Chapter 18: Plains before the Citadels

The fire had burned out entirely too quickly. My feet hurt from walking.

Which was a weird thought. I was a robot. An android. My feet had pain receptors, at least in my old body, but I could toggle them on and off. Plus, we'd been walking before today — and I'd even done harsh physical combat with intense and all-too untrained footwork. Why didn't they hurt then?

Oh well, I huffed. Questions for future me.

I'd wrapped a good deal of my scarf around me on the way to the plains we were in now. It was a lot breezier, a lot more wind — I think we were probably headed towards areas near mountains, from the map — and as such, my suit had started being less of an advanced, all-terrain second skin with auto-repair technology and more of just cold rubber-latex-whatever on my skin. So on the scarf went!

It snaked around my torso and to my legs, mostly, and did a decent job of protecting from wind chill. My companions, however, were feeling a tad more chill. Flurry was still wearing an overall-shirt combo, and Nora's cloak was tooled mostly for keeping off rain rather than explicitly being a warmth one. Neither were too cold to be comfortable, but I could tell it was getting to them.

The grass was up to around our ankles, but it was a beautiful blend of wild grasses and flowers that could never have been in my old world. Capitalism would have razed these years ago, and CEOs would have retooled the land for cities or Towers. Here, though, the wind made breathtaking swathes of grass bend and shine under the sun; it almost seemed like waves on the ocean. I'm sure I could have drawn some good comparisons to fluid dynamics, but it was far more relaxing to just gaze out onto the plains.

There was no city on the horizon yet, but I was sure one would crop up soon enough. We had a great day today — weather-wise, I mean. It was clear, sunny, and just a tad on the cold side, meaning that the city would probably be pretty temperate. Which was good!

It was probably around now that I'd usually bring up my coding and walk a little closer to Flurry, but honestly I was too enamored with the plains around us. It was clearly lived-in; we were walking a path. But there were far more flowers and grasses here, possibly as the result of several wildfires or battles or something. Maybe it was just well-fertilized?

Or, from a Doylist perspective, it could be because the makers of the game wanted the starting area to be friendly. That was probably it. Still.

I yawned, and then Nora and Flurry yawned as well. They started chuckling among themselves, and I joined in a bit, but I mostly kept going in silence. Sometimes I'd check into their conversations. Mostly not, though, apart from the odd time where they wanted me to talk to them as well.

But they seemed okay with it! Moreso than normal, at least. Maybe they understood that I was just kinda enjoying how things were going.

"Hey, Cyllie?"

"Huh?"

Flurry was walking with her head supported by her hands, leaning back to look at the sky and sparse clouds. "How does it feel to be a, um. Robot?"

"Hm." It was an odd question, for sure. "Usually it's like. A feeling of something not sitting right. Like there's something underneath it all? I figure that's partly because of the soul thing, or whatever I am without all the machinery. So that's a big part of it. Otherwise, a lot of my emotions and feelings are usually a little dampened. It's sort of on purpose, I think, my creators didn't want it to distract me."

"Oh! Intriguing, heheh!" Flurry shot me a knowing glance, and Nora shot her an amused one in response. "I'm just curious. Hope that's not a bad thing to ask?"

"No. You're good. And it's been feeling weirder to be a robot recently. I figure it's just a part of, uh... all this."

"What, having tits?" Nora quipped, and I wait for the flinch to come. But it didn't. I just felt a little glow in my chest.

Ironically, that was where my tits, indeed, were. "S-Something else! I, uh. Don't know where you get that idea."

Nora snickered, getting cut short by Flurry elbowing her in the side and speaking up before she could continue insulting my dignity. "You really don't, do you?"

"No. I in fact: don't."

"Fair. I've felt that way, though. Kinda doubt it's a robot thing."

Easy for her to say. She's technically an AI. We were more kindred than Flurry thought, but I didn't know whether the NPCs here were self-aware or not, so... I decided to just roll my eyes and move on. "Yeah, yeah. Lemme guess, it got solved when you magically grew breasts overnight?"

Flurry sighed, still staring up at the sky inscrutably. "Actually, it took more than one night. But yeah, pretty much." She had a smile on her face, though, and Nora laughed at her joke just as much as she did my reaction to her own. "Anyways, I kinda meant more the technical aspects. How's it feel to do all that stuff with the writing in mid-air and all?"

"Oh! Apologies!" Coding talk — I could do that! "Most androids are given at least one way to access their filesystems. Usually it's limited, but some — like me — aren't, because we need to be able to self-diagnose at a moment's notice due to the experiments we're dummies for involving radiation a lot. A single runaway error could be fatal to the bottom line and continued testing efficiency, so we get free access.

"Anyways, the way that that functions is via a sort of new muscle attached to our brains. Think of it as being given a new limb! It's initially restricted to HUD functions, but once we learn how to utilize it efficiently and without interference from our emotions and instincts, we get to use it freely. That happened for me around the three month mark? And at that point it's just like moving an arm to change things. Viewing stuff is pretty much just the same — remembering memories is just like recalling data, and searching for the specific app ID or whatever of a subject is kind of like metacognition. Er, metacognition being thinking, about thinking."

Flurry nods along, jotting some things down in a notebook she'd taken from her inventory sometime in my rant. "What about if you do something in your sleep? Like, if you dream too hard about doing something."

"Well, uh. That is an issue, but it gets drilled out of us early." She gave me a dirty look at that. "I, um. I don't do that anymore, don't worry. Mostly I don't dream a ton either. You don't have to worry."

