Salvation

by voroshilov

Xayanth

The Eternal Emperor, Nicholas, The Master of Time, stood on the observation bridge of his personal vessel, the IESS Hand of Fate, overlooking the glistening emerald of a world he orbited. Normally, the discovery of a world like this would warrant immediate deployment of Imperial forces, the system would be brought into the Empire no matter the cost. The world below, twinkling in the light of its star, was so rich in resources as to be worth several systems. Thousands of ships could be lost taking it and the materials gathered within the first year of Imperial control would replenish those numbers ten fold.

But, it was not to be. He had ordered it so. The world was abundant in raw materials, yes, but there were countless planets, an endless supply of materials to fuel his armies and navies as they marched endlessly through the void. Yet, he had still ordered it surveyed, more out of curiosity than anything else. Rift energy had taken a crystalline form in the lithosphere, there was enough of it to warrant the information be quarantined from all eyes but his. There was great avarice in his Empire yet, so the secret of such bountiful wealth must be kept hidden, lest one of the more ambitious factions attempt to seize it and ruin all of his work.

The planet’s life was primitive, to say the absolute very least. It was not as though they had just climbed from the oceans, far from it, they were far, far older than any species Emperor Nicholas knew of, any species anybody knew of for that matter. Yet, apparently, their evolution had stagnated. They had once been as gods - to use a term an unfortunate Leftenant had used when Nicholas had been enraged - yet, now, they were like insects, like the ants that he would view with such wonder as a child.

Like ants, they were weak. He could kill an ant accidentally - he had done so many a time - perhaps even without knowing it. Yet, for creatures their size, they were exceptionally strong. They could lift ten times their own body weight, he had read - or had that been beetles?

The Precursors, a species who had lived before even the Dauxite Assembly, a species who had at least one of their members match even the Dauxite Emperor - one or both of them. To look upon them now was almost pitiful, they were so feeble that a slight change in their core temperatures could kill them. They had joined all of the other mortal species of the omniverse.

A shiver ran up Emperor Nicholas’ metaphysical spine. Danger, he could sense it. Where? Down on the surface, his project was in danger. Creatures, hundreds, at least, were swarming, they wished to devour his project. All would be lost.

A shiver in the fabric of space-time, then a tear, and the Emperor was gone from the Hand of Fate’s bridge.

Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra snapped awake on her captain’s chair on the command bridge of the Retaliator. She felt groggy, like she had just short of the right amount of sleep. With a deliberate movement of a claw, she wiped her eyes clean and focused on commanding the vessel. Which, with Ablazed Glory aboard, took the form of telling her to do something once then checking back every hour or two to make sure it was all going well.

They were eighteen hours and seventeen minutes out from New Horizons, stuck in the wake of an advancing Dominion fleet. In order to retain operational integrity, Dominion fleets utilised interdiction fields that prevented civilian craft or enemy vessels from Rifting into operational zones. Unfortunately, due to the Dominion’s strategy of “better safe than sorry,” those interdiction fields were enormous, with a typical radius of a parsec or greater. They were, for the time being, unable to leave the system.

“Incoming transmission from Dominion Perseus Central Command,” the Luminary said, snapping Penumbra to maximum alertness. Hopefully, it was about the interdiction field going down.

“All fleet interdiction systems in the Perseus Sector are now offline.” The message was automated and to the point, just as Penumbra liked it.

Ablazed Glory whistled a happy sounding tune. “Alrighty, where to?”

Truth be told, Penumbra wasn’t sure. She had Ablazed Glory, she’d visited New Horizons and Sanctum, where would she go now? She’d visited the remains of old Equestria, and now ponykind’s new home, was there anything else urgent?

No. Not anything urgent, anyway. She did, however, remember a lead she would like to take up. It wasn’t a matter of life or death, nor was it a matter of care for a friend. It was a simple matter of curiosity, that and boredom.

“You remember Cradle?”

Ablazed Glory tapped a claw on the desk in front of her, face scrunched up slightly. “The Shield World?”

