From the Ground Up
How many times have you turned and looked back but never saw the person you were looking for? When after you made a joke, you turned to where they normally would be by your side to see their reaction only to find they aren't there? To be constantly reminded that your best friend in the whole world is dead? How many times?
How many times can a human suffer before they shatter? I guess we'll have to find out on a different day.
They traveled for days and weeks by foot. They waded through many streams and rivers. It wasn't until they had camped down for the night and sent off a squad of sentinels did they receive word back from their long-distance scouting party. Terra took the letter out of the cylindrical casing on the messenger hawk's back and read it to himself under his breath in disbelief. A large grin spread across his face threatening to split his face open and showing off his teeth as a belly-deep laugh escaped him and past his chapped lips.
"Silver!" He cried. "Silver come here!" He continued to laugh. His sister approached him skeptically thinking that he finally lost it before he shoved the piece of paper so close to her face she couldn't properly read it. She grumpily snatched the paper out of his hands as he ran circles around her with his hands in the air. Silver rolled her eyes and looked down at the paper and began to read. Other Grey Knight members stared incredulously at Terra before glancing at each other weirded out and shrugging their shoulders.
Silver scoffed in disbelief and shoved the paper back into Terra's chest when he passed her by. He stumbled for a moment before righting himself and gazing deep into his sister's eyes. His grin slightly fell when he didn't see any emotion on her face. She nodded at him and motioned to the others with a quick tilted jerk of her head. Terra's grin came back full force.
Silver started moving in a Northbound direction and yelled, "Move out!" However, no one moved. Many just stood where they were and looked at each other quizzically as if they had the answers.
"You heard the lady! Get a move on!" Terra sternly ordered the group.
"Where are we going?" Mason questioned under his breath to Terra. Silver, with her sharp ears, heard what he said but didn't answer as she was focused on guiding the group on where to go. She knew Terra would answer for her.
"We're going home." Said Terra.
"Home? You mean back to that burnt shit pile of nothing?"
"No. We're going somewhere else."
"Where? Where are we going? What's the plan?" Terra stopped walking where he was to stare at Mason with a straight face. A frown began to make its way onto his face as Mason wasn't letting up.
"The plan is that we are going to follow Silver as she leads us to where we are going."
"Wh-"
"And we'll get there when we get there."
"Yes sir." Mason sighed. He went towards some of his subordinates to have them relay what was going on to everyone else. The further north they went the colder and thinner the air got until they reached an abandoned town in the mountains. Some of the buildings were beginning to fall apart, but as they were made of stone, they seemed to have made it as far as they were pretty intact. More so than the warehouse they were previously staying in. The best part was, there was a large abandoned factory that stood against the test of time. This large hulking building was built mostly from steel. The structure was still sound and sturdy, nothing short of a bomb would bring this building down, though considering how their last headquarters went down they didn't have too much hope. However, this was to be everyones' new home so they were going to try to make it last.
Rubbing her hands together from the cold, Silver went to stand on a stone wall to get some added height. "Quinn!" She yelled over the murmurings of her people. "I need you and your division to get a lay out of the land. Three square miles is our border, make it happen." The Sentinel Head nodded in confirmation and started gathering her subordinates to get a lay out of the land. From there, Quinn will confer with her squad leaders and make a patrol rotation schedule.
"Shaun! I need you to set up a medical tent nearby until we figure out a permanent settlement for the Medical Division."
"Yes ma'am!" A black haired young man, who had his hair in a ponytail at the base of his skull, with the deepest stress lines carving ravines in his face grabbed the collar of someone who looked like he would be his relative. His hair was short and messy, but his eyes were alight with humor and eccentricness.
"Hey! Shaun! Ack-! Lemme go-"
Shaun shot him a dry look.
"C'mon cousin!"
"Griffin…" Whatever Shaun was saying to his cousin was left unheard as they got out of hearing range. After a brief moment of staring at their retreating backs, Terra took the reins from his sister and continued to give out more orders. Silver got down and directed some Supply Division members to take stock again and set up supply tents.
