The Secrets' Crusade

Context is the foundation to understanding. Without knowing the surroundings of an image, there's so much that even the brightest minds can miss. Which was why you restrained yourself. You needed to understand what was said next, and the only way to do that was to ask the right questions. Build towards the answers that Entara's chip had made you desperate to learn.

"This place isn't a memorial, is it?" You asked. The walls had cleared back to glossy black as the images faded, but they weren't what you meant, not entirely. "There's too much here to just be that, too much invested to just be a citadel to guard the Teel'sanha's bones."

"No, no it isn't." The answer was what you'd expected, but it didn't stand alone. "This place holds the memories that we couldn't bring ourselves to leave behind in the great museums outside. Why we laid aside our weapons after taking them up, and much more."

There, a place to go from here. That would do. "Why did you? What could they have possibly said to make you stop?"

The walls shimmered and new images formed there. Two War Fleet detachments flickered across space, one Shiplord, one clearly not, engaged in the deadly dance of FTL hunter-killers. Spits of light marred the endless starfield as the recording played out, bereft of any reference points but for whirling, unknown constellations.

Then the Shiplord craft, reduced to a third of their number, stood back from the field. And a craft in the same model as the diplomatic craft you'd seen in the recording of the First Sorrow appeared in their place. The Teel'sanha War Fleet retreated too, and a - presumably - diplomatic vessel of their own flickered into being beside the Shiplord one.

The two ships approached and silvery nanotech formed a connection between the two, a neutral space reliant on both vessels to maintain integrity. You glimpsed a Shiplord form approaching from one side, a Teel'sanha delegation from the other.

"The Shiplords told us the truth," the system said, disrupting your examination of the meeting. "The whole truth, for maybe the first time in their history, and certainly the last."

"What truth?" You asked. You wanted to denounce anything that the Shiplords had said, refuse the answer this place had been created to protect. But if it truly had been created to do that, you couldn't afford not to hear it. Tahkel had said, and you'd agreed, to try and find the truth of them.

That didn't mean you had to believe anything you were told here, but you still needed to listen.

"The truth." Energy surged from the walls, cascading through the chamber in a way that felt somehow familiar- like the touch of a hand you couldn't quite remember. "The only one that really matters."

"But what truth?" Your repetition ground to a halt, and the world slid into glacial slowness around you as the power rippling in the wall arced invisibly into the room between them. Sidra had triggered your perceptual accelerators the moment the leashed energy had formed coherent branches into the chamber, and Iris had brought Mary's online for her in line with standard protocol.

:I get it now,: Elil sent into that near-stillness. You felt the wonder and the soul-deep curiosity that had made him an Insight Focused in the words. :Why it feels familiar.:

:Is it dangerous?: Kalilah replied immediately. :To any of us?:

:I don't think so,: Elil sent, his attention shifting towards the youngest member of your Heartcircle. :Mir? Any clue from your Focus?:

:I can't feel anything dangerous from it, but you know that isn't perfect,: the younger Peace-Focused sent in reply. :But why is it familiar, Elil?:

:It feels like Project Insight,: Elil said, and for a moment the feeling of leashed energy doubled, tripled, memories flickering across the link between you. :I tested with the project before I became a Unisonbound, and since then I've felt it every time the Project cycled. It's hard to miss for those close to it.:

:Not a geographical closeness, I assume?: Lea asked. Affirmation flowed back from Eli, mixed with thankfulness for the recognition. :So what does that mean?: She added.

:It means that if it's not flagging as an immediate danger from anyone here,: Vega said. Swirling energy had pooled around the Harmonial, reflecting your own, greater, instinctive gathering. :Then it should be safe. And we should see where it takes us.:

:Even for Mary?: Iris asked.

:Even for Iris?: Mary asked, at almost exactly the same moment.

There was a moment of expectant quiet, then you felt the curious attention flutter beyond the control of those around you, focused on your lack of response. Laughter bubbled inside of you, so strange, to find that here.

