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English
Series:
Part 5 of the ghost and the raven
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Published:
2016-04-19
Completed:
2016-09-03
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105,729
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26/26
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574
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nou ani atlantus

Summary:

The story of what came before, and how it affected what came after.
(some tales are written in blood.)

Chapter 1: prologue

Notes:

(2016-04-19) Hello everybody! This is the actual sequel I think you've been asking for (see with all these WIPs how many ideas I'm trying to balance all at once...). Firstly, I'm just clarifying that this story will not make much sense unless you read we are the raven and the ghost before this one. I’m writing this in attempt to answer some questions (and cover eventual plotholes) and broaden some themes that I just couldn’t find the space and time to properly explore in the first fic. I'd also like to try continuing the narrative in "we are the raven and the ghost", so, several things will be happening all at once but I think it'll work out (fingers crossed). Secondly, I want to thank everybody who read, left kudos, and commented on "we are the raven and the ghost"—without your continuous support and encouragement I wouldn't have gotten this far writing this verse. Thank you!! Thirdly and finally: please enjoy!
(2016-04-01) I've now gone through and revised/updated all four previous fics in this verse and am starting with this one. I'm correcting grammatical and continuity errors; basically fixing the details. I'm altering spelling from British to American standard, since that's the kind of English most characters in the fic speaks. The plot remains the same. As I tick off each chapter, I'll add a note in the beginning of it to mark it as updated/revised.
(2022-03-06) Going through this series of fics I'm revising some grammar, continuity, and formatting.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

nou ani atlantus


i. 

prologue

the end of the beginning. 


Atlantis · Lantea · Pegasus
ten thousand Terran years ago

The raging fire of the Enemy has lasted endlessly for a hundred and five turns of the Sun, and as the years have dragged on, the War reaches no viable ending.

They call it the Long Darkness, the Ever-Night, for beneath the surface of the ocean they can no longer see the sun or the stars: not dusk nor dawn, only the endless rain of light from the Enemy ships, orbiting the planet in a tight cluster. Many Warships and colonies have been lost, thousands of lives; and the map has narrowed until there is only Lantea left, as sanctuary;

And in this Long Darkness, nineteen years before the Evacuation, Icarus is born.


His Anima Emerges within the hour; it takes many shapes through the years before they turn nineteen and then she settles in the shape of a volucera, sharply dark with a scatter of lightened greens upon the soft ridges of her back. And she has the most beautiful wings, a wide span which have never tasted true air because down here, there is no place to truly fly.

And once he is old enough to speak, he looks at her, and she at him, and they share a mind; and he names her after what he has never laid eyes on: the single star around which Lantea slowly orbits.

The City was sunk a century ago and Icarus grows up without ever recalling the freedom of sky or the sound of wind, only the cold dark of the waters outside the shield, constantly lit by the blasts of the Enemy weapons: streams of energy which would tear the City apart if not for the three potentiae.

They had more than three, once upon a time; but they have launched the last of their Warships, each with a potentia to power the engines, in a final hope to free this galaxy from this scourge. His mother Ephesia argued long and well with the Council to see it happen.

The High Council said: We must leave. There is no other alternative.

They have already lost so many ships, so many lives, so many souls left drifting in the vacuum between stars:

For all life in this galaxy is bound to be wiped out, one day, and they must strive for survival before it is altogether too late. They had fled their First Home upon Celestis in their birth galaxy eons ago: they had survived the break with their sisters and brothers, those who abandoned reason and became the Ori; they are the Others, now, no longer purely one united people. And they had crossed the void, found another corner of the universe to carve out and make theirs and they had made life in their image and for a time, all was well. These are the stories with which he is born and raised; tales of heroic deeds, and scientific wealth, and memories of peace yet lingering.

Our time is reaching its end.


When he is born, they are no longer building weapons. They are not making new potentiae, a process painstakingly slow; old projects abandoned, left to wither under the dying light. They do not have the power or time to continue.

Oh, some try, in defiance: Ianus, his mother’s brother, conducting experiments in secret somewhere, a lab where the Council cannot see. Of this Icarus is certain. There are whispers, and the City Sings: There is a secret lab. But She will not reveal where, as if sensing greater things are to come, and this is not the end.

Like her brother, Ephesia does not listen to the Council. That fierce and cunning defiance is something Icarus has inherited from her—if the trait was shared by his father also, he does not know; Ephesia does not speak of him, as he was destroyed by the Enemy before Icarus’ birth, and there are hours upon hours of holorecordings he has watched and listened to as a child, when he was not dashing through the hallways of the City chasing childhood memories. There were quiet moments, when his mother was tasked elsewhere, and he had only his Anima, Sau, for company; and they would watch the recordings, vivid but mute and unresponsive, and repeat all the names of the dead;

When he is born, it is a time of despair, and of Ascension unlike any: the majority of the City’s inhabitants are meditating and reaching out and, unless there are scientists or warriors otherwise occupied, they close their eyes and Merge to be One with their Animae, rising into Ascension: there, they will be untouchable. There, they will survive.

