The reality of this Sorrow wasn't what we expected. There was some we could guess of course, context from our scans and open broadcasts. But it's one thing to see a picture; it's another to step inside it. To touch and live it in fullness. We didn't understand it at all. How could we? That was why we'd been sent here. Why humanity had risked so much to delve into the deepest secrets of the Shiplords, and here lay one we'd never even glimpsed in Insight's Thoughtcasts. Their ability to reach out across thousands of light years had been what saved our people from a second, far crueller sorrow at the hands of the Shiplords. But I still had to wonder how they'd missed this.
Not just a city, or a colony, but an entire star system full of a species still living where countless thousands must have perished for far lesser transgressions in the millions of years since their war. The very first war that the Shiplords called such, in fact, which had almost brought creation as we understood it to a very permanent close. Mary had explained that it wasn't quite that bad, that something new might well have formed from the mess of energy and chaos left by a vacuum collapse, but that didn't make me feel better. We are, all of us, born from another such disaster. That doesn't make the potential deaths any less real.
And yet the Gysians were still here. They still lived, and not only that, they seemed to have done well in their time. Their cities were huge and sprawling, threaded between the patchwork cracks of worlds literally stitched back together across centuries. They couldn't have done that by themselves, but the Shiplords clearly had. Their ships were present here and there, but no massive detachment of warships that would signify a protectorate. The vast majority of the craft here were clearly Gysian, their designs subtly different to those of the Shiplords even if their technological evolution appeared near-identical.
Much of it was bright and shining, yet the place to which we were sent was quite different. Three vast docking rings of a burnished bronze metal intertwined around a core station that could barely have seen worse days. It had once been a full orbital, but some vast impact had torn through one side of its structure, and its outer shell was ripped and scarred by burns and shrapnel. Those impacts hadn't damaged the rings, lending credence to the theory that they'd been added later, and the whole thing now hung suspended in space, mere hundreds of kilometres above the surface of the world below.
There were dozens of Shiplord craft docked there, and a steady stream of pilgrim craft traversed the paths between it and the shell that had hidden this star system from every form of sight or sensor. Most of the ships were around the same size as the Adamant, built with all the same economy of form that we'd come to expect from Shiplord designs. Here and there, there were larger examples - the Shiplord equivalent of passenger liners, perhaps? It was so hard to tell.
"Surely it was deliberate?" Jane Cyneburg, your captain, asked from her command chair. "The way the rings around it have been added, like framing to the core orbital. I can't imagine it being an accident."
"As you say," you agreed. "But the real question is what they were trying to say. And there's only one way to find that out for sure." You came to your feet in an easy motion, pacing forward to examine the image projected across the centre of the bridge. This close to it you could clearly make out the results of scattered savagery that had almost destroyed the orbital. Last Cry had barely survived that strike, but it didn't feel wounded anymore to your Focus. The scars had been left deliberately, a memory or monument to whatever had happened to give the station its name. It wore them with pride now, like some great ancient beast that has passed through the worst of its life and now can rest.
"We'll be coming in via the ring nearest the central mass," you mused, noting the docking path the Adamant had received whilst you were seeing to your crew - and then to yourself. "Any ideas why?"
"There's a transit corridor to the orbital just behind the bay we're being routed to," Jane replied. "I'm guessing it's been designed with the idea of passing across the worst of the damage. This place is important to them, but the damage itself is almost more so. They've put a lot of effort into keeping it this way, preserving what they want to show those who come here."
"It's preparation," Vega determined from her place further back in the command deck. The Harmonial had been deep in thought, and close to her Focus, as you approached the orbital Sorrow. Looking back at her though, you saw that her eyes had cleared. They were pale, almost shining despite the lighting, and - no. Not almost shining. Actually doing so. She'd not cleared her eyes so much as sunk a fragment of her soul into them, to see more clearly. Where had she learnt to do that?
:Phoebe taught me,: her voice whispered to you without sound. :I'd be surprised you didn't notice, but you've had a lot of other things on your mind.:
:Ah.: You shook your head. How an Insight-Focused had been able to teach a Harmonial something was a question for another time. There was a more pressing one in front of you. "Preparation for what?"