:I know better than to ask.: You infused the sent words with a fraction of the love and trust you felt for those around you, a warm breath of companionship whispering above the worry that still gripped you. :And it's not as if there are any exits here. We do this together.:

:Like we should be.: The chorus answered you.

You and the other Unisonbound moved, taking up position in a loose ring around the more fragile members of the group. And as the energy arcs inched steadily closer, you reached out to touch the closest one to you. The point was simple: diffuse the energy around the Unisonbound, to protect those less experienced with soul manipulation.

The one you'd reached to split apart as it touched your hand, reinforced as it was with the presence of your Aegis, twining around your hand. Then it pushed deeper, past your Masque, past flesh, to the ephemeral you that existed beyond.

:Oh heavens,: you breathed. Because you recognised this. What Elil had said was true, the familiarity, the connection, but the source of it wasn't what he'd thought. Not that it was his fault for making this error, anyone but you would have.

Despite all attempts to the contrary, you were the only human alive who'd ever spoken directly with an Uninvolved. Lea's work with Project Insight to connect with Tahkel had been lucid, but not personal. Yours had been, deeply so, and that gave you experience that no one could match.

:It matches.: Sidra's words were calm, but the Unison's presence around you was more tangible than you'd felt them in weeks. :This is the creation of an Uninvolved. The power left behind would be theirs as well. And that means-:

Your mind flashed ahead of the thought-words, and for an instant you almost did something incredibly unwise. The strength of an Uninvolved was orders of magnitude above the powers you'd wielded at the height of the Third and Second Battles of Sol, and you didn't know if anyone here could survive that. What stopped you was a simple realisation, met in concert with your Unisonbound.

:Anything built here would have been built for those without Practice.: It had to be true. Nothing else would make sense. No Secret had ever suggested the ability to peer into the future; the creations of the Seventh at the Third Sorrow had been simulations of a past the Shiplords had lived.

So instead of throwing your strength against the creation of one so vastly your greater, you welcomed it. You grasped the crackling ribbon of power firmly, wrapping your fingers around it, and brought it to breast, just above your heart. It was like holding a live wire, blurring your vision and making your body shudder. You'd no words that could explain why you were doing it, just instinct. Instinct and that strange, fragile thing called faith.

:Ready?: You asked. You felt the flickers of worry from the others, Lea's most of all, feeling the pain that you were suffering from holding what they were all trying to diffuse.

Sidra's reply came with the feeling of a tired smile, yet as resolute in their support as ever. :Ready.:

:Mandy,: Vega began.

:Harmonise us, Vega,: you said. You turned your head to the younger woman, and you knew she could see the entreaty on your face through the nanoveil hiding you from Shiplord detection. :Please. We need to see, and I can take us there.:

:Lea?:

:Keep her alive,: Lea agreed wearily. :Not my first time.:

:I'll be alright,: you added quickly, mostly to the two most important people out of the group. The two without Unisonbound senses, and therefore the link of the Heartcircle to the whole. :I can see what we need, and it doesn't want to hurt us.:

:You'd better be.: Iris had no give in her tone, and Mary's silence made it clear she spoke for the both of them. Fair enough, you could manage that. And if you couldn't, your Heartcircle would keep you safe.

So you closed your fist around the blue-white arc of Uninvolved power. It came apart into tiny streamers, each of them racing past your hand and into your body. They slid through your Aegis like it simply didn't exist - perhaps to them it didn't - digging down through the barriers of space until they reached the core of your being.

You hissed in sudden pain as it found it, the touch of impossible lightning playing across the fabric of your soul. You'd felt worse, when Kalilah had almost killed herself at Third Sol, burning herself out into a vengeful and defiant star. You'd survived that, and saved her besides; you'd survive this too.

The pain abruptly vanished.

The other ribbons of light snapped out of existence, leaving only the one you'd taken, feeding out to the others through Vega's abilities.

