Diana Elekitel
On the planet Samallia, Within Elekitel's caves of steel
To call Elekitel a place was wrong. To call it a people was wrong. To call it a title was wrong. Elekitel was an organism. It existed on both the physical and mental plane. Elekitel was a mind and it knew everything that occurred with in it. A mind consisting of millions of minds could keep tabs on absolutely everything. But, Elekitel was rather monotonous, like a clock. Every day, it did the same thing. Farming, mining, manufacturing, gathering, sleeping, eating, breeding, growing. But Elekitel rarely complained, for it had no room to complain. Elekitel may have always been unsatisfied, but its emotions couldn't get in its way of its true goal. Elekitel thought about it every day; I must become supreme. I must contemplate the nature of all of existance to become omniscient. I must conquer every single square Yojana to become omnipresent. I must upgrade myself with new weapons to become omnipotent. My will must be absolute and to do that, I must destroy all those whom oppose me.
But, it was on this one particular day that Elekitel brought its attention toward a single existence, one whom was slightly different. She always was different. Diana may have been nearly identical to the rest of Elekitel in nearly every way, except for the fact that she was the last surviving existence of Elekitel to have lived on the surface. She was Elekitel's only memory of better life; better food, better housing, better life. But she also carried horrible memories with her that Elekitel wished to forget, memories of fire, of light, of poison. Diana was deemed unfit for producing children, so even at the age of 25, she has had no children, unlike the rest of the women of her age whom likely would be producing their third of fourth child. Elekitel once considered ridding of her, a blighted existence, but feeling stopped her. Elekitel often ignored its feelings, but somehow, it felt immoral to rid of even one of its existences, even if it lost hundreds every week.
Diana had suddenly experienced something huge and important and Elekitel realized it had to listen. Suddenly, Elekitel understood everything.
Diana grunted as she hit the floor. She was groggy with sleep and her arms and knees were sore from breaking her fall. She heard the bed mechanism behind her groan as it fell back into place. The room was pitch black with the exception of dimly lit beads that were lined up in grid patterns along the entire room to mark where the floor was, but it was filled with sounds. Vnamen didn't have the best hearing, so they mostly ignored it, but the very soft sounds were hardly mute, hardly disturbing either. The sounds of the breaths and snoring of countless amounts of Vnamens could be heard, along with the ticking of their own bed mechanisms.
The Section B sleeping chamber was designed just as all the others were, great big rooms filled with specialized bed mechanisms, elevated cots with no pillows or bedsheets and worn down after years of use. Below the cot was a mechanism of a bunch of gears and springs. Upon lying on the mattress, the pressure would activate the gear mechanism, causing the bed to rotate extremely slowly, until it made a full rotation in six hours. Once it made the rotation and the release mechanism was knocked away, the spring would rotate the mattress into a standing position and drop the Vnamen out of the bed, waking them from sleep and resetting the whole mechanism.
Diana wiped the grogginess from her eyes when she got up. She could hear the thoughts of a few others in the room whom had woken up at the same time as her as well as the random faint patterns of the dreaming. Dreaming is all about reflecting upon the past and predicting the future, so even while sleeping, the Vnamens of Elekitel were assisting their nation. Slowly and quietly, she made her way through the sleeping chamber, falling the dimly lit blue dots to prevent herself from bumping into any of the beds, and made her way to the exit.
After retrieving her personal female dressings from her locker (in an absolutely huge room consisting of many lockers), She made her way through the long dark narrow hallways toward the Pit. The halls were hot and musty and dark with the exception of the gas lights of which hung from the ceiling and the Glowworms of which inched around on the walls. They weren't very heavily populated in the area around the sleeping chamber, likely due to workers grabbing them on their way out toward the Mines or the Pumping Station. No hall was complete with a bunch of pipes lining its sides, carrying all kinds of resources. Each one was crawling with Pipe Sniffers, spider-esques with antenna that checked the pipes for even the smallest of leaks and patched them up with a temporary bright green silk which would be obvious to any repairman. Pipe Sniffers weren't the only things crowded in the halls. Diana continually passed by other workers on their way to their own destinations. They payed each other very little mind, but they could hear everything that was on each others minds.
Eventually, Diana made it to a much larger chamber, the Pit. It was a great big gap that was several meters across, as long as a great big Steam Engine. Other sections had Pits just like it. An unfathomable amount of distance up were the closed silo doors. When open, they flooded the upper levels of the Pit with light, but Diana was too far down for it to be too visible. Occasionally the huge cargo elevator in the center would carry huge train cars from the depths or big loads of coal and stone, or uprooted trees dropped from the surface to be processed, or occasionally, the giant War-Bears. On the far side of the pit were the various communal elevators that brought workers back up from the depths, but on the near side were but large chrome poles just off the edge of the balconies of which had no railings. Diana looked around the pit for a second to look for a specific person. Standing right next to the edge of the pit a few meters away with his hands behind his back was another person in a repairman's wear, sporting goggles and some sort of metal harness. A small monkey-esque creature chattered away on its shoulder, chewing on feed in its fist. Diana nodded to man and he nodded back. Her thoughts were easily conveyed to him. Diana reached for it with both arms and brought it close to her chest while releasing her feet from the ground, and instantly, she was shot down the length of the pole by gravity.
