Song of the Void

”One of the oddities in the field of history is that it’s rarely objective. The humans have an adage saying that history is written by the winners. While that's not entirely correct, they do have a point. At best history is a matter of interpreting the facts and clues, and interpretations tend to come with pre-conceived notions and points of view. If two historians state the same facts, just the way they state them gives a different image to the person listening. And that’s without taking into consideration the historian’s own emphasis on what they consider important.”

- High Ambassador of the Mrrroww

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Now that the ship had ample power, the insides looked a fair bit more inviting. The whole place was well lit as it seemed the walls themselves glowed with a faint light. Amaterasu considered the crystalline material a little odd for the hull of a spaceship, but they had seen the same material within the ruins their capital was built over. The material was extremely sturdy and seemed to be extremely resistant to any kind of psionics. It also had the added benefit of not showing on most scanners. It wasn’t specifically a stealth material, but it was pretty damn close. She wasn’t sure if it felt very comfortable to have all the walls made of the material though. She could see that there might be errant worries of privacy as the walls were not quite opaque enough to block everything that happened on the other side.

The geometry of the ship felt a little off for Amaterasu as well, though that wasn’t all that odd. Many races had slightly different sensibilities. Dhar apparently liked spacious corridors with a high ceiling, though seeing as her companion was at least two and a half meters tall, that particular design choice made sense. The corridors and doors were also hexagonally shaped, which threw her off a bit as most human design centered around square or even round shapes. Most of the doorways on the ship had no doors, though some of them did seem to have an energy field of some sort. This too added to the possible privacy issue. Amaterasu wasn’t aware of the social nature of the Dhar or the presence of the unity that made petty concerns over privacy less prevalent.

As soon as they had reappeared, Amaterasu had found herself in a section of the ship clearly designed for such arrivals. There were several similar rooms that all connected to a large central chamber that had a large orb of some glassy material floating in the center. The orb had several metallic platforms spinning around it. “Oh hey, we have one of those back on our homeworld. We haven’t quite figured out what its purpose is, though it seems to have something to do with power. It’s not a power generator though, that much we figured out. It was powered down but we managed some slight repairs and got it powered again a few years ago.”

Selendil looked at what Amaterasu was pointing. “That’s what we call a support beacon. While it’s not exactly a generator, it does help provide power to anything in range. Its main functions are to keep things in working order, enacting repairs where necessary, and to work as a warp marker.”

“I’m guessing warping is how we got here. We are on your ship right? I can’t exactly see outside and the walls block any attempts at trying to use my mind to reach outwards.” Amaterasu continued with her questions.

“Yes, warping is the main method we used to get around, though the obvious limitation is that we need a warp marker as a destination. If the beacon I sensed earlier is on your planet then that makes things easier. I can send you home by using that as a marker. I was wondering what was near that beacon. Almost all the other beacons inside this galaxy are broken due to the time that has passed.” Selendil stated. She glanced at Amaterasu and noticed the clear signs of eagerness. “You have questions, and part of the reason I brought you here is to answer some of them. I will not answer everything, but you can ask.”

“Well, there are two obvious things to start with. I’m fairly convinced that you truly are one of the old ones, as I wouldn’t have bowed down otherwise, but we might as well confirm that so I don’t have to worry. Could I ask for you to show yourself?” Amaterasu phrased her request politely. This was something with the potential of being a touchy subject, but it was too important to skip.

Selendil made a small sound of amusement and the environmental suit she had been wearing so far seemed to vanish into thin air. Instead, she was now wearing a skintight black mesh suit, the same suit she had been wearing when she came out of stasis. Now she had simply added a lining into the neck area that seemed to be made of black feathers as a small show of comfort and excess. As before, there were several spots glowing with power on the suits and Amaterasu realized that it wasn’t really the suit that had those glowing spots but Selendil’s body itself. Lines of power ran from those spots and it was likely that the suit wasn’t as simple as it looked.

