The World We Live In: Chapter 24
#24 of The World We Live In
Highway to Heaven
The Collectives, as usual, used their secretive location as a base of operation to achieve their ambition: achieving heaven. But then, like the Agents, the Collectives had become notorious in their own pursuit.
Knowing how the place they left had become chaotic and violent, the Collectives started to hasten their work for the past week, and slowly but sure, their attempts had slowly made themselves notoriously remembered as 'the monster who eats from the shadows', just as the Agents were called 'the hungry pack of wolves'. Both meanings also had another meaning, which was very degrading for both. The Collectives never helped the people they protected after their emergency teleportation away from that city ruins, and only post mages in cities to gather information and act as scouts. They were given that name because of the disappearance of some people, be it mages or not.
The Agents, while they fought like hungry wolves, they were very weak if they lost their pack, as seen by the exploits of the Wanderers in enlisting help from many fronts. The morale of their soldiers was low, and they slowly lost faith of their own pursuit, and blindly kill anyone who used magic. However, this was becoming even worse when the mages themselves disappear.
In truth, the Collectives captured these people and get them through the portal, not to become their member, but as fodders. To hasten the process of their project, the leader of the Collectives, Ganymede, designed and build a mana reserve pool system from an abandoned one in the elven tower. It still had its golden finish, as gold was a perfect conduit for mana transfer and reserve. The 'pool' wasn't a pool, but a big sphere with condense 'liquid form mana' inside. Mages could pool their mana resource into that sphere for constant flow to the magic circle, but it was very costly, and one incident, where it caused a fatal heart attack to one of Ganymede's acolytes, forced the 900-years old elf to devise a solution that turned her from a kind-hearted elf into a cold-hearted one.
A month before the final phase of her project, she found out that her students knowingly torture captured Agents to find out their weakness. While she was at first disagree with their methods, she realized how the human's peril became the source of power to the mana, and from there, a seed of corruption grew within her. In a desperate attempt to finish her project and escape from the world of hate, she agreed to torture and possibly kill the Agents who found out about their lair. At first, it was to find information, but slowly, it became that of a fodder farm.
Ganymede had taught her acolytes of how everyone, except Chaos races, could use magic and had magic circuits within them. While not everyone could use magic, their body had their own mana pool, and that pool could be extracted with suitable arcane apparatus. Like the vampire brotherhood's 'blood bank' during the 'Scourge War' that started the Chaos race's reign of mass destruction, she used them as 'mana bank'.
The arcane apparatus itself was a torture device for magical beings like elves and such, and in the arcane suite (a place for magical attunement), there were such devices, possibly for punishment for caught necromancers in the past. Ganymede could still read the elven script she described as 'modern' for the plan, and made a bunch of them in just three days, owing to telekinetic magic some of her acolytes used. Then, the rest was a cruelty that caused fear. While the Agents did it through action, the Collectives did it from the shadows.
It was a horrific pool that used up more bodies than not. Some Galhuds, who thought they were 'helping', were instead strapped into the machine and was squeezed out of their mana reserve, which was abundant within the Aether contamination. Slowly but sure, the Galhuds became the first victims of the mana pool. However, as they could not die, they became voluntary 'victims', and it wasn't a problem for them.
In exchange for their own 'ascension', the Collectives, especially Brock and his subordinates, convinced them to capture citizens from beyond the portal gates. This did not cause them to rebel, but instead, they trusted their guests even more. The thriving settlement was, in many ways, either because of the people prosecuted by the Agents escaping through the portal, or being invited.
The rest, who were not so lucky, were captured and subjected to the machines, were they were kept awake and pumped full of adrenaline to keep their hearts working and pump more mana into the pool, until they became nothing but husks before they suffered cardiac arrest. This became a system, and slowly but sure, the progress was accelerated.
Then, on the final phase of the magic, Brock came into Ganymede's room and invited her to the room. But, along the way, she was given a terrible news.
"My lady," said one of her acolytes. "The Agents found out of our portal gates, and are launching an attack through the gates!"
Ganymede was surprised, but unmoved. She calmly said, "Shut down the portals. We will not be disturbed."
"Right away."
After the acolyte disappeared from their sight, Brock, who was impatient with the project, said, "There will be no time to turn that giant gate off! We need to run, Ganymede."
"Yes. Finishing the magic is our top priority," said Ganymede while running. "Brock, I will be honest with you. The magic...is not what you think."
"What do you mean?"
"It's a magic to convert our beings into that of pure energy, where we will be dispersed in the atmosphere and travel in the speed of light. It's not ascension or such."
"Why saying this to me now?"
"Because I want to tell you that to be ready for what's coming," said Ganymede. "We are here."
As they opened the room to the summoning circle, Brock set aside his cloak and walked towards the middle of the room, where the acolytes had gathered. But then, when Ganymede came inside, there was a loud explosion by the portal gate room. The Agents had come through.
