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we developed need of a guard, a race no one had quarrel with.
A force to ensure harmony prevailed once negotiations had finished."
-- Yondalao, Peacekeeper Wars
"We don't need new acolytes." Administrator Joru Bru tried to hold her temper, following on the Lower Hierarch's heels like an importunate sholh. "The Cismar are adjusting much better now." Under her breath, "If we could only develop the capacity for controlled aggression in our own race, we'd need no acolytes at all."
Dala turned his head, facial seams unsealing fractionally. He slowed in the corridor, stopped and looked at her, lips flattening to a thin line. Under the harsh ship light, any glow he might have released was invisible, if he was attempting to influence her. Which he was, of course. It's what Hierarchs did. "Violence is anathema; that you can contemplate it as a possibility for our race has always astonished me. As Conciliators, it is our sacred calling to bring peace."
"With how many races do we negotiate each cycle? How many border skirmishes and undeclared wars that nonetheless take thousands, even millions of lives?" His seams widened and then closed abruptly as he paused for a deep breath. "We have always depended upon acolytes to maintain hard-won tranquility. But when peace keepers provoke hostility merely by their race, how then can we perform our duty?"
Black eyes softened along with Dala's voice. "Bru, this quarrel was old before we left home space, and makes no difference to our task. Let us prepare for landfall." He turned and strode forward, robe fluttering in his wake.
"Hierarch," Bru muttered. Her own seams tensed with the urge to open wide and bathe the cleric with influence. But neither of them would convince the other; endless rounds of conversations and arguments over the long journey had made that clear. Speeding her steps, Bru entered the observation dome at the priest's side. They came to a stop in the center of the chamber. Projected streams of light coalesced into a revolving planet.
"It is a beautiful world."
"Yes." Bru drew a a finger through the air, tracing along a swath of clouds swirling over multiple hues of blue. "For now." How long before the inhabitants began to advance their technology? Before wars scarred the land masses, and industrialization polluted earth and air and sea? Peace imposed from above would save this world from its children, as Ejano hadn't been. As Norok and Nesorak hadn't been. Young races destroyed themselves across the galaxy, taking with them their worlds, their futures, and too often, other cultures trapped in the same cycle of violence.
Only in Eidolon space and the surrounding territories could peace be found, and that largely due to isolation; their particular cluster of stars lay among deep halo drifts, time-shifting clouds of particles and dust that both baffled sensors and caught potential intruders before threat could be posed to the home system. Aggressors were examined and influenced and sent home with Conciliators; trade was established. Younger races flourished under Hora Dalay, gaining technology, impartial arbitration and introduction into a larger galactic society.
Peace. Prosperity. It cost nothing more than the cessation of war, and a tithe of willing acolytes. Yet no race so far encountered seemed able to throw off the shackles of biochemical violence, no matter how often they claimed to abhor it. Such acolytes did easily what no Eidolon naturally could: fight to defend peace.
The galaxy was vast, filled with competing philosophies, with aggressive and acquisitive species. The Hierarchy decreed: more than ever, Conciliators needed to go forth to aid alien nations in finding wisdom, clarity of thought. To expand peace throughout the varied civilizations. For a time, they were successful. A trained Hierarch could unravel the twisted threads of cycles of discord, open not only her own face to the sheer vastness of the universe, but share the humilty of that experience. What leader, faced with their own insignificance in the cosmos, could bear to send fellow beings to their deaths?
Many, and Eidolons were few.
Settled interplanetary squabbles burst again into violence after Hierarchs departed. Peace keepers outstripped authority in quelling skirmishes. Eidolon couriers were attacked. Acolytes of different species became uneasy serving together. Some began jostling for power, seeking advancement for their people alone. On Ejano, a world boasting two sentient races, missiles launched by one government destroyed the capital and grain-producing region of the other. It was not the last conflict of its kind. The Eidolons were losing control.
And then a renegade cell of Immik peace keepers bombed a temple in Quja. The Eidolon capital, Qujao's Jeweled City: temples and university, halls of governance and institutes of arts, justly famed throughout the five worlds. The demand: ban all other species and advance their own. The terrorists were mown down in the ruins by loyal acolytes, and proud banners thereafter lowered throughout the system, temple bells tolling dirges for the murdered… and their murderers.
