Work Text:
the city, covered in plague, interspaces itself with memories of the before. your creator, smiling down at you as you tighten the ribcage into place in your brethren yet to be born. the local bunny population, quiet and calm whenever a warden approached. the start of the plague-
it statics.
you see your creator's grave. barren. lonely. the only one who visits is you, after all, and nobody leaves flowers. he never taught you to.
years later, when you return, its overrun by the plague. a mound. you wouldn't know it was his if you hadn't had the coordinates saved-
it glitches again.
there's a distinct, out of body experience when you kill the dragon. you remember doing it, but there's a fuzz. like something else came over you.
if you think too hard about it, you remember shrieking and a rush to repair yourself.
so you don't think too hard about it.
especially when it glitches out if you try. statics. there's something interfering with your very base circuitry, the thing that constructs the fabric of your personality.
but he never taught you how to make those chips. you don't know how to fix it.
when you lived there, you made others. fixed them, too. your creator wanted an assistant, but nobody wanted to apprentice under him, so he created the perfect apprentice.
there was something else, too.
you can't remember what it was, anyway, and.
well.
it fizzes out.
but when you'd killed the dragon, somethingakin to victory swept over you. not strict victory, just the sense that you'd won out in the vastness of the void.
the call of silence always came to you, but this wasn't that.
something in you wanted to smash the egg.
you didn't.
the making of others, of wardens just like you, enabled a lot of your survival. mending was worked into every piece of every warden, but even then they required upkeep. the cores especially.
fickle. souls that pour out.
the plague wa-
a
as?
you can't remember what you were thinking about.
the barren grave stands out to you. he was warm, to you, but the people recognized him as cold. you think they just didn't know your creator very well.
(the mini warden you made stands as a failure to his very name. but he never taught you how to make personalities. and you can't remember his name.)
it happened after you left.
and you killed the dragon.
so why can't you remember what your purpose is?