Blood and Stone

{|style="width:100%; color:#FFF;"
|valign="top" style="padding:5px;"|
 
----
The very first thing that Kino ‘Letham noticed when he struck the wall was that it was hollow. It crumbled before his hammer like dry dirt before a windstorm. A small hole betrayed no line of sight into whatever lay on the other side. Kino peered into the dust and debris floating about in the slim hole that he created, illuminated by a frustum of light. He furrowed his brow, mandibles twitching in irritation. This was a room that no one had bothered to tell him about. How predictable.
No one held any respect for the Builders of these Keeps. No one paid any mind to the necessary functions performed by the, so-called, ‘lesser’ Sangheili. The social rejects, serfs, and lowest rung on the social ladder were all one thing in the eyes of nobles and soldiers; failures.
All of them. It didn’t matter who did what, if a weapon was not in one's hand when they did it, and it did not leave a thousand smoldering corpses in its wake, the deeds of lesser Sangheili went largely unnoticed.
So it was no wonder that a Builder was not informed about a room when expanding the Keep. He was just expected to know everything.
Scoffing, Kino put away his hammer and pried the hole apart with his bare hands. The nobility could chew him out all they wanted, that didn’t stop the fact that they were at fault here. He would be punished, of course. Public flagellation, stockades, ‘failure to uphold one's duty’, they would call it.
He didn’t care. He was old, old enough to remember the time when the Keeps around them burned to the ground, time and time again. Old enough to remember the wailing women and questioning glances from the children when their fathers and guardians did not return from the Blooding Wars. He was old enough to remember the first throes of zealous fury, going up all around the planet, when the Covenant told them of Humanity.
Kino spat down onto the floor. The glob spluttered and spat in the midday suns. The Covenant. Despondent, faithless cowards, all of them. They would blindly lead the entire species of Sangheili to their dooms, exterminating an entire species for the sake of some false zealotry. 
No, he had no hatred for the Humans. He had hatred for the unworthy, and the only unworthy one in the holy war that almost saw the Humans’ extinction was the dogs that lead the Covenant. No words could describe their kind. 
He sighed, realising he had pried down half of the wall in his ruminations. His arms suddenly ached. With a blink of surprise, Kino realised that he had been channeling his anger into ripping apart stone. Shaking his sore muscles, he picked up the hammer once more, raised it above his head, and brought it back down.
Now where was the mighty race of Sangheili?
He struck the stone with a thump. It crumbled.
They were toiling in the dirt, desperately clinging to some form of stability while their enemies closed in around them.
Kino hit the wall again. 
The Covenant had made the Sangheili weak. The Jiralhanae had made them weaker. Now, the Humans were gaining strength, advancing at a pace that they had never before seen in any species, while the Elites were scraping around in the dirt for technological secrets, long withheld from them by the Prophets.
Again, and again, and again. Thump, thump, thump, the last of the wall crumbled away.
Kino’s only wish was that he could live long enough to see the glory of Sanghelios restored. Towering spires, shining lights in the sky, and a hundred thousand ships burning bright with the resplendent glory of the triple suns of Sanghelios, blotting out the very Stars themselves!
He blinked, a smile parting his mandibles at the thought. With a solemn sigh, he instead stepped into the room. 
He was unlikely to see such glory.
He reached to the belt wrapped around his tunic, picking out a small, spherical orb of pink and purple. Clicking a button on the side, he brought the hand holding it up to about shoulder level, and let it go. The pink and purple surface roiled, three interconnecting spheres swivelled about to reveal a shining light.
With the extra illumination, Kino stepped into the dark, decrepit old room. 
There were mounts for Sconces along the walls. Something covered the wall in a shine that hadn’t lost any of its lustre, despite the motes of large dust swimming in the air. Kino held a part of his tunic up over his nostrils, refusing to breathe the stale air of the long-forgotten room.
Perhaps it was an old storehouse. An ancient larder, perhaps? There was a sickly sweet smell, like that of rot and decay. Though, perhaps that was the pile of papers and parchment sitting in one corner.