The Hierarchy reached consensus in less than a cycle. The planetary governors of Qujao and its four sister worlds prepared the expedition within two. The re-examined mission of the Conciliators remained: spread peace. End conflict, not as the secretive Nebari did, with long-standing traditions of mental coercion and punishment for nonconformists, but with reason. With compassion and understanding, showing leaders of nations that co-existence was possible.
But no species seemed able to trust another to remain impartial, to not seek advantage -- aggression and instinctive behaviors trumping rational thought and empathy again and again.
New acolytes must be sought. A race unknown to any other, a species with nothing to gain in any conflict. The convoy must seek territories far from known space, a journey that could last tens of cycles. Eidolons had time, in their secure isolation and resource-rich worlds. Time for those left behind to continue with peace efforts. Time for those going to find another answer. So the ships went out, equipped with multiple bays designated for terrain replication, to comfortably house whatever compatible species could be found.
Sixty cycles ago.
Bru has spent almost a quarter of her life aboard the generational convoy. She chose this, gave up academic advancement and tenure in order to support the Hierarchy's plan. She bade farewell to her grandchildren and stood alone under the naked star of an alien world to burn offerings for her husband's death.
She had believed.
"They are able to learn," Dala murmured. Bru blinked back her recollections with difficulty – harder to do now than in her younger, more optimistic cycles - and gazed at the changing images playing over the dome's interior walls. Bipedal beings like so many others, subtly divergent in coloration and feature. The natives formed primitive settlements or wandered as nomads, scattered over several continents. "No one will hate them for old causes or grief." Dala brushed the side of his hand against Bru's. "They could prove to be valuable partners."
She curled her fingers through his, papery skin brushing over thinning bones, comforted despite their longstanding differences. "You want me to give these barbarians a chance."
"They are young and ignorant, barely more than sentient raw material." Dala's eyes met hers. "But they can be more."
We found your kind primitive, barely clothed. Far removed on the galaxy's outer spiral.
-- Yondalao, Peacekeeper Wars
"Well... similar. I mean, probably a species offshoot from the same stock."
-- John & Grunchlk, Die Me, Dichotomy"
"More trouble than they're worth, is what they are!" Laon Bru slammed down her data recorder and slapped the door control. She brushed through the widening gap before the doors finished opening, her shoes clacking against slip-resistant flooring. Her head ached, and all she wanted to do was to relax in a warm, scented bath, open her face to a sense-drape and soak in peace and tranquility. Instead, she had to report yet another failure in the genetics lab.
Reaching the Admin office, she started talking as the door opened. "The Interior Lines are more stubborn than any other species I know." Her words rang out loudly in the near-silence, the low hum of distant engines and life support too familiar to notice after a lifetime aboard. Milik's assistant nodded a greeting when Bru stalked past to the open door that she'd never yet seen shut.
Milik, warned by the sound of her arrival, already had his arm stretched for the jug of tea on his desk. He poured into a delicate translucent cup and set it before her just as she flung herself into the chair before the desk. "Tell me."
Bru thumped her arms against the chair. "We expanded the Sebase mental capacity as requested. That's not the problem. The initial experiments fifty cycles ago flourished, and all predictive programs indicate continuing success." Closing her eyes, she flared her nostrils. The tea's warm scent flowed through her nose and throat. She sighed. "The Interiors know how we modified their ancestors' genome to pass on heightened intelligence, and they've studied on their own the various sciences that led up to their alterations."
"But?"
"Almost every Line in the group has rejected our proposal."
"All of them?" Milik's eyes widened. He corrected himself: "Almost all of them?"
Moodily, Bru took up the cup. She stared into the tea's light green depths, noted a tiny crack in the bottom. She adjusted her grip to a lighter hold.
"They want to colonize a world and start a new society. Just on their own, no connections to any other races." Warm liquid slid down Bru's throat, soothing and smooth. "It's ridiculous! We created the Interior Lines to serve as acolytes, to become part of a greater community and help secure peace. Instead, they want to fly off and isolate themselves to study the universe, 'unimpeded by outside social strictures.'"
