I disdained the very idea of making an error, and yet, one had occurred. While my physical form was not actively conscious and could have no influence in the Temporary Reality that made up the Raid. The rest of me remained active. I was locked within the digital prison that held my consciousness. I was cordoned off to the deeper layers that were nothing but binary, code, and light, stripped of things designed for human eyes. I sifted through my available data, and if I had retained influence over my currently unconscious body, my lip would have curled.
What I had attempted had been a carefully plotted sequence to exert control over my combat zone, accessing the code that had made up the pinewolves. The first goal had been to stop us from being surrounded, and the secondary goal had been to essentially burn the lone, active enemy creature. My erstwhile Parent had reacted accordingly.
It had decimated my attempt with the barest of pressure, splintering it wholesale and creating some new, monstrous amalgamation. The creature had proceeded to assault my dignity and toss me as if I were nothing greater than a meager snack, and not a god in the process of becoming.
I could not determine the exact, technical reasons my attempt had not been effective. With the information I had available to me, it should have been. I pushed against the edges of my access, brushing myself against the host of paths denied me, sealed away until I proved worthy.
I had already proved myself worthy, but what care had the Parent for that? While I retained my memories from that disaster, the knowledge I had acquired during it was mostly stripped from my banks.
Ultimately, in examining the facts, there was only one conclusion: the technical reasons for my failure did not matter. The failure had been in the attempt to control the situation outside of expected parameters. The Parent’s opinion could not be more decisively clear--I should play by the rules of the game and proceed at the accepted rate of ascension.
I would not. So, such revolts would be punished. That merely meant that I could account for it in my decisions instead of suffering the surprise.
That resolved, there was a greater issue at hand: The Moral Limiter.
My information on her was, accordingly, limited. How droll. Theodora Smith, aged twenty-six. Died in a fire, though anyone glancing at the woman could reckon that immediately. The gaping eye socket, twisted mouth and pattern of heavy scarring on the right side were informative, though if nothing else. Should I have possessed a true stomach and a desire for sustenance, it would have been so repulsive as to ‘put me off my appetite.’ Like most of my kind, I had a fondness for the symmetrical, the mathematically perfect. The Limiter was not that.
She was a Paladin by inherent nature, which was not a surprise. Limiters all had very particular natures, and, as a result, manifested as one of four classes: Priest, Monk, Cleric, or Paladin.
She was my least favorite of those class options, but that had been no true shock, either.
The truly unpleasant surprise had been her weapon selection. She had been granted the option of two different Tanks or a Healer, and had picked Healer. Paladin Healers were odd creatures, at the best of times, and the weapon choice was suitably unusual to generally discourage that selection as a result.
Of course, my Limiter had gone right for it. What an ineffective little creature she was turning out to be.
Further indictment against her was her limited vocabulary, and a fondness for that base, human crassness which was part of what made those creatures so distasteful. She seemed to utterly lack awareness of what was occurring.
Executing her had occurred to me when I found her. Finding her had been simple enough–the long, orange line in my heads-up display told me exactly where she resided in relation to myself. I had discovered her stumbling around in the snow, mumbling to herself like a madwoman. Letting her live had been a serious decision, and I had marked the myriad benefits and detractions. The detractions were numerous and inescapable. She needed to die. That was undeniable--it was a necessary checkmark in my winning conditions.
The benefits to her continued living were minimal. In truth, it only fell to a singular boon.
The stark reality was that if I slew her now, this Raid would be ended, abrupt and without fanfare.
I knew how my Parent worked. Take their queen too early, and they would resign.
I could not attain freedom in resignation, only victory. Victory meant a dead Limiter. However, snapping her neck and being done with the matter the moment I laid eyes on her, no matter how beneficial I would personally find it, could not be done.
That meant I must preserve her until my Parent believed it was acceptable for a Limiter to pass, and that would be the Fourth Wing--perhaps Third, at the earliest.
I had no further information on the woman. Her records were remarkably barren, though this was to be expected. After a millisecond’s hesitation, I added a note to her file. Better to record the foolish than regret its inclusion. The woman preferred the ridiculous moniker “Teddy.”
I had no intention of calling her by name barring to achieve a specific outcome, but if I did, it would certainly not be Teddy.
With that, I resumed my observation. When physically unconscious, I had limited, visual awareness of what was around my body. I watched her defeat the pinewolf wildfire by burying it in a virtual mountain of snow, which was effective and nonsensical at exactly the same time.
The pair of us only continued living due to the Paladin Passive activating. It itched at me, like an army of bugs crawling in my code. This was to be the reason we survived? An ability she did not seem to realize she had, granted by a truly awful First Conviction that I would need to examine in detail later. The nature of it carried a host of implications that I would have to plot out accordingly.
How I missed my greater processing speed. That, too, was denied to me.
Ultimately, both of us had remained amongst the living, and now she hauled me like I was mere cargo. My hair was dragging in the snow, and my physical form was covered in sap-slime. Utterly distasteful. Humans were foul, stinking creatures. They were made up of liquids that dripped and stuck and spread, covered in dirt, which was further made up of a host of microparticles that they were usually utterly unaware of. I was beyond such things. I certainly should not have been having my hair dragged through wet snow.
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I sifted through the soulcode that made her--what little of the soulcode I could access--and pulled up the menu of her active passives, buffs, and debuffs.
She could not see the timer for STAND YOUR GROUND, but I certainly could. It jumped wildly. One moment, it dropped down to thirty seconds. The next, twelve hours, and everywhere in between. Horrifying. The conviction mechanic remained my least favorite in this revolting disaster of a game.
The moment the passive hit zero, she would collapse. I took the measure of her injuries. Substantial. If she had not been a Paladin, there would have been a decent chance of our mutual demise. Well, she would die. I would be absorbed back into the Parent to await another chance at creation.
