Future Project
Prologue: Discovery
Year: 2157 CE (Standard Terran Calendar) Location: Von Colony
Derek had been agitated from some discovery in the “global archives” buried deep. Whatever it was must have been awful - or better have been to be worth getting out of bed this early.
But no one, nothing, could have prepared Sophia for what she saw. Arthur was already there. So was Alice. “I thought it was a myth.”
“No. He was…that kind of person definitely leaves a memoir. I believed it when I heard about it. But…this…I never thought I’d be looking at it.”
“What am I looking at?”
“The Nihilus Testament. The manifesto of Nils Andover and his Inner Circle.”
Year: 328 AC (Gaianist Calendar) During the Surge (Almost 200 years later)
Location: Nihilon Camp Ruin, Frostreach, 27 Kilometers from Seattle.
Pike could barely believe the artifact he held. Bound in laminated pages, still effective, legible after all these years. Vile, the lamination. Poisonous. But it had maintained an artifact from the old world, one he had scarcely believed existed. One that…
Year: 352 AC
Location: Arcata, Archives
Tyler looked at the item they had been handed by River. “This is…”
“Recovered by Pike during the mop up after the surge. It’s…the only known copy.”
Tyler looked at it, and then identified the seal on it, and felt sick, as though the pages had been made of human skin rather than laminated paper. “This is…his. Nils Andover’s.” “Or from his first Disciples, yeah. We could read it. Learn what…makes someone like that. We’re supposed to learn, not just bury.”
Reed took a breath.
***
The first chapter had revealed the worst horror they could have imagined.
Nils Andover, the False Messiah, Accelerationist Demon of the Old World, Nihilus Rex…
As a young man, he hadn’t been that different from any of them. Just in a world that bred monsters.
Knowing what he’d become just made it that much worse.
Nihilus Rex
From the beginning, you know the End.