A short silence followed. Bru sucked down more tea, then glanced across the desk to where Milik's mouth gaped like a kisb. Her neck and shoulders were still stiff from tension, her mouth tight and facial seams sealed. The look on the ship admin's face matched her own feelings very well.
"So." Bru carefully set the half-empy cup on the desk. She folded her hands around the chair arms. "What do you think we should do?"
Milik drank his tea down in a gulp. "All we can do is try to persuade them otherwise." He leaned back in his chair, flicking buttons on the desk's control panel. A small screen dropped to the side of the room. Milik and Bru turned toward it as an image of a terrain bay flickered to life.
Interior Lines Eid and Baln occupied the park area, settled at all the benches and tables. Groups crowded around and peered over shoulders, pointing and commenting at hand-held screens and flimsy documents, the contents of which their bodies and heads and moving hands blocked from the overhead sensors. Further images replaced the first: Interiors in their quarters, Interiors meeting in different locations, a crèche of the newest Line filled with sleeping toddlers.
The children bore visible signs of their elders' brilliance, the seamed skin somewhat similar to that of Eidolons - only externally, of course. Beneath lay re-structured skulls, increased cranial capacity, enriched cortex and neural connectivity – improvements not only over their primitive genitors, but over their most recent parent lines, as well. Bru tangled and untangled her fingers. "I'm a little uneasy about how far they might go, without supervision." She nodded at the screen. "They're brilliant and fearless, but also arrogant. Improving on nature should be undertaken with care and reverence, but they play like children with their own helixes. Line Koa is already progressing at nearly half again the rate of Baln."
"Is that what disturbs you?" Milik offered the tea pot toward Bru. She hesitated, then shook her head. He poured for himself, keeping his eyes on the task, letting her think.
"If we let them go out into the world, how will they survive?" Bru picked up her cup, rotated it between her palms, the sides cool, the crack in the bottom again catching her eye. "We've taught them nothing but peace. They regard violence as an aberration. But out there," Bru gestured toward the wall, somewhere behind which layers of corridors and bulkheads and heavy, thick hull stood between the office and empty, lethal space. "Out there, rationality and peace are so often overcome by aggression and fear."
"You're afraid for them."
Bru met his gaze. "And, though I'll never admit it outside this office," she forced a slight curve to her mouth, "Of them. Just a bit. We changed their ancestors on the inside, and now, they're changing themselves, inside and out, and choosing things we never imagined for them."
"They're no longer your laboratory subjects, and they aren't children, despite the fact that their species is comparatively newborn. If the Interior Lines truly want to abandon the purpose we chose for them, we can't force them to stay." Milik's hand clenched on his cup, and liquid sloshed out. He shook his fingers, sending droplets this way and that. "I'll send over Conciliators first thing. We'll do all we can, but in the end, they are sentients. They're partly our creation, and are currently our responsibility, but we cannot fight them if they choose to go another way." His mouth crooked, a dark light in his eyes. "It's why we chose their forebears, after all."
Bru nodded, and drank the cold dregs of her tea.
"Sebacean. Intellectually suited to carry weapons and die marching in formation."
"Human. Your species and mine might be related."
-- John & Jool, Self-Inflicted Wounds, Part 1: Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
Stark, Peacekeeper Wars
"Pika noalo!" Djanca Bru folds her face back together, inner eyes retracting. She looks up at Irask, but her vision blurs as moisture gathers in her outer eyes. "I can't feel anything."
Her sister cries out softly, as if injured herself. Irask wraps her arms around Djanca, gathers her close and rocks. Comforting words spill like water, but Djanca can only stare forward, seeing nothing but an endless future shut away from everyone and everything around her. She will never feel the universe again. She is crippled.
Just as crippled as the ones who did this to her.
The Sebasen had come far from the primitives found all those cycles ago. They learned science, philosophy, art. They learned of their purpose and forgot their past. They knew war and studied its craft from acolyte races far more suited for such than their Eidolon mentors (masters), who taught them to abhor it.
