The entire situation was obviously a setup of some kind, but as R’vaajh stood in place with his arms wide in a gesture of invitation, I struggled to figure out exactly what it was. Not landmines, at least, I thought, he could have people waiting to shoot me on the battlements but that would be highly ineffective considering that I can close distance and put him in the line of fire. Does he have more specialists like him? Only two or three seconds ticked by while I mentally modeled different approaches through the small tunnel and worked out the most likely angles of attack. Then, having run out of patience, one of my human companions did something stupid.
Vaozey, apparently unable to contain herself any longer, burst into motion, rushing R’vaajh with her mace raised high. She managed to cross the ground at least as quickly as I would have been able to, and with a roar, she swung her weapon towards the assassin’s unguarded face. Again, without even moving a centimeter, R’vaajh responded with magic of his own, stopping the attack in place this time instead of deflecting it. He also stopped her hand as it grabbed for his forehead in an attempt by vaozey to kill him with heat magic.
“I’ll be speaking at length with you later, Miss Svaaloyweyl,” he said in an overly friendly tone. “Now, kindly wait for the battle to conclude.” Before Vaozey could reply, R’vaajh moved his left hand above her head, then twisted it a full half-turn in the blink of an eye using magic. Though the move wasn’t fatal, Vaozey’s body slumped, only to be caught by R’vaajh’s right hand. Lifting her full weight with one arm, R’vaajh launched Vaozey through the air to his left in a high arc that went beyond my sightline.
The entire encounter had lasted under five seconds, happening so fast that my subconscious barely had time to process what was going on as it happened. Once Vaozey was out of sight, however, it seemed to understand the events well enough to be enraged. I didn’t get angry very often, but I knew what it felt like, and when my whole body started to grow hot, my breaths deepened, and the scene before me briefly blurred from pupil dilation, I understood that I had a choice to make. I could resist the anger, which would impact my ability to fight, I could allow it to fight for me, which was clearly what R’vaajh wanted, or I could fight with it.
With a single kick, I crossed half of the distance between us so quickly that I had to squint to keep my eyes from drying out. As I finally entered the inner circle of the Rehvite fortress, I saw what the trap was: R’vaajh had pulled his bowmen from the walls and positioned them along the sides of the area, using some short huts as cover. I was almost disappointed at how simple the idea was, and how many flaws it had. Glancing to my right, I saw where Vaozey had landed amidst a group of R’vaajh’s guards and was being restrained before she could recover.
My second step took me right to my opponent’s face, and I opened with a diagonal downward slash as I always did. Unsurprisingly, R’vaajh expected the strike and shifted backwards on the ground using force magic to put just over a meter between us, making my attack miss. I wasn’t sure what he expected next, but it clearly wasn’t what I did. I had no reason to fear being struck in the back because I could now detect physical objects as they approached me, so I simply used the momentum of my strike to spin and keep moving forward, and redirected the blow to be a low horizontal attack.
My sword didn’t hit flesh, but it wasn’t caught in the air with magic either, instead impacting two of R’vaajh’s floating blades that had hastily shifted to intercept. A huge jolt of electricity surged through my body, but I was already prepared for that after his initial display, so it did little but numb me temporarily. My left hand shot up towards R’vaajh’s face, an orb of light appearing and detonating so brightly that the clouds above us were briefly illuminated, but my opponent had blocked his face with yet more of his blades to save his eyesight.
Finally counterattacking, R’vaajh swung his right arm at me, using his blades to form a long edge that extended past his hand. I kicked off of the ground again, backing up, then heard some twangs to my left and quickly ducked, allowing arrows to soar over me. R’vaajh took the duck as an opportunity to slide up to me at high speed, swinging his right arm again in the opposite direction. His attack caught my breastplate by just a centimeter as I jumped back, shearing apart the metal and leaving a long gash across it. Just as soon as his right arm passed me, his left flew up, firing metal blades like darts in my direction.