Penumbra nodded.

“Yeah,” Ablazed Glory said, turning back to her console, apparently to key in the coordinates - or at least attempt to find them. “Wait.” She turned back to Penumbra. “Why?”

“I’m curious,” was her reply, “apparently I’m some sort of ‘Precursor’, something that the Shield World’s AI mentioned when I was there at the start of the War. I want to check that out.”

Ablazed Glory seemed to consider it for a moment. The gem on her chest pulsed slightly faster, evidently the two were speaking.

“Could be fun.” The burning alicorn turned to her console and began working at a lightning pace, Penumbra able to keep track of her movements but not what they did. “Keying in coordinates for Cradle, they’re probably a little inaccurate but we’ll work with them.” She tapped away for another half a minute, no doubt doing something beyond Penumbra’s limited understanding. “Ready to engage Rift.”

“Engage,” Penumbra declared, adding the unnecessary but inevitable flourish of a pointed claw.

Ablazed Glory clicked a talon and the Retaliator entered the Rift.

The Eternal Emperor, Nicholas, The Master of Time, froze the air around him. He had emerged atop a hill, covered in snow from foot to summit. The severe weather of the area was unnatural, caused by a group of malignant entities that had turned their wicked eyes to the local inhabitants. Little did the creatures know, however, that the locals were under the protection of the most powerful being ever to live - one whose mere command could shake the world.

One of them was below him, some twenty metres from where his talons dug into the deep snow. The creature wormed its way upwards, clearly aware of the new arrival but unsure as to exactly what or where he was. Emperor Nicholas’ abilities were many, but none had first seemed as useless as the ability to go unnoticed. He could not become invisible, not fully anyway, but he had a power even better. An invisible person could still be smelt, heard, touched, Emperor Nicholas had the ability to simply force everyone and everything to ignore him. Once a bane in his younger years, now it was a great blessing. Not least in that it made his arrival on primitive planets seem like the arrival of a prophesied messiah - which he often claimed to be purely for the reaction of the inhabitants. He may have been Emperor, but he was allowed some fun every few centuries.

It was a similar shape to the inhabitants, though it had the appearance of a wisp, much of its body had little more than a vague shape, with its whole rear simply a long, snaking tail that rippled in the wind. The creature was curious, no doubt it had heard the shrill scream of his arrival back into the mortal realm. To Emperor Nicholas, it was an odd creature, most likely it had evolved as it had due to the unique conditions of its homeworld - namely the immense Rift energy that seemed to permeate everything.

It was a horrid thing.

He drove Oathbreaker through its head, the wispy form of its flesh crackling and sparking beneath the weight of his weapon’s power. Conventional force didn’t seem to harm it, but little stood against the Emperor’s will. The creature gave a raspy cry, before pooling into a puddle of mist on the ground. Nicholas was certain it was dead.

The creature had been weak. It displayed a similar sort of physical reaction to starvation, though what it fed on he wasn’t sure. There was no denying it was carnivorous, given the way it had reacted to Emperor Nicholas’ appearance, it had moved with a hunter’s presence. Unfortunately for it, Emperor Nicholas was the chief of hunters, the apex of the apex.

The danger to his project had not ceased, he could sense them in the valley below. Similar creatures to the one he had slain, though many far larger and stronger, swarmed in an almost cloud around the comparatively small huddle they were endangering. The blizzard about the valley was not natural, it appeared to have been summoned by the creatures. A femtosecond later, Emperor Nicholas had learned they were feeding off of his project, using their energies to fuel themselves - constructing this blizzard as a cover.

He spread his mighty wings, flexing those muscles he was still not yet fully used to existing. With one beat, he threw a chunk of the blizzard aside and took to the skies, aiming for the mass of wisp creatures below.

The Retaliator exited the Rift above the Shield World, which had remained remarkably untouched by the Dominion. Cradle, where she had discovered her true purpose, hung silently in the void, its miniaturised star core glowing with slightly less brightness than she remembered - though it could easily have been the Retaliator’s light filters.

