Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 153 of 365. Sol standard year]
Days after of Crash landing/ 2
Uninhabited Island / Ruins / Corridor set against Scholar’s Rest
Galactic Standard Time / 0745
Yogix looked at the man in the Scholar’s robe, the Order’s symbol on. He had short blackish-green hair and jade eyes and had a slash scar mark above his right eye. “Young Embix? Is that you my boy? What are you doing here!?”
“Long story Master. But how? What did you do? Were the weapons that you built able to hit a weak spot high up?” Embix asked in awe but then he looked at the three Deckhands. “But wait, who are they? They don’t…… Master?”
“Yes Embix?” Yogix answered slowly, looking at him with concern. Yogix knew what the teen was going to ask, and he was worried about how he would take the answer.
“Ate they…… of the lost?” Embix asked with awe in his voice.
Yogix only winced. He knew that he had to tell the truth, but could the boy take it? After all, the belief in the reality of what happened to their ancestors was at the core.
“Nope! We’re people from the homeworlds! And the War against the Corporations was won a long time ago!” Zane cut in with a smile.
Embix just looked at them, shocked. His mouth dropped open in before he fell backwards, completely unconscious.
Yogix looked at the youngster and slammed his right hand over his eyes as Zane started to laugh.
Rodolphe only sighed as he looked down at the student before shaking his head. “If that happens when we meet more of your people to learn who we are, I worry. How will you react when you meet others of the Way?”
Only silence met Rodolphe’s question, Yogix didn’t know how to respond. He looked at his new friend and tried and failed to find another way to say what he had to. But he just took a deep breath and sighed.
“Well, the belief that we were captured has started to……. Fade,” Yogix admitted.
Zane and Bryce both turned around and looked at him. Rogix and the other soldiers all went still, each waiting for Yogix to explain.
“What do you mean, fade away!?” Bryce demanded and the words echoed off the cavern.
“About twenty years back a cult appeared. They started to say that the memories were but a lie that the Builders gave the Founders to test them. Since then they’ve slowly but surely spread their poison, some people believe in it and others don’t. Most people want to do something about them, but freedom of Religion and all,” Rogix said bitterly.
Yogix looked at his old student and sighed, having heard Rogix rant about those people too often. And he had done the same with Rogix just as much, their feelings about the cult the same.
“Of course this too! I wonder just what hell we’ll face next!” Rodolphe said bitterly. Without saying anything he walked towards the door to the galley.
“What are you doing?” Rogix asked as Yogix went to his knees next to Embix.
“Gonna close the doors. Might not do anything, but it might do something. Hope for the best, plan for the worst and all! You understand, right?” Rodolphe said with forced cheerfulness.
“So how do those Lost of yours carry over to this Cult?”
“Phantoms that never existed. Their dogma says that the Builders wanted our rage, but we must outgrow it to become what they know we can. That we are their greatest creation, that all our memories of what was are their gift. Not that any of the scholars believe that,” Yogix asked with
“Then why….. oh. We’re the proof that they're wrong? And I bet that some nobles are buying into it to get more power, right?” Bryce said with a slight wince.
Yogix felt a small spark of hope at Bryce’s reaction. At the back of his mind, worry about just others would take the truth had been building. But with the simple fact that the three understood, there was a chance to do this right.
“Yes, you are. And…… what’s the Way?” Yogix asked how Rodolphe what he was saying caught up to him.
“The way? Oh, the Scholar’s Way. It’s a religion that uses that symbol as their own,” Zane said as he pointed at the insignia on Embix’s robe.
“The Scholar’s Way?! That's who we are!” Yogix said with a shocked look as Rodolphe came back.
“Hey, guys. So the doors are closed, and that’s good. We can hit the security room later. So let’s get moving…… what is it??” Rodolphe asked as he looked around, seeing Yogix staring at Embix’s body.
“Oh, they just didn’t know what the Symbol of the Scholar’s Way meant. And wow, really wondering how that happened!” Bryce said with a grin.
As he led the way towards where that Orphan Trash was, Parcis only grinned. As he walked he saw his reflection in a window. His long jade hair was in a ponytail and his black eyes were set in a line. He walked through the stone hallway of the Scholar’s Rest, leading one teen and following another. This morning, unlike others, he knew had work to get done. Plus it would let him finish up some private business, permanently.
“Boss, are you sure this is a good idea?” The teen behind him asked.
Pacis looked at the teen, Cursix, one of his long-time followers. From his short forest-green hair to his black eyes, he looked like a stable boy. And he was, he and Xacris were only at the Scholar’s Rest to be his servants.
“Yes! If you two had done your job right he should have been killed! And now we just need to knock him out and then hang him!” Parcis snapped.