Had I not learned anything since Kahvahrniydah, his attack would have likely skewered me, but intercepting projectiles moving in a predictable path was nearly trivial with force magic detection. I held my left hand out, extending my arm along their travel path, and grabbed each one out of the air as soon as I felt them pass me by. Taking a sip of magic booster, I formed the five fired blades into a small parrying shield above the back of my left hand, then used it to block another inbound arrow that I wasn’t confident I could catch without looking away from R’vaajh, who was moving toward me to attack again.
I don’t even need to fight him, really, I thought in my first moment of clarity since the anger overcame me. Bending down to allow my jump to gain more height, I simply leapt over my opponent, twisting in midair to avoid arrows from two directions at once. Three arrows still struck me, with one sticking in my right side below the ribs, but I could tell immediately that the injury wasn’t deep because it had been a glancing impact. When I landed on the ground, I moved to break into a sprint for the noypeyyoyjh, but then time seemed to stop as I noticed something that was only now visible.
Atop the pyramid’s apex, just barely visible against the stars, was a figure in long robes, standing on one foot. Apparently praying, the woman was slightly hunched over, her hands held tightly to her chest around an object that I didn’t recognize immediately. Then, memories flooded back from Kahvahrniydah, and before I knew it my sprint became a dive to my left. Not a moment later the ground beneath the spot where I had just been standing exploded into dust and particulate, throwing me even further through the air. When I finally landed, I was almost seven meters from where I had intended to be, bleeding from my ears. As I checked to make sure I still had all my body parts and rose to my feet, I started to hear muffled voices thought the ringing tinnitus.
“I see you remember our Ervoyraoey from last time,” R’vaajh laughed mockingly. He can’t see me because of the dust, I realized, but I know exactly where he is. Charging up the blades I was using as a shield, I fired them sequentially in the direction of R’vaajh’s voice, listening for the impacts. Miss, miss, hit on flesh, hit on metal, miss, I counted. “How dishonorable of you,” R’vaajh sneered, “and how foolish.”
The dust between us was blown away as R’vaajh shot up next to me, swinging his bladed arm for my face. I had no idea if he knew or guessed at my position, but it didn’t matter, as I couldn’t duck or block in time to fully avoid the strike. The glancing blow tore metal from my helmet and jolted my balance, knocking me off guard long enough for R’vaajh to strike with a follow-up blow. The right side of my belly exploded with pain as highly-charged knives tore through my armor, and the fist that followed them crushed my muscles and organs, throwing me into the air. I didn’t even feel the ground when I landed, but somehow my body knew to get to its feet immediately.
“What a fool you are to be wearing such a thing,” R’vaajh taunted as I tried to straighten my helmet with magic so that I could see again. The grenades, I remembered, reaching back and feeling relief as my hand touched the bandolier. Through the one good eyehole I had, I could see the woman on the top of the noypeyyoyjh turning towards me again, but she didn’t appear to have a metal orb in her hands this time. It takes her a while to recover her stamina, I realized, she’s warming up again, I need to bait it out so I can strike R’vaajh when she won’t be able to strike me back. A few arrows impacted my back, but none of them did much more than break my skin.
“I thought you wanted me alive,” I bantered as I pulled all four grenades out and lined them up along my inner forearm. Another explosion went off somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t look away for a moment to check what it was unless I wanted to give R’vaajh an opening.
“I never understood why Rehv commanded that you live,” R’vaajh replied, his tone suddenly much more hostile. “Not until recently, at least. Do you want to know why Rehv allowed you to live, jhaoyeyl? Surely you must be curious.” More sounds of fighting reached my ears, but the slowly drifting dust cloud didn’t allow me to see them even though they were in front of me. R’vaajh emerged from the cloud, walking normally for once, arms spread wide.
“Your patron has provided you with knowledge that humans do not yet have,” he explained. “It was clearly Rehv’s intention to allow you to foolishly spread it, lessening your relative power and gifting us with a greater understanding of magic.” Though his basic assumptions about the source of my knowledge were wrong, I found myself realizing that the effects he was talking about might be accurate, if only in the long term.
