Ryanti took a few breaths to ease his own tension upon giving out his first order of business. The first order was always to get themselves armed. It was a golden rule in his unit. Ideally, if it weren’t for the water, he would have had his rifle in hand before he had even inserted the key into its resting place.
It appeared that Sounsyy was already ready. Good. It did well in reassuring Ryanti that he picked the right person for the job. Or was it the Allagans…? After all, she did receive those dreams, unlike Leura. He began wondering why she was chosen as he gently sat himself down next to the plague, bringing his backpack forward in front of him after taking it off, unzipping it to find the disassembled pieces of his weapon. He had witnessed others checking and examining the artifact in prior missions without so much as just feeling slightly drowsy or having a headache later in the day, but otherwise no symptoms. No dreams. Not like Sounsyy. But why? A man and a woman from the seventh era investigating the traces of the third… he had remembered the prophecy of the seventh era that was the rage during the Calamity, that the era was to be a culmination… were they destined to be the ones to culminate the events on this ship full circle?
Or were they just here to die?
His gaze followed her as she examined the plague for herself. He placed the first piece of his weapon – the stock- down upon the ground in a standing position as she asked him whether or not he could read it. Immediately it triggered back memories.
I’ve been staring at this thing all day. This rectangular shape of darkness. That and this sheet of paper. The letters have become scribbles in my mind. All of these symbols that I’m studying in this dark, cold room. They keep on staring at me. The men in the window, with only their lips visible to me. Lips that keep asking me about my progress. I pick up the tomestone. I hover it over the words on the piece of paper. They begin to change. Morph. My mind feels like it is on fire! My eyes burn! These symbols feel like they are branding themselves onto my brain! The blue light shines! I grab my head! Make it stop!
“Yes. I can.†Ryanti answered, with a kind of gaze in his eyes that reminded Sounsyy of her own; the kind of eyes that told her he was in remembrance of a memory he did not enjoy. “It was required of me during the… selection process. It is similar to a non-classified unit. The Keeper of the Artifact is a title, and like any title in any military, there is a skillset you must learn to earn it. The difference is that I cannot disclose what occurs. But I do have a paper in my backpack de-coding the wordings, if we need them later.â€
But Ryanti wanted to disclose it. He really did. His commitment to secrecy had already been breached by this point. The Captain was never intended to know even what the hell they found in the Deep, or even what the Sharlayans were carrying. But realistically… he could no longer afford to keep things secret when he now trusted Sounsyy with his life. Ryanti preferred it this way anyhow. It was very hard to carry the burden all by yourself.
He had picked up on her nervousness in her question. He had also heard her stammering words back in the first room. It was surreal to Ryanti to hear such a capable woman spew out words and curses in such a panic like that. Her shaking her head at him while they were still in the water burned into his short term memory. He had tried to tell her earlier in the mission, hoping that it would ease the transition. But this was Ryanti’s first term in an Allagan structure as well, and even he was having trouble coping, despite his knowledge beforehand and his training.
It was why his hands were very subtly twitching when he was assembling his rifle. Occasionally, Ryanti would shake a hand once or twice to try to rid himself of those mild jitters. His mind was still trying to contemplate the kind of rational decisions he needed to make about the communication. The interference was very bad, and they had no clue whether or not it would get better. He clung to the hope that Forty-three was right, that it was the location that was the problem. So he formulated the next step of their objective in his mind.
The last piece of his rifle clicked together, and Ryanti cocked back the lever. A slight whining sound emitted from the rifle as it sprung into a loaded state. It was a satisfying sound, letting Ryanti know that there were barriers between him and death down here. He almost immediately reached into his backpack again and pulled out the same powerful revolver that nearly took Cynthia’s head clean off. He spun the chamber and shot it back into place, clicking off the safety and holstering it by his waist. As armed as they were, they had enough firepower to kill nearly one hundred and fifty Garleans if they were to burn all their ammunition. It was the kind of armed-to-the-teeth preparedness that they needed to face their nightmares.
