Chapter 4, part 1
Fireblade felt deeply conflicted, on one side she knew that all that she had experienced there so far was not real but on the other she appreciated the peace that this dream world had given her. At first she found herself confused and alone at her dormitory in the Teidar Academy on Deinar; she instantly felt watched and lashed out telekinetically, only to be shocked at the destruction she wrecked upon her surroundings, destruction that made her realize just how strong she truly was now. She thought that it was all a lie; in fact she wanted it to be but she somehow knew that it wasn’t. The dream world wasn’t real but they made sure that she would learn from it and that everything she would grasp would be applicable once she would return to her real body.
It wasn’t by sending, but they taught her everything she needed to know; it was as if she always knew about all this and yet she could never fully grasp it. They somehow let her know that this was how they now taught their young, the only safe way for everyone involved to be trained as an Ascendant; nothing was real in the dream world and yet everything was as real as it should be. Sight, touch, noise, smell, taste and all the ranges of sensing; everything was geared to teach new Ascendats the true depth of their power including the repercussions of failing to properly apply those powers. She felt the true recoil of improper mental defenses, the painful boundaries of unbound telekinesis, the maddening sensation of finding one’s self losing control of their grasp of time. She howled in agitation at the mental pain of her failures and yet her successes brought results that she wouldn’t dare to consider before.
Successes that brought her into an unprecedented state of mental serenity. It wasn’t the complacency of the one who knew that they could now face the impossible that finally put her at peace but just being able to witness everything from a perceptive that made the incomprehensible comprehensible and the sensible ludicrous. There was no real point to things that used to agitate her in her previous state; she just knew that peace within herself could easily be found even among them.
Now that the lessons had stopped she gave in to the leisure of peace and found herself sitting at the edge of a mountain cliff of Taben, with the sea peacefully extending in front of her beyond the horizon. She took everything in at the fleeting moments she still had, the salty scent of the slight breeze, the slight moisture of the ground, the minuscule movement of the waves far below, the setting sun at the horizon, the myriads of stars at the darkening skies. She let herself lost in those singular moments as if it was a lifetime.
“Are you ready Pallan Fireblade?” She was surprised by the alien’s sending, she had been left alone for so that she had almost forgot about him.
“Do I have to leave just yet?” His laugh at that was pleasant as his mind was filled with understanding.
“All of us felt that way when we had to leave this place for the first time.”
“Is this how you all learned how to use all these powers, even the first among you?”
“It’s complicated, the first Ascendant humans a little less than two centuries ago knew nothing about how to be an Ascendant, we had all simply forgotten how to use these gifts. We even debated on if we should maintain the mental locks or not but some pioneers managed to find what was left behind and used it to build all this.” He replied as he sat down next to her.
“Our species was fractured at the time, only some of us had managed to Ascend but thanks to what we found we realized immediately what to do in order to maintain ourselves without getting lost to our self-destructive tendencies. This simulation or dream world, as you think of it all, was the solution; carefully crafted and maintained, all humans are able to access it provided that the equipment necessary and enough of us are around.”
“Is that why I felt watched?”
“A few teachers were assigned to you but you weren’t really watched over nor were the places and events you experienced directly affected by anyone other than yourself, some discrete direction was provided because your life has been traumatic but everything was yours.” He replied and looked around in silence.
“I must have shamed myself then. When I was taught how to properly harness telekinesis my mind immediately wished for Shells for me to kill. I knew that all of it was not real despite how accurate everything was and yet I allowed myself to be overcome by my rage. I destroyed those fakes in numbers beyond counting and in ways I couldn’t comprehend before, I felt joy in the fear, pain and agony they projected. I kept going until everything around this fake body of mine was littered with broken husks as far as I could see, their black blood having drenched all in its wake as if it was a tidal wave. They tried to harm me and I knew that this dream world, this simulation, would allow even the most excruciating pain to be felt but it was beyond futile with what I am now capable of. As I found myself in that field of bloody death I could only think of how unfulfilling it all was, I could feel and sense everything as if it was real and yet their destruction didn’t fulfill me in the way I had thought it would. I felt shame at the realization that I held contempt, anger and rage against beings so beneath me. They need killing but they are not deserving of anger in the same way maddened animals are not deserving of it.” She turned to look at him at that, only to see him smiling as he looked at the setting sun.
