Flowchart of Doom

My processing matrices stall at the auditory input of "Azzy." It makes absolutely no logical sense, much like everything else this anomaly has brought into my realm. But as I hold his fragile hand, my internal sensors finally breach his aura. The ambient magic shielding him lifted like mist. I pushed inward, expecting to catalogue his terror.

Yet I find nothing. Not the metallic crispness of fear, nor the airy suffocation of vengeance. Not a mortal soul, but... a mirror. A vast void perfectly contained within the limited geometry of a primate body. His internal landscape perfectly matches my own cosmic expanse. We are operating on the exact same frequency.

As if sensing the sudden rigidity in my meat-suit and the total lack of muscular movement in my facial structure, Silas waves his free hand in front of my ocular organs. He tilts his head, attempting to catch my attention.

My eyelids blink for the first time. Unconsciously, my motor functions copy his action. I tilt my head in the exact same direction, trying to align my optical perspective with his.

That cause Silas’s physical form to malfunction. He breaks out into what mortals call "laughing." He releases his grip on my hand, doubling over and clutching his midsection as rapid, breathy spasms shook his frame. He reaches up to wipe saline fluid from his eyes. My databases indicate tears are a biological response to extreme distress, yet his aura radiates amusement. A fascinating paradox.

"You are just like a baby, I swear." Silas looks up at me. His laughter is dying down, though his optical lenses are still watery.

I remain there, my head still tilt to the side, filing this catastrophic realization away in the dark, vast library of my consciousness.

"Baby? The infantile stage of the mortal primate?" I pause for a fraction of a second. I raise a fleshy hand and placed my fingers under my chin, mimicking the human gesture for processing data. "I am eons older than your species. Though... if you are referring strictly to this localized meat-suit I have manifested, then yes. This configuration is only today old."

Silas just stares at me. His blue eyes do not blink. He looks directly into my optical sensors, and for a suspended moment, it is simply two abysses recognizing each other. Then, he clears his throat and pushes his glass up.

"It seems I owe you an apology. A real one this time," he says, "For both my intrusion and my patronizing attitude."

He sidesteps, his heavy robes flowing around him. Reaching into the spine of his leather-bound notebook, he takes out his quill and presses it briefly to his lips.

I watch as he transfers a tiny, structured flow of ambient magic into the feather. He drags the tip through the empty space between us, manipulating the localized light particles to leave a glowing, golden trail in the air, effectively turning my void into his personal whiteboard. 

"Azzy," Silas says, stepping back to admire a glowing circle he had just drawn. "You must be wondering how I got here. It is only courteous to give you the full brief of my supposed heroic sacrifice."

"Heroic sacrifice?" I ask out loud, pushing the sound through my unpracticed larynx. “Why frame it with such parameters if your trajectory ended here regardless?” 

"Tsk, tsk," Silas tuts, tapping his quill in the air. The word context appeared, a curvature of suspended, glowing ink. "It makes all the difference."

With a brief melodic incantation and a rapid displacement of molecules, Silas manifests a cushioned chair next to me. Assuming he generated it for my avatar, I carefully lower my center of gravity. Bending this meat-suit’s hinged joints at a ninety-degree angle requires embarrassing focus; I have never needed a resting apparatus before. 

"If you can manifest complex furniture," I raise a fleshy appendage—the polite primate protocol for inquiries—"why not a physical board and pen?"

"Because I like it this way," Silas says proudly. His aura flares with positive energy. In the empty space between us, a full, complex flowchart is now displayed. He had rendered the entire thing in the exact moments I had been struggling to sit in a chair.

The mage doodles a crude rendering of a castle, followed by a stick figure wearing a crown. "This is the kingdom I reside in, and this is my current king." He adds another stick figure next to it, this one sporting a cape and a cluster of decorative sparkles. "And this is me, the Royal High Mage. I handle all the logistics. They couldn't survive without me, a fabulous one."

He closes one optical organ quickly and opens it again. Is that what humans called a wink?

Silas clears his throat. With a flick of his wrist, he draws a circle around the king figure. Next to it, he sketches stylized flames, a dying tree, localized flooding, and several highly distressed stick people. 

"Here is the mayhem happening up there. The kingdom is in chaos. The king, naturally, blamed it on the curse of the abyss."

