The Drellic Saga: Books One, Two and Three

by Mike Marlinski

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dark clouds appeared over the Great Hall, as the projected man walked through the crowd at the base of the stone steps. He stopped in front of every person he saw and said their full names aloud, as if he were reading them from a list.

  A light rainfall then accompanied the glowing green path he had carved down the middle of the growing assembly. The rain drops fell around him, forming expanding ripples in the green veil of energy that surrounded him.

  As Drellic followed closely behind him, he could see the rain pass through his transparent form, causing his face to appear cloudy at times. Drellic could also see that the visitor was quickly gaining the affection of the people. They seemed spellbound by the man’s charming smile and seemingly endless knowledge of Siren’s citizens.

  At one point, the Architect approached a sad faced woman standing at the back of the crowd and expressed his condolences for the loss of her son, one year earlier. That was when Drellic had heard enough from the visitor, who had all but ignored Drellic, since appearing at his side, minutes earlier.

  “Who are you? What is it you want?” Drellic boldly asked the man, without even a hint of reluctance.

  The Architect seemed to once again, ignore Drellic and continued walking from person to person, reciting their names and showcasing bits of knowledge about their personal lives.

  Drellic perceived the alien’s failure to acknowledge him, as a sign of unjustifiable arrogance and was immediately offended.

  Without any reservations, Drellic quickly walked up behind the visitor and shouted, “Excuse me! I asked you a question!”

  The Architect then came to a stop at the center of the crowd, and slowly turned around to face Drellic.

  “What troubles you? There is great distress in your voice, Drellic Kail,” the man quietly said.

  “I represent these people,” Drellic replied. “I speak for them. I mean no disrespect and I am honored to meet you, but I would like to know what your purpose here is.”

  The visitor remained silent and still for a moment. It was as if a third party had placed him on pause and the people of the city were watching a prerecorded film. A moment later, a sense of life returned to his face.

  The visitor then smiled at Drellic and said, “Do not be afraid, Drellic. Do not be confused or frightened. You know who we are. You all do,” he added, as his eyes drifted over the circling crowd.

  “Really?” Drellic asked, skeptically. “Then, perhaps you could enlighten us. Because aside from what I myself witnessed, while I was half way across this galaxy, not very long ago, I think it’s much more likely that we’ve never met.”

  The visitor’s face became stern, as the electrical charge around him began to glow brighter with every slow step he took towards Drellic.

  “It is understandable that you would not remember us, as we are presented before you now,” the visitor began.

  “But long ago, before the people of your worlds could even understand the purpose of the sun in your skies, we were able to ensure that upon our return, you would all remember this moment.”

  With those last words from the visitor, the green light that surrounded him, blinded his audience. An intense burning sensation was felt by all those standing beneath the Architect Flagship that day, but was then suddenly overmatched by the bitter cold of a terrifying memory; a memory suppressed by the births and deaths of countless generations of man, over the previous five billion years.

  The people were then forced to relive the memories of the first humans to awaken on Siren. They found themselves naked, alone and afraid. They could not comprehend their surroundings, or even their own thoughts. Neither language nor reason had any presence, as their basic instincts drove them to burst out of the slimy white cocoons they had been cultivated in.

  Afterwards, they staggered together to the top of a frosty hill, where they looked up to the sky, to see the Planet Farmer that had deposited them on their new home, slowly retreating into the stars.

  Once the ship vanished, and the sunny morning sky was no longer tainted by the horrific looking organism that had birthed the first generation of man, the people simultaneously returned to reality.

  Once Drellic discovered that he was once again standing beneath the ominous dark clouds and alien ship, hovering over Siren City, he remembered the Emerald Flies. Drellic had never relived the first few painful experiences of humanity, before coming into contact with the visitor that day, but he knew that his father had once described the exact scene he had just lived through, a moment earlier.

  Nearly every survivor of the lethal night terrors that had been linked to the Emeralds, described a vision very similar to the one Drellic and his citizens had just experienced.

  “How long have they been here watching us?” Drellic thought to himself.