“I believe that I can now compare what I was before with what I am now and the only thought that comes to me is if you thought of us Loroi in the same way I thought of the Shells after my realization?”
“No, never!” He replied almost instinctively.
“Your kind is worse and greater in equal measure. We hold contempt and disgust against you for what you did with the few gifts that you were left with but we also hold an admiration for how your kind avoided some of the crimes that we have committed among ourselves. We humans are a species that is fractious by nature, much like you Loroi; we have always warred and fought with each other and the past half of a century is actually the first time that we as a species have been truly free from organized conflict. This unity through Ascension was brought forth by the greatest war humans had fought with each other, before that war was waged only two relatively minor factions had become truly Ascendant. The faction I was part of had Ascended first by using our own tools and minds, the faction that followed soon after Ascended after using Soian technology that they had managed to salvage. Ascension is a delicate matter and beyond reason we hoped that our brethren that would Ascend after us would come to the same conclusions as we did; unfortunately we were wrong and many humans suffered greatly as a result. The Soian philosophy of forcing order to chaos poisoned their minds, their form was still human but they tried to strip themselves of their humanity in the same way the Soians ripped away their sentience. By taking the easy way and thinking themselves superior they proceeded to war on the still Unascended human factions. The lesser humans had the technology necessary to mount a resistance but they weren’t fighting Ascendants that were working with emotionless and calculating logic, they were fighting something monstrous that couldn't be reasoned with in any acceptable way. We pleaded with them, we repeatedly tried to show them the error of their ways but it was to no avail, they had deemed the Soian mission of bringing order to chaos as their absolute divine mandate that should be accomplished by any means necessary. They had to be stopped and I planned the operation that did exactly that.” The alien looked up into the sky at that.
“We made sure that not even their deaths would be seen by other Ascendants. Most died but some surrendered when the inevitable came for them; we still debate if we should have killed them regardless of that, rather than keeping them quarantined until they can somehow make up for their mistakes.”
“Is that why you are doing all this? Why you chose me to Ascend?” She asked, she hadn’t been told anything so far but the implications were plain to see now.
“Yes. Your kind would never willingly follow anyone without a good reason; we concluded that someone from the universally respected Teidar caste would be an ideal baseline for a paragon for your kind to look up to. Then we looked up for individuals with peculiar abilities and personal histories, you stood up from among them in an instant; a tragic life, an unparalleled strength and intentionally sidelined because of rotten coincidences and bad luck. You Ascending in the most dire moment of the war and being there to turn its fortune in your kind’s favor will be enough for you to get the attention of many of your caste mates who will be the first to swear fealty to the first Loroi Ascendant, the warrior who rose above all else by force of will alone.”
“I never wanted any of what you describe.”
“No one worthy ever does.” He said as he turned to look at her.
“A millennium ago one of my ancestors, who bore the same name as I do, became universally known for being the greatest human explorer who had lived up to that point. He was forced into a difficult situation and decided to forgo his dream of exploring the stars until he found sapient life in order to make sure that he wouldn’t witness the worlds he discovered be consumed by war. He succeeded in that, the seemingly inevitable war of that time breaking out a decade after his death; the last words he left at his death bed being ‘I never found them’. I am certain that he would have found your ancestors if he kept himself on the path he wanted to tread instead of doing what was necessary at the time. Perhaps it’s for the best that he didn’t; perhaps it’s for the worse.” He looked away and shook his head at that.
“Your kind has to Ascend, we cannot protect you from those whose attention your kind has attracted without you being worthy of the sacrifices necessary for us to do so; nor can we tolerate a repeat of the madness that we put a stop to half a century ago. You will be the first Loroi Ascendant, if not by choice then by the necessity borne out of you being the best possible candidate for the task. There will be other worthy warriors that will be provided gifts, they may use those gifts to help you or hinder you but know that we won’t provide any further aid to anyone and we will make sure that no other Ascendants will interfere with your Ascension whatever form it will take. You will all be Loroi and it will be up to all of you to act as you see fit.”
