172 In Absence Of Life; In Abundance Of Death (1/2)

Collections of memories, not bound to bruised flesh or brittle bone — that was what the crystal pillars were. They were an advanced hard drive meant to endure even the harshest conditions in the event of unforeseen incidents. The moment Reed saw the pillars he recognized what they were.

It was not the first time he had come across a construct like them before, after all.

The technology required to safely contain a soul without its physical tether — the body.

Ma.

Reed felt a chill down his spine and said, ”Why are they here? Or rather who are they? The Quetzal Collective was never... completed, right? If that's the case, then who are these people...?”

Truth be told, it was a question that both Reed and Lu'um already had the answer for.

Lu'um put her hands on the crystal pillar in front of them and shut her eyes in concentration. Reed guessed that she was probing it, but he didn't think that it was necessary. The facts had been plainly laid out for all to see. Confirming them would do nothing to remedy the situation...

What had been done could not be reversed.

Astor turned toward Reed in confusion and said, ”...Do you know what these things are, Reed? These crystal pillars weren't in the observational reports we received about the city. I've double-checked, but I can't find a single report mentioning them.”

His helmet's heads-up display winked as it continued to beam a flood of information about the city into Astor's eyes, though none of it matched what was before them.

”You can stop looking. I doubt you'd find anything about them, even if you searched through your universal compendium for another century,” said Reed in a low voice.

Once Reed explained the function and nature of what a memory crystal was, Astor quickly caught on the logical discrepancy between what he had learned from Lu'um's explanation of Itroch and what stood in front of them. The same dreadful realization struck him as he gazed outward toward the street riddled with the crystal pillars in abundance.

When Lu'um removed her hands from the crystal pillar, she turned toward Reed and Astor and silently nodded her head.

Reed felt a headache coming on, already aware that they had finally stepped onto something important. He broke the silence and said, ”Let's go and tell them the news, then. Ophelia can relay the news to the Spirit of Bountiful Charity and then rethink this entire situation from the ground up.”

The Itroch Syndrome cases had a definite connection to the city of Itroch itself, rather than a mysterious pathogen of some sort. What that relationship was would determine whether or not the infected Chosen in quarantine could be saved...

Lu'um stroked her chin pensively as she thought about all she knew of post-Great Barrier War Mulia and the hidden infrastructure that had allowed it to be a self-sustaining miniature world of its own.

What lay beneath the very continent of Mulia was one of the few things that she had not been privy to for unexplained reasons not known even to her.

She was one of the few people who had been granted the privilege of knowing what He had been creating toward the end of the Final War, the penultimate millennia of conflict against the Infestation after they had snuffed a majority of the Prime Universe into darkness.

It was during that dark, final millennium — when the entire cosmos had been leeched of all its light, — that He had created the Heavenly Barrier System as it now existed.

He had combined the most advanced Ancient Mulian technology available at the time and the taboo, eldritch knowledge extracted from the imprisoned Infested Pupa within Xibalba to create something entirely new...

Lu'um roughly knew what He had done, but couldn't be accounted to explain the specifics because she had not been around on Mu during the Heavenly Barrier's construction. She had been out in the Deep Black — Infested controlled space out of their homeworld — keeping the Infestation at bay with the few remaining Ancient Mulian fleets at their disposal...

Ophelia let out a resigned sigh and said, ”I can feel it...! We're at the cusp of something huge right here, but we're missing a piece or two from putting it all together! Goddamnit!”

Astor took a deep breath and said, ”At least we know what happened to the victims, Ophelia. It's better than not knowing what happened to them at all. We know the effect now; all we need to do is gather some more information and then we'll be able to extrapolate a possible cause.”

Reed gazed at Itroch's magnificent works for all they were worth and closed his eyes. He blocked out his senses and retreated into the depths of his mind where he could work without disturbance.

He had long since come to the conclusion that the Eventide of Faith was a series of independent calamities designed to cull Mulia of all life as its end goal. Whether it was the workings of Fate, the Bastard, his own Karma, or some unknown force, he was positive that there was more to Eventide of Faith than what it was on the surface.