[Log 3.5]

[Nightfall]

Behind Zephyro, all of the city gates, majestic and imperious, true statements of craftsmanship and the pride of the people living behind them, exploded at once.

I felt the blast a split second later.

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 my eyes, trying to get things back into focus. My clothes were ripped and torn in several places, revealing unblemished (and 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. My eyes searched for it, finding it lying on the edge of the hill, halfway buried in the sand. I shifted, looking for Zephyro, and I found him on the ground behind me, bleeding from his eyes and nose.

“Shit. Zephyro!?” I croaked, inhaling more dust, forcing another coughing fit as I struggled to my knees. 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. They took several blocks of houses with them in the explosion, both inside and outside the city walls.

Zephyro shifted, enveloped in a teal blue glow, and 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, I couldn’t see any house that wasn’t either on fire or had debris scattered all over it. The palace was the last building left relatively untouched.

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.

Behind the dunes in the distance, the world started to unravel, both land and heaven dissolving into a hungry black nothingness. I got up, whirling around, and sure enough, far in the distance behind the throne, the world was vanishing as well.

I turned again, frantic, facing Zephyro. He could no longer hold a stable form it seemed, glitching through various states of health, from joyfully laughing to bruised, to bleeding from several wounds, to dead on the ground, and finally to sand-blasted bones.

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“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. “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 stood, grabbed the scepter from where it dropped in the sand, and followed him. 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 seemed expertly suited for traversing the sand. They may have looked luxurious, more representative than practical, but their clever cut allowed for a wide range of movement. I could see myself fighting in these, which I guess was the point.

I caught up to Zephyro as we reach the outskirts of the city at the base of the hill. While we were walking down the slope, people emerged from the buildings around us, swarming towards the city gates, making it harder to follow the Vizier. If they could recognize me, or gave a damn about me, it did not show. They shoved and jostled in a panic to reach the presumed safety of the city walls. Often the mass of people got between Zephyro and me, but he did not seem to notice he was almost losing me.

When I had caught up enough to be sure not to lose him, I turned and worriedly stared at the void closing in. It was far away still, but came closer at a steady pace, inexorable like a sandstorm of darkness. I do not want to go back to nothing, I realized. What was worse, I noticed that I was scared. I turned and scan the crowd again. Zephyro was walking some hundred meters ahead of me, moving faster than he should, as if he were sliding over the ground with each step. 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 thought and started pushing through the throng of people again. The few who started to recognize me tried to help by making a corridor for me, but my average speed did not increase by much. 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.

As I hurried behind Zephyro, I tried to get angry at him for ignoring me, to reach that comfortable place of scorching heat and electric tension in my chest for that extra boost of energy. 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. Someone in front of me did not notice me approaching and I grabbed their shoulder, tossing them aside. Even though I tried to ignore it, I saw the terrified expression of the young woman I just shoved as she got buried under the masses. Suddenly, the feeling in my stomach turned sour. Why am I doing this? The answer came as quickly and violently as water from a ruptured main line. Everything felt too threateningly real, too imminent, too big. And I felt small in comparison. Helpless. It took me a second to stop those thoughts and 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 let the emotion go. Immediately, the sickly feeling faded. And yet, a part of me wished to stay angry nonetheless, because fuck, the fear was so much worse.