Ruth shuffled uncomfortably in the darkness of the hollow tree. This real resistance -- the Grinhe, they’d said they were called -- were quiet at the best of tis, but in this place it seed that silence had taken on a reverent quality.
Old Owl had led her inside the tree at the centre of their encampnt after her little outburst, promising to explain everything. Ruth wasn’t sure he could do that -- with all the weird shit going on on this planet, they’d be here for a billion years if he tried to walk her through it all. Still, she was willing to listen. Wasn’t like she was good for much else.
The inside of the tree was illuminated only by fireflies, bobbing and weaving lazily through the air, so landing on the leaf-covered cloaks of her Grinhe escorts. They didn’t even blink in response to the bugs crawling over them. Ruth, on the other hand, found herself waving her hands to keep the insects off her.
Not quite the dignity the Grinhe seed to be looking for, but it was all that they were getting.
Click, click. Old Owl limped back into sight -- he’d gone off for a mont -- a small object in his hand. Ruth’s eyes were instantly drawn to the silver disk-shaped thing: unlike everything else she’d seen since she’d arrived here, it was familiar.
Not exceedingly familiar -- it was definitely an antique among antiques -- but Ruth knew a hologram projector when she saw one.
"What is that?" she asked quietly.
Old Owl held the disk up in his hand. "It is the truth," he rumbled. "Unfiltered. Unbiased. Rembered. Do you want to see it?"
Ruth gulped. She felt sweat on her hands as she clenched them into fists. It was absurd -- how much could the truth of this planet affect her, really? She’d barely been here a week.
Still, she felt nervous. The grimness in Old Owl’s eye seed only to intensify that.
"Yeah," Ruth said finally. "Yeah, I wanna see it."
Dragan found Lily just outside the cave system, sitting on a ledge that overlooked the vast forest below. As he approached, she hurled a pebble out into the distance, like she was skipping rocks across a pond.
"Penny for your thoughts?" he sighed, hands in his pockets as he reached her.
She glanced up at him. "The fuck’s a penny?"
Dragan paused. He actually didn’t know. "You seem kinda freaked out."
Lily turned back to the horizon, sun barely peeking over it, and threw her hands out as if she were about to say sothing. No words ca, though, just a formless sigh.
Dragan couldn’t exactly bla her -- she’d just found out that pretty much all the history she knew had been a lie.
"Gene Tyrants," she muttered, rubbing at one eye. "You really think our gods are these… were these things? Monsters?"
Dragan folded his jacket up on the rocky ground and sat on top of it, legs crossed, hands in his lap.
"I don’t know about monsters," he said hesitantly. "Just people that figured out how to do things others couldn’t. They could -- they were monsters, I guess, but not like wild animals or anything. Why? Do you not want to accept that?"
Lily looked unsure -- when her mouth opened, it took her words several seconds to make their escape. "I don’t… I don’t really know. I’m not sure if I believed in the gods, in what I -- what we were all taught as kids, but…"
Dragan furrowed his brow. "You’ve been fighting the Regulators for years, though. I don’t really see how this changes anything."
"Yeah," Lily tossed another stone. "Fighting the Regulators. I’ve never -- I’ve never thought I was actually fighting the gods, or anything like that. I hated the ssenger, but the ssage… I could take it or leave it, I think. Guess I just leave it now." Even saying that, though, there was a glint of hope as she glanced up at Dragan. "You could be wrong, still, I suppose. There’s no proof these Gene Tyrants actually made the Guardian Entities."
Dragan winced -- false hope was uncomfortable to look upon, after all. "I don’t see how anyone else could have done it. Gene manipulation is the most taboo of taboos in the galaxy now -- apart from the Superbians, nobody’s bold enough to ss around with it. And if the organisms that beca Guardian Entities were naturally occurring, there’d be specins of them in the wild, too. There aren’t, so… not really sure what else there is to say."
"Fuck," Lily muttered, tossing another stone with all her strength. "Fuck."
Dragan nodded. "The thing you told Ruth about, the complex underneath the Regulator’s base… I’m thinking that was probably the original Gene Tyrant ship, where the Regulators make the Guardian Entities. I bet it crash-landed here during the war, right?"
The second glance Lily shot his way was much harsher. "Not really interested in the logistics of it."
"Oh. Uh, sorry."
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For a mont, they were silent, staring out at the sea of trees below. The quiet was interrupted only by the far-off calling of so unknown bird, slowly fading into the distance.
When Lily spoke again, her tone of voice had changed -- from exhausted depression to a kind of cautious curiosity.
"That godsblood you use…" she began. "Aether, you called it? How’s it work?"
"Physically? I don’t know. It pretty blatantly breaks the laws of physics, but I don’t know all the science behind it--"
"No," Lily shook her head -- and the rest of the words that left her mouth seed to do so almost reluctantly. "I an… if I wanted to use it, to learn how to use it, could I? Could you help do that?"
Dragan blinked.
That was a very interesting question indeed.
The projector blinked blue -- and in the sa mont, a human figure appeared in front of Ruth, composed of distorted light. The blue glow bathed the inside of the hollow tree, shadows dancing with every minor movent of the hologram.