Many tens of hundreds of floors and balconies passed through her vision as she plummeted toward the ground. The length of the pole continued to shoot upward out of her grasp as well. The skirt of Diana's dress also shot upward, catching the air coming up from below, but Diana payed it no mind. Her heartrate only increased slightly. Diana was used to the rush of gravity when travelling down the poles. It was the quickest and most efficient way to move down, as opposed to waiting for one of the elevators, which would have to already be moving down for her to board it. As long as she kept a firm grip around the cold metal pole, she wouldn't plummet to her death. Her view on everything may have become blurry, but she could tell exactly what floor she was passing by as the Pit Guards saw her pass by. Their job was to convey where she was to her and when she was to tighten her grip on the pole to slow down when she made it to her destination. Of course, her destination was at the very bottom at the Section B Terminal, so even though there was no chance of her missing her stop, if she didn't slow down, gravity would halt her forever. The Pit Guards also dealt with any issues involving the pit such as repairing the elevators or assisting in moving cargo. Both them and their preformed assistants had the freedom of moving in both directions on the poles and could relay information on which poles were unavailable.
Diana also was reminded from them that it was the day of Fire, on the week of Air. On Air-Fire, Diana used to go down to the Preformation Chamber to operate one of the huge lenses used to see things on the microscopic level, the only way to be able to see the base forms of all living things. It usually took at least a few hundred people to preform an operation or experiment, taking between one and three people to operate each lens, a person to look though the lenses and an entire team at the bottom to preform the operations. The lens chamber itself was about 90 meters in height, but nowhere near as high as the Pit. Only the Vnamens could accomplish the exact precision needed to operate the huge device, as they could synchronize their actions. just as the Pit Guards did. The entire team at the bottom could see through the eyes of the seer at the top, and the Seer could adjust the lenses through the operators. The team at the bottom used a bunch of hands to operate a few tools of which were required to work with the base forms, along with the four elements. Manipulation of the base forms was very difficult and despite the fact that Elekitel literally crawled with preformed creatures, everything about it was still experimental. It usually took tens of hundreds of hours to complete a single creature and Elekitel worked around the clock, but the tiniest of mistakes would require an entire do-over, and that was counting on the fact that the design was functional in the first place. Changing the blueprints of Idros was very extremely difficult and creating new ones was unthinkable as of presently. Elekitel, however, was in the process of designing a new Multiscope that would consist of over 200 lenses, along with tools that could work with even more precision.
Diana had wanted to put her effort into designing the new Multiscope, but her duty on the day of Air-Fire was to train in the magical arts. It was ever since the Order had seeked her out personally. 'Personally' was a foreign concept to Diana, as it was to many Vnamens, but the Order did recruit her. Elekitel was honored, but ever since then, Diana felt different. Diana was used to being considered slightly different, but only in experience. Yet, because of this, she sometimes thought slightly deviantly. Now, she still had the mind of Elekitel, but she began to make comparisons. She compared herself to Elekitel and contemplated the nature of her own existence. She recognized that while she was part of a collective, she really had her own will and her own body. This was a thought she hadn't had since she was a child, when Elekitel was much different. When Elekitel lived on the surface...
Diana knew very little about magic, but as she contemplated the nature of the mind and the nature between the difference of the mind and the physical world, she had realized that the physical world took on only one shape while the mind was spontaneous and constantly transforming and could create something from nothing, such as a lie or delusion. She began to accept that the physical world was reality, yet the physical and mental worlds were equally existent. Indeed, Vnamens were a race connected by mind, but these minds were boundlessly connected to the physical plane, as they observe it. A mind could not kill another mind, but a person can physically kill another. A mind could only use up energy, but it could not feed itself. A mind could create, but its creations would do it no good until they are created on the physical plane. The mental and physical worlds were connected, but the mind only received information about the world through sense, while physics were only influenced by the mind through action. Diana realized that if she could manipulate that connection, she could become very powerful. To control the mind's perception of reality, cutting it off from one of it's connections, would render any thought-based creature helpless.
Thus, Diana learned to create illusions. She could fool the individual, but unfortunately, her power had little effect on the hivemind. Because the hivemind consisted of a multitude of single minds, it was able to adapt easily, and it could easily separate truth from lie, so it could tell if either the single mind or the majority of minds were correct. Diana thought she'd be able to trick larger amounts of people with more power, but she had very little Mana to work with. Because the Vnamens of Samallia had such a high population, the Order had given them limits on their allowed Mana usage so they wouldn't put all seven worlds into unbalance. Every nation was allowed plenty of Mana for everybody, but because Elekitel used so much Mana for growing its specialized crops with little nutrients, plus the immense amount of Mana needed to produce preformed creatures on large scales (producing a single one took up enough Mana to blow up a house) Vnamens had little Mana individually with the exception of the Mana that is broadcasted throughout the caves, using a special arcane process of focusing and distributing, that was essential for supporting their Telepathy (and they didn't need much).