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“Boss we did our best!” Xacris said, his blue eyes looking out from under his light green shaggy hair. Xacris had to turn at Parcis from ahead of him. “That guard wasn’t supposed to come back so soon, remember? We at least finished half the work! And why are you after that punk anyway? He’s not gonna be working on an invention for weeks!”
Xacris had become a general servant for a while until Parcis ‘hired’ him. In reality, Xacris had been sent in to learn the servant’s routes. This let Pacris have access to the entire Rest, and in ways that the teachers weren’t looking at. This had let him sabotage so many of his fellow students over the last two years. And that was just why his father had sent him here in the first place.
“Because that’s the orders I got! And I don’t know, just that his note was all about discrediting his work! His invention was supposed to kill him and destroy the very idea of it!” Parcis said bitterly. And as much as he wanted to just ignore his minion’s words, nothing about this made sense! His father had often sent him notes about how to handle other students, but never so blatant about how. It was almost like……. Parcis shook his head as they walked through the castle. “And we’ll carry those orders out now! The Orphan’s alone! None of his friends are there. We do this, we slip away to the town out the door and we only talk about this with my father. Understand!?”
“Yeah, but we’ll still get our bonus for this, right?” Cursix asked with hope in his voice.
“Of course! You’ll get payment a bit to gamble away!” Parcis said absently. He looked at Cursix and part of him would feel bad at what would happen. But secrets had to be kept. “But we’re near the staircase, right?”
“Yeah! Just give us a few more minutes of searching. Now the sign is….. here!” Xacris said with a grin. They were standing before a near-blank section of the walls. Without a word, Xacris walked to the opposite wall, stopping right in front of a torch. He grabbed it and pulled it down until he felt it stop. Then a section of the wall Parcis and Cursix were standing by swung open. “Told you I’d find it, boss!”
“Remember the plan! Once we’re done, then we need alibies. And to get them, we’ll use the servant’s way to get out. We’ll use that underground route to get to the caves. As we all have to leave before tomorrow, we’ll be in the clear.” Parcis said with a scowl on his face.
“Yes, boss!” Both of them said as they went before him.
Parcis only stayed for a few seconds, looking around. For a moment, he had been sure he heard something. But no, there was nothing there. His mind must be playing tricks on him. As he turned he followed after his minions, never seeing a door open slowly after he left.
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“I knew that that scum was up to something!” A voice snarled as they looked at the torch as it swung back to the wall. The speaker was a tall female teen with jade green short spiky hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a robe with the marks of a third-year student. “Didn’t I Zaglix?”
“Yeah Krisila, you did. But what are they doing? And where did they go?” Zaglix asked with shock in his voice. He was a tall teen with brown hair and brown eyes.
“I don’t know, but with Embix down there I’m just worried. Aren’t you? I mean, what happened?” Krisila asked with a hard tone.
Krisila couldn’t understand what had happened. They had all worked on his invention, all three of them. She helped him make the cylinders airtight, and Zaglix had gone over the math. Everything pointed to their invention, their engine working. And instead, it exploded! The only reason that they didn’t die was because of something Embix did to start it from far away. But the explosion was even worse than they thought it would be if something happened.
“I know Krisila, I know. And I don’t understand it either. But really, what could they be doing now? And so early in the morning? And who were those two people with that noble brat?” Zaglix asked with a scowl.
“All good questions,” Krisilla muttered under her breath. She only looked at the torch lost in her thoughts. Something was bothering her, something about the two teens with Parcis. They looked like servants, but why were they with him? And as she tried to figure it out, she thought of something. “Say, Zaglix, those two servants, wasn’t one of them the one who brought us our food the other day. You know, when we were all working on the engine?”
“Yeah, and I think that other one was at the stables, Embis had his brainstorm behind the engine there with me!” Zaglix said with a shocked look on his face.
“They're working for Parcis! They must be his spies! Could they have been behind the explosion?” Krisilla asked, her horror turning to rage in seconds. “That slime! I knew there was a reason I hated him!”
Zaglix looked at her with complete horror on his face. “No, no! Not even that freak would have been as mad as do that! Why would he even want to sabotage others?! I mean we do research for the military here! Anyone that does is a traitor. And Embix’s invention could have helped so many other people!”
“But what if he did? What if he’s behind most of the experiments that fail? All to take them home with him, and he could use them for his family?! Don’t you ever think that there’s no limit to how low nobles would go!” Krisilla said as she looked away, remembering a lot of pain the so-called nobles had caused her family. In her opinion, the good nobles were few and far between. The idea that Parcis had been stealing the works of others while shaming them, that she could see.
She needed to figure out the reason that he was here. All that she was sure of was that there was nothing that he would do that would help anyone.
“But what was that doorway? I mean how did it open? Like this?” Zaglix asked as he reached for the torch. Pulling down, they heard the sounds of gears shifting. The wall opened again and they looked at each other.