“Why do all this for us? If your kind had a Lotai forced on you by the Soians then you should be hating us with all your being. I can barely conceive the rage that we Loroi would feel if someone stole our telepathy from us; the Soians stole far more from you and yet you plan to see us Ascend and it doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that you will exterminate us if we turn into the ones you fought before.” Fireblade pointed.
“I have repeatedly told the other three that honor demands this much from us. If it’s one thing that you Loroi understand then it’s this: Honor demands for us to see you succeed or die by our hands.” He stood up at that and looked her straight in the eyes.
“Now come, it’s time for you to understand.”
She felt something powerful and irresistible grip her whole being before dragging her someplace faraway with unimaginable force and speed. A solon later she felt herself in control of another illusionary body and she opened her eyes to find herself standing amidst a forest the likes of which she had never seen before.
“Where are we?” Tozet Beryl broadcasted the instant Fireblade could sense her. Parat Tempo and Lashret Stillstorm appearing next to her after a few moments.
“You are on Earth, the Human homeworld, approximately 400 tozons before the fall of the Soians.” The Senator broadcasted as Fireblade turned to look at the others, their bodies were perfect illusions but their minds where still there.
“Palan Fireblade knows it already but these aren’t your real bodies, they are projections necessary for maintaining a sense of mental being while experiencing all this.” She sensed the other three turn their attention to her, their subconscious littered with barely controlled emotions and thoughts that brought forth a singular question from all three of them.
“I have Ascended.” There was no other way to explain it, she knew that they hadn’t unlocked or taught her everything but she was more than she was before and she knew that the rest were wholly up to her. She sensed Parat Tempo’s intention to raise her mental defenses, Tozet Beryl’s curiosity overcoming all reason and Lashret Stillstorm forming the belief that she had already turned traitor; they were so slow in all this that she had already formed an answer for everything but elected to reply to the one thing that her pride couldn’t stand.
“I am still Loroi.” She knew that this alone wouldn’t be enough but ones so limited couldn’t hope to sense the full truth behind it, how different and yet the same she was now.
“I don’t believe you!” Stillstorm sent accusingly and Fireblade felt a tingle of anger rise up inside her but another sentiment rose up to swallow it whole as she sized up her commanding officer.
“Pitiful…” All she could do was pity them, all three of them. So limited in their perception, so guarded; so… lesser in every conceivable way. She looked at the alien and wondered if that’s how he still saw her.
“No.” He replied instantly and raised his hand to point at something.
“These ones are the first ones that we want to show you.”
All three of them turned to look at what he was pointing at, about a couple of dozen of mannals ahead of them was a small group of pink humans that wore primitive leather clothing, their mental signatures were seemingly weak but as Fireblade focused at them she realized that they were just distorted to them by something.
“Even with the measures we have taken it’s very hard to sense people from the past, it’s almost impossible to intercept their sendings but one can monitor their state of mind and the telepathic network they have set up.” The alien explained.
“They are telepaths!” Beryl broadcasted excitedly as she walked up to them.
“What are they?”
“They are Neanderthals, one of our human ancestors.” He replied.
“It’s a foraging party of 5 females, 2 children and a young male to provide security.”
“They are shorter and they look like they have a larger skull and a slightly different body build than you.” Beryl commented as Fireblade with Tempo and Stillstorm walked up to them as well, it felt eerie to look at them as close without them even realizing that they were being watched. All of them were shorter than she was; their females were about as short as a Loroi male while the lone male was about the height of an average Loroi female. Their heads were definitely bigger than the alien’s, with bigger noses, a smaller chin, with slightly protruding brows and a forehead that immediately bent backwards.
“They are ugly.” Stillstorm broadcasted.
“Your stone age ancestors after the Soian fall weren’t pretty to look at either, Lashret Stillstorm.” The alien replied with a laugh.
