The End... Again...

     Rushing over to the desk with all of SERVERE's books piled high atop it, AMPHIS pushed them all to one side and began to frantically search for the one yellow book bound with the yellow cover. OROTHO, THEXIS, Joe and Amie slowly walked into the lab behind us, all looking rather baffled at our hurried excitement; aside from OROTHO and COLUS, the others hadn't said a word when in the discussion room. They were likely thinking over everything that UOPETA had said to COLUS, and I didn't blame them for taking so long in doing so. It had taken me a while to fully understand the situation, but even now there were bits of it that didn't quite slot together properly...

"What do you hope to find in this book then? Presumably if SERVERE himself directed you to it, it must contain some rather valuable information..."

"My thoughts exactly, although finding it was going to be the first task to overcome..."

"I think you've found it, AMPHIS."

"Eh...?"

AMPHIS looked at Amie with a look of complete and utter bewilderment, whilst the rest of us tried to hide our smiles. Despite searching the entire surface and the sides of the desk, AMPHIS held the yellow book in his left hand, as though he had forgotten about picking it up. Amie pointed to the book in his hand and smiled.

"There's the yellow book. There's only one book with a yellow cover, remember? You said that yourself..."

"So I did..."

AMPHIS cleared away the remaining books and pieces of paper from the top of the desk, before placing the yellow covered one in the now clear space. Stooping down, he then picked up a pencil and fresh piece of paper he had knocked aside, and sat down on the chair behind the desk.

"Right then... Let's begin. I'll decode the first page, and then when you UOPETA and THEROS decode the second and third page, I'll work on the Latin translation of the first. Let's see how much we can reveal!"

UOPETA and THEROS sat down before AMPHIS and looked at the page upside down as it was decoded. Meanwhile, I sat with the others and filled in the bits that were obviously still gaping holes to them...

     Over the time it took to decode and translate five pages of the book, I had updated the others about everything we had encountered since leaving the base. The underground basement beneath the outpost, the burial of the skeleton before we knew, strange occurrences with the hidden room within the library, footprints in the sand and mud, which inevitably led to talk of the actual meeting with SERVERE. They were more or less quiet until I got to that part, at which point they began to ask many questions. Well, THEXIS did, however OROTHO, Amie and Joe seemed to remain oddly silent. The questions ranged from simple, unimportant ones that sounded half-hearted such as "what did he look like" up to more deep questions like "how did you feel when you saw him"... However, I answered them all more or less in the same manner as I was pretty much frozen with shock at the time. All I could remember with any clarity was SERVERE appearing out of nowhere; the air around him shimmering like rippling water, and his face... That scar...

"So... HoN Co. are making use of this light refractive technology... Interesting..."

Everyone turned to OROTHO, who was looking into his open hands thoughtfully, muttering something to himself. It would certainly seem that way. Nothing I knew of could make an entire person reappear and disappear at will... OROTHO looked up after a moment or so, with the first question of the evening...

"Did you manage to see if he was wearing a red backpack or back place for the armour?"

Thinking hard, trying to visualise everything that had happened, I couldn't think back to any point where he exposed his back to us. Even when he disappeared, he was entirely invisible before turning around.

"Erm, if you lot are finished with the catch up, you might like to know we're getting somewhere over here..."

I stopped and we all went over to where UOPETA, THEROS and AMPHIS had been working for the past half hour or so...

"What have you found? Is this about the Ascension?"

"Oddly enough... No. It seems to be about... The End... Again..."

"The End...?"

"Remember? A few weeks back, Syeonyx, UOPETA and THEROS stumbled upon a chamber with a book inside called Finis? It detailed an event called the End which I later reinterpreted as a place, a physical location rather than an occurrence... This seems to be an extension of that book."

"There's pictures too. Here, take a look..."

The image before us was that of another End man, however this time it was surrounded by other End men. Either smaller ones, or ones off in the distance... It was hard to tell...

"What does this mean...? What does SERVERE know that we don't...?"

"I don't know, but I get the impression that we're going to find out with the more we translate..."

Syeonyx signing off