"The pilgrims," she said simply, as though that explained everything. "They come here to pay tribute to the Sorrow and to the dead, but it's also about preparing. Preparing to live and to die, to bridge the gap between teachers and tyrants. These twinned Sorrows are the root of that reality, the choices that led to what they are now. Of course they'd need to prepare them for that."
"And what about us?" Mary asked. Her tone was hesitant, and she spoke up even as you turned your attention to her. "What will we be going through this time?"
"If Iris is right," you said, "the truth of this sorry mess." You had no illusions about yourself, or your crew's abilities. Your people's will was formidable, but your arrival here had shown how far it had been pushed from their limits. And nor did you think that the station would provide them with any kind of solace. Whatever horror awaited, if there was a horror here at all, you knew that it was the truth of the Sorrow itself.
"So let's go find it." You nodded to Jane. "Take us in, Captain."
***
It didn't take long. As you emerged from the docks, the view beyond the bulkhead screen was alike and yet nothing alike to those you'd seen before. Here and there, the cloud of stars was broken by a bright point of light that was unmistakably a ship departing or on approach. The pattern of those paths was both alien and oddly familiar - there were only so many ways to chart routes to an orbital, but this was the first time you'd seen a living system under Shiplord...whatever this was. And of all the questions this place presented, that was the one you most wanted an answer to.
Looking up to where your team stood ready in the loading area, you did your best to assess. If they felt anything like you, none of them were comfortable with what this place represented. Yet it was more pronounced this time, with all the added baggage. Kalilah was more under control than she'd been before, but flames still crackled beneath the facade she'd found a way to repair. Iris was perhaps the least affected of all of you, but that only made sense. For all her brilliance, your daughter lacked the very personal context of loss that humanity had suffered during the Week of Sorrows. And even she felt uneasy, as though she could feel the presence of the Sorrows around her. As for you, you were as calm as you could manage, yet still unable to shake the fears weighing your soul.
"Greetings and welcome?" came a voice down a corridor that led into the bay. It sounded like a woman's, but that wasn't a particularly useful distinction in a place like this. You were about to reply but then it spoke again, the tone that of one talking to themselves. "No, that's not right. That's what we say to everyone, but they came here with the Sorrowful's codes. We should do something bett-"
A figure stepped out from the corridor ahead of you, limbs coated in the shifting colours of a Gysian masque, but face uncovered and revealed. It wasn't a surprise now, but it had been a shock when the first person realised your host hadn't masked their face in their transmission. There was the beginnings of a disturbingly humanlike smile on her flatter lips, the asymmetric dusting of bright, tiny feathers across their cheeks somehow making it less difficult to deal with that impossible similarity. Her plumage shimmered as she saw you waiting in the bay, their colours shifting in reaction to your presence. Somehow it had all the feeling of someone arriving to a crucial meeting to find it already in progress.
"Entara, I told you," they muttered, low enough that even your enhanced senses struggled to catch it. "Have time indexed to-" The words cut off and your host stepped forward. As they did so, their face seemed to transform, soft light pulsing into the dusting of colourful down that must have been kept for a reason. Bioluminescent feathers could have been a natural evolution, but it was terribly unlikely for an advanced race to hold onto it. That spoke of access to the Second Secret for casual ends—not those bargained for and bought at such high prices as the Cich'swa Confederacy had paid.
Pearlescent light washed out across the chamber as the Gysian came forward with quick steps, the motions abrupt compared to those of the Shiplords you'd started to become used to. They stopped a few metres short, sweeping into a formal bow that scattered the lights across the room again, but this time in a way that would be hard to later explain without referencing the footage itself. Prismatic backscatter flecked the hall, curling echoes of rainbows and simpler tones that lent the motion elegance all out of sorts to her rushed approach.
"Welcome, honoured guests" she said solemnly, rising from her bow. "Though I give you it again, my name is Entara. I bid you welcome to this Sorrow of which I am Warden, and to the home of my people. It is an honour to have you here."
"Thank you, Entara," you said, taking a step forward. "It's good to meet you."