“I never got to see it from far away,” Ablazed Glory muttered, “it’s so strange.”

Cradle, the last of the Shield Worlds.

She had done her research, with the help of Tick back on Sanctuary’s Watch. Millennia of nothing to do would have crushed her had it not been for the wealth of knowledge she had relatively to hand - if the Clockworks could be considered to hand. Cradle - or 268-SHIELD as it was entered as in Dominion records - was the last of the Shield Worlds to be built by the Dauxite Assembly, it had also not fully finished construction, being approximately seventy percent finished before the Assembly was consumed by civil war and destroyed.

The Shield World’s control centre was within, on a large platform that would have eventually become a much larger system, cut off from the vacuum of space by a complete crust. As it stood, Cradle’s crust was partially open, allowing easy access inside. Its defensive systems had been offline for long enough that Penumbra did not even give them a thought.

Ablazed Glory marvelled at the design as she took them within, gazing up at the city sized lattices of girders that would have held up plates of the artificial lithosphere - if a hollow world could have a lithosphere. The miniature star, contained within an immense shield, gave light to the entire inner surface. No Assembly constructs had been moved within, save those on the various floating platforms, so the hollow crust was devoid of light and life.

Penumbra identified the control room easily, it was at least triple the size of any other platform, hovering in a nearly central point, orbiting slowly around the star’s shield. She pointed it out to Ablazed Glory, who responded with an affirmative “aye,” and directed them to land.

She remembered how they had fought for the control room, how Emperor Nicholas had strode forwards without so much as a care. How he had swatted aside any attempt to attack him in an almost undignified manner. Everytime she remembered him fighting, she remembered why no one dared stand against him.

The door to the control room was already open for them, a pair of WarSynths waiting outside. Ablazed Glory had been cautious of them, but had calmed when Penumbra had informed her they wouldn’t be any issue. Even if it came to blows - which it wouldn’t - Penumbra was almost certain she could kill a WarSynth. How hard could it be?

Exultation-001, the Shield World’s commanding AI, awaited them in the form of a red line on a screen. “Welcome,” it said, voice deep and somewhere in the uncanny valley between natural and robotic, “Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra and?”

“Ablazed Glory,” Penumbra answered, the burning alicorn having not realised the AI was asking her.

“Why have you come?” Exultation-001 asked. Its voice could portray no emotion of any kind, so the question appeared to be perfectly neutral.

“Information,” Penumbra replied, “about Xayanth.”

Exultation-001 hummed. “What information do you require?”

Penumbra wanted to say everything, though she knew that wouldn’t be enough. Knowing Assembly AI, it would give her literally everything on the topic, she would quickly drown in the information - much of it being useless or only tangentially related. Eventually, she settled on, “its location.”

Exultation-001 hummed again. No doubt it was searching its data banks for the information she had requested. “Stellar coordinates in local database are outdated, I am issuing an information request to the Array.”

The Array was the network all Assembly machines connected to, allowing enormous amounts of data to be passed from one side of the galaxy to the other if necessary. The problem with the Array was simple: most of it was gone. Destroyed either by the Assembly’s fall, the withering effect of time or Emperor Nicholas during the early days of the Irenton Empire.

“Very well,” Penumbra said, “we can wait.”

The Eternal Emperor, Nicholas, The Master of Time, struck down the closest of the wisp creatures. Oathbreaker ripped the creature’s soul apart, burning its body and killing it within a second of impact. There was no triumphant roar, or other assorted battle cry, necessary, for he fought against creatures unaffected by morale. Nothing could be allowed to endanger his project, not even his presence. He was only on the surface by absolute necessity, the moment his project was safe he would be starward once again.

Little light reached him, such was the ferocity of the blizzard, though there had been a decrease - albeit miniscule - when the wisp monster, that had once lived where his feet were, was alive. As expected, if he killed the monsters, he killed the blizzard and saved his project. Compared to the administration of his Empire, the act was relaxing.

