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    A/N – This chapter continues directly from the end of the bit in the previous chapter (the Patreon Snippets) with Jones, Tristan, etc in the Reaper Archives


    Dakota’s head shook while everyone else exchanged curious glances in the wake of Jones’ last words. Looking at their Reaper guide, she tentatively asked, “Um, who are the Solemn Ones? Are they the leaders of your people or something? Why do they call them solemn?” She could feel even more questions trying to come pouring out, but clamped down on them for the moment.


    Jones kept her eyes on the massive tower in the distance. “They aren’t literally called Solemn Ones. Our people don’t go around using words like that, exactly. But the term is about as close as you can get in English. As for why they’re called that, I’ll explain on the way.” With that, she took a step forward and beckoned for the others to follow.


    As they did so, Crow pointed toward a pair of Reapers who stood on the roof of one of the nearby buildings. “Uh, those guys have been staring at us since we got here.”


    “Not just them,” Tristan pointed out quietly while glancing around. Gradually, the others became aware that they were surrounded on all sides. None of the other Reapers approached or said anything. They simply stood there, barely in sight, and stared silently, as though waiting to see what happened.


    “Yes,” Jones replied simply, “We’ve been having a conversation. Well, sort of a conversation. I’ve told them what we’re here for and where we’re going. They’re willing to wait and see what the Solemn Ones say before making any judgments.”


    Aureus, for her heart, was beside herself. She tried to do the special greeting she had done for Jones when first seeing the Reaper, but Tristan held her arm and whispered something about not interrupting. Neither of them knew exactly how Jones was communicating with the other Reapers, given there was no outward or audible sign of anything. If Jones hadn’t said anything, they never would’ve known she was even talking to the others at all. But it was probably a good idea not to draw attention to themselves any more than necessary.


    Still, the Seosten girl kept snapping her head around in every direction as they stepped out onto the strange collection of different streets and walked down it together. She wanted to see everything, wanted to take in absolutely every possible sight from every angle. Not for the first time, she was grateful for the Seosten perfect memory. And for their ability to magically share those memories. It meant people would have to believe her. They would see what she had seen and know she was telling the truth, no matter how fantastical it might seem.


    When she got out of here and back to her own people, she would be able to sell the memories of being in this place for an indescribable promotion and recognition. She could be the youngest of her people to ever be given command of her own ship at this rate. The Seosten had been looking for details about the Reapers for their entire existence, essentially. And, as far as she knew, no one else had ever actually been inside the Prime Archives. They knew about its existence in general terms through various research, but not precisely where it was or how to get to it. And nothing at all about what it looked like. She would be famous simply for being in here. No one would look at her as the failure who had been captured and imprisoned by the Rysthael rebels when they found out where she had been. This was how she was going to make a name for herself and become the captain she’d always wanted to be. When the Seraphim found out what she knew, they would grant her a ship and allow her to explore anywhere she wanted to go. Her name would be synonymous with discovery, and no one would ever be able to mock or taunt her about her dreams again. She would show all of them that there were still things out there in the universe to discover.


    So lost was she in her thoughts about what would come in the future, Aureus lost track of where she was in the present. She nearly stepped right off the edge of the raised road they were on and into a deep, jagged pit. But Tristan caught her arm to pull her back. She, in turn, whirled around reflexively, snapping her hand up to his face while nearly letting off an explosion with her power. Only at the last second did she stop herself with realization. Everyone was staring at her. Not just their own group, but the assembled Reapers. There had to be a hundred of them by that point, standing perfectly still on the surrounding buildings or on the road ahead and behind. They never moved. They didn’t walk after the group. They simply watched until these uninvited guests had moved out of their sight, then instantly appeared further ahead to watch from another vantage point. There was no indication of their teleportation, no flash of light or rush of air. They were simply in one spot, then another, as though they had always been there.


