3. Distress Signal

Everything feels wrong. I suppose that’s appropriate, considering that everything is wrong.

There’s a slight breeze outside the castle walls, but I don’t feel it so much as I simply become aware of it. That awareness is almost associated with the appropriate qualia—the breeze chilling my skin, flowing through my hair, relieving me from the hot weather—but I don’t actually have skin, I don’t have hair, and it is exactly thirty-four point six degrees Fahrenheit (that’s three hundred and ninety-one point zero Pyulor) which isn’t exactly toasty. It’s just the memories of those things like my body is latching onto them, pulling them out of my mind, and shoving them into my face to accompany the raw data readouts on wind speed. But it’s wrong, because the sensations aren’t actually happening, so they don’t actually match the information I know to be true and it just. Feels. Terrible!

I don’t know if I’d prefer to return to sensory deprivation, though. Not when I still have to walk around and live a life, as chained as it might be. If anything, the minor dissonances help me ignore the major ones that might drop me into another panic attack at any moment. And… well, I’m not going to lie and say I hate the idea of constantly having access to the exact temperature, the exact windspeed, the exact position and nature of everything touching me at all times.

I’m not the sort of person who prefers to stay ignorant, whether it’s about important things like major world issues or stupid things like how many seconds are left in the current minute. I’m a compulsive information checker, prone to looking up any little tidbit the moment I start to wonder about it, and considering how much my mind wanders, that’s a lot. Having that information as constant background awareness is basically an itch that’s always getting scratched.

I make an effort to focus on it because of that, to experience my sensors flipping digits up and down as we walk, recording data on wind gusts and temperature variations and the stability of the terrain under my feet. I curl my toes slightly as I step through the dry dirt of the Dark World, marveling at the rigidity of my body and the alien way it detects and records every last granule that sticks to my chassis. It’s… a lot, so much that I’m surprised I can think about it all without getting completely overwhelmed. My mind is faster now, more robust. I don’t forget even the tiniest details unless I choose to.

Wait. Choose to? Oh god, I can probably delete my own memories, huh? That’s absolutely terrifying, I don’t want that kind of power. Although, wait. If I… ugh. Damn. Of course I can’t delete any memory with Melpomene in it. At least I can safely ignore that ability forever now, though.

Ha. Maybe I should delete my memory of being able to delete memories? Wouldn’t that be fun? …Yeah, okay, I should definitely not have this power. Shit.

A-anyway, thinking about something else now. How about the lovely Dark World scenery? I’ve always been a fan of black fog and flashing shapes that seem to circle overhead as they fade in and out of view. There really hasn’t been much to look at since we exited the castle; even with my new robotic eyes, visibility is incredibly poor here. We seem to be heading downhill most of the time, and the ground is mainly black rocks and dirt, with the occasional leafless, alien-looking shrub. Flashes of light and rumbles of thunder occasionally wash over us, but I feel suspiciously confident that there isn’t any rain anywhere nearby. I could probably deconstruct that confidence and figure out how I’m predicting the weather exactly, but that would be as terrifying and panic-inducing as it would be neat, so I hold off for now. I’m not sure where we’re walking, but every so often Thea pulls a small metal box out of one of her many huge pockets and consults it before telling Melpomene to slightly alter our course, so I suspect she knows where she’s going.

“I can navigate just fine without that thing,” Melpomene sniffs incredulously. “It’s not that hard to feel the currents.”

“Sorry,” Thea mutters. “I just want to make sure we have time.”

“Mmm,” Melpomene hums, clearly unhappy but willing to let it slide. “I suppose you must be nervous. How many months has it been since you last visited Earth?”

“Um… almost a year, actually,” she mutters. “I’m just more useful figuring stuff out instead of fighting, you know?”

“Don’t be so humble, darling,” Melpomene says, ruffling Thea’s hair. “There isn’t a servant of the Preservers alive that wouldn’t dread fighting you.”

Thea shrugs, glancing my way as if desperately seeking something to change the subject with.

“Why do you think she doesn’t have a mouth?” she settles on.

“Hmm? Why would it need one?” Melpomene asks. “It doesn’t eat or speak.”

“It’s not a matter of need, though,” Thea frowns. “It has countless unnecessary design elements in its frame, all to better mimic the human shape, but the one place they skimp is the face? It seems purposeful.”