Ryanti nodded at Sounsyy’s suggestion. He was to lead, and she was to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Perfect. His fingertips clamped onto his torchlight and he turned the dial, shifting his light to point at a thin angle, giving him as much sight as it could afford distance-wise. Ryanti started to tilt the rifle in front of him when he stopped parallel to Sounsyy. He did not forget the nervousness in her voice. “Remember, we have the absolute best weapons and equipment my people could afford us. And each other. Let’s just take it one step at a time. Our main objective is to locate and acquire any kind of valuable information or data in this place that can benefit the greater good, and prevent the Garleans from getting their hands on anything else. But for now, let’s just press deeper into the ship, and see if we can get a better signal with my teammates. Let’s move out.â€
He had to say those words himself as much as he knew Sounsyy had to hear them. “Watch my back, Sounsyy. I need you at one hundred and ten percent at all times.†Perhaps more than she ever had been. She had never seen Ryanti this deadly serious before. He walked with a purpose and conviction beyond his years as he stepped in front of her, yet the deep breathe he took and the hesitation he experienced proved that he was just as tense. There was no possible way any of them could have gone in here by themselves. They would have gone mad. After that one last breathe, Ryanti began to move forward.
The first thing he did was point his torchlight at both ends of the room, but the beam seemed to go on forever in both directions. He was trying to determine where the closest wall was so that he could huddle closer to it to reduce the amount of space he had to cover with his torchlight. He finally determined it to be the right wall. So as he proceeded, he took a hefty amount of steps forward, and then traversed diagonally to the right a little bit, then pressed forward once more.
It was deathly silent. Ryanti’s light shined upon what appeared to be five thousand plus year old cargo crates that seemed to span the entire horizontal distance of this section of the room. Once again, these are made out of cerment. They were all different shapes and sizes. Some were square in shape and large in size. Some possessed a cylinder shape, and were sealed shut by complicated locking mechanisms and where the LED’s upon the boxes used to shine was nothing but blackness, as the lights faded in power long ago just as well as the materials in them were long expired. They were exotic and foreign even to Ryanti; the first relics of an ancient time when the world was different.
The air was stale, not ever affording a gust of wind over the eras of time. It smelled of metal. It was different from the Garlean steel which smelt dirty. This kind of metal smelled clean and refined, not containing any kind of imperfections that would leak in the air as an odor. There was so faint smell of oil or fuel or smudge. If Sounsyy noticed, Ryanti was only looking directly at where their lights were pointing, for if you didn’t, it would quickly feel like the space around you was choking you down in claustrophobia. No words could describe the ominous silence. Ryanti had a feeling that they were trespassing, almost committing some sort of sin for being here and re-discovering this. Perhaps it was simply the dread of the silence.
“I’ll answer your questions that you had earlier about where we are. I did not forget.†No, he did not. He was just trained to do something when someone required information, but was in a wrecked state of mind. He was taught to deny them the answer and allow them to wait out their frustration before answering, so that they could better absorb the reality around them. It was meant to be a coping mechanism. He had to learn a lot about them to be able to grasp all this. So he spoke, hoping his enlightening dialogue would ease the dread of the long consistent silence.
“As we know, there have been seven Astral Eras so far. For thousands of years, we believed that civilization as we know it began after the Age of Endless frost in the Fifth Umbral Era. Before the ice age, historians speculated that man was primitive in nature, and lived out their lives in either stoic or nomadic tribes and lived off the land with countless individual, secular cultures. All sources of either our present day nations or their ancient mothers trace back to the end of this ice age. So naturally, it was thought for a long time that the beginning of recorded history around the early Fifth Astral Era was the beginning of civilization and factual history. Anything prior to that was neck deep in myth and legend.â€
Ryanti tilted his torchlight up to glance at the ceiling. There were several cords hanging from the roof at the place they were. Some of them were broken, others were still interconnecting into the ceiling. They looked similar to fuel lines that Garlemald would use on their vehicles, but the network within the exposed ceiling seemed much more complicated. Upon lowering his flashlight again among the endless sea of long neglected cargo boxes and scattered portions of cords and wires, he resumed his dialogue.
“Some of the beast tribes and Miqo’te tribe lineages extend all the way back to the First Era. It was known for a long time that these tribes possess very interesting legends and fables of a world before the Endless Frost. They speak of everything from ancient sea monsters to extraordinary chariots that rode across the sky and befriended Menphina’s moon. They spoke of Menphina’s loyal hound, and of demi-Gods that sailed the great Star Ocean under Her watch. For centuries and millennia scholars kept these legends transcribed but believed them to be that: imaginative legends and fairytales. They deduced that these legends and fairytales all had common themes. Beings that rode the sky, beings that constructed immense monuments that came crumbling down when they met their end.â€
Ryanti shined his torchlight to his right, finally reaching the right wall. The ceiling had to be at least eighty fulms in height. There were broken and twisted remnants of a kind of catwalk complex upon the right wall that would have been quite marvelous looking five millennia ago. But now it was all twisted and broken, having partially collapsed at some point. The metal was ripped in half and distorted, and the catwalk was half suspended still on the upper floor and half sprawled upon the ground.
