33 - The Living Cluster

We took a different path to Eden than I remember walking from after birth. That time we went directly to the Nest district, not passing through any other part of the city. Now we are walking in the "Gym" district towards the center, where Mother rests. It's a direct path from here to Eden, much similar to the one from the Nest. I imagine that the city is built around Mother, it is highly probable that every district can have a direct path leading to her ground.

Lots of other teams were following the same path. Well, it is safe to say that everyone will be attending the ceremony, the entire Gym district was headed to the same place. Many, many teams.

Mother was visible from everywhere, she was not only giant but also positioned above everyone, in an elevated ground that, for lack of a better name, I'm going to call a mountain. The straight path led to some stairs, we walked up to see a copy of the gate I remember.

A big red and golden gate stood magnificent between us and Mother. I remember that from that side of the gate I could not see the city, and true enough, once we passed through the gate the city vanished, I could only see smoke outside.

I could not feel this barrier the last time, I guess I did not have enough mana sense to, but now… It felt like we were jumping into a pool. The feeling only lasted for a second, but we could feel it, very strongly. Once in, the air was pure, the mana density high. Higher than anywhere we have been, even higher than the Nest's Core.

Jade led us to the same section where all the people entering through this gate were heading. It is clear for anyone to see, every team was composed of a bunch of inexperienced lost girls and a guide.

The place where we stopped had 'marks' on the ground. Every meter or so a spot of darker grass grew. We were told to stay on top of one, but still close to the team and her. Jade chose the first dark spot and we followed the lead, we occupied all the marked places after her in a straight line.

The spots near us were filled by other teams, leaving no open ones. We stayed there, standing on the dark grass for about 20 to 30 minutes before the same omnipresent voice that I remember from the Nest spoke.

"Welcome to the Eden young ones. We shall teach your..." The voice continues to lecture us on the importance of this mega ritual. For about 5 minutes the voice talked, I had never heard the voice talk more than a couple of sentences, that was a surprise.

We would be offering our bodies to Mother today, to help her sprout new life into this world. By offering our bodies, they meant that we would function as a big mana network to improve Mother's circulation or something like this. My guess is that we will be used to form a structure similar to a computer cluster. Mother functions as the main computer and we would be auxiliary nodes.

Jade moved from her spot after the voice went silent. She conjured some paper and handed it to us. All the other instructors nearby did the same to their own team.

"Sing helps us synchronize with Mother, these are the lyrics… well, they are a set of sounds in a specific order, the meaning was lost with our ancestors, but it's still very effective for uniting us, which is why we still sing it. No other combination of sounds works better than this one" Thats surprising. Who would have guessed that the meaning of such an important song would have been forgotten and lost with the passage of time, right?

The paper she handed us had 5 lines of random syllabus. We would need to memorize the sound and order of the syllabus to perform together with everyone. I never understood what they sang during every ritual, I just assumed it was an ancient language with a profound holy meaning… I guess it may still be, we just don't know it.

"I'm going to give you some time, be sure to memorize it correctly" The girls were smart and had excellent memory, they would be fine with 15 minutes of memorization time, but 2 hours were given.

2 fucking hours later. I wanted to burn that damn paper. Lucyra kept on reading, repeatedly, she had it perfectly memorized for more than one hour, but she kept reading it, until an order to stop came. The order came from the omnipresent voice.

"We will now begin the trial song, sing!"

I could hear a small voice from the front, the voice began to get louder and louder as more people joined the choir. It took only a couple of seconds until everyone was singing together. It was not nearly as perfect as it should be, but hey… that's why it was a trial right? To teach us.

Took about 4 repetitions to start sounding good, like what I usually hear when the more experienced are singing. The 'trial' song had the duration of exact 10 repetitions. By them the new batch of singers were doing fairly ok. One could tell they were not as used to singing as the older ones, but it was good enough.

"The ritual should start in about 30 minutes, you can sit and rest until then." They did, no one said a single word. The sky was clear with lots of glowing stars, two big moons and a small one showering light at us. The silence reigned until the ritual started.

A mana pulse signaled Mother's awake. We all felt it. We all stood up.

A minute goes by and another pulse comes. Stronger. We all felt the urge to kneel. And we did. Mother's presence grew and we could feel her pressuring us, not a bad pressure, it's just that her existence and mana were too strong, we felt like it would crush us. But none despaired, we all trusted our lives to Mother.

Another pulse, even stronger and we felt the urge to start singing, no command needed to be given. This time we all started in sync from the beginning. Mana started to flow out of us and connect to the ground. A strong bond formed. We sang.

The bond grew until our minds were not our own any more. We were a single entity with Mother. We sang.

Mother's will is our will. We sang.

Mana came flowing into us, circulating in our bodies, using our entire self as a single node in a vast giant system. We sang.

Mana floated into the air, the concentration of mana skyrocket. The night sky glowed. Multiple aurora-like lights danced in the sky. We sang.

Mother's leaves began to fall, one by one, they fell. But none got into the ground, they disintegrated midair, adding to the mana and forming more lights. We sang.

The mana in the air was being channeled to Mother's roots using our bodies as proxies. The entire ritual was a giant mana circulation system. We sang.

When all of Mother leaves had fallen, small sprouts formed all over her branches. We sang.

The sprouts grew, mana visible to the eye, flowing from the roots to the branches and being absorbed into the sprouts. They grew. Mana from the air was being absorbed all over Mother's roots. Enormous quantities of mana were being cycled by the second. We sang.

The sprouts grew into small flower buds. Not small, I know they are big enough to hold a child inside, but from the ground they look small. The flower buds showered in Mother's mana grew more and more. The blooming started. We continued to sing.

Small globes of light started to leave the flowers and one by one, they flew to the ground, all headed in the same direction, to the left of us. But I could not see them getting on the ground. I knew what was going to happen now.

A new, very weak pulse and we all felt the urge to stop singing. We stopped.

All in perfect sync. We stand and wait. Most of the mana stopped flowing, the world no longer glowed as much. For more than one hour we waited.

Without warning a strong hungry mana pulse came from Mother. It was different from the other pulses. She was starved in need of nourishment.

The starved sensation Mother was emitting made us all drop to our knees. We placed our hands on the floor and offered up our own mana to her. No command or explanation needed. We were just following our instincts.

I could hear weak screams coming from where the newborn children were dropped. The feeling of starvation Mother was emitting vanished.

I finally understood what happened on that first day.