Another creature, larger than the previous, seemed to have noticed its fellow’s demise. It slithered towards him through the air, coming across where its compatriot had once stood. It hung, almost motionless, as if confused, for a moment, before Emperor Nicholas struck at it with Oathbreaker, cleaving it in two. Its body dissipated, though not before letting out a wail that was certain to attract attention.

Emperor Nicholas, though, revelled in a fight. He let his field of ignorance drop, revealing himself to anything that got close. Under the cover of the storm, his project would be none the wiser to his presence, but the wisp monsters would likely see him clear as day.

Oathbreaker pulsed, sending the snow heavy air around it swirling away. It was a pulse that called the wisp monsters closer, creating a new energy signature for them so large as to be impossible to ignore. Sure enough, three of them emerged from the blizzard, attracted by the signature, only to try and halt themselves as they realised the trap that had been set for them.

With an arcing cleave, the three wisps were dead. Though, another five quickly took their place. Oathbreaker’s pulse had been far more attractive than originally expected. The wisp creatures swarmed him, hungering for the bountiful energy that lay guarded within Emperor Nicholas and his weapon.

These creatures, as evidenced by their seemingly suicidal charges, were not fully sentient. Or, at least, not in a way that gave them any sense of self-preservation. Emperor Nicholas liked to consider his fights as dances, with a number of carefully trained and choreographed moves that built into a crescendo and eventually a climax. The wisps that charged him, however, made his dance a solo endeavour. He twirled and swung and gave the battle more than the minimum amount of flourish, but his many hundreds of attackers were little better than pests - particularly large and misshapen wasps or mosquitoes. Invisible, it would have appeared as though Emperor Nicholas was making a - quite literal - song and dance of swatting flies.

Naturally, to complement his dance, there was song. The song was not sung by him, his vocal chords had long since been unable to recreate melody - or indeed anything other than a deep rumble. Rather, it emanated from Oathbreaker, a chorus of a thousand voices, singing in a language only he and it knew. Song served to not only demoralise the enemy, given that the very language it was in was anathema to most mortal ears, but also telegraph his opponents’ attacks to him. Though, against the wisp monsters, there was little need for either of those abilities.

It took the deaths of no more than three hundred of their number for the wisp creatures to slow, several of their smallest shying away. Some of the middling sized circled him, keeping at two sword lengths at least, whilst their larger brethren were cut apart when they came within one. The odd few would attack, acting as though they had caught him by surprise, though they would come to only just within natural vision range before they became a part of the layer of death mist at his feet.

The smallest creatures fled, scattering in all directions. Those few that remained were killed barely seconds later, as a wave of green fire burst out from Oathbreaker, cutting apart the blizzard and creatures as if they were tissue paper in a hurricane.

Yet, he sensed the danger to his project had not yet diminished. The blizzard, although weakened, continued. If his project, the very thing that would ensure his victory, was destroyed by a snow storm, the very thought drove him mad. He had chosen this path long ago, he would follow it.

Confident the creatures would not return, he closed in on his project. They were holed up in a cave, singing. Certainly an odd choice for a species in the midst of a potentially cataclysmic crisis, but to each their own, he supposed.

He could only influence them, such was the task he had given himself. He could not simply appear to them and whisk them away to safety, that risked compromising the integrity of his project. It would also be a pain to deal with, he would likely have to make regular visits and he would rather do almost anything else than deal with adoring primitives. He was a leader, not a celebrity.

What better way to influence them than to set a seed. He could not influence them directly, but - especially with him - influence was rarely direct. He could create a whole mythos by accident, but it was worth it to save his project. His seed would be simple: he would use some of his power and let them believe it was they who used it. Over time, they would see his actions as their own, so that even Nicholas’ most overt manoeuvres would be attributed to them.