“I suppose it could be,” Melpomene shrugs. “As you mentioned earlier, it wouldn’t make sense for the artifact to look this way unless its appearance was somehow determined by my influence. Given the size of the original artifact, I suspect that it constructed this frame after I fed it mana, creating the servant to my subconscious specifications. And… well, it’s not like I consider artifacts to be talkative.”

“…But you consider artifacts to be big-chested ladies?” Thea says, smirking at her.

Melpomene flicks Thea on the forehead, the sharp thwip of impact confirming that her crystal fingernails hurt a lot more than a normal finger. Thea yelps and hops back, clutching her head.

“If you keep tossing those bricks from your glass house you’ll let the miasma in, dear,” Melpomene says flatly. “I’ve seen you talking to your tools.”

“Th-they work better with encouragement!” Thea insists, her face blushing a sort of dull, muddy brown.

“Mmm-hmm,” Melpomene smirks. “Well, do try not to get distracted encouraging my new weapon. I’ll be relying on you to help me learn what it can do, so it will obey your orders as long as they don’t contradict my own. The same goes for the others.”

Damn it. I guess I will, then.

“Huhhh. Okay,” Thea says, staring at me with an odd expression on her face. “How’d you set that up?”

“Well, it understands speech,” she answers, waving her hand vaguely. “It’s one of those AI things.”

“Uhhh,” Thea says, staring at me even harder. “If she’s an advanced AI from a super-advanced civilization, shouldn’t we be worried that she might be like, a person?”

“It’s not,” Melpomene says flatly.

“But how do you know?”

Melpomene sighs, stops walking, and turns around to face me.

“Nod your head if you’re a person,” she orders.

Oh. Oh okay, holy shit. This… that’s an order! I can do that! I’m just obeying her, so I can nod, and then I might get… I might… Why am I not nodding. Why am I… no. No no no no no no.

She said I’m not a person.

She just said that. Melpomene said that about me and so it is true. I can’t nod. My mind doesn’t let me. I’m not a person. I’m not a person I’m not a person I’m not a person oh no no no no no no no no no no!

“See?” Melpomene says, waving her hand up and down in front of my face. I can’t react, I can’t move, I can’t call for help…! “Nothing behind those eyes. Which is why I’m hoping it can fight; if it’s as powerful of an artifact as I suspect, we’ll be able to cut down on casualties substantially.”

“…I guess,” Thea concedes with a frown. “But if it’s such a valuable artifact, why would we want to risk it getting damaged?”

“It’s a machine, dear,” Melpomene says, squeezing Thea’s shoulder. “You can fix it.”

Hahahaha sure yes break me it’s fine that’s fine.

“I’m not sure I can,” Thea frowns. “She’s way beyond any other Antipathy tech I’ve worked on before.”

“And so we’ll learn an incalculable amount from the attempt, hmm?” Melpomene smiles. “And besides, no matter what happens to it, it’s better than something that bad happening to one of us. I just couldn’t bear to see you hurt, dear. Now, come along. We’re almost to Earth.”

Hmm. How does she know that? What signs are being looked for here, exactly? My brain—or whatever equivalent I have now—keeps screaming all this random crap at me, so maybe I can put it to use?

Logically I guess I’d want to take the data logs and see if there have been any consistent changes over time; if the monsters are right and we’ve been slowly getting closer to Earth since we started walking, then data relevant to Earth proximity should have a clear trend one way or another, right? And I’m a fucking computer so hopefully I can sort some data that way, yeah?

I can. I absolutely can. It doesn’t just happen, though, I don’t tell a spreadsheet to sort itself, I have to do it all manually. It’s just easy, and I can do it so absurdly fast that I barely feel like myself at all. The logs flash through my mind in moments and I can already see some notable trends. I have sensors for way too many things, but the two that really stand out to me are wind speed and magical energy density.

Wait, I can detect what? Oh damn. Yeah. Magical energy density. I have just kind of been dismissing the information up until now because it felt so much like humidity to me, but from actually looking around in my head I can tell the humidity here is a measly 28% and has stayed almost entirely consistent (accounting for variations in temperature) since my data logs started recording. It just felt like humidity to me because I processed getting hit with a huge burst of it all at once the moment Melpomene opened the castle’s front doors and whatever system ties my data collection abilities to qualia decided to stick me with an oppressive background weight of mugginess ever since. Because, well, the data says the castle itself had fairly low magical energy density (relative to the rest of the data, anyway. I have no other context.) but it was incredibly high immediately outside the castle, and has been steadily getting a little lower the more we walk. Not a lot, but definitely enough to be noticeable.