Diana was spacing out, thinking about how she could improve on her magic, but then came back to her senses. She felt as if she'd been dropping for a while, but the Pit Guard's hadn't notified her to ease up yet. In fact, they weren't telling her anything. Were they not on duty? The world was moving too fast for her to catch any sort of glimpse at their bright red and blue clothing. She couldn't even hear the previous Pit Guards in her head. She couldn't hear the thoughts of anything, as if she were completely alone. For one of the few times in her life, Diana felt truly alone, not to mention plummeting to what could have been her death. Diana looked around in helplessness, when the one hand that was holding on slipped from her sweat. Adrenaline shot through Diana as she used her legs, of which were curled around the pole, to pull herself back toward the pole and began to embrace it with her entire body as tightly as possible. The friction burned against her thighs, her chest, her fingers and her cheek, but her speed was slowing very quickly, until she practically stopped. Diana continued to hang on, panicked thoughts playing out in her head, calling out to whomever in her emotion-based mental cry, but there was no response. Her eyes were closed as she held on for dear life, and although the sweat held her up, Diana was gradually continually to slip down slowly. Although, one thing she began to realize was there was actually a very loud thought in her head that she hardly recognized, but she was too panicked to realize it was her own.
Calm yourself, a voice in her head spoke. It was more than a voice, it was a fully developed thought, as the Vnamens would communicate with, but this concept, this thought seemed as if it was thought by not just an entire collective of a nation, but a collective of collectives, an absolutely vast and overpowering conscience of absolutely great insight. Perhaps the former collective of Samallia sounded something like it, but Diana would have had no way of knowing. However, Diana couldn't help but submit to the greater conscience, as was her instinct, and her thoughts became calm. Nonetheless, she still held onto the pole for her dear life, her eyes shut tightly, oblivious to the world.
Diana, you have a duty you must uphold. Diana didn't have time to comprehend the concept before her mind was flooded with ideas and concepts. The presence was that of Idros, and as a mere mortal, Diana found herself completely unable to begin to decipher the workings of such a great mind. Telepathy may have been the connection of minds, but Diana's mind was merely too simple to handle that of Idros. Idros did flood her mind with ideas, however. Concepts of the Archites and the Order flooded her mind. Diana's recruitment into the Order was a memory that appeared in her head, but so was the vision of seven great silhouettes, the most prominent being that of a woman whom wielded a bow whom couldn't have been anything but a Vnamen. Diana had no idea exactly how she looked, but she just merely knew she was Vnamen. A very brief concept appeared in her mind of the idea of conflict and a very dark presence allied with lesser, yet still great presences. The concept of danger, however, was very present, and somehow Diana just knew it was of a large scale, involving things beyond her current understanding. Vnamens communicated in their thoughts less through words and more through concepts and emotions of which were indescribable through words. Yet, Diana understood exactly what Idros was telling her. She was chosen as one of the Archites and it was her duty, not to her nation, not to her species, not even to herself, but to the creator and all of creation to protect it from impending danger. Conscription? That idea was a fact of Diana's life, so it probably easier for her to accept a duty forced upon her, but the fact that it was upon solely her and a few? As opposed to the collective effort of a mass? Diana had hardly enough time to truly process what that would implicate.
You may have faced many hardships up until now, visions of fire and war came to mind, But I, the creator, have made my choice, and it is you, a single, unique, existence, that shall defend all of creation from those whom seek to destroy and imitate. The dangerous presence came to mind, but frighteningly, it wasn't the only thing, It is not only out of my will, but I see that your actions shall be for the good of your own kind as well. The concept of the great collective came to mind and so did the memory of Diana's childhood on the surface.
Diana was about to consider all the ideas and ask questions, but the great conscience Idros paused her with his overwhelming will. Calm yourself, and open your eyes. Everything went quiet for a second, but Diana could feel the great existence leave her. Diana slowly became aware of the pole again, but also became away of the weight on her feet and her bottom. She had reached the bottom. slowly, the non-stop thoughts flowed back into her head as she reconnected with the great collective. When she opened her eyes, she saw the great brightly lit terminal, consisting of many lines of tracks of which ended at the cargo elevator at her right. There were about hundreds of Vnamens walking up and down and standing along the sides of the tracks, waiting for the trains to transport them to various part of the lower complex.
Diana began to replay everything that happened in her mind and contemplated everything Idros had put in her head. Suddenly, the terminal grew silent as the crowd of white, red and blue all stopped what they were doing to look at her. Diana wasn't used to being in the center of attention, no Vnamen could possibly have been. But Diana's thoughts weren't her own anymore. They all simply understood what Diana had experienced, as if the memories were their own. The gradually, the collective turned its attention toward Diana. Diana's name was suddenly on nearly everybody's mind.
Suddenly, Elekitel understood everything.