52. Vesper #3
People should look out for people. We’re all the same. But time after time, era after era, century after century, humanity finds a reason to be cruel.
I understand why Lady Liberty is so angry.
She’s supposed to be a symbol of freedom Cipher said, the symbol of hope, and yet here she stands, beaten and abused, crying and filled with feminine rage as player after player beats her.
They fight her, expect to win something from hurting her, looking for loot despite her pain.
She’s meant to protect them, protect us, and instead, she became something else.
Slowly, I lift the bottle into the air.
“Give me your tired,” I begin, repeating the lines from before loud enough to be heard across the courtyard. “Your poor, you decaying masses yearning to breathe free.”
The statue whips toward me, her brows furrowed in anger, her mouth open in a brutal scream that makes my ears wet. When she sees the bottle in my hand, she shrieks and starts to barrel toward me, clamoring over the white tile, desperate for her flame.
“The wretched refuse of your rotting shore,” I continue, choking on the words as sobs threaten to overtake me. “Send these, the players, the hunger-ridden to me.”
Lady Liberty lowers to her hands and knees and slides across the tile toward me, her face growing closer and closer.
“I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” I scream, my fingers tight on the bottle. “And ask you to light my flame of liberty!”
The statue screams, desperate, her fist lifting up to smash me beneath it. I don’t flinch. I stare up at her face as she looms over me, as that righteous fury surrounds me and I feel it too. I feel it, too.
“This isn’t who you are!” I choke out. “I know you! I see you!” I hold up the photo of the little girl, of the moment before everything had changed. “I see you,” I choke out, my voice so rough, it’s almost doesn’t sound like words.
The angry expression on her face starts to ease.
Her hand slowly lowers to the tile and she leans her face closer.
Those black tears track down her face and her eyes close as she sinks into the feeling.
My own tears flow freely down my cheeks.
We’ve come so far as humanity, and yet, we haven’t moved at all.
We’re the same, holding people down so that others can stand taller.
We haven’t changed.
But I can.
I can.
“They’ve used us,” I choke out. “Abused us for their gain. They hurt us at every turn. But they can never own us.” I hold the bottle tight, the light of the fire inside it shining onto her face as the anger disappears completely and her face is left anguished.
“We are not broken. We are not broken!” I snarl, desperate to sink into this rage, hungry for it.
“We are not creatures that were born from their cruelty. We are a fire that’s been set.
” My face hardens with my words, and I’m reminded of every time I’d been beaten, starved, brutalized, violated.
Dross is a hard place. We all suffer, but even there, women are still at the whims of men.
My mother was at the whim of my father and look where that got her.
Look where it got me. “And we’re going to burn the ones who fucking put us here! ” I snarl.
Lady Liberty’s eyes open and she stares into me with that otherworldly blankness that somehow still feels full of emotion. She shifts, bringing the cone toward me.
“Then light my flame, player,” she says in a voice far gentler than I expected.
I do as she says. With a scream of pain and rage, I slam the bottle into the metal torch, watching as it shatters and the flames escape.
They roar to life along the metal, growing and growing until the torch is engulfed with flame.
It slowly eases, forming back into a controlled blaze as the fire potion settles.
Lady Liberty begins to straighten, slowly unfolding from her position and standing tall.
Her great feet stride across the white tile slowly as she steps over the small river and picks up the cracked book.
She nestles it against her and looks back once at me with a smile.
“Your rage will be the catalyst for your liberation, Vespera Vox,” she says, but it echoes in my mind. Her lips never move.
Then she lifts the torch into the air, tips up her chin with pride, and freezes. She doesn’t move again, but that torch still burns. It burns so bright, its light shines across all of the city.
Locke is staring at me from across the courtyard, slack-jawed. I wipe at my face, trying to get rid of the tear stains there and look more presentable as I sniff and stare up at the statue.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
You lit the flame of liberty. Feminine rage will light the way home.
REWARD: in another era, you’d be burned at the stake. Lucky you, we don’t do that here! Have this loot crate instead!
I stare at the loot crate that drops to the tile with a clatter in front of me, my stomach dropping at the size of it. Before I can even reach down to open it, another notification pops up across my vision.
TIER UPGRADE UNLOCKED
It flashes at me over and over again, blinking like a warning.
Blinking like a curse.