The Butterfly Effect

{-Neville-}

They didn’t descend at the exact location that they needed to go; that would’ve made it a bit too obvious. No, they entered the mortal land a little ways away from the ruins, then walked from there to where they needed to be.

“This must be the ruins of Kevabel,” he remarked. They’d just passed through what, once, might’ve been the town gate—it was nothing but rubble now. “It is still quite intact, all things considered. There doesn’t seem to be the faintest hint of phoenix fires.”

“Does it matter if phoenixes were here or not?” Verity questioned. “We’ve got a mission to destroy everything that might have to do with ‘Achadus.’ Since apparently nature hasn’t done all of that for us, that means we’re going to have to do it ourselves.”

Jaqueline tilted her head. “It’s strange, though. Isn’t this area known for the wildfires caused by the phoenixes’ migration? Not to mention the other natural disasters I recall others mentioning this area was known for…”

“Exactly,” Neville said with a nod. “This is all rather unusual.”

Verity shrugged. “Well, what else were you expecting? Orestis wants this place gone for a reason—there’s bound to be a lot of reasons it’s far different from everywhere else.”

He considered it for a moment, trying to think of what the best course of action might be. After a moment, he touched the charm in his ear and asked, “Kiri, what do you think we should do?”

It took a moment, but they responded, “Just proceed with caution. I can’t get a hold of Micah right now to try to ask for more specifics, but there’s got to be something wrong here. Try looking for enchanted objects or signs of magic—that’ll probably be your best bet.”

He nodded to himself, then turned to the other two. “Shall we look around, then? Perhaps things will be a little bit more evident once we probably have a look around the area.”

“It’ll be quicker if we split up for this part,” Verity remarked. “There’s a lot of ground to cover and there doesn’t seem to be any imminent threats. We could all come back here in, say, ten minutes? That should be plenty of time to get a good look at what we’re dealing with.”

Jacqueline nodded. “That sounds good. We’re not that far away from each other and we have the charms in case anything happens.”

“Shall we be off, then?” Neville gestured to three separate buildings, and each went off towards one of them.

He was, in all honesty, quite glad that he had been allowed the one in the middle. It took some more walking to get to, but it was by far the most promising out of all of these buildings; it reminded him of an old town hall. He wondered if there had once been a town square where he walked, too, full of bustling mortals and their families. Of course, none of that was here now. All that was left was the memories that the Messengers had to get rid of by will of the Creator. That was, perhaps, the only thing that justified destroying all of this knowledge.

At least his memories could not be taken away from him—even if he could never share the information—so that the memory could live on in someone. That was about the extent of comfort Neville was going to find in this situation.

And even that comfort was soon replaced with nervousness as the full extent of where he was sunk in.

This wasn’t just any normal ruin; there was something that separated it from countless other places they’d visited before. There were signs of something—something bad, and something unusual.

Neville didn’t have the talents of Kaius and Hayze of being able to exactly determine exactly what kind of presence was around the area—he couldn’t sense the presence of darkness. But he was capable of picking up on other signs, which led him to the conclusion that she had been here at some point.

It wasn’t just her, either.

He picked up on signs of Light being here, too.

The only other thing he did was looking around for any remnants of records—there didn’t seem to be any written ones, as he expected—before heading back to where he’d meet up with the others.

“Notice anything odd?” he prompted as soon as they all came back together.

“Gods were here once,” Jacqueline mumbled. “Weren’t they?”

“Well, it’s no wonder, is it?” Verity remarked. “How many times do I have to say it: Orestis willed for this place to be destroyed. Obviously something had to have happened here, and that something was probably one of the gods. If I had to guess, Eldrianna, since she’s the root of so many of the other problems we have to deal with…”

“It’s a little bit more than that, I’m afraid.” Neville shook his head solemnly. “I’ve found signs that, aside from Darkness, another god has spent quite a lot of time here. More specifically… the Goddess of Light.”

Verity tilted her head. “What the hell would Danai have to be in a place like this? As far as I know, she hardly stepped outside of Sanctuary during the time of the Commandments, and definitely never to the same place twice or for long. Unless the great Messenger of the God of Knowledge himself has found more clues about what made this place so special?”

“I haven’t gotten enough evidence yet to make a proper conclusion, but I feel as though Eldrianna and Danai had come here together.” Neville gestured towards the town hall. “I could show you what I saw and, perhaps, with the three of us looking, we could find something out for certain. Unless, of course, the two of you found anything that was also worth further investigating?”

“Nothing for certain,” Jacqueline responded in a mumble. “But… is this really something we should be looking into? What if it’s just something else that Orestis wants gone? If we get involved in it, it’s only going to make it worse, and then we might get the others in trouble…”

He gave her a kind smile, in hopes that it reassured her at least somewhat. “Quite the contrary, if my theory is correct. The more we know about who was here and what they did, the more thorough we can be when it comes to getting rid of it. We don’t want anyone else to be able to find what we have, after all.”

“I say we should simply burn the whole place down and call this mission successful,” Verity remarked. “The sooner we get this done, the better. At least that way we’ll be back in the comfort of Sanctuary instead of this hot and dreadful place.”

“There could be things that wouldn’t burn,” Neville pointed out reasonably. “We can’t quite say that our mission was successful until we know for certain that we’ve gotten rid of absolutely everything. And we will only know what ‘absolutely everything’ involves once we put some effort into uncovering it.”

Jacqueline slowly nodded. “We have to make sure we complete this as thoroughly as possible. That is what our gods would want us to do.” She glanced at her brother. “You said you’d been investigating the town hall..? If Verity hasn’t found anything, then that’s probably our best option. A lot of things can be found in a place like that…”

They both turned their attention to Verity, who sighed. “Oh, come on, stop looking at me with that creepy twin glare. No, I didn’t find anything. Just rubble and animal carcasses. As long as the town hall isn’t likely to fall on top of us, I suppose it’s worth trying to find what we can there.”

“It’s not my area of expertise, but if it means anything to you, all of these ruins seem remarkably stable,” Neville said. “For ruins, that is. I don’t believe we should spend too long here, but it should be well enough off for our purposes.”

“Lead the way, then. I’d just rather not get ichor anywhere. Who knows what other defiled things have touched this land…”

Jacqueline shuffled nervously. “You’re right. As much as we need to be thorough, we need to get this done as soon as possible. Would… you like to lead the way, then, Neville? We’ll both be right behind you.”

He nodded. “Let’s see what’s there, then. I have a rather good feeling about what we’re going to find there—it’s certainly going to help our mission. At least, give us a better understanding of what we’re going to need to do to successfully complete it.”