The figure seed to be a man, his age made uncertain by the degradation of the image, heavy bags underneath his eyes. Things like the shades of his hair and skin were impossible to tell -- it seed colour had been one of the first things to go as the hologram broke down. Still, a sense of exhaustion ca through loud and clear.
"This is servitor Enden Los, rep█rti█g," he said, parts of his speech worn down by ti. "We are still on XK-12, as I said in my last ssage."
"XK-12," muttered Old Owl. "That is the na of this world."
"I am… uns██e if my ssages are █etting through. █o, I am almo█t cer███n they are not. We are alone."
The ssage skipped forward slightly, catching the man just as he was wiping sothing from his face.
"We are al███," he repeated, expression twisted into a tornted grimace. "Ilan██eitl i█ dead. Baras’ sp███s proved too much for he█. We ha█e not yet… this planet is not suitable to b██y an esteed Gene Noble on."
Ruth’s eyes widened. Gene Noble? She’d only heard the more flattering term on history videographs, but she knew what it was referring to without a doubt. The Gene Tyrants were involved with this place sohow?
"Not a god," she heard Old Owl mutter, with more than a trace of bitterness. "Just a corpse. Maybe not even that now."
The ssage slipped forward again -- this ti perhaps days, the speaker’s clothing and stance changing dramatically. Before, he’d almost seed shellshocked, but now the man seed fully present -- hands clasped behind his back, standing at attention. Even through the faded hologram, Ruth could see a kind of familiar ferocity in his eyes.
The man spoke again:
"The servants are uneasy. Steps must be taken. Grinhe stirs rebe████n, I believe. Wi███ut the guidance of Ilancueitl, we are lost, but there are… there are █ell resources avail███e to us. The power used by Baras’ alliance -- ███her -- will be our salvation. Our r███archers have found a new possibility. The amusents left behind by our creator will serve a new purpose -- or█er."
He blinked, and for a mont Ruth thought the hologram would skip ahead again -- but the man continued, a kind of grim solemnity in his voice. "XK-12 is now the fin██ bastion of civ██izati██, secure from the chaos of the ██tside. It must rem██n so. It w█ll remain so. I t█o will --"
The hologram stuttered.
"I to█ will--"
Again, it stuttered. Old Owl gazed impassively at the flickering image -- clearly, this was no surprise to him. It was a ssage he’d heard many tis before.
"I to█ wi██ ███o██ █ ████████ ██t███. X█-██ wil█ ████ peace."
And with that, the hologram finally died, the remnants of the scrambled image retreating back into the projector. Grena knelt down and picked it up, passing it back over to Old Owl, who returned it to the depths of his cloak.
"As you see," he said. "It is seen. This world, XK-12, is a lie caged in the glass. The Regulators regulate the falsehood. They are of the belief that only oblivion awaits in the true world."
Ruth blinked, still absorbing the information she’d received. Why couldn’t Dragan or Skipper have been here? They’d have known the good questions to ask.
"What…" she began, before swallowing and starting again. "What do you believe? Do you, uh, think the sa?"
Old Owl’s eye closed for a mont, considering the question. "I believe it is better to be an unchained corpse than a bound slave. Should the world be chaos, it will be chaos. Should the world be order, it will be order. All that matters is that lies beco truth. A lie cannot last forever. Falsehood is the sin of man alone -- the world can no longer tolerate it."
The eye opened again, and there was fire in the iris.
"A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely," he growled.
A shiver ran down Ruth’s spine -- this man was definitely not the sa as Rupert Grave or Lily Aubrisher.
Rupert had held the sa beliefs as the man he opposed -- if he had ever defeated Barridad, he would have just taken his place without a thought. His revolution had been borne of a personal grudge, not ford from any kind of greater ideology.
Lily seed as if her rebellion was just an extension of her effort to survive. The Regulators wanted her dead, so she had no choice but to oppose them. It was still personal, sure -- there was no way it couldn’t be -- but it wasn’t sothing she could never leave behind.
But Old Owl was different. This rebellion was created from pure, unbreakable resolve. This man would drown the whole world in blood for the principle of the thing.
Ruth gulped. "So you want to help you fight your war? You saved because I was strong, right? That’s why?"
Old Owl stood up straight, a formidable pressure emanating from him despite his diminutive height. His good eye gazed fiercely up at Ruth, its depths inscrutable.
"We brought you because you are strong. Yes. But…"
The eye flicked past Ruth, looking instead behind her. She turned to follow its gaze -- another of the cloaked Grinhe was standing in the entrance of the tree, hands clasped in front of them. Ruth hadn’t even heard them approaching.
"It’s as we expected," the ssenger whispered. "Aubrisher’s rebels are attempting to flee through the swamps -- and the Prester has already laid a trap for them."
The eye narrowed slightly. "Then the end of the war is at hand."
"What does he an?" Ruth asked, turning back towards Old Owl. "What’s he talking about, what swamps?!"
Old Owl didn’t provide any answer to that question. Instead, he simply turned his eye back to Ruth and continued the statent that had been cut off.
"We brought you here because you are strong. But you are not here to help us fight this war."
The eye blinked.
"You are here to help us end it."
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