And, what better a seed than a burning one. He could purge the blizzard, remaining wisp monsters and thaw out their worryingly ice-entombed leaders in one single swipe. Granted, the leaders would still probably be just as dead - and damp - but the results would be fine overall. It was the whole that counted, after all.

His fire would be a nice pink, enough that it didn’t look like he was just setting them on fire. Different enough that they would believe it a “magical” phenomena. Actually, he thought, just make it a heart shape. Teach them that friendship with each other could conquer all - rather than the usual war. He didn’t want his project extinguishing itself, that would make his fight against the wisp monsters all the less satisfying.

He conjured before himself a pink, heart shaped flame. The addition of a little embellishment was a mixture of both making it look magical, and also wanting to see if he could recreate patterns with pink fire - apparently he could, though he hadn’t exactly expected that specific task to prove overly difficult. Satisfied the heart would be enough, he brought it back within his hands, claws burning with energy. With a burst, he sent a giant version of the flame forwards, across where his project faced a small group of wisp monsters - who had apparently not seen his beacon. Evidently, they had been preoccupied.

He watched from afar as the fire of friendship - an appropriate if still incorrect name - swept through the valley, purging the blizzard as it went. With a satisfied nod, he shivered.

Another shiver, a tear in space-time, and The Eternal Emperor, Nicholas, The Master of Time was gone.

The only active terminal in the control room flashed, instantly drawing Penumbra’s eyes. She pounced on it, moving from a seated position some ten metres away to standing directly before it in seemingly an instant.

Exultation-001 hummed. “These coordinates are from the records of KINDLE, provided by Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra.”

Ablazed Glory turned to her companion, having done little more than slightly roll the wrong direction when Penumbra had jumped. “I thought you didn’t know where this place was,” she said.

“I don’t,” Penumbra said, “not now at least. It’s a long story and I’ll tell you at some point, I just need to memorise these coordinates.”

The burning alicorn gave a sarcastically guffawing chuckle. “Love a good bit of stellar cartography, me.” She rolled slightly further, carrying out an unnecessarily difficult manoeuvre to right herself. She had decided against the usage of her forelegs, using only the strength of her rear and neck - though she had once righted herself using only her upper jaw and four front teeth so it couldn’t be too hard.

“I’m just hoping the Luminary can do something with these,” Penumbra said, not realising Ablazed Glory was far from paying attention - placing all of her mental faculties on getting to her feet by use of her face - “for all I know, Assembly coordinates are incompatible with Dominion machines. In fact, they probably are.”

Exultation-001 cut her off, “negative, all coordinates are updated for usage in your vessel’s flight controller.”

“How did you do that?” Penumbra asked, not taking her eyes off of the screen as she jotted the coordinates down onto a square of paper, “I was under the impression that Assembly technology was entirely different to that of the Dominion.”

“That assumption is correct,” Exultation-001 sounded almost proud of itself - though it could have been a quirk in the processing of the phrase - “your vessel was scanned as per protocol as soon as it entered the system, allowing me to access the specifications of your flight controller and adapt the retrieved coordinates accordingly.”

“Are they correct?”

“Affirmative,” now the AI sounded almost annoyed, “unless your vessel’s flight controller is incorrect.”

It had an arrogance atypical of the Assembly. At least, Penumbra assumed it was arrogance, it was rather a measure of reading between the lines heavily. In all fairness, it was probably telling the truth.

“Hey, computer,” Ablazed Glory called, having somehow managed to reach her feet, “this statement is false.”

“My systems have been specifically designed to filter out looping queries such as yours.” Exultation-001 did not care for Ablazed Glory’s poor joke - probably - and Ablazed Glory did the only reasonable thing and stuck her tongue out at the console.

Luckily, Penumbra finished her copying a second later. “Come on.” She practically dragged Ablazed Glory out of the control room. “We appreciate the assistance,” she called back to the AI, who responded with a simple hum.

Boarding the Retaliator, Penumbra threw herself into the captain’s chair. “Luminary,” she said, preparing to read her coordinates aloud, “chart a course.”