The Secrets' Crusade

In another time, you'd faced a creation that had been the vaguest echo of this one in conversation. It had been a doorway, the lock and key both, and your answer to it had been born from the same place as the one you reached for now. Practice could create things that were entirely simple, and others that were glorious, but it wasn't limited to just that. In the third year of your Presidency, a Shiplord assassination system had almost killed you. You had survived through a manipulation of Practice that you'd never been certain existed. When faced with a machine seeking to kill you, you'd stared up into the face of its weapons and told it to stop. And it had obeyed.

You had used that power many times since, in ways primal and beautiful. But what many might call your greatest examples of it were the purifying flame that had broken the Tribute Fleet fifteen years ago, or the single Word which had torn a world back from ash and dust, those paled in comparison to a one Spoken years before. That moment facing the gatekeeper of your predecessors. Those of the First Awakening who had guided humanity towards a future that held more than war. You answer had been a Word to describe your very self. The answer given to you by your visitor had been like that, just without the words.

If one sought to speak, to truly converse, with one from another place, there was only one way to do it: speak in their language. You wished for a moment that Sidra were here; what you'd received was their field, not yours. But you still couldn't feel the presence of the calm intelligence of the Unison Platform that had bound themselves to you. Which only added another question to your list, and left you having to compile it alone. Who they were seemed obvious, yet there was nothing there that Phoebe could use to trace back with Project Insight, when you woke up. That required resolution.

And there were all the other questions beyond that. So many variations of why, each of them so necessary. Why now, why humanity, why should you even listen. Fortunately, this you did know how to do. Picking multiple meanings instead of one complicated matters, but the basic process was the same. Find the meaning you needed in a word, invest it with Practice, and then add it to more strands of the same. Vega would have been better at this, but you understood at least some of what Harmonials could do. Learning how to Speak without limits had taught you that.

Through the entire process, the being that had, you assumed, somehow brought you here waited. Its eyes burned the same gentle blue as the plane of light you were standing on. Deliberate, or something more profound? Maybe you could ask that later? For now, there were more important things.

This was when you discovered that one could not easily Speak a gestalt. The weave of interlaced meanings was too dense. It made sense, in retrospect. You'd often stretched the boundaries of single Words in practice sessions, applying only one meaning. Imbuing a word with so many just wasn't possible. Language had its limits. This was one of them. Yet, you knew that words were not used by Sidra and the other Unison Intelligences, or even your daughter Iris. They could do it. Why not you?

Because you're not connected that way, Amanda, you told yourself, and stopped suddenly. Why couldn't you be connected that way? You'd been able to forge a link with a member of another species, during Second Contact. Why couldn't you do that here? Yes, it had been something they'd offered you, but the principles…weren't they the same? And if this being had given you information, then surely there would be a link already present. There was only one way to find out.

Don't Speak, Feel: 96 + 36 = 132. Solid Success.

You reached out with your soul, with the power that had been given, scouring the world around you for the pathway that had been used. You almost missed the shift in the figure as you did so, which the gestalt helpfully interpreted as surprise. They hadn't expected this, even after seeing what you could do? No, that was assuming that they'd always been watching, and you couldn't know that. If all they'd seen was the battle just past, they'd just know what they'd seen there. Power in plenty, but little finesse beyond the control required to safely wield such energies.

You found the link a moment later. It was fading quickly, but you were a Mender. Putting things back together was what you did. Power surged out of your soul, through the lens of your Focus, and the connection reformed swiftly. Then you took what you'd built, the invisible collection of precise meanings and questions, and breathed them out into the renewed link. The being opposite you stilled, its cloak freezing in the air around it. It tilted its head, another remarkably human motion. For a single, mad moment you hoped that you'd not somehow confused it.

"Your mastery is impressive," it remarked, bowing its head in a motion of solemn acknowledgement. "And were we you, we would not have fewer questions." It reached up and pulled back the hood, revealing a face that was at once close to human, and yet not at all. There was the impression of bright scales across a narrow and curious face, and then the human image it had created reasserted itself.

"We are all that remains of a species known once as the Tahkel," the figure continued. "If you wish to give us a name, that will suffice." You nodded once, thankful. Project Insight would be able to follow that name, if it truly existed.

"As for why we have made contact now, and not before," the entity's eyes flared bright, but no burst of knowledge followed this time. "We have watched your race for little more than ten of your years, and until now, others would have prevented us. Even observation was seen by some of them as too much. But now, with what you've done, there can be no denying it."

"Your race," the many voices continued, still speaking as one, "represents now the greatest chance that this galaxy has ever seen to change, and that is not simply due to what you have done. There have been alliances before, races brought together in defiance. Each and all fell in the end, yet you possess something that they did not."

"Practice?" It was hardly a question, what else could it have been? And yet, Tahkel's nod was not as deep as you'd expected.

"Not just that," they said. "No race before yours has possessed Practice, not in all the memories of the Uninvolved." Something about that statement felt odd, and a moment later you understood why, the knowledge fluttering into your mind. The Uninvolved as they were now did not include all those races that had chosen to bid the physical world goodbye. The oldest of their society was little more than a million years old, and they did not remember the beginnings of the Shiplords' tyranny. Only a different sort.

