Ishura - Volume 2 - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: 160th West-Longitudinal Zone Survey Site

Five days earlier.

The four-person survey team dispatched from a neighboring city visited the aftermath of the storm’s passage.

They were a frontier unit belonging to Aureatia. The mission they had received through their long-distance radzio from Third Minister Jelki was to survey the tracks the Particle Storm left behind on its move from the Yamaga Barrens.

Gently sloping plains stretched out below the horizon, a similar view to what they usually saw. Although they were far away from any town and the terrain was a little rough, such landscapes were a daily occurrence of theirs.

A number of anthills poked up between the short grass. Far off in the sky, a vibrant wooded mountain range was hazy in the mist.

“…Are we going to be all right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that Particle Storm thing, it’s taking a pretty much unheard-of route, right? It’s not going to, say, reverse course back at us right as we arrive, right?”

“Ha, you’ve got some moronic worries bouncing around in that skull of yours.”

“This guy’s a hardcore worrywart, let me tell you.”

“You gotta be that worried to be fit for working with the frontier survey units, right…? Hey.”

The four of them stopped in their tracks right before a descending slope. All of them stopped, without exchanging a single word between them.

At the bottom of the slope, a scene the likes of which they had never seen before stretched out before them.

“What the hell’s all this?”

“Hold up. Hold on one damn second. This Particle Storm thing…it’s ’posed to be some kinda sandstorm or typhoon, yeah?”

Homogenized topography. It was the only way to describe it.

It wasn’t that the ground surface had been shaved down to its roots and erased. It was the opposite. There were rolling sand dunes, with a trail, like a ripple mark formed naturally in the wind. The scenery appeared out of the blue, completely disregarding the original terrain that had once been.

That was all—everything was particles.

“……Is this how things normally end up?”

“Whoa, whoa, this is beyond abnormal. This thing’s on its way? Is Aureatia going to be okay… Wha!”

One of the squad members fell down. The incline at his feet had suddenly collapsed beneath him. He tumbled down the all-too-soft and smooth hill and collapsed far down below.

“Hey! Heeeey! Are you all right?!”

“I-I’m good… But what’s up with this sand? It reeks something fierce when you’re surrounded by the stuff. There’s absolutely nothing I can use to climb back up there. Probably gonna need someone to grab me some rope.”

“…All that organic matter’s rotted by now.”

One of them on top of the hill said as they scooped up some of the sand.

“Living things in its path…beasts, plants, anything, are torn apart and ground down to the bones. Bet whatever liquid and soil gets jumbled in, too. One day’s more than enough time for microbes to start propagating.”

“Even staring with my own eyes, I still can’t believe it… Can a natural phenomenon do this? I’ve seen a tower wiped off the map by a flood, but even in those cases, they still… how can I put it…? The form was still there. Smashed timber, dead fish, and the like were all jumbled into a big mess, but you could still make out each part of the chaos. And you’re saying all this was finally shredded naturally, without any design or intention behind the destruction…?”

“……”

The survey squad member who scooped up the sand sifted through it in his palm, looking at it closely.

It had small fragments of bone, like the shards of shells seen on the beach. There were what appeared to be scraps of leaves, black, their shapes lost. There were pieces that looked like smashed crystal. As well as pieces of something metal.

“Has anyone ever been to the Yamaga Barrens before?”

“Nope, not me. I guess because I always got the feeling it was a scary place. I heard stories about the Particle Storm from my grandma’s friend who saw it, too.”

“Same here. It may be weird considering our job, but when I got to Itaaki, I didn’t even think about seeing what lay beyond it. I mean, do people really live out there, anyway?”

“I wonder when people started to think about it like that.”

The Particle Storm was a phenomenon that only occurred within the isolated environment known as the Yamaga Barrens. As such, its true terror hadn’t passed into legend. Nevertheless, to those who personally laid eyes on it, it was a meteorological death, to be feared more above all else. Like the stories of terrible floods and earthquakes that killed a great many, passed down for several hundred years, across generations.

The accumulated terror of witnesses, collected over an innumerably long number of years, had spread, and vaguely lodged itself within the minds of even men like them, who had never seen it directly for themselves.

The Yamaga Barrens is dangerous. Because that’s where the Particle Storm rages.

“Maybe no one noticed because it’s a desert weather phenomenon. Everything mixes together with the sand and gets erased… That’s why we were totally unaware of just how abnormal it really was…”

In the Yamaga Barrens, terrain of exposed rocks and stone was exceedingly rare. It was a region where close to sixty percent of the surface was covered in sand. The reason why, and when it had become that way, were both unknown.

“H-hey.”

A different member of the group spoke uncomfortably, shrinking back from where they stood.

“Th-this is bad. Let’s get away from here. I’m heading back.”

“…What the hell are you talking about?”

“You forget about our orders from Third Minister Jelki? We gotta pull him back up from there, too.”

“Y-yeah, but still…c’mon, haven’t you noticed?! There’s no way they’re gonna withstand this thing!”

He gazed steadily toward the horizon.

There stood featureless mountains and a lake. That was what terrified him.

“…Ha-ha. I-I knew it… I’m sure of it. Of course. There’s a trapezoid-shaped mountain, next to it is suddenly this craggy peak, and…th-the lake…you can see the lake. You can see it!”

“What the hell are you getting at?! If you’ve lost your mind, I’ll gladly shove you down there with the other guy!”

“You’re the one who’s lost their mind! How many years have you guys been surveyors out here?!”

He dropped his eyes below the diagonal slope. A slope. An exceedingly far-reaching terrain of nothing, sunk deep into the ground.

The four of them were surveyors from a nearby city. They had patrolled near here hundreds of times before.

“There used to be a hill here! The whole damn thing disappeared! There’s…nothing left!”

There was one day left until the disaster’s arrival.