176 In Peaceful Slumber, May You Rest Eternally

Not a single word was uttered after that painful revelation from Reed. He had siphoned whatever momentum the trio had out of their sails and left them to their own devices.

Truth be told, Reed felt that he had gone too hard on them, despite his best efforts at restraining himself. The comparison he had made between himself and them had been unnecessary. 

To have compared the sum of their combined efforts over the past three years to himself at his current worst state was something he should not have said. All Reed could imagine was a child mercilessly trampling over a field of flowers without any reservations.

They'd done well for themselves since he'd last met them. It was undeniable that their growth had been exceptional, past what anyone could have thought possible. Horatio was almost a conqueror, on the verge of reaching the threshold, to put it all in perspective.

And yet, it had still not been... enough. 

Once more, they had been left behind as Reed and Lu'um continued forth on their lonesome... 

It was cold within the fissure's embrace, which was not what either of them had expected. There was an ever-pervasive chill that transcended what conventional thermal protection could afford. 

Reed and Lu'um's helmets started to glaze over on the outside as condensation coalesced into a thin sheet of ice on their helmet's visors. Stranger still, their suits had not detected the dramatic shift in temperature — a clear sign to both of them that something was wrong. 

Not the environmental suits, of course, but rather the environment itself. There was a problem inside of the fissure that likely was affecting the natural state of the region within the fissure. A potential defect or corruption of some aspect beyond the ken of mortal beings. 

Suffice to say, it was outside of Reed's expertise, even with his remarkable experience with events, beings, and concepts that existed on the fringe of human comprehension. 

The further they descended into the frigid abyss, the greater their suspicions grew that they had stumbled onto a monumental crisis far greater anyone could have predicted. 

It's so cold, I can't even detect the slightest hint of warmth from it. It feels hard as diamond, as if it's actually turned into a crystal.

Very much like the rest of this... overgrown disaster.

It was much worse within the fissure in many ways. Several hundred meters below where sunlight could reach, the arm of the colossal giant had all but turned into a crystalline substance akin to the crystallized pillars above on the surface.

A nigh-impenetrable web of diamond-hard ice, crystal pillars, and stagnant Anima dominated the frozen underworld beneath the city of Itroch.

"There's a lot of stuff in the way and not a lot of space for error, huh..." said Reed in a low voice. 

Of course, the crystal pillars and the ice could be broken apart if necessary, but reckless pathfinding would all but certain result in... tremendous losses.

The word "crisis" couldn't even begin to describe the situation in the fissure.

"...Weren't we told that only a couple of small cities were infected with the Itroch plague? This doesn't match what we were told at all," said Reed as he tried to record the scene in front of him with the camera installed on his failing helmet. It had, unfortunately, died though — the internal battery had died under extreme duress. 

Were he not so... preoccupied with processing the reality of their new situation, he might've let out a curse or two in abject horror.

Millions upon millions of faint, glowing lights were encapsulated with a seemingly innumerable amount of crystal pillars. An ethereal landscape of frozen souls stood in their way, blocking further progress.

"Where'd all of these souls come from?! H-holy shit, there's no end to them!" said Reed. 

"I-I don't understand," said Lu'um in confusion and blankly retorted, "This shouldn't have been possible. The Quetzal Collective wasn't designed to handle such an enormous volume of souls. They must have known that this would have led to a fatal overflow and an inevitable logic void..." 

Reed paid no mind to Lu'um and continued to hunt for an opening within the enormous crystal honeycomb that occupied the entirety of the lower fissure and said, "So what, you know these folks in here?" 

Breaking through the crystalline overgrowth that engulfed the fissure was not a problem for either Reed or Lu'um in terms of technical difficulty, but rather they were deeply troubled by the consequences involved with a mistake on their behalf.

All it'd only take a single incorrect fracture to cause a catastrophic chain reaction within the crystalline shelf-wall that'd spell the final death for an untold number of souls. 

