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“Radios on,” The TL announces, pulling her mask on and motioning for the rest to copy. “Masks up.”

The old forest is beautiful, the traces of the historical fires and destruction only adding to the resplendence.Trees too thick and crowded for vehicles, canopies blocking out swathes of light like blackout curtains, traces of that sort of power linger, washing the scene in a surreal palette of colors. 

Deep breath, separate the sentiments from the rendering, he has to remind himself, taking out the color he can best pinpoint the sky to be at when it’s oscillating with a shimmer that suggests less true cognitohazard and more of a powerful aftermath of something so desperate to be perceived that the husk is still noticeable centuries later. Somewhere between light blue and lilac.

It isn’t silent, not with the thousands, tens of thousands, of cicadas, but it’s an unnatural pattern for them to be singing in, one that waxes and wanes so there are moments of perfect silence, broken by the synchronized screaming. The group’s steps noticeably lack this harmony.

“Freaky,” one of the Green Stags mutters. “They always do that?”

“Scared of a few bugs for keeping count?” another member taunts back. “Damn, Tanner, I didn’t figure you to be such a wimp.”

“Fuck off!”

“Eat shit.”

“Quiet on comms,” their lead snaps, visibly rolling her eyes. Avery is inclined to agree. “That’s just how it’s been for a while around here, right?” Her left hand pitches towards one of the doctors nearer to her, as though prompting to explain.

“Correct,” a new voice joins them on the frequency, “although it is unclear why, the cicadas of this forest have been confirmed to hold a nearly perfect unified song during prime-numbered years.”

“Any significance to that?”

“Not to the best of our knowledge, Agent Snipesoil, but it does not appear to be an indicator of danger.”

“Leftovers of the dying deity,” Tanner mutters.

“Neutralized deity, remember?” the taunter adds sardonically, “Officially speaking, Three-oh-oh-four is as gone as it can be.”

“Brannings, if you actually believe that shit,  I’m not even going to bother with hitting your funeral,” Tanner replies at the same time as the lead says “Quiet on snark, Brannings, Tanner.”

“Copy that, TL,” both say in response, even as Avery sees peripherally how they switch to making rude gestures at one another instead.

Another thirty minutes pass of walking, mostly silent on the radio. Members close enough to one another to whisper do so, and the few times Avery finds themselves needing to speak with the MTF, sign suffices. The gradually lightening sky is more of a guide to him than the clock for how long they’ve been moving.  

“Forty paces ahead,” TL tells them when above is almost periwinkle-pink, adding, “Gilman, you’re gonna be needed up front soon.” Avery nods, hopping over the irregular dirt floor and weaving around several agents to catch up. Times like these, the job doesn’t feel like it’s about the Foundation, just the discovery, the recording of it. The artistic merit of the work, so to speak.

“Remember,” one of the researchers, shorter by a good head, adds, “The goal is not total recording, it is a sufficiently broad sample that we can bring back. Keep it to portable sizes.”

He gives a thumbs up before remembering the darkness of the forest and replying “Confirmed,” to be safe. Odd to remember how for most people, the pre-dawn light is insufficient, while Avery is still wearing their tinted glasses. 

As they reach the clearing, the traces begin to present themselves. Trees with rectangular indentations in them, emptied or damaged by previous personnel’s hands. Scatterings of light that line up exactly, no overlaps to speak of. Were they more paranoid, Avery would suggest that perhaps 3004 existed on both a separate plane and in their current one, simply beneath the Earth. For once, however, the paranoia is easily recognizable as absurd. If 3004 manifested again, after all, it would be far greater than the dying deity Father Clark’s report suggested.

“Just beyond the zig-zagging tree,” Snipesoil tells the group through the radio, followed shortly by the collective gasps and awed murmurs.

There’s no good descriptor in English, Avery realizes, having to settle on ones like ‘mesmerizing’ ‘resplendent’ ‘scintillating’ when he’ll have to write up his reports. It feels too monumentous to take in, surreal and almost alive.