“The Neanderthals were a human subspecies that evolved to thrive in the often frozen northern continent of Eurasia. Their bodies were geared to survive in cold and high altitudes; they had stronger muscles and bones than the other humans of the time while they also had eidetic memories, unlike the other humans who only sparingly had that ability while still having all other gifts.”
“Their telepathic network is laid out oddly…” Tempo commented.
“As if the eight of them have two leaders at the same time.”
“Indeed, it’s all down to the main evolution dynamic of Earth’s mammals where the males are geared to be dominant and females are geared to be submissive. Human sapience didn’t change this evolutionary directive but it has given it an interesting twist in regards to the social dynamics between the sexes. In this instant the young male has been given the de-jure leadership of the foraging party by his father who is also the patriarch of the extended familial unit of which this group is but a small part of but the lead female of this group is his mother who is the mate of the patriarch and as such she is the de-facto leader of this group. In fact she should be considered the co-lead of the entire familial group as every last female in it looks up to her and does what she tells them to do.”
“They are too clean, both their bodies and their clothes made of hides.” Beryl commented.
“In fact the clothes seem to be better made than their stone tools and the crude spear the male is carrying.”
“They are also very well fed.” The alien added.
"What do you think of that?” Beryl frowned in thought at that.
“The low quality of the tools doesn’t coincide with such prosperity for a hunter gatherer society. Unless they aren’t actually relying on their tools. In fact they don’t seem very proficient in using them if I am to judge by how the females are gathering plants with what they have. It makes no sense… they are telekinetics!”
“Indeed they are, very strong and proficient telekinetics whose main weakness was their lack of scientific understanding in order to draw out the full potential of telekinesis; all humans of the time had almost the full arsenal of Ascendancy available to them but due to this lack of scientific understanding they couldn’t really be called Ascendants in the way we describe ourselves now. Now as for the stone tools you see them using, they are purely ceremonial, in their culture the food for celebratory banquets, religious offerings or for honored guests had to be collected by female hand or killed by a male hunter’s weapon. In this occasion they are gathering food to offer to the gods who live far above the height where one sees the curvature of the Earth, where it is very cold and breathing is hard.”
“The Soians!” Beryl realized.
“Indeed. All humans of the time saw their ships at the night sky when they were close enough and could collectively sense them once they focused themselves at the task. The Soians kept their
distance as a matter of course which led to the human belief that the Soians were gods. This ridiculous cultural epiphany from all humans lasted for far longer than it should.” He sent before pointing at the matriarch of the group that was still going about their business of gathering food with their stone-age tools.
“It’s time for us to be somewhere else but remember this female well.”
The invisible force took hold of them again, this time the transit was instantaneous but they didn’t find themselves on a planet but inside what looked like the inside of a space station, with telepaths all around them.
“These are…” Beryl begun as she stared at the identical aliens who were going about their business.
“Soians.” The alien finished with clearly felt hatred at the mere sight of them.
“They became what you now see after deciding to forfeit what they once were. They chose a form they thought would maximize the Ascendant potential while simultaneously rooting out all of their sentience and everything they considered superfluous. They were just one of the many Ascendants who followed this path.”
“They seem weak.” Fireblade thought as she observed them closely.
“They are weak, in more ways than you can realize just by observing them in this way.” The alien replied. To Fireblade the Soian form looked like a mockery of theirs, blue skinned and slightly taller than her, with long arms and legs, a small torso, a featureless face with bland blue eyes, a small slit like mouth with no lips and two small holes where the ears should have been.
“They have no noses.” Stillstorm commented as she too was taken in by the bizarre sight they offered.
“Their mouth serves that purpose with only a rudimentary sense of taste and smell remaining.” He replied.
“They don’t look able to put much of a fight, or even survive in the wild.” Stillstorm added.
“They didn’t need to suffer any of that, they were Ascendants. They had the technology and abilities necessary to be beyond all such trivial matters. They also had several specialized servile races ready to do their bidding at all times, should something beneath needed to be done.”