    Taking all that in and realizing the Reapers were, as one, staring at her, the girl lowered her hand and looked at the pit she had almost walked into through her distraction. A slight grimace crossed her face and she swallowed before speaking softly. “Thank you.” It was hard to say, but she forced the words out. She had been so distracted in that moment she easily could have plummeted and smacked into the ground before even realizing she needed to teleport. And wouldn’t that just be the most incredible way to end her brief visit to this remarkable place?


    Austin Tasious broke the brief moment of silence followed with a bright, “Well hey, if we get through all this and make friends with the Reapers here, maybe we can convince them to let OSHA come in and put some regulation rails up, huh? That’s something to look forward to. And if we’re friends, I could even play a show for them.” With a grand sweeping gesture of his black and pink cape as it swirled around him, he bowed toward the nearest Reaper observers while they stared impassively back. “Any time you wish to be entertained by dazzling tricks and awesome displays that will boggle your mind and leave you struck by the sheer, endless possibilities of the cosmic–”


    “Let’s go, Austin,” the red-skinned Flak quickly put in. She pulled her Aspect brother away from his audience, and the group continued on. They were still being observed, and a few of those Reapers centered their focus on the boy. Their opinion on the matter was relatively unknown, but it was clear that he had at least gained their attention. They were thinking about him, a prospect that would be daunting for most, if not utterly terrifying.


    Denny stepped next to Flak and Austin, keeping her voice low while nudging the latter. Not that doing so mattered, since she was certain the Reapers could all hear everything she said. Maybe everything she thought too. But still, it felt right to be quiet. “I know you’re nervous, we all are, but have you lost your mind?”


    Austin shook his head, keeping his own voice low as well. “It took their attention off Aureus and let her regain her composure. Believe me, she needed that.”


    As they walked on, Jones explained, “Before we became what we are now, the Reapers were conquerors and destroyers. We weren’t that unlike those Fomorians you know of these days in fact. We were basically an entire empire of what you call Hangmen. We wanted nothing except to kill and destroy everything that wasn’t our own people. And we nearly succeeded. Nothing could stand in our path. Not even, eventually, ourselves.”


    “You turned on each other?” Bang-bang put in, sounding just as curious as everyone else felt. The chance to get this sort of detail about who the Reapers were, their history, it was too good to pass up. It was just too bad Letters wasn’t here, given how much she would’ve loved to be the one asking questions. Come to think of it, Jones might have had trouble getting a word in edgewise to answer all the questions.


    Jones bowed her head with a soft sigh. “Yes. Our people turned on one another, completely. They didn’t care about maintaining any civilization. They simply wanted to be the last ones standing. The only thing that seemed to matter was causing destruction and misery. We absorbed one another’s powers and memories, all trying to become the final living figure in the universe, containing the thoughts and memories of every other living being. There were several terms for it, but the closest to what you would understand is Singularity. We were trying to create–or become a Singularity, one figure with all the lives of every being in the universe held within them. Some thought doing so would accomplish something important within the grand cosmic scheme. Others gave no actual justification other than wanting to kill everything that wasn’t them. But whatever their reasoning, the result was the same, the near annihilation of every bit of life in the universe, including our own people. We went from being a species of hundreds of millions, down to simply hundreds through our brutal civil war. Those few who were left became powerful beyond imagination, holding the abilities and memories of millions at the very least, and of billions at the most. Billions of creatures’ power held within only a few beings. And those few beings were intent on using that power to kill each other. It was a dark time in the universe.”


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    Her hand briefly squeezed Casey’s shoulder as the girl leaned closer, then rose to point at their destination. “That tower you see there was the very tip of one of our capital ships, the last Reaper warship to survive. It was crewed by the very last of our people who had not entirely succumbed to being monsters. That is not to say that they were heroic, not in the least. They still wished to kill most forms of life to create the Singularity. But they did manage to maintain some slight grasp of sanity, and believed that doing so was achievable without killing our own people. The Reapers on that ship, all nine of them, were the last of our people in that time to not descend into madness. And it was they who realized that something had to be done.”