Kino raised his eyebrows at them, and began making his way to the wicker baskets in which they were kept. He grasped one, and drew his hand away from the orb. It hovered in the air with a low, pulsating sound.
Perhaps, he thought, this was a records room. Something that might quell the ire of the Nobles for his transgression into an ancient part of the Keep. Maybe his punishment would be less severe.
The desk in which Kino sat the papers and parchments down on was cluttered with tools, utensils, and what appeared to be some form of mathematical utensils. They were strange to him, an odd combination of mechanical hinges and manual releases.
Kino tossed one over his shoulder and lay the papers back down flat. He unrolled one, and was rewarded for his trouble by a swarm of insects that were notorious for their lust for feasting on parchment. They swarmed his face, clearly agitated at being woken up.
Kino most certainly did not yelp in surprise. He did, however, cough, splutter, and hack, as the vile creatures kicked up plumes of dust, and some of them even got a tad too close to his open jaws. He turned away from the vile stench of age, and the insects that came with it. They fluttered around the room for a moment, before disappearing out through the wall he had knocked down. 
Kino momentarily forgot the paper, cursing at the insects with garbled speech and a raised fist, swearing them all manner of death should they return.
Turning back to the paper, he unrolled it once more, brushing a stray insect that still clung to it off onto the floor. It landed on its back, wings flapping uselessly and making patterns in the dust, while its legs kicked and twisted.
Kino thought about crushing it, but he left it be. It caused him no harm, if it remained on the paper. There was no point wasting his energy, especially when they had been guarding stores of ancient lore, albeit indirectly.
Scoffing, he seated one arm on the table, pinning the roll of parchment open. It was just as likely that they were eating it, rather than guarding it. 
He idly read the first few lines—they were standard in their prose. Their date marked the Age of Abandonment. His eyes widened at that. This was not merely ancient, this was antediluvian. This was prehistoric. He paid a bit more attention to the following lines, even if they were steeped in religion and allegory. 
Kino’s brow knit together. He held the paper tighter. The insect from the ground hopped up onto the table. Kino read the phrase, reread them, and then a third time, not daring to believe what he saw.
This was no storeroom. This was no larder, library, or reliquary. This was an ancient Shipwright’s Chambers; a housing of knowledge and designs for space vessels. He spun around, his breathing rapid, heart hammering in his chest.
This was where they stored data on all the ships the ancient Sangheili used, before the Writ of Union, before the Prophets controlled technology. Before even their first contact with the Sangheili empire.
The mounts on the wall, he thought they were for torches. How foolish.
Kino approached one with all the reverence of a worshipper at the feet of a god itself. He approached with caution, as tentatively as a stray domestic pet. He dared not even entertain the notion, even as he reached for one of the mounts he thought he would find nothing.
His thoughts of seeing Sanghelios return to glory came back, and they came back with force. His fingers stroked one of the mounts. It hissed, retracted from his touch like a reptile. Then, with agonising slowness, it parted.
Kino fell to his knees. Enclosed within, on a crystalline structure no bigger than his fist, was a pink holographic data lattice. A wealth of ancient knowledge; a reminder of the might of old Sangheili. 
Kino reached for it, plucking it from its housing, and holding it in his hands. There were buttons on the side he dared not press, lest he erase the data, or cause irrevocable harm to it. And yet, he could not stop himself from selecting the button on the front of the device.
It sprang to life, depicting an image of a mighty vessel. It arched downward, like the blade of a sickle, and behind it were two long offshooting branches, like insect legs. The upper end of the ship, at the back, sported a hollow circular hole, which sparked and thrummed with energy even in its virtual state.
Kino looked up, and around. The other mounts were coming open. More and more data lattices—more and more crystalline stores. He started laughing. Deep, thrumming laughter.
The insect on the ground finally righted itself, flapped its mighty wings, and took to the skies; it was no longer helpless.
----
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories
Category:The Weekly Winners