“I will tell you even more if you allow me to reach the noypeyyoyjh,” I offered. “My only goal is to complete my mission, surely your god told you that.”
“Oh no, your usefulness is at an end,” R’vaajh replied. “What we have not learned from you by the end of this duel, we will extract from your companions. Now, die.” Just before his sentence finished, one of R’vaajh’s blades shot at me. I barely noticed it in time because of my obstructed visual field and had to move out of the way instead of catching it. This helmet is becoming more of a burden now, I thought as R’vaajh once again approached to begin a series of attacks.
Something about the way he’s moving is different, I thought as I dodged out of the way of the third half-hearted slash R’vaajh threw out in a second. I knew how fast the man was, and it was clear that he wasn’t using his full strength. He’s doing the same thing I am, I realized, he doesn’t know I’m just trying to buy time to avoid the attack, so he’s probably going to try to lure me in and then hit me with a crippling blow to guarantee it. Sure enough, all of a sudden the man spun around so quickly that his whole body turned into a blur for a moment, and he attempted to cut my leg off.
At the exact same time, I jumped and tilted my entire body in midair so that it was flat to the ground, then swung for R’vaajh’s elbow with my sword. Attacking and defending at the same time was fairly difficult for most humans, so I reasoned that he probably wouldn’t be guarding his arm as well as the rest of his body. My suspicions were confirmed as my sword slipped between the gaps of his hovering blades and cut through bone and cartilage like butter, spewing us with his blood when it came out the other side. The arm didn’t detach though, and R’vaajh took a sliding step backward, tilting his head to one side as I landed back on my feet.
“I suppose the first proper point of this match goes to you,” he said. Still trying to buy time, I thought, glancing at the woman standing atop the noypeyyoyjh. I couldn’t tell what kind of weapon she was preparing, but it almost looked like hundreds of tiny reflective shards were hovering around her. Glass? I wondered, Why would she need to prepare for that though? The one in Owsahlk didn’t. “Too shocked to speak?” R’vaajh jeered as another explosion went off.
“You held the limb in place with magic and re-attached it,” I said. “It’s not even difficult, I could have done that before I even killed Yaavtey. If you’re looking to impress me, you should try harder.” The twinkling in my peripheral vision was growing more intense, and I struggled to not give an indication that I had noticed it.
“R’vaajh!” a shrill, female voice yelled, and both I and my opponent sprang into action immediately. R’vaajh shot backwards along the ground in his typical frictionless fashion, putting ten meters between us before I had even turned around. Not knowing what to expect, I turned and began sprinting towards where the nearest bowmen had been standing, intending to take cover behind one of the buildings. It was at that point that I realized why they had stopped shooting me in the back: The explosions I had been hearing had cut down their number significantly, and Koyl was currently in the middle of losing a fight to two of their remaining members.
Rapid sharp snaps began cracking out from the top of the noypeyyoyjh before I got to cover, and at the same time, the ground around me started to be kicked up and torn apart by tiny impacts. A machine gun attack, I almost laughed, zigzagging along the ground to break up the fire pattern. Four or five of the Rehvite woman’s projectiles struck me, slipping through my armor like it wasn’t even there, but a combination of directed healing magic and pain resistance got me to cover mostly intact. The two Rehvite bowmen attacking Koyl didn’t even have time to realize I was behind them before both lost their heads.
“Seyt,” Koyl gasped. “Thanks.”
“How many grenades do you have left?” I asked quietly. I hadn't been counting the explosions, but I knew he had thrown at least four.
“Two,” Koyl replied. I missed that many? I hissed, looking back to see if R’vaajh was approaching.
“Alright, listen to me,” I said quickly. “That prick is going to charge me as soon as the dust clears. Have those two ready and throw them at us as soon as he takes his first swing.”
“But-” Koyl began.
“Just do it!” I growled. Koyl’s mouth shut, and he nodded quickly, pulling out his last two explosives. Need to put some distance between him and me, I thought, turning back around and dashing to the edge of the now-ruined building we were using for cover. Though I couldn’t see anything on the ground very well, a quick peek at the top of the noypeyyoyjh showed that the woman was either out of ammunition or resting in preparation for another attack, so I hesitantly stepped out, splitting my four grenades between my two forearms.
