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Votecount 4.2

Votecount 4.3 (Final)

~Alcamoth~
2 months later

Yumea awoke in a cold sweat.

It was the same dream again -- visions of what she now knew to be the Bionis, of dark caves and chasms, teeming with living things that most beings would nor could ever comprehend.

She, however, could. It was in her blood, as it was in the blood of all

high entia. And Yumea knew, from the dreams that plagued her every night, that the prophecy spoke of by the Bionite Order would soon come to pass.

But she was powerless to do anything to prevent its fulfillment.

Yumea had been content, at first, to use the Order for one point of common ground -- that the Homs, Nopon, and the worst of all, half-bloods that played at the nobility and grace of true High Entia, were not welcome in the city. But she had gradually come to realize that the Order stood for something else, something much more sinister: the reversion of the High Entia to what she had eventually learned was their natural state.

As first consort to the emperor, Yumea was privy to the records kept by the royal family’s ancestors from centuries ago. She knew what the telethia were; how dead telethia rarely reverted to the form of the High Entia from which it had mutated.

Yumea, having been party to the Order’s ceremonies and rituals for a long time, had gradually been unknowingly coerced down the path to reversion. And when she opened her eyes this time, and the vision of a beating heart, deep within the Bionis, did not leave her mind, she knew that her time had finally come.

Her affairs were in order; she’d told no one about her untimely fate save what she had committed to the royal family archives. No doubt they would come looking for her when she did not show her face for a few days and would find out all they needed to know. If she were lucky, they would find a humane way to put her down.

Tyrea and Melia had been missing for quite some time, and while she did not shed any tears for the latter, she knew their fates were likely linked. She hoped against hope that Tyrea would return someday and know what had happened to her mother.

But most of all, Yumea vowed that she would not lose herself without putting up a fight. She was a High Entia -- the most intellectually and magically advanced society on Bionis. She would not allow herself to succumb to the base emotions that coursed through her veins, itching for release.

Yumea walked to the window, and gazed upon the empire which her people had built. That was it! She

protect them still; Not from themselves, for she was powerless to combat the genetic code so expertly woven into the essence of the High Entia.

But there were still enemies, that is,

enemies, to fight -- enemies that still could still destroy her people from without.

Yumea latched onto that emotion, the rage and hatred she felt for those that would dare attack the city she loved.

Her body shimmered as she let herself fall forward through the window. Had there been any spectators, they would have stared in awe as a giant birdlike creature emerged from her plummeting form.

The creature that had been Yumea soared through the air, away from the city. One thought implanted itself in its mind.

~Valak Mountains, near the border of Sword Valley~
Around the same time.

Fiora wrapped her arms around herself as best she could, although it provided precious little warmth in a place such as this.

It had all started the day that Fiora had volunteered to excavate one of the old Mechon wreckage sites on the outskirts of town. The majority of the scrap had been run-of-the-mill -- old power cells, rotors, gears, and other assorted machine parts. But Fiora had found something else: an intact memory core. That had been unheard of in their dealings with the Mechon, as their enemies had a built-in directive to self-destruct whenever it looked like the Homs had gained the upper hand on them. The military had scoured the entire battlefield after the Sword Valley and found nary a useful piece of information.

But when Fiora touched the core she’d found in the rubble, a tiny spark had passed into her hand. She’d handed off the core to the researchers, but they found what she knew they’d find at that point: nothing. Fiora had never told anyone that the contents of the memory core, and all the information they contained, had passed themselves off into

Or maybe it had been a beacon that was passing information to her in real-time. Fiora did not know how mechon physiology (or for that matter, psychology), worked. But that night, she had found herself in a dream unlike she had ever experienced. In the dream was a mechanical woman; Fiora could never quite remember if she

the woman in the dream, talked to her directly, or was simply a third-party observer. The name of the woman, however, she remembered quite well.

Meyneth.

Meyneth was someone important to the mechon, Fiora knew, but not quite a mechon herself. She had a face recognizable, even dare she say beautiful, to a homs, but a mechanical suit that either obscured the rest of her features, or a body that was simply mechanical in origin.

Meyneth had been on a journey. Fiora did not recognize the places the woman had traveled, at first, but over the nights the cold metal of the landscape gave way to ice, snow, and eventually foliage. Dunban had told her of the places he’d visited in his last tour of duty, and Fiora knew that Meyneth had crossed over from the Mechonis to the Bionis. The question, Fiora wondered, was why?

Fiora could not talk to Meyneth in her dreams, but over time, she began to feel that she knew more and more about the mysterious woman. Meyneth’s own thoughts began to come clear to Fiora. She was looking for something; something very dangerous to her people, and she wanted to eliminate it. Meyneth passed through High Entia, Nopon, and Homs lands, but never lifted a finger to harm any being she came across.

This was not at all what she had come to expect from the race she’d grown up believing wanted nothing other than the complete genocide of her people.

Then one night, two months ago, Fiora finally recognized the surroundings firsthand. Meyneth had come to Colony 9. Fiora had been asleep when the giant mechon had attacked the front gate, and was summarily put down. But something else had happened that day too, and it was this incident that Fiora watched helplessly, in horror, as Meyneth had stormed into the Weapons Development Lab and attempted to destroy the Monado.

Fiora was numbed and saddened, but not at all surprised, when she had been taken to the lab after she had woken up and saw both her brother and the mysterious woman from her dreams slumped over.

Of course, nobody knew that Fiora had any idea who Meyneth was; they’d simply brought her in as next Dunban’s next of kin. Dunban was not dead, but his use of the Monado, which he had been explicitly warned never to hold in his hand again, had put him into a coma. He had not yet awoken.

The dreams had, of course, stopped after that. Fiora, more alone than she had ever felt, had been left to ponder just exactly what Meyneth had been trying to do.

A month later, Fiora had departed Colony 9 without a word.

Now she stood, on the precipice between two lands, the Bionis and Mechonis, wishing Dunban had been here to talk some sense into her. She wasn’t suited to these temperatures, and there were monsters around that could cleave her in two without a second thought.

But her days on the road had only served to strengthen her resolve. She did not forget about Meyneth; on the contrary, Fiora felt she understood more about her with each passing day, as if layers of information were continually being unlocked to her.

People were suffering on Mechonis as well; the mechon assault on Bionis was leaving casualties in its wake even on Mechonis. Meyneth, no doubt, wanted that to end, but the mechon seemed to be in no position even close to losing the war. Why did Meyneth, whose actions seemed borne out of desperation, risk so much to destroy the Monado?

Fiora hoped these answers could be found on Mechonis. She had left a note for Dunban, explaining where she’d gone. She hoped he’d get it, and forgive her for what probably seemed to anyone else as the actions of a madwoman.

She didn’t care. Fiora had to admit that, somehow, she trusted Meyneth, even having never spoken to her face to face, and this cause was too important to ignore.

She steeled herself, marched forward into the less than welcoming arms of the Mechonis and hoped to the heavens that mechon had a penchant for warmer weather.

Votecount 5.0