I dropped the shard to the ground and let my arm dangle down, unsummoning my gauntlet and replacing it with the non-oiled one a split second later. All the oil left with it, leaving nothing but the shard of what was once a slyk’s shell on the shelf below me. But that wasn’t quite right. If a slyk took a rock as a shell, then left, it would just go back to being a rock. But this shard was somehow defined by the fact that it had once had a slyk host, and was now empty.

“Like an empty beer bottle.” I muttered, bending down to pick up the shard of rock that had somehow come free without a single drop of oil on it. “Even when the beer’s gone, it’s still a beer bottle. Even when you peel off the label and throw it in the recycling, you still know which bottles had beer in them.”

And this rock had, at one point, had a slyk inside of it. And Okeria knew they were the key to defeating the signaleech. I spared one last glance at the piece of slyk before sending it to my inventory, then opened my map to mark all the spots that were freshly seared into my mind. Two-hundred and eighty one of the damn things, and I somehow remembered where each and every single one of them was. I’d always had an above-average memory, but there was no way I’d remember all the control points after just a few short seconds of seeing them.

I twitched my fingers, and the key to locker 281 appeared between them. Two-hundred and eighty one lockers. Two-hundred and eighty one control points. I didn’t know what they were controlling, or how I knew they were even controlling anything in the first place, but that was the term that experience had planted in my mind. There was a connection there, even if it was just that I’d need this key to open the way to the last node.

That was a mystery for dozens of minutes from now, though. I looked around to pinpoint the closest pod, finding one that was just a few shelves away. I didn’t know how many of these slyk shards Okeria needed, but it couldn’t just be one. He’d need at least a handful; enough to make another one of his gadgets that could kill the singaleech. Or significantly weaken it at least.

“As long as the signaleech doesn’t come after me first.” I chuckled nervously.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three mode pods gave up their slyk shards without a fight. I always expected something to jump out at me, or the signaleech to crash through the shelves on a warpath to stop me, but nothing ever changed. I saw the same vision of all the shards inside of the control points, felt the sting of electricity coursing through my veins, and came out with a new chunk of long-dead slyk in my hands.

The difference was in what I felt at the end. The first piece felt like a shard that had been ripped of its purpose, yet the imprint of that purpose still remained. The second felt like a knife that had been dulled from a lifetime of serving its purpose, bloodied and rusted from a life of violence cut short by the same violence that had made it. I held the third and fourth pieces in my hands as I tried to make sense of the sensations that hadn’t felt whole until I held the pair.

Third was a death well earned. The shard felt ancient in my hands, like a piece of million year old fossil, the signs of age etched so deep in the bones that it was visible even millions of years after its death. A long-lived ancient slyk that had simply laid down and died when its time was up. But the fourth… the fourth. It mourned.

I couldn’t think of a way to explain it that didn’t make me sound like a madman, but this piece of inanimate rock mourned. It felt the death of the piece in my left hand, and it remembered. Remembered the slyk for what it once was, for what it could have been, and for what it eventually became. The mourning wasn’t one in hatred, or in sadness, but in grief. Grief of lost family. Grief of lost love. A grief so vast and all encompassing that it would never leave the slyk for as long as it lived, and from what I felt now, would never leave it at all. It was grief. It was rememberance.

It mourned.

{This slyk feels like you for some reason.} I sent to The End, pocketing the third shard and taking out the second. The mourning fourth shard changed its tune; now it remembered with a clash of steel and a visceral spurt of life, a remembrance of lives taken and lives protected. Of that which had to be done, that which was needless, and that which was for the sake of oneself. {It… it remembers. It remembers so much.}

The End took quite a while to reply. Long enough that I had the fourth shard mourn the first, and what I saw seriously bothered me. There was so little to remember of the first shard. Its life was short, its purpose unfulfilled, and its end senseless and utter. All there was to remember of the first shard was what it was, and what it was wasn’t much. Like remembering a very young child who hadn’t gotten the chance to become… anything.

//SEBASTIAN.

//IF YOU SEE THIS, YOU NEED TO COLLECT ALL THOSE SHARDS.

//DO NOT GIVE THEM TO OKERIA.

//DO NOT USE THEM TO DEFEAT THE SIGNALEECH.

//THEY DESERVE A PROPER BURIAL.

//THEY DESERVE A HOME IN THE OSSUARY.

//THEY DESERVE TO BE REMEMBERED.

I was taken aback by the deluge of messages that all came in at once, but I was also relieved that The End had seen an importance in these chunks of rock. They felt significant, but I couldn’t explain how. This was a hazard. A place born out of nothing and the cultural memories of the Staura. How could it go back millions of years? Did this place get written with a massive history backing it, or did something get repurposed when the Staura took this land?

{Alright, I won’t. Do you know why these pieces of rock feel like they have memories?}

//…DO YOU KNOW WHAT OIL IS MADE OF, SEBASTIAN?

//YOUR PEOPLE CERTAINLY DID, AS ARCHIVIST’S FINDING TELL ME, BUT WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

Did that question really have a point for this conversation? I put away the shards and the oil-ruined gauntlets in my inventory and crossed my arms in thought. I remembered learning that oil was hydrocarbons, and I remembered people saying we were fueling our cars with liquid dinosaurs, but it felt like there was something else that I was forgetting. That it wasn’t dinosaurs, but actually… Plants. Mostly plants.

Oh God. {Is this oil made from Staura?}

//NO.