“Impressive, jhaoyeyl,” R’vaajh laughed as the dust cleared. Slowly, and sarcastically, he clapped his gloved hands, and I could almost picture the expression on his face beneath the mask. “One could almost believe you had seen such an attack before.”
“Maybe it’s just predictable,” I replied.
“It still hit you,” R’vaajh noted, gesturing to the bloody holes on my right leg and arm.
“Then we’re even,” I replied mockingly. “But it seems you’ve spent much more power than I have, and there are far more of you than there are of me. Wasn’t I supposed to be dying in this fight?” Attack me, I thought, You’re clearly a prideful man, you’re confident, and I know you didn’t hear what I just said to Koyl.
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“Indeed, I suppose it’s your move then,” R’vaajh laughed, standing in place. “Have you suddenly become shy?”
“What if I have?” I asked, walking out and approaching to within about four meters of him. “You seem just as hesitant, what’s the problem?” Through the holes in his mask, I saw R’vaajh’s eyes narrow at me, then jump around as he scanned for possible traps. “Perhaps are you worried that your god might be lying to you again?” I jabbed, pulling up my battered faceplate with magic so that R’vaajh could see me grin at him. His eyes locked onto me again, practically vibrating with rage, then he was on me in an instant.
Though I told Koyl to throw his grenades as soon as R’vaajh attacked, I knew he wasn’t able to launch them as quickly as I would have been able to, so I had to dodge two brutal attacks that could have split me in half before I heard the grunt of exertion behind me indicating that the plan was in motion. One hundred milliseconds, I counted, ducking a third strike. Two hundred, I began loading my legs with as much magic fuel as possible, making them sear with pain. Three hundred, I started to jump, lighting the fuses of my own explosives. Four hundred, R’vaajh backed up as predicted, shielding himself with his blades. Five hundred, two loud cracks sounded out peppering my feet and R’vaajh’s weapons with shrapnel as I ascended rapidly into the air.
The Uwrish didn’t know much about how explosions worked. Even the Rehvites, who had access to explosives, didn’t seem to understand the fundamentals about their mechanics. Healing magic was a great boon to the humans of the world I found myself on, but their ability to shrug off minor and major injury also meant that many phenomena that Earth’s humans learned of through harming themselves were missed by their magical counterparts. Thus, when R’vaajh look up to see me launching four grenades to equidistant points on the ground around him, he had no idea what was about to happen, and merely blocked his vitals with his blades.
I had been meticulous about using the exact same amount of black powder in each of our grenades when we were loading them. Koyl and Vaozey probably just thought that I was trying to make sure that the powder was used as efficiently as possible, and that much was true, but there was also another reason I was being so precise. Blast waves didn’t always have a consistent speed, depending on the magnitude of the explosion that produced them they could move anywhere from a few hundred meters per second to many kilometers per second. Black powder was a relatively low-powered explosive, but I still wanted to be sure that each blast wave had a consistent speed, just in case I had to create synchronized explosions.
Four grenades detonated on four sides of R’vaajh at once, and mere fractions of a second later they interfered constructively atop his body. He had already re-positioned his blades to protect his vitals from shrapnel, but he had no idea of the true nature of the attack I had performed, and also no way to resist it. While the blast wave of one black powder grenade would barely harm a human with healing magic from close range, four at once was more akin to a larger hexogen explosion, at least in the spot he was standing in. For just a moment before the dust that was kicked up by the blast covered him, I saw blood fly from behind his mask and out of his ears. My own shrapnel also battered me, breaking a few of the straps on my armor and causing the plates on my right arm to detach when I landed back on the ground in a heap.
