The Wyrms of &alon

Interlude 3.21 - Der Abschied


EUe flew away from tUel-tEa station as fast as he could, leaving sonic booms in his wake. The unease EUe had been feeling as he had been closing in on tUel-tEa station had ripened into full-blown terror. He ran over the possibilities in his mind, trying to lose himself in the sound of his rushing wings.

Could it be an attack of some kind? A curse? A plague?

Gah!

He could figure out the details later!

EUe's mind kept flashing back and forth between the pipes and their corrupted nectar, and what Vyx had told him.

It didn't take a genius to realize that a contaminated nectar supply would spread the contagion across the world at lightning speed. But it made no sense: the safeguards in place were meant to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. The nectar would be filtered and heated, purged of any toxins or germs.

He couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of catastrophic failure that would have had to happen in order for the safeguards to fail like this. twEfE paranoia meant that everything in the Ecumene had safeguards and redundancies, and even those had back-ups and back-ups for those.

Who watched the watchman? twEfE did!

The nectarducts, for instance, contained three completely separate networks, laid alongside one another in a triangular formation, so that if one failed or had to undergo maintenance, the precious fluid's flow wouldn't be interrupted.

But it had failed. This plague had run roughshod over every single preventive measure EUe's people had put in place, obliterating them like they were nothing.

And as for the cistern, what was the point of bringing it back, other than to infect more of his colleagues? Everything was fouled! It'd be safer to drink poison straight out of the bottle!

Wait.

EUe stopped and doubled back to the elU fields, diving down beneath the canopy. He didn't just want to see if there was any uncontaminated nectar left.

He was also worried about the crops.

If this disease infected elU, the unthinkable would happen: food shortages. People would start killing each other to eliminate threats to their food supply if there was even a hint of food shortages. And twEfE not drinking nectar, they wouldn't be getting their daily doses of the calming barbiturates added to the nectar supply.

People would go insane.

This was doomsday.

"C'mon! c'mon!"

EUe buzzed down through the canopy. Conjuring an orb of Uehea into his hand, he used its light to illuminate the elU's giant stalks as he flew deftly among the groves.

"No!" he screamed. "No!"

The elU were infected. All of them. Every last one! Black filaments grew over and through their sickly, rotting stalks. The elU drooped, withered and melted, their branches sloughing off at the slightest touch.

Even the clams were infected! Fungal blooms sprouted from their shells, and from the rot in the elU.

EUe soared up into the air, leaving a sonic boom in his wake as he rocketed away from the grove, toward the mountains. The waves of sound and force toppled dozens of elU being him.

Vyx's words rattled around in EUe's skull as he flew back to the camp.

The reason Vyx and its kind had come to UlU?

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Because of the big bad.

That couldn't have been a coincidence.

There was no time to waste! EUe was exhausted; all the hours of teaching over several days without much sleep, along with zipping back and forth across the continent? It was wearing on him. But he pushed himself as hard as he could. He refused to give in.

He arrived at the camp several hours before midnight. Tired, beaten group of people were waiting in the dining area, the communions on the paths and the walls and the buildings' sides illuminating them like spotlights. As he came in for the landing, EUe realized many of them were seated, or had propped themselves up against a table or a wall.

Voices clamored as his feet hit the dirt, intermixed with coughs and moans.

"It's EUe! He's back!"

"W-Where's the nectar?" A scientist said. The bird was down on his knees.

EUe realized some of the male's feathers had fallen onto the ground, knocked loose by the force of his coughs.

The weight of their expectations was crushing. He didn't know what to do. They were all so desperate.

What should I say?

Pushing off the nest she'd been leaning against, tlE-la made a haggard tromp toward EUe.

He noticed she kept her distance from him.

"Did you see the announcement?" she asked. "Is that why you came back?"

"Announcement?"

"It was over the Philharmonium. There's a plague. The Nectar-King has declared a state of emergency. All travel is suspended until further notice."

