“My original world?” Surprise flickered in Heron’s eyes, a pebble dropping into still water. “Why ask that now? The Valkyrie sisters showed you the histories, right? I never capped your access.”
She’d thrown the library doors wide like a city gate at dawn. The Zerg Maiden read with Valkyries as lantern-bearers, and the core computer burned like a cold sun. So why ask her?
“After reading, I found you led the world’s upheaval, Mother,” the Zerg Maiden said, gaze clear as spring water. “But the records kept your thoughts silent. I want to know why you reformed that old civilization.”
Heron felt a soft warmth and a pinch of ache, like wind meeting reeds. The Zerg Maiden’s spirit was a blank sheet, snow-pure and curious about all things under heaven. Her mind could taste emotions like rain on leaves, yet some answers wouldn’t come by feeling alone.
In the Aether-born Newborn Civilization, human lifespans had stretched like pines on a high ridge. Heron’s study of Aether ran deep, a river cutting stone, and her years lengthened like an unending wick. Her body stayed poised, a foot always set toward the future.
She served as planetary governor, helm in hand on a star-bright sea. Besides a few Valkyries, she alone had walked three eras: the Prior Age, the Wasteland, and the Newborn Civilization. She was the one who had turned the wheel, so her voice fit this answer like a key in a lock.
If you asked the people, praise would rise like a tide. Scholars would weigh her with a cool hand, then nod at the course she set, an arrow aimed far. And the Valkyries…
“Why did I reform the past?” Heron smiled, then crouched like a willow to meet the girl’s gaze. “Didn’t the Valkyrie sisters answer that? What did they tell you?”
At nearly one-eighty, Heron stood tall as a white birch; the Zerg Maiden reached only her waist. She folded herself small, easing pressure like shade under a eave. If the goal was to teach the girl to join the Newborn Civilization, there was no need to press like a mountain.
“The Valkyrie sisters…” The Zerg Maiden tapped a knuckle to her lips, a bell’s soft note, then spoke. “Sister Hrok said you pursued greater power, because you walked the Aether path farther and stronger than anyone. Sister Shilwen said you sought the secrets of the Origin, since you gained most of its knowledge and fueled our civilization’s leap.”
She relayed a dozen voices like a clear echo, word-true, a mirror without dust. No schemes coiled in her; she was direct as sunlight on water. The Valkyries had no treachery either; to be Valkyrie was strength bound with loyalty, iron and silk.
And even if a stray heart strayed, what then? To touch Heron, you’d first have to catch a hawk in open sky. Not just her Aether, but the whole Newborn Civilization rose behind her like a mountain range. Borders dissolved, race and tribe unknotted; to rebel now was to push a boulder uphill into a storm.
Hearing those answers, Heron let out a breathless laugh, a chime in the wind. Their trust felt almost like blind faith, a silk so fine it could cut.
“Alright,” she said, a smile like dawn on water. “With so many answers from them, what do you think?”
“I don’t know.” The Zerg Maiden shook her head, the motion small as a falling petal.
“Your era was too complex, Mother,” she said, voice steady as a drawn line. “The homeworld was carved up by many states and peoples, ideas spreading like seeds on wind. Even those in the same camp thought differently. I have no standard to judge that age.”
For the Insectoids, unity was forged in war like iron in a furnace. Individual wills bent low, and the Zerg Maiden, as queen, wove them like threads into one tapestry. Her measures were simple as a blade: useful or not. But with humans, her sensitive mind felt it—old one-cut standards shattered like glass on stone.
“Yeah,” Heron said, a wry warmth rising like steam. “My era was a tangle of vines. Nations and peoples split the world like lines on cracked earth. Everyone fought for a bigger slice. Using Insectoid standards must’ve been rough.” She drew a breath, cool as river air. “Then let me tell you why I led that world toward reform.”
Heron took the Zerg Maiden up the iron spire, the wind a ribbon at their backs. From there, the Revival City spread below like a broken chessboard, ruins and scaffolds stitched by new roads and cycling systems. It was a hard-won lattice, bright wires feeding a dim heart.
And just beyond that bleak ring, beauty rose like a dawn tide, clear and intoxicating as spring wine. “That’s why I call this place Avalon,” Heron murmured, eyes on the tender green buds the spring wind coaxed from bare branches. The Zerg Maiden saw life-force thick as sap, but not the poem in the leaves; her values hadn’t grown those eyes yet.
“I’ll start with my country,” Heron said, drawing the girl into her arms like bringing a sparrow to a hearth. Nostalgia welled, a moon behind thin clouds.
“In my time, our country was one of the world’s two poles, a pillar in a shaking hall. We tried to avoid collision, but strength draws its own orbit like a moon to a planet. Sometimes even a state is a clay pot in a flood, fragile before the torrent of time.”
“Our five-thousand-year line ran strong to weak, then weak to strong, like a river finding the sea. Our ancestors were never reeds in the wind. When enemies pressed, we pushed back; when nature pressed, we fought the mountain and the storm. Ancient days were man wrestling nature, fist to tide.”
The Zerg Maiden started to speak, eyes widening like stars, then closed her lips and listened, still as a deer in brush.
“People first, then home; home first, then nation,” Heron said. “As tools and systems advanced, the state grew, a sapling thickening into a trunk. Look at the scroll of history: dynasties blaze and dim, a lantern passed hand to hand. Each new one rises under the people’s revolt, like the cycle of the Heavenly Dao, rise and fall, again and again.”
Regret brushed her gaze, a shadow of cloud over water. She sighed, a reed-flute note.
“Then came the modern age. Eyes opened to the wider world like shutters thrown wide. Cold steel neared its dusk; hot steel was the red sun rising. Muskets, ironclads, cannons—once a strong realm, we should’ve absorbed and transformed them, straw into gold.”
“But a country’s decay is never one man’s sin. In that last modern dynasty, those on the throne feasted and slept, pearls over rot. A few woke up under the bite of war and pushed for reform, but money and know-how were dry wells. Every step stuck like a boot in mud.”
“Funds? Sure—go flatter the supreme emperor and his dogs, and fill their cups. Technology? Sure—sell the country, piece by piece.” Her voice cooled, a blade in frost. “Those who modernized early already knew the worth of technique. We had a vast land, treasure-lodes under our feet. Lacking tech, we didn’t even see them sparkle. The great powers did, and they plundered like wolves in snow.”
“After those foreign wars, more and more hands reached for us, seeing a profit-fat land and a sick old tiger. We still called ourselves a celestial power, a banner in the wind—but in real steel and fire, the state would snap like dry bamboo. The men at the top knew it too.”
“So under every pressure, we ceded land and paid indemnities, bleeding like a cut that wouldn’t clot. The people lived worse than dogs in the street. Any foreigner could step on a commoner’s back like a plank. If the people dared resist, the first guns weren’t foreign—they were our own.”
“Then the people must have risen again, right?” the Zerg Maiden asked, hope bright as a lantern, eyes lifted to Heron’s face.
Heron rubbed her head, gentle as rain on moss, and went on. “Yes. No one can live forever on their knees. If you can’t live, you must resist. No one is born a slave, and no one is born to be crushed into a class. Such regimes carry their own coffin, and the ‘fools’ they mock will hammer the nails.”
“The old dynasty fell again, and on that vast land the unbowed stood like forests after fire. With the blood of countless comrades, through decades—nearly a century—of struggle, they taught those who reached greedy hands into our country to squeeze its people the most basic truth.”