Scattered among the convoy, three hundred cycles from the small blue world they'd called home, Sebasen multiplied (had been multiplied) by the thousands. Their variations were many, their goal singular: serve the Eidolons, keep the peace, become wiser, stronger, better.
Warriors trained with weapons of many races, and then practiced diplomacy under approving eyes. Scientists studied not only their own species, but many aspects of the universe that Eidolons claimed spoke to them in ways the Sebasen couldn't yet understand. Artisans created, interpreted, predicted. There was nothing denied a people who served (as long as they served) with willing hearts and minds.
There are seven Line failures in the fleet. Djanca Bru informs Hierarch Cholak only after all tests have been run. She looks him in the eyes, lets regret appear in hers. "The damage is irreversible. And it is irreparable. Every test shows that if we try to repair the chromosomal matrix, the subject will suffer crippling nerve damage or worse." She looks down at the data tile in her palm, then extends her arm. "Every Sebasen with this defect will suffer terminal toxic plasticity."
Cholak takes the disk, his fingers folding around it. "You've consulted--"
"Hierarch," she says, gentling her voice, "I have consulted every geneticist and physician in the convoy and as many as we can contact without: Eidolons and Cismar, Delvians, Interilons and Sebasen. No one can see a solution." She holds his gaze, places her hands around his around the disk, a light presumption of intimacy - of empathy. "Afflicted Sebasen will lose all genetic integrity. Exposure to other races, to any known carbon-based animal life, will lead to DNA interference and entanglement, and eventually..." Bru falls silent. She swallows, drops her eyes briefly before raising them back to his. "As far as we can discern, Sebasen who bear this set of genetic markers will pass it on as a dominant trait."
"But what does that mean?" The skin around Cholak's large eyes grows tight. His lips draw back to reveal white tips of teeth. "I'm not a scientist, Bru. Tell me in plain Eido."
She considers him. She drops her arms to her side and sharpens her tone. "Plainly? Without intervention that we are unable to provide, the affected Sebasen and all of their offspring will die."
"How long?"
Bru bows her head at last, dark hair tumbling to hide her face. "Five cycles. A bit less for some, a bit more for others."
For all that he can absorb and influence the delicate emanations of emotion of any species, for all that his pika can overhear the cosmos whispering its secrets, Cholak will never sense Bru's heart. She waits for him to speak.
"Until then--"
"Some of the Lines have requested permission to leave the convoy." Bru raises her head. A tear glitters on the lower lashes of one eye. She draws a deep breath, releases it in a slow, rough sigh. "There is an uninhabited solar system along our route, six planets, a star like their native world's. I've been asked…"
Cholak leans closer, reaching out. "They want to… what?" His hands wrap around her shoulders, warm and gentle.
Bru takes another deep breath. "They want to colonize, for the cycles they have left. They want to live on a planet. They want rain and wind, sun and seasons." She brings her hands up to clutch Cholak's elbows, matching his grip, holding his gaze with her own. "They want to die as they were born to do, if they can't live on as acolytes."
The Hierarch closes his eyes. "We will go among them," he grates out. "I and my Conciliators. I will contact the Quartermaster General, make arrangements for supplies and tools. Whatever they will need." His lashes part, slivers of color blurred by moisture. "To lose so many. Bru, Djanca Bru, is this something we have done?"
She says nothing. Pulls him close.
Let him comfort the dying.
They chose from among the six planets one that much resembled Sebas: blue oceans, white clouds, mountain ranges and desert plains, vast forests and swift-running rivers. The Cartography Dept solemnly recorded the chosen name: Iromi, or Land of the Blessed. The convoy's Survey teams found the best area for the colony, agrarian specialists directed the Sebasen Lines how to set it up for maximum efficiency and production, and Life Sciences provided seed and livestock.
Cholak and his Conciliators roamed in safe-suits among the Sebasen, taught children and conducted ceremonies. The convoy hovered in orbit for nearly a cycle, giving all the aid it could. Of the seven damaged Lines, the majority of individuals chose to stay. The few who remained aboard ships intended to serve until they no longer could.
