Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:34:29 GMT
“…so when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour
The trumpet shall be heard on high
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.”
--John Dryden
--oOo--
The Patron of Sorrows returned to what had been the here and now. It wasn’t the place it had left.
Not in the least was it the place it had left. It returned a stranger in a strange land, a suddenly terrible land, and not the one they had hoped for.
Droix had been sleeping when they arrived; he slept comforted by the sensations and memories that enabled them of his conversation with the Centum’s ambassador. It had been an immensely pleasant thing; it was the first non-Flux Droix had ever spoken with, and the differences between the races-as well as a degree of the similarities-had been awesome. It was a delight, for those ten minutes, to exchange words with someone-
-and then the door alarm rang. It rang only once before someone was pounding on it, and Droix awoke abruptly, taking a moment to gain register for where he was, before hearing the pounding on the wall and the cries from the other side. It was decidedly unmoral to wake someone that way, and he rolled out of bed to the staccato bursts of fists on the door, and the rising warble of alarms beyond.
Bare feed plodded across the floor with a tempo not quite as fast as the fists, but fast enough. Droix opened the door, the sand still in the corner of his eyes.
Outside stood a trifecta of Heraldic guardsmen, the alarmed shipmaster of the Patron of Sorrows, and another Heraldic he didn’t recognize.
“Get dressed.” The unarmored Heraldic snapped curtly. “The Prime Admiral wants to see you immediately.”
--oOo--
So Droix dressed rapidly, moved rapidly, and was ushered rapidly into the presence of the Prime Admiral.
“I trust your return was uneventful?” She inquired pleasantly, though with a strange taughtness to her smile that unsettled the emissary. He nodded, and began to explain the details of his trip.
She cut that short.
“I’ve already read your report, Droix. I have to say for thought that I would have to disagree with your summary however.” The old woman rose from her chair and began waving her arms through the air to manipulate the Ascendancy’s ethereal consoles. Droix was confused by this; after all, he had lived his life in study of the SSC, and was surely qualified-
“…the Flux will be engaged due to severe temporal violations, temporal corruption and conspiracy to manipulate temporal technologies for national benefit at disadvantage to galactic progress…”
The voice continued to play in the background as Dorin and Droix locked eyes through the quiet noise that screamed into their hearts like hell itself.
“The Immortal Empire can contain their end of the transmission; their communications systems are intertwined with their supercomputer to an extent so they at least won’t have to be dealt with. There’s a possibility that, with carefully timed jamming emplacements, we can contain the signal to areas galactic east of the Immortal Empire; this would spare perhaps a third of the galaxy, but I am not certain we can take that risk…”
Everything fell silent in Droix’s mind. He did not immediately realize that he could not hear the strangely calm utterances by Prime Admiral Dorin as she evenhandedly discussed the possibility that, as Costellon’s colonies were in the shadow of the Infinite Empire, they might be able to escape, potentially, the required turning of the soil. Nor did he really hear her unnaturally diplomatic comments towards his failure on his mission.
Not at first, anyway.
“…you are quite certain, emissary, that you conducted a temporal jump back to these points from these points?” She says as she gestures to a holographic diagram. She is too calm, too bloody calm, too psychotically calm, and Droix trembles.
“I…I’m certain…our encounter never…never took place…”
“That’s a bit debatable at this hour, Droix, and stop stammering.” She replies softly as she leans onto her desk, the energy of all her purpose now seemingly extinguished.
The only reason Dorin is calm now is that the choice has already been made. If the SSC can maintain information from events that never happened, it was more of a threat to them than they’d ever anticipated. With the Ascendancy revealed, the delicate dichotomy between seen and unseen rendered null, Dorin now has an exchange of weight on her shoulders. Instead of balancing the Ascendancy’s love for this galaxy with its need to protect its secrecy, the choice had been made for her; the SSC had placed a heavy hand on the scales, and rendered the question solved.
It was time to turn the soil.
“…I am their emissary,” Droix said hesitantly, feeling a great deal less calm as he lacked the fanatical determination that Dorin’s years had imbued her with. “I am their emissary, and this is my problem to solve. Send me back to before the broadcast, and I can-”
“I don’t believe that’s how you can best solve this situation emissary, though your resolve to cure us of this grave ailment is laudable. I appreciate your commitment to our cause.” The Prime Admiral said as she places a hand onto a particular square of her station, and a drawer slides out silently. She reaches a withered hand inside it and removes an object wrapped in cloth as she speaks.
“I’ll be addressing the Ascendancy as a whole in the next fifteen minutes Droix,” she murmurs, herself feeling awed by what she’s about to be forced to do. “Everything our civilization stands for has been placed in jeopardy, and I will die before I let my people disintegrate like dust in the wind. If this means I have to turn the soil, so be it; for I know that each and every one of us has that same dedication to our principals of being.” She turns back towards Droix, her face seemingly more gaunt than ever. She was trembling now, slightly, and it was a surprise to see it.