EUe heard a loud cough and groan. Turning toward the sound, he saw lU-twO in a chair, slumped over the adjacent table.

"The government isn't certain which came first," the astrophysicist said, with a shake of his head, "the plague or the Impactors. Death is already spreading like wildfire."

"We have to assume that everyone here is already infected," tlE-la looked EUe in the eyes. "Even you, Gatherer."

"How serious is this?" he asked.

"gEl is dead, EUe," lU-twO said, eyes wide, wings drooping behind him.

Uwen-ka—lU-twO's brother—shook his head. The old bird looked like he'd just seen Death's foggy lE with his own two eyes.

"I… I don't think I've seen anything so horrible before." He coughed.

EUe stood in place, beak slightly ajar. The dread in Uwen-ka's voice made the Gatherer's flight feathers stand on end. His tail feathers shivered.

"What? Wait… hold on a minute. Just how bad is this disease?"

lU-twO's reply was somber. "If nothing is done it's projected that everyone in the Capital will be infected within a day or two, assuming people don't violate the Nectar-King's command and make a mass exodus to the countryside. The Minister of Health has said that, within a day of contracting the illness, you have at least a one in four chance of falling comatose, if not dying outright."

tlE-la coughed. "There's not enough data to make a reliable projection for its mortality rate, but, I shouldn't need to tell you what happens if a quarter of the population falls comatose."

"This is a race against time, EUe," Uwen-ka said.

EUe folded his wings against his back as quickly as he could, but he worried he wasn't able to hide his nervous tremors. He stood there for a moment with his head held low, not moving or speaking, just thinking.

But in the end he couldn't stay silent.

"I went to the nectar station at tUel-tEa," he explained. "I didn't see many people there, and the few that I did see were…" but he couldn't bring himself to finish the thought, but he didn't need to. His silence spoke volumes.

"tUel-tEa station?" someone said, splaying their wings in anger. "If you were there, why didn't you bring back any nectar?"

"I planned to, but…" EUe clenched his fists. "The nectar supply was contaminated." He couldn't bring himself to look them in the eyes.

Coughs and gasps alike rippled across the scene.

"The plague is inside the nectarducts. And it doesn't just affect us. All the elU are rotting." Though he tried to fight it, he couldn't help but run his claws through his feathers.

Panting and wheezing, Uwen-ka flopped off the bench where he sat and fell, hitting the ground on all fours. He retched, repeatedly, scraping his beak through the dirt, spewing up black ooze. On the side of his head, a whole section of feathers fell away like dead leaves plucked away by wind, revealing naked skin festered with ulcers and that tell-tale black, filamentous growth.

"Uwen-ka, are you alright?" lU-twO stumbled over to help his brother. EUe joined him.

"Don't move, Gatherer," a scientist barked. "If, by some miracle, you aren't yet infected, I'd like it to stay that way."

Uwen-ka pushed his brother back with a flick of his wings. "No, I'm not alright!" He shook his head; his whole body trembled. "If the contagion has breached the main nectar supply, that's it. That's game, set, match." His eyes widened in terror. "That's how it spread so quickly…" he muttered. He dragged his claws through the dirt. "It was the nectar! It was the nectar!"

EUe tensed his feet, digging his toe claws into the ground. "Vyx tried to warn me about this…" he said.

"Vyx?" tlE-la said.

"Crap, I totally forgot!" EUe said. He'd lost himself in the terror of the moment. "I made more progress with the Impactor. We can have conversations now. He—it—calls itself Vyx. They came to our world because they need help fighting this plague!"

That took lU-twO aback. "W-What?"

"Well, Vyx didn't quite put it that way, but I'm certain that's what he meant. At first I was unsure, but now…" EUe shook his head. "…no, there's no doubt in my mind. Whatever this plague is, the Impactors are here to fight it. That must be wh—"

—EUe staggered backward, feeling dizzy. The dreamshard in his chest burned.

"EUe?!" tlE-la yelled.

And then he fell to the ground as everything went dark.

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