"You're a long way from home," she said, raising a hand to her chest, unaware of how those words set your heart suddenly racing. The light that had cut the room from her plumage was fading now, softening. "But all Pilgrims who come here usually are - in time if not space. And none ever have enough. Your introduction is the highest that any could bear to this place, and higher to me," you heard tears somewhere in the Gysian's voice, or at least their expression of them. "But it is my place to answer questions, not ask them."
She laid her two limbs against her sides, hands adjusted to the horizontal. How humanity's analysts had missed that the Shiplord language database humanity's translator had been built from had contained active context cues from a second species was going to haunt the Ministry of Security for years, but it did translate Entara's posture. It was a deferent one, and clearly well-practiced.
"Here, our Sorrow departs from tradition," she said. "I will not ask you what you wish to see, to Witness or Remember. I will simply answer your questions, until we reach either the limits of this Sorrow's purpose or what time you may dedicate to it."
You swallowed, turning to look back at the others in the bay. They were still there, looking on, and a few of them had already recognised the trap this Sorrow could become.
:The longer we stay here,: Elil sent.
:The longer we'll want to stay.: Mary continued.
:This place could be dangerous...: Iris sent a moment later. It was a palpable understatement. :What do we ask first?:
That, at least, was easy. You focused on the odd being that had shattered everything you knew of Shiplord mercy, and asked the most burning question of all:
"What are you?"
***
It took a little time to focus the scope of that question properly, time that took you from the docking area into the orbital proper. Passing through the central hub of the station, you found yourself staring up into the towering cavern of the station's star-shaped core. It was an artificial construction, but even with the sensors on your suit you couldn't quite tell what it was all made of. Not Shiplord construction materials, that was for certain. Scatterback and a limited analysis from Elil suggested it had been reinforced with nanotech at some point, but all other making marks pointed to the strangest of things. This station, its core at least, had been manufactured as close to by hand as the term could be considered to exist. You could see rivets on many of the internal joins.
Rivets!
Entara led you on, expertly teasing out of the exact scope of the question you were trying to ask. Here and there she offered small answers, a small piece on the history of the orbital's core as an ancient Gysian experiment in orbital engineering before they discovered the Secrets. That at least explained one thing. Despite the number of ships docked in those rings, there were surprisingly few other pilgrims in the wide corridors you crossed.
"Here," your guide said at last, stopping at a section of viewing panels that looked out from the station through a twisted mass of wreckage. "This is the place."
"For what?" You asked.
"To answer you." Entara smiled. "This is not the only place it could be done, but it feels right. You wish to know what my people are. That question is a common one, but you appear less interested in what we were and more on what we've become since our near-ending." A hand flicked out, and the air shimmered with sparks of pearlescent light.
:Active nanotech.: Sidra noted. Schematics bloomed on a section of your display. :Fancy toys they've got if they can deploy that stuff for recreation.: They weren't wrong.
The brief analysis implied nanotechnology on a similar level to the military grade implants that had still been in the process of full distribution to the Solar Navy on the Adamant's departure from Sol. Implant sets that had only been created with significant help from Makers - those among Potentials who dedicated themselves to creation and, in some cases, full production. Their military grade production was almost certainly not capable of deploying active effects of this precision, and the fact that Entara was using it for recreational purposes was disturbing. You tried to ignore it, focusing instead on the display.
The view in front of you flickered, and then suddenly you were looking out through a mess of sparking wreckage, oddly coloured flames twirling across cracked wiring from fractured delivery ports. Through the destruction you could see the world beyond, different again from vibrant marble of blue, white and more that you'd have expected. This world was burning, flashes of terrible light erupting from its surface as ribbons of flame slashed down through the splitting sky. The clouds had already been torn to shreds, and as you watched more detonations came. That's what those flashes were, you realised, the marks of kinetic bombardment on an unprecedented scale.
The world's crust was rippling under the beat of that assault, bubbles of lethal light washing across its surface like soap bubbles. Except that normal soap bubbles weren't blasts in...you tossed a query to Iris.