“Well, they were wrong. A man by the name of Saint Coinach was a historical figure during the Sixth Astral Era. You might have heard of him. He was the first person to discover that the legends and fairytales of the old tribes contained more reality than fiction. His discovery was to change everything we know about this planet. The Sharlayans knew the real nature of his discoveries, and they have probably known for a very long time. But they chose to keep the true realities of Saint Coinach’s discoveries hidden from the greater public, and for good reason. It turns out that during the Third Astral Era, two further Eras back than the beginning of our recorded history, there existed a time on this planet where civilization reached its absolute apex. On the very top of its apex stood the mighty Allagan Empire. In the very distant past, the landmass of Eorzea was said to be larger, and the Allagan borders must have stretched at least across half of the planet. Their civilization reached a pinnacle of technology to near omni-potent levels, and a complete mastery of the forces of magic. We still do not know how many years thick the Third Astral Era was, but the amount of years Sharlayans theorize vastly extends the length of the Eras we know. However, very little is still known about that time. There is a… point where this Empire and other nations that thrived during that time, such as Meracydia… completely vanish from the record. It was not over years or even months… they were there and then suddenly they weren’t. They were just… gone. Nobody knows why. This happened approximately five thousand years ago.†Ryanti slowed down his steps, until he was completely stopped in his tracks, glancing around in the darkness as if he could see, but obvious could not. “As far as this place goes… according to the plague, this must have been some sort of research vessel. It’s good for us because research vessels contain much more useful data to us than military ones. But it’s not the kind of ship that sailed the ocean, no… this vessel was meant to sail the star ocean, Sounsyy…â€
The sight of Hydealyn from space in her dream…
Ryanti briefly looked back to her, his facial features shining within the confines of her torchlight. “The reason why this information is buried is clear. It’s… much easier for society to accept a clear beginning to the history of civilization and be able to draw a straight line from there to where we are now. It’s easier to accept that the way of life and civilization that we know has always been relatively familiar to us. It would be difficult for people to accept the… truth. Society is not ready to be able to cope with it. That is why Jonathan advised you not to tell your Superior Officer about this. Even if you did, your Superior probably would not believe you.â€
He solemnly turned around to face his front again. “How can you just simply… tell someone these things and expect them to believe you unless you see it for yourself…†There was a kind of burden in his voice. It was hard to live with this and not be able to tell everyone.
Now do you believe…? Ryanti thought.
Just then, there was a noise. A sound of a bump or two in a ventilation shaft somewhere further beyond, a bit to the right where the wall met the ceiling. Ryanti’s heart skipped a beat and he immediately pointed his gun up at the source, clicking on the torchlight that came with the rifle. It was weaker than his body one, but certainly not a weak light in of itself. It shined upon the spot where he heard the noise, but there was nothing. Had there always been nothing. “Assume all foreign noises independent of us are hostile.†Ryanti murmured to Sounsyy. “We have no literal idea what could possibly be down here with us if we aren’t alone. Probably something not ever meant to see the light of day.â€
Within an additional twenty or so steps, they cleared the cargo farm, and found themselves amongst the largest part of the room. It had a trapezoid-like shape to it, and an intricate network of perfectly molded steel and ancient hydraulic pistons held shut the enormous twin hanger doors that hugged the left wall. It would never be opened again. Perpendicular to the hanger doors was another second story catwalk, and this one was intact. In the distance, Ryanti’s light shined upon the door up there, which half of it was broken down, providing an open to go through. “That’s our way out.â€
When Ryanti lowered his light down to the center of the room, he gasped at the marvel of what he saw. In the center of the room, there was a derelict… craft of some sort resting in that place in which had become its grave. About the size of the Roehmerl, it was nowhere near in perfect condition. The rear rotors were long disintegrated, and the wiry mesh of the light metals used in design of the small shuttle was broken and mulled in many locations. The front landing gear had collapsed long ago. The rear ones, alleviated of the weight due to the nose of the aircraft resting on the ground now, were still standing. The middle of the craft looked like it had caught fire centuries ago, a fire that eventually burned out. The front windshield of the cockpit was broken and shattered in some places, yet still intact upon the ship.