“…I…I love my garden Droix, more than I love my own life. I’m about to destroy everything I have laboured so long to protect…” Dorin too was terrified, Droix realized, but she was much better at hiding that fact. She could pretend to be calm and collected in the face of madness, but it was not her natural element. She was not a madwoman, but she would play the part if she had to. And the Khamood’Urr knew she had to now, because if she was unwilling to bring madness, then she would have failed her entire civilization; and Dorin would rather die than fail.
“…our families will never know our failure, for if we fail; they will sit in perpetual night, waiting for a release that will never come.” Dorin gradually moved the cloth off the object, revealing a small metal handle attached to a cold metallic blade. “…I do not know if I should envy them or not,” she added, as she wiped the blade carefully with its cloth cocoon.
Droix recognized it immediately. It was a rare instrument, so rare that not even the Heraldics wielded them; in normal circumstances, it was only to be found in the possession of the Council of Five. It was a temporally sealed blade, capable of turning murder into something more than mere erasure. When someone is erased, the timeline shifts, subtly adjusting to the disappearance of a soul who would otherwise have been there. The Flux had engineered their society to accommodate these disappearances; they abolished families, prohibited love amongst their highest caste, and indoctrinated their offspring to be prepared to gladly commit the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the many.
But what she held in her hand was not like this. A temporally sealed blade did more than merely erase; it rewrote. If, for instance, Droix was erased, someone else would likely fill his place, barring certain exceptions; perhaps his mission to the SSC would be carried out by some other unfortunate soul. But to die by a temporally sealed blade did more than erase. It would touch so many things…
Droix swallowed uneasily.
“…we could retreat into the galactic core. We’ve hidden the majority of this galaxy’s indigenous inhabitants on the far side of the galaxy to prevent their abuse at the hands of the newcomers; we could easily hide among them there or in the expanse-” Droix proposed uneasily, causing a soft look of sorrowful disdain from the prime admiral.
“When the Nakai came, we fought them back out of this galaxy and made them regret the day they heard our name. We have not lived for so long and suffered through so much to surrender our domain at the hands of upstart invaders.” She said the words without hatred, as she was too drained to hate now. This war, if it was to be called a war, would not be a thing of hate. Invaders was just another word now. Just another word. Just another set of syllables that would shortly go forgotten in a cosmos so terribly large, and yet horribly intimate.
“…I do not think my life weighs too much to the balance to foreclude its elimination, Prime Admiral.” Droix said stiffly, his heart trembling abit as the lungs forced the words out of his throat. She didn’t look at him, but shook her head.
“I considered that the moment I heard the news, emissary; if they could keep information from timelines that never happened, your deletion would have little effect on the matter.” She slips the blade into her belt and looks back up at the emissary with haunted eyes.
“This galaxy is no place for mercy, Droix. I was a fool to think I could keep everyone safe here. Now we spread the cost to the stars.”
“We could hide in the past, hide from ourselves even!” Droix suggested desperately. “They can’t find us back there! We can fold our people into the vast nothingness of it all and the Khamood’Urr wouldn’t even dream of our existence!”
Dorin stared at him silently.
--oOo--
“Family in arms, take heed.” Dorin’s voice boomed through the intercoms of ships filled with unease and distress. It was a sort of unnatural day, the sort of thing that shouldn’t have been able of happening; yet as Droix had said earlier this very day, never and forever are rather misleading words.
“All we have, my children, is gone. Our loved ones are in hiding in the Silent Bastions, our dominion has eroded to the brink of non-existence, and we…we are the defenders of all that remains. We are their only hopes for salvation from a universe now bent on our annihilation.”
“We come to these crossroads bearing the heavy weight of our deeds upon our shoulders, and I am the one who placed that burden upon you. I had hoped that we could potentially coexist in this galaxy unseen, and I…I was mistaken. Our loss today is not incalculable but unimaginable, and we must proceed with vehement will to survive if we are to escape its shadow.”
Dorin’s voice paused for a full fifteen seconds here, though the sound of soft breaths and heartbeats could be imagined without too terrible of a difficulty.
“…what we have done is only the best we could offer. We have lived up to our common expectations more admirably than any other race in this great space could ever dream of. Now upon the precipice, we must leap knowing that we have the wings to overcome our enemies. One way or another, our name shall again become a thing of legends, and then ultimately we shall be forgotten. I ask you to leap with me into this great unknown knowing that we are more than anyone could imagine. We are Flux. We are the Ascendancy. And we shall rise.”
Dorin ended the transmission, and cried for a brief moment. She was alone, and in her empty chamber she wept for what she was about to do to this galaxy
This crumbling pageant shall devour
The trumpet shall be heard on high
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.”