Selendil herself was tall but relatively thin with long limbs. You could almost call her lanky if she wasn’t covered in well-toned muscle. She was humanoid in shape with a dark blue skin that faded to black in places while paling to almost white in others. She had six digits on her long hands, with apparently two thumbs, one on both sides of her palm. She had a long and thin tail coming out of her lower back and five others coming from the back of her head. The only real features on her head aside from the tails were her large eyes and slight bony ridges on the top of her head. There was no ears, nose, hair, or even a mouth. Most importantly though, she looked somewhat intangible, as if she would turn into energy at any moment. The word that came to Amaterasu’s mind was ethereal.

“In the interest of fairness, I should probably mention that you chose a rather bad method of confirming things," Selendil stated, and suddenly her appearance changed into a mirror image of Amaterasu, clothes and everything.

“That’s…not an ability that we were aware of," Amaterasu replied with surprise clear in her voice.

“One of the benefits of being an energy being. We are not bound into a single form.” Selendil shrugged, her movements a little off in a human frame that she wasn’t used to, and she quickly returned to her normal form. “That’s actually a better way of proving things. During our history, there was only one other race of energy beings we found. I can’t say for sure that no others have developed since, but the ones I mentioned are no longer around.”

“The Solarians?” Amaterasu asked due to sudden inspiration.

“Very good. Yes, the Solarian’s were the other race.” Selendil confirmed, slightly impressed by the accurate guess. The reason Amaterasu had figured it out was because it felt like something she would do; taking the name of an old enemy that was in many ways similar to her.

Something that was on Selendil’s chest caught Amaterasu’s eye. It was a small golden rune she had seen before. She pointed at it. “What does that mean? I’ve seen the symbol in some of the records we recovered from a ruin, but we never figured out what it means.”

Selendil instinctively touched the rune that looked like a stylized eye surrounded by a galaxy. “Our kind usually shows their rank or role somewhere on their clothing or armor. This one is mine. The rank doesn’t have a perfect translation though. The word Keeper is the closest thing this language has.” She also said the word in the language of the Eternal Empire and something about the word sent shivers down Amaterasu’s spine. She could sense the word had an important meaning and that it wasn’t some common rank. “Your next question would likely be what it means in practice, but that is a topic for another time. You would not understand even if I explained.”

“As you say.” Amaterasu nodded. It had in fact been her next question and the word stuck inside her for some reason. They had also walked deeper inside the ship and had even taken a ride on a platform that felt a bit like an elevator to Amaterasu. “The next question is obvious. What happened to your kind? This has mystified everyone.”

Selendil stayed silent for a while and led them into a room that showed a view of the nebula outside the ship. There were no windows, but the crystal wall here was completely see-through. There were no chairs in the room but there was something akin to pillows on the floor. The pillows were actually a recent purchase that Lilly had suggested, though Selendil had skipped on the hover function. She herself took a meditative position floating in the air. She had nothing against hovering, she just thought it beneath her to use mechanical assistance.

“The answer to that question is quite complex. To make matters simpler though, the Dhar are gone. I’m the only one left.” She finally replied to the question.

"What? But…we suspected something like that, but how? I was under the impression that your empire spanned galaxies and no race was able to threaten you in battle." Amaterasu couldn't help herself, even though she could sense the subject was touchy, to say the least.

“Plague.” Selendil spat the word out. “We never learned how the disease began, but our ability to travel anywhere instantly became our undoing. The disease was not normal either. Even with all our medical technology and power, we could do nothing. Even the way it spread seemed odd. There should've been no way the disease spread everywhere so quickly and so completely despite the circumstances. Even relatively isolated communities were infected somehow. By the time we realized what was happening, it was already too late.”

“…Was it engineered by someone?” Amaterasu asked carefully. Something about the whole thing rubbed her the wrong way.