When the convoy broke orbit, the colony had lost much of its roughness, and the surviving Sebasen had tanned and hardened and grown accustomed to wall-less vistas, to clouded views of stars, to spring rain and summer storms. To death, lingering and distorting if they ventured among their livestock unprotected. Or among the other races of the fleet.
A single vessel lingers.
"I'll catch up in two days," Bru says into the transmitter. "It's a minor repair." Reassured, the comm officer lets her go. Bru returns to studying the schematic design on her console. The device was created and built by Sebasen and Interior engineers, designed to eliminate obstacles in space too large to destroy with conventional cannons.
Bru splits her face wide, feels the helpless quiver of her sense-eyes, blind and blind and blind since childhood. Since the Sebasen revolt, quelled so fast by their own, but not fast enough. Not fast enough to save a child caught in the chemical attack, a child left mind-mute, mind-deaf for the rest of her life. Crippled.
Alone.
The members of the rebellion had been identified, all from the seven Lines aboard Greskor Dala. Seven Lines out of hundreds, raging over inconsequential causes. Ungrateful. Savage. Animal.
The remnants of those Lines in other ships had been isolated, scattered across the fleet, investigated and examined. Found free of defect, and freed from suspicion, if not closer observation.
Bru recovered. She studied hard. She grew up, and joined the cadre of her peers, geneticists dedicated to the improvement of the acolyte races.
She opens a comm line to the colony's small port, where several of its planetary craft and a somewhat larger interstellar vehicle are visible on her monitor.
One of the Sebasen answers, unlined face dull as earth. Bru speaks, and his eyes widen. She presses a button on her console. Flicks a glance to the readout, then settles her gaze on the being shouting – bellowing – screaming at her: WhyWHYWHY--
Bru feels nothing of others' joy or anguish, shares no part of Hora Dalay. She is no more an Eidolon than are the beasts she has doomed below her, scrambling for their spacecraft.
"Because I can."
-- Aeryn quoting Djanca-bru, Prayer
Somehow they maintained a truce with the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers for five hundred generations."
-- Jool, What Was Lost, Part 1: Sacrifice
Opening oneself to the universe means opening oneself to other minds, usually those close at hand. In fullest Hora Dalay, however, one can touch a consciousness whose physical form may be light cycles distant; once, if legend speaks true, halfway across the galaxy itself. Oris Bru has studied that legend more than most, and mostly in pursuit of her private research, as heir to a far darker legacy – one she wishes desperately to deny.
Hundreds of cycles ago, an ancestor of her lineage was said to have destroyed a colony of sentients. Worse, loyal acolytes. It wasn't written anywhere. Bru's scoured records of the Great Journey, talked to Interon scholars and researchers among the Conciliators. The rumors persist, however, most strongly in a few outlying Sebashan colonies, station-based and isolated. For all her efforts, Bru has found nothing more than roughly translated tales supposedly handed down over countless generations.
She'd even ventured to the High Temple of Arnessk for her studies, the first home of her people in this region of space, where the most ancient of rites were performed as flawlessly as if on Qujao itself. Most Eidolons today had never seen the home world, and most never would – the pilgrimage would take half a lifetime, more than a hundred cycles just to get there, much less return.
Bru had loved the mix of ancient and modern cultures, Interon students mingling with Sebashan peacekeepers, Delvian priestesses arguing healing methodology with Traskan mystics, even the occasional visits from Banik Stykera (star-carriers, they called themselves, two species symbiotic) or the secretive and mysterious Builders, who appeared as diffuse particle clouds, and who claimed they were creating a cyborg species of their own (smirking boasters, but undeniably brilliant).
She had loved the university and the Temple, but hadn't found what she sought. But a few Stykera had confirmed that halo clouds flouted the normal laws of physics, or at least twisted them a bit. Two, maybe three of their kind claimed to have caught glimpses of other times.
Cycles ago, that had been. Bru is a respected scholar of Sebashan history, author of transformative monographs tracing the divergences in oral and written documentation for all the known colonies, even those who have forgotten their own origins. And she has a theory.