It only took a second for my bones to heal and allow me to get back to my feet, but my eardrums took another second. Even once they healed, the scene was eerily quiet, as though everyone stopped fighting to watch the aftermath of my attack. I was caught between two impulses: Logically I needed to go into the dust cloud and confirm the kill, but instinctively I felt as though I was being lured into a trap. It took me three heartbeats to decide to go in, but just as I did, my primary question about R’vaajh was answered for me.
Some kind of force began pulling on my body, dragging me along the ground towards the cloud of dust. At the same time, a circle of ground at least twenty meters wide around R'vaajh's approximate position was disrupted, with various grains of dirt flying towards him. Sucking down magic booster and oversaturating my feet allowed me to hold myself in place, but my helmet was ripped from my head, and my sword soon left my hand, flying through the air and into the clouds that were slowly dispersing. With his mask nearly destroyed and his clothing torn to pieces, R’vaajh’s rage-filled expression was the first thing I saw when his form was visible again. The second thing I saw was my sword stuck to his forearm, along with all of his floating knives and numerous spikes of fine metal particulate.
“Very clever,” the man seethed, gulping down deep breaths. The whites of his eyes had turned deep red, ruptured capillaries giving him an almost alien appearance. “You are a bounty of techniques and trickery, but just as it was last time, you lack in the most important area: Raw power.” As R’vaajh inhaled, I felt the force pulling me along the ground increase, and I struggled to not slide towards him. I need an opening, I need to put distance between him and me, I thought.
“Vaozey! Now!” I yelled, hoping to distract my opponent, but he merely grinned with blood-covered teeth and cackled, not falling for the ruse.
“I want you to know that I find your magic techniques disgusting,” he mused. “The energy of Rehv’s Binding is meant to flow, that is its nature. To keep it in one place is to defy all logic, even if it does produce quite a potent effect. In our efforts to gain greater understanding of exactly what you did in Kahvahrniydah, we discovered a curious effect that can happen if this energy’s flow is manipulated in a different way. Allowing it to move, but creating a loop to contain it, creates a new magic that is partially unrestricted by normal limitations. Halfway between natural and unnatural, there lies some middle ground of great and mysterious power.”
“A magnetic field,” I grunted, thinking aloud, and I slid another meter closer to R’vaajh. I tried to make my own magnetic field with magic, but I couldn’t muster nearly enough power to produce a perceptible result.
“You have a word for it, as expected,” R’vaajh sneered. “We have yet to name this magic, but perhaps we will use that term, if only to remember its source. Now, come here so that I might kill you.” Against all of my efforts, I began grinding along the ground at a steady rate, and my mask was ripped from my mouth. He must be anchoring himself to do this, I thought, did he drink all the magic booster in his mask right before the explosion? Even if he did, it didn’t make a difference, and I found myself barely able to keep my limbs from folding in towards R’vaajh’s outstretched hand as he made contact with my chest.
“Die,” I grunted, grabbing for his face. Predictably, my hand stopped short, and the most I could manage with my heat magic was to burn some of the skin around his left temple.
“Now this technique, I will admit, is quite creative,” R’vaajh continued. “We have been using it in executions ever since we figured out exactly how you were performing it. To separate fire from heat verges on insanity to the uneducated mind, but clearly, you are no such thing.” My mind raced, trying to find some solution to my predicament. No projectiles, can barely move, what can I-?
“Fuck you,” I spat, collecting and superheating my saliva with magic and then launching it at R’vaajh’s eyes. I missed my target, hitting his upper left cheek instead, but the momentary distraction allowed me to free my hand from his grip.
“Since this fight is now over, indulge my curiosity: Is it really possible to cool an object with magic?” R’vaajh asked, his bloodied eyes slowly clearing up as healing magic began repairing the cosmetic damage. “Of all the reports of false miracles you have performed, this one is the one my researcher colleagues are furthest from solving. I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to aid them in their studies. You have never been secretive about magic in the past, so surely you will have no issue with answering me in exchange for a few more seconds of life.” Under the intense magnetic pressure, my breastplate began to deform, slowly reducing my ability to breathe.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I gasped, pulling back my right arm and throwing a magic-enhanced punch at R’vaajh’s face. Instead of blocking it, he pulled his head back out of the way, then grabbed my hand and held it in place above his right shoulder. Try as I might, I couldn’t free my hand from his grip, and I slowly felt the bones being crushed under the pressure of his magic.
