Weight of the World Ep.5 - Early Signs

When Ova’s glorious golden sun rose from its horizon, the night-faring Forgeborn returned to their homes and stations. Their exodus back to camps and caravans heralded the changing of the guard; now those who walked about during the day took their turn at the Forgeborn’s oath of efficiency and progress…

Luna used two of her arms to climb the side of the lumbering metallic ‘beast’ that housed her and a dozen other Rangers. She sat on the top and gently cuddled her little one, despite the young newborn’s expression looking tense and annoyed at the affection…

“Auhuhuh… Lil Shimmer… You are precious…”

...Alphi sat at the front of the Caravan as ever, with Willow at her side. She clutched onto the strange little ‘pod’ she’d pushed out the day prior. Before, she’d merely been curious as to why Luna acted the way she did… Now…

“...I don’t understand. Is it a change in programming, Willow?”

Willow glanced down from where she was massaging her own middle. The Caravan plodded forth, each step rumbling the ground subtly as it navigated the uneven terrain. Behind, the Maternity Ward disappeared in the gathered trees, leaving them once more within a sea of wilderness…

“A change in programming, little Alphi?”

Alphi nodded and looked back at Luna once more, then to the egg in her arms…

“...Yes…? Yes… Luna was begging for the child to be out of her… And as soon as it was, she was desperate to have it back. Pushing out this… ‘egg’ was difficult. But… Because of that, I don’t want to give it up…”

“Hmmm hm hm… Not only that, dear Alphi. It is a maternal instinct we’ve always had, us Forgeborn…”

She stared off into the woods, stood stoically in uneven rows and swaying in the growing wind of the day… She always did adore the softness of nature to the cold hard grey of the Forgeborn’s ships…

“Forgemothers feel this for all their creations… A connection that goes deeper than mere pride at a craft. It is nothing less than a… A spiritual bond, one could almost say. An intrinsic link that we’ve yet to understand fully… Well, anyone besides Mother Allma, of course…”

Alphi’s antennae flattened a bit at the mention… Willow always spoke about the Grand Forgemother with such reverence… bordering on fanaticism. It was a passion Willow rarely showed otherwise, and the switch of her behaviour was always concerning…

“...why wouldn’t she tell us?”

Willow let the creak of the Caravan’s movements fill the silence, as they trudged along through the wilderness for a bit…

“...Well…” Willow answered carefully, after a few long moments… “There is much we cannot comprehend. We are limited by our neural and cognitive capabilities… Only so much processing power can be squeezed from even our minds. It’s… implied we could not understand why one Forgeborn would need to act as mother to another. Not without our minds breaking from the overload…”

“Sounds… almost foolish. Like a design flaw that Allma would have fixed…”

The Caravan shuddered. Willow stiffened subtly…

“Perhaps. But we oft must ascribe higher reasoning to the Grand Forgemother’s actions… She knows best. She was the one who created all of us…”

“So I’ve heard…”

There was an uncomfortable stretch of silence between the two. Willow seemed especially conflicted, being utterly loyal to Alphi and the legacy her mother had left… And yet…

...well… To defy Allma… That was a grievous line of thinking. One her processors actively rebelled against when she entertained the thought…

“...hm. We will reach our destination within a few intervals. We are returning to the cave that inspired the first of the Newborns; you yourself, Alphi…”

Alphi had heard this tale many times before… As a bed-time story when she was still ‘fresh’ and nubile, and as a reverent, almost religious retelling while she grew. She was the result of something truly special… A new paradigm… A shift in the fundamental ways the Forgeborn functioned…

Such a thing only came once every century, if that. The fact the latest step forward in their evolution was currently trapped on a world so far from their homeland…

...it was enough to steel Willow’s resolve… Alphi glanced up at her expression, and listened to the ambient Signal that they shared… but she heard nothing more than the same vague, contemplative thought-waves as ever. Willow remained as mysterious as Gaia, without even needing to disappear…

“...We’ve found no more of the ‘fuzzballs’ that started this whole mess, right? So… What if there are complications we don’t know about…?”

