"I need a woman with a wolf cut to beat me to death? No you don't! You need... healthcare and universal basic income. That's th-don't get distracted okay?"

- Northernlion on Stream reading and reacting to a chatter 10 February 2025

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I can feel her gaze burrowing into me, not just from the monitor now winking into unfiltered static, nor just from the yellow void I refuse to perceive as anything other than a defined room, but from the back of my chair as well, from the square steering wheel I was just holding in my hands, the metal armor all over my body, I take a deep breath and I can feel her gaze in the very air I’m breathing in and out, in and out. 

I am not talking to something(one) in my head or in the room with me, I am talking to the room itself. The room opens her mouth, and I am made to listen. 

“Disappointing.”

A sudden shock, my left arm spasming and whirling about as sharp and burning pain courses through it.

“Weak, pathetic, that is all your people can amount to isn’t it? Fucking crybabies?”

The pain radiates out towards my chest and I’m left squirming and writhing and bucking back and forth against something unseen that keeps me pressed down against the chair. My mouth opens just to say something but I end up biting down too hard and my scream is muffled by the flow of blood choking me that is just as quickly stemmed by my tongue stitching itselves back together.

“Not a single spine to be found in the whole lot. I promise power, glory and life everlasting and they run from the fight, they turn to honeyed words and pathetic schemes to avoid the crush.”

Eventually I slip out of her grasp for but a moment, enough to roll almost bonelessly onto the floor as countless fractures pulls themselves back together and joints pop back into place, letting me lift myself up on the useless stumps that my arms are proving themselves to be before I slowly start to wobble forwards, imagining myself bumping and steading myself against the wall with every pained jolt and seizure, the cockpit’s walls closing in around me like some cheap hotel pod.

“Once I saw one quiver and moan as I fell upon her, but you, that rush of excitement in your voice, the naked brutality you displayed, the boldness, the sheer decisiveness of it all!”

I’m still struggling to move through the pain, drifting in and out of consciousness as she speaks, trying to turn the distance between myself and the monitor into no distance.

“I thought I found a true warrior, someone who could understand and revel in our power, wield it the way it was always meant to be, to crush anyone and anything standing in our way! BUT ALL YOU’VE DONE IS WHINE!”

Another jolt stops and restarts my heart, turning a thrown punch into a full body lunge. I fall, shoulder checking through the surprisingly fragile monitor that now lies right in front of me, shattering it, scattering sharp glass that bounces harmlessly off of everywhere save my head, leaving me lying, twitching and feeling something warm pool out of me before something cold and sharp and hard is pushed out of my face, and I’m still in pain but breathing normally again, lying on the side of the yellow void we’ve both agreed is a floor.

“I… I asked you a question,” I manage to slur out, still trying to push myself up to ‘face her’ again but mostly succeeding at flopping against the ground.

I can feel laughter all around me, mocking me even as I manage to kneel, bracing myself against the chair in time to hear her speak once more.

“Even your rage is pathetic, impotent, but I suppose you won’t break as easily as I thought.”

I start to regain sensation in both of my arms and regret every moment of it, as something sloughs free from them and disappears somewhere into my armor.

“Wha-what are you? What was that, that thing we fought? Where did all of you come from?”

A groan reverberates throughout the entire cockpit and makes my hand almost slip free from the chair I was trying to pull myself back onto.

“You’ve forgotten already? Must I-”

My eyes widen as a certain sense of understanding sweeps into mind again, driving me scrambling back down to the floor out of sheer shock before the knowledge flows out of my too small brain, leaving only a single image behind in its wake. A complete map of the milky way unified under one banner with names and fine detail for the vast kingdoms underneath it that I am already struggling to recall as my mind latches onto one thing, and one thing alone. 

There is a translation marked at the bottom right corner of the map, and it simply states ‘Approx. 4.632 PCE’. This map was made four thousand six hundred and thirty three years ago, that is how long this galaxy has been conquered, that’s how long it’s been sinc-Oh God, how are we not dead yet? How did no one ever…. 

“I am a Mechacampus, caretaker of a sacred Imago, granted only to those the glorious Center of Xin has deemed worthy of civilization. Once, long ago I landed onto ’ar‘â, which your people now call Earth, and the strongest of your kings laid claim to the right to wield me.”

Typh-Ea grows wistful as she speaks, “Through me his ambitions were matched only by his will, and through my power he forged an Imago that he named in honor of his gods. With me he swore that he would use my unmatched power to conquer the Four Corners of the universe and unite all under heaven. A lofty, no, a worthy goal.”

But by the time I’ve finished clambering back onto my seat that venom returns to her graven voice, “And yet all he is now dust in Centauri’s dunes, unworthy of the strength I gave him, unworthy of the right to rule, unworthy of even a name to remember him by. I breathe him out and I am done with him! Let us not speak of the failure of your predecessor, but rather of the glory and acclaim you will surely obtain once you crush the Duke’s head into a fine powder.”

