"Smallest of Gifts - Prologue" by Brian D. Saul

For as long as recorded history has existed, the church of the Maker had overseen the lives of the people. Its purpose was to address matters moral, spiritual, and even technological, for knowledge of such things was seen as a gift from the Maker.

The Holy City of Xemyx was the seat of power by for the church, and over the years grew beyond that of even the most glorious of city plates. It was constructed, updated, modified by the latest in technological breakthroughs. Also inherent in its construction were things impossible by any known technology. Gifts from the Maker, or so the priests said.

Over time, the Holy City outgrew its simple plate, and thus, so it is said, the Maker granted unto them the ability to span the void with bridges constructed of the purest of light. With this gift came further knowledge, and it is said that the four spiritual leaders of the church, the A'Myls, saw within it another potential use. And so it was the great domes which protected Xemyx from the harsh winds of the void were cast off. The five plates, connected by their gleaming bridges, now stood enshrouded in domes of light, which neither wind, nor the greatest of storms, could penetrate. The great spires of Holy Xemyx shone out through the void, like a great beacon in the void to all the followers of the Maker.

Great miracles were performed within the cities glittering crystalline halls, feats of faith impossible in places not so personally blessed by the Maker. It is said that such was the power of the faith, that they were capable of healing even the ravages of Phyric poisoning within its followers.

The Great Multi-Continental City of Xemyx stood for nearly three thousand years. The priests oversaw the daily lives of virtually every colonized plate within the void. Life, people were led to believe, was peaceful and prosperous.

Then came the Day of Revelation. The Great Revelation was not a day of renewed spiritual belief, it was instead, to be the the end of all such belief.

A great tragedy befell the nearby city plate of Threx. A storm of unparalleled strength swept across the plate like a wave of rolling air and energy, leveled half the city, leaving thousands dead, and even more injured. The survivors, injured or otherwise, were shuttled into Xemyx, where the amphitheater within the great temple was set up as a temporary hospital. The coming miracle, the healing of all those who had survived the trajedy, was to be the churches greatest gift to humanity since the completion of Xemyx itself. The miracle was transmitted to all the major city plates via the newly completed Crystream communication network.

The four A'myls ceremonially took their places around the altar which stood as the centerpiece for the great amphitheater. Solemnly they began their plea to the Maker, even as the wounded around them sang in tune to the hymn which filled the air. Slowly minute rays of light began to snake their way across all the amphitheater's crystalline surfaces. The sound of the Hymn, and the prayers, rose to almost deafening proportions, surely a sign that the Maker's blessing was upon them.

A bright flash of light filled the chamber, followed shortly by the shattering of crystal. Then, before the eyes of two hundred thousand people, spread across seventeen city plates, the survivors of the Threx tragedy and the high priests themselves were obliterated.

It did not take long for the damage to spread. With the central chamber of the great temple in ruins, the integrity of the entire complex was put in jeopardy. Thousands more perished over the next cycle as the Great Temple gave way, but it did not end there. Shattering crystal gives off a certain tone, and curiously enough in its own destruction the resonant ringing of the crystal which made up the temple was of just the right pitch to break any other like it nearby. Unlike most other city plates, Xemyx was carved from one type of crystal, and only the purest of its kind. Had they used different materials within it's construction, things might not have ended as they did. As it was, it caused a chain reaction throughout the rest of the city. Thus, the entire central city plate of Xemyx rang through the void, even as its great spires cracked and gave way under the sound. So great was the ringing that many believe the light shields around its satellite cities were all that saved the great multi-continental city of Xemyx from complete destruction.

The fanatics were the first to come up with an explanation of what happened. It was clear to them that the people of Threx had sinned, and that was why the Maker saw fit to destroy their city, and in the end, the whole of its people. So great was their sin that their mere presence tainted all around them. Thus the Maker saw it necessary to destroy his most holy of cities. That those who had earned it may be joined in his embrace and thus cleansed of the taint, and so he might deal with those who had forced him to unleash such a horror upon his children, of whom he loved so dearly. The truth, it would be discovered, was much worse.

As with Threx but a few cycles before, scores of people from across the void flocked to the ruins to render aid. With its leaders, and most of its high ranking officials dead, there was little to keep prying eyes out of things they were not meant to see. The Templars did what they could, but their numbers were scarce, and what could be scraped together was not enough to guard the whole of the ruins of Xemyx. It took nearly fourteen cycles, but as was inevitable, the rescue workers found their way through the rubble of the Great Temple.