“...mm. It’s true that we were able to study them so little… They perished so quickly… And we think it likely had something to do with the impact of the Loving Burden. Or, perhaps they were simply a fledgling kind who were on their way to extinction already, before we ever landed. That part we can only leave to the Scientists to find out. But as for us…”

The lumbering Caravan lifted itself over a hill. Willow squinted, and then pointed to an inconspicuous patch of vines that hung on the side of an innocuous hill…

“...We may yet find clues left behind, if we seek them…”

Alphi clutched her egg a bit tighter… Then she moved it gently to her back, where a helpful Scientist had installed a carrier for the thing to leave her hands free… She set her head against Willow’s warm midsection as they approached the entrance. It was a bit obscure for certain… It was clear why a Ranger as keen as Gaia was needed to uncover it… Even to a seasoned veteran like Willow, it appeared as little more than a bare stone face, until it was viewed at just the right angle…

The Caravan slowed and gently ‘laid down’, curling its legs to let its passengers off. From within, a few other Rangers emerged and began to spread in different directions. While their leaders worked, they too did their task of gathering information… And whenever they heard the Caravan began to plod heavily along the trails again, they would navigate their way back, climb the side casually, and slip back to their rooms to document their findings…

Nomads in spirit, and in nature…

Willow landed, and held her arms up to catch Alphi, unnecessary as the kindly gesture was. The two then turned and walked to the cave’s entrance, peering inside…

Just path the mouth of the cave, a small team of Scientist dummies remained here to study. They had set up workbenches and machines to analyse the origin site of the internal forges that the Elites had begun to adopt en masse…

Willow and Alphi walked past them, barely giving the low level drones a second glance. Willow then held up her arm to signal Alphi to stop… The Princess had to squint for a moment to see that at the back of the cave, there was a sheer drop… A ‘well’, whose bottom could only barely be seen…

Scientists would need specialized equipment to get down there… But even if they requisitioned it, they had already explored thoroughly enough to know that any traces of the fuzzballs, and the pool of Nanoculi that was found near them, were entirely dried up. Willow judged the distance… Then, with an arm tucked around her middle, she stepped forward and leapt…

In an expert display of agility, she used the slope of the well to slow herself down, scraping a foot and hand against it just enough that she could finish with a graceful landing… Though, as she tried to stand, she winced, and remained in a deep squat for a moment, rubbing her middle…

“...aheh… Well now… It’s been awhile since I’ve ‘stumbled’…” she muttered to herself, before standing tall. There was a gentle ‘poff’ beside her as Alphi landed far more gracefully. Her small size was one factor, of course… But it wasn’t just the Soldiers and Scientists the Princess Newborn outstripped; she was also more agile and alert than any Ranger. All she lacked was the training to hone her skills to a razor’s edge. Willow stared down at her for a moment, as mesmerized as a proud mama...

Alphi lifted her chin in subtle pride. Once she’d checked her ‘egg pod’, (finding it to be more than intact, as an attachment crafted by Vex’s daughter would be), she stepped forward into the shadowy darkness around her, glancing about at this ‘sacred site’ that had ostensibly created her…

“Take care…” Willow said, as she stood and let her servos recalibrate. The ache in her back would likely be there the rest of the day… “This cave goes very deep… But…”

Alphi paused as she approached the back of the cave. Here at the bottom of the well, the ceiling couldn’t be seen for how far away it was… But after walking a few steps, Alphi spied another yawning cave mouth set into the back wall… It sloped downwards, and exuded a hint of painful warmth that warned of worse the closer you got… Like standing in front of an open oven…

“...ah?”

Willow stepped up beside her…

“The planet has an unusual degree of pressure below… I believe the Scientists have theorized it’s where the Nanoculi ‘brews’… But… For now… We have no way to go far without special equipment. Needless to say, in our situation, our resources are better spent…”

...she paused, and turned her head, as if she’d noticed something…

“...Loretracker Willow?” Alphi asked, trying to follow her gaze. She was looking at a wall near them…

“...Forgemother Gaia would not have gone any deeper either, when she first discovered this place… But… She also remained her for a time, as the others coordinated to extract the specimens.”

“What does that mean, Loretracker…?”

Willow stepped forward. Alphi kept by her legs, and slightly behind.

“...All Forgemothers are driven to explore… To create anew. It is their purpose in life… So she would not have sat idle for the days it took to find her precise location...”

Willow traced her hand on the dusty wall…

“...It was curious, why she didn’t simply carry the creatures out herself. Perhaps she was worried about harming them, or… Perhaps…”

...her fingers paused on a small, nearly indiscernible mark. Most would see it as just another scratch in a craggy stone… But Willow’s eyes shimmered softly as she traced its shape…

An X, with a slash across its lower arch…

“...Hm!”