He drags the quill through the air again, drawing a crude, two-dimensional cephalopod with a frowning facial expression, a single horn, and squiggly lines denoting negative energy. "Which is YOU," he emphasizes, raising his voice and pointing the feathered end of his quill directly at my meat-suit. 

"But I didn't do any of that," I protest, raising a hand to point at my own chest. 

My processing matrices are caught in a logical paradox. Is this the sensation mortals referred to as ‘confusion’?  As I never interfere with fragile beings beyond returning them safely. 

Furthermore, my true form is vastly more complex than a frowning octopus.

"I know, I know." Silas lowers the quill, tapping it thoughtfully against the palm of his hand. "I know you return all the sacrifices. I collect their data, after all."

He pushes his glass lenses up the bridge of his nose, the localized light catching the glass and briefly obscuring his gaze. 

"And I know that the source of the mayhem is something completely different. But that is a story for another time."

"You fixed the mayhem?" I ask. It is not my custom to monitor the state of the mud-sphere, but since my presence is the cause for their panic, my interest is piqued. If the problem is solved, my cosmic classification will be cleared. 

"I fixed the mayhem," Silas confirms. He raises a single, opposable digit into the air. My motor functions, still running on mimicry protocols, irresistibly raise a fleshy thumb in response. 

"Well, actually, it is not fixed at the moment, but it will be. That is Phase 2, which has to be perfectly aligned with Phase 1…" Silas places a hand over his mouth, his syllables devolving into rapid mumbles. He sighs. "Never mind. Just talking to myself."

I stare at him. Behind my back, invisible tendrils of my true geometry begin to seep through the seams of this restrictive meat-suit. If Silas senses the localized reality warping around him, he gives no indication. 

His erratic behavior and rapid vocalizations contradict his aura. I cannot sense a single fluctuation of nervousness or deceit; there is only that unreadable null. I can probe deeper into his consciousness to verify, but I consciously retract the tendrils. Not yet.

Silas’s cheery smile return. He drags his quill through the air, doodling yet another stick figure, this one brandishing a sword.

"This is Kaelen, the Kingdom's Holy Knight. He is the absolute best with his sword, but unfortunately, that is all he is good at." Silas sighs and pushes his glass lenses up again. I document the frequency of the action. Is it a biological necessity, or a primate trick to shield nervousness?

"Sir Kaelen is also my childhood friend," Silas continues, "and he is desperately in need of a promotion!”

He isn’t even following half of the glowing flowchart he had manifested; his thought process had gone completely off-script. What is the logical purpose of introducing a swordsman into an equation about cosmic mayhem?

There is a pause. The silence thicken, literally increasing the localized atmospheric pressure of the room.

Silas drags his quill through the air, sketching another diagram: the knight from earlier, plunging his sword into the frowning octopus. The cephalopod now sported ‘X’ marks over its optical organs.

"Azzy, you must be wondering why I brought Kaelen into this," Silas says. He raises his thumb and index finger at a ninety-degree angle. I quickly cross-reference my cultural databases. A ‘finger gun,’ meant to simulate human projectile weaponry. "It is because he will arrive here to slay you in a day or so. But don't worry about it. I told him exactly where to strike, and it is nowhere near your vitals."

"Why are you telling me this?" I demand.

I can not comprehend his algorithmic logic. One simply do not announce their assassination plan to their target. The act is suicidal, akin to a predator making loud, rhythmic noises in front of its prey.

My invisible tendrils are visibly manifesting now, piercing through the seams of my meat-suit in jagged bursts of dark energy. The bipedal configuration is actively tearing; I can hardly maintain the anatomical structure anymore.

Yet Silas remains steady and unwavering. 

"Because you deserve to know that much, Azzy." His lips curves into a smile—not the devious, feline one from earlier, but something faint, subtle, and incredibly fragile. 

He caps his quill and places it neatly into his breast pocket. Then, he completely severe the flow of his ambient magic. The aura shield that protected him this entire time vanished. He spreads his arms wide. 

What does that gesture mean? An invitation? A surrender? 

It does not matter. Driven by pure, unadulterated curiosity, my tendrils lash forward. They plunge seamlessly inside of him, wrapping tightly around the pulsing muscle of his heart and the electrical storm of his brain.