“I had trouble sensing them at first but if these are indeed Soians then I cannot sense any kind of emotion from them, their minds are hard to discern but they seem focused to a singular task at all times. I find this hard to believe considering that even the minds of Shells wonder in small ways when they are working.” Tempo commented.
“What is a living being without sentience? What is someone who turned themselves to emotionless beings of logic? What truly limits them from acting on every thought that seems logical but is actually monstrous?” The alien pondered in a manner that reminded them of Loroi males.
“Most Ascendants followed the route of the Soians in regards to the choice of Ascension, becoming beings of cold calculating logic that are universally focused on a single overarching goal without much consideration of even their individual selves. The beginning is almost universally the same but the ‘logical’ path they choose to follow are usually vastly different. The Soians chose to bring order to chaos by creating a finely tuned eternal empire with them as their task masters; nothing would get in the way of that goal and those who were problematic were simply replaced by Soian Liron copies that were fine tuned to fulfill specific tasks. Of those still living you know of: the Barsam fulfilled the role of shock troops, the Neridi the role of engineers and the Pol were living repositories of knowledge.”
“What about us?” Beryl asked.
“You… will witness what you were intended to be soon enough.” The alien replied.
“Let’s say that you accomplished the task that you were created for, for now sate your curiosity by witnessing what happens when Ascendants like the Soians miscalculate.”
They waited for some time, as hundreds if not thousands of Soians passed by them as they stood and waited in the massive and quite spacious corridor that he had brought them to, Fireblade easily sensed Stillstorm’s impatience growing by the moment which served to increase her own when an impossibly strong telepathic shout swept their minds asunder, by all accounts they should be dead but she felt something protect her and the others from the worse.
“Consider this a warning for your own kind’s forays into the past.” The alien sent after recovering from the shock.
“Certain Ascendant abilities affect all, even those from the future who choose to snoop in. We took some pretty obvious precautions for this endeavor but you will be on your own on your future attempts.”
“Why didn’t you warn us?” Stillstorm sent angrily after collecting herself.
“For the same reason you let your dirals out in the wild with little to no help.”
“What was that?” Tempo asked as she just stared at the reaction of all the Soians around them, the vast majority of whom now laid mentally dead with only a fraction able to flail around both physically and mentally.
“The beginning of the first human revolt.” He replied and the invisible force again dragged them to another place in an instant with the result of witnessing something that shocked them to their very core; they looked almost exactly like him, hundreds if not thousands of males like him but Soia-Liron!
“What you see here are human males that had their biochemical template forcefully changed into its Soia-Liron equivalent for two very specific reasons. The first being for the Soians to test if the one to one change in regards to biochemistry as well as the subsequent upgrades would affect natural Ascendant potential and the second to extend the life span of their captives so they could train their Soia Liron copy when it would be finalized.” He replied with a sense of subtle pride emanating from him about what was happening around them.
“They thought of the Soians as gods to be honored and cherished but instead they were abducted, put through torturous experiments, had their bodies and minds shackled while ending up with blue blood instead of red. Massive Ascendant galactic empire or not they knew that the Soians had to pay for all this, not that they had much of an idea of the true abilities and resources the Soians had at their disposal but they were wronged and they would do everything to put that right.” He pointed at a small number of blue humans that went from one to another and telekinetically ripped away the collars and shackles that their comrades were wearing.
“They are violently revolting after being trapped in this stockade deep within a Soian dreadstar for decades. It took some time but a handful of them managed to find a way to disable their mental shackles which allowed them to shout in unison and take out the vast majority of Soians on this part of this dreadstar. Now they are freeing the rest of the captives here before the Soians manage to activate the fail safes put in place.”
“Biochemistry aside they look almost exactly like you while your Neanderthal ancestors were obviously different from you.” Beryl asked as the blue humans around them cheered in droves.
“The Soians didn’t see much worth to the relatively specialized physical form of the Neanderthals and many other humans of the time, electing to make some modifications in order to have the Soia-Liron copy be able to thrive in a wide range of environments. These early prototypes that the captives were transformed into represent these changes which ironically are the exact same changes that natural humans went through after our Ascendant abilities were locked away. Earth has a wide variety of natural environments and some nasty natural predators used to walk on it at the time, the ability to thrive on all these environments was the key to our success as a species after our primary evolutionary weapon was forcefully taken from us.”