  “This may be difficult for you to understand, but in a very literal sense, we are your parents,” the visitor proclaimed to the disoriented crowd.

  “But we are not only responsible for your bodies, we are also the architects of the very worlds you live on,” he added, while noticing Drellic’s increasing discomfort.

  The visitor then went on to describe Eizenfar as it existed five billion years prior. He explained that his people believed that the galaxy would have indefinitely remained a lifeless void, had they not intervened; all the while completely neglecting to mention the existence of Aia.

  News crews from all over Siren arrived on the scene, as the visitor continued to tell the tale of mankind’s true origins and the history of the Architects. The holographic representation of the Architects’ ambassador was being broadcast across Siren, Tyrran, Bouldon and Kier-en.

  A great deal of skepticism naturally came from the remarkable story humanity was being told. But since the majority of the people living in every human settlement, had experienced a shared vision of what was being called, The Birth of Man, the vast majority eventually came to believe that they were in fact, the descendants of genetically engineered men and women, crafted by the Architects.

  By the time the visitor vanished from downtown Siren City, and the green light was retracted by the Architect Flagship, the aliens were being referred to as “The Architects”, by all of human society.

  Days later, after being challenged by Drellic to offer some proof as to their deep rooted connection with mankind, the Architects used the Planet Farmers in orbit around Siren and Tyrran, to introduce a gaseous cleansing agent into the planet’s atmospheres. Within minutes, the synthetic element that had been poisoning the two worlds for several millennia, had been eliminated, and all of the damage it had done had been reversed.

  The four domains of man erupted with celebration. The Architects had saved billions of lives and given man a prosperous future to look forward to. However, the two men and the heart of Siren were still not convinced that the Architects were truly a benevolent people.

  During the fourth night of interplanetary celebration, Morn and Drellic had sealed themselves off from the rest of Siren inside the dock of Kail House, while Syll, Moya and Delendra were representing the Kails at a celebratory banquet, at the Great Hall.

  Morn had mustered the strength to climb down the several flights of stairs to the dock, refusing to lean on Drellic, regardless of how strongly he insisted. Together, they had entered the chamber and used a remote system to turn on the six transport engines at their disposal.

  Morn wanted to use the engines to muffle the sound in the room, in the event that the Architects or anyone recently affiliated with them, felt inclined to listen in on their conversation.

  Drellic knew that if they were so inclined, any attempts to avoid exposure would be futile, but he decided to humor his father for the time being, out of respect.

  “Let’s start with the most obvious,” Morn rasped.

  To which Drellic replied, “By all means.”

  “We don’t even know what they look like,” Morn said. “Each time they appear, they appea
r as one of us in a beam of light. Like a fucking puppet show.”

  “Our people have been so eager to worship them,” Drellic replied. “But we don’t have a shred of proof that they are who they say they are. Yes. We all shared a compelling vision, but we’ve seen their technology. They could’ve simply projected those images into our minds.”

  “The Emeralds had something to do with it,” said Morn. “Those flies started buzzing around with that same green glow, and all of a sudden, people started having visions of those ships and dropping dead. I’m probably next in line to be one of them!”

  “I believe they are still hiding their true intentions,” Drellic began. “But what I can’t figure out is why they need us for whatever they’re planning. You would think that with their technology, it’d be easy enough for them to wipe us out, overnight. They arrived in hundreds of those ships in the blink of an eye and we never saw them coming.”

  “Maybe you’ll find out when you go up inside that disgusting thing,” Morn scoffed. “You’re an idiot for doing it, Drellic. I hope you know that.”

  “You keep saying that,” Drellic replied, while rolling his eyes. “But I have to do this. We were invited and I’m planning to take them up on their invitation. It’s the only way we’ll ever truly know what we’re up against.”

  At the very beginning of the mass celebration, the Architect’s ambassador, relayed a formal invitation from the Architect’s High Overseer to man’s world leaders. Drellic and the High Council had been invited aboard the Architect Flagship for a tour of its facilities, on the following morning; an invitation that Drellic graciously accepted.