"Well, it certainly didn't seem like something that would occur naturally. However, we never found a guilty party. Even our own technology would've been unable to engineer something like that. In the end, we never did find the true cause. The disease burnt through our kind so quickly that we didn’t have much time to figure things out either. As the last of our kind and the last one to not contract the disease I entered stasis. The rest is history so to speak.” Selendil’s voice was dark. She had known these questions would be asked, but that didn’t mean she was happy to talk about it.

“This might sound like a greedy question but I assure you I’m asking mostly out of confusion. What happened to all your ships? I mean, if there was no battle then there should’ve been countless ships floating around, dead in space.” Amaterasu pivoted, changing the subject somewhat.

Selendil gave a small mirthless laugh. “That’s one of the questions you will not get an answer to. Suffice to say there’s a reason you didn’t find any. And you never will.”

“I expected as much.” Amaterasu sighed. “Otherwise we would’ve found them already. I can kind of guess though. I don’t think I would like to leave behind ships either. Speaking of, I’m assuming you aren’t thrilled about all of us going through the old ruins either.”

Selendil stared at the nebula outside, lost in thought for a while. Finally she replied. “I can’t say that I’m thrilled. At first, I was extremely angry. I had just come out of stasis and the loss of my people was still fresh and raw on my mind. Still is to an extent. To me, it feels like it happened just weeks ago. And here’s everyone going through the graves of my people. No, I’m not happy about it. But I do get it. That doesn’t make it much better, but it does make me less likely to want to kill everyone. Though from what I’ve seen, there’s not that much left.” She wasn’t sure how much she was joking with the killing part, if any.

Amaterasu suddenly had a thought. “So what do you want to do now?” She hit on the same problem Selendil had hit upon.

“That’s the question, isn’t it? I have some ideas, but it’s a bit early to share. My people did leave me with a mission once I entered stasis, but I’m not sure how to best go about it.” Selendil suddenly turned around to look at Amaterasu. “I think it’s my time to ask a question for a change. Can you cook?”

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A battle raged above the planet of Shadowdell. The Mrrroww fleet had jumped in a few hours ago and was facing stiff resistance. One of the things they had learned about the Shinzen was that the longer you left them alone, the more they had the chance to build their forces so leaving them alone for a long time was a bad idea. Most of the Mrrroww ships had been pulled from the more peaceful parts of their domain, as well as the fleet that had been in charge of the battle line that the Shinzen had by-passed.

“Main cannons focus fire on the Hives, auxiliary weapon systems and all point-defense system focus on the small creatures!” Moonshadow commanded. The large plasma cannon turrets on both dorsal and ventral sides of her ships turned towards the nearest Shinzen asteroid-vessel, while the pods at the sides of her ships sprung open as hundreds of missiles were launched in just as many seconds. The large cannons belched glowing round projectiles of superheated plasma while the missiles exploded in a fairly large area, each missile taking dozens of Shinzen flyers with them.

The large cannons on her ship and many others were dreadful against the small flyers, as most of their firepower was wasted. That was something that could not be changed without taking out and replacing the entire weapon system. However, it was much simpler to change the warheads on the missiles to be more suited against massed fragile enemies. They were not the optimal solution, but they were a solution. The point defense lasers were working overtime as they targeted the enemies that got past the missiles, but while the little creatures were fragile, they were not so fragile as to go down from a single hit from the lasers.

The enemy returned fire of course. The larger Shinzen vessels found their fire absorbed by the void shields of the Mrrroww vessels, but the small flying creatures could fly close enough to by-pass the void shields entirely. Luckily their firepower wasn’t stunning and the armor on Moonshadow’s ship was faring well so far. It also helped that her ship wasn’t one of the main targets of the enemy.

She along with many others had received summons from the High Command as all available warships were drafted into service. While she was a High Ambassador, her ship wasn’t in active use and she herself was a powerful Deity, which made her an asset in battle. Her powers had already taken a chunk out of one of the Hives that had gotten too close. As soon as she had acted though, one of the powerful enemies using abilities that felt much like her own had interfered with the actions of the Mrrroww psions. The enemy was not going to be able to stop all the Mrrroww psions for long, but it was holding on for now.

