[Log 3.6]

[Hashashin’s deed]

I managed to reach Zephyro. It took me a while due to his glitching and the panicking crowds, but I caught him by the arm just as we arrived at the city gates. Around us, townspeople were streaming into the city proper, clipping right through the massive doors. Another glitch ravaged the world and for a split-second, I saw the gates for what they truly were, a massive bunker door, gears and crank-wheel included. I wanted to ask Zephyro what was going on, why the doors weren’t closed, where we were going, and what the first thing I needed to do was, but as he turned to me, I let go of his sleeve and stumbled backward. His face was impossibly gaunt, like a corpse dried by the sun.

He coughed up some blood. He grimaced. His eyes refused to meet mine and briefly, they narrowed with regret before he closed them. Cyan-colored fragments jetted over his body, and his face reset to the one I knew. Deep lines. A graying beard. Intense brown eyes, endlessly seeking some sort of forgiveness. Behind him, the landscape distorted, fragmented, and reassembled itself. The city gates, now suddenly behind us, looked like a nondescript brown mass for a second before the textures loaded in properly. It was a bit like a camera’s auto-focus readjusting itself. No more people came in, and I assumed the door had been shut in the real world, too. I noticed several cracks in the heavy wood, and as I watched, it splintered further in eerie silence.

There was nothing I could do to stop it, I didn’t know what to do, nobody explained anything, I was completely blind, and suddenly as if someone had flicked a switch, that clenching sensation took hold of my chest again. My anger swelled in response, offering reprieve.

“Enough,” I said, tapping into the feeling. I just had to let it happen. It felt right.

“Sultana, I-“

“Enough!” I said, meeting his eyes and refusing to let them go. “You will tell me what is going on…“

“But Sultana, it is not safe—“

“…now!” I had just kept talking, not raising my voice, but my anger laced every letter of that word.

Zephyro considered me for a second, and then another coughing fit wrecked his body. Finally, he inhaled and, voice weak and worn, said

“العدو عند البوابة”

He blinked a few times, clearly confused, then shook his head and coughed again. Blood speckled the sand. “The enemy is at the gate, Sultana. We do not have long. I need to show you what happened, so you understand and are prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“For what I need to do, Sultana. But we need to get away from the gate— Allah yahmina…“

Zephyro spun to protect me as the gate imploded.

Splintered wood hit us like hail. Chaos reigned. People screamed. A person I only saw flashes of shoved past us. More shoving. Bells, hundreds of them, ringing an ear-splitting staccato. Somehow Zephyro and I got separated. I got jostled around until I braced myself and pushed against the throng of panicked people around me. I noticed I was snarling and did not stop. The people were trying to flee deeper into the city, and I struggled to not get pulled along. I needed to get Zephyro to answer my questions, to know what is happening, to take control.

The worst passed and the crowds thinned. They left behind a market square broader than it was deep, surrounded by squat, middle-eastern looking houses on three sides, and a splintered, broken, burning, smoking abyss that used to be the gate.

I found Zephyro at the front of a ragtag group of crossbowmen. Some looked like farmers, some like artisans, and there were even two scouts, but none of them were dressed like proper soldiers. At Zephyro’s command, they raised their weapons, no bolts nocked. They didn’t even carry quivers. The wreckage of the city gates smoldered, and for a second I swear I could see something disturbing the smoke rising from the fire, but nothing else happened.

Until the first crossbowman fell.

Directly after, another. A woman made a strangled noise, then collapsed. A man whimpered as his head separated from his shoulders. Blue sparks rose from their bodies, and for a brief moment I thought they were just electricity, but they didn’t fade, didn’t fizzle out. Instead, they hovered in the air for the span of a breath, then were sucked through the open gate.

The line did not break. But they were not firing either, even as more fell. Zephyro looked on as they died, grief carved into his face so deep, any further and you would carve his bones. I made to jog towards him, but he turned to me, panic in his eyes.

“No, Sultana, get back! They seek to weaken us before they go in for the kill.” Two of his militia died at the same time.

“Then do something about it!” I yelled at Zephyro, lacing my voice with anger. What are you hiding, Sam? Who are you, really? I stoked the anger higher, drowning out the voices of the dead.

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“The filthy mockeries of hashashin hide themselves using foul trickery! I-“ Zephyro said. Another guard went down.

The anger told me to do something, to take control, and to save the day because no one else would. It was only my battlefield experience telling me that kept me from charging in. You’re the commander, Sam. You’re too valuable to go in. I took the anger, hot and violent, and—with an effort of will—bent it towards a seething calm. Don’t just hit them, Sam. Be effective. Think. Make them hurt.

I assessed my options. I didn’t have a weapon besides a ceremonial scabbard—without a sword—and the torch-scepter. My robes seemed to be fit for fighting, but I doubted they would offer much protection. A brief moment of focused listening confirmed my Wish hadn’t returned yet, either.