Her university reluctantly approved this sabbatical and granted her the use of a research vessel and crew. If exploration of a halo drift can confirm or deny Sebashan legend… Even if it can't, Bru's expedition won't be without result if the research crew can capture new scans and data from the halo drift. But for Bru, her interest lies solely with whatever truth she can glean. Djancaz Bru was a genocidal lunatic, or the Sebashans have confused and conflated a historical ship-revolt with a later natural disaster, creating the myth of a murdering goddess to explain the loss of their first colony.
Bru directs her pilot into a wandering halo drift. She will open herself. She will strive to draw out hints, clues, perhaps obtain miraculous recordings of what once was.
She settles herself in the tiny meditation chamber. Purification, relaxation, centering her soul in her body and her mind on her goal – all rituals both practical and preparatory are complete. Bru breathes, slow, steady, even. She reaches out.
Her crew's thoughts are gentle murmurs, the ship a thrumming coldness, and… nothing else. Further. A brush of patient hunger, some unknown creature vast in space. Further, and a line develops between Bru's eyebrows. Darkness, void, sparks of incoherent life.
She's never reached out so far. Her concentration weakens, grasp of purpose growing vague. Bru is nearly at the point of retreat when she encounters thought. She shrinks back, astonished at the contact, half-repelled by its difference. Her mind whirls with concepts beyond any she's known. Space and time are fluid; matter and flesh are alien and strangely fragile.
The foreign essence wavers in her perception, unalarmed, perhaps even… kind. Your mental organ cannot interpret the expanse.
"What expanse?" Bru's thoughts twist and elongate, as if her mind floats in a colorless void, inchoate, alive with meaning if only she can grasp it…
Between your material realm and mine. Do not linger, young one.
Bru's delight curls around her, mingles with the warmth of (Who are you? The Keeper)'s voice. It is alien and female, concerned and commanding. "How do I leave? Can we speak again later?"
Colors seep into her perception. "Oh…" A slender twisting strand, inviting, welcoming, compels her attention. "Not yet!"
Good-bye, whispers the Keeper, and Bru's mind seems to whiplash downward, falling forever – images and voices flashing past, faces she doesn't know, and then she's lying on the floor of her quarters, sticky-eyed and dry-seamed, her body spasming into a curled, tight ball of too much sensation, too much input -- too much everything…
As her thoughts tangle and collapse, Bru sees Arnessk, Eidolon priests sacrificing a sholh, or is it a Sebashan at the altar? -- she whines deep in her throat, distressed -- sees a bright ring flash in a cloudless blue sky, and three devices falling -- or is it the Sebashan who sees? --
Sees nothing more.
"They will destroy us," Bru mutters, waking. "Enemies of peace. I saw…" She opens her eyes, and her husband weeps with joy.
"They will come," she tells him, voice little more than a croak. "They hate us. They'll destroy all that we've done."
"It's all right, love," Dirla whispers, his hands warm on hers, his blue eyes anxious. "You're still affected by the halo cloud."
"No…" Bru winces, pulls her hands away to clutch at her skull. "I saw the future, I know what's going to happen--"
"Rest," he commands, seams stark against paling skin. "Oris, whatever you did, it's damaged your pika gland. You need to rest, love. The doctors say you'll get better, but only if you let yourself recover. Do you understand?" His hands caress the backs of her forearms, sweep up and down until she takes his hands in hers.
Bru rests her aching skull against his, forehead to forehead. "Yes," she murmurs, eyes closing on a vista she'll never forget. "I understand."
The past no longer matters. Only the future…
Our people will die.
No one knows how they achieved it because... one day they just vanished.
And it's like everyone just left. In a microt. And no one...
"Knows why."
"Knows why."
Jool & John, What Was Lost, Part 1: Sacrifice
"Everyone."
John & Muoma, Peacekeeper Wars
Muoma Bru is a priestess unable to fulfill her vows.
"Pikal," she repeats, rubbing her forehead. "You've completed four of the five forms without flaw. Tomorrow, you will demonstrate." She opens her eyes, forces a smile in response to his vibrant pleasure. "We'll resume regular classes in two weekens," she warns.