:Megaton range,: she replied across the full circuit. There wasn't a shred of emotion in the words. :They weren't trying to shatter the planet. Just kill everything on it.:
:Of course.: Mary's response came with the feeling of a hand cradling one side of her face. :They didn't have starkiller platforms, so they had to improvise another mechanism. But then-:
:Why did they stop.: It came from all of you at once, returning your attention to the display before you. Of a world dying before your eyes. A world you knew wasn't dead anymore, but that didn't make the imagery any less potent. Like every survivor of the Week of Sorrows, you remembered the Burning of Mars. How an entire world, millions of kilometres away had blazed in the heavens as all the works of your people were ruthlessly excised. This was similar, in a way. But Mars had suffered the attentions of a Shiplord society far more capable of inflicting the total destruction of a biosphere on a planetary scale. As horrifying as it was to say, the Tribute Fleet had known what they were doing. The Shiplords of this time had not.
And all of that, the words, the realisations, passed in mere moments of silence. Enough time to process, and a little to take it further. Then your guide spoke again.
"This was how our worlds ended. Not just here, but every star that we'd claimed, every planet we'd made a new home." The image shook and debris sheared across the clogged port, launched by an impact towards the planet below. The image accelerated, angry red spewing out across the battered world as its crust began to fracture. Tides of molten rock fit to drown continents surged forth, trailing seething clouds of steam as they bulled through blue waters. Any remains of the ecosystem drowned beneath the forces that had long ago birthed their genesis.
"Every world," Entara said, and in their voice there was the echo of terrible pain. For a moment you tore your gaze from the imagery to look at your host. There was something in how she held herself, watching. Something deeply personal that you couldn't track properly. Or was it that you didn't want to? You didn't know.
And then something slammed into the planet below you faster than even your eyes could track. The imagery in front of you slowed to a crawl, letting you see the cracks radiate out from the cataclysmic impact. Spread, and then widen, shattering the world's crust and spraying its molten lifeblood across the void. You heard yourself cry out as light flashed across the cracks until it wreathed the entire world like some wayward corona. Something in your mind, in your soul, recognised what you were seeing.
A planet's death.
The light flared out, covering the screen, and when it faded there was only dead rock where there'd once been a world. A planet, or what remained of one. It looked like nothing so much as a cinder, shattered into shards, and for a moment you couldn't breathe. But then, with a suddenness that left you feeling ill, the display shifted.
"Every member of my species has seen this imagery at least once in their lives," Entara said. The light around them had faded into nothing, and unnatural shadows had formed in places, darkness to highlight the depth of their meaning or so the software said. "Like you, we are never prepared for it. But the question you've asked can only be answered in parts, and this is one of them."
They turned back towards the image of a planet reduced, and waved a hand. That awful sight remained, but it was relegated to the background now as more nanotech formed a diagram of a star system. This star system, presumably millions of years ago. Two habitable planets shattered by c-fractional impactors, the source of that faded patchwork which defined their rebuilds. Orbitals flaring with all manner of error and alert flags, those that still weren't clouds of floating debris. And there, out at the edge of the Stellar Exclusion Zone, Shiplord warships. The attack groups had been centred around several massive craft, the source of the bombardment that had ended the Gysian homeworlds. Those craft flickered out, carried away by First Secret drives to safety, and the War Fleet began a steady sublight advance. Any opposition of note was gone now.
"Why did they," Kalilah swallowed, correcting herself, "did we stop?" You glanced worriedly at the woman whose soul had seared fleets from the heavens. A woman who'd lived the receiving end of a display like the one before you, where humanity hadn't been shown anything like mercy.
"That reason was one we never fully understood until much later," Entara said. It was difficult to isolate the core of the Gysian's emotions on the matter, but they were clearly deeply personal. "All we knew at the time was that the fleets that had implacably annihilated our defences and worlds suddenly stopped, and then turned all their power from working destruction to its opposite."