The size and scale of the frozen ice-crystalline shelf that obstructed their descent eclipsed anything they had since seen in terms of its physical dimensions. It ran the entire length of the Itroch fissure, which was over forty-two kilometers in length and based on Reed and Lu'um's estimates, ran at least three to four miles in depth, though this was admittedly a conservative estimate. 

"I don't know them, but I know who they are. The prolonged wavelength emissions that they're releasing are undeniably... Mulian in nature. Tie in the connection to the Quetzal Collective that was supposed to be down here and Itroch above us..." said Lu'um. 

"But you said that it was designed to hold only the brightest minds of the universe," said Reed. 

He had heard enough to make the connection that Lu'um had implied, but he did not understand how it had all come to pass. 

"They must have repurposed the entire network during the attack five thousand years ago in a last-ditch effort to escape the Infestation after the city fell. Rather than let themselves be taken, they set themselves in a makeshift coffin of ice and crystal... forever." 

"We can't get them out?" 

"Repairing all of this would take centuries, at best. And that is in a hypothetical where my people had not fallen and possessed the resources and manpower we had at our zenith. As we are now, it will never possible for them to ever see the light of day again."

Sleeping they would remain, at rest until the end of time. 

"...What's a logic void?"

Lu'um sighed. "The Quetzal Collective was designed to allow a handful of the brightest minds uninterrupted access to a city-spanning neural network for them to utilize — to handle the hundreds of billions of individual queries from the students who were supposed to live above, on the city itself and later on, several star systems as well. 

But when the Infestation attacked and all hope was lost, the Collective tried to deny the Infestation of their bounty — they took in the souls of the deceased civilians and moved them here, several miles underground down here, where they resided." 

She gestured towards the titanic wall of disordered crystal pillars and ice. 

"There was no way the network could have handled that, hence the current state of the fissure. Millions lived in Itroch at the time of the attack and they all died when the city fell. Look at this mess. With millions of people connected to the network, the Collective drowned in a cacophony of queries from the newly collected victims. 

They drowned themselves, in a literal sense, until they could think no more. The network probably crashed and ever since then, every single soul in here went dark. Unable to connect to the network, they were left all to their own devices, suspended within the crystal pillars. Although there is no risk of degradation given the nature of the pillars, I suspect that many if not all of the souls here are unsalvagable." 

Reed didn't understand and said, "But they're completely intact and preserved. There's nothing wrong with them." 

"Imagine yourself cut off from your bodily senses for five thousand years with nothing to do and no one to interact with, all the while still being able to form thoughts. What do you think will happen to you? If they haven't gone through a complete spiritual cascade yet, I have no doubt that they've all gone insane. There's no saving them. Perhaps only the souls with the strongest willpower have retained some of their former sanity as of today."

Which was worse — becoming an eternal slave for the Infestation or enduring eternity in a prison of ice alone?

What sort of last-ditch effort was this supposed to be? The only thing Reed felt was a terrible revulsion from the bottom of his heart for either choice.

But that was reality in a nutshell. An unfair gamble that one had no choice but to accept. 

For the city of Itroch, they had been offered between two hells of unimaginable cruelty and on the eve of their end, the citizens of the City of Love had chosen to think of their people. 

Rather than become the very enemy they had sworn to purge from their universe, they chose never-ending slumber in a tomb of ice and glimmering crystal. 

For them, the nightmare had ended. Millions of souls hunkered down for their final rest and then succumbed into the deepest reaches of their minds. 

Reed couldn't even begin to imagine the courage required to face death as they had done, but he knew that their sacrifice would never again go unnoticed. 

Because they'd been found again — today. 

There will come a time when they'll feel the warmth of the sun again.

Reed promised himself that'd he make that a reality, come hell or high water. He was going to take them all back home, where they belonged. They didn't belong in the dark.

...And he had a plan on how to get them out of the fissure. Not that it was a good idea, though.

But then again, that was where Reed shone brightest — at creating unconventional solutions with his trademark ingenuity — which is why he was perfect for the job.