The order is given: The Evacuation must begin.

But Ephesia does not listen to the Council, and a hundred and fifteen volunteered to join her in a mission behind enemy lines with little hope of returning alive. Before they embark, his mother calls him down before the Astria Porta, and Icarus goes, his Anima with him. Sau is bright within, albeit her skin is dark and silent, and they rarely have the chance to stretch their wings and fly. The shield is in the way; always has been. If only they could tear it apart. He does not know what the sky looks like other than as a holographic projection, though he has dreamed of it often enough. The Archives account many tales, and he had savored each one as a child, like stumbling across a desert planet in frantic search for water: eagerly lapping it all up.

And in their sleep, he and Sau listen as the City sings.


He has tried insisting to have his mother allow him aboard the Last Ships. If nothing else, he would then travel the universe, truly, and become a pilot and a warrior; join in the last of battles, die heroically as one of them truly; but they do not allow it. He is too young, they say. Oh, he knows there is much more. They may be afraid of him, because at night the City whispers to him, one of Those Who Listen. Before the Wars broke out and drowned them, there were thousands like him, and all the Cities Sang and there was peace.

Now, he is the only one. Ever since his older brother Iaphyx was claimed by death; the horror of a Wraith’s cold hand as the Warship had been overtaken and boarded and brought to ruin. He is the only one remaining. He is to preserve, and be preserved: a memory.

The Aurora is waiting around another star, hidden out of sight from the Enemy: at one of the few outposts left whole, though that will not last either. The Astria Porta begins to turn, gently.

His mother and her Anima, Daedalus, meet him on the grand staircase, where the crew is gathered to board the Warship one by one, and Ephesia says: “Icarus, my child, my beloved son. If I do not return, promise me to go to Terra: survive. Promise me.”

And he answers—he loves his mother, loyally and eternally: “I will. I promise.”

And she smiles, sweetly, sadly, and does not weep, and nor does he, even as the event horizon begins to blaze brilliantly blue and she whispers: “Aveo.”

Ephesia steps through the Porta and aboard the Aurora; and Icarus does not see his mother’s face again, or hear her voice, or see the shadow of her Anima, oh the sweet Daedalus, fraught with weariness and war and wisdom of an age surpassing that of Ephesia’s physical body.


The Aurora disappears into hyperspace.

They do not hear from them again.


In the last hours of the Final Siege, the orders are given: Hope will not return.

Negotiation is futile. The last remnants of their legacy is gathered, and voices hushed the Porta is activated. A final path: the road away from home. They will go, and leave the City to slumber until the days are beyond counting and the Enemy have returned to sleep. On Terra, they may find peace: on Terra, they may find time to build a weapon, a solution.

The City is weeping; Icarus and Sau can all hear Her, the Song silencing into a murmur, a wail of mourning. This time, which long has been feared, has come.

The Aurora has not returned. It will not return. They lost contact with the Warship Tria and her Captain fifteen days ago, and, in the atmosphere high above Atlantis, the Lachesis has just been destroyed.

The Council says: It is too late. It is time to go.

Icarus, furious and fearful, and yet wholly comprehending of the situation—his mother did not raise him to be a fool—tries to argue. Buy for time. A hundred more hours, a hundred more days. For they have withstood a hundred and five years. They can endure.

No. They need the power of the potentiae to reach Avalon. If they wait any longer, that power will be lost forever.

As he screams and cries and tries to soothe the ache by meditating, Sau says: “We made a promise.”

To survive. Yes. And survive—Icarus is planning on surviving, for ever and ever and ever if he can—the Aurora and its crew may be lost, but Atlantis is yet singing:

If they go, who will be left to hear Her voice?

And he turns to Sau and says: “We must find Ianus before he departs; we will not leave Atlantis to die.”


This is the place of our Legacy.

This is the Last City, and it will hold until the Unending of the World.  


The secrets of Atlantis are theirs to hold and She lights the path, now, to the hidden corners, away from sensor range, where his uncle harbors a secret lab: one of many, spread across this galaxy and the next. This one is his most important, though, a place none of his assistants has ever seen, no one else ever visited. Icarus remembers what his mother used to say: her wayward brother, never listening to the Council, off to study the most peculiar things—but that same defiant streak lived in her; it lives in Icarus, too.

But the lab is not emptied. There is a woman there—Icarus recalls her, briefly, from afar: the woman from Terra.

Elizabeth, she is named, as if there was a Lantean namesake; there is one Elizabeta who Icarus has already known, once. The Enemy had destroyed her and her crew with the Lachesis. This one is very much alive, and she and two more Terrans had fallen into the ocean in a broken portam nava, one which Ianus had modified and left behind in the City—left behind for the future to find. The woman had survived, alone, the two companions merely broken bodies; and Ianus brought her before the Council bearing the most amazing story: a future timetraveler, Elizabeth and her expedition will find the City submerged in slumber ten thousand Terran years from this day.

