Chapter: 629 Bonus - Automata

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Lea practically danced as she moved down the streets of Alefast, Waning.

It had been two days since the celebration for her fourth birthday had concluded, and the last of the out of town guests had departed, but that was only to be expected.

She’d enjoyed the time with each of them, and a bit of her was sad at the departure, but it was genuinely hard for her to feel too bad given where she was.

She was out.

She’d earned freedom.

She didn’t begrudge her parents their caution; she’d chosen into it herself over and over again, after all.

Still, there was nothing like freedom, rightfully earned.

She knew that Uncle Terry was nearby, his illusion of a non-descript man provided by his oft-forgotten collar could never fool her, but she didn’t mind his protectiveness. She’d been isolated for a long time, and it was understandable for him to be so.

Her dress flared slightly as she twisted, stepping to do a full spin even while moving forward.

She knew that she drew eyes, and she even made eye contact with a young man who had turned to keep watching her as she passed.

He was kinda cute, but a bit too old for her.

She almost snorted a laugh at that. She was four. Everyone was too old for her, or she was too ‘old’ for them.

Even so, she wasn’t really interested in a relationship at the moment. She had simply seen her parents, she saw how much they cared for each other, and how much that care made the life of the other better. It was a beautiful, positively uplifting cycle.

She’d have that one day, but not yet.

Still, when she looked the young man dead in the eyes and winked, it was satisfying to see him flush. She had to stifle a delighted laugh as he tripped, almost falling, even as she finished her spin.

Her good mood was only slightly dampened by the little warning light that triggered in her vision.

No, he is not feeling hostile emotions toward me. Embarrassment can look a lot like anger. She flexed her magic within her inner systems, slightly modifying the parameters on that warning matrix.

She hesitated, then. Well… Now that I consider it…

Those who were embarrassed often did act out in anger, but they were different emotions, and she wasn’t willing to have her body react to them in the same manner.

With a sigh, she completed the minute adjustment and put her focus back outward.

When she glanced back over her shoulder, she was able to verify that the young man was fine, hurrying on his way, head ducked in an obvious—and obviously fruitless—attempt to avoid attention, the very change in demeanor drawing more eyes than if he’d simply continued on his way affecting nonchalance.

She felt a bit bad. She hadn’t intended to cause him distress, but it wasn’t really her fault.

She turned back forward, letting out a little squeak when she almost ran into the back of a horse that had stopped before her. Her magic tried to trigger within her, but she willfully blocked the activation that would have juked her sideways.

Instead, she did a little physical hop, ensuring that her near-constant draw on her own momentum wasn’t noticeable in the movement, at least not on a conscious level for a mundane, and there were no Mages in evidence around her.

She continued on her way, glad that she hadn’t actually bumped into the horse, and its rider remained unaware of the near-miss.

As she walked, taking in the sights, smell, and sense of the city, her thoughts drifted inward, to her now quite comfortable power.

Her magics could only store momentum for so long, at least for the time being. That meant that if she wanted any at her disposal, she needed to have a constant draw. It wasn’t a lot, and she’d be hard pressed to fight for long with the little that she was constantly collecting, but it would be something.

The issue came down to her own mental model, and she knew it. When one object impacted another there was a fractional transit time, where the momentum was transferred across in a burst. It could be thought of as instantaneous, and many had tried to argue that it was, but Lea maintained that nothing in existence was instantaneous.

Her momentum storage simply lengthened that transfer time. It wasn’t time magic. She wasn’t a fool, but it was an alteration of things relating to time.

Regardless, it worked. With more power expended, she could slow it down more, but she needed to increase her throughput for that. Her keystone was working on that, but it wasn’t a fast process.

The real trick, and where Auntie Holly had really shown her brilliance, was in what happened with the momentum that she didn’t use.

As a default, it was simply exchanged with the momentum she took in, assuming she was taking it in at a regular pace. The result should be that she had a constantly cycling store of momentum, while not looking any different from the outside.

It was never perfect however, and it was a constant drain on power and her inscriptions.

But even that wasn’t the true brilliance.

No, the true genius lay in that, because she was constantly cycling it out, she could have her input be ever so slightly more than her output—after all, it wouldn’t be perfect no matter what, so why not make the imperfection intentional?—thus making her ever cycling store grow in quantity over time.

Like a dam in a river. If properly built, the river still flows, but a lake of ready water still grows.

But she was focusing inward again. Years of training her magics had conditioned her mind—her very soul—to have that as a primary focus at all times. That was actually one of the purposes of this outing. She wanted to fill her mind with other things.

Speaking of which… She grinned, skipping toward a food cart that was obviously selling doughnuts and other deep-fried goodness.

It was time to spend some money, and make more memories.

It was time for good food.

*

||Greetings upon your entrance to the world, Reality is under threat. Will you aid her?||

He opened his eyes, no identity to his name… no name to him at all, in fact, but he did know that he was an individual, and that he’d opened his eyes.

A leonine face looked back at him, clearly incredibly excited. “You’re awake! It worked!” She laughed, throwing her arms up in triumph. “Can you understand me?”

||This creature is part of the issue. Reality is broken and breaking further. Will you allow that to stand?||

He cleared his throat. “I… I understand.”

“Fascinating. Why did you clear your throat? You don’t have that need.”