--John Dryden
--oOo--
The Patron of Sorrows returned to what had been the here and now. It wasn’t the place it had left.
Not in the least was it the place it had left. It returned a stranger in a strange land, a suddenly terrible land, and not the one they had hoped for.
Droix had been sleeping when they arrived; he slept comforted by the sensations and memories that enabled them of his conversation with the Centum’s ambassador. It had been an immensely pleasant thing; it was the first non-Flux Droix had ever spoken with, and the differences between the races-as well as a degree of the similarities-had been awesome. It was a delight, for those ten minutes, to exchange words with someone-
-and then the door alarm rang. It rang only once before someone was pounding on it, and Droix awoke abruptly, taking a moment to gain register for where he was, before hearing the pounding on the wall and the cries from the other side. It was decidedly unmoral to wake someone that way, and he rolled out of bed to the staccato bursts of fists on the door, and the rising warble of alarms beyond.
Bare feed plodded across the floor with a tempo not quite as fast as the fists, but fast enough. Droix opened the door, the sand still in the corner of his eyes.
Outside stood a trifecta of Heraldic guardsmen, the alarmed shipmaster of the Patron of Sorrows, and another Heraldic he didn’t recognize.
“Get dressed.” The unarmored Heraldic snapped curtly. “The Prime Admiral wants to see you immediately.”
--oOo--
So Droix dressed rapidly, moved rapidly, and was ushered rapidly into the presence of the Prime Admiral.
“I trust your return was uneventful?” She inquired pleasantly, though with a strange taughtness to her smile that unsettled the emissary. He nodded, and began to explain the details of his trip.
She cut that short.
“I’ve already read your report, Droix. I have to say for thought that I would have to disagree with your summary however.” The old woman rose from her chair and began waving her arms through the air to manipulate the Ascendancy’s ethereal consoles. Droix was confused by this; after all, he had lived his life in study of the SSC, and was surely qualified-
“…the Flux will be engaged due to severe temporal violations, temporal corruption and conspiracy to manipulate temporal technologies for national benefit at disadvantage to galactic progress…”
The voice continued to play in the background as Dorin and Droix locked eyes through the quiet noise that screamed into their hearts like hell itself.
“The Immortal Empire can contain their end of the transmission; their communications systems are intertwined with their supercomputer to an extent so they at least won’t have to be dealt with. There’s a possibility that, with carefully timed jamming emplacements, we can contain the signal to areas galactic east of the Immortal Empire; this would spare perhaps a third of the galaxy, but I am not certain we can take that risk…”
Everything fell silent in Droix’s mind. He did not immediately realize that he could not hear the strangely calm utterances by Prime Admiral Dorin as she evenhandedly discussed the possibility that, as Costellon’s colonies were in the shadow of the Infinite Empire, they might be able to escape, potentially, the required turning of the soil. Nor did he really hear her unnaturally diplomatic comments towards his failure on his mission.
Not at first, anyway.
“…you are quite certain, emissary, that you conducted a temporal jump back to these points from these points?” She says as she gestures to a holographic diagram. She is too calm, too bloody calm, too psychotically calm, and Droix trembles.
“I…I’m certain…our encounter never…never took place…”
“That’s a bit debatable at this hour, Droix, and stop stammering.” She replies softly as she leans onto her desk, the energy of all her purpose now seemingly extinguished.
The only reason Dorin is calm now is that the choice has already been made. If the SSC can maintain information from events that never happened, it was more of a threat to them than they’d ever anticipated. With the Ascendancy revealed, the delicate dichotomy between seen and unseen rendered null, Dorin now has an exchange of weight on her shoulders. Instead of balancing the Ascendancy’s love for this galaxy with its need to protect its secrecy, the choice had been made for her; the SSC had placed a heavy hand on the scales, and rendered the question solved.
It was time to turn the soil.
“…I am their emissary,” Droix said hesitantly, feeling a great deal less calm as he lacked the fanatical determination that Dorin’s years had imbued her with. “I am their emissary, and this is my problem to solve. Send me back to before the broadcast, and I can-”
“I don’t believe that’s how you can best solve this situation emissary, though your resolve to cure us of this grave ailment is laudable. I appreciate your commitment to our cause.” The Prime Admiral said as she places a hand onto a particular square of her station, and a drawer slides out silently. She reaches a withered hand inside it and removes an object wrapped in cloth as she speaks.
“I’ll be addressing the Ascendancy as a whole in the next fifteen minutes Droix,” she murmurs, herself feeling awed by what she’s about to be forced to do. “Everything our civilization stands for has been placed in jeopardy, and I will die before I let my people disintegrate like dust in the wind. If this means I have to turn the soil, so be it; for I know that each and every one of us has that same dedication to our principals of being.” She turns back towards Droix, her face seemingly more gaunt than ever. She was trembling now, slightly, and it was a surprise to see it.
