The smoke had yet to clear, and the sour stench of shattered Insect Corpses still lingered over the scorched earth.
The Red Tide Knights were clearing the battlefield, recovering fragments of the explosive devices and burying their fallen comrades with meticulous care.
A figure in a silvery-white cloak quietly skirted the crowd and approached the collapsed remains of the Brood Hive alone.
Eduardo Calvin, Duke Calvin's third son and an ecclesiastical investigator for the Golden Feather Flower, had not spoken a word since the battle began.
Even when the Brood Hive was destroyed, he had merely stared at it with a frown, as though he had sensed something inexplicably familiar.
Why do I feel... as if I've seen it before?
The ruined hive before him resembled a charred stone embryo, with traces of still-wet slime visible in its cracks.
And biological tissue that should never have existed in this world.
It still twitched, as if even in death it refused to abandon some mission to bring forth life.
"...It's too similar," he murmured, finally stepping forward.
Eduardo removed his glove, revealing his faintly glowing right palm. A golden marking resembling a feather, yet not quite one, appeared at its center.
It was divine grace bestowed upon him by the pope himself, granting him the ability to read the lingering memories of the dead.
This was also why the Church had sent him to investigate the Archmage's whereabouts.
"If you ever possessed consciousness... then tell me."
His palm brushed the fleshy wall that had once been an egg-laying chamber. For an instant, the earth seemed to shudder.
Boom!
It was as though his mind had been set ablaze, and a surging tide of information crashed into him.
Crying, laughter, wailing, incantations, blood, fire, flesh, gestation, devouring.
Thousands upon thousands of memories