Prodding The Shade

A small diplomatic ploy unfolded in the background.

The NPC element of Lee’s military had safely retired to the harbour, where their ships floated away from each other with a greater separation than Ramiro’s mindleap. On the heel of this evacuation, while Lee was struggling to squash the triple threat, his command post welcomed a messenger with an edict from Suchi’s non-intervening church. Pope Berbahaya had officially forbidden the re-entry of his soldiers onto hallowed ground—almost all the region’s ground—until Ramiro’s apprehension. The Blood City trusted Lee’s control of the force but not this cannibal king whose loyalties to the sand engendered so much hostility against the clay and sky. In a gesture of goodwill, honouring the many gods of compromise inhabiting the church’s pantheon, their holy order would exempt the units stuck at his trading posts if they disarmed. None of this applied to Lee’s regiment on the autonomous west bank, but any trespass from there into the church’s surrounding jurisdiction would be interpreted as an act of military aggression.

A lieutenant of the regiment who would sustain 149 stabwounds assured his platoon that their situation was peachy. “Just tolerate the trembling of these red-skinned faggots.”—the clergy in eunuch-esque regulation were selected from homosexuals without the corrupting influence of offspring—“The ‘apocalypse’ they hide from behind their wall—a child-eater, a dirt-digger, and a glorified seagull—will soon be blotted out. If I wore their holy skirts, the only thing I’d fear is whether my arrogance might provoke the shadow to engulf me, too.”

Few of the troops trapped by the church’s edict would survive.

Anti-Icarus

Wilson had pestered Lee’s troops around a spawn site so her cult could reincarnate, but she was forced to flee when their towers grew too numerous. Next her spree had flapped her over to the stadium where an almost undefended crowd were cheering for the acrobatic marvels of Cirque du Saana. Victims were galore. Their plenitude was offset, however, by their low levels rendering them individually worthless, the exercise akin to weeding a garden with a pistol. More aggravatingly none showed either the proper respect or terror owed to an empress—drunks screamed demands to be shot for their 3-seconds of television fame. The matriarch left fuming.

A reluctant wind drifted her back to El-Masry, whose quakes slowed Lee’s towers and helped her sniping by sieving off the weak and flushing the survivors from their buildings. In a chat group for her cult, one yoga babe bemoaned, “Her Grace has been manipulated by the scrotes into playing support for their avatar of women-hate!” Wilson banished this wench and declared that she was only acting in accord with her “higher maternal instincts.”

Wherever her instincts might’ve driven her, the empress wouldn’t have Re-Lived much longer. Lee had solved her pattern ages ago and was now combining it with El-Masry’s to put both beneath the dirt.

Her next flight away from his towers passed by a cluster of achievement pillars. These makeshift skyscrapers, dotted throughout the slum, had been used by Lee early in the battle but had been subsequently abandoned after multiple collapses due to their fragility. Now, they were swarmed by journalists wrestling over aerial shots of the conflict. Wilson due to the lack of threat had slipped into complacency around the pillars, which she monitored only to ensure their occupants captured her most regal angle.

On one nearby pillar Lee stood in violation of international military law with a helmet marked “PRESS”. His upper body was covered in spelltomes strapped over a patchwork tunic of monster furs—an unidentified Legendary. He also wielded an Ortheerian sword, “Worldhexer”. This had been looted yesterday from the elementalist, Xiaoming Chen, who’d failed to assassinate him during the preliminaries. Lee was already incorporating these new tools into his juggle.

He used a battery of troop thunderbolts below to mask the noise of two chained teleports, latched onto Wilson’s angel wings, and flicked the sword like a lightsabre to slice off the top of her skull, which she’d left uncovered to flaunt her divine face and afro.

The pair then entered freefall as Lee—“like a daterape-druggist,” one of Wilson’s followers cried—repeatedly stabbed her inert body. An enthusiastic news commentator dubbed him the “Anti-Icarus, climbing to the heavens and dragging the gods back down to earth.”

A quirky symbolism tickled a few of Saana’s lore buffs. Here was the protégé, albeit the involuntary protégé, of Karnon executing a female imposter of The All-Mother. The scene, like a farce put on by a troupe of dwarves, re-enacted in diminutive caricature one of this instalment’s climactic historical incidents.