“Be polite,” R’vaajh sneered. “Your life ends when I desire it to, not before and not after. Is it possible, yes or no?”
“It is,” I replied.
“How?” R’vaajh asked, shifting back to a polite tone.
“You’ll figure it out in a few hundred years, if you last that long,” I laughed. “Ask your god, maybe he knows, though it would be far funnier if he didn’t.” As I spoke, an idea popped into my head. I didn’t have much magic left, trying to resist the magnetic field had drained me quite a bit and I hadn’t expected to lose my mask, but I had enough for an attack that I was sure R’vaajh wasn’t expecting. Along my forearm, I formed three layers of force magic that intersected to form a thin line.
“If I thought you human, I would demand you refrain from blasphemy,” R’vaajh growled. “Yet, you and I know better of that fact, do we not? The body I am about to kill may be a man, but the that which resides behind its eyes is anything but. I was a fool to even attempt to speak to you.” My vision started to fade from lack of oxygen, and I knew I had to act.
“You’re right on all accounts,” I agreed, flashing a blast of light in front of both of our faces. At the same time, I began pulling my arm in a chopping motion from left to right and consuming as much energy with my force magic blade as possible. The crushing grip on my chest clenched even tighter, rupturing my innards, but it wasn’t enough to stop the attack. I didn’t see much, but I felt my arm cross through the space between R’vaajh’s skull and collarbone, and I felt hot wetness splash my face, then the magnetic force that had been gripping me ceased.
My legs fell out from under me and I collapsed to the ground, coughing and gasping against my deformed armor as my vision tried to correct itself. I couldn’t make out details, but the blotches of color were enough to tell me that I was kneeling on a pool of blood, with a body in front of me and a head a meter or so away. As I stumbled to my feet, I heard someone yelling, but it took a few repetitions for the words to translate in my oxygen-starved brain.
“WHAT THE SEYT ARE YOU DOING?” Vaozey screamed. “RUN BEFORE THAT SEYTOYDH TEYLM UP THERE SHOOTS YOU!” Right, I have a mission, I remembered, stumbling to my feet and looking around with squinted eyes. The darkness of the noypeyyoyjh was easy to spot, so I didn’t have to think much about what direction to run in. I tried to use magic to go faster, but it seemed that my immediate reserves were too tapped out to use, so all I had was muscle. Luckily, it was only about a hundred-meter sprint, fifteen seconds at most even in my current state.
At fifty meters away, my knee started to hurt, and I began to limp as it refused to bend properly. At forty meters, my left arm went numb, and something cut my neck. At thirty, a dozen sharp pains erupted in my back, and I nearly vomited from a sudden wave of nausea. At fifteen meters, something hard hit me, splashing me with wet liquid that burned my face and eyes, making it even harder to see. Then, when I was so close that I was sure I could reach out and touch my goal, something heavy hit me in the lower back, throwing me forward as it wrapped itself around my midsection. The darkness of the noypeyyoyjh rushed up to meet me, but instead of a hard surface, there was nothing. I kept tumbling, end over end, until the darkness even reached inside my mind, snuffing it out entirely.