On the display a shiver washed out across the advancing fleet groups, and then the dressed formation shredded into a haze of vector changes. Some ships remained where they were, but great gaps opened around them as the majority surged forward at maximum burn, splitting out across the surviving orbitals. Weapon signatures vanished, powering down, and moments later enormous ships flickered into place at the edge of the SEZ. You recognised them - or at least, you recognised their influence in the mobile shipyards that travelled with modern war fleets. Mobile logistical platforms of unparalleled scale and strategic agility, never meant to enter a hostile system, diving into the SEZ with reckless abandon.
"On that day, your people remembered how not to be monsters." Fury shuddered across the link between you and the rest of your party, the same rage that had possessed Kalilah on your arrival to this system. "How not to be the ones who committed genocide and then hid from the consequences. They remembered your oldest nature, and what it meant for the galaxy."
They spoke the words without reproof or fear. Yet that made sense, didn't it. The Shiplords were not united on the matter of their conduct, and the Sorrows were as much monuments to history as they were attempts to teach the next generations of Shiplord population that the path of their current civilisation was wrong. It clearly wasn't working anymore; your own experience was but a single stone on a road of terrifying length stretching all the way to hell. But it told you more than just that, too. Entara was a Gysian, a member of a race that had been condemned to die by the Shiplords for almost destroying reality. You weren't sure that the punishment fit the crime, but you also didn't know if there'd been any attempts to form a dialogue since the attempted deployment of a vacuum collapse weapon at the site of the First Sorrow.
But if a Gysian could stand here and say that, could strike at the very core of what appeared to be the Shiplord mission and not fear reproof, then that narrowed the possibility of what their race could be enormously.
:That she can be a Hearthguard, and especially a Warden, does that too,: Vega pointed out. But she knew it was different even then. That position could've been handed out as a sop, a way to make it appear that the Shiplords cared. Everything you'd seen so far implied that the Hearthguard at least did, but there were limits to their influence. Harsh ones. If the Gysians were a protectorate of some sort, a distinct entity in Shiplord civilisation, you couldn't imagine they'd be allowed to be this open.
Which meant...
"How many worlds do your people live on today?" Iris asked. Your daughter's voice was very small.
"How many worlds do the Shiplords call their own?" Entara replied, rhetorically.
And there it was. Clear as day. The possibility none of you had considered, that Insight had somehow missed entirely. But would that be so surprising if they saw themselves-
"You're part of our civilization?" Mary asked, aghast. At least she'd remembered to use our.
"You are quick on the mark." Entara gave her a gentle nod. "We are, yes."
"Do you believe in what we do?" Kalilah demanded, voice choking to contain her hatred.
"No," Entara said. "We do not." She hesitated, then added, "But we do not hate you for it, either. We wish that you would remember the choice made here as more than a memory of times long lost, but our numbers alone can't effect that kind of change, even with the Hearthguard."
"I don't understand," Iris said, the nanoform around her rippling in confusion and no small amount of pain.
"The Sorrows were never meant to be a prison," Entara explained. "They began as a monument to your people's ability to forgive, to find a path where others might not. They were meant to ensure that you didn't forget that the world is bigger than yourself, and that you aren't always right. When your people would struggle to choose the right path, the Sorrows would be here to remind them. That is why I stand here as Warden, far more than the part I'm told my plea played in saving my species."
"So... what?" Mary asked. "You want us to stop being monsters?"
"I would not put it so bluntly," Entara smiled sadly, "but that was the whole point of the Sorrows. To be a reminder to your people that they were capable of being better, as you were on that day almost two million cycles past. You may have forgotten that in large part, with those who lived it almost all long since dead, lost or sleeping. But for all that has changed, for all that you were forced to change, we still believe that that core nature remains. That at your core, you remain the race who sought to teach, understand and enshrine all the beauty of our universe.
"And if you cannot remember that, then we will do it for you." The words had a weight to them, and a finality that was hard to even comprehend. In it you recognised the desperate hope that Kicha had shown when you'd found a solution to the problem of the Hjivin Sphere's rampant expansion, and the same pain that had seen such hopes dashed a thousand thousand times. And yet beneath it all, there was the same determination. The refusal to surrender the past to the future's so-called progress.