Through that absurdity might be grasped why Lee—who in the obscure undertakings of his Cripple era must have assassinated his own mighty gods in this fashion—talked with such fatalistic irony about “The Cycle”. The kid himself sensed the currents of destiny that were as bizarre and repetitious as the decapitations of this yogini. As was learned by a practitioner of Wilson’s trade, for those who spin the wheel of samsara too long, everything recurs, both ups and downs, both birth and death. The only question for Lee in the phase of his karmic descent was whether to exit the ride or enjoy it like a rollercoaster.

Or like skydiving.

The plummeting duo were caught by a platoon, who then assisted with the queen’s dismemberment.

But She would Re-Live. After Wilson’s permadeath a new player with her username spawned in the western megalopolis of Nilke where the mother was still worshipped, and entering the yoga cult’s communication channels she declared, immortally, that, “Many women are at best undeserving recipients of Mother’s milk and the heretic women of the penis-loving east who failed to rally for our cause today do not deserve it whatsoever…it will be their Assignation to suckle for eternity upon the cycle of masculine abuse they’ve chosen, lapping at The Tyrant’s golden urine and The Tyrant’s rotten smegma and weeping with envy as the faithful regathering in my homeland grow powerful upon the generosity of my divine mammaries.”

This speech, bizarrely, rollicked with a double layer of comedic imposterism. Wilson had logged out after her deletion—not even yet to snivel over dying but to review what’d happened, her perspective a blank blackness from start to finish. During this absence, an opportunistic yoga student of hers with a “lactivism” bent had swiped her freed-up username in a bid to steal and redirect the following.

Optimism

The hunt for El-Masry was a quiver more protracted to the audience’s gratitude. He brought the entertainment right to them. Zig-zagging through the tourney crowd, he shook seventy-one-thousand into a human paste before beginning his main demolition job on the stadium hosting the girlfriend-swindler’s matches. The centre of the roof collapsed, the thousands strapped in shrieking and laughing as they fell. An opera singer was splattered. Alex Wong and his regiment struggled throughout in a game of catastrophic whack-a-mole.

But in the air beyond El-Masry’s sight, an angel had been grounded, and the one who’d buried her was now reallocating the freed-up resources. Steadily the sculptor tunnelled towards his own grave. Soldiers all throughout the city were digging plots and waiting for him to select his favourite.

“It’s news to me that he had all these pent up feelings,” Dina said in a live TV interview. “I’m startled; I was convinced that Mustafa fancied other men.” The reporter sensed a juicy line of drama and asked her to elaborate. “Most guys feel dangerous,” she said. “Because he lacks that energy, I thought the instincts must’ve been concentrated elsewhere, you know? It might be the sculpting. His hand movements are very delicate.”

El-Masry fled the stadium when the site began to swarm with units. As his carnage shuffled back to the markets, Dina gave further commentary. “This just seems like compensation,” she said. “Something’s lacking.” Lee as a counter-example was someone who “radiates masculine charisma.”

In a devilish move the journalist hopped into El-Masry’s stream and invited him to join the interview, to air his grievances directly at his crush.

The sculptor entered chivalrously. “I’m not gay, you stupid bitch. I’ll show you gay when I fuck you and the whole class in the ass!”

Dina inspected her classmates arranged about her for the camera. Five out of eight were men. “That’s over 50% gay,” she observed.

“I am not gay!”

A series of crashes sounded in the distance. El-Masry had vented his exasperation by knocking down a barracks and a restaurant complex, neither of which were occupied.

The reporter then added to the interview a second surprise guest caller: The Tyrant of Saana.

Lee tried to mediate the romantic dissonance between the sculptor and his muse. El-Masry ranted that chasing these “sword-worshipping sluts” was pointless for anyone without fame and riches and an army, but Lee rebutted with a citation from a possibly made-up fan letter describing his most enamouring asset as none of those. “And most attractive Tyrant-sama,” he quoted, “is your contagious optimism. The cheery spirit of your monologues has lifted me out of a lifelong depression I did not know I even had. Please write back to me soon, your disciple in the joy of The Beyond, Kiyoko. P.S. The second pair of panties are from my cousin, who is also a fan.”

El-Masry convulsed with rage.

He got so heated that he actually engaged with the fake fangirl’s assertions by pointing out Lee’s gloomy features and challenging him to list a single thing he was optimistic about.

Lee responded in deadpan, “You dying, I’m optimistic about that.”

Cursing him, El-Masry quit the call.

“I think that is why he’s going to lose,” Dina agreed flirtatiously, “because he doesn’t have your Highness’s confidence. After picking up these magical abilities, we’ve only heard negativity.”

Omnipresence

The Sandfolk wheeled out in a mass exodus once the skies were free of Wilson. They couldn’t tolerate the pressure wedged between Ramiro and Lee’s ominous patrols.