And, swelling inescapably before you, the shifting image of the Shiplord and Teel'sanha delegates enveloped you. Emotions tore through you, thousands of them, but two resolved out of the whirlwind above all. A mournful pride in the peerless performance of their navy, and a terrible sorrow for what their loss must now require. The conflicting viewpoints made it clear: Teel and Shiplord.

"The terms of the agreement are very clear," the Teel delegate said calmly. Their mouth didn't move in anything close to Earth Standard, but it was perfectly understandable. "We understand that you didn't want this, but we have proven ourselves, old teacher. A promise was made, it must now be upheld."

The Shiplord looked down, and you'd never once seen one look so vulnerable. Not even Kicha presented with the truth of the Third Sorrow, or proof that it could've been avoided.

"It is understood," they said. "And you are right, a promise was made, and you have proven yourselves. I just wish…

"It matters not," the Shiplord shook their head. "You will see what is true, and I hope that you will understand, even if you cannot forgive what we are becoming."

"We never said we couldn't forgive, teacher," the Teel replied, and something in their posture seemed…hopeful. "There are ways back from this. There must be. Sometimes it is the duty of the student to educate."

"Perhaps," the Shiplord said. They keyed a sequence on the panel before them, and you took a moment to survey the room. It was largely featureless, a table with several chairs - none of them in use. There were two transparent panels looking out into that starlit void, with no star close enough to distinguish from the others. And on the table, a panel. An actual one, with buttons marked with Shiplord glyphs. That was unexpected.

"You have asked why our methods are shifting," they continued. "Why we've taken actions to tighten the use of the Secrets by younger races. That was the initial agreement, and I want to know that it hasn't changed."

"It has not."

"Very well," the Shiplord touched a final button, and a display projected itself into the air between the two. A moment later, they stepped around the table to stand beside the Teel'sanha delegate. "This may well be my last lesson to your people. I hope it will suffice.

"What you're looking at," they gestured to the image of a very familiar galaxy, "is our galaxy as it existed three million cycles ago. When only a handful of races were known to exist. One of those was us, and as now our people looked ever outward, struggling forward to discover and chart the wonders of our universe.

"This much you know already, I know, but you don't know the whole story. Other than us, only the Neras do now, and they'd rarely speak of it. Because this galaxy, this universe that we charted, we did so without the Secrets."

:They did what?: Mary's voice was incredulous, but also impossibly excited. The surge of emotion from your viewing partner was almost enough that you missed the next sentence. A reply from the Teel.

"What do you mean?" They asked.

"I mean that before this empire that you know, before we were teachers, before we could step between stars at the flick of a switch, we were explorers of a universe that chained our explorations to the speed of light."

The Teel simply stared, no doubt as stunned as you all felt, and the Shiplord kept talking. "We learned how to extend our lifespans, splicing and changing our genetic structure until we could enter a form of cryptobiotic stasis for millennia, waking only when our ship systems required us to do so. And one day, we found a species that we'd come to know as the Consolat.

"They looked inwards as we did out, searching for answers to the universe amidst a deeply philosophical science that we never properly understood. Perhaps if we had, ah," the Shiplord sighed. "They were the first race we met who we found a connection to, young one. The first race that sought to understand us, to talk to us, and in time to come and live among us. We were close enough in evolution to do that, and modifications made by our own sciences allowed us to bridge the gap further.

"They looked at our wonder for the world, our desire to seek distant wonders and far-flung stars, and they smiled and gave us a name. A name that all except the Neras call us."

"Shiplords," the Teel said. They took a shaky step back, and almost fell into an odd-looking chair. "That's why you call yourselves that?"

"It is hard to explain even now how deeply the Consolat touched our race, even millions of cycles later." The old - somehow they felt old - Shiplord chuckled. "And we'd never realise it until it was far too late."

"What happened to them?" the Teel asked, and the Shiplord sighed again, an awful sadness gathering around them. They touched another button, and the image jumped, the orientation of the galaxy shifting. You weren't sure how far it had gone, though.