She pressed both palms against the wall suddenly. Alphi watched carefully, unsure what was going on… Until the wall subtly began to move…

After a few moments, Willow had managed to push the heavy stone out of the way. She breathed out softly and settled a hand against her middle. Alphi eyed her, but said nothing as they made their way down a narrow, low tunnel. Willow nearly had to crawl to get through…

They emerged unto a small chamber previously unseen… It was little bigger than the rooms aboard the Caravan, and yet…

...there was a crude workbench… Notes, pieces of equipment that must have been brought here later…

...in one corner, a cage… It had the skeleton of one of the Fuzzballs curled inside it…

“I knew it…” Willow whispered softly… “Of course. She studied them in secret, perhaps even more closely than Forgemother Neptune would have…”

Alphi looked around silently… She was taking in the purport of being here, in one of her mother’s secret places… It had an oddly intimate sensation to it, like sharing something special with the Forgemother over a distance of time…

She paused in front of one of the workbenches. Underneath it was a dusty case that looked much different from the others… Something special, perhaps…?

Willow was looking over the notes… Her normally soft eyes were intense, and focused… She absorbed all she could, and then stored them in her cloak, to try and undo the arcane cipher that the Forgemother wrote in to protect her secrets…

“...ironic, eh, Zochosa… Now the only one you protect those secrets from is… me.”

CLACK…

She turned her head sharply, but then relaxed as she saw it was merely Alphi pulling out the dusty case to be inspected. She walked back over and peered down as Alphi popped the clasps and…

“...Oh MY…”

...Willow rarely raised her voice beyond a soft, soothing tone. The sharp squeak of surprise she gave now told Alphi they really had discovered something important…

The Princess picked it up carefully… It was an old hilt, the blade or whatever it had once had above it having snapped off long ago. The design was so intricate, even under its mouldering decay, that it could only have come from a Forgemother…

Beside it sat a very small ingot, only about the size of one’s hand. Alphi lifted it and found it surprisingly light, for a condensed metal brick…

“What have I found, Willow…?”

“Well… Aha… The weapon was one of your mother’s. I recognize it… But now it is nothing more than a useless base. A trophy keepsake… Or… Well, it WOULD be useless… Except…”

She picked up the ingot from Alphi’s hand, inspecting it…

“...oh indeed… She must have brought this with her from our Homeworld, intending to remake this weapon anew…”

“With so little material?”

Willow chuckled almost musically…

“Yes. This is quite a rare and valuable little metal. Even this much is enough to create something impressive… The Twin Generals’ weapons are so powerful in part because they are forged of this metal… And now you have a bit of it as well…”

Alphi took the ingot back… Then she pushed it, and the hilt, back into the case. She closed it up and hefted it, offering it to Willow, who took it carefully under one arm…

“…mnnh. It would be nice to have a weapon, I suppose… In case I run across… Mm, the Wardancer again…”

The image of Jorien’s twisting ‘blade’ driving straight for her middle flashed in her mind… Her eyes hardened… Willow had, throughout her youth, trained her in simple combat arts. Like everything else, the Princess had picked it up very easily… that was likely the only reason she could block so quickly in the first place…

But before this, she had used her fists and occasionally a bo staff to train. Now, however…

“...What do I make with it, Loretracker Willow?”

“That is up to you… When the time comes, I will perhaps guide you through it, if need be… But a Forgemother’s weapon is a very sacred thing, and can only truly be complete if it is made by their own hands…”

Alphi pondered this for a moment, realizing that she had many choices… but picking one would mean she would have to commit. After all, with the materials so rare, she had one shot at creating it…

“...hm.”

She turned and glanced around the chamber again. With the notes swept up at the case opened, the rest was all mundane equipment and supplies…

“...what now then? We’ve found this place… Do we inform the Scientists so they may study more…?”

Willow’s eyes lowered for a moment, and then she shook her head…

“...no my dear. I think this is something we should keep to ourselves. If Forgemother Gaia kept this place so secret that she did not even inform me of it… Then it should remain that way a while longer, until we understand why she did so…”

Alphi briefly thought about this… On one hand, her unifying instinct as a budding Forgemother to be was to bring all the clans together, and to ensure their talents were all used optimally…

...but on the other hand, she retained a grudge against Jorien, obviously. And her thoughts on Vex were as cold and detached as the Scientist herself…

“Perhaps you’re right… So then, I ask again… What now?”

Willow adjusted her grasp on the case and then began to walk back towards the tunnel…

“We do what every Loretracker who has found a lead does…”

She turned back and reached her hand towards Alphi to beckon…

“...we explore it...”