“This must be a place where they landed those… smaller ones. Wow… unreal.†Ryanti mentioned, examining the entirety of the craft, noticing a partial serial number on the side of the craft. Some of it had been burned away by the fire. Then his light gathered with interest at the front of the craft, where the shattered window was. It would not be that much of an effort to climb aboard the smaller vessel and peak into the combat. Ryanti felt like he had to do it, even though it make him extra nervous to do so. He had to check to see if anything was… harboring inside of it. The insides of the ship beyond that point were scourged by fire and melted metal, so there were no worries about that. “I need to examine it and make sure it’s clear. Watch my back.â€
And with that, Ryanti made his way ever so cautiously to the front of the craft. As he laid the torchlight upon the broken windshield, he felt a tingling in his mind. He remembered in one of their first dreams there was a split second… yes… he could almost hear the hydraulic doors closing, the sky being their destination. It had to be a ship like this… a ship like this. That must have been how they arrived. On a ship like this…
With a single gesture, he leapt up into the air, his feet landing with a thud upon the nose of the smaller vessel. The scale of it was still immense. Ryanti’s form was miniscule compared even to this ‘smaller’ ship. “Okay Ryanti…†He murmured to himself, examining the lower parts of the nose by sweeping his torchlight slowly, back and forth, finally reaching the windshield, and shining the light inside.
All of the levers... all of these controls were buried in dust. It reminded him of Garlean schematics he used to recover from his earlier missions in the Immortal Flames concerning stealing Garlean blueprints. But these were much more sophisticated. All he saw were just buttons and levers galore, and a seat or two before the fiery molten metal brought an end to the ship’s space. He quietly etched the light over the controls… then examined the seats.
The seats… they had bite marks on them. How old were those bite marks? Thousands of years old? Centuries? Decades? … Days?
“Sounsyy!†Ryanti shouted, his voice booming with an echo across the room to get her attention. “We might not be alone in here!â€
Just then, four more noises. Like four heavy bumps in a constant pattern above him. The ceiling. Immediately he shined a light up above to investigate. There were so many roof panels that had some off, so many exposed wires and compartments where anything could be hiding… waiting. The artifact could not help them now. It had been dead since they arrived.
It appeared that Sounsyy was already ready. Good. It did well in reassuring Ryanti that he picked the right person for the job. Or was it the Allagans…? After all, she did receive those dreams, unlike Leura. He began wondering why she was chosen as he gently sat himself down next to the plague, bringing his backpack forward in front of him after taking it off, unzipping it to find the disassembled pieces of his weapon. He had witnessed others checking and examining the artifact in prior missions without so much as just feeling slightly drowsy or having a headache later in the day, but otherwise no symptoms. No dreams. Not like Sounsyy. But why? A man and a woman from the seventh era investigating the traces of the third… he had remembered the prophecy of the seventh era that was the rage during the Calamity, that the era was to be a culmination… were they destined to be the ones to culminate the events on this ship full circle?
Or were they just here to die?
His gaze followed her as she examined the plague for herself. He placed the first piece of his weapon – the stock- down upon the ground in a standing position as she asked him whether or not he could read it. Immediately it triggered back memories.
I’ve been staring at this thing all day. This rectangular shape of darkness. That and this sheet of paper. The letters have become scribbles in my mind. All of these symbols that I’m studying in this dark, cold room. They keep on staring at me. The men in the window, with only their lips visible to me. Lips that keep asking me about my progress. I pick up the tomestone. I hover it over the words on the piece of paper. They begin to change. Morph. My mind feels like it is on fire! My eyes burn! These symbols feel like they are branding themselves onto my brain! The blue light shines! I grab my head! Make it stop!
“Yes. I can.†Ryanti answered, with a kind of gaze in his eyes that reminded Sounsyy of her own; the kind of eyes that told her he was in remembrance of a memory he did not enjoy. “It was required of me during the… selection process. It is similar to a non-classified unit. The Keeper of the Artifact is a title, and like any title in any military, there is a skillset you must learn to earn it. The difference is that I cannot disclose what occurs. But I do have a paper in my backpack de-coding the wordings, if we need them later.â€
But Ryanti wanted to disclose it. He really did. His commitment to secrecy had already been breached by this point. The Captain was never intended to know even what the hell they found in the Deep, or even what the Sharlayans were carrying. But realistically… he could no longer afford to keep things secret when he now trusted Sounsyy with his life. Ryanti preferred it this way anyhow. It was very hard to carry the burden all by yourself.