The Mrrroww had sent hundreds of ships into the system and the Shinzen were being pushed back. They had already withdrawn to what looked like orbital shipyards that had yet to start creating more of the Shinzen vessels. Three of the twelve Hives had already fallen and four others were heavily damaged. That said, the other ships in the Shinzen fleet were still in a relatively good condition, and the Hives had already disgorged all of their fliers so destroying them was of questionable value on the short term. Still, the Shinzen used the Hives to take most of the punishment, so the Mrrroww had to take what they could get.

“Captain, the enemy fliers in the vicinity have been wiped out, but we’ve used all the missiles we had loaded! It will take some time to re-load all the launchers. I recommend we pull some distance in the meantime!” One of her tactical officers recommended.

“No. We need to take advantage of the space we have created. Helm, bring us closer to the nearest Hive. I’ll deal with it. The enemy psion can’t stop me once the distance is short enough.” Moonshadow decided.

The ship maneuvered according to her commands and received support from the nearby vessels that recognized the owner of the ship. A huge concentration of psionic energy gathered above the ship and slammed down on the Hive soon after. The force was enough to crack the asteroid that had been turned into a carrier and the whole thing shattered into several fragments. They could all see the remains of eggs floating among the debris.

“I hate fighting in space.” Moonshadow cursed. Her powers were much more suited to fighting on the surface of planets or dueling with a single powerful enemy. Attacks like that took a lot out of her despite her strength, just because brute forcing it was extremely inefficient. There was a reason she was a High Ambassador instead of becoming a high strategic value asset as a Deity used in battle.

“Now now, you did quite well.” The Primaris commented through the communicator. He was in charge of the battle. “You might hate it, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”

They had all been assigned targets and the hive she had destroyed was one of hers. Destroying a large asteroid like that was difficult with normal weapons, which is why psions were better suited for the job. “Primaris. I still have a bad feeling about this. The Shinzen must have known we were coming. Why were they not better prepared? If they didn’t have the ability to prepare for the attack, then why did they not pull back?”

"I'm equally confused but they are already putting up a pretty stiff resistance as is, so I'm not exactly sorry. If you have ideas then I'm all ears. We can't just pull back though. We would be gifting the planet to the Shinzen in that case. We are keeping our eyes and ears open for any surprises, but beyond that, I'm not sure what else to do." The Primaris argued. He shared Moonshadow's feeling. Even if he didn't, he trusted Moonshadow enough to know she didn't exaggerate such things.

They didn’t need to wait long for that dark feeling to materialize though. Only ten minutes later several Mrrroww vessels in the vanguard suddenly exploded. The reason became immediately obvious as large meteors seemed to appear from thin air and seemed to vanish again. “Gods curse them! They have stealthed meteors orbiting the planet!” Moonshadow hissed. The impacts with Mrrroww ships broke the stealth on some of the meteors. Some of the meteors had also broken on impact, showering the fleet with debris, revealing the problem in a rather gruesome way.

“Moonshadow, this one is something you’ll have to deal with. There can’t be that many of the damn things as the planet didn’t have any before the Shinzen arrived, but we can’t locate them with our sensors. They have to be able to detect the things somehow or they wouldn’t be able to avoid them so perfectly. These sorts of things are your specialty!” The Primaris commanded.

His words weren’t without merit as the Hives were much larger targets than the Mrrroww vessels yet they had not been hit. Moonshadow was also well suited to the task. This was somewhat akin to the hunts she had performed before, only now she was hunting for rocks instead of invisible beasts. The fleet could not approach the planet for as long as the invisible threats were in place. They would be able to deal with the rocks if they could spot them.

“Let’s just hope this is the only surprise they have in store for us.” Moonshadow muttered.