During the Winter the walls were swallowed in, strange lights that fat clouds or the night sky birthed gripped the folks of the desolate region, a harmless and (they are not sure of its hostility but call it so) intriguing little thing that by small chance one might spot in the long distances if they were to truly try hard enough.
Keen news followers, scientists and researchers alike muddled the general public with their theories about the prodigious events, some claimed it to be a natural process not yet discovered nor described, or a secret government technology yet to be exposed.
Other theories landed in far more outlandish territory.
But nowadays there certainly is not much to see or find of those lights. In the extensive sky in the aimless congregation of stars or clouds it had disappeared, and for a while the lonesome people of the walls forgot it ever had existed and went about their ways.
Not much had happened, some befuddled themselves over the whereabouts and origins of it, yet nothing came but religious ramblings and claims of priests, which some took at face value.
Then the time of year arrived, only 2 months after the reports of lights a grand harvest of ripeness came. All farmers, and all who seeded the dirt vowed their fields of wheat and fruit that had never come this prosperous, all grew to a swollen size with unwonted gloss, great and thick, unrivaled lengths and in such an abundance it looked as though it could feed every soul within the walls.
But with this ripeness came a sore and pitiful, confusing disappointment; for in all that grew in a bountiful and gorgeous arrays none was fit to eat. A single bite induced a creeping and stealthy bitterness, which later came with an unidentified sickness with unidentifieble symptoms that took a heavy physical toll. Some families who lived close to these plantations too described feelings of a mild virus and a sense of vague disquiet.
It was only the beginnings of a dreadful havoc.
Those curious specimens of crop led to curious vegetation, and at that point they were pardonedly definite it was of no man caused abnormality. The primitive looking plants were equipped with grotesque formations and protruding through the soil with some taller than a man.
As one can imagine, the walls had began to be engulfed by a wave of religious fanaticism as the environment, by all means impossibly began to change. For all, in the end all but a lame ventriloquial explanation was offered, yet non were too appeased with it.
With the utter bizarreness of it all, the Military police opened an active investigation, one had gone so far as to bring up the proposition that the soil had been tainted. Yet none the technology the people of the walls had conjured was so advanced as to read the contents of any material.
And even those who had seen it all and had been great readers of bizarre material, had found it equally as unearthly as the next person.
——
No one could doubt what they saw.
The working day had started unpropitiously, since another survey of the crop pastures and vegetation had come out unassertive, it skewed with Nile Doks mind. The small details in news reports were radical enough to the public to rouse a large wave of incredulity, and their slow yet sure hostile unrest of no harvest was becoming a problem. Dhalis Zachary, was prevalent in the investigations, pushing them to all courses of action, Dok felt as if he had someone on his back, too.
He resolved, nonetheless, to personally venture with his five subordinates to investigate reports of a farmer's herd of cattle, all mysteriously dying, likely due to some poisoning by bitter rivals, he thought.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
The sight to behold him were fleshes of meat that were monstrous perversions of naturalistic laws — God, it hurt to look, the dead herd of cattle attained the most grotesque extremes of bizarrerie. It was impossible to describe what they were looking at, perhaps the thing most akin to the sight would be that of fetuses in the womb — deformed and sickly, but even that description wasn't good enough.
A young woman made crude attempts at scribbled sketches and descriptions in the notebook of the specimens, and had run away back to the setup tent close nearby to dispatch it as copy's, though she did her best the reports would be without coherent depiction.
But all appreciated the epoch-making significance of the discovery.
They had acknowledged that their horses shied away from the area, or any other biologically altered organism. From afar, tied to branches they watched alert, frightened; for the grass and vegetation around had been previously worn by the violent stream which the cattle had drank from flowed down from the hill, but then it seemed that it retaliated, in the place of the dead plant life came forth the anomalies in great abundance, a lot were somewhat similar to the ancient and marine plants of the Cambrian era.
The vegetation started to blossom forth strange colors, the startings of the curious growth even had different species of plants grow on the same stem, some of which hadn't ever belonged to that particular region. The Earth floor was sprang about with their sinister blood roots, with the same underlying tone of crimson all variants of the 'plague' carried.
The reports in the coming days would be baffling and provocative indeed, Nile imagined, the thought undoubtedly aggravated him.
His subordinates placed the tarp over the carcass and were sort of standing in a mute bewilderment until the sounds of an approaching wagon reached their senses. The wheels of a man-wheeled wagon had faintly whined their way up over the descent of the hill away from the hellish congruity graveyard of cattle, cattle so deformed and unrecognizable it'd later shattered the voices of even the most informed of people.
Had there been any trace of pollutants? Nile found himself asking, he knew that water tainted enough could make ordinary creatures look fantastical, he's seen it in fish before within wall Maria years back, yet he wasn't so sure if tainted soil could lead cattle to the same fate. He later consulted a scientist, who he knew fancied the abnormalities and inner-workings of biology. The scientist first insisted that biology be revised before concluding;
"There is no reason to believe it's pollution," he had responded. "I believe it's out of the question, no said pollutants could ever lead cattle to look like deformed fetuses."
The words brought about a change in his immediate objective, he believed they were on the cusp of a conceivable explanation, although the revelations in the coming days neither of them could have ever guessed, it would make him mad with the sheer inconceivability of it all. As his soldiers did more than a bit of indecisive whispering, Nile regarded his focus towards the farmer.
The farmer was a rotund and short man, he had dark stains under his pits and his thinning hair laid like a second skin over his forehead, from working in the fields, no doubt. He had this little and queer narrow head with a fat and flat nose. His eyes were bulgy, maybe a bit starry.
"This makin' me more scared than the Titans." The man started, "You ought to hear what them townsfolk saying, you know, some ain't even brought any crop to feed their families the past days. I'm an old fellow, commander, trust me — this just the beginning."
Then there was a pause.
It was this pause that Nile caught that the man's hands
twitched terribly, and that his face looked so sickly and sunken, yet his eyes were wide and red with a fervor he didn't know existed. He was too with a frightful odor Nile'd compare to the stench of horse shit and leaves rotting amidst sewage.
"It's a busy season, folks are selling their harvest at the markets — you sure you don't have or know any bitter men trying to outcompete you?" He knew it wasn't the case, but he ought to try.
"I'm but a lonely man, my wife died years ago, I lived alone and in isolation ever since. No one ain't got no reason to go after my cattle, commander." He finished, with an ill smile.
Nile regarded the man peculiarly, with a brow raised. He ought to pry more out of him, but then realized he wouldn't get much more from the man. It took no excessive observation to see that he was totally out of it — perhaps a tad crazed. He asked him if he was well, the farmer then heaved a breath and signed with a certain hesitation, his shrew-face then went desolate.
"To be frank with you commander, no. All this has made me terribly worrisome, with no cattle to slaughter and no crops to harvest, how shall I make my living?"
Fair, Dok thought. He was no stranger to the toll of stress — his late boyhood consisted of training in the Survey Corp, where most days he was drowned in that fatigue and ebbing stress, Nile didn't think he'd ever again feel such an ache.
Yet he still held his suspicions.