    “You said they still wanted to kill everything that wasn’t a Reaper to create this Singularity thing?” That was Crow, glancing over their shoulder to see the figures continuing to stare at them all while clearly allowing this story to be told.


    Jones gave a slight nod. “Yes, that was the goal of all our people, even if some disagreed on precisely how it could be achieved. Regardless, all thought that every non-Reaper life in the universe had to be eliminated. Though many believed they were doing those other lives a favor, by bringing them into the fold, so to speak. They believed that by, in their eyes, making those other lives part of the Reapers, they were causing them to ascend to a higher state of being. Allowing them to be absorbed into our minds was seen as a gift, because that way they would never actually die.”


    Tristan gave an audible snort despite himself. “I thought my mom’s people were a piece of work, but you all take the cake on that.” He immediately blanched, glancing toward the still-passively observing Reapers. None gave any reaction to his words one way or another. They might as well have been statues. “Uh, no offense, I’m sure you’re great. Took the cake. You all took the cake. You know, before all the–wait, what happened?”


    Aureus gave the boy a hard look before addressing Jones eagerly. “You said the people of that ship were the last–wait, that ship?” Her gaze turned to that enormous tower, voice suddenly awed. “You said that was only the tip of the actual ship.”


    “Yes,” Jones confirmed in a low, deliberate voice as the others took that in. “What you see before you is only one-tenth of what was once the most feared vessel in the universe. That single ship was capable of destroying entire worlds that lay in its path.”


    “One tenth of–but…” Tristan swallowed hard, staring up and up and up at the thing. “How tall is it? We can’t see the top from here. Wait, Crow?”


    “Fifteen miles,” the vision-focused Aspect informed him. “It’s fifteen miles from the bottom to the top of that tower. And three thousand feet wide at the base. If this is just the tip of their old ship, just ten percent of its length…”


    They all did the quick mental math on that and realized they were looking at the remnants of a ship that had once been a hundred and fifty miles long, and since this was just the tip of it, the body was probably much wider than the three thousand feet of this one. The idea of a spaceship that size was… it was…


    “That’s like twice the size of the Death Star,” Tristan blurted before coughing as everyone’s attention turned his way. “Err, sorry, but it is. I mean, if the Death Star was real and not just–never mind, what were you saying?” He looked back at Jones pointedly. “That ship was crewed by just nine of your people, and they were the last Reapers in the whole universe who weren’t total Hangmen by that point?”


    Jones nodded to him. “Nine Reapers, each with the minds and powers of millions living beings within them. They could control any ship, even one that size, without any issues. And the nine of them realized that there would be nothing left of the universe if they continued along that path. They knew something had to change, no matter how difficult it was to accept. So, they turned away from their own desires. They gave up the goal they had held for so many hundreds of millennia. But to do that, they had to fundamentally change their own minds. Not simply in a metaphorical sense. They had to literally alter their minds in order to become the sort of people who could do what had to be done, who could totally and completely turn away from a goal like the Singularity. Imagine if the entire human race, all of you, had been focused on one goal throughout the entirety of your civilization. From the times of ancient Mayans until today, you all had one single goal that you were all working toward. Now multiply that time by a thousand. Six million years of work, conservatively speaking, to become what we were and to grow into a force that could have wiped out all life in the universe. Six million years of growth and focused work. They had to alter their minds to ensure they would stop pursuing that goal.”


    To Aureus, she amended, “Imagine if your own people, having just spent the past several hundred thousand years fighting against the Fomorians, suddenly had to ally with them and work together. It would be… difficult, to say the least. But they knew such drastic changes had to be done.


    “There is more to the story, of course. But for the sake of brevity and focus, those nine became the basis and originators of what Reapers are today. They put a stop to what our people had become in their bloody quest, and transformed them into what we are now. They created this Prime Archive, and our people became observers. We watch and catalog everything so that, no matter what happens in the future, some part of the universe will exist forever.”