He had picked up on her nervousness in her question. He had also heard her stammering words back in the first room. It was surreal to Ryanti to hear such a capable woman spew out words and curses in such a panic like that. Her shaking her head at him while they were still in the water burned into his short term memory. He had tried to tell her earlier in the mission, hoping that it would ease the transition. But this was Ryanti’s first term in an Allagan structure as well, and even he was having trouble coping, despite his knowledge beforehand and his training.
It was why his hands were very subtly twitching when he was assembling his rifle. Occasionally, Ryanti would shake a hand once or twice to try to rid himself of those mild jitters. His mind was still trying to contemplate the kind of rational decisions he needed to make about the communication. The interference was very bad, and they had no clue whether or not it would get better. He clung to the hope that Forty-three was right, that it was the location that was the problem. So he formulated the next step of their objective in his mind.
The last piece of his rifle clicked together, and Ryanti cocked back the lever. A slight whining sound emitted from the rifle as it sprung into a loaded state. It was a satisfying sound, letting Ryanti know that there were barriers between him and death down here. He almost immediately reached into his backpack again and pulled out the same powerful revolver that nearly took Cynthia’s head clean off. He spun the chamber and shot it back into place, clicking off the safety and holstering it by his waist. As armed as they were, they had enough firepower to kill nearly one hundred and fifty Garleans if they were to burn all their ammunition. It was the kind of armed-to-the-teeth preparedness that they needed to face their nightmares.
Ryanti nodded at Sounsyy’s suggestion. He was to lead, and she was to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Perfect. His fingertips clamped onto his torchlight and he turned the dial, shifting his light to point at a thin angle, giving him as much sight as it could afford distance-wise. Ryanti started to tilt the rifle in front of him when he stopped parallel to Sounsyy. He did not forget the nervousness in her voice. “Remember, we have the absolute best weapons and equipment my people could afford us. And each other. Let’s just take it one step at a time. Our main objective is to locate and acquire any kind of valuable information or data in this place that can benefit the greater good, and prevent the Garleans from getting their hands on anything else. But for now, let’s just press deeper into the ship, and see if we can get a better signal with my teammates. Let’s move out.â€
He had to say those words himself as much as he knew Sounsyy had to hear them. “Watch my back, Sounsyy. I need you at one hundred and ten percent at all times.†Perhaps more than she ever had been. She had never seen Ryanti this deadly serious before. He walked with a purpose and conviction beyond his years as he stepped in front of her, yet the deep breathe he took and the hesitation he experienced proved that he was just as tense. There was no possible way any of them could have gone in here by themselves. They would have gone mad. After that one last breathe, Ryanti began to move forward.
The first thing he did was point his torchlight at both ends of the room, but the beam seemed to go on forever in both directions. He was trying to determine where the closest wall was so that he could huddle closer to it to reduce the amount of space he had to cover with his torchlight. He finally determined it to be the right wall. So as he proceeded, he took a hefty amount of steps forward, and then traversed diagonally to the right a little bit, then pressed forward once more.
It was deathly silent. Ryanti’s light shined upon what appeared to be five thousand plus year old cargo crates that seemed to span the entire horizontal distance of this section of the room. Once again, these are made out of cerment. They were all different shapes and sizes. Some were square in shape and large in size. Some possessed a cylinder shape, and were sealed shut by complicated locking mechanisms and where the LED’s upon the boxes used to shine was nothing but blackness, as the lights faded in power long ago just as well as the materials in them were long expired. They were exotic and foreign even to Ryanti; the first relics of an ancient time when the world was different.
The air was stale, not ever affording a gust of wind over the eras of time. It smelled of metal. It was different from the Garlean steel which smelt dirty. This kind of metal smelled clean and refined, not containing any kind of imperfections that would leak in the air as an odor. There was so faint smell of oil or fuel or smudge. If Sounsyy noticed, Ryanti was only looking directly at where their lights were pointing, for if you didn’t, it would quickly feel like the space around you was choking you down in claustrophobia. No words could describe the ominous silence. Ryanti had a feeling that they were trespassing, almost committing some sort of sin for being here and re-discovering this. Perhaps it was simply the dread of the silence.
