Salvation

by voroshilov

Dominion

When the War in Heaven ended with the Smothering of the Great Light, the Irenton Empire, which had stood firm as a bastion of militarism and strength for over seventeen thousand years, nominally collapsed within a single day. The Rift, the means by which Imperial starships navigated between the countless stars and galaxies that the Empire held dominion over, vanished without so much as a trace. The Rift Generators, the engines allowing Imperial starships access to the Rift, simply deactivated.

Over the course of the next two hundred years, the last of those who remembered the Empire firsthand died out. With the death of Vice-Commodore Richardson, the last of those who served in the War in Heaven and the Imperial military were gone, with the Irenton Empire, its size and its leaders eventually becoming semi-legendary amongst those living on Chronove. Emperor Nicholas, meanwhile, became little more than a story told by mothers to scare their children into behaving, his abilities becoming nothing more than fairytales. A small few continued to believe, though even they couldn’t help but deny the possibility of the true extent of his powers.

Irenton society changed drastically over the next four millennia, without the guidance of the will of Emperor Nicholas, the Irenton people were free to try and determine their own futures. Unlike the artificiality of the Empire, whose culture and mannerisms were designed by Emperor Nicholas to better serve him in the War in Heaven, the remaining people of Chronove and its satellites developed naturally.

Four thousand and two years to the day since the end of the War in Heaven, the Rift suddenly reappeared. Ancient monitoring stations, kept active purely as tradition, suddenly began to ping, messages were tentatively sent between former Imperial planets, with the newly built fleets around Chronove entering the Rift and reconnecting with their ancient cousins. A new found joy spread throughout the former Imperial Core as peoples, united once by their shared loyalty to one man, were united once again. Children who had never known the Empire saw the beauty of different stars for the first time, their eyes alighted to the fragility of their homeworlds. A new passion burned in trillions of hearts, a passion to protect.

Around Arcadius, once capital of the Irenton Empire in a time of great crisis, ships from across the Core systems reunited and proclaimed the Irenton Dominion, a federation of planets and systems that would ensure above all the safety and freedoms of its peoples. Using technologies far beyond those available to the Empire, artificially regulated and induced mutations created forms perfect for their assigned duties, genetic enhancements eliminated disease and perfected forms of surgery sent success rates close to 100%. The Irenton Dominion, it seemed, was perfect.

Perfection, however, was in the mind of the beholder. One such beholder, Sunless-Halo-of-Penumbra, was, despite not being one to complain, more than dissatisfied with the Dominion. Not as a result of any particular event or part of the new culture, granted, but the fact that there was nothing to be done. She may have loved learning about new inventions and scientific discoveries, but they eventually exceeded even her capacity to learn. The Irenton Dominion was expanding, scientifically and spatially, every single day, faster than she could keep up.

Thus, she had given up, at least partially, faced with the impossible task of learning the equivalent of tens of millennia of science. She had, initially, tried to take up a hobby, though the only one which she could reliably do from her observatory home on Sanctuary’s Watch was star-gazing, though that had the complication of confusing the immense layer of defensive stations around the Chronovus system with stars. Within a single night, she had observed a grand total of two hundred and sixty seven defence stations, along with one hundred and four capital ships. She was among the stars that she had once seen every night from her window as a child, though she was lucky to see any of them.

She also visited Chronove’s surface, specifically the Dominion’s Headquarters for the Defence Flotilla, every month or so, her visits originally beginning when Dominion commanders called her in to simply talk, evolving into a tradition she couldn’t stop - mostly because she had nothing else to fill the time. She had made a few friends, though her relationships with them stayed securely within the duration of her visits.

Penumbra tried her hardest to bury her memories of the War in Heaven, though that was an essentially impossible task. The memories, the trauma, every second of pain and violence had left indelible marks on her soul, impossible to truly escape. Every night she would be haunted by nightmares of a past she had forgotten, with the ghosts of her friends gnawing at her soul.

When Emperor Nicholas’ death had come, she had lamented the death of her mentor, the person who had educated her and even built her. Celestia, her first real mentor-figure, was abandoned - she had not saved Penumbra or the rest of her species from the War in Heaven as she should have done, so she was less than worthless.

The year that followed marked the beginning of the Irenton Dominion, the hundred years that followed marked what Penumbra considered to be the twilight of her life, though she still remained unsure if she could even die.