"Xandra! I need you to help Quinn, her squads are down members from the attack. We have gaps, fill them in."
Xandra raised her eyebrow but went to work. She walked over to where the seventeen year old was forming squads out of the people she had left. Xandra, in all her serious no-nonsense glory, sternly ordered her members into squads as well and lent some of her squads to help fill in the gaps. From there, tents were set up near the abandoned factory in order to keep everyone closer together.
The next morning, the patrol squad captains went to meet with Terra and Silver in the meeting tent to discuss the surrounding area that they have claimed Grey Knight property.
"There's no one for miles." Ronny said as he laid out a map that he had drawn out. He was a Sentinel squad captain. "Our borders end here." He traced with a thick blue marker their borders. "Another five miles off to the West is the nearest bit of civilization." Ronny circled in red where the nearest civilization was. "There aren't many people there so anything we do, for the most part, should be able to fly under the radar."
Silver nodded. Terra looked up from the map and set his gaze on Anna, the Head of the Research Division. "I need you to make some kind of cloaking device. A force field-like dome to be able to protect our land."
"Would you like me to add sensors so that we know who and when someone arrives at our borders sir?"
"That would be great." Silver intercepted. "But make sure that you can get the underground as well. We don't want anyone digging their way under our defenses."
"Yes ma'am."
"Good. Terra, what do you think about the factory?"
Terra took a moment to think over the new object of discussion. "I think it could hold everyone we have. We would just need to clear out all the machinery and make it livable once again."
"...That's….we could keep the town looking abandoned so anyone who does make it past the defenses will just see an abandoned town."
Terra rebuffed, "However, if someone notices the barrier around our borders then they'll know something is up."
"You make a good point."
"Of course I do, I'm your older brother. I'm supposed to make good points."Silver just gave him a dry look in response,
"I will kick you in the balls."
"I'd dodge it before you could land a hit."
"I'd do it when you least expect it brother."
"Bet."
"Eloquently put. How much?" Silver raised a scarlet brow.
"Ten bucks, bitch." Terra said with the smuggest look on his face. Silver hummed and thought about it.
"You do know that we don't have any American money, correct?" She asked.
"How about an I-owe-you until the debtor gets their hands on ten American dollars?"
"Deal." They both stuck out their hands and shook them while staring deep into each other's eyes. Silver narrowed hers into a determined glare.
"I'm gonna win."
"We'll see little sis, we'll see." Xandra cleared her throat to get the siblings' attention. "I would appreciate it if we got back to business. Some of us have stuff to get back to."
"Oops." Came the double reply from the Scarlets.
Anna spoke up from her pre-blueprint sketches and brainstorming to continue the string of ideas about the factory. "We can have any organization business and such go on in the factory. All our civilians can live in the town as soon as it is fixed up." Everyone paused. The idea had merit. Terra gota wide grin on his face and turned towards his sister, who in turn gave him the same grin when she caught his look and began to figure out what his expression meant. All the other heads began to get a very foreboding feeling.
'...Oh no…. what are those two planning now?'
The siblings on the other hand….
"Let's do this."
Anna packed up her utensils and headed outside the tent flap and marched her way to her tent and gathered her teams together to hash out ideas. She and her scientists became engrossed in their designing and they poured over their blueprints and testing for months. Those with some extra spare time did research into the accidental magic and Genesis, head of investigations, had his people looking into it as well and everyone had their answers.
Magic was real.
It was a huge shock to everyone not in the know, but those who had magic explained and taught everyone everything that they could. There was some struggle at first with getting some to accept that magic was real and it wasn't some kind of witchcraft involving demons possessing the person, but everything was resolved eventually with much effort on Silver's personal relations skills, which honestly weren't a lot considering she wanted to punch those idiots all the time for thinking that their best friend who couldn't ever hurt a fly was going to kill them.