Coughing, I can’t help but point out, “Wait, you still haven’t told me where the Duke even came from, or why he wanted-”

“I do not know and do not care.The Duke is a mere worm, the emperor would have scattered men like him to the four winds with a mere word, and even at his weakest that fool king would have eaten him alive for daring to breathe the same air, but you, you waste time with these questions, this is simply how things must be done, how things have been done ever since the emperor’s word became law and I was first scattered throughout this galaxy.” 

The monitor reforms and a sped up recording of our battle plays before me, a disorienting display that is soon joined by another taking shape, and another, and another, and another. Thousands upon thousands of monitors all playing in perfect detail the songs and struggles of the thousandfold heroes and villains whose lives this great and venerable machine has ended, her sense of understanding and wisdom overlapping, joining with mine to allow me to perceive the sum total of her vast and storied history even as she speaks.

“If a realm bearing an imago comes into conflict with another then they must resolve it through force of arms, through their own strength, or alongside their vassal’s, that is how things are done. This is the empire’s peace.”

“But that’s-that’s stupid! You can’t expect everyone to-I can’t- I’m no-”

The screens suddenly shift, instead I am made to look upon the death of worlds. I see vast fleets of stone, living wood, sculpted bone, cold metal in hundreds upon hundreds of different makes and models, together or apart, all arrayed in a defiant last stand against… myself? No, Typh-Ea.

“Then you would prefer the wholesale death of your people? The Duke only sent out his drones to harry and contain snarling barbarians messing with forces beyond their understanding. But the moment you arrived, the moment I claimed you as my wielder did he not stop? Did the Duke not respect our challenge as backed by the Emperor’s law?”

My body refuses to listen to my commands as I am locked in place, staring onwards at the monitors, “What? No, it can’t be that simple, right? They were people for Christsake , they were all people! Just, living, eating, partying, arguing, struggling to see tomorrow, you can’t just…”

It matters not what the fleet brings to bear, crude nuclear weaponry, lasers hot enough to reduce tungsten to slag, or arrows tipped with antimatter. Their fleets burn, their fortifications are reduced to rubble, and I see one planet after another once teeming with life and joy and hardship reduced to ash, bodies stacked upon each other into grotesque temples, and the clinking of countless chains as kings and paupers alike are taken away to distant worlds never to return.

“And they will keep being people for as long as they are subject under an Imago and her wielder.”

That sense of understanding leaves my body, the monitors all fade into one, and the room shrinks into the familiar size and shape of the cockpit from before. I am suddenly aware that I can stand on my own again when I stumble as my little mind spins around in circles around itself,

“I… I don’t think I can, I’ve never killed anyone before! I’m not a… Opal Damnos! Y-you want a killer right? They’re the most infamous serial killer Centauri has ever seen or-wait no, someone more responsible! Lik-like one of the veterans in the reclaimer fleet up in R.O.M.E.! I’m sure one of them would love to use your power t-”

“Then kill yourself,” drones Typh-Ea.

“W-what?” I stammer out, instinctively backing away even as a knife materializes in my hand and lingers there for the brief moment it takes for me to recognize it and let go with a yelp.

“Holly Bashur, you can deny it if you wish, but you dream of war, of the glory long denied to you. Unless you prove yourself to be lower than the dirt you already are I will channel that rage and frustration within you into a greater purpose, my purpose. Through you I will conquer the stars and become the strongest under heaven, and through you I will surpass heaven itself until it is my name that is whispered out of fear, my songs that are sung in every corner of the galaxy.”

A wall materializes behind me, pinning me in place as the room and the monitor very suddenly surge up to meet me.

“But that’s insane…”

A ghost materializes in the monitor’s static, a faint impression of a humanoid shape warped into existence out of radiant blues and glimmering white, and she smiles at me with just her teeth.

“That is all I yearn for; kill yourself if you refuse to comply.”

I am suddenly naked and exposed in the cold room and the knife is in my left hand again. Nothing is holding it in place, nothing is keeping me from moving the way I want, but no matter how much my hand shudders and shakes I can’t bring myself to let it go. Is this just a test? That wasn’t me putting myself together all those times before was it? Does she just want me to know that I don’t have a choice in this? That I live or die based on her whims alone? 

But wait, no. She’s disappointed in me already, she hates me, I can tell from the way her red eyes are staring deep into my soul, she wants me to die, she wants me to degrade myself, to cry and change my mind and beg for a second chance like I’ve heard so many people do after slitting their wrists and fucking it up and ending up in the hospital from the other interns just so she can watch the light fade from my eyes when she tells me no.

Or worse, what if she doesn’t care? I mean the duke must have bastards and murderers of his own. It would be so easy for her to claim one once my world is dust like the countless others she’s killed before. And either way she has time, right? Time to wait until any lingering survivors crawl out of the ruins and then she’d have her pick of desperate, apocalypse hardened survivors eager for revenge and…

There is nothing I can do to win.

I let out a yelp as I feel cold metal press against my skin and I realize that the knife is already at my wrist, an all too familiar sting forcing me to throw it away, sending it clattering along the metal floor. Tears are streaming down my face, the room shudders and shakes with her laughter and I fall down to the ground, wallowing in the hot sand as distant voices and sounds swarm towards me and this is a nightmare I am not waking up from and my friend is dead and my life is over and everyone else is going to die unless I kill him I kill him I kil-