I followed Aurin down the halls, walking past crowds of soldiers and non-combat personnel who were flocking to the poster with excited expressions in complete silence. Only the ones who saw the poster were speaking in that nonsense manner. I wondered if it had to do with the fact that there would be no Show. Their minds were also completely blank; trying to touch them in any way was like trying to catch mist in my hands.

  It was a shame they were all going to leave disappointed in an hour, but what could I do? I wasn't advanced enough to provide what they gathered to watch.

  A part of me decided then and there not to use this again before I was ready because the state it was in right now felt like a knife to the gut. There had to be better options than putting on a bad Show. Why did my Aspect want me to see this in its incomplete state?

  Unfortunately, no one but me could answer such questions, so instead I focused on the future. I needed to spend more Dust so that I could advance my Grade to earn more points to unlock Manifests. That was the whole point of this mission. Loot a convoy carrying anomalous supplies and recycle them, extracting the Dust from every Dusttouched object or entity and using it to fuel my growth.

  I still needed to fill out my Stats, and I'd like to purchase some permanent equipment if I had the funds. Vivi had shown me some of her toys right before I headed out on this mission, and after having the chance to lay my hands on one, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little envious. Because I was sorely lacking in that regard at the moment.

  Besides the collar, it was just that no matter how much Aurin enjoyed it when I used it on her, it didn't have the right feel to it. The fact I could make people shiver with pleasure from thirty paces was… well, I suppose not nothing. But it lacked that certain je ne sais quoi that a true object of power should have.

  My hand went up to the jade hanging around my neck, and I played with it mindlessly as Aurin led me up a grand set of stairs in the centre of the fort that led to a second set of double doors.

  These were far more lavish than the ones at the entrance, solid and clearly part of the fort’s original design, while those on the exterior looked like they were bolted on in a hurry. The doors themselves were huge, made of wood coated in deep red lacquer, with dark iron brackets bolted to the stone walls. Two bronze dragons coiled up the pillars on each side, their carved bodies met at the top and aimed their ferocious expressions towards anyone who approached the threshold.

  Two stone soldiers were standing outside the room. These statues were actually wearing helmets and carrying swords at their hips, not spears like the others. They also seemed to be so polished that they gleamed in the harsh LEDs being used to light the interior.

  Tilting my head to the side, it seemed like their eyes were following me. But they had no minds to speak of, so I dismissed that fact as a mere oddity.

  As soon as we reached the top of the stairs, I grabbed one of the iron handles, planted my feet on the ground and pulled back as hard as I could. Letting out a groan, the door hardly budged before slamming back into place.

  “How did you get in there? I know for certain you couldn’t open the doors on your own.”

  “Oh, I didn’t,” Aurin replied. “The people standing guard outside this room were really chatty.”

  “So the only information you have is hearsay? That’s great, I love knowing the information at my disposal is unsubstantiated. Help me pull one of them open,” I said and motioned her over.

  By planting a foot on the other door, I was able to yank it open just enough for Aurin to slip her hands in the crack and aid me. Together, we pulled the door open to let her slip through to the other side, where she pushed back against the door until the hinges suddenly clicked into place.

  “Why didn't you just shoot the hinges with your breaky bullets?” Aurin panted, sliding to the ground and leaning her head against the door.

  “I don't have many of those,” I replied, ignoring the awful name for them that Aurin made up as I stepped into the room. Inside, there were definitely some kind of spatial shenanigans at play. Because I was fairly certain this room was taller than the roof of the building.

  It was far more unassuming a room than I expected, though the only ornamentation was the variety of different weapons lined along the walls. They looked to be made out of different types of stone, from an obsidian sword to a granite maul. Otherwise, it was completely barren besides a single mat laid out in the centre.

  On the mat sat what at first glance looked to be an actual human being, but on closer inspection, it appeared to be made out of coloured porcelain. Clothes hung over its body with cloud patterns that looked to be embroidered on, except for the fact that they were in motion and slowly drifted across the Taoist robes.

  “You are aware we're here, and I presume you are aware where everyone else in this facility has gone since you are this fortress,” I said, walking up in front of the statue and sitting down. “So, why have you not attempted to kill us for our insolence or whatever?”

  A spotlight had shone upon me the moment I stepped before the doors to the chamber, coming from the statue.

  “I am no guard dog here to nip at every intruder that passes my way. The will of the Heavens is clear, and I have my mandate,” it spoke in a voice far gentler than I imagined it would produce. I could not discern any gender markers on the construct. “You are but a drifting leaf floating through the wind. There is nothing you could possibly do to interrupt my master's project. And so why should I spare the effort?”

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

  It seems it didn’t realize what I actually was. That was funny.

  Its eyes opened, and its gaze met mine. Almost immediately, a spike of intent radiated from its mental model so intense I could feel it without even looking at it yet. For an instant, I knew it was going to end my life, and there was nothing I could do about it. Then my Charisma washed over it, and I used that moment to drive a mental nail into its mind, cutting the killing intent at its root. Raising a hand to my neck, it felt warm and wet with blood where it had tried to behead me.

  Its mental concept filled my mind as the glamour took effect.

  “Really? Underestimating your enemy when you have been given no reason to do so is such a tired trope,” I said, staring unblinking into its eyes. Now that I could see what I was dealing with, I realized that it wasn't the only one to underestimate its opponent.