The magic users were also surprised that the Statute of Secrecy breaking hadn't alerted the aurors, even if they were in the middle of nowhere. Now that everyone knew about magic, the siblings had every child that exhibited accidental magic of any kind get taught how to harness their magic wandlessly as much as they could and get a head start in their magical education. Every child still went to a regular civilian school so in the future they could earn their diplomas and degrees if they wanted to. This was made possible by Silver and Terra setting up a school system and making those schools up to standard so that they would actually count. They also managed to make those same schools on grid without actually making them on grid. Essentially, everything will work as if the world knew they were there and in the system without the world knowing they were there and in the system.
"This is why you have and make connections." Silver said one day.
The maintenance crews became busy with both fixing up the town and the factory. Cass even made a special surprise planned for the siblings. She knew that they would love it without a doubt in her mind. Maintenance built meeting rooms and training facilities throughout the factory. They dubbed it officially as 'Headquarters' and left it at that. They fixed the gravel streets and made them into beautiful smooth quartz. Floating streetlights strewn across like fairy lights. They had outdone themselves. The whole town began to look like a fairy tale setting. Everyone loved it.
The organization prospered and spread. Connections and spy networks were made all across the world. The Grey Knights and its "mysterious leaders" began to become extremely well known throughout the underground.
After a few months upon months of hard work and blood and sweat, and many many tears. Everything was finished. Everyone had a place that they could call home. The research division was finally able to put up the barrier and added defenses around the whole border as contingency plans. Terra applauded Anna on her forward thinking.
As for the surprise, Cass had dragged the siblings out into the town square where a large construct was covered in a white cloth waiting to be unveiled. Silver looked at her brother who seemed to be just as confused.
"Cass, what are you doing? What is that?" All that they got in response was a brief "You'll see." A crowd was gathered around, actually, they were fairly sure it was the whole town. Cass stopped in front of the covered object and faced the crowd.
"We have all spent a lot of time and effort into this place. I never would have thought that I would have a home or a family again until these two," She gestured towards the Scarlet Siblings, "found me and gave me that home, gave me that family as I know they did for many of you." murmurs of agreement spread through the crowd like wildfire.
"But it wasn't just them. We all remember our third leader who we lost along with many other loved ones. Cascius." Silver tried extremely hard not to tear up at the sound of his name. Terra pulled his sister into his side in order to comfort her.
"So, in my gratitude towards our leaders, Terra and Silver, and in memory of Cascius, I had a small team make this…" In a dramatic fashion, Cass pulled the white cloth off of the object revealing a statue of the three founders and leaders of the Grey Knights.
Terra was on the left wearing a shirt that had the first two buttons undone and a pair of jeans. His hair was in a man bun to keep the hair out of his face in a "manly way." A smile was planted on his face as his arm was around his sister's shoulder who was on the right. Her hair was let down and flowing down her back. She was wearing a long flowing skirt that was sculpted as if there was a small breeze gently blowing her skirt and hair. Her shirt was tucked into her skirt. A large happy smile graced her features as her left arm held her brother's hand that was around her shoulders and her right arm was around the waist of the third person that stood behind but in the center of the two siblings. His right arm was strung across Terra's shoulder while his left arm was wrapped around Silver's waist. His shirt looked as if it used to have buttons but was replaced with a leather string and very loosely done. It showed the top of his chest a bit and brought a roguish quality to him. His pants looked to be sculpted to look like leather. His hair looked feathery light and framed his face well. His horns were beautifully done and his pointed teeth showed through with his smile while he held the siblings close. It was Cascius. All three's ears were on full display.
Under the statue was the block of stone that the statute was built on. It had an engraving in the center. Silver's tears fell and hit the ground and from those crystalline tears came white lilies and poppies sprouting around the statue. Everyone began to shed tears at the meaning behind it. The white lilies for purity and the poppies for remembrance.
'In memory as in the hearts of our people lives one of our leading three. Cascius Voyage.'
