’t tell how strong a digital rat is.”

“I- I thought… What about your network scanner, Sultana?” He had paled even more so than before.

“Where would I get a network scanner? It’s not like there was one waiting in the welcome package on my desk.”

“But… but Sultana. Your Essence, its strength is almost worthy of Jannah, of paradise. How can you possess such strength and not have such basic tools at your disposal? I wondered when you created a firewall, but I thought you…” he trailed off, face now positively ashen under the blood and grime.

He was laying it on thick. So thick it made my blood boil over the small voice that tried to tell me something was wrong. I ignored it. There was nothing wrong. There couldn’t be. I had enough complications, I just…

The rope frayed. I laced it with more anger. The cycle continued.

I snorted derisively. “It’s just a few terabytes of Logic.” A part of me wanted to take back the words. It knew that Zephyro didn’t like talking about AI like that. He preferred his ineffective, confusing, mystical vocabulary.

A larger, angrier part did not care at all. It just saw a burning city, a blood-red moon, dangerous glinting steel, and a panicked mob of peasants. A lot to track. A lot to control. Zephyro’s feelings were the least of my problems. Does he deserve this? The woman he dedicated his life to just walking over him? Is this who you want to be?

Zephyro grimaced for a second, but then he slumped. “Sultana, you asked me for advice before. On ‘Upgrades.’ My advice is to learn the ability to gauge your enemies’ strength. You must learn to spot peril from a mere glance, for in a Domain, not everything is as it seems.

I rolled my eyes, but in a sudden moment of clarity, I realized he was right. I was basically blind, and there was danger everywhere. Zephyro looked like a middle-aged man, but I had seen him shove carts twice his weight with a casual shove, and slice a giant wolf made out of cables in two with the friggin moon. If I ever encountered someone like Zephyro, but hostile, I wouldn’t even know what hit me. One moment, I’d be full of triumph, and the next, I’d lie there, my blood trickling into the grass. Just like—

My breathing turned shallow, and Pharus started to slip from my fingers. I grabbed it tighter. The leather creaked under my fingers as I strangled my thoughts, laced that fraying rope with burning sinew. That was the past. It was done. It didn’t matter. Only the future mattered.