"Hurry!" exclaimed Brock. "Block the door! We will not be disturbed!"
"But..."
"We cannot save everyone," said Brock with a sad tone. "But do not lose faith! We will prevail. In the end, we will win. Continue!"
Brock's commanding voice made the acolytes to be even more determined to finish what they started, including Ganymede, who smiled, knowing that her most trusted student could lead the groups. Stepping into the middle of the circle, she knew that, by finishing the project, she would leave the world, but then, she remembered what her first reason why she started the project in the first place.
Outside, the battle between the mages and the soldiers raged on, and was on a tie. The Agents were almost overwhelmed by the intensity of the magic used by the mages, which had started to penetrate their armor. The Collectives and other mages were overwhelmed by the power of their opposition, with their anti-magic weapons and their human bombs being used, but they fought for a standstill...at least for 15 minutes.
The tide soon turned towards the Agents, who dispatched the new robots their mechanic team had developed for the past month. Their durable steel and their anti-magic property soon overwhelmed the mages, who had no time to regroup and was scattered due to fear. Even the golems they used to guard the main room was destroyed in a short time.
The Agents burst through the first room, which was rigged with explosives by the Collectives. It destroyed the floor beneath them, into the mana pool. With the devices being turned to maximum output, the input was quadrupled, which became so powerful that it started to take the Agents trapped underneath, turning them into the husks that the Collectives had made the people who fueled their ambition.
Even then, they would not give up, and rushed to the room where the Collectives had gathered. Even then, it gained them almost 20 minutes' worth of time, and the magic was finally completed. But was not quite.
They rushed into the room, where Ganymede almost finished pouring the final ingredient, gold dust leftovers from the first emergency teleportation. Brock was ready in defending his teacher and friend, by runes he had scattered around the room. He knew an ancient art of runes that he found in a destroyed library. Focusing on the art of elemental magic, he finally used it. But then, Brock miscalculated the rune's power, and in the end, it drained him of his mana, as he did not put mana reserves in each runes.
Even then, the explosion was enough to push back some of the Agents, though not one. This lone Agent, the commander, pushed through the explosion amidst damaged armor and, using a sharp blade protruding from the back of the armor's hand part, stabbed Brock through his heart. The dying man, surprised but glad, weakly said, "Goodbye..." before expiring, with his body still dangling on the blade. The commander unceremoniously threw him away, and removed his helmet. He smiled in victory.
"It's over, witch," said the commander in a mocking tone. "Your ambition is over. Our high command said that you cannot finish the ritual without enough people. Are these the ones that remains?"
"Yes," said Ganymede short, but subtly pour the gold dust under her feet. "We are what's left, if the people outside are still alive."
"You know, if you just give up quietly, we can just parley..."
Ganymede scoffed. "As if you beasts have a word called 'parley' in your dictionary. All you do is kill and kill, like hungry wolves that you are."
"Do not compare me with you, witch," said the commander with an angry tone. "We are simply doing what we should have done hundreds of years ago: purge this world of people like you. But, you are right. We are not going to be merciful..."
Suddenly, the whole circle glow bright, as if lit from the floor. The surprised commander exclaimed, "What tricks are you trying to pull?!"
"Nothing. You have simply lost. Your ego and arrogance have cost you your life, stupid child," said Ganymede. "If you had simply shoot me instead of basking in glory, you could have stopped me. Typical humans. Always so glorious even if their age was the one coming to an end first."
"I am not going to let you win, witch!"
"Too late. Soon, this are will be purged of all living things. Everyone will be reduced to energy, and you will be remembered forever as the one who helped 'the witch' win."
"You bitch!" He then pulled out a gun and shoot the elf repeatedly. It hit her and she was bleeding, but she simply stood there, glaring towards him like someone who was taunting the loser. The commander was still determined to stop the elf, but as he walked towards the circle, his hand disintegrated. To his horror, his body slowly disintegrated into energy, and he screamed for help.
"Au revoir," said Ganymede slowly as she looked towards the sky.
In her mind, she was thinking of her first reason of creating the Collectives, and amidst the corruption in the final days of her life, and the devotion of her acolytes, she remembered a noble goal that she had forgotten, up until her death.
And that was to let the people of the world to choose their own fate, instead of being governed by magic and technology. She knew this choice would make the rebuilding of the world slower, but it was better than the arrogance of both sides that caused the world to end in the first place.
"The world we live in isn't perfect," said Ganymede with a smile. "But do not lose hope, those who choose freedom over a dead culture. Look forward, children of the future, and be free..."
Those were the last words of Ganymede, the last of the Eldoan era elf, who passed away, achieving her dream. Let the city, renamed Ganymede's Rest, be a town of memorial, for the final resting place of 67 mages known as the Collectives, 200 Galhuds, 90 people who had helped the progress, and 30 Agents, who fought for their own future.
The rest of the world may not know her words, or what happened next, but in the end, her words echoed through the people of the future, and it would rock the world yet again....