"I will be glad," the boy says truthfully. The most accomplished student in the Temple, Pikal's future poses no uncertainties. He will be an acolyte, and later a priest. Once, he might have risen to Conciliator if their people still possessed that ability. Once, Bru might have.
Once he's gone, Bru tidies the work area, then dons a robe against the slight chill in the air. The dome hides them from all surveillance technology, but along with fresh air, it allows weather to penetrate. Evenings along the sea side lack warmth.
Bru makes her way through the stone boulevards and carefully tended gardens of Qujaga's dwindling colony. They were never many who survived the Culling. They are fewer now, and changed. She returns a nod of greeting to a pair of armed scouts at an outdoor eatery. In a few hundred cycles, there might be no Eidolons left alive in the universe.
Twelve thousand cycles gone, and Eidolons are a faded myth to all other races, but for the Eidolons who live and breathe, violence and hatred are real enough. Few recordings remain of the genocide, but the handed-down terror of generations exists as a near-palpable atmosphere. Bru often feels as if she could touch it as easily as the stone walls around her.
Pikal would change that, he and his fellow students. Like each generation before theirs, they see possibilities instead of obstacles, and youth fears nothing. Bru… does not suppress their idealism. She once hoped to change the world. She once thought of leaving Qujaga, even if she could never achieve Hora Dalay. No one ever has, and the highest point of Eidolon existence is more legend than history.
And yet. Whispers in Bru's family spoke of a prophet, a woman cursed by an encounter with a halo drift. She had foretold the Culling and described the destruction of Arnessk -- the planet itself remembered as a paradise, even dismissed by some schools of thought as a fanciful origin myth. Since then, every few generations, enough for the gift to be dismissed again and again, a Bru woman dreams true dreams.
Bru hasn't spoken of hers since childhood. She dreams of fire. She dreams of alien invasion. She dreams of Qujaga's end. She dreams of worse.
She wishes now for doret tea. The headache has been building all day and portends another night of agonized, chaotic dreams. Sleep-aids do nothing. Bru will dream through the night and wake with such pain behind her face that she'll wish to sever the useless inner eyes and purge her memory of what she's seen. She'll call her assistant to find a replacement priest for the ceremony tomorrow. It can't be helped, although Pikal will be disappointed. She will sleep again until dusk, ignore her hunger and sleep again. The routine is horribly familiar.
Arriving home, Bru settles in for the night, placing pain-pills and water by her bed. She tries to read the latest newsletter, calming her nerves. At last, she lies down and takes the pain-pills, drinks her water and closes her eyes. It never takes long to fall asleep, despite her dread.
Chunks of rock spinning in space. A ring of fire, widening. Ships drawing ever closer, crossfire bright against the void. A Sebacean soldier, his back to her, screaming.
Look deeper. Alien eyes, whiteless, framed in too-pale flesh. Look.
The ring of fire grows. It doubles, doubles again. A Leviathan is sucked into its gaping black center. Peacekeeper ships, Scarran vessels follow. The ring engulfs Qujaga completely and burns for more.
A flash of a Kalish woman, half-masked in glass. A Sebacean soldier speaking, her long dark hair loose around her shoulders. A hybrid Stykera, red-haired and anguished, pointing at someone unseen in the shadows.
Fire. Fire and destruction and the death of all she knows…
Bru screams. She screams and feels something give in her head, feels sensation in the pika gland she's never known. In her mind, Bru pushes.
She wakes, limbs uncontrolled, flailing until she falls out of bed. Her knee strikes the floor and a finger bends the wrong way. Bru wakes. The dream is gone. She climbs to her feet and reaches for the lamp, her breath coming hard and fast. Her hand hurts. Her knee hurts.
The dream is gone, leaving nothing but pain and a heavy sense of foreboding.
"Pikal," Bru says, throat raw and voice strained, and doesn't know why she begins to cry.
"High Priestess, prepare yourself."
"The legends are true. Our heritage, Yondalao's knowledge, lies within me."
-- Stark & Muoma, Peacekeeper Wars