Most of the tombstones were small, unremarkable cubes poking out of the ground. On them, plaques were fixed listing the names of the dead in each spot. Around twenty people are listed on each cube, approximately, all buried in the amount of space needed for a single entire body to be interred, at most. What was buried here were not entire bodies, after all. The dead of the humans of Wireweb Village died to feed the spider ninjas of the village. The ratio of ordinary citizens to ninjas was large enough that this was actually maintained, though not without occasional difficulty. Sometimes, some people went hungry. It wasn't uncommon, although the authorities tried to prevent such instances. When a powerful spider ninja went hungry, the results were rarely pretty. So everything edible was salvaged from the dead bodies, and very little remained. Only some of the bones were left, in the end, and those were gathered together and compressed... then fired in a furnace until they broke down and crumbled. Then they were put in jars and buried. This was the way all citizens of the village left the world, and it is no wonder that they would be uneager to go to the graveyards... to the common folk of the village, it was a morbidly sobering reminder of their own mortality.
Orb had not returned home to Wireweb Village for a long time... the last time had been right before Jerrit built the Ramen Noodle School. Since then, he had changed a lot. For one thing, he was no without any doubt that he could singlehandedly take on all the other ninjas in the village and come out triumphant. For another, he was now an outsider. Anastasia had purified him of the virus which every ninja in the village was infected with almost immediately after birth... the virus which granted them vastly superhuman strength and heightened senses, but shortened their life-spans to an average of thirty years. The virus that gave them the ability to create poison and wireweb from their own bodies, and rid them of the constant need to eat... but required them to eat from the flesh of a sentient being approximately once per month. Once, Orb had not thought of the virus as a bad thing. He hadn't even known it was truly a virus. He knew only that it was thanks to the spiders that Wireweb Village had been able to survive the harsh realities of the Tundra. He'd thought of himself and his fellow ninja as heros, of sorts... they accepted the curse of a painfully short lifespan for the good of their people. But now, looking back, Orb realized that it was all a horrible deception.
The humans didn't need the spiders, not really. The spiders had a tether around the necks of all of them. They created the virus specifically to mold a small, hopeful community of human beings into what they needed. It killed the strongest of the humans off at a relatively young age, so that they never got wise enough to question the village's elders, or strong enough to oppose them. It forced the humans to eat the flesh of their fellow men so that they would grow to be without regard for each other's lives. Orb didn't know how it had began, but he knew how it was now... and he knew that one way or the other, it would end soon. These spiders were not just building up a stronghold of slave humans... that could've been achieved through much easier means. No, Wireweb Village wasn't a base of operations. It was an outpost, and Orb had a feeling he knew where the chain of command led to...*
But then, it always seems to lead back to him, doesn't it?
*Wearing a grim expression, the spider ninja jolted the rusty gate open, leaning into it with his shoulder. The gate let out a screeching protest as flakes of rust chipped off the hinges for the first time in years. He steps through the open portal and shuts the gater behind him. He is not afraid of this place, but it has an effect on him nonetheless. After all, this village is Orb's home, and some of the people buried here are his ancestors. As he walks past the graves, he notes some of the names on the plaques. He didn't recognize the full names, but the surnames were familiar. He'd gone to school with kids from some of these families. It's all very interesting, but he didn't come here to tour the cemetary. He came for one specific grave, and it would be much farther back. He clenches the stems of a handful of dandelions as he walks.
The ground is hard and the light is dim. The graveyard, it seems, is a lot bigger than he expected. If one paid close attention, they could actually see the passage of time through the tombstones. Every now and then, the style of the markers changed, slightly... signs of slight but omnipresent cultural evolution. This far back, other things changed as well. The plaques still bore characters that Orb recognized, but the names were ones he'd never heard of. Every so often, there would be a plaque with more than just a name on it, and it was surprising to see how much the language had changed. Some used words Orb didn't recognize, and some seemed to be working off of a now-defunct system of grammar. It was after about thirty minutes of walking that he saw the first character he'd never seen before. It looked like an upside-down 'V', and it was part of a name. ERVIN, the plaque said, except that the V was... an upside-down V. Soon, they were popping up all over on the tombstones, and more joined them. A U with a weird little hat doodle closing the top of it. A spiral-like squiggle that ended after two loops, with a line being drawn connecting the center point and the tail. A... Orb didn't even know how to describe it, except that it looked kind of like a nine and kind of like a G. Eventually, even the upside-down V disappeared and the entire selection was replaced with some kind of heiroglyphics. What surprised Orb the most was not that there were tombstones in his own village with words in another language... and alphabet. What surprised him was that he'd never even heard of another language being used in Wireweb Village. He'd read up on the village's history, and they had never used another language. Another dialect, maybe, but nothing like this. This was... well, this...*
This firmly contradicts everything they're teaching us about our history. This means that they're lying, and that means that they have a secret. Something we can't know. But what? Is it the wireweb virus? Or something else...?
*Orb glances around at the unfamiliar gravestones. There is something even more odd about them, he realizes. There is no more than one plaque for every marker. One. No mass graves, just solitary one-person shrines. There was no way this could be part of the spiders' plans. It simply doesn't add up. These graves were more like the ones Orb had seen outside the village, on his travels with Jerrit. They were like human graves...
He sees it.
So caught up is he in his musings that at first it escapes his notice. It is not, by any means, amazing. But what it is is large. It is without a doubt the biggest monument Orb has ever seen used as a grave marker in the village. It is even larger than the other human-like graves. What's more, it doesn't have a plaque. Instead, the words are carved directly into the stone itself. They would've been carved out of the rock by the weathering of time, but Orb feels a faint but potent aura of magic about it. As he gapes at the strange symbols, he starts to realize that he can read it. Whether it is genetic memory or intuition or just plain neurosis, he is not sure... but he knows that he knows what the inscription says. It says:
LOVING MOTHER
HEROIC LEADER
DEVOTED WIFE
WALK WITH REVERENCE, FOR SHE GAVE HER LIFE SO THAT YOU MAY LIVE
At first unsure of what to do, Orb stares at the tombstone. He wonders who this woman had been... this Dalania Iuson Kayla. He recognizes the name, because it was the name of Romulus' wife. No doubt that was how he could read it- a trove of innate memories, courtesy of Romulus Sparkborn. There is another stone directly to the left of Dalania's, a much smaller one. Orb cannot read the inscription on this one, but he knows who's grave it is, anyway. Tenderly, he kneels down and sets down the five dandelions. He stands.*
Your father is sorry... rest in peace, young one. Rest in peace.
*With the wind streaming through the cemetary, Orb (once o' the wireweb), gazes up at the treeline. His mind is full of questions, and there will be a time for questions later. For now he is silent. Silent and respectful.*
She gave her life so that you might live...