The whole of the void had hoped that somehow, someone within had survived. As the teams scoured the ruins, all they found was rubble, but more frightening still were the distinctively blue shards of Phyric crystal...the remains of the survivors. That alone had told people something was terribly wrong. The church had since officially taken up the standpoint of the fanatics, that a great sin had been committed and that those killed were to be cleansed by the Maker. Yet, for centuries the church had claimed that Phranine, the material which made the very air lethal under the proper circumstances, was an instrument used by the most unholy of the Makers protegee to undo that which he had wrought. The church had made its stand, and now was at a loss to explain why the maker would use the very thing created to oppose him, as a merciful way of bringing his children back into his arms.

That was merely the beginning. As the teams uncovered more of the ruins, fueled by renewed curiosity by the findings within the Great Temple, they pored over the rubble in greater detail now. They sought not just survivors now, but answers. What they found were things the whole of civilization was never meant to know.

Conductive wiring lined virtually every building block of the city, which blended perfectly and almost invisibly into the type of crystal the whole city was constructed of. What was more, when charged it caused the wiring to give off a very holy sort of glow, which due to its origin seemed to come from the structures themselves. The huge paintings, reliefs, tapestries, and various other decorations that the public was never allowed near, hid even more oddities. The Holy City of Xemyx seemed to the rescuers like a great technological playground. Things beyond explanation were uncovered, but more disturbingly still was what the workings of those few the engineers could salvage. Within minutes of activation they had mere, mundane, engineers performing miracles thought reserved for only the most holy of priests.

It was not long before news stared to spread, and very slowly it all started to unravel. Protesters filled the streets demanding answers, fanatics proclaimed the desecration of Xemyx signaled the end, and the church in its weakened state was left helpless to respond. The killing blow, however, was what the search parties found in a long forgotten vault sealed away beneath the Great Temple. It was not the holy texts within that did it, instead it was the rough drafts of such texts. A holy text very quickly loses its holiness when one finds various versions of them signed by an author other than the Maker himself, with little footnotes, comments, and critiques scrawled on their pages. Who in their right mind, after all, would give the Maker of all humanity a bad review of one of his texts? One loses faith very quickly when, mixed into the guidelines that all true believes of the Maker were supposed to follow, was a tiny comment stating quite simply, “Complexity confuses the masses, shorten these so they'll understand without question.”

The teams that made the discovery very nearly did not make it out of the city. Up until then the Templars, the guardians of the temple, had been civil to the rescuers. The moment word got out that a group had found the vault, they became openly hostile, their intent was not to let anyone leave the temple grounds alive. Hundreds died in vain, cut down by the gleaming weapons of these holy knights, for in the end they failed. Word spread through the void like a stormwall washing over the plates, and over the course of only a few cycles, eons of religion, belief, and control, completely collapsed.

Open rioting filled the streets of the remaining inhabitable areas of Xemyx and most other major city plates. Believers, non believers, fanatics, doom sayers, prophets claiming to know the true god... When total chaos ensued, they were indistinguishable from one another.

As centuries of belief and teachings came crashing down around them, no one truly wanted to believe the truth. There had always been the skeptics, people who refused to believe that their life, destiny, their very soul was merely under the direction of a higher being. Yet, to even scarcely believe such a being exists is to believe that there was more than simply what one could see. With the fall of the church, everyone, even the skeptics, who had finally gotten the confirmation that there truly was no Maker, unraveled. For to know within your heart that no such being exists, nor ever did, was to know nothing awaited after their time was up. There were no golden hewn gates, no glimmering fields, no great father waiting to embrace his children. There was nothing. Once the body was spent, their existence ended.

No one really wanted to believe, yet, in time, they did.

With the churches collapse, civilization very nearly tore itself apart looking for a meaning which had been there all along. An unrecorded amount of time had passed by that point in history. Xemyx was but a memory now, its gleaming shields of light long since extinguished, its bridges across the void gone, the great spires of the temple and adjoining cities collapsed. For all its greatness, it succumbed to the ravages of nature as all things did. The many great city plates had been rent asunder, but even now slowly recovered under a renewed belief. Many perished, victims of the riots, the fanatics, or themselves, before this ideal started to spread. The ideal came of its own. There were no doctrines to follow, no preaching to be done, it very simply stated the preciousness of life.

There were those who resisted the ideal, that refused to let go of the old ways, but for the rest, this was all there was. A peace unlike any other settled over those who took it up as their own. Life itself was the most precious of things, not to be thrown away, trivialized, nor taken. For without anything beyond, one must make use of what is available, while it is still available.

Thus, with their ideal embraced, slowly the rebuilding of their once great civilization had begun anew.