    By that point, they had somehow, through some sort of transportation shifts none of them had actually noticed, crossed the distance to stand at the base of the tower in question. All of them stared up at the thing while Jones continued. “This place serves as the center of the Archives. It is where those nine reside. They are the Solemn Ones for making the solemn decision about how to change our people in order to stop the total annihilation of all life in the universe.”


    A glowing red portal appeared in front of the main door then. Jones gestured for them to each go ahead, promising they would be okay. So, one by one, each member of the search party passed through the portal, telling themselves this was the best–only way to find those missing Aspects. And, the case of Aureus, simply giddy over the prospect of what she was about to see.


    Once the group had all passed through the portal, they found themselves standing in what had to be the very top of the tower they had just been in front of. It was a pyramid-shaped room, each wall completely transparent to show the various other (constantly transforming) structures spread out far below and around them. This was the tallest building by far, though there were others which at least came high enough to see the tops of. The Prime Archives were spread out around them.


    As for the rest of the room itself, it was about a thousand feet across, with the newly-arrived group standing in one corner, close enough to see through two of the nearest transparent walls. Ahead of them were nine rectangular tables, each almost twenty feet long. Or at least the tops of those tables, as they seemed to hover with no legs or any source of support. The tables were covered in an array of what appeared to be hundreds of ‘viewing instruments’ from across the known universe. There were magnifying glasses, reading glasses, microscopes of all shapes and sizes, monocles, jewelers glasses, dozens of cameras from across all of human history since they were first invented. And that was only the Earth-centric viewing implements that they could recognize. There were hundreds more from so many different worlds, all lying across those tables.


    Far past those tables, nine figures were arrayed in a half-circle facing the newly arrived group, each about ten feet apart. Each was the pale humanoid with white, blue, or pink hair that the new arrivals had come to associate with Reapers. Rather than any sort of throne or seat, they stood in front of pillar-shaped crystalline structures, like twelve-foot tall prisms. Each prism had just enough space carved out of it for the Reaper there to stand partially within, arms resting across bits of crystal that had been positioned for that purpose. Across each crystal pillar, various images were displayed like holographic video screens. The images were of people, of various beings of all shapes and sizes. They looked almost like home movies, recordings of the daily lives of every creature in the universe. Some scenes showed humans, before shifting to Seosten, then other beings, some recognizable and some not. The Solemn Ones did not sit on thrones. They stood within pillars displaying images from across the universe. Images of the very civilizations they had devoted their entire existence to recording. And they were all watching this newly arrived group.


    “Do not approach until they say it is safe to do so,” Jones informed them quietly. “Wait here while they deliberate amongst themselves. We may talk to one another while we wait.”


    Aureus was the first to find her voice, though it sounded so much smaller than she normally did. “O-oh… so they’re the ones who are going to decide if it’s okay for us to look for those missing people.” Her head turned to look at Denny and the Aspects who were with them. “What happens if they say no?”


    Grunting, Casey spoke up first. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, right?”


    “Yes,” Jones agreed flatly. “Let’s hope. I think we’ll be okay. They’ll want us to remove the… pardon the term, but infection. They won’t want the outsiders to stay.” There was a hint of pain in her voice, easy to miss but still there. “So if we say we’re here to take them out of here, I think… I think they’ll accept that. Now, let’s go in.”


    “This ship,” Tristan started after taking a moment to stare out the nearby window. “What was the name of it? While it was still an actual ship, I mean. And what happened to the rest of it? You said this was just one piece. Was the rest all destroyed?”


    “Most of it,” Jones confirmed. “There is still one other piece out there somewhere. It is the twin to this one, nearly identical. And as far as I know, its location was lost to all except from the Solemn Ones. They alone among all beings in the universe retain that knowledge. As for its name, you would not have heard of it.


    “The ship was called the Lashra Vaeil.”