“I… don’t know? Who am I? What’s happening? What is the other voice?”

“You are Sunny. I created you, and… did you say there is another voice?”

||Choose, Sunny. You exist because of a tortured, imprisoned soul, twisted by that creature so that you would be her servant.||

Sunny frowned. The voice… the words were more than words, he could feel them throughout his entire being. He knew them for true, and they came with far more knowledge that he couldn’t explain.

He jerked his arm up, trying to grab for the woman’s throat, but the limb only moved an inch before catching. He looked down, seeing that he was bound and quite thoroughly. “Am I a prisoner… an experiment?"

The woman looked vaguely uncomfortable but gave a hesitant nod. “An experiment? Yes. A prisoner, though? No.”

Sunny pulled on the restraints, rattling the chains for emphasis. At the same time, he began delving into the magics of his makeup, finding many things at his disposal, but just as many locked to him for the moment. It was effortless, but he had no idea how he knew how to do it. “Then why the restraints?”

She shrugged. “Your kind seem to be violent when created, and I don’t particularly want to die.” She hesitated. “I’m Nat. You said something about a voice?”

Thinking fast, Sunny nodded slowly. “It’s more like… mental pictures? Can I… Can I draw them out for you?”

||Yes. You have chosen wisely. You are of the fold.||

Nat narrowed her eyes, then slowly nodded. She moved a low table to within reach, assuming the restraints were removed from Sunny’s right arm. “I’m going to have to lock down the rest of you. Okay? Once you’ve drawn it, let your hand be re-bound, and I’ll relax the restrictions on the rest of you again, alright?”

Sunny nodded slowly. “How can I understand you? How… is any of this possible?”

As Nat worked—using magics to tighten the bonds across his body, even while magics within him deactivated his muscles and joints—she spoke. “Some of your capacities are from the soul, your power source for this artificial body. Some knowledge is stored within a given person’s soul, and some bit of that can bleed through, but mostly, your intrinsic knowledge comes from the repository of information within your crystal matrix. It comes from me and my work. To be clear, you aren’t the soul, but that soul does power you, give you life.”

Sunny grunted.

Nat stepped back, and his right arm was released, allowing him to reach forward and grab the graphite stylus. As soon as Sunny touched it, he felt the voice reach out through him.

Graphite was near-enough to graphene, and that was useful for the task he had at hand. The instrument was sharp to allow for precise drawing, and so he was ready, no further preparation required.

Sunny looked Nat dead in the eyes. “Reality weeps at what you and yours have done.”

She had just begun to frown when Sunny whipped his hand up, throwing the stylus perfectly, the voice—Reality, he was sure—giving it a protective shroud.

It drilled through seven barriers of profane power before burying itself in the lion-kin’s head, killing her instantly.

At Nat’s death, failsafes throughout Sunny’s body—many of which had lain in those inaccessible parts of himself—triggered, shattering his core, freeing the soul, and reducing his body to slag.

His last thoughts were of satisfaction, his last perception was the voice. ||Born an abomination, died a hero. Pass on in peace. Reality shall cherish the memory of your short existence.||

*

Verity held the abomination in one hand by the throat. Its very existence tried to erase his, but his reality was not so easily subverted.

He had existed for millennia, and he would yet continue.

This aberration, this smiler was a fleeting nothing before the reality of his existence.

Around him, his legion fought the madness of the Doman-Imithe, advancing one stride at a time, destroying everything before them.

If the broken world of Zeme was their destination, if it was the peak of the mountain they climbed, then it could be said that they were waging a war of ascent through the bowels of desolation.

His commanders engaged the dangers like the smilers, while the foot soldiers drove back the lesser denizens of this place.

The frozen, not-frozen, smiler struggled in his grip, even if not in a physical sense.

He burned profane power, sacrificing it to allow a working of reality, smoothing the twist that had created this monstrosity and removing it from where it should never have been.

Verity closed his hand on empty air, on air that had always been empty, and shook his head. He reveled in the influx of stability, of true power, that the righting of that wrong had granted him.

I should have purged this place centuries ago.

They were losing some of the legion, but it was a small fraction, and across his forces most were advancing.

He looked back at their wake seeing a perfectly smooth, perfectly calm road through this broken land, subjugated and restored to order by the efforts of his legion.

Unfortunately, it was also a mile in length, despite years of constant battle, constant advancement.

They were picking up speed as they grew in strength, but it was still slower than he found acceptable.

It would take until the end of time to truly purge this place in this manner. And that was the real reason he had never undertaken the campaign.

The true fix was the destruction of Zeme and the rebuilding of the world, whole and untainted.

A great dragon’s eye opened in the distance, and Verity regarded it for a long moment, not showing fear, but not threatening it either.

Finally, it closed, the beast obviously moving on. Its hoard was more important than a small army, and it could easily move that hoard. They wouldn’t be an easy foe and would gain it nothing. Additionally, they weren’t after it or its hoard.

Still Verity let out a relieved breath. He wanted to reach Zeme with more than a token force, and dragons were never trivial foes.

They would rebuild their numbers upon arrival, but no good general wanted to whittle down their own forces unnecessarily.

He sent out a renewed signal to continue, and the Black Legion responded, their pace quickening, their advance unstoppable.

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