Chapter 618 — Front and Rear

"It said a few things to me, but almost no useful intelligence was revealed," Kamael said to Pi Yun with a sigh. "Just as you judged earlier, these 'commander-class' crystal giants are mostly transformed from the diehard martyrs of the Order of All Things Perishing. They maintain control over the crystal legions in this manner, and the mouths of such fanatics can hardly be pried open."

"As the crystal legions expand, sooner or later they will select new commanders from among the transcendents who accept transformation. The mouths of those commanders ought to be openable—there's no need for us to hurry," Pi Yun said. Then he seemed to notice something off about Kamael's mood. "What else did it say to you? You look a bit unwell..."

Kamael was astonished. "You can tell how my face looks?"

"Your expression I can't read, but the color is fairly obvious—you're quite green right now..."

"...Nothing major, except that the last thing that fellow said left me a little uneasy," Kamael shook his head. "So the Order of the Final Doom did indeed inherit a portion of the legacy of the old 'Defiance' project. In carrying that project onward, they produced godspawn—but that crystal giant said their work was even more 'defiant' than the original. I do not understand what that means."

"More 'defiant' than that?" Piyun raised an eyebrow. Though he too had once been a member of the Order of the Final Doom, he clearly knew nothing of their godspawn project. "Back then you dug up the grave of the God of Nature, flayed the flesh from the corpse, and refined its divine blood and flesh into a serum to vaccinate the whole nation. What under heaven could be more defiant than that? Even if they truly built a false god, to my mind it would not be as defiant as what you did..."

"Which is why I cannot make sense of it," Kamael buzzed, then shook his head. "And on your side? How have your experiments turned out?"

"Once the crystal-infected who were transformed from ordinary people were isolated from the 'Commanders,' every subject showed marked signs of decline and stasis, and what little thought capacity remained was fading fast. It seems the mental activity of the lower crystal-infected can only be sustained by reliance on a 'Commander'..." Piyun spread his hands and sighed. "In short, there is no saving them—the mutations, from body to mind, are already irreversible. But those who have not yet mutated, who merely carry the infection—those may still be saved. The most recent batch of infected brought in is now in a very stable condition; conventional treatments for plague and curse both work on them. I am searching for the most effective purification protocol, and for the key trigger that drives them to jump from 'carrier' to 'mutant.'"

...

In Xuanyao City, a spring rain had washed clean the serried rooftops and the crisscrossing streets, and in the slowly dimming light of the sky, the city of Xuanyue remained as bustling as if it were broad daylight.

A lithe serpent tail climbed the city's tallest arcane broadcast tower, coiling around the amplification antenna at its summit. Tyre's body clung to that steel-wrought magical mechanism; she leaned out, her gaze sweeping across the distant districts, across the factory floors already lit with lamps and running day and night without pause.

War was spreading in the distant north. Though the land of the Duchy of Cecil remained safe, the war's influence still seeped into every facet of people's lives. People had begun discussing the war in taverns and coffeehouses; news from the north and opinion pieces appeared ever more frequently in the newspapers; and the factories had entered the so-called "wartime footing," running at unprecedented efficiency.

Countless war machines filed out of the workshops in procession, their gears and bearings still warm as they rumbled off to the front. Technicians, physicians, and noncommissioned officers freshly graduated from the academies, full of vigor, went forth to their posts and their lives. Because the duchy did not face the war directly, its internal commerce had not suffered in the least—it had grown more flourishing than ever. This city, driven onward by the power of arcane industry, was so vibrant, so lovable, that even the indolent Tyre could not help but be stirred by it, stirred to fancies about the sirens' homeland—

Tyre did not know what the sirens' homeland looked like. She was of the generation born only after the Antavien made its forced landing in this world; the siren empire, after the "Great Crash," had declined and never regained its former glory. Yet from the teaching machines, from the fragmented records stored on memory wafers, from the old sirens' accounts of their distant, blurry memories, Tyre had heard the homeland described more than once—

It was a world brimming with life, the ocean covering the entire planet. Deep in the profound and gentle waters, the sirens' world had flourished; machines had run without pause day and night; AI-governed cities had shone on the seabed; undersea trains had raced between trenches and ridges; craft had burst from the deep sea to vault above the surface; and satellite constellations and orbital installations had ringed the planet, looking down upon that beautiful water world...

Perhaps the sirens truly could never go back.

But Tyre's gaze swept over Cecil—over these land-dwelling beings, who had a homeland, and who were building it with all their passion.

Perhaps one day they would build this place as lovely as that "beautiful water world."

The lost siren drew a soft breath, opened her mouth, and sang low.

Formless power soaked into that ethereal song, resonating through the ambient magic, through the amplification antenna atop the broadcast tower, through Cecil's arcane net—and then, by way of the countless relay towers between Cecil, the Black Forest, and the Wall of Grandeur, resonating through the Tower of Sentinels, through the Wall of Grandeur.

The song rode the ripples of space, crossing endless storms and oceans.

In the eastern reaches of the Endless Sea, the siren city of "Antavien," already bathed in starlight, saw a night-watch Listener stare in astonishment at the unfamiliar frequency that had suddenly flickered onto the communicator.

A moment later, a Deep-Sea Handmaiden swam into Queen Pythia's bedchamber, tail swaying—

"Your Majesty! The missing Tide Master has been found. On her return voyage she swam the wrong way—she is on the western continent now!

"She has found human allies there!

"She asks whether you would like a cookie."