The Wyrms of &alon

Interlude 3.11 - Der Abschied


Runetic engineering.

Runetic engineers were artisans of prayers and dreams. After the dreamshards themselves, the Engineering Collegium and the castebunds bound up with it were the Ecumene's most precious resource. Through new, innovative applications of natural theology, not-light could be shaped and refined like never before, and when that knowledge was applied to the dreamshards' not-light, engineers could commune with the Gods in ways their ancestors could have only dreamed of—and it had been EUe's dream to become one.

It had been a while since EUe had last given his old profession serious thought. Runetic engineering was one of the branches of science on which the world turned. According to the Ecumene's historians, natural theology and the other sciences must have existed in one form or another since the Barbaric Ages, but it was only with the discovery of the first dreamshards that runetic engineering was truly able to come into its own, and more spectacularly than anyone could have ever imagined.

The first generation of runetics had devoted their lives to the extermination of the harriers. Long ago, when twEfE still lived in fear of the natural world, those invisible demons would spring up in the webs of not-light that criss-crossed the world, feasting on whatever not-light they could find, even when it was caught up in the middle of a communion. According to legend, their favorite meal was the not-light present within thought itself, which drew them in like flies to a tree clam. But, unlike the flies, the harriers were the predators. When they consumed their victims' minds, they left behind only brain-dead husks, and no wall was thick enough to keep them at bay.

Then came the dreamshards. The impact was so profound that, for the only time in recorded history, the different Colors of twEfE set their hatred aside. It mattered that much. With the shards' power, the twEfE burned the harriers away, creating safe-havens where science could flourish without the fear of drawing a harrier's fangs. And that was how theology evolved into true engineering.

EUe could never think about that without feeling a little tingle down the middle of his back at the roots of his wings. It was a feeling of joy, knowing that twEfE of different Colors could, if only for a short while, work together, living alongside one another in peace. It was also a feeling of sheer terror, because he simply couldn't imagine how horrifying the harriers must have been in order to push the different Colors to band together to eliminate them.

In his prime, as a graduate fresh out of the Collegium, everyone had been abuzz about a new matrix projection technique that could interlink different dreamshard fragments over great distances. People were certain that wire-based telegraphy would be obsolete within a generation. At the time, EUe never could have imagined he'd live to see that prediction fulfilled. But then things changed.

The Accident had been EUe's watershed, dividing his life into before and after. Even now, he couldn't call it anything but the Accident, because the truth of what it was was just too horrible to name, least of all because the Accident was his son. EUe's friends told him he could start over. His parents promised he'd always have a home waiting for him in their nest. His colleagues implored him to not lose sight of his work.

"You're valuable to the Ecumene, EUe," they said. "No one—not even Uka-yen himself!—thinks quite like you do. Don't let despair wash it all away."

But their consolation didn't amount to much, especially once it turned into condemnation. Their words didn't change the reality of what he felt. If anything, it only made him dig in more, and somewhere in the middle of all that grief, something in his conscience spoke to him. It said just three words, but they made all the difference:

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

This is wrong.

That was EUe's watershed; the inflection point, past which everything changed.

"This is wrong" soon became, "They shouldn't have died", which quickly metastasized into "They deserved to live". It was a cancer in his thoughts. The progression was rapid, and the prognosis was bleak.

It got to the point that he couldn't even enjoy the peace anymore. Nectar lost its sweetness. A shadow fell across his life, stretching even into his dreams.

The ideals he'd been taught to cherish?

Everything he'd ever aspired to be?

It all wilted, rotting like fruit beneath the sun.

In short order, EUe was thinking the unthinkable: he wondered if it would have been better if the Sapphires had come out on top, instead of the Rubies, because maybe then, eUna and hU-nOan might have been able to live.

The final straw in this tragic affair fell squarely on EUe's shoulders, and his alone. He'd had the temerity to open his beak and say how he felt, and that got him branded a kwekek. True, it wasn't against the law to have the wrong opinion, but it also wasn't against the law to deny every and any desirable opportunity to those who expressed them. EUe had decided he didn't want to live in a world that had destroyed what he'd loved and—guess what?—it turned out the feeling was mutual!

He went from promising star to pariah in very short order.

In a way, it was actually kind of funny. Even as a pariah, EUe could have lived a life of luxury if he wanted to. As long as you weren't currently serving out a criminal sentence, anyone, anywhere, at any time could choose to join the Ua-hU: the nectar harvesters. In decreasing order of importance, the social hierarchy went: the Gods, nectar harvesters, the Nectar-King, and then all the other Uas in their particular order of relevance. As a harvester, you got to keep every dram of nectar you collected over your daily quota. And as long as you—or anyone—had enough nectar on hand to keep yourself alive, the world was your oyster.

EUe could have easily set up an automatic harvester to perform the grunt work—many Ua-hU did just that—and spend the rest of his days alternating between tending the machinery and doing his research while living off his harvest surplus, but he had no interest in doing that, either then or now. Really, suicide would have been the best option, but that would have really upset his parents, not to mention earned eUna's disapproval direct from the afterlife.

So, that left becoming a Gatherer. And if he died in the arena, well… at least Ela-tU would have whistled on his honorable death.

Not just anyone could become a Gatherer. It had been that way since hU-U-te's time. You had to prove your worth in battle. Once the Race Wars ended, that meant either rising to the top of the gladiatorial circuit or winning first place in any of the approved competitions, such as the International Theological Championships. EUe chose the arena because he wanted to hope that valor in combat would make him seem more hUale—nectar-blooded—to his colleagues, and, most of all, to his parents.

He hadn't wanted his mom and dad to go to their graves thinking they'd raised a kwekek.

No one expected a bookish engineer to rise to the top of the circuit, but that was just because they'd underestimated his pain. Pain could make a person do all sorts of things they might never have done otherwise.

In the back of EUe's mind, he'd always held out hope—impossible though it was—that, somehow, by grace of the Gods, the Great Dream would lead him back to the family that he'd lost. Maybe, somewhere in the mysteries of the dreamshards, there was a way for him to get back what he had lost.

EUe had shared his sad story with Uka-yen over a glass or four of zUzU Fresh. Hearing the tragic tale, the old bird said he should have returned to ordinary life.

"Boy, you're too smart to be a Gatherer," he'd said. "The future needs people like you, now more than ever. You want to make yourself useful? Contribute. Help make the world better than when you left it. That's how you do it."

He hoped Uka-yen's words would bear out in the end.

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