“I’ll answer your questions that you had earlier about where we are. I did not forget.†No, he did not. He was just trained to do something when someone required information, but was in a wrecked state of mind. He was taught to deny them the answer and allow them to wait out their frustration before answering, so that they could better absorb the reality around them. It was meant to be a coping mechanism. He had to learn a lot about them to be able to grasp all this. So he spoke, hoping his enlightening dialogue would ease the dread of the long consistent silence.
“As we know, there have been seven Astral Eras so far. For thousands of years, we believed that civilization as we know it began after the Age of Endless frost in the Fifth Umbral Era. Before the ice age, historians speculated that man was primitive in nature, and lived out their lives in either stoic or nomadic tribes and lived off the land with countless individual, secular cultures. All sources of either our present day nations or their ancient mothers trace back to the end of this ice age. So naturally, it was thought for a long time that the beginning of recorded history around the early Fifth Astral Era was the beginning of civilization and factual history. Anything prior to that was neck deep in myth and legend.â€
Ryanti tilted his torchlight up to glance at the ceiling. There were several cords hanging from the roof at the place they were. Some of them were broken, others were still interconnecting into the ceiling. They looked similar to fuel lines that Garlemald would use on their vehicles, but the network within the exposed ceiling seemed much more complicated. Upon lowering his flashlight again among the endless sea of long neglected cargo boxes and scattered portions of cords and wires, he resumed his dialogue.
“Some of the beast tribes and Miqo’te tribe lineages extend all the way back to the First Era. It was known for a long time that these tribes possess very interesting legends and fables of a world before the Endless Frost. They speak of everything from ancient sea monsters to extraordinary chariots that rode across the sky and befriended Menphina’s moon. They spoke of Menphina’s loyal hound, and of demi-Gods that sailed the great Star Ocean under Her watch. For centuries and millennia scholars kept these legends transcribed but believed them to be that: imaginative legends and fairytales. They deduced that these legends and fairytales all had common themes. Beings that rode the sky, beings that constructed immense monuments that came crumbling down when they met their end.â€
Ryanti shined his torchlight to his right, finally reaching the right wall. The ceiling had to be at least eighty fulms in height. There were broken and twisted remnants of a kind of catwalk complex upon the right wall that would have been quite marvelous looking five millennia ago. But now it was all twisted and broken, having partially collapsed at some point. The metal was ripped in half and distorted, and the catwalk was half suspended still on the upper floor and half sprawled upon the ground.
“Well, they were wrong. A man by the name of Saint Coinach was a historical figure during the Sixth Astral Era. You might have heard of him. He was the first person to discover that the legends and fairytales of the old tribes contained more reality than fiction. His discovery was to change everything we know about this planet. The Sharlayans knew the real nature of his discoveries, and they have probably known for a very long time. But they chose to keep the true realities of Saint Coinach’s discoveries hidden from the greater public, and for good reason. It turns out that during the Third Astral Era, two further Eras back than the beginning of our recorded history, there existed a time on this planet where civilization reached its absolute apex. On the very top of its apex stood the mighty Allagan Empire. In the very distant past, the landmass of Eorzea was said to be larger, and the Allagan borders must have stretched at least across half of the planet. Their civilization reached a pinnacle of technology to near omni-potent levels, and a complete mastery of the forces of magic. We still do not know how many years thick the Third Astral Era was, but the amount of years Sharlayans theorize vastly extends the length of the Eras we know. However, very little is still known about that time. There is a… point where this Empire and other nations that thrived during that time, such as Meracydia… completely vanish from the record. It was not over years or even months… they were there and then suddenly they weren’t. They were just… gone. Nobody knows why. This happened approximately five thousand years ago.†Ryanti slowed down his steps, until he was completely stopped in his tracks, glancing around in the darkness as if he could see, but obvious could not. “As far as this place goes… according to the plague, this must have been some sort of research vessel. It’s good for us because research vessels contain much more useful data to us than military ones. But it’s not the kind of ship that sailed the ocean, no… this vessel was meant to sail the star ocean, Sounsyy…â€
The sight of Hydealyn from space in her dream…
Ryanti briefly looked back to her, his facial features shining within the confines of her torchlight. “The reason why this information is buried is clear. It’s… much easier for society to accept a clear beginning to the history of civilization and be able to draw a straight line from there to where we are now. It’s easier to accept that the way of life and civilization that we know has always been relatively familiar to us. It would be difficult for people to accept the… truth. Society is not ready to be able to cope with it. That is why Jonathan advised you not to tell your Superior Officer about this. Even if you did, your Superior probably would not believe you.â€
He solemnly turned around to face his front again. “How can you just simply… tell someone these things and expect them to believe you unless you see it for yourself…†There was a kind of burden in his voice. It was hard to live with this and not be able to tell everyone.