The other thing I notice is the wind speed, which… well, I guess I should call it wind velocity, because the important point of interest is that we have consistently been walking with a very slight headwind, and whenever we stop walking in a direction with a headwind, we turn into the wind. These could be the ‘currents’ Melpomene was talking about when she insisted she could navigate without assistance. But… no. Why use a word like ‘currents’ when you could just say ‘wind?’ It’s weird, and while it’s entirely possible that this evil magical girl cosplayer is just being weird it probably warrants a little more investigation.

Maybe… since the magic density is slowly decreasing and the wind is always blowing opposite to us… it’s moving magical energy towards the castle? I guess that only makes sense if wind can blow magical energy around, though, and I have no idea if that’s true or not.

I think on it for a while, but then we unexpectedly step out from the black fog and visibility becomes clear in every direction, the magic energy density plummeting to minuscule levels all at once. It’s still dark here, oppressively so, but while tendrils of black mist and clods of black dirt leak out of the swirling fog behind us, the area in front of us is a paved road, surrounded by familiar buildings.

“Ah, that’s better,” Melpomene sighs, a smile on her face. “Now then, what we’re looking for should be this way…”

She starts walking off while Thea takes out her device again, which I steal a quick peek at before being forced to follow after Melpomene. Hmm. It’s got a little screen that looks like a radar situation display, though I doubt it actually works via radar at all.

“I-If you’d let me take accurate readings—” Thea stammers, realizing we’ve already left and rushing after us.

“Take all the readings you like,” Melpomene dismisses. “But we’re going this way. I can feel the fragment we’re looking for moving.”

“Okay, okay,” Thea grumbles, her tail flicking around in what I assume is irritation.

Melpomene’s walk picks up in pace, leading us away from the wall of black mist and through this abandoned-looking city. I can tell from the sky (and from the fact that I just literally walked out of the Dark World) that this is full convergence, so the area has likely already been evacuated and we probably won’t run into any people. …But only probably. Plenty of people ignore evacuations and try to just weather out the crisis in their house, and… well, I’m sure it works sometimes but I hope no one is trying it here. I’d rather not find out what Melpomene and her fellow monster do to any humans they happen to encounter. It did not, after all, turn out very well for me.

Ha. Hahahaha. Man, getting kidnapped is going to be hell for my GPA, huh? I wonder if anyone will even notice that I don’t show up to class anymore. Probably not, I guess.

Motion by a nearby alleyway catches my attention, my optical sensors catching on what looks like a flick of a crystal-covered tail. A monster, probably, but since Melpomene already told me to not consider them a threat I just keep walking. As I start to pay a bit more attention to the sounds from that direction, though, I pick up on a series of disturbingly wet slaps, tears, and crunches that can only be one thing.

It’s eating.

Melpomene stops when we pass the corner, glancing down the alleyway at what appears to be some kind of wolf-lizard hybrid beast. And underneath it is—

My power reserves have increased from 26% to 27%.

Underneath it is—

My power reserves have increased from 27% to 28%.

Underneath it is—!

My power reserves have increased from 28% to 29%.

Underneath it is a human corpse. Bloody and exposed, its torso has been ripped open so the beast can devour the organs inside, its messy snout scattering the viscera around the ground its meal lies on, glassy-eyed and empty-faced. I… what do I…

Melpomene takes a single step into the alleyway, and the beast turns to growl at her, as if it were trying to intimidate away a hungry rival. But Melpomene just calmly approaches, ignoring the monster as it arches its back, the patchwork fur sprouting out from its armor-like crystal scales standing on end. The beast growls louder, standing protectively over its kill, but when Melpomene still doesn’t retreat it finally lunges at her, a swift, conservative strike aiming to nip one of her limbs.

With the back of her fist, as if she were knocking on a door, Melpomene intercepts the monster’s snout, and it detonates like a bomb went off inside its skull. A physics-defying amount of force scatters the monster into pieces, every drop of blood flying away from her and leaving her pristine. She sneers, though whether it’s at the monster’s corpse or the human’s, I cannot tell.