“…I…I love my garden Droix, more than I love my own life. I’m about to destroy everything I have laboured so long to protect…” Dorin too was terrified, Droix realized, but she was much better at hiding that fact. She could pretend to be calm and collected in the face of madness, but it was not her natural element. She was not a madwoman, but she would play the part if she had to. And the Khamood’Urr knew she had to now, because if she was unwilling to bring madness, then she would have failed her entire civilization; and Dorin would rather die than fail.
“…our families will never know our failure, for if we fail; they will sit in perpetual night, waiting for a release that will never come.” Dorin gradually moved the cloth off the object, revealing a small metal handle attached to a cold metallic blade. “…I do not know if I should envy them or not,” she added, as she wiped the blade carefully with its cloth cocoon.
Droix recognized it immediately. It was a rare instrument, so rare that not even the Heraldics wielded them; in normal circumstances, it was only to be found in the possession of the Council of Five. It was a temporally sealed blade, capable of turning murder into something more than mere erasure. When someone is erased, the timeline shifts, subtly adjusting to the disappearance of a soul who would otherwise have been there. The Flux had engineered their society to accommodate these disappearances; they abolished families, prohibited love amongst their highest caste, and indoctrinated their offspring to be prepared to gladly commit the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the many.
But what she held in her hand was not like this. A temporally sealed blade did more than merely erase; it rewrote. If, for instance, Droix was erased, someone else would likely fill his place, barring certain exceptions; perhaps his mission to the SSC would be carried out by some other unfortunate soul. But to die by a temporally sealed blade did more than erase. It would touch so many things…
Droix swallowed uneasily.
“…we could retreat into the galactic core. We’ve hidden the majority of this galaxy’s indigenous inhabitants on the far side of the galaxy to prevent their abuse at the hands of the newcomers; we could easily hide among them there or in the expanse-” Droix proposed uneasily, causing a soft look of sorrowful disdain from the prime admiral.
“When the Nakai came, we fought them back out of this galaxy and made them regret the day they heard our name. We have not lived for so long and suffered through so much to surrender our domain at the hands of upstart invaders.” She said the words without hatred, as she was too drained to hate now. This war, if it was to be called a war, would not be a thing of hate. Invaders was just another word now. Just another word. Just another set of syllables that would shortly go forgotten in a cosmos so terribly large, and yet horribly intimate.
“…I do not think my life weighs too much to the balance to foreclude its elimination, Prime Admiral.” Droix said stiffly, his heart trembling abit as the lungs forced the words out of his throat. She didn’t look at him, but shook her head.
“I considered that the moment I heard the news, emissary; if they could keep information from timelines that never happened, your deletion would have little effect on the matter.” She slips the blade into her belt and looks back up at the emissary with haunted eyes.
“This galaxy is no place for mercy, Droix. I was a fool to think I could keep everyone safe here. Now we spread the cost to the stars.”
“We could hide in the past, hide from ourselves even!” Droix suggested desperately. “They can’t find us back there! We can fold our people into the vast nothingness of it all and the Khamood’Urr wouldn’t even dream of our existence!”
Dorin stared at him silently.
--oOo--
“Family in arms, take heed.” Dorin’s voice boomed through the intercoms of ships filled with unease and distress. It was a sort of unnatural day, the sort of thing that shouldn’t have been able of happening; yet as Droix had said earlier this very day, never and forever are rather misleading words.
“All we have, my children, is gone. Our loved ones are in hiding in the Silent Bastions, our dominion has eroded to the brink of non-existence, and we…we are the defenders of all that remains. We are their only hopes for salvation from a universe now bent on our annihilation.”
“We come to these crossroads bearing the heavy weight of our deeds upon our shoulders, and I am the one who placed that burden upon you. I had hoped that we could potentially coexist in this galaxy unseen, and I…I was mistaken. Our loss today is not incalculable but unimaginable, and we must proceed with vehement will to survive if we are to escape its shadow.”
Dorin’s voice paused for a full fifteen seconds here, though the sound of soft breaths and heartbeats could be imagined without too terrible of a difficulty.
“…what we have done is only the best we could offer. We have lived up to our common expectations more admirably than any other race in this great space could ever dream of. Now upon the precipice, we must leap knowing that we have the wings to overcome our enemies. One way or another, our name shall again become a thing of legends, and then ultimately we shall be forgotten. I ask you to leap with me into this great unknown knowing that we are more than anyone could imagine. We are Flux. We are the Ascendancy. And we shall rise.”
Dorin ended the transmission, and cried for a brief moment. She was alone, and in her empty chamber she wept for what she was about to do to this galaxy