thread_night.demian_reflexion

they’re on the seventeenth. dappled orange light flickers amidst plains of grass, all gold. they wade against the tides, all shifting with the wind.
ahead of them is mount olympus.
none of them speak. there’s no point in the conversation, so either of them thought. they have their allegiances, their mutual alliance, a foundational trust built on a secret, the bond between them tentative and shallow. the wind nips at their faces, cold and chilly — the man amongst them doesn’t wince until the woman tailing behind him does.
they pace the outskirts. each entity present is looking for something. the ones with green cursors over their head have a shared objective. their prey, predators of their own, share another. but only one amongst them rise to the challenge, once the scouts have deduced the positioning of their victims.
the nemean’s pride, their leader, steps up amongst the brush. he remains unseen to the hunters.



suddenly, he strikes.

through the exposed eye of the man, the world steeps in monochrome. hatched lines trace every nook, every cranny, over hills and valleys of the underbrush. on his fingertips, they trace the ground beneath them just as well. the sun burns white in his vision, and he sees the world in slow motion: there is a lion before them, of the nemean variety. beyond their pouncing predator, he sees traces of the others of its pack: lionesses, adolescent cubs, all hanging back with bated breath awaiting the outcome of their guardian. if he doesn’t see them, he knows yet still, feels it in his systems, a neurosis incurable. he deduces they’ve found their target, and calculates the most optimal set of instructions to follow to achieve their desired outcome — victory over the animal.

so he calls forth to the void and prays. it answers in song, forging matter from thin air, and in his grasp forms the grip of a blade: standard-issue, unremarkable. he takes hold of it, and pull it forth.



a slash that was meant to strike the lion emerges from the ether ahead of the man. but his target is stricken by something else, instead. behind him, weapon at the ready, the woman lunges early a second before him, and invisible forces pull her through spatially to snap her into position ahead of his blow. she is trained to intercept it from his perspective, from her position, until reflexes faster than he is willing to perceive lead her to conduct reality in her favour instead. she jabs the lion through and withdraws her arm before an impact properly registers — their realm believes otherwise. her arm clicks into place for a second blow, following the first, as she raises it high, sword edge posed diagonally across her face. she brings it down on the lion; it recoils in a stagger in mid-air. she drops the lion to the ground — she, the player, falls — her hair barely grazes the tip of the projectile of sunder created from pure energy and mechanics.



their scene returns to a regular speed.

the lions’ pride crashes to the ground. it roars at the provocation, found pinned to the ground, and picks itself up as the woman jumps back from her close proximity to him, the grip of her sword held up high, its tip facing downwards. her silhouette from his angle is undefinable, blocked out by most of the inorganic material her sword is firstly forged from. she shifts through the brush, sinking back into its obscurity, and rounds their challenger with careful footsteps.

their mark trains in on her. here is their diversion, then: the man moves in one swift motion towards the lion’s hind quarters — he sticks a leg out, diving through as he brings himself low to the ground, then draws a wound across their contender’s back limbs. when the lion is quick to notice its aggression redirected, he blinds it with the pop of a crystal, creating a glaring flare mid-daylight.



the world suffers another cry of pain from the hunted. the lion jumps backwards as it sweeps around, abandoning its previous objective: by now, the woman has vanished into the golden stalks. surrounding them. it takes a second to reconsider its options, but flight is not one of them, especially when its pride is at stake. safety for their numbers comes first. so it bides its time as the man scrambles to his feet, having rolled away from a delicate swipe that razes the grass behind him — still no luck in exposing his companion, but it registers this not, burying the task at the bottom of its list of immediate threats. the man, demian, raises his blade with one hand, blade stretched across himself diagonally, and holds out his other above it. staring into the heart of the feral beast, he goads it with a gesture hither into another attack.



it charges, pounces; the leap made with its hind legs powerful kick dirt off the ground and presses down golden stalks horizontal. demian watches it, feels time slow at the tips of his fingers. cardinal outlines the shine reflected in his eyes as the sun, radiant, hidden behind the shadow of the predator peeks through to greet him: the white light curves in his limbal. he drops his shoulder, blade arm set to the side as the nemean threat exposes its underbelly, its weakness.

he knows, on instinct, how to best strike had the system not imposed rules upon itself. as grids take over his periphery, he sees it: the outline of a gash drawn diagonally, from the bottom right to top left, snakes up the hide of the beast. it is almost as though he were an artist, the blade his own brush, and he were to paint strokes into the world dulled grey, bringing forth the vivacity of scorching red to write the universe to life.



in a heartbeat, he shifts from his form stoic. demian gouges the lion apart. all he does is beckon, and his tool finishes it for him, first piercing through an emptiness beneath fur, before following through on the cut. he recounts the anatomy of an animal as he does, visualizes a projection in his mind: the most optimal way to avoid the instance of damage would be to dodge its oncoming attack, but he can’t if he dedicates himself to the drawn art. so he cheats.

it is in milliseconds that he finds the core of the lion enroute his blade’s path, and he exerts an effort so great as to penalize him on his recovery. demian commits, holding no breaths, and spurs the world on as his sword tears past the pride’s center. in resumption, as the world moves on, he throws his threat overhead further than it had intended to jump, and takes a few steps backwards: a forced stagger.



he doesn’t need to turn and see what has happened to it. there are predictable outcomes to every decision made in this world: the lion will roll forward upon landing, headfirst, before coming to a halt as it slinks back into the brush, camouflaged in its habitat resplendent. demian will take one step forward in response, wrangling away from the system’s fight to his hold. with its eyes trained on him, it will circle the proximity of at least five meters, maximum ten, and within an interval of three to five seconds of buffer for a hypothetical player to reorient themselves within, it will signal its next attack with a lowering of its head and a wag of its tail. he takes another step forward, and his sword disappears from his hand.
demian has already calculated how best to take down the lion had it decided to move that way. but there are predictable outcomes to every decision made in this world, and he knows he doesn’t have to be on his guard.



this was the thing with players, they had observed. variable, indeterministic, they themselves as elements were the sole arbiters of entropy within a universe of defined limitations. demian could falter when he guesses what to do come face to face with an enemy beyond his means, no pressure. but he knows all he does is follow in suit where others had gone, unable, viably, to carve a path out for himself alone.
in day’s steps, he follows. he thinks he would trust her, just as she did, and night pulls up with a message upon his interface as their mark breaks into polygonal fractals behind him. cardinal tells him of a reward delivered to his inventory; he refuses. silent as ever, his finger taps on a trade request to send to night, beyond his vision, and she accepts. he thinks her confused.
he deposits his item into his own depot. demian leaves, choosing absentmindedness, when the trade completes and its window snaps out of view.