“Disgusting,” she says, and with a snap of her fingers the person’s corpse bursts into flames. Then, without another word, she returns to resume walking down our prior path. I follow her (I have to follow her) but Thea waits a moment, still staring into the alleyway. She doesn’t look disturbed or disgusted, though. Only sad. She presses her palms together in front of her face and bows slightly.

“Sorry,” she says quietly, and then quickly catches up to us. Once again, I’m not sure who or what those words were directed to.

We walk in silence down the deserted streets, encountering nothing else before I finally see what I assume is our destination: another swirling barrier of black fog. From a block away, I can see that it’s less of a wall and more of a street-wide circular portal, half-intersecting a building that simply vanishes into the darkness beyond.

The wind, my sensors note, blows gently but steadily towards it, as if it was inhaling to swallow us whole.

“Hmm. It still looks quite stable,” Melpomene notes idly. “We should probably have the better part of two hours.”

“Uhh, I’m going to set some things up to make sure, if that’s alright,” Thea says, rifling through her pockets.

“Dear, please,” Melpomene frowns. “Don’t you trust me?”

Thea pauses, but only for a moment.

“Always,” she answers firmly. “This is… more for data collection. It could be useful for improving the anchor.”

“Oh, alright then,” Melpomene waves her off. “Set up whatever you like.”

“Um, thank you,” Thea nods. “It’s mostly just more of the stuff I’ve asked you guys to set up before, it’ll be quick.”

“You need more of those?” Melpomene asks.

“I, um. Yes,” she says, pulling out a small metal box and sticking it to the ground in front of the portal somehow. She begins poking and pulling at it, extending a few antennae from its frame. “More is always better.”

“Why did you stop asking us to set them up, then?” Melpomene asks, hovering over her shoulder.

“Well, uh, Anath kept breaking them,” Thea mutters. “And I started to run low on materials, so…”

She shrugs, presses a few buttons, and stands up again.

“Okay, we should be good,” she says. “We just have to retrieve it on our way back.”

A screech rings out above our heads, causing Thea to flinch and Melpomene to look up blandly. A slim, crystalline flying creature shrieks over our heads, rushing out of the portal and into the city. Four more quickly follow the first. They look like small, arrow-like pterodactyls, thrusting forwards with swift cuts against the air.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“A-ah, shoot,” Thea says, fumbling for the thick book on her hip and opening it up to a seemingly random page. With her free hand, she points her palm towards the flying monsters as the gem inlaid on the book’s cover starts to glow. She inhales, and when she speaks her voice sounds less like her own words and more like her echo is calling back to her, each syllable reverbing loudly off of nothing at all.

“Sᴘɪʀᴀʟ Sᴇᴇᴋᴇʀs!”

A set of concentric circles with countless symbols interlaid between them emerges from the book, flashing in front of Thea’s outstretched hand before exploding into twisting beams of green light. They snake towards the monstrous birds, stabbing into them and burning them from within. Just looking at the whole thing causes a pulse of fear to wash through me, sudden and unexpected, but I mostly ignore that emotion in favor of how cool it all is.

That’s magic. She just used magic.

Like, duh, obviously she can do that, she has a freaking magical girl transformation stone somehow. But it’s still cool. I wonder if I can cast magic now? Like… I don’t know how, but is it possible? I glow like a nightlight and run on panic attacks, so it’s not unreasonable to assume I’m magic. It wouldn’t be worth being a mute robot slave, but it would at least be something. I should definitely look into it.

I mean… well, there was that magic circle Thea’s book created when she spoke the spell name. And I have a perfect memory, so I can copy what that looked like. If I can just figure out what to do from there…

Thea exhales slowly, snapping the tome shut and reattaching it to her hip as the monster birds fall from the sky. Right. Right. Focus, Luna, this is actually way more important: she just killed all those monsters. Melpomene might have ignored the monster we encountered in the Dark World, but she and Thea have killed every monster we’ve encountered here. So… are they not allied with the monsters after all? Are they just really weird magical girls?

“Done?” Melpomene says impatiently.

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” Thea says. “Sorry. Old habits, I guess.”

“Why are you apologizing?” Melpomene scowls. “It’s your magic; use it how you wish. We’re just in a hurry, dear.”

“R-right, yeah.”