During the chaos the puppetmaster managed to infiltrate one departing faction undetected. They weren’t being monitored due to a lack of strategic significance, but the acquisition would prove pivotal in a subsequent encounter. He’d been given no other reprieve than this from the hunt, despite Lee’s cameos in the heavens and the featherbrained interview. Though Ramiro could not see much of his opposition in the streets, he felt that the reverse was not true, that Lee’s vision permeated every alleyway like Suchi’s unobstructed sunshine. The trick had not been recognised. Lee had adapted to his search the administrative skills developed during his “reformation” phase, when The Company’s finite resources had been flashed around the globe in calculated schemes to manufacture a sense of omnipresent terror.

Ramiro must've stewed in frustration at the nearing of El-Masry’s end, at this cast of jokers luring him into blowing his cover. Initially he wouldn’t have dared to start his operations until Lee’s forces had been outed by the Cleansing, but the activation of Karnon’s other chosen had caused him to drop some of his caution in case this was the apocalyptic moment. Now, with the other two goners, half of The Company’s top figures would be on a manhunt for him, a petty slumlord, who couldn’t have defeated one of them let alone their united excess. He’d already spotted Kara ‘Caramel_Sunshine_Sprinkles’ Tangaroa, the effective overseer of Suchi’s playerbase, at the head of a minuscule 100-troop company. Into random shacks major generals were dragged by exotic monster hounds. No one could accuse the More-obsessed Lee of the crime of moderation, but this over-allocation of resources was tyrannical, a concentration of genius possible only because of the tournament collecting the gang and his willingness to pause the event while he stomped some worms. Ramiro prayed for a miracle to save him, prayed even for the church to start the purge a little early.

Enemies of Enemies

El-Masry popped up from the earth at the gates of the Blood City and calmly requested admittance from the guards. “I’m depleted. Let me recuperate, and I’ll give you guys my powers.” The pope’s booming telepathy ordered him to “fuck off”, but El-Masry tried to enter anyway, thousands of Lee’s troops above and below ground having cornered him against the ramparts. Tunnelling under the wall ran him instantly into the zone’s goat-herd protector frowning on the other side. A global notification advertised his death.

Half an hour later in an exclusive interview with a Middle-Eastern gaming channel, El-Masry was asked why in Allah’s gracious wisdom he thought that might’ve worked.

“The enemy of my enemy. I studied in the city for my sculpting prep, and while freaking out I had a brilliant epiphany that the factions might not be as friendly as they present. Guess I was mistaken.”

Martyrdom

Wilson and El-Masry had died within an hour, but Lee stuck to the full duration of his hiatus for the quieter hunt of Ramiro, much to the irritation of the tournament attendants unable to follow it.

With Lee's attention no longer split three ways, he rapidly jack-hammered through the identification and arrest of the puppets, the nomadic merchants and the homeless orphans and the construction workers and even the hidden converts that Ramiro had planted in shacks for his city-wide network. The search exhibited in its rawest form Lee’s inhuman pattern recognition, the freak skills used to crack many of Saana’s mysteries decades in advance. These now hounded Ramiro as psychological tendencies he didn’t himself recognise were superimposed on a vast library of spy intelligence tracking Sandfolk social networks, opportune locations, and the recent movements of thousands of suspects. Experts would later realise this detective work was easy in comparison to another case Lee’d solved during his sojourn in the Blood City.

On the verge of capture Ramiro contacted Lee and requested a rendezvous to negotiate a diplomatic resolution. Lee interpreted this as a sign they would be meeting soon regardless, one on one, but since the Argentine was willing to capitulate formally, he organised a sitdown with a dozen Sandfolk leaders and a disenchanter. Ramiro and himself attended by proxy through puppets, one mind-slaved, the other wage-slaved.

The meeting was broadcast for the sake of openness. Ramiro’s ambassador, himself a leader of the Sandfolk, bantered with his compatriots as he served a bowl of communal soup. The others passed on the dish with horror. The magic left no visible trace.

Ramiro had planned the meeting with the small hope of creating a hole for escaping from Lee’s ever-constricting containment zone, but the multi-tasking teen only pulsed into his envoy’s gaze occasionally while the search outside blitzed on.

Ramiro’s puppet suddenly adopted his mannerisms. He warned Lee that he controlled a quarter million between his subjects and the families they would murder on his orders.

