Radiation, Part Two

6/6/115
0200 hours
Luminaire System
Caldari Prime
Somewhere in the Kaalakiota Mountains


Aracturus awoke from his dream, and was greeted immediately by the pain. He gasped for air as pain surged through his lungs and his body, forcing him to consciousness. He rolled over on the floor of the small shack he had taken shelter in, to find that the radiation shields had turned off. He gasped in pain and placed a hand on his head, only to find his hair come off in his hand. as he rolled to his hands and knees, he saw the generator nearby, off. He began crawling towards it, but something stopped him.

A sound.

The wind howled through the rocks, and he stopped and listened to it, in wonder. The more he listened, the stronger he felt, until, feeling a surge of strength, he stood.

He knew what must be done.

Leaving his gear behind, he strode to the door, stepped out the door, and set off down the path, his feet seemingly following their own will. And as he walked, he felt an immense sense of purpose. His mind clouded, and he thought back to the dream of the night before.

He had been high above the world, in the clouds, shapeless, formless, and alone. He flew over the flat, dead, lifeless world, weeping. He had been this way for years, he knew, but somehow, he felt today was different. He suddenly felt something tingling on the back of his neck, and he turned and saw something entering the atmosphere. He flew towards  it with great speed, and when he arrived at the object, he stopped in awe.

It was a probe of some kind. Marked upon it in were strange symbols he did not understand. As it hit the ground, it was soon followed by another object.
A colony ship. Terraformers.

Joy surged through his veins as the terraformers surged to life, and people emerged from the colony ships, and he flew down to greet them. to his horror, they could not understand him. Or even see him. But he didn't care. He wasn't alone anymore! As the terraformers continued, mountains grew, and seas... but then a flash from the sky happened... and the people vanished.

For millennia he had sat, weeping, even as the terraformers transformed the world into a near-garden. It was still cold. Cold cold cold.

Then one day, he saw a small light in the distance. Swooping down towards it, he found a little fire, at the mouth of a cave. and a man sitting by the cave, on his knees, begging something to hear him.
He listened for a moment, and could almost understand him if he tried very hard.

The man was asking for food.

An idea came to his mind, and he saw a small animal nearby. The man could not see it, but he could. As his anger flashed towards it for evading the man, lightning surged from him, striking the animal, and killing it.

The man was amazed, and as if he could see aracturus, thanked him, and scurried to collect the animal.

The man whispered something as he ate.
North Wind.

The man would later found the Raata Empire.


As his vision cleared, aracturus stopped dead, and found himself standing before the shrine of Mountain Wind. A boulder had fallen onto the entrance, and dangled precariously over the small entryway

He crouched down, and began to squeeze inside.... when suddenly, the rock moved, and fell.
He was knocked flat on his stomach by the impact, and it took him a minute to realize... his leg was still under the rock. Feeling a surge of strength, he pushed with all his might on the boulder, pushing it off his leg. He screamed in pain as the rock rolled off, and then rolled right on down the path, off the mountainside.
Looking around, he saw rocks blocking the place where the wind was supposed to enter the shrine, which was made of many tall pillars in odd shapes.

Standing, he limped to the rockslide, and began shifting rocks like a madman. He could feel the pain from his leg along with the weakness and illness from the radiation creeping back into his muscles, but he carried on, until the rockslide was clear. As he shifted the last rock, his strength gave out, and he collapsed onto his hands and knees.

Dragging himself to the center pillar of the shrine, he heard the wind come whistling into the shrine.
And as his eyes closed for the last time on Caldari Prime, his mind was filled with one last vision of the Winds...

Radiation, part one.

Luminaire

Caldari Prime

Somewhere in the Kaalakiota Mountains.

Aprox. 16 km from Wreck of Shigeru

17:50 hours

Aracturus was doubled over on his side inside the small shack he had decided to take shelter for the night in. The Radiation Shield Projector he had set up to shield the bombed-out shack was holding - not that it mattered, he thought to himself as he ran his hand over his now-bald head.

Already he had received a fatal dose of Radiation. His medical scanners told him that already. He'd be dead in a few days regardless of anything anyone could do. He cursed his rotten luck as he rolled over in his bedroll, in immense pain.

He began to wonder what possessed him to come here in the first place, and so he played the hike over in his mind once more.

He had come to Caldari Prime as a Pilgrimage of sorts. In the southern portion of the Kaalakiota mountains there was a shrine to Mountain Wind. But recently, the Shigeru, a massive titan-class vessel, once the pride of the Caldari State, had crashed down nearby, and while the Shrine was nearly 15 kilometers from the crash site, the sheer size of the wreck caused debris and radioactive material to rain down upon it. Many of the waypoint markers on the path to the shrine had been damaged or destroyed, and the monk who tended the shrine was killed. It was for this reason, Aracturus told himself, that he had come here - to repair the shrine and it's waymarkers, but no - there was something bigger, more important drawing him - calling him - pulling him, to the mountains.

There had been a village at the start of the path - Kaalia - once a quiet hamlet through which only the occaisional pilgrim passed, now a hub of activity as mercernaries had set up a landing pad there for the recovery and clean-up effort. They had given him strict instructions to not venture within what they called the 'exclusion zone' - a no-mans-land stretching 15 kilometers in all directions from the forward half of the Shigeru's wreck. Even outside the exclusion zone, radioactive debris had fallen to the surface, in the form of unexploded nuclear ordinance, fuel from her auxiliary reactors, and tritanium alloys from her superstructure. The whole area was dead. Lifeless. Background radiation had forced him to wear radiation gear during the hike.

Things had went well the first day of the hike -  he repaired a few of the waypoint markers, and altered the path in some places to go around radiation hotspots, and encountered no debris.

The second day of the hike, though... he encountered a large pile of fissile material - debris from the Shigeru's arsenal - in a small crater next to the path. He had no choice. He called the Mercernaries in charge of the cleanup, and waited for the drone to arrive to take charge of the material.

It was about an hour into the wait when he noticed a metallic taste in his mouth, and a feeling like pins and needles on his face. In horror, he looked at his radiation shield that went over his radiation gear, and saw that it had failed. He was being irradiated! he scrambled to restarted the shield, and sighed in relief when it shimmered into life around him. Then that sigh turned into a cough. And then another.

Aracturus felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, one he wasn't entirely sure whether it was knowing he had just been irradiated, or the effects of radiation poisoning. Later that evening, as he was taking shelter in a small cave, he checked his dosimeter - and his heart sank at the reading.

187 rems.

He was going to die.

He was only three days from the shrine.

Aracturus carefully pulled himself up and walked to the window, the gap where the glass had been at some point long ago replaced with the shimmering field of the radiation protector. He looked out across the mountainside, seeing the dull orange-and-blue glow illuminating the immense column of smoke on the horizon - the Shigeru. It was then that he heard something. At first he thought it was his name.
But that was ridiculous. 

Probably my imagination, he thought.

A wind began to blow, and he heard it again.
He was sure of it this time.

The wind began to pick up, even higher this time, until the shack groaned and strained against the wind which battered it. Frightened, Aracturus stumbled and crawled into his safety-bag - a radiation-proof sack which was designed to be hid in in the event of fire, radiation, etcetera, until rescue could come. He had almost closed it, when he heard a soft voice whisper in his ear.

Do not fear.

Aracturus stopped dead, his eyes wide, his head spinning and dizzy as he looked around for the source of the voice.

But the voice was gone. 

The wind died down, but still remained, as a new thought entered his head.

Mountain Wind.

Aracturus' eyes rolled into the back of his head and he knew no more.