:A little over half a million cycles.: Iris reported. :Closer to six hundred thousand than five.:

"We shared the universe for over half a million cycles," the Shiplord said sorrowfully, wistfully. You felt Iris' surge of satisfaction, but she restrained it well, focusing on the now. "We came together, learning, charting, showing them what we'd found and learning from what it told them. But no matter how much we learned, we couldn't breach the chains of light's cage.

"We could only ever explore so much, only ever see so much of the endless beauty of the galaxy. It made us sad, and that made our friends sad. So they set out to find a way to change it," the Shiplord's voice cracked with emotion. "And they succeeded."

:Wait a second,: Elil sent. :Did they just-"

The Shiplord continued. "They promised us an answer, a solution, a way that we could see more of reality and understand it. We thought little of it at first, perhaps it would be another way of seeing the world, a philosophical framework that could satisfy our wanderlust. If only it had been so simple…

"Instead," the Shiplord paused, marshalling their words. "One day, a few decades short of five hundred and seventy centuries since our first meeting, every single Consolat life ended. One moment they were there, across the few worlds we'd come to make and share as our own. Then they were gone. And with their death came the Secrets."

The Teel started to speak, asking a question, but it was forgotten in the roaring of blood in your ears, and the stunned silence of your fellows. You'd started to guess that something had made the Secrets, maybe someone, maybe an Uninvolved of some type, billions of years ago. But if this was true…you shoved the logic chain away, trying to force it to continue running in the background for now. Later, later.

"When those who'd been left behind on Origin found our worlds a decade later," the Shiplord said, answering a question you'd missed about how the Shiplords had reacted, "travelling on First Secret drives so primitive that you'd barely credit them with the word, they found us cast adrift. Lost, until their messages brought us understanding. Our friends had left their archives behind, all their work, and those of our people left behind had been able to find some answers.

"Never a full one, never one to the greatest question of why they'd vanished. But enough to unlock the beginnings of the Secrets, and to recognise the dangers and vast responsibility we'd been given. It was only the initial dangers, not the real ones, not yet. But it was enough of a purpose for the people we were then to grasp it with both hands. We were the only race other than the Neras with First Secret technology for several centuries, and we used that time wisely."

"But how does that explain what you're doing now?" The Teel demanded. "We didn't fight and die for a history lesson, teacher. We did so for answers."

"And I'm trying to give you them," the Shiplord said. "But you need to understand the background first. You've been to our Sorrows, you've seen our mistakes, and you fought to help us contain the last one. But you never were able to understand them, because we hid some of the truth. I know you've wondered why the First Sorrow was so destructive to us at a cultural level, and the Second doesn't really answer that question."

"No," the Teel agreed. "It doesn't."

"Then allow me to rectify that," the Shiplord said. Another gesture and the space around them filled with stills. Nebular clusters, young stars, the roaring hunger and hawking fountains of black holes. Life flowering across hundreds of worlds, the barren mountains of those that would never feel its presence.

"When the Consolat were taken from us, they left behind a legacy that could shatter creation. They gave us the ability to break the cage of light, to seed life on dead worlds and to tap the very stars. But those very same things were also capable of becoming weapons. With the Consolat gone we were the only race with real information on how their Secrets worked.

"Perhaps we could've shared that burden better, in the early days, but we weren't the people you knew then. For all our age, we were terribly uncertain what the right choices might be. All we could agree on was the need to protect the reality we'd always seen as so beautiful from the unintended - we hoped - side effects of what the Consolat had given their existence to provide."

"That's why the War of the Sphere's ending affected you so deeply," The Teel said. "You'd seen something like it before."

"Yes." You barely heard the reply, it was so quiet. "And why we reacted so badly to what the Gysians tried to do. The Secrets had been given to us, to reality, through sacrifice. And they were going to abuse them at the cost of everything. And then the Sphere did abuse them, and one of those we'd taught hundreds of thousands of cycles before today stepped in to prevent it."

"Wasn't that a good thing?" It was a good question, and the followup made you like this long-dead Teel more. "Wouldn't more guards, more protectors, have helped you?"

