The Sun Cup

All along the Yesael Route lay no small number of undersea villages, every one of them connected to Yesael City, the greatest of the cities beneath the sea.

Most trilobite men had by now grown used to living upon the land, but some among them still preferred to dwell beneath the sea.

This route served also as a trade road, and merchants of the Yinsai Kingdom traveled back and forth along it constantly.

Several sea monsters of every shape cleared the way ahead. Upon the back of one enormous creature like a starfish grew a palace of bone, and there the King of Wisdom sat.

Hundreds of the Yinsai Kingdom's guardsmen kept watch on either side, and among them rode several priests mounted on bizarre shrimp.

Along the way, the most common creatures beneath the sea were trilobites, and here and there the shadows of Ancestral Fish could be glimpsed. As the trilobite men raised their shoals, that species was scattering into every corner of the ocean.

"The King of Wisdom has come!"

"Our Yinsai Kingdom's own supreme King has come!"

"Look, that's the mythical beast the divine bestowed upon us!"

All along the way, trilobite men in the villages of the Yinsai Kingdom celebrated the arrival of the King of Wisdom, Yesael. They gazed upon the fusion monster, huge as a small hill, and awe rose in them alongside their wonder.

Many even trailed along behind, seeing him off from a distance, until he and his procession had passed entirely from view.

When the divine was absent, Yesael was the god in their eyes.

At last they reached Yesael City, and thousands upon thousands of trilobite men streamed out from the seabed, rising to the surface to welcome their King.

The Lord of Yesael City surfaced from the water, climbed onto the fusion monster's back, and knelt before the palace.

"Great King of Wisdom, your people welcome your arrival."

Yesael stepped out as well and looked over these waters, sighing a little to himself.

"How long it has been since I last came back."

Under the Lord's guidance, the enormous fusion monster sank down beneath the sea.

Beneath the deep, clear blue of the sea, bubbles rose endlessly, one after another.

Where the sunlight refracted through the depths stood a magnificent undersea city, grand and towering.

Trilobite men dwelt here in great swaths, passing in and out of buildings sunk beneath the water. Some drove shoals of fish toward beds of underwater growth formed from Ancient Cup creatures, while small squads patrolled the waters above the city with bone spears in hand.

Once inside Yesael's old travel palace, the lord asked him cautiously, "King of Wisdom, what is it that brings you back this time?"

Yesael did not answer. He put a question of his own first. "In all these years, has anyone set foot in the God-Given Land again? Or rather... has anyone so much as laid eyes on it?"

The Lord of Yesael City froze for a moment. "There has been no word of the God-Given Land for decades. Had you not spoken of it yourself, my King, I would all but have forgotten that it lies in these waters at all."

"I cannot even remember now which way it lies."

"It should be..."

He strained to think. Something within his mind seemed to press down directly upon his memory of where the God-Given Land lay, and try as he might, he could recall nothing at all.

As soon as he had finished speaking, realization struck him.

"My King, surely you do not mean to return there again..."

The Lord of Yesael City grew agitated.

The second King of Wisdom, Yesael, gazed into the depths of the sea, and bit by bit his eyes came to mirror the eyes Redlichia had worn in days long past.

The same devotion. The same steadiness.

"I wish only to look upon the God-Given Land once more. I do not ask to bask again in God's glory. I seek only the faintest thread of guidance."

"I want God to guide me, and to guide the future of the trilobite men."

"And how we, Redlichia's descendants, may atone for our sin."

Upon the boundless sea, a band of trilobite men and several fusion monsters crisscrossed the water, combing the region in a wide, sweeping search.

For more than half a month they wandered like the eyeless worms of the seafloor, yet found nothing at all.

They searched every place there was to search, from the surface down to the seabed, but could not find so much as a single trace.

Some unseen and formidable power seemed to steer them away from the legendary God-Given Land. No matter how hard they strove, no matter how much thought and effort they spent, they could not draw one step closer to that hall belonging to the divine.

"It should be right here. It has to be right here."

"Why can we never find the God-Given Land?"

Atop the palace carried on the fusion monster's back, an aged trilobite nobleman broke down entirely.

"This is divine punishment!"

"God has made it so that we can never go back to that promised paradise."

The trilobite man rushed outside, out to face the boundless sea.

He fell to his knees atop the fusion monster's head, weeping bitterly.

He had once been among the most nobly born of all the powerful families in the old God-Given City.

Unlike the young, who held nothing for the God-Given Land but longing and dreams, he had witnessed with his own eyes the catastrophe that broke out between the first King of Wisdom and Ense, the sinner who profaned the divine.

He had felt the shock of the first King of Wisdom's death, and the sorrow of being driven by God from the God-Given Land.

He had been born beneath the divine's own protection, and had grown up gazing upon the divine's own hall.

He had listened, growing up, to the great first King of Wisdom, Redlichia, proclaim that they were the divine's own eldest son.

He had watched from afar, wailing and weeping, as the God-Given City slipped little by little from sight. The older he grew, the more fiercely he longed to return beneath God's protection.

He was overcome with despair.

"We... may never be able to return to the God-Given Land at all."

His own generation could still find their way to these waters, relying on hazy memory and old records. But what of a few generations more!

Yesael raised the old man to his feet, this elder who had once followed his father, and said, "God will forgive us."

"We are children wandering out in the world, and one day we will surely come home."

Yesael had thought that even if he could not set foot upon the God-Given Land, a distant glimpse of it would be enough. In the end he returned disappointed.

Still unwilling to give up, he set others to go on searching the surface of the sea for any trace of the God-Given Land.

He clung to a fragile hope.

Perhaps, in this way, the divine might see his devotion, and his unyielding resolve.

The God-Given Land

A sea of golden Sun Cups, grown thick and wild, had crept across the ruined city, and on this whole vast island Shelly was the only living thing still free to move as she wished. The place was her garden now.

Ordinarily she sat upon the temple steps, imitating God as she watched the sunset and the moon, or else gazed up at God's statue deep inside.

She could watch for an entire day at a time.

Sometimes she wandered instead through the sea of flowers across the ruined city, playing with the crowns of the Sun Cups, breathing in the fragrance of the blossoms.

These Sun Cups had cracked the once-orderly stone paths entirely apart. Shelly made her way out of the ruined city, wading through a sea of blossoms taller than she was, all the way to the shore.

She came to the very spot where God had once had her plant her first Sun Cup, and picked up the stone flowerpot she had long ago cast aside.

Gurgle gurgle~

She plucked up one golden blossom, meaning to stuff it into the flowerpot and cradle it in her arms, just as she always had.

Torn violently from the earth, this half-plant, half-animal flower let out a shrieking hiss at once.

Then it bared its fangs, sharp as knives.

It struggled once, and Shelly's hand, gripping it tight, gave a single wrenching pull.

Snap!

The flower's stem broke clean in two.

Dead?

Gurgle gurgle?

Shelly made the sound, and thought no more of it.

She tossed the broken halves of the Sun Cup into the sea, then reached her merciless hand toward the next one.

In the water the Sun Cup Flower drifted away on the current, fading little by little until it vanished in the distance.