The details stick out first in times like these for him, he’s learned, little bits of clarity against a smudged background in their memory. The sheer scale of the window takes second place to the level of detail put into each piece. 

Cicadas, dozens, hundreds, beautifully put together from glass, the long-extinct Cicadetta luculenta brought back to a new life in these depictions. Simplified for the medium, yes, but with clearly distinct eyes, wing patterns, details of the body, contrasted to the triangle that he suspects was intended to subtly pull at the idea of a halo-like effect. Each one the size of a human head, the remnants of a serpentine wall stacking well above them.

“Monumental,” someone next to him whispers, but Avery can’t bother to register their presence, pencil flying over paper frantically. He knows their own hands well enough to know that it’ll take a good six messy sketches before they’ll be able to draw the precise smooth lines that this will demand.

“I’ve seen it twice before and it still takes my breath away for a moment.” The TL’s voice now, level like an academic’s behind a lectern. “The dating varies piece by piece, as each separate unit was placed by a different set of hands.”

His hands are still shaking starting on the second sketch. A different voice asks “What’s the estimated date range?”

“Barring anomalous interference with our testing, the remnants we’ve found go from the early fifteenth century to the late nineteenth.” The wing is crooked. No time to fix, no time, paper almost tearing in his haste to capture the careful spots.

“Despite the Singers only having been here from the late-fifteenth century onwards?” The voice is skeptic, muffled somewhat by approaching steps of a new speaker.

“The sects have always existed, Doctor, you have to remember that. They travel, spread word, and bring over past traditions that evolve into then-contemporary ones.” Deeper, baritone, presumably Dr. Kehan. The curve of the wall now, messy, ruines, jagged edges of its cleaner breaks, pencil jumping with each breath.

“How was the century-long range even possible, then?”

“Within Singer society, a child’s transition into adulthood was signified by the loss of milk teeth. These, judging by the traces of human touch we’ve been able to isolate, appear to be commemorations of the process. Like a bat mitzvah, or a debutante ball, the transitional youth would render the cicada in glass, choose colors which held significance to them or their family perhaps, and then add their piece of the story to existing ones.” Pause. Messy, poor shading on the wall fragments. The TL’s bootfalls suggest she’s moving to the perimeter. “The really interesting thing is that analysis shows the glass itself to be non-anomalous, but there isn’t copper foil or lead binding it together. The binding is done instead by hair, skin, crushed up teeth -presumably those lost by the youth in question-, and their blood.”

“Fascinating.” The pencil snaps. Avery, without looking, shoves it into the empty pocket and pulls a replacement out of his other. The other voice sounds excited.

“Oh, you should see the other parts. There’s spots before they began to join the tokens together, where they would put the final work into a tree and let the tree weave around it.”

“Wouldn’t it cover the cicada?”

“That’s the thing! No, it doesn’t. It’s fascinating, really, but the influence of 3004 was strong enough to even hold sway over the trees themselves!”

A heavy sigh. “That’s not a good thing, you realize.”

“But it is incredible.”

“Fair.” Approaching footsteps, a hand put on his shoulder, moving in a way that he can track its path by the shadows. “Gilman, conjectures?”

He pulls himself out of the borderline-hypnotic thoughts about the stained glass itself. Their pencil jumps off the page.

“Currently nothing that registers as a memetic, thaumaturgical, cognitohazard, or any other sort of mental control that would not require in-person rituals or consent. There are lingering traces of draw and attraction within the remains, but that is moreso of an artistic compulsion, not an innately manipulative one. It can be studied, just pick people who are not art specialists for your composite analysis tests.”

“Noted. Any historical context?”

He doesn’t recall working with Dr. Galloway before.

“Yes, but I do not guarantee perfect accuracy. My studies were on practical application over pure academia, and I do not hail from this culture.”

“Noted. Give it a shot anyway?” If she insists. He’s done due diligence on warning her. 

