Inquisitor's Promise (Act Three, Chapter Five)
The Holy League had been united, but the Grey Globe continued to move towards Earth. Aeneas and the members of his inner circle knew they had much to do and little time to prepare.
Chapter Five: Dark Age History
Didn’t I tell you not to act like a conventional wyvern knight?” Antonio chastised.
“But Antonio…,” Galatea whined.
After returning to the camp to recuperate along with the rest of the army, Galatea had eagerly told her cousin of her exploits with her beloved Inquisitor. Little did she know that the wyvern knight would not take kindly to what she had done.
“But what?” Antonio interrupted. “That Bashan Voronin died by your hand? If you had played it safe, you would’ve been able to stall that creepy cat long enough for the main army to team up with you and kill him together.”
“And yet, it still worked out,” Galatea said.
Antonio sighed. “But there was just so many ways it could’ve gotten wrong, little cousin. You lucked out there.”
“There’s no such thing as luck, Sir Antonio,” Halpful interjected, the recordkeeper had been eavesdropping on the conversation. “The Almighty had made a decree from the very beginning that Lady Galatea was to be the one to slay Bashan Voronin.”
“You stay out of this, theology nerd!” Antonio cried.
Aeneas couldn’t help but chuckle as he listened to the conversation between the cousins and the recordkeeper. The Inquisitor was glad that this whole episode was behind them. Bashan Voronin was dead, meaning that there would be no more schemes done to destabilize the Holy League.
That being said, his existing schemes had remained which needed to be addressed. And of course, there was the issue of the Grey Globe.
The Grey Globe was not Bashan Voronin’s doing. The dark felinid simply made use of it as the means to destroy the Church. And Aeneas knew that they needed to discover the way to defeat it, inside the Dark Age Archive.
Having been assured by Halpful that there would be no hostiles inside the archive, Aeneas decided to leave the soldiers in the camp to rest. Jaya had agreed to stay behind to oversee the camp and tend to the wounded. This meant that Sancho Panza and Don Quixote stayed behind. It was fortunate the two wyverns were just fine, though they would need some time to recover.
And so, Aeneas walked across the light bridge towards the Dark Age Archive with Halpful, Antonio, Galatea, and a group of machine spirit drones.
“It’s so peaceful here, now,” Galatea commented.
“Hard to believe there was a battle here just yesterday,” Aeneas said.
Despite Aeneas’ words, there were still signs of the battle with drones and cyborg pieces strewn around. The Inquisitor had ensured that his own casualties were no longer on the bridge, but the same could not be said for the other side.
The Inquisitor tried to be as respectful for the human body as possible, even for his enemies. But the machine spirit question had confused him. Was the cyborg the human body or was it the chip? Aeneas had ensured that his men had recovered these chips and buried them. With everything in the Monolith metallic, this burial was done back in the abandoned town where Aeneas had set up camp.
But the cyborg parts Aeneas left lying on the bridge. He hoped that he had made the right decision.
Aeneas’ group continued to make their way through the bridge, and they soon reached a large gate-sized door. But there were no handles or anything graspable on it.
“How are we going to open this gate?” Antonio asked.
“Give me a minute,” Halpful said as he pressed some buttons on the side. Soon, the door opened by itself.
“Wow, amazing,” Galatea said in awe.
“Yeah,” Antonio added, similarly amazed.
But Aeneas looked at the two cousins in confusion. “You two act like you’ve never seen an automatic door before.”
“We don’t see things like this in San Felipe,” Antonio said defensively.
“Indeed,” Galatea said. “Our people are very traditional.”
Aeneas remembered his time in San Felipe and couldn’t help but agree. Having given it a thought, San Felipe was a strange place. A country where the people would eschew much of modern technology but at the same time used energy shields on their wyverns.
At this point, Halpful decided to chime in. “Inside, we should learn much about the Grey Globe.”
Nodding in acknowledgement, Aeneas led the way as the group went inside.
The Dark Age Archive was actually one large room. In the middle, there was a square console, it had a holographic blue glow.
“Isn’t this the archive? Where are the books?” Antonio asked.
“There are no books in the Monolith,” Halpful answered.
“No books?” Galatea said in surprise. “How tragic.”
“Remember that machine spirits live here, they have no use for books. Not physical ones,” Halpful explained.