As I watched another glitch rush across the burning houses and over the destroyed gate, a new thought arose. I was laboring under a lot of assumptions that might not even hold true in this place. Maybe what I saw was not what it truly was. Maybe something I thought was a crossbow was in fact a nail gun. Or worse, maybe this was all just abstract, a metaphorical representation of the Real, an immersive theater built just for me, and I was just supposed to watch. But no. The splinters hitting me had hurt, and Zephyro was trying to protect me. Stuff in here could affect me, which meant that I could affect it.

On the other hand, if I was stuck in an old laptop in the real world, did my armor in here matter? Was my scepter just a symbol of power, or could I use that power, metaphorically, to exert some sort of control? It was all theoretical. There were too many questions and too little time for answers, so I shelved them for now.

What about the sitrep then? There was Zephyro, who was a trained soldier, and his townspeople who clearly weren’t. I had thought training would matter little in this place, considering they actually were programs, but maybe their representation as workers and artisans meant they didn’t have the right subroutines, or maybe not the tools to do real damage. Perhaps what I was watching was the equivalent of welding torches and ore drills being brought to bear against trained soldiers. That didn’t bode well for our chances.

As far as terrain went, we had a fortification that was slowly burning to the ground, and a world that was unraveling at a steady pace. The darkness didn’t seem to harm the enemy, but from the terrified looks of the people fleeing toward the palace, I assumed it would harm us.

Lastly: Enemy forces. There was an invisible squad of harriers, with an unknown number of additional enemies on the way. It wasn’t a “target-rich environment” yet, but Zephyro seemed to think it would be, and soon.

I can’t change anything. I can’t help. My life depends on—

I clenched my teeth until my head started throbbing. Focus. How can I turn this around?

The anger pulsed above my solar plexus, up through my lungs and shoulders, and into my neck and ears. I started to hear a faint, high-pitched noise and I knew I was reaching the limit of what I could take. I had to do something with it, or I wouldn’t be able to keep it under control. So I let it fuel my thoughts, just a little, and it took, like a small grassfire.

I’d forgotten one important factor.

Me.

Everyone acted as though I was important, which made me a VIP. Probably the MVP. That meant power, but also liability. I had fought enough battles as a General to know that people would do stupid shit to keep a VIP alive, even if they don’t need the help. Even if the MVP is immortal and everyone knows it, people still want to protect you. Inevitably, they will die in the process. Their lives will be wasted. The battle lines collapse, entire battalions are left leaderless, and the battle is lost and I lose a friend and afterward everyone blames me for their own stupidity and right now I just really want to hit things until I am safe and never lose anyone again and— I took a step towards the burning hole where the gate used to be. Towards the mayhem. Then another. Towards the slaughter. I weighed the scepter in my hand. I needed to do something. Now. NOW. Now.

Is that true, or is that your anger again, Sam? Is that who you want to be? Does it help you right now?

Yes, and fuck you. Fuck you, you died.

And yet, I stopped walking towards the massacre. My fist clenched around the scepter so tight, it hurt. Above the gate, what few stars in the sky I could see through the flames and smoke started to dim as the edge of the firmament dissolved into darkness.

Zephyro’s movements were stuttering again and he was talking to someone who wasn’t there. Judging by his gestures, he was giving orders. Judging by his face, he was sending people to their deaths. Another soldier went down behind him, and he flinched.

I took a step back, away from the gate. I let myself get cold again, let the experience come through. What did Zephyro say? ‘Filthy mockery of Hashashin?’ Our troops were dying to some sort of kill squad, then. Someone who didn’t show up in this digital world. But if everyone here was a representation of a machine or system in the real world, that meant that someone or something undetectable by Zephyro’s sensor suite was taking out our forces, one after the other. Also, the soldiers were not shooting back, meaning they couldn’t shoot at what they couldn’t see. But that meant that…

“Zephyro…” I started to say, but stopped because he already knew. I couldn’t tell from his posture. The mathematics of the situation were devastatingly simple. …there’s nothing you can do here. The city is lost.

He looked at his militia, and they looked at him. A woman at the front checked her crossbow while she addressed him. “Go, Vizier. Save the Sultana. It honors you to stand with us, but there is nothing you can do.” She looked at me, just a stolen glance, as if merely looking at me might set someone aflame. A tremor of emotion ran through the woman, and tears formed in her eyes. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but instead, she merely smiled, awe-struck. The smile did not leave her expression when she reluctantly turned back to Zephyro. “Do not waste our lives, Vizier, no matter how gladly we give it for Her.”

Next to her, a man that could have been her brother exploded in a shower of gore and blue sparks. Instead of frizzling out, the lights were sucked into the whirling smoke around the gate.

Something in the smoke flashed red.