“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
And so, the original sin was born
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Scytheros, Colonus Pact
The city was more like a series of stone bunkers or temples, nestled into a dense forest. Each building was low to the ground, no more than five stories tall, each of them covered in moss. From the lower atmosphere, it’d be hard to make it out under the tree line. All across the planet, cities sprawled out in camouflage. Not to say that it wasn’t a bustling city; it was. It just didn’t want anyone to know that.
The civilian arena was empty at this time of night.
Well, almost empty. Two men remained inside, although it was unfair to call them that. The pair were more like David and Goliath, a young man pitted against an elder who towered above him. Goliath swung his blade.
Alesk ducked under the knife with an almost serpentine grace, bending around to thrust his own blade forward. For a moment, time seemed to freeze as the moonlight reflected from one blade onto the other. Alesk found himself idly wondering what would happen if they just stopped there and kept the light trapped there in it’s own personal hell. Would it forever repeat, like a series of facing mirrors, or would the reflective metal amplify it into a blinding beam? There was so much for him to learn.
Of course, it was all just adrenaline-fueled thoughts racing through his mind. Time was not frozen, and Frisk spun out of the way, narrowly avoiding getting skewered. He had the grace of a dancer as he twirled across the ground. Perhaps in another life he was. Alesk felt his muscles tense in anticipation. He leapt through the air, tackling the man to the ground. Frisk never saw him coming. Alesk was surprised how much it hurt when they landed. Frisk shoved Alesk off of him, and for a moment the two of them lay there in silence. Then they burst out into laughter. Alesk stumbled onto his feet and helped his opponent up.
“Boy, you tell me something. Are all our soldiers as incompetent as you?”
Alesk stood up and brushed the dust off his clothes. “Hey now, I wouldn’t be talking if I were you, mr Fancy Feet,” Frisk shoved Alesk back to the ground, and the arena was once again filled with their laughter. “Frisk, you sure you never served in the military?”
“Damn sure. I don’t care what they say about the military, there’s no line of work more noble than the family trade.” Frisk peeled open a panel on his sleeve and let out a long whistle. "Jesus, don’t you military boys have a curfew or something? I’d hurry along now if I were you. " Alesk opened his own sleeve panel.
Shit.
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Varattone, Colonus Pact
Judas no longer longed to sing. He had once, long ago. He had even gotten close, so painfully close, and yet still so far. It had been a long path before he learned that he wasn’t an abomination.
And it had taken so much longer before he truly believed it.
In his memories it was all so sudden, so unbelievably fantastical. It felt more like a nursery rhyme, the one where the ugly duckling isn’t so ugly after all. Once he had left his home to find a place in the stars, he had spent many a day with a group of human nomads. They had jokingly called him Judas, after the man who betrayed Jesus to his persecutors in ancient history. Judas kept the name, a symbol of defiance that seemed to ask “who betrayed who?” In a way, he was grateful to his betrayers. If not for their very nature, the same biology that branded him defective, he would have been conformed long ago.
The doors to his office opened, and his assistant scuttled in. She was breathtakingly beautiful. And that was as much as he allowed himself to notice. He was much too old now to start a family, another consequence of a life filled with doubt. Besides, she was young, full of life. She could never love him. Judas would die alone, but he could be happy knowing the service he’d done for his people. He could be happy knowing that his sacrifices would allow the ones like her to experience the joy he had never been allowed. And so he could live with a life of martyrdom. Because no matter what they said, he was still Mandi.
Self-sacrifice was in his blood.
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Alright, so I already had this story planned out, but writing it would take a long time and just bog me down in the end, so I’ll just summarize some of the more important stuff
As punishment for breaking curfew, Alesk is assigned escort duty for Governor Judas in an intra-Colonus diplomatic meeting with the Divinity Fragment. During talks on the ship, there’s a critical failure on the ship, causing it to crash (and killing the Jellie onboard). While Judas uses parts of the disabled Neural Net link in his head to repair the comms, Alesk tells the Priest about how humans reached Colonus.
Basically, there was a ship launched from earth where the passengers were in cryosleep for a long time. One of these passengers wakes up early, basically goes insane, and merges himself with the onboard ship systems- this is where the actual story would be starting.
From there, the fused passenger would start taking the other inhabitants and converting them into crude biomaterial (for any of you who’ve seen Murder Drones, all of this is pretty much based on the monster from episode 2). It would then follow a group of scattered passengers waking up and having to deal with the problem. Ultimately, they have to sever the ship in half using explosives, believing the inhabitants of the other side to be dead.
The priest would then reveal that the passengers of that half of the ship survived, crash landing on High Divinity, where they’d first spot organisms looking vaguely like jellyfish bobbing in the waves.
The Priest would then fatally wound Alesk, before being killed by Judas. Governor Lux and Scytheros would arrive just in time to see Alesk pass.
In the epilogue, Governor Lux would be talking about confronting the government of High Divinity, before Scytheros would reveal the confidential information that the Divinity Fragment isn’t actually a part of Colonus, but an autonomous Star Nation that agreed to work as a part of Colonus in exchange for eventually being given control of the human fragment. Scytheros reveals that he doesn’t trust them, and believes a war is coming (stay tuned for 20 ABT)
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