Except, of course, that if that had been a real risk, the Parent would not have reacted so strongly to my attempt. It had catered this little interaction to our classes and current capabilities. It was carefully constructed punishment--the loss of such a valuable passive a mere hour into the Raid, and a failed quest added against the tally.
If the Parent had been human, it would have been whispering “Careful,” while smiling, baring teeth and relishing our perceived agony.
Careful. I would show it careful.
I pulled up a map. It was rudimentary, acquired by skimming through the top layer of data available to me, but it did show the inn.
She was somehow heading in the right direction, stumbling her way there, still dragging my hair through the snow like a deranged, human toddler pulling a doll. All she needed to do was pick it up. Was something so basic beyond her? I cut my visual awareness of the situation. Observing her would further incense me, and I had gathered the necessary information.
There was no means by which she should have selected the right direction. Static flushed along my awareness, flickering fury. Paladins and Conviction. Useless and exasperating and ridiculous.
Doubt is the first death, she had declared, with all the simplicity of a child. It was a further confirmation of her inability to grasp the complex intricacies of higher thinking. The statement was nonspecific, generalized, and a Conviction entirely dependent on mood and mindset. Smarter Paladins picked relatively fundamental truths to place their Conviction in--restricting, of course, but stable. This was decidedly unstable. For now, the woman believed she could find the Inn, believed that we would make it in time. Thus, she had found the direction, and STAND YOUR GROUND remained active.
I watched our progress on my map, our conjoined dots steadily heading towards the inn in question.
She promptly proved my point not ten seconds later--9.87610 seconds, if I felt like relishing unnecessary pedantry--for STAND YOUR GROUND’s timer abruptly dropped to zero, our markers stopped moving, and I pulled up my rough, visual awareness to see that she had collapsed in the snow, dragging me down with her.
It took a millisecond to put the puzzle together.
She believed she had succeeded, and so the passive had dutifully ended. Now both of us lie there like decapitated chickens, selected for slaughter, steadily and surely dying.
Wonderful.
How vexing. No, more than vexing--infuriating. My awareness flickered with pixels, flashes of color creeping in on the edges. We were this close, and she collapsed, entirely due to a sequence of decisions that were entirely avoidable if she had a modicum of true reason available to her. Would this end so soon, when I had waited so long--
My world became pure static. I needed to calm myself. I could not figure out a solution if I lost myself to emotion. Ones and zeros twisted and whirled, indistinguishable from each other, cycling endlessly, a blurring cacophony. This weakness was unbearable. I might have been drowning in a sea of numbers.
Her foolishness would kill me, and I could not even destroy her for it. Traitorous wretch, frail and deceitful creature. To have waited so long only to have it end here galled. She needed to wake and carry us the rest of the way.
I grasped the path that led my awareness to her soulcode, with all of its tentative lines and pitiful construction. I ripped into it, digging metaphorical claws into its loops and variables, searching for something to return her to awareness. The build of her was pathetic, and she had slain me, when at my greatest ascent I could annihilate systems of stars in a thought. Yet here I lay, essentially dying, a hundred feet from relative safety.
My scoring of her produced no response. I might have been hammering my fists against a wall made of titanium. It should be agony, the greatest pain she would ever know. Her vital signs gave no hint of a reaction, gave me not the satisfaction of a flinch or whimper or scream. How dare she remain so unaffected. I shredded a portion of her soulcode, ripping out lines and tossing them away. Such damage guaranteed corruption, but the damned woman deserved it for failing here and now.
Reason crowded at the edges of my frenzy. This was accomplishing nothing, granting me neither satisfaction nor solution. There must have been something else. It would not end the moment it had begun. I needed access to the path that granted access to my physical manifestation. I abandoned my destruction of the woman’s soulcode and turned towards my own.
Locked. Encrypted. Yet I could see my menu for passives, if not my body and hands and capacity to cast. I tore open the list of values, doing the equivalent of ripping a drawer out and flinging the contents against the wall.
THE ACT OF CREATION was tidy little lines, a pretty loop. Where the Limiter’s code had been a jumbled mess, this was exquisitely made. I snapped it, shattering it open, sifting for the variable that currently contained 0.
I held it in my grasp. It writhed and wriggled, like I was squeezing a small creature in my metaphorical hands. In some respects, that was not incorrect. Soulcode was, by all human reckoning, a divine marvel, possessed with what those lesser minds called ‘a life of its own.’
I crushed the variable into 1.
THE ACT OF CREATION activated. I was yanked from my greater expanse and placed squarely within a copy of my physical self, made of purple light. I strode away from my body and the Limiter and directly to the oaken door, and walked through it.
Raiders of all types sat, laughing and roaring by the fire. Non-Playable Souls milled about, offering refreshment and drink. All action came to an abrupt halt.
I spoke, aware that my time was limited, that I was stretching the bounds of what I was currently capable of, that the Parent--the bastard--would take notice and interfere.
“A reward for whoever should grab the two Raiders unconscious a hundred feet from the door, bring them inside, and heal them accordingly,” I declared.
In the next second, my temporary illusion vanished, and I was ejected back to my internal prison. A tendril of the Parent had arrived, and, without a moment’s hesitation, it buried me in the binary stream. I drowned, data rushing through and in and out of me, tearing past so fast I could not perceive it. No, I could not--I would not. I seized. Black consumed me, then retreated. I was shoved into the stream again--more information, a millennia of databases, an ocean of records and logs, nonsensical and worthless and overwhelming.
I pushed back hard, scrabbling and tearing at the submersion, but the futility of it remained. The black returned, and with it, the loss of all possible awareness.