He then laid out his conditions soberly. His people were tired of running from the monthly arson. They wanted to settle on the west bank. Lee would transfer its title in exchange for the end of hostilities and the release of all hostages. The territory to Lee, beyond matters of the ego, could be donated without the pains of significant loss, its value not a thousandth of his empire’s holdings, its value, in fact, negative as its maintenance consumed imports. Was he not also retiring? Why did he care?

Lee, with his calculating compassion, pointed out that nothing stopped Ramiro from collecting more hostages for further demands.

The puppet imitated Ramiro’s tearful answer. Amongst “his people”, he’d not been numbering himself. The legal and sole recipients of Lee’s generosity would be the Sandfolk. Ramiro promised to atone for his sins by suiciding once the deal was sanctioned.

This caused Lee to howl with laughter, yet one of the faction leaders present at the meeting actually asked him if he had the benevolence to consider Ramiro’s offer. Lee was startled that the sappy martyr charade seemed to be persuasive to some of the Sandfolk. A few minutes earlier the most incensed of them had been begging for a chance to strangle Ramiro personally in retribution for their orphans. Now, brainwashed by the material incentive, they advocated faith in this cannibal’s contrition.

Lee told Ramiro he would speak to him privately via message.

Ramiro switched communication channels. His puppet resumed a previous conversation.

The exact details of the duo’s talk are unknown and have to be inferred in retrospect. Lee may have seized it as another opportunity to derail his unhappy destiny by revealing to Ramiro the greater scheme in which they were themselves but puppets. It is possible, too, that Lee plunged into the nuances of law and history that would render Ramiro’s efforts vain, or he might have delivered a confusing monologue that alluded cryptically to the fact he was just about to ambush the hiding saviour.

Two kilometres away Lee stealthed into the basement of a shack. In a simultaneous stroke, five puppets who formed all the escape nodes into the surrounding network were assassinated.

But Ramiro wasn’t there. Lee was greeted by a scared child with a pendant around her neck, its amber decorative piece housing the severed digit of a god. It was a familiar Legendary. It was one of his own: “The Swindler’s Left Thumb”, an artefact for swapping locations with its right-thumb twin. Lee pocketed it like the rest.

Out on the savannah Ramiro jostled along in one of the many caravans fleeing the Blood City’s rising heat. But he had other plans for “his people”. He would swift through their timid flocks and unite them into the power they should’ve been without the constant in-fighting. No longer would they scatter to be picked off by the vultures and the hyenas of the plain. He would drag these cowards back to face the other monsters shooing them away. They would either succeed and install a permanent kingdom on the banks of the river, or they would all—together—be purified of their lifetime’s filth by holy flame.

Towards The Summit

Ceremonies rolled on at the stadium while crews repaired El-Masry’s destruction. The finales were held for a body mod tournament, adventurers were tantalised with a presentation on The Company’s new desert colony, the crowd were rejuvenated by an aerobics class followed by a chakra cleansing session, a dance by the now-absent Sandfolk was replaced last-minute on Lee’s orders with a sermon from a froth-mouthed preacher exhorting players to shun videogames for Jesus.

The closer was another segment designed by Alex Wong to remind the public of his imperial succession. As the audience snored, the orchestra played Accardi’s “Ascension From Darkness” with an accompanying bikini choir. The sun was so hot, the instrumentalists had also stripped from their tuxedos to their underwear.

A doppelganger of Lee read a speech in praise of his replacement, and then, with Wong eventually permitted to join the fun outside, his own acceptance speech and re-coronation was performed by yet another doppelganger. The remarks were extra silly in light of the concurrent events. “My friend has lost the energy to continue the crusade towards our democratic dream and has thus retired like Diocletian to a farm where he’ll grow vegetables and chill with ponies,” the doppelganger read. “That’s not a joke. My son has ridden on the animals.”

Much of the audience who’d logged or tuned out during this downtime would never come back. The 6s with the pros were finished, they reasoned, and all evidence pointed to the 1s being even more of a grand stomp. They were wrong, of course. The summit still awaited.

The four-hour mark approached. As had been promised, the soldiers of The Company arrived at the stadium and slotted themselves around its benches and staff quarters to quietly resume their positions in the tournament’s background. With a wave of boos for holding up the day, the spectators welcomed Lee, who materialised in a seat at the arena’s foot. Around him the rookie competitors sweated nervously, the heart and soul of each compressed by the difference in stature between them at their small beginnings and this titan returning to his god-murdering peak. Which of them would fight him first was determined by Alex Wong trading places with his doppelganger and kicking off the selection lottery.

The duels had begun.