"Let this be my final testimony," were the first words engraved by the Scribe. The lid of his sarcophagus was mounted on an easel before him, and he scrutinized it like a painter at his canvas.
He planed it from the durable wood of a sweetly aromatic tree, then overlaid it entirely with gold that had been hammered flat and polished to a shine. Crude, he thought, as he considered his choice of materials and methods. "Yet, enduring," he decided aloud.
The Scribe had spent weeks planning, etching, and engraving his thoughts, followed by days ornamenting the message with colors, enamels, filaments and granules. He hoped that through his efforts, many generations of recovery could be hastened into just a few, on the other side of the fall.
"I, Wanderer of Dissonant Lore, consign myself to this tomb," the engraving read. The soft edges of each symbol were emblazoned by the light of the local star that flooded the nearby window. "Immortalize this legacy. Forever know that when confronted with corruption, we failed the tenets that rest here."
"Interred are relics of our pride and shame. At my feet is an Urn of Manna: the desiccated remains of our creators. Corrupted by vengeance, it has become the wellspring of our woes. But with hope it may inspire revelation. To my side rests the Staff of the Steward: a sacred icon of dominion and plenty. And to my chest I hold the Twelve Laws: the mantle of our failed responsibility. These laws we assumed and failed to uphold."
"Reclaim these gifts. Know them and their place so that we may be redeemed."
The Scriptorium spun like a carousel in the immense orbit of a gas giant, whose atmosphere was streaked with oily auburn tendrils that turned violet as they spread across the sky. Each raced for some terminus they would never see because it was always just beyond their horizon.
The storms of the planet mirrored the disarray of the Scriptorium. It was littered with the debris of iteration. Previous renditions of the Scribe's testimony were scattered around its circumference, all of them equally final.
"A grand testament to persistence," he whispered to his auric reflection.
Or a monument of my mediocrity, he retorted silently to himself.
While reviewing his work, the Scribe vacillated between self-aggrandized elation and miserable self-flagellation. He recriminated himself for his work now more than ever. His goals seemed doubtfully worthy of pursuit, or perhaps he was not worthy to pursue them. Another would have been better suited for this task, he thought, especially when considering—or perhaps because of—the impending doom.
The Scribe was once again tempted to seek the opinions, advice, or even criticism of another. Not for the sake of it, or even for companionship, but just to be read. He needed to know that he had done well. But there was no one to solicit, nor could anyone actually provide him the unreasonably specific affirmations he desired.
The Scribe inhaled a tsk as the eleventh hour turned. His immutable mortifications—those persistent grammatical and canonical creases that refused to smooth—would have to remain.
When he was decidedly finished with his testimony, the Scribe shot his final dose of desiccant, strained to get on his feet, and stowed away his tools for the last time. Sweating profusely and rapidly withering, he carried himself across the Scriptorium and summoned the gold-laid canvas to follow.
As he wavered to and from consciousness, the cloth-lined basin of his sarcophagus became an oasis of comfort and rest in a desert of brutalist metal architecture. The lid of the sarcophagus hovered forth and secured itself to the open arms of the basin. It matched its partner's width, length, and composition. It too had been constructed of wood and laid in gold, within and without. But the basin was lined with soft sage satin.
The void-facing window on this side of the Scriptorium was like an inky black curtain backlit through a scattering of pinholes. Framed by the viewport was a circlet of silver that hung in its shared orbit of the titan planet. Its interior was inlaid with blues and greens. This nascent ringworld—one of several weapons of galactic destruction—glinted in the light of the star.
"The crowning achievement of our empire—," he muttered weakly as he admired the megastructure.
—and a monument to our dereliction, he finished the thought silently.
Within the sarcophagus rested symbolic gestures previously laid there by the Scribe.
At the foot of the basin sat a simple stone urn containing the nourishing, and yet corrupting, desiccated remains of the gods turned enemy. It stood as a reminder of the sins of the forefathers, but may also itself hide the key to redemption.
To the side lay a staff with a shaft twisted like a serpent and a head that sprouted like a tree. It had many smaller siblings, all capable of firing the dreadful weapon of the ringworld. But it was also the key to bounty and conservation. This artifact could inspire water to flow from any stone and vegetation to sprout from any soil.
And finally, centered in the basin were two stone tablets on which the Scribe chiseled the Twelve Laws in the old script. These tomes of elegant simplicity were the Scribe's gift to those who might reclaim them and uphold them.
The Scribe recounted the contents of the sarcophagus before himself stumbling inside. Clutching the tablets to his chest, he found comfort in his confinement. His soft sage satin shroud blended with the lining of the sarcophagus. He lay in front of the void-facing viewport watching the ringworld outside spin among the stars. He recited the ancient laws as he passed in and out of consciousness and awaited the annihilation to come.
Before long, the outer surface of the circlet began to glow. Spokes of cross-phased supermassive neutrinos were emitted from spires along the inner surface and met at the ringworld's central axis. The well of combined energy grew brighter until a tipping point. It detonated with a devastating burst of radiation harmonically tuned to disintegrate neurological systems. The shockwave reached deep into the stars for twenty-five thousand light-years, joined in concert by its siblings. All life susceptible to the enemy—all sentient life in the galaxy including the Scribe himself—had been condemned.
The autonomous sarcophagus gently rested the neurolyzed and mummified Scribe into its embrace. He had been laid alongside his carefully selected treasures and beneath his carefully inscribed testimony.
The lid closed and sealed against the basin. The contents of the sarcophagus were locked outside of spacetime in a bubble of temporal suspension. They would be preserved indefinitely, until such a time as the reclaimers should discover it.
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Historian's Note
Deep Space Anomaly #0198 had been an overlooked satellite of the gas giant due to its relatively inconspicuous shape and size.
According to the official record, this is the only xeno-relic discovered to actually contain a body and has added volumes to our understanding of who they were, and what happened to them.
The interred creature had been perfectly preserved within a temporally locked sarcophagus for roughly one-hundred thousand years. From its perspective, however, we may have thawed it out only moments after it had been sealed.
The body appeared to have been ceremonially mummified. Insofar as we can discern from our limited knowledge of their anatomy, this individual appears atrophied and dehydrated. Further, it lacks a neurological system.
But what we found is equally as interesting as what we did not find.
The sarcophagus is engraved with ornate inscriptions that elude translation. Their true meaning continues to be the topic of speculation and debate. What we think we understand so far are descriptions of items of importance, collectively referred to as Testimony. What is unclear is if these relics should have been laid within this tomb. If that were the case, they never made it to their final rest or have since been displaced. But it is also possible they were interred elsewhere.
The whole site and its contents will be a center of study for years. And so, rather than remove the sarcophagus from the tomb, our archeology team endeavored to move the tomb itself from its original orbit and into controlled space. Which brings me to our current predicament.
When we attempted to jump with the tomb in tow, our superluminal trajectory became skewed during transit. We returned to normal space in mere minutes, in the orbit of yet another ringworld.
And we're not alone. The enemy zealots have moored a recon frigate in low orbit.
This record will continue to be updated with future developments.
Testimony is a #Wayfinder story and #fanfiction exploration of the #HaloCE multiplayer map: #Derelict.
Written and narrated by Alessandro Marino (vigg.substack.com).
Audio and visual effects captured from Halo: The Master Chief Collection on #XboxSeriesX.
Based on the #Halo Universe, a property of #Microsoft Corporation and #HaloStudios.
vigg.substack.com/p/testimony
youtu.be/Xd1ZCZo-9_U
#halospotlight
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