It is a glimmer of hope, and also of immense grief. It means, ultimately, they are not buying time for themselves: it means they will not return a decade, a hundred years from now with a weapon to wipe out the Enemy once and for all.

At least, they know the Enemy will not reach Avalon, because the woman had asked about the Enemy, the Wraith, unknowing as if she had never heard their name.

Icarus had not been allowed to hear her story in the Council chamber: he is yet too young to be allowed inside there. He will never be old enough. The Council is disassembling at its roots, along with everything and everyone else. But now she is waiting inside the lab, alongside Ianus, who is standing before a console giving instruction.

He and Sau enter, unannounced, and Ianus greets them, unsurprised. Ianus’ Anima is thrilled; the Anima of the woman betrays fear, anxiousness, grief, an echoing restless weariness, an exhaustion wrought by the gap of time from her home to Atlantis. Her two companions had not been salvaged: their bodies remain buried beneath the waves, and there they shall fade, become forgotten. Perhaps, mercilessly, it is just as well; if they are anything like this woman, they would find the City of Atlantis, right now, unfitting and strange, and they would never truly be at peace evacuating to Terra with them. No, this time is not theirs. They do not belong here.

“I am uploading instructions on how to put the City to sleep,” Ianus is telling her. “You will be able to access it from any terminal after we leave.”

Then she is not evacuating with them, after all, despite the orders of the Council. A gift refused. Despite everything, Icarus smiles: the first smile for days, months, years. (They have not taught him to smile—they taught him the sciences, and the art of war, and meditation. Joy is for humans.)

If not for this sacrifice, the City will be torn asunder the moment the future expedition finds it, claimed by the ocean long before the Enemy even realizes the Descendants have returned.

The woman nods and murmurs. A plan hatched. Icarus asks what can be done to further aid it.

“We will go to the Core and see to the potentiae,” Ianus says. Turns to the woman. “What did you say you called them?”

“ZPMs,” she says, a word so utterly foreign: “Zero Point Modules.”

“Yes. Yes! Of course! Come, I will show you. To lengthen the City’s lifespan, the potentiae—the Zero Point Modules,” Ianus corrects, easily taking new knowledge to good use, adapting his tongue for her to understand: “they must be used in sequence; I will adjust the stasis chamber to wake you once every three and a half thousand Terran years so that you can rotate them.”

“Then this is your plan?” Icarus asks. He and Sau have not been properly introduced, and the woman and her Anima, a most curious creature with red fur and clear eyes, are watching them very closely. If forced to put an expression to it, Icarus would say the woman is looking at a ghost.

“Yes. Icarus, you should go with the others, before the Council notices your absence and suspects.”

“We have a few more hours,” he says, mournfully: once they leave, they will not return, not within his lifetime, or his children’s lifetimes—he and most of his people will fall into oblivion and myth. One day their stories will be unearthed and revered, but their future is no more.

Descendants.

[we will remember] Atlantis Sings: a promise. Every sweet word is becoming an oath.

But his uncle shakes his head. “Go.”

“I cannot, not yet.”

First there is something he and Sau must do.

“Very well,” Ianus sighs, “but I will be waiting for you before the Porta.”

Waiting, as his mother was waiting before the Aurora disappeared. Waiting, as they all are, for the End.


In the lonely echo after Ianus and the Terran woman have gone to the stasis chamber, Icarus finishes the last adjustment of the crystal panel of the console. In this device he is storing the last memories. The holorecording can only be accessed by another with the blood of his people; because the Terran woman, Elizabeth, had said to the Council that there are Descendants among her people, Names Who Shall Be, and they will carry the key to Lantean technology.

There had been one, she had murmured, aboard the ship upon which she had travelled through time. She had woken, confused and dazed, and asked names; “Ionn Sheppard, is he here?” she had cried out, and: “Doctor Zelenka? The Major? Where are they? Are they alive?”—and she had not wept upon receiving the news of their deaths, but almost, perhaps in too much shock of the whole ordeal to be anything but utterly calm on the exterior.

Ionn is a Lantean name.

The Descendants will live and through them, Icarus is going to make sure, Atlantis will survive.

Do not worry, he sends Her a message: You will not be alone.

And in the final hour, the City answers:
[make it a promise]


ten thousand years will be a long time to be alone.

Notes:

Ancient-English translations:
Anima(e) Dæmon(s), lit. "soul(s)"
Astria Porta(e) Stargate(s), shortened to Porta(e)
Avalon the Milky Way Galaxy
aveo Farewell, goodbye
Celestis is the home planet of the Alterans (who later split into two factions, the Ancients (Anquietas), and the Ori)
nou ani Atlantus we are Atlantis
Pegasos the Pegasus Galaxy
portam nava(e) Gateship(s), i.e. Puddlejumper(s)
potentia(e) Zero Point Module(s), ZPM
Terra Earth