Origins (Book 4 of Alfireán age)

ORIGIN'S HISTORY

As the others gazed on, the vice champion heaved a sigh of relief, then softened his voice and quietly asked, "Are you, you?"

Rinnia's eyes met his. Her breath caught in her throat, and her cheeks blushed a pale pink as she noticed his arms wrapped around her.

"Oh, Sorry," Rex muttered and gently laid the princess on the floor. "Are you... still you?" he asked once more, his voice unsure.

"Yes, I'm me," she moaned, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the hard floor.

Drakovian stepped forward, his eyes narrowing. "Are you sure?" he asked, suspicion flooding through him. If he were another entity, that's exactly what he would claim.

"I think so," the princess moaned again, pressing her fingers to her forehead as the screen flickered to life with dozens of symbols. Zaphaniea rushed over to it.

"All I know is I just witnessed what felt like a thousand years' worth of history compressed into a single minute," Valarinnia said, struggling to sit up. "And to make matters worse, the person experiencing it shifted every forty or fifty years, and their perspectives were so extremely different."

Drake rubbed his chin thoughtfully while Zaphaniea tapped away on the holographic project, and the others huddled closer to Rinnia. That wasn't the answer he'd been expecting. "Care to elaborate," the prince asked.

"Yeah, what do you mean?" Rex chimed in, sitting down beside the princess.

Valarinnia sighed and messaged her eyes. "When the ganglion activated the 'confirm host process,' it used the chip in my brain to access the zikarôn. From there it began sifting through all the memories and erasing any unrelated information. I had to watch all of it as it flew by."

"Ganglion?" Alf questioned, glancing at Zaphaniea while her fingers danced across the holographic screen.

Valarinnia swept her arm across the vast circular room, where screens flickered along the sterile white walls. "It's this control center," she explained, "It's like a massive brain that oversees the entire facility. This whole place is powered by six underground rivers and two lava flows."

"You mean it was," Zaphaniea snorted, "This machine won't quit yapping about low power and insufficient resources. Apparently, a couple of those rivers decided to go on a detour, and the whole thing is stuck in security mode."

Valarinnia stumbled to her feet and nudged the grand champion to the side. As her fingers flicked over the floating images, she continued her story. "The people who built this place controlled most of the world's wealth during the Dragon Age. And the zikarôns," she continued, pointing at the cylinders lining the far wall, "are their futile attempt at immortality."

Drake eyed the dozens of gleaming cylinders. "I assumed as much," he mumbled, "Care to tell us what you saw?" he said, bringing up his ka'akah and recording the princess as she worked. No doubt, he would need to know how to access the mainframe later.

Valarinnia paused for a moment and rubbed her temples again. "My zikarôn was connected to a man named John Baltic. His memories start from his mid-thirties, which I think is when his cylinder first came online. He, his parents, and grandparents belonged to an organization known as Origin. Origin believed they should rule over the masses, and those masses should never exceed five hundred million. John Baltic was also obsessed with something called the Georgia Guidestones."

"Ah yes, I read about those," Drake noted, "As I understand it, the originals were damaged and then recreated in secret. In the end, Eldrin destroyed them. Legend suggests he held them partially responsible for the mass genocides and sterilizations that took place in the Great Wars."