"But what are you going to do?" Iris demanded. "There's no way to change what's happened. There's no way to-" Entara moved subtly, the shadow around them shifting through patterns and hues, and your daughter froze.
"There is," she whispered. "There's something else we haven't seen yet, isn't there. A reason that we were told to see the First and Second in concert. Why Kicha told us to seek the Fourth Sorrow last. We've been blind to the truth, but now we have to see it."
"If there is, it is not here," Entara's voice was quiet, but firm. "You have seen much of the past, but not all of it. What you will see in the next cycle, I cannot say. But I can tell you this: if you choose this path, you will not be alone in your struggle."
"What?" Iris asked. "Why would we need anyone else?"
"Because you are not the only ones who must choose this path," Entara said. "In fact, you are far from it. The others, they must also make the choice. It is their right to choose how they wish to live, just as it is yours."
"What do you mean?" Mary demanded. "The other races?"
"No," Entara shook their head. "The Authority must choose to be something else than it is now. Otherwise wars like the one that has just begun will only be the beginning, not the end."
You looked between each other nervously, between moments, and hoped your guide wouldn't recognise the real reason for it. Calling the conflict with humanity a war had always been something that you'd known would happen, but for it to be distributed so quickly was concerning. But you also had no idea what the other nations who'd allied with you had done. Once they knew humanity had survived a War Fleet, how long would it take for them to build similar defences? And at what point would they decide that they had enough, and act?
"Even if that's true," you said carefully, trying to deflect. "You're talking about change on a scale that's barely been seen in all our history. How could anything prompt that?"
For a moment, Entara was silent. Then they flicked a hand, and a recording filled the space around you. It was a Gysian voice, young, terrified and clearly in pain.
"Please," the voice begged. "Please. We just want to live. I just want to see my momma, and play with my sister again. Please don't hurt us anymore. I don't even know why you're doing any of this. You've killed our home, and everything else, and never said why.
"You're not going to believe me," they continued. It sounded...familiar? "but I swear none of us here did anything to you. And all we want is the chance to survive. To live. To have a future. We don't deserve to be eaten by monsters." The recording trailed off into the sound of ugly tears, the kind that come only when there's no hope left, then terminated.
"Long ago," Entara said softly. "A child begged for salvation from those who'd destroyed their world. There have been millions since, and trillions more dead, and it breaks my heart that I cannot stop it. But on that day," the Gysian's voice cracked and broke. "Your people stopped.
"And if you can do that even once," something kindled in Entara's eyes as you watched, a feverish gleam that was too deep to be madness. "Then you can do it again."
Except you weren't Shiplords. And that alone was a bone in the throat to any sympathy you might have offered, even if you'd known a way to do what Entara was asking. Takhel and the Uninvolved had told you that there was another path to peace - was this it? Something ineffable cried no. Not entirely. Not quite. There was more to this mystery than this sorrowful Warden, and the last plea of her people - one that unlike so many others since had been answered.
:Are you sure, Mandy?: Vega asked. :Can you tell?:
:I'm not sure of anything right now,: you admitted. :But I think...I think maybe they're telling the truth. That we can't see everything that's going on, that we never could. And above all else, we need to see what followed.: You looked between each other, and took a deep breath. For a moment it was all of you at once.
Then you waved a hand through the imagery around you, a dispersion field cutting it away, returning you to a view of the planet you'd just seen die millions of years ago.
"Then tell us," you said. "What happened next?"
A question presents itself now. A question with the potential of terrible consequences and equal possibilities. It cannot be ignored, nor defied, though any decision in the here-and-now will not be acted upon in immediacy. This time and place is too unstable. But in another time and place, one that could and you believe will be, the question remains.
Will you tell Entara what you would not tell Rinel? Would you give her the same truth Kicha unravelled? The benefits you could reap from an unfiltered perspective on Shiplord society, one part yet not fully of them are hard to even quantify. But then again, so are the risks. You are deep within the Gysian home system, and though you believe you could withdraw the Adamant safely, revealing your presence could doom the mission you've come so close to completing. Is it truly worth the risk?
Only you can decide.
Will you reveal yourself to Entara?
[] Yes
[] No
