“Where shall we go?” Said Winoa, as they walked out into the main road of the town. She looked to the left and right of where they were standing, and saw two large buildings in either direction.
“Well, Jim and Law went over to the right, so I guess we should look at that large place on the left,” Cleo replied, taking a moment to look at the building she had just declared would be their target. “It looks kind of like a town hall doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, perhaps we can find out what was going on here if we look inside”.
The two girls began walking towards the hall, glancing into the buildings as they passed. They saw very little that could shed light on the way the town had been deserted, but they did notice that a lot of the buildings were deserted far quicker than if it was an exodus, or something planned. The set tables, messy beds and turned over chairs told a story of fleeing from something unexpected rather than any sort of great looming threat that allowed any sort of organised exodus. Both girls had a glum look plastered over their faces as they arrived at their target.
“I’ve not walked through a place this saddening since the villages that got set upon by Peter,” said Cleo, her hand shaking the doorknob slightly as she voiced her problem. The door swung open, revealing a dusty reception hall filled with the same kind of overturned chairs and paper strewn about as had littered the town before them.
“Seconded. There's something rather unsettling for me about going through places like this. So many people experiencing their last moments, running for their lives,” Winoa replied, following Cleo into the building.
“At least they had a chance to run here. Do you remember that castle we found? The one where all the people had been killed while they were having dinner, just sat at their seats”.
“Don't remind me. I still have nightmares about that one. I swear their half rotting faces stared. They didn't have eyes, but damn could they stare”.
Cleo shuddered in response, before walking into the building proper. The two girls split up and began peeking into each room they could find, checking if it was useful and then moving on. Room after room all they saw was desks with strange arrays on them. Cleo tried several times to use them, but she could not help but feel that the arrays had a specific purpose, and yet were also woefully incomplete. Unfortunately she did not have enough of a grasp upon arrays in general to understand what they did. In the end all she could do was move on and look for something more concrete further down.
Cleo and Winoa met up at the last room on the ground floor. It was a large room, but only had one entrance, so they could not help but go in it together. The room was obviously important, because had it not been for the fact that someone panicking left the doorway open, neither girl would have been able to go inside the room. The entrance itself was something like a vault door, littered with arrays and made of an extremely tough metal alloy. It was not perfect, as both Cleo and Winoa had no trouble entering the room, but was quite clearly a Hephaistia clan creation. If they had not been able to guess by the craftsmanship quality, they could easily tell by the gemstone mosaic in the shape of a furnace on the back of the vault door.
“I wonder what actually happened to the Hephaistia clan,” said Cleo as she took a step into the room. It was full of filing cabinets, stacked row after row that were barely visible in the light-starved room. Winoa stepped in and the girls heard a click, immediately making them stand completely still. One of them had obviously started something working again, but they did not know what. There was a whirring and a flash as lights came on in the room, and the gemstones on the door burst into life. Winoa turned her head and stared in wonder at the beautiful mosaic battery that only had five of the hundreds of gems that made it up actually working.
“So do I. It makes me wonder though,” Winoa paused, before she began opening drawers one after the other and perusing the contents. “I really wonder, was whatever Law did trueforming? It fit the description perfectly, but that's the dominion of the Book of Creation”.
Cleo followed suit, opening drawers and looking inside for something that could tell them more about the town they were in. In each drawer were thirty or so thin slates with a completed version of the array Cleo had looked at on each desk. Each one was set up to record information and show it on the panel in text form. After scanning a few pages of the text in the array, Cleo gasped in surprise. “These are documents kept by the military of the kingdom we are in... Biqiril? I think that's what the country is called. Keep looking, there might be something useful in here”. After a moment of checking through the files, Cleo spoke up again. “I don't know. Something about Law has always rubbed me the wrong way, from the first time I met him to a few days after he dealt with Peter. What he said, it was just too outlandish to believe”.
“But now you've seen his dominion, you are doubting yourself?”
“Well, yeah I guess. It seems kind of dumb to hold a grudge against him for so long because the third day I knew him he declared that he was going to revive the Hephaistia clan. But it struck a nerve. He seemed... He just seemed like those other children who had bullied me when I was living in the Ignis homeworld. They would pretend to help me then declare they would overturn the rule about the fourth child entirely, but soon after they would just give up and laugh at me. From when I was four until when I was six I hoped that someone would come and save me from that hell, but no one would.
“My family, rather my immediate family, were worthless. Three mediocre brothers, a mother who died in childbirth and a father who no one accepted the existence of. It seems childish but I just can't trust anyone who makes great claims about changing the world with nothing to back it up. And Law...”
“May actually be able to do it,” Winoa said, quickly looking up at the worried and slightly distracted Cleo. “It really seems that you're being unfair on him, for something other people did”.
“I know. The more I think about it, the more unfair I think I have been... But I had no proof he could change things. He spoke of making a place for me to live in when I told him what I told you, about life in the Ignis clan and I couldn't separate him from the others. I still... I still don't know if I can”.
“Well we have a long time to try and find out. You can ask him about his Book when we get back to camp, and perhaps try and get over your problem with him. Hold on...” Winoa stopped and looked at the array in her hands, before pulling it out and reading it again, this time out loud. “... Project Alamis... Array studying settlements... Oh wow, autonomous array soldiers? I think I just found out what they were doing. Listen to this.
“Day 1772, almost six years since the start of Project Alamis. Primer Qema has come to the General with a working prototype for the array soldier, and in my professional opinion it is disturbingly simple but it works. The general has ordered creation of ten soldiers that we have coined generation 1 and will be testing them a week from now. If all goes well then we could see the face of war change a month from now. The General has sent off the array schematics to HQ, so even if the traitor got word out to her conspirators no invading force will be able to stop the rise of the New Biqiril Array Army. Biqiril blood will never have to be spilled in combat again”.
Both girls looked at the slate and then at each other with wide eyes. Neither one could imagine the skill and ingenuity it would take to make an array sentient, but they had both heard of strange artifacts that had been made by the Hephaistia clan that possessed intelligence. They were things of legend, so anyone emulating that with arrays was beyond their scope of reasoning. They both immediately turned around and attempted to find out more about the array soldiers, peeling through each draw and discarding anything that was either before day 1772 or not to do with Project Alamis. After almost half an hour, they had cleared the room and Cleo was sat at the single desk in the vault. She poured over everything they found, but there was nothing after day 1782, the day of the test. Finally she slammed her fist into the table in frustration and the array on the desk lit up. From the array, a single image began floating in front of the girls. It was an article of some sort of missive or news bulletin with the words ‘War Has Changed’ printed in a bold font above the image of a hundred stone soldiers walking in uniform step. Neither girl could talk, but a thousand possibilities of what happened went through both girls heads.
However, before either could talk about it they heard a crash from a nearby building and Louisa’s voice came out of their Challenger Rings. “Everyone, help! Yun and I have found something and it seems to be violent. With the mana acting so strangely in this area we need to work together to get rid of it!”
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