As one they looked into the door, and they saw it was a staircase. Looking down, they saw the three they were following were already three stories down.
“Hey, how far do you think this goes?” Zaglix asked with horror in his voice.
Krisilla just swallowed and then glared down. “If you think it goes down to the bottom level, all the way to the Window? Then I think it does.”
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As Embix blinked awake, he chuckled. “That was some dream!”
“Why don’t you tell me about it, my boy,” Yogix’s voice caused Embix’s eyes to shoot open and sit up. He looked around and saw Yogix. Slowly he looked around and saw Zane, Rodolphe, and Brycee who was waving at him.
“Hey there!” Bryce said with a smile.
Embix looked at them for a few moments, his mind going strange places. This was something that would change everything. His world had changed in an instant, the old stories were true! His people had once walked the stars, there were stars out there!
“You're all real!” Embix stammered in shocked joy.
“Yeah, kid we are. So what are you doing here? The way the old man talks, this place is a punishment. And he said that you’re a good kid,” Zane said as he looked at Embix.
Embix looked away, shame and anger warring within him. He knew that Sir Yogix wouldn’t hate him, but how could he have failed?
“Embix?” Yogix asked with worry. “Did your experiment fail?”
“Tremendously sir. It exploded!” Embix said as he looked at Yogix.
“Oh my. I’m sorry my boy, but how? I looked over your plans, they made sense!” Yogix asked and Embix shrugged.
“I don’t know what to tell you, sir. As the rules say, I looked over everything before putting it into the chamber…..” Embix began, only for someone to interrupt him.
“Wait, what chamber?” Zane asked suddenly.
Embix looked up, seeing the three off-worlders looking at him, Zane looking a bit strange.
“It’s a custom, every invention is tested at Dawn! The night before testing, the inventor puts it into a chamber to wait for the sun. And once it’s locked, there’s no way to get in!” Yogix explained.
Bryce snorted. “Yeah right! I’ll bet there’s a Servant’s Passage or two that lead there!”
Embix looked at Bryce, a shocked feeling growing within him. He could tell what Sir Bryce was getting at, but he could understand. Who would even think of doing that to him?! Who would dare!?
“Wait, what Passages?” Rogix asked.
“Servant’s Passages. Places for servants to move about without people seeing them. A swift way for them to do their duty, and the Passages double as escape routes!” Zane said with a smirk. “Perfect for people to move around if you don’t want to be seen. And I’m speaking from experience at using them!”
“But why, how, who?” Embix croaked out, and his mind almost shut down. He couldn’t believe half of this, but it made sense. The worst thing that a Scholar could do was ignore logic, and he wouldn’t do that. But why? He wasn’t someone who wanted an easy assignment, he was going to go to the Front!
“So this place, it’s isolated then?” Bryce asked from near the door.
Everyone looked at him, and Embix nodded.
“Well yes. The only other rooms down here are old storage. Some people might come down here for ……other reasons,” Embix said absently. He just shrugged at the looks and chuckled before speaking more. “But not today. Everyone knows I’m stuck down here. They gave me my punishment at dinner after all, why?”
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The insect creature looked out from the window. It was tall, over ten feet high and it had a body of red chitin. It had four legs and four arms, plus two sets of wings on its back. Its face had three multifaceted eyes in a line across its face. Below them were four mandibles set in a cross, and from it, a white liquid dripped. Its hands ended in three claws set in a ‘Y’ formation and each ended in savage-looking black claws. Each leg ended in a forward-facing ‘Y’ and had white talons.
The Insect looked down at the smoldering remains of the tower and the bloodstains. The rebels had left, and the Insect had let them, the food was all that mattered.
As five more cocoons grew, the Insect looked at them with a strange kind of pride. It had been able to use its wings and speed to grab food to allow it to make more eggs. Each egg was connected to a special cocoon. And thecocoon was connected to many of the crystals that were set against the windows.
Before it had first left to hunt it had felt the Life of each crystal. And it had felt the crystal it drained to change starting to regrown what the Insect had taken. It had grabbed food quickly and barely made it back into the passage before the window regrew. Feeding on what it brought, it quickly made another egg. This one it had fed a special mass of food, and the pupa had reacted as it knew it would, making a special kind of cocoon. Then the Insect had gone and hunted, taking what food it could. From that bounty, the five eggs were created. From the first cocoon the Insect had made lines of silk that channeled Life to the eggs. Each one was slowly growing into a kind of being that would be the Insect’s slave.
Once this space was its hive it would spread and grow. Slowly it would gain power and from that, it would Hunt and War against all that had killed its own. Soon only the Insect and its children would sing songs here.
And this nest was near a path that two walkers traveled on. All it needed to do was keep growing its numbers and sooner or later, it would rule over all.