“But this archive was used by the Dark Age ruling class, who were cyborgs,” Aeneas pointed out.
Halpful nodded. “Indeed. Even so, they preferred to have their information transferred to their minds directly.”
“I don’t think that’s an option for us,” Galatea said thoughtfully.
“No,” Halpful said. “But we can turn this whole place into a theater to show us everything.”
“Like a planetarium,” Aeneas offered.
But Galatea was confused. “A planet what?”
“Never mind,” Aeneas said sheepishly.
“Perhaps it would be more helpful if I just demonstrate it,” Halpful said as he pressed some buttons on the console.
The room became dark. Suddenly, Galatea grabbed onto Aeneas. Clearly, the lady knight was surprised by the turn of events. The Inquisitor, for his part, resisted the urge to chuckle. Instead, he wrapped his arm protectively around his beloved.
In front of them, the group could see a sky full of stars in front of them, it was deep space. This was followed by a group of starships flying through the ether of outer space.
“These look like the Holy League fleet,” Galatea commented.
“They can’t be, since this happened during the Dark Age,” Antonio responded.
The ships were traversing through space, there were some dialogues amongst the crew of the starships. Then, the fleet began to fire at a large spherical object.
“It’s the Grey Globe!” Galatea cried.
“Has to be,” Antonio said.
There was a battle between the two sides, but it was one sided. The fleet attacked the Grey Globe, but they were overwhelmed by the Grey Globe’s minions. Before long, there was nothing of the fleet but wreckage.
Aeneas frowned as he looked at all this. The Inquisitor couldn’t help but remember the video of Lieutenant Giovanni Rossi’s last moments. Though there had been other videos and pictures available of the Grey Globe since, Giovanni’s last moments remained a vivid memory in Aeneas’ mind.
A woman’s voice boomed, the narrator of the archive:
“That was the beginning of the Atomian War.”
Galatea gasped as she heard the narrator. “Did she say, Atomia?”
“You mean the guys that Fyuria wants to avenge?” Antonio said.
“Perhaps Fyuria is an Atomian,” Galatea speculated.
“Shh,” Aeneas hissed, trying to silence the two cousins.
“We the Federation have lost multiple fleets. The Grey Spheres are not affected by conventional weapons.”
“I guess the Federation is what the Dark Age Civilization call themselves?” Antonio asked.
“Obviously,” Galatea answered.
Aeneas shook his head. He was getting really annoyed by the two cousins constantly commenting. But he remained silent.
The video then showed more destroyed fleets. More battles between the spherical objects and the fleets.
“There was more than one Grey Globes?” Galatea asked.
“That seemed to be the implication of the video, yes,” Halpful answered.
“Even worse, we have discovered that the Atomians had produced an Electrosphere Portal, just like us. They are planning to strike Earth!”
Aeneas was glad that the wyvern cousins had said nothing. Evidently, talks of the Electropshere had gone over their heads. As for the Inquisitor himself, he remembered of Portal Zero. Aeneas surmised that the Atomians had created it with their technology but was then closed by the Dark Age Civilization after the war.
“We needed help. And we found it on the Moon.”
The group was then shown pictures of a base on the moon. It looked very much like the moon colony Tycho that Aeneas had been to before he visited the Lektros Dimension. A large gate was being constructed, clearly the Lektros Gate. This was followed by a scene showing a group of men surrounding the completed gate, ready to activate it. Then, a bluish blur. As Aeneas watched, he thought of his father and how it had all started.
“It was an accident. We did not intend to find anything related to the Electrosphere. And yet, we have located our salvation through this random act of chance.”
Back to the movie, Terran and Lektros were shown to be working together. There were videos of scientific experiments done by Terran scientists. None of the group safe for Halpful had any idea of what they could be doing.
Aeneas also saw a construction of a very large building, an arena large enough to host an entire Calcio World Cup by itself: it was the Lektros Dome. As Aeneas had suspected, that gargantuan building was constructed with the help of the Dark Age Civilization.
“We discovered their weakness: alondite. And we made cannons that can launch them.”
Aeneas nodded as he watched. He remembered of the idea to use a cannon that would launch alondites to defeat the Grey Globe. But what was missing in those scrolls were the instructions on how to make them.
To his luck, the video began to go into the details on the alondite cannons’ creation process. As it turned out, the cannon functioned similarly to starship cannons. Aeneas saw how the engines of the Dark Age starships were refitted to be able to fire the alondite at the Grey Globe’s structures.
