It had been a gargantuan edifice long ago, well over ten thousand meters in height by the estimate of the slann. It was difficult to tell over the ages of degradation, but it had clearly once been artificially sculpted, for it was unnaturally symmetrical and made out of a stone that was far stronger than any naturally-occurring substance. But the mountain had been broken by a colossal impact, a great hole torn in its side by something that seemed to have fallen apart on impact into a pile of rubble. Flitting around the kilometers-wide mound of debris, the slann found that it was not all rock - there were sheets of metal tens of meters wide buried in the debris, scattered in a pattern that suggested something else was buried under the tens of meters of rock.
The slann looked into the mountain, and found that it was hollow, with chambers having seemingly been formed into the stone with no marks of tool or shaping. They drifted through them, and found nothing - if there had once been inhabitants of this place, they were long gone, and their possessions with them. This place was nothing more than a tomb centuries old, with only their holes bored in the mountain to suggest they had ever been there. With speculations storming through their minds, the slann ghosted out of that empty place and flew south, racing past the orks once more and over hundreds of miles of sea as they headed towards the southernmost continent.
They found a sight that, while not as alarming as the orks was, still caused them to proceed with some caution. Like its northernmost counterpart, the south continent was flat, a plain save for the shadow of a mountain in the distance. Unlike it, or indeed anything else on the planet, the entire continent was covered in a thin layer of shimmering crystal.
There had been great windstorms on the northern continent, with no geological features to block the wind, but here there was no wind at all, despite the presence of windswept waves just meters from shore. The crystal plains swept on seemingly indefinitely, an unbroken expanse of refracted color. There was a humming sensation emitted from it that the slann recognized as being indicative of the substance being psychically reactive, but none of them attempted to manipulate it in case they triggered some security system. Instead, they flew towards the leagues-high mountain in the distance, seeking answers there.
It was a far different sight than the one in the north - it stood unblemished, covered in the same crystal as the rest of the continent and stretching thirty thousand meters into the sky, growing too thin near its peak to stand under conventional physics. As the slann approached, they began to sense a distinct tingling in their auras, and could soon tangibly feel the power stored within the mountain. Where the crystal covering the rest of the continent was mostly inert, here it was charged with energy, clearly powering something inside the mountain itself.
...
Examination of Ayacmanik memories has revealed that they were very likely created by two mysterious entities, each of which desired a different utility out of them. Additionally, an unknown but long amount of time ago there was a catastrophe reminiscent of the fallout from asteroid impacts, after which feral orks appeared on the planet. The Ayacmanik have fought back incursions of the orks several times, but each invasion has taken them centuries to purge fully from the jungles.
...
The fruit of the ultimate predator was rotten and brought only death when eaten at long last. It now stands a hollow remnant, a mockery of that which was before.
The Garden will rage and thrash at its discovery, but could not halt the inevitable. The storm cannot be controlled; it can only be allowed to pass by or stopped in its tracks.