Eyes rolling, Flurry sighed again. "That's kinda sad, you know?"

"It's not usually a good sign if androids dream. Bad form. Could point towards future breaches of protocol." I couldn't quite keep looking at her face, so I shifted to gazing at the clouds alongside her. "Sorry."

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"It's fine. You don't have to apologize, it's just kind of fucked up."

"Okay, I guess."

We continued walking in silence after that, an awkward miasma settling until Nora began pointing out odd-looking clouds to me and Flurry. It got a lot more bearable when that happened.

It was a long time walking before we got to the city. It'd been maybe eight days total, and the castle and towns were just about beginning to pop over the horizon. Our path had quickly been inset with ruts wagon-wheels had carved in the mud, and the occasional farmer seemed to be living out here.

All the houses were abandoned, though. And in pretty great disrepair.

We marched onwards, though, and the star-shaped fortress on the horizon began to grow larger. The walls surrounding the city seemed almost insignificant from far away, but the closer we got the more obvious it was that they were up to three stories high and maybe ten feet thick. Strong, made of stone, and some areas were even reinforced with what looked like iron tresses. Thoroughly intimidating, even from this distance.

There looked to be a few hills that had mines constructed in them around us. Not a ton, but enough to probably be the source of the metal in the walls of the city. Plus, a bunch of windmills — and I could tell there were at least a few shops in the houses we were passing. It was still a central path towards the city, clearly, but there were increasing amounts of side roads that led to gatherings of buildings. Civilization expanding like the plague.

And yet, the towns surrounding the city seemed to be pretty deserted. The closer we got — three miles to two, to one — the more it became apparent why.

There was an incredible amount of monsters in combat near the city limits, and a nearly-similar amount of players and guards fighting them back. Ogres and cyclopses crushed the front lines, while goblins and demons flitted around and punished any ranged attackers who didn't pay enough attention. What's more?

A lot of them carried the same colors as my scarf and suit. Not just same as in similar, same as in identical. The same semi-hexagonal pattern on the jet black I wore, the same matte dark magenta, down to the odd choice of blackened armor and rags with etched hexagons. Whatever these things were, they were weirdly color-coordinated with my own clothes.

I thought for a moment longer. Where had they come from? We hadn't seen any, but this was surely not a surprise attack. The fighting was too fierce for that. Which meant, given the context that this was a game... they probably spawned in when out of sight, meaning in the alleyways of the buildings and such. And the city probably had some sort of anti-spawning field, which the towns didn't have, meaning they evacuated...

...meaning that there could be ogres or something on us at any moment if we simply waited.

Ugh. We'd have to break through the front lines to get into the city. "Either of you have a plan?" I asked, already groaning on the inside from the abuse my poor legs were going to have to go through. If I was organic, I'd have the best-toned legs in Beyovaria when this was finished.

"Hm," Flurry hummed, clearly considering something. "Nora, want to blend in with the troops and try to make our way in that way?"

Nora nodded. "Yeah. Cyl? You look bone-white, so you could probably pass as a vampire. We'll act like we're mind controlled by you or some shit and sneak our way through, then you can act like you've been captured by us once we break the barrier between the two battling parties? That should work."

"Sure." Not a bad plan, all things considered. "So, uh, should I do anything to make the lie more convincing?"

The two looked at each other. "Yeah," Flurry said, "I've got an idea."

Somehow, they convinced me to use some magic to glow up their bodies a little in red, then got me to take both their hands and run towards the fighting.

With both my hands occupied.

Leaving me no way to draw my sword. And more importantly, with my hands occupied holding my two friends who I found, uh, pretty.

Hell was real (as was obvious by the demons), but it wasn't fire and flames. it was figuring out how to keep the spell going while my bio-heart and CPU beat and spun out of my chest. I managed, barely.

Once we met the back lines of the monsters, nobody paid us any mind. My eyes weren't red, but my skin was definitely white — and my outfit did fit in exactly. On the backs of the monster vanguard, Nora and Flurry tapped me on the shoulder (our signal to disengage the magic), and quickly started hauling ass to break the allied frontlines with me in tow. Now at least I didn't have to worry about the light spell I'd used failing. I could focus entirely on my hands, and how little gouts of flame seemed to spark across them every so often.

Before long, though, we broke the lines and started retreating towards the city. The two of them came back and stopped holding my hands, instead choosing to keep their walk at a friendly-but-not-too-friendly distance. Which set off negative reactions in my emotions. Which was something I'd worry about later or never, thank you very much.

The city gate was just up ahead, and it wasn't shut — but it was short enough that any attackers would have to be either tiny or slouched a lot to get through. After a brief once-over of us,  the guards at the entrance waved us on through — though they gave a dirty look at my outfit along the way. Damn. Already getting shit on for that.

Whatever.

We were finally here. I'd almost forgotten why (for supplies, recon on our mission, and a more-advanced idea of what was going on), but at the moment I was more interested in the idea of a warm bed and food that wasn't hunted wild or heavily-salted. I'd gotten used to the nice soups and broths back in the Damned Sparrows guildhouse. Gotten soft, but a good kind of soft.

Any kind of soft still meant I was eager to get something like noodles or beef stew in me, though, and I caught myself almost outpacing my companions a few times. I was in a good mood, somehow. Despite everything.

"Hm, uh, Cyl?" Flurry said, and I perked up. "So, the inn may have to wait until pretty late. We gotta do a lot of paperwork, like. Guild things. And city things. Sorry."

I pouted, groaning even as Nora patted me on the back. They both even had the audacity to chuckle at my plight. God.