“Lord Aeneas, do you understand all this?” Galatea asked.
“I’m a little lost,” Aeneas admitted. “But don’t worry, these are the things that the engineers need to worry about.”
“I’m writing down all of the relevant thing as we speak,” Halpful chimed in.
“The alondite cannons was a success.”
The group soon saw a series of fleets engaging the Grey Globe. The alondite cannons had successfully disabled all of the main functions of the Grey Globe. This was then followed by a ground invasion by the Dark Age armies.
There were firefights shown between the two sides. Aeneas saw cyborgs fighting against a group of grey particles that form into soldiers and vehicles.
“What are those things?” Antonio asked.
“I have no idea,” Aeneas answered. He turned to the recordkeeper. “Halpful?”
“They looked to be the basic building block of the Grey Globe ecosystem. That was how they managed to take the shape of our weaponries,” Halpful explained. “Though that was simply our speculation.”
In time, the cyborgs made their way to a verdant forest. This was a strange sight for Aeneas, as he had expected the Grey Globe to be a giant version of the Monolith. There, the cyborgs fought against a large grey creature; it took the shape of a bird of prey. The grey creature was able to take out many cyborgs, but it was eventually gunned down.
Then, cut to another battle. This time an air battle. Various planes and small airships took on another grey creature: a serpentine monster with two wings and four limbs, and it had one eye.
“A wyvern?” Aeneas asked.
“No, wyverns only have four limbs,” Galatea answered. “This creature has six.”
“This looks more like a mythical dragon,” Halpful said.
The dragon had destroyed many aircrafts, but it was soon destroyed by bombs and missiles.
Then, the film cut into an explosion of the Grey Globe.
“The Grey Spheres were powerful. But we have numbers on our side. And soon, we wiped them out.”
The group was then shown a video of Dark Age ships and aircrafts bombarding various planets. There were pictures of cities being destroyed, humans running in terror from the bombardment.
“No!” Galatea shouted as she tightened her grip on Aeneas.
For his part, the Inquisitor shared his beloved’s feelings on the matter.
“Atomia is gone. We are victorious!”
Aeneas and his group saw that there were none but ashes on the planet. And the lights returned to the Dark Age Archive.
“That was horrible,” Galatea said, tears were forming in her eyes.
“What the Dark Age guys did to the Atomians wasn’t pretty, but they were a threat to them,” Antonio pointed out.
“No!” Galatea snapped. “I refuse to accept that, Antonio!”
“Please be reasonable, little cousin,” Antonio pleaded.
Seeing a conflict brewing, Aeneas placed himself in between the two cousins. To do this, he had to detach himself from Galatea’s firm grip. The lady knight gave her beloved a disappointed pout, but the Inquisitor paid that no mind.
“Let’s cool down, everyone,” Aeneas said calmly.
“I must agree with the Inquisitor,” Halpful interjected. “The Dark Age Civilization is long gone.”
“Destroyed in the Three Days of Darkness,” Antonio finished.
“Our records say that there was a power overload on their main system in Meridian. The vast majority of people died. And if our timelines are correct, it happened not long after the Atomian War,” Halpful explained.
“See,” Aeneas said gently to Galatea. “There’s no need to be angry at the dead.”
Galatea took a deep breath. Her anger soon receded. “Sorry, Lord Aeneas.”
In response, Aeneas gave his beloved a smile. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I guess we got everything we came here for, right?” Antonio spoke up.
Aeneas nodded. “It’s time for us to return to the outside world.”
“Wait, Sir Inquisitor,” Halpful cried. The recordkeeper’s hands remained on the archive’s console. “There’s another video I believe we should look at.”
“Another one? What could it be about?” Aeneas asked in puzzlement.
“It’s about Fyuria.” Halpful answered.
As expected, this led to cries of surprise from both Antonio and Galatea.
Aeneas paused to consider his options. His beloved gave him a pleading look, and it was having the intended effect. In all honesty, Aeneas wanted to take a look too. But he was also worried for Galatea’s mental state. In the end, he gave in to his beloved’s wishes. But Galatea’s pleading was not the only reason, for the Inquisitor could not simply turn a blind eye on something that may shed an entirely new light on his mission.
“Play it.”