“Stained glass was used as poor man’s Bible, a way of teaching parables to the illiterate. Conjecture that this was a symbolic test of both faith to their god -rendering an illustration consecrated by pain and human material-  and a canonization of the individual and their family as members of the community. A historical marker, so to speak. Several colors hold symbolic significance in Christian canon when found in stained glass, indicating mercy, hope, suffering, repentance, rebirth, and other ideas. This may indicate a more personalized relationship to the deity, either direct or indirect.”

“Clarify?”

“Perhaps they were given visions, or unique trials and rituals, similar to how certain offshoots of Christianity today assign saints to a child. Perhaps the abstract relationship between one worshiper and the deity was encouraged and allowed to personalize.”

“You’re judging by the colors used?”

“Yes. Different shades of the same color indicate variety and choice, while the colors themselves could suggest the individual’s feelings towards the manifestation.”

“Theories on the usage of human byproducts in the works?” 

At that, he has to look away from the rendering.

“You are aware I do not specialize in theology or medicine.”

“Yes, but extraneous ideas rarely hurt.” Dr. Galloway is still looking at him, so Avery swallows down the urge to point out that bad data is a greater harm than no data. Few benefits from arguing with Level 4 personnel.

“I would presume  a connection to the idea of Christ giving flesh and blood in the communion, possibly tied to Avrám and the mandate of sacrifice as it was interpreted in Christian canon, with the idea of blind faith and a reward for the risk. Alternatively, providing degrading material of the human body, items which can be replenished or lived without but still requiring at least some pain, would be the analogy, and potentially tie into ideas of sin and repentance.”

“Would that affect the proportions of each item, in your opinion?”

“Possibly. Again, not a theologist, merely-”

“We know, Gilman, but we’re asking for a reason.”

“If yes, then there could be a correlation in either relation to sin, proportion of pain, or proportion of permanent damage done to the body. Hair may correspond to vanity, or could be a punishment which took a long time but did not permanently defore, while adult teeth could have been used to represent envy and greed or indicate a significant violation, to be worn as a functional mark of Cain. Milk teeth could be indicative of the transition, or a sacrificial offering, similar to the principle of repayment for a martyr.” Avery’s hands itch to work, to draw, not speak on shit they don’t really understand to a doctor several degrees more advanced than him. Galloway seems to take the hint.

“Noted. Thank you.”

“Of course. May I-” motioning to the sketchbook again seems to suffice in lieu of words.

“Go ahead. Alert immediately if you see something out of the ordinary.”

What about this is ordinary, he refrains from asking, settling for a nod and a clean page. The time for quick, simple sketches is over. These renderings will require precise, careful lines if he aims to make the final result accurate. 

Kehan returns, speaking to Galloway behind Avery’s back as the grid starts appearing on the paper.

“Were photographs impossible to take, Dr. Kehan?”

“Damaged results each time. We suspect any medium involving electronics will suffer interference in environments 3004 has affected.”

“Shame.”

“Indeed. But this is an acceptable compromise.”

“Speaking of, should we go over to check how Gamma-4 are doing on setting up the portable lab?”

“Probably a good idea. Give me a hand with the sample we’ve managed to secure?”

The chatter slides in and out of Avery’s mind, snippets filed away as relevant, to be examined in a later moment. Right now, the world has narrowed down to him, the sketch, and the wall. The wall is grand and impossible, a good fifteen-sixteen heads in total height on the most intact sections, snaking through like it had stretched with hundreds, thousands of lives given to its radiance. Compared to that, other thoughts glide like water over a pane of glass, comprehensible but not to be too deep until a time later when he could go over them in detail.

He lets it wash over him, remembering the testimonials left by Lutterman, by Clark, the idea of the Cétiladí’s ties to the being and how little it must have understood. Or, rather, how much of that which it understood had been miscommunicated due to metaphor, abstraction, accident.

But those are the concerns of theologists and thaumaturges, not of an operative whose duty is to record and preserve the anomaly before him on paper. It will be a shame to see this all destroyed in the name of secrecy, and it is Avery’s duty to ensure at least some traces of this beauty remain, even if only as a warning and not the beautiful, breathing thing that this wall is.