  “So it seems,” they replied, the tone of their voice was nearly robotic, but I could hear a measure of strain in it.

  I knew with absolute certainty that if I broke eye contact that I would die before I could even finish blinking. For the first time, I was regretting the fact that I hadn't put more points into Charisma.

  I hadn't really had a chance to see what someone actually resisting my charm felt like until now. In fact, I hadn't even realized it was possible to resist. From a normal person, it would probably require a level of hatred bordering on mania, or faith in this case.

  That's what the construct was working with, after all. A faith so earth-shattering that I could feel tears welling up in my eyes from the pressure of trying to suppress it. The strain on my eyes felt kind of like staring directly into the sun, but increased by a factor of ten. My vision blurred, yet I held my eyes locked in the same position.

  This wasn’t an issue as I didn't need sight to envision its mental concept, just for my eyes to be aimed at it. The concept itself was a massive regal chamber filled to the brim with worshippers who all bowed before a throne. A ruler sat on the throne above it all, an entity language couldn’t contain. Their authority wasn’t a mantle from heaven, but the very substance of heaven made manifest. Before a being like that, the only choices were submission or annihilation. Even the statue itself was merely just one amongst its many devotees.

  “There is no need to bow before authority—never mind, geez, no need to get so testy,” I started, only to halt when the strength of will redoubled against my attempt at narrating that change to its concept.

  Attempting to make alterations without telling a story also resulted in a spasm of resistance. Attacking the entity on the throne resulted in resistance. Doing anything resulted in resistance.

  I tapped a pouch on my waist in contemplation. I was given something for emergencies that might help… in a way. But I wasn’t sure it was enough to escape from this.

  “Are you doing okay?” Aurin asked, walking over to sit down next to me.

  “I… well, we might die in a moment,” I replied, and tried to figure out what search term to use on The Stream to get out of this situation.

  Aurin leaned gently against me and placed her hand on my back, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  In the end, the only thing I could think of to search was fairly simple.

  Something that will save my life right now that I can afford.

  “What are the results? I can’t see the screen because my vision is shot,” I asked Aurin. There was supposed to be a way to see the screen without having to look at it visually, but Makesi said we’d work on how to do that later.

  “There are no results,” Aurin replied.

  Something that will help me in any way that I can afford.

  “There’s an ad for eyedrops.”

  “Do they do anything special?”

  “No. It just says ‘high quality eyedrops guaranteed, only two Dust, limited time offer, buy now!’”

  I considered just closing my eyes and accepting my fate. I had a couple of Lives in the bank after all.

  But those were hard to get more of, and I didn’t have the Dust required to buy them. That was the whole purpose of coming here. So that I could get some Dust while also figuring out how to work in the field on my own.

  I purchased the eyedrops, caught them midair and asked Aurin to wet my eyes with them. She applied the drops to my tear ducts, and I shook my head slightly to help them spread. Keeping my eyes locked on the same spot.

  -2 Dust

  Dust: 325

  Taking a deep breath, I considered what I knew of these statues from the snippets of information I took from Yuxie while rummaging around her mind. I had been focusing on why they activated this anomaly, but in doing so, I picked up a bit of information on the anomaly itself. This was mostly in the form of half-formed thoughts and implications, but it was knowledge nonetheless.

  These were supposed to represent soldiers who served one of the ancient emperors, and their devotion to said emperor was unshakable. Or at least culturally, that’s how they were seen. Reality likely differed, but this specific anomaly didn’t care about reality; it cared about mimicking what people believed it should be.

  So who was the emperor in this scenario? Who was the entity on the throne exerting all that authority?

  Carefully, I copied the statue’s image of its emperor, far from the throne, in a part of its mind that its light did not reach. Then I imported the statue into my own mind.

  The moment I finished dropping it into my mind, all that power I felt radiating from it before was gone. The emperor was just a dead, empty husk, and from that husk I felt something wrong slither out into my head.

  I instinctively went to crush whatever the fuck that was when Aurin grabbed my head and carved my throat open.

  “I'm sorry,” the thing puppeting her lied.

  Aurin can't hurt me; this isn't real.

  Seizing Aurin's mental construct and twisting it, the wound on my throat vanished as Aurin's character became defined by the fact that she couldn't hurt me.

  Connected to the box that was her mental construct, I could see puppet strings hanging from the ceiling. Grabbing hold of them, I pulled down, ripping the puppetmaster from its hiding place onto the stage in my theatre. Its appearance was that of a set of prayer beads with centipedal legs attached to the strings.

  Aurin collapsed, like a puppet with its strings cut.

  “Splat,” I muttered as I smashed it with my mind. The beads shattered into fragments of emotion before dispersing. Well, this could have gone worse.

  “Look upon your false idol and weep,” I said, pressing the hollow corpse of the emperor down over its counterpart, “for it has been dead a very long time.”

  Serenity ruptured. Devotion buckled. The throne room inside its head convulsed as my implanted truth spread like a crack through porcelain.

  And who would I be if I didn’t take advantage of that fact?

  “Luckily for the court, a new emperor has been prepared, and is ready to rise to the occasion,” I pronounced, and sat down upon my throne. The pressure on my eyes vanished, and I fell backward as the curtains closed and my mind flickered off.

  Discord Server if you'd like to chat with other fans of my work! We need someone who starts conversations besides me.