Now do you believe…? Ryanti thought.
Just then, there was a noise. A sound of a bump or two in a ventilation shaft somewhere further beyond, a bit to the right where the wall met the ceiling. Ryanti’s heart skipped a beat and he immediately pointed his gun up at the source, clicking on the torchlight that came with the rifle. It was weaker than his body one, but certainly not a weak light in of itself. It shined upon the spot where he heard the noise, but there was nothing. Had there always been nothing. “Assume all foreign noises independent of us are hostile.†Ryanti murmured to Sounsyy. “We have no literal idea what could possibly be down here with us if we aren’t alone. Probably something not ever meant to see the light of day.â€
Within an additional twenty or so steps, they cleared the cargo farm, and found themselves amongst the largest part of the room. It had a trapezoid-like shape to it, and an intricate network of perfectly molded steel and ancient hydraulic pistons held shut the enormous twin hanger doors that hugged the left wall. It would never be opened again. Perpendicular to the hanger doors was another second story catwalk, and this one was intact. In the distance, Ryanti’s light shined upon the door up there, which half of it was broken down, providing an open to go through. “That’s our way out.â€
When Ryanti lowered his light down to the center of the room, he gasped at the marvel of what he saw. In the center of the room, there was a derelict… craft of some sort resting in that place in which had become its grave. About the size of the Roehmerl, it was nowhere near in perfect condition. The rear rotors were long disintegrated, and the wiry mesh of the light metals used in design of the small shuttle was broken and mulled in many locations. The front landing gear had collapsed long ago. The rear ones, alleviated of the weight due to the nose of the aircraft resting on the ground now, were still standing. The middle of the craft looked like it had caught fire centuries ago, a fire that eventually burned out. The front windshield of the cockpit was broken and shattered in some places, yet still intact upon the ship.
“This must be a place where they landed those… smaller ones. Wow… unreal.†Ryanti mentioned, examining the entirety of the craft, noticing a partial serial number on the side of the craft. Some of it had been burned away by the fire. Then his light gathered with interest at the front of the craft, where the shattered window was. It would not be that much of an effort to climb aboard the smaller vessel and peak into the combat. Ryanti felt like he had to do it, even though it make him extra nervous to do so. He had to check to see if anything was… harboring inside of it. The insides of the ship beyond that point were scourged by fire and melted metal, so there were no worries about that. “I need to examine it and make sure it’s clear. Watch my back.â€
And with that, Ryanti made his way ever so cautiously to the front of the craft. As he laid the torchlight upon the broken windshield, he felt a tingling in his mind. He remembered in one of their first dreams there was a split second… yes… he could almost hear the hydraulic doors closing, the sky being their destination. It had to be a ship like this… a ship like this. That must have been how they arrived. On a ship like this…
With a single gesture, he leapt up into the air, his feet landing with a thud upon the nose of the smaller vessel. The scale of it was still immense. Ryanti’s form was miniscule compared even to this ‘smaller’ ship. “Okay Ryanti…†He murmured to himself, examining the lower parts of the nose by sweeping his torchlight slowly, back and forth, finally reaching the windshield, and shining the light inside.
All of the levers... all of these controls were buried in dust. It reminded him of Garlean schematics he used to recover from his earlier missions in the Immortal Flames concerning stealing Garlean blueprints. But these were much more sophisticated. All he saw were just buttons and levers galore, and a seat or two before the fiery molten metal brought an end to the ship’s space. He quietly etched the light over the controls… then examined the seats.
The seats… they had bite marks on them. How old were those bite marks? Thousands of years old? Centuries? Decades? … Days?
“Sounsyy!†Ryanti shouted, his voice booming with an echo across the room to get her attention. “We might not be alone in here!â€
Just then, four more noises. Like four heavy bumps in a constant pattern above him. The ceiling. Immediately he shined a light up above to investigate. There were so many roof panels that had some off, so many exposed wires and compartments where anything could be hiding… waiting. The artifact could not help them now. It had been dead since they arrived.