"But it is what you have done with that gift, Amanda Hawk, once again. Not in the power that you have learnt to wield in battle, but in the society you have made, and the more subtle tools you have created." A ghost of something you would have called a smile flickered across their face. "The reason that all others have lost to the Shiplords is not because they possessed less strength than the alliance you have helped create. It is because they did not understand their enemy. Incomplete your knowledge certainly is, but it is more than any have had before."

"You understand the nature of the War Fleets and the hidden infiltration of societies that, between them, have inevitably turned the path of revolution to the Shiplords' favour," flashes of wars flickered across your eyes, each one grand and terrible, memories of failures of the past. "You have created a weapon to fight the latter and, even now, search for a way to blunt the former. Without the knowledge gleaned by your Insight, you would fall just like all the rest."

"And the other reason?" You asked carefully. It…made an awful sort of sense, but just because they thought you might be a winning horse couldn't be a reason to contact you now. The Uninvolved sighed, conveying in that simple sound an eternity of sorrow.

"Before you, there was no race that we believed we could speak to without alerting the Shiplords to our actions. It's…a measure of the soul. Beings like us can exist here, where the Shiplords cannot see us. But if we take action in what you know to be reality, they see it. Your souls, though; they are strong enough to exist here. What you did today proved that beyond any doubt."

That was too much to leave without a question, you had to know. "They see you," you asked. "No matter where you act?"

"There is a web they have built across the stars," Tahkel explained, and there was pain on their face as they did so. "If we act in your reality, it is disrupted. For so long they have known when we act, the weapons you now know they created ever threatening."

"You must understand: if we die, everything that we are dies with us. All we remember, all that our race was. Gone. To many of our kind, protecting that which lies beyond easy reach of the Shiplords takes higher precedence. We recognise this as hypocrisy," they added steadily, "and we have fought it. We would not be here otherwise, and please know that your existence has stirred many lost in despair to contemplate hope again."

"Why?" You asked, into the moment of silence that followed. "Why are we so important? You can speak to us, but what can you do with that if you remain unwilling to act?" You wanted to believe that there was more to this, but the pain in this being's voice was hard to set against a message of hope.

"Ah," the figure shook its head. "We forget to explain the rest. Our apologies." It turned halfway, gesturing out at the stars, and the shape of a galaxy you knew formed at the end of the gallery. "You hold such promise because with what you know already, and what we can give you, victory need not take the shape that you have seen." Stars winked out, bursts of fire playing out across the spaces between them in accelerated motion, and by the time it was done, many were lost.

"You are offering us a different path to victory?" You asked slowly. "One where the Shiplords would be just as stripped of power, or gone?" Tahkel nodded.

"We are, at least, we think so." They said, and your eyes narrowed in suspicion. "There are places across this galaxy, that we cannot see. Places that used to be open to us, that some of the eldest of our kind remember. Others were remembered by those who were eldest when our own set aside the real, and that knowledge was passed down."

"Wait," you shook your head, confused. "Your eldest's eldest? What does that mean?" It sounded self-explanatory, but the phrasing was specific. What would it matter?

"Those who were old when the oldest among us now were young," Tahkel replied, and something flickered in those brilliant eyes. "Our lifespans are not infinite. We begin anew, grow, change, age, and then fade. If it was not the case, then we would know why the Shiplords did what they did."

That held some disturbing possibilities for the immortality that the Second Secret and then Prologue had given you, but you did your best to ignore them for now. "You think these places might hold the key to a victory that will not cost us as much?"

"That is what we believe, yes." Five stars flared on the image of the galaxy. "In one of these places, lies the truth of our enemy. And with that, a path to victory that will not leave so many stars burned to dust."

"And if I were to ask my last question again," you asked, your voice hardening. "If I were to ignore the logistics of this, how far we would have to travel, and everything else. How would you give us reason to trust you."

"Because you know us now," the being replied, words you had expected. What came next, you had not. "And because your predecessors left behind what you would need to do this. To pierce the protections of the Shiplords, you would need a ship invested with power in a way only the Shiplords can. Or at least, it used to be just them. Your predecessors, the Elder First; they saw the barriers but did not understand them. And without understanding, they could only leave behind the means to break them."

Your world tilted again as you realised what that meant. What that had to mean. You could feel this being's emotions, feel its soul pulsing in time with its words. To lie like this…you did not believe it could be possible. And yet, could you trust that? With so much on the line?

"We do not ask for an answer now, Amanda Hawk," Tahkel said, and fear fluttered in a thousand voices. "In the end, there is little you can do with what we have given you, without our help. But we do not wish the galaxy to continue this way. And to be left to wait again if you fail, for you know as well as we that victory is not certain," They broke off. "We cannot let such promise pass, not now that you have realised it."

"Please," it was not begging, not quite, yet their eyes dimmed with the word. "We cannot promise all that you might wish; against Shiplord weaponry we are too vulnerable to take the field. Our deaths would mean nothing. But if there is a price you would ask of us, even that, then ask. We will carry it to a Gathering, and do all we can to prevail in it."

What do you do?
[] Demand of the Uninvolved
-[] Much
-[] Some
-[] Little
[] Ask of Tahkel
-[] Much
-[] Some
-[] Little
[] Ask nothing
[] Write-in?