"That would have required us to trust them," the Shiplord sighed. "It was my hope, young one, that one day we could've shared it with you. But the Authority has already voted, and that amendment never made it far."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the Teel said sadly. "What now, then?"

"You will be given leave to explore the truth of our beginnings," the Shiplord said. "To visit the Consolat Origin and read the archives there. I hope and would pray for you to find something there that we have not, for that is the only way that the Authority will turn from the course that has been decided. You sought a challenge against us to find answers, and that will be given."

"But you won't turn away?"

"I'm not sure we can." The Shiplord turned away, tapping a final sequence on the pad. "But if you think you can succeed where we have failed, then this is the place you must go."

A set of coordinates formed above the table, parsed in Shiplord standard. And around it formed the shape of a star system. One star, five planets and two asteroid belts. Surprisingly mundane really, for a system that had reshaped the galaxy.

And now you knew where it was.

"Then go there we shall," the Teel answered.

The vision of the meeting broke apart, shattering into streamers of light, each one lancing out across the stars. One dove towards the coordinates you'd just seen, full of fragile hope and desperate curiosity. Two more retreated back towards feelings of home, full of regret for a universe descending into madness.

The rest split away too fast for you to track, except for one more, that descended down into the straining foundations of a terribly wounded nation. It took root there, growing and bringing those around it closer, a desire for resistance and a will to have hope for the future even if there was none for them.

Belief that a better day could come, and that all they had to do was leave behind the tools to make it real. And acceptance for how they'd never be alive to see it. The Shiplords couldn't be healed by the Teel'sanha, but one day, there'd be someone who could.

Maybe that was meant to be you. You weren't sure how you'd be able to do that, there still wasn't enough time. But maybe…

:They were waiting for someone who understood the science of the soul,: Mary sent. A singular focus had overwhelmed her usually boundless curiosity. And you…felt something in that sending. A flicker, and then another, below the measure of normal awareness but just within your own.

:Someone who could see something they only glimpsed,: your friend continued. :Enough for them to build this place, but not enough for them to do anything with it.:

:But what?: Vega asked, and you felt Mary's impatience well before her words.

:Something in the archive that the Consolat left to the Shiplords,: she replied :Something that the Shiplords never found, and that the Teel'sanha couldn't do more than realise was there. This place was made to wait for someone who could see in a way that neither of them could. That's why it let us in.:

:What do you mean?: The world took shape around you again, the dark panels, low table and tangible presence of ancient power. Like you'd never left.

:The Shiplord delegate said it,: Mary pointed out. :The Consolat looked inwards like the Shiplords did out. They searched the world inside of them, whilst the Shiplords explored everything that was beyond that. I think the Teel'sanha must have been similar to the Shiplords in that, but wouldn't that make sense? They'd been taught by them, moulded, even if it wasn't entirely deliberate.:

:Just like everyone else the Shiplords would ever trust in the Sorrows,: Kalilah's voice was sharp with pain. :Anyone who might have been able to see the deeper meanings never made it that far. Or just…didn't exist.:

:Until now,: Iris said, voice small as the scale of this started to sink in. :They believed there was a chance that someone might find this place, one day. And now we're here, and we know. And we aren't like the Shiplords - none of us. We look out at the world, at its wonders, but the greatest of them have always been said to lie within. Look at our literature, our culture, everything that we treasure at the deepest levels. It's inwards facing. We look out to extend it, to defend it.:

:We're like the Consolat,: you finished for your daughter, and a surge of fierce agreement flooded through you. :Not as old, not as wise. But how we see the world is similar.:
Just
:I think so,: Iris said, nodding minutely through her Masque.

:Then…: you trailed off, and in that moment the interface spoke again.

"Further data required?"

:We should ask for information about the Teel'sanha, and this place.: Vega said quickly. :It's what we need most, to understand them and their reasons. To make sure that we're right.:

:Agreed.: The affirmative pulsed from all across a fluttering moment. :But then what?:

The answers to the immediate questions came in the form of the informational posts you've already read. What would you like to do after receiving those answers?
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