Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 9: Family Matters, Part 2

"The Ancients," Reinhardt finished for her. "The dirty business of the Ancients."

Everyone else was soon to join in; Geraldine, Leo, and John Wesley stepped up and surrounded us, namely Reinhardt. He had the information we needed to stop Ishmael from turning the world into his personal playground.

"How did you come to know of the Ancients?" I asked Reinhardt.

"It was a hobby I had," he noted. "Back then, the interwebs wasn't even as good as it is now, information was scant, but less censored."

"Okay, go on, interwebs slow, walked thirty miles without shoes in twelve-foot snow."

"So—I was always interested in the progenitors and their notes on sorcery. A few of the conspiracy and history sites that were hard to find on the open web had information on them. The C.o.N. was blocking information on them even back then; they were good people, the C.o.N would say, they were our ancestors, we should look highly on them."

"What did you really find out about them?"

"Some of the dig sites uncovered had photos leaked online. Ritual sacrifices, old artwork of the Ancients murdering He and She, mass murder chambers, cloning machines that were far-too-advanced given what the C.o.N. were saying about them. Some of the conspiracy boards would say that the C.o.N. were flooded with ancestors of the elites of the Ancients, but I wasn't so sure. They also said lizard people infiltrated the government."

"Which is silly," She remarked. "The lizardfolk of Plucrates don't even know of humanity's existence."

"Of Plucrates?" I asked. "Wait, there are actual lizardfolk—"

"That's besides the point," Reinhardt interrupted. "The truth of it, I came to, is that the C.o.N. is afraid of people knowing of their past. That we are parts of the Ancient's unwanted castes. They didn't want people to get the wrong ideal."

"Typhous told me of us being descendants of the Ancient's unwanteds."

"Did he tell you that we ran them off the planet?"

"No," I said, my eyes flicking about. "No, he did not."

"The Ancients left on shuttles to the far-off planets out of fear of us."

"Why?"

"That one is easy," She said. "Your ancestors, all the unwanteds, were able to kill them."

Reinhardt nodded in agreement. "While I can't be certain of it, evidence shown that they left in a hurry. The ships took centuries to make ahead of this event, but a lot of them were not fully completed. Some of the Ancients tried to leave, and what I've seen of the sites of their temples, they were ambushed. We can see the scars of war and the bones of those who fell. But since both sides were the same people, it was hard to distinguish what happened. We could only speculate."

"What can we do against such creatures?" I asked, my hopes rising when I heard we could fight them back.

"Faith," She said, slowly stepping up and looking down at me and Reinhardt.

"Faith, boy," he said to me. "Faith is the word the old unwanted castes used over and over in what little scraps we can find of them. They had the Radiant and the Darkness on their side. The Ancients had to hide from their fates, from their righteous judgment. They knew themselves wrong in what they did, but they justified it to themselves."

I looked between the two. "Then they left out of fear of an uprising."

She nodded. "Not just that though. They left to become stronger. They wanted to learn to kill gods."