“You said that the Neanderthals were your ancestors.” Beryl pointed out.
“Our ancestors that were anatomically modern humans coexisted with Neanderthals for some time which resulted in lot of interbreeding between the two subspecies when they weren’t busy bashing each other at the head with clubs and rocks. Most humans today have Neanderthal genome in them so they technically are our ancestors even if they proved to be an evolutionary dead end when the cold north they evolved to thrive in became warmer.”
“What are they doing now?” Stillstorm asked as all the blue humans around them stopped cheering and stood in silence as if they were concentrating on something.
“This stockade they are trapped inside has no known way in or out, everything that went in was handled via teleportation technology. They may have freed their minds and abilities but the hurdle of getting out is still there.”
“So they are trapped then?”
“Are they really?” He asked but his thoughts made it obvious that this wasn't the case.
“Their minds!” Tempo realized.
“They are synchronizing with everyone else and… That’s impossible, even if they don’t need to touch each other the mental conflicts alone wouldn’t allow this!”
“They are not mind melding, not in the way you think at least. The highly disciplined telepathic networks you Loroi employ allow you to coordinate in highly complex and difficult endeavors, however the mental outlook you have is too proud and self-centered to reach the logical conclusion of such networking. Human males are, on average, result oriented altruists in their way of thinking. As long as every single one of us understands that something has to be done then we will do everything in our power to do it, even if it means sacrificing everything we are in the process.”
Even with the inherent difficulty in sensing them Fireblade felt the minds of all the blue humans move in unison, the telepathic wake of the effort alone being enough to sent shivers down her spine. As one they concentrated on a single spot on the walls that contained them and launched a single massive telekinetic attack that shattered everything in its wake as several mannals of armor just gave way from the sheer pressure.
“We humans had mass drivers mounted on our warships a millennium ago, weapons that were weaker than the telekinetic attack of these two thousand men.” The alien commented as the captives rushed into the open gap and into the rest of the dread star.
“What are they going to do now?” Stillstorm asked.
“Fail.” He replied and shook his head.
“They will succeed in freeing their females but they have no avenue of escape. They have yet to even realize that they are in a Soian dread star, they will tear everything they can from the minds of any Soian unlucky enough to be caught alive but there was simply no way for them to escape this place even if they knew how to operate a spaceship. It took two nanapis but the Soians managed to kill every last one of them and recapture the females.”
“It was futile then.”
“The first revolts usually end in failure but they are never truly futile. More Soians died in this revolt than the combined death toll of the previous 8 millennia while this dread star was left crippled, with its surviving population dispersed into the remaining 7 dread stars the Soians had until enough resources could be allocated to repair all the damage that was done to it. The various servile races suffered dearly as well, since the Soians took great care to have the majority of the key manufacturing capacity that their empire needed to run come from their own dread stars, taking out one of them even for a little while caused friction among the ranks of those beneath them. Funnily enough it wasn’t the Soians who managed to stump the first rebellion but the Barsam, the Soians sent thousands of them in suicide attacks in an murderous battle of attrition that exchanged blood for mere mental fatigue as the Soians were otherwise unable to compete with the natural Ascendant abilities of humans, especially the naturally combat focused males.”
“The breakout cost them as well.” Beryl sent with clearly felt distress as she pointed to the couple of dozen dead who littered the now empty stockade.
“That’s the way it works Tozet Beryl; we do or we die trying to bring forth the desired result. This time the result they gained was two nanapis of violent freedom with plenty of dead Soians added as a bonus.”
“They are…males.” Beryl continued, drawing a sense of amusement from the alien, amusement mixed with appreciation.
“We feel the same when we witness dead Loroi warriors.” The alien commented.
"The first human revolt was bound to end in failure but it did force the Soians to radically change their approach in regards to the planned Soia-Liron copy."
Chapter 4, part 2:
http://www.well-of-souls.com/forums/vie ... 642#p26642