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I have to do something, I remembered as I walked up the stairs. I had been walking for a long time, or at least it felt like a long time, I wasn’t entirely sure. All I could remember was the stairs and the fact that I had to do something. Every time I got too far away from thinking about the stairs, I seemed to-
I have to do something, I remembered as I walked up the stairs. I wasn’t sure how I knew there were stairs, I couldn’t actually see any stairs, but my body told me there were stairs, and I could feel them under my feet as I climbed. I had to be careful about thinking too much, every time I did I ended up-
I have to do something, I remembered as I walked up the stairs. I could see the top now, there was a room of some kind, but I couldn’t really see it. It was actually better than seeing, there wasn’t a limitation of perspective at all. It was more like I just knew what was in the room, and how far away it was. Well, I didn’t really know what was in the room, the thing inside was just as mysterious as-
I have to do something, I remembered as I entered the room. It was dark, but still bright enough to see clearly, which seemed to be a bit of a paradox but I didn’t want to think too hard about it. In the center of the room, there was an object. That was all I could describe it as, every other property of the object seemed to elude any language or description. Whenever I would apply one descriptor to it, I would notice something that made that descriptor incorrect, and-
I have to do something, I remembered as I sat at the desk, typing on the primitive terminal. Such a relic of the past, even older than I was, it couldn’t accept direct brain input nor give direct brain output. Instead, there was just a keyboard and a display screen, or… something like that. If I looked too hard at either of them, they didn’t really look like a keyboard or a display screen, but my brain told me they were, so-
I have to fix this, I thought as I typed away on the keyboard. The monitor, an old cathode ray tube model from hundreds of years before I was made, displayed a scrawl of terminal output that made no sense at all to me. I knew not to think too hard about it though, it didn’t really matter what it said, I just had to fix it. I had never used such a primitive computer before, so I was still learning how the interface worked, which begged the question as to-
I have to fix this, I thought as I investigated the various running processes on the terminal. One of them was wrong, but I wasn’t sure how it was wrong exactly. I just knew there was something wrong with it. The list was endless though, millions and millions of unique processes with unique names that all had to be located and examined one by one by decompiling them into machine code. I didn’t even know how to read machine code, so I wondered why-
I have to fix this, I thought as I stared at the nearly-incomprehensible code on my screen. Every piece of it was like a puzzle, every character recursively affecting every other character to form a web of utter insanity that no human mind could hope to process. I wasn’t human, but even my mind had limits. After all, I was designed to have a mind that approximated a human one, so it would really have been better to-
I have to fix this, I thought as I rested my head on my hands in front of the ancient computer. I had no sense of time passing, but it also felt like I was sitting at the desk for an eternity. I knew that was probably because a piece of my mind was shut off, but thinking too hard was bad. Searching for new solutions, I looked around and was surprised to see a third piece of equipment: A tower-shaped computer unit. I had never noticed it before, so where did it-
I have to fix this, I thought as I searched the inside of the tower computer. It was far bigger than I would have suspected by its exterior, so much so that I could stand up inside of it. That didn’t make topological sense but neither did-
I have to find the anomaly, I thought as I walked through the endless halls of alien electronics. Something was out of place, that much was certain, but I wasn’t sure what. I’d know it when I saw it though, that I was certain of. Accidentally, I looked up, and what I saw on the ceiling was so shocking that-
I have to fix the anomaly, I thought as I looked at the jury-rigged bundle of wires, LEDs, and circuit boards. It was nothing like the ordered perfection of the things around it, instead it was as though someone desired to represent chaos in a physical form. I wasn’t here to fix the machine, that would be insane, no human-like intellect could hope to fix such a grand device. No, I was here to fix this little thing, this contraption that I was determined not to look too hard at, lest I suffer another-
I have to fix the anomaly, I thought with a sigh as I looked the device over for the hundredth time, or was it the thousandth? I didn’t care, it was slowly making more sense to me, even though I was pretty sure there was something about it I wasn’t supposed to know. I knew I could fix it for some reason, but I still wasn’t sure how. I fiddled with switches along its outside, of which there were far too many, determined to try them all. Once I had turned the bundle around ten times and was still seeing new switches appear, I began to think-
This must be the one, I thought as I got to the last switch, flipping it and watching as all of the lights on the anomaly went out. In a panic, I flipped the switch back to its old position, one of just over sixty-five thousand options for this specific switch, and watched as the lights came back on. They were flashing in a different pattern than before, but everything seemed to be working. Looking at the machine in front of me, I found the spot where I had taken the anomaly from and put it back in. The device didn’t actually connect to anything, and for a moment I worried I had just been wasting my time, but then everything went white, and I suspected I had succeeded.