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Children of Earth, humanity, you have never been alone. In your ever reaching curiosity and endless wars, you have never been alone. Though you were born to the Earth, we were born to the skies and we have soared beside you in every step, seen your struggles and victories and fought beside you when we were needed. We- who are the Drakonis- were your cousins, your partners throughout history.
We’re the elemental shapeshifters of ice and fire that so resemble your myths of dragons. We’re low-level empaths capable of limited telepathy over limited distances. We can breed amongst ourselves or with humans, albeit at a slower rate. We live up to seven hundred years and can withstand a hell of a lot of pain.
Less than a thousand years ago, we retreated from your side. At the time, it was easier and safer for all of us to fade from your memories as we struggled with ourselves and fought to bring back a hope that had died so very long ago. We were isolated and you continued to grow and thrive. You waged your wars without us and continued in your curiosity to reach heights we never dreamed you would. You took your machines and reached into the skies. Yet, you never stopped asking if you were alone. You kept seeking your answer, reaching past the skies and into the stars.
Eventually, finally, we won that battle against ourselves and we crept out of our isolation and back to your side, but it wasn’t like before. Where before we were protectors and guardians, you were equals. The Drakonis might have still been physically stronger and each capable of wielding forces that humanity couldn’t yet, but you had progressed in ways we didn’t expect.
You reached for the stars and found Prothean ruins in 2148. There were eezo spills and humans developed biotics. Those powers were so very familiar, so very similar that we revealed what we should not have. We came forward, into the light, and revealed ourselves.
We trusted you, the Children of Earth, too far, too soon, and my children paid the price for that.
You didn’t like it, that you had been sharing your planet with another sentient race. There was violence and protests. We tried to reason with you, tried to bargain and calm, but you would have none of it. Until you made an offer.
We weren’t desperate. Our protections stood and still stand. We wanted peace, but your curiosity had turned sour and strange while we were isolated. We didn’t expect you to desire to understand us the way you had sought to understand everything before us. We didn’t expect the depths of darkness you had fallen into.
I sent my child to you in good faith. You were supposed to talk to him, not take him hostage and experiment on him. Then, you denied it to my face with your poisonously sweet reassurances that you would search for him. How did you not realize that I knew his pain and felt it while you did such horrible things to him?
You took where you should not have.
You broke a trust that can’t be replaced.
Cowards.
That’s what I remember of you when I stopped trusting and made the search myself.
Too late I arrived to find them dissecting his body and removing the organs from his cracked chest. There was so much blood and the sour scent of fear. All of it his. In that moment, rage, grief, and sorrow possessed me as my world shattered. Those within the room were sealed inside. A part of me can still hear their panicked screams and smell the scent of their fear, but I reveled in it for the first time in my life.
The smell of burning flesh lingered in the air. Their soft moans barely registered in my ears. The walls of the lab were a colorless blur to my eyes and the hard tiles were cold against my knees. A thousand memories flashed before me. He was a little baby screaming his indignation to the world for the first time. He was a toddler learning to talk. He was a little boy calling me “mama.” He was a child trying to look innocent after his first prank. Then, in my arms as I rocked him in that cold colorless lab, he was a young man whose death had amounted to nothing.
He wasn’t the only one, though.
My son was the bait, the distraction. You took our children while I searched. You did unspeakable things to them, for the sake of curiosity. It became a fever in our blood, the echo of their pain. Even had I known, even had I wanted to, I would not have stopped them. I would not have stopped the slaughter that the Drakonis unleashed on you for those deaths.
Because we remember. We remember every incision, cut, and name. Every last one of us knows the list of names of those you stole and murdered. We remember and we will not forgive.
The Drakonis are an independent, thinking, free willed, and passionate species. We have our faults and lines that we will cross. We have morals and beliefs, just like you. The only differences between us is a second form that allows us to touch the skies without the use of machines and a lifespan that lasts several hundred years rather than a single century.
What makes you better than us?
You learned a hard lesson by our claws and hands and blood.
You drove us away.
Was it worth the price?
I hope so, god I hope it was. I hope the data you extracted about our biological capabilities was worth the blood, pain, and death that came as a result of those heartless experiments. I hope it was worth it to make us your most depraved secret that you do not want the rest of the galaxy to know.
Because that’s what you made us. You reached for the stars in 2148 with your Prothean ruins and we moved too fast. We collided too hard with the darkness that lingers in your species and unleashed our own hate and darkness on yours.
We horrified you. We terrified you. And I learned that not all of humanity was depraved and sour.
You tried. You tried to make peace and amends for the small number of yours that had done us wrong and been eradicated, but there was nothing that could right the lives lost and the blood shed on both sides.
I couldn’t even look at you, so I called the retreat. Most of our numbers withdrew back into isolation after you learned those lessons, after we learned ours, but…
Go ahead and reach for the stars. Dig into those Prothean ruins on Mars and learn what you can. Make your advancements.
We’re watching. We’re right beside you. We won’t leave you so entirely again, not as you push further and further into the stars.
We’ve tallied each and every death. We know who struck each blow and who survived that first wave of justice. You’re being watched, assessed, judged.
Live your lives, but know that we’re there. Take your steps and continue to reach, but understand that you are not alone.