//IT IS FROM SOMETHING FAR OLDER.

//FROM SOMETHING FORGOTTEN BY MOST, AND CENSORED BY THE GODS WHO ABANDONED THEIR PEOPLE.

//SOME GODS OF THE STAURA WERE ONCE GODS OF OTHER PEOPLE.

//OF A PEOPLE THAT LIVED BEFORE SOTRIEN WAS BROUGHT LOW, AND WHO WERE BURIED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF EXISTENCE BEFORE THEY CAME TO THE COLLECTIVE EXISTENCE.

//A SPECIES SO FEW REMEMBER, AND THOSE WHO DO NO LONGER THINK OF THEM AS A SPECIES.

//A SPECIES, THAT SO TO SPEAK, WAS REPLACED AND MET ITS TRUE AND UTTER END.

The shards in my inventory suddenly felt a whole lot heavier. {So the slyk are actually from the memories of the dead people from before the Staura?}

//THAT IS WHAT I AM ASSUMING FROM MY CURRENT UNDERSTANDING.

I nodded to myself, looking down at the oily pod with a different view from minutes ago. This thing was from a memory of a completely dead species, one that was only remembered by a few gods and nothing else. There were still a few questions I had about all of this, but I could save them for when Okeria and I were done dealing with the signaleech. And speaking of which…

{If I can’t use the slyk slivers to kill the signaleech, what am I supposed to do? Can you do one of those time-distortion things here so Wipe Away can take away more of the signaleech’s stats?} I asked, then frowned. {Actually, should we even be fighting the signaleech? If it’s one of the pre-staura species, then wouldn’t you want it alive too?}

//NO; ONLY THE CONTROL POINTS CONTAIN SHARDS FROM THE PRE-STAURA SPECIES.

//THE SLYK ARE MONSTROCITIES FROM STAURA MEMORIES, COMBINED WITH THE OIL AND STONE-LIKE BONES OF THE NAMELESS PRE-STAURA SPECIES.

{Shouldn’t you know what the species was called? I’m assuming you’ve been alive forever.}

//JUST BECAUSE A PLANET EXISTS, IT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS CONSTANTLY UNDER SUPERVISION.

//ONLY THOSE IN AND CLOSE TO JOINING THE COLLECTED UNIVERSE ARE READILY MONITORED.

//AND THOSE AT HIGH RISK FOR COMPLETE ANNIHILATION, AS YOURS WAS.

//THE STAURA JOINED THE COLLECTIVE UNIVERSE, NOT WHOEVER CAME BEFORE THEM.

Well, that was interesting. I wondered how The End found out which worlds were close to joining the collective existence, or which ones were close to destruction, if it wasn’t constantly monitoring everything. I voiced as much in a message, and The End’s response wasn’t exactly all-revealing.

//IT IS A VERY COMPLICATED ALGORITHM THAT READS THE LEVEL OF ADVANCEMENT AND RISK OF ANNIHILATION ACROSS ALL OF EXISTENCE.

//OVERSEER, WHO YOU HAVE ALREADY MET, IS THE ONE IN CHARGE OF READING AND INTERPRETING THE DATA.

//THE NEXT TIME WE MEET, I COULD BRING OVERSEER WITH ME TO ANSWER AND QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE.

I nodded to myself. {I’d like that, thanks.}

//OH, AND ONE MORE THING BEFORE YOU RETURN TO YOUR LABORS.

//HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT… ERM… HOW DO I PHRASE THIS…

There was a pause between The End’s message and its next one that almost felt awkward, even through plain text.

//ARE YOU… SEXUALLY ACTIVE?

Okay, that was probably near the absolute bottom of everything I would’ve expected The End to ask. Hell, it might’ve actually been the one thing I’d never expect it to ask. Especially since the sentence and its predecessors came along with the awkwardness of a parent talking to their teenager, and not an ancient all-powerful entity and its chosen.

After I stopped smiling in amusement, I answered truthfully. {Not recently, no. This situation doesn’t exactly lead to easy sex. Or any sex at all.}

//WELL, ERM, FLUX SAID THAT SEXUAL GRATIFICATION IS SOMETHING THEIR CHOSEN ENJOY PARTAKING IN.

//SO… WOULD YOU LIKE THAT AS A BENEFIT OF OUR CHOSEN AGREEMENT?

//I DON’T KNOW HOW I COULD PROVIDE IT FOR YOU, BUT I COULD WORK SOMETHING OUT WITH THE STAURA IN RAINBOW BASIN TO… RELIEVE YOU.

I could feel the discomfort radiating out from each and every one of The End’s messages, and I wasn’t exactly the most comfortable with this conversation either. {No, you know, I don’t want anyone to feel they need to fuck me because The End told them to. So, uh, please don’t do that. Or bring the topic up again. EVER again.}

//OH, THANK EXISTENCE YOU SAID NO.

//FLUX WAS SO PERSISTENT AND SURE THAT I’D BEGUN TO DOUBT WHAT YOU TRULY WANTED.

//I WILL CONTINUE TO LOOK FOR SOMETHING TO SWEETEN OUR AGREEMENT, BUT IT WILL NOT BE SEXUAL IN NATURE.

//FOR… BOTH OF OUR MENTAL WELL-BEINGS, I ASSUME.

{One-hundred percent yes.} I said seriously, the impact of the slyk revelation from mere minutes ago already lost on me. {Getting back on topic, how am I supposed to kill the signaleech without sacrificing these slyk pieces?}