Archive of Our Own

*War journals, Swarmlord Silversheen, Carcinid Imperium.*

“The sacred spread of claw and shell
Broken hard by fires of hell
From which our folk only be freed
If soon you crush the human seed.”

I have long thought, that though we have of course mastered every science and art beneath the stars, that prophecy is still one of those we need to put many more scuttles into. The above prophecy, from the eye-stalks of our Imperial Foreseers, caused quite some agitation when it was delivered in the 27th grand cycle. And it took many years of careful scouting ahead of our expanding fleets before we actually found the shell-cracked “humans”.

What you will know from the histories, being sensible scions of our race, is that we englobed their lone star pool, and slowly and carefully crushed them into powder. Clack high, job done. What you don’t know, my poor doomed crablings, is how badly we stomped the egg on the way.

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By the time we got enough starships into place around their words, someone had warned the humans. We’re still not sure who. And they fought like maddened fluffballs against us, at every step. We had them completely in our claws, and they could not get away. They tried more and more innovative ways to slip past us and away, and we stopped every one of them.
Again and again they launched suicidal assaults on our Greatships, looting our technologies and knowledge, transmitting it back to their homeworld, and then dying doing as much damage as possible.
I’m not saying they stopped us. Even our official histories of that war note that they did a lot of damage and slowed down our advance. It was like crushing a spikeshell; you do it slowly and carefully or you cripple your own damn claw, and even if you do it right, the meat is bitter.

But in the months it took us to go from the outer rim of their starpool to their homeworld, they frantically upgraded and advanced their defences with knowledge stolen from us. And there were some surprises, I’ll wave a leg or two to that!

Their armour was pathetic. Their anti-armour kinetics were really rather good. The Breacher guns now used on our landcruisers? Reverse engineered from what the humans used on us, which they developed from upgrading their tech with our knowledge. And their energy shielding was disturbing.

By the time we had crushed their territory down to their homeworld of Dirt (I know, but it had plenty of water), they’d fortified to the point where we crunching could not just squash them from the skies. And so we had to finish it leg to leg, on Dirt.

We did not do it for the glory of the kill, or to take what we could from the ruins. We did it because we had to. Because between the prophecy and our seeing how they could grow on our tech, we dare not leave the task half-done.

But we broke them. We crushed their warrior bases and slaughtered their kin and drove them back and back across all the lands of their world. It was slow, and it was horrible, and I lost a lot of good hatch-kin in that mess to the cracking thief-raids of the humans, not to mention the actual fighting. But less than an orbit after we’d landed, less than a leg-set of orbits after we started on the humans, we pushed the surviving humans back to what we came to call the Empty Shell.

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I was not in command of the whole operation, or course. I was but a Leglord at that point, with a mere hundred thousand claws at my command.

(Did you know the humans also worked in base 10 for everything? They didn’t count their legs, but the ten little wiggly bits on their upper tentacles. But they could certainly do mathematics properly. As I said, they weren’t stupid.)
So obviously I wasn’t on the front lines, but I was reasonably close in my command skimmer. I wanted to see this thing done. And so when the report came in from Swarmlord Ketacrusher, I was one of the closest commanders to investigate.
“Thaumic build-up”, they said, as the final battle raged. Which was ridiculous. The humans were rubbish at magic. And we weren’t bothering to use any. But we serve to obey, not to question. So off to the front I went with a full diagnostic team.

I recall well what passed next. My skimmer passed crushed outlying fortifications, several still littered with the scattered forms of human soldiers. Afore me, lit by the yellow light of their waning star, was the Empty Shell. A cluster of mountains, studded up and down and on all sides by their shield batteries and gunports and constructed armour shells. Smoke was rising from several places, and my Claws were pushing forwards, but the humans were holding. Dying in place. Not a legstroke back. I thought, at the time, that that was not odd. Where would they go? Our forces were pressing in on all sides, and bar a few rough outlying regions, there was no-where to go to.
We settled close to the front lines, after a couple of long-range human shells had bounced off my skimmer, and read the currents.
Item: Humans had been fleeing to this location for some time, but their projected numbers were not reflected in the numbers of defenders.
Item: They were completely englobed, and could not leave the planet, build any ships, escape up or down or sideways.
Item: The human soldiers killed were all mature males, according to the field reports. Given that the humans had fought with their females and sometimes younglings at their sides, this was an anomaly. And it tickled a thought in my mind.
I summoned my sages and had them check. The thaumic build-up was in accord with the casualty rate among the human defenders.
So I grabbed a squad, capture and communication gear and headed in on bare legs. We needed answers from some humans, while some still lived. I was proud, at that time, that it took a while to find some. My Claws had scoured them hard, but eventually a squadfirst reported one still living. So I descended into the burst ruins of a fortification, my escort tight and eyes high, to meet the human.
As I said, they had fought hard and unyielding. This one was trapped under crushed stone, still fighting for breath, only one limb free. He hissed at me and spat blood in my direction. I wondered if I would need the stasis grenade or the keep-crystal to retrieve and interrogate him, but he seemed delirious and talkative.
“Crab commander! Come to kill me with your own…. Claws?”
(They taunted us with their name for the scuttling little things in their own oceans. I know not why. All shall become as such, in time. Only the foolish stand against this.)
I replied, using our translator software of course. I had learnt a few words in their slippery tongue, and have used them since only to curse at idiots.
“What are you up to, human? Why do you fight so hard?”
“Where could we go , crab? Where could we possibly go?” He was showing teeth. Which could have meant many things.
“What are you trying to do here?!” There was a chance he’d brag, if it was of note.
“Wiggle your eye-stalks, crab! What does it look like?” His eyes were becoming unfocussed, and his blood was a spreading pool as he threashed. “Dying!”
And I paused, my legs stilled. He’d said it as if it were not a consequence, but an aim. A purpose. I stepped sideways and got opened comms.
“The humans are still dying?”
“Indeed Leglord. And the build-up continues tracking.”
“Blood magics. Death magics. What could they be doing?”
“We know not, Leglord.”
I tried to gather the scattered flow of my thoughts, assembling the anomalies. “If you had no aptitude for magic, and must compensate with a greater wieght of death…. If you needed the males in one place and the females in another….” My blood ran cold within me, thinking of the many attempts the humans had made to break past us. “If you tried one last attempt to get away, no matter the cost…. How would you put these together? What method would such be?”
“Leglord, we are searching now, but we need….” There was a dreadful screech down the line. I recall it still, these years later. It was the noise of horrified realisation. “Aetherium Causeway! They’re building an Aetherium Causeway!”
“How? How?!”
“They must have stolen those historical experiments in the Greatship raids, and….”
“No! Babbler! How are they building one?” I knew little of that particular magical working then, though my gathered knowledge of it has haunted me since.
“Many deaths Leglord! Half at their own claw in serenity, half at the claw of another in rage!”
“How many?”
“Calculating sir…. Without resonators or focal runes… they’d need about ten thousand of each!”
I raised my stalks to the mountain-side. The smoking, war-torn mountainside, where my Claws were painting the rocks with human blood….
I tried. I opened a swarm-wide comm channel.
“Leglord Silversheen to all Claws, it’s a trap! Break off and fall back, all Claws fall back!”
And as the first confused responses and affirmatives came back, the voice of my magic sage came again, a whisper.
“Too late…”
And the mountain howled. Above us it started to turn in on itself, stone ripping stone and falling into a swirling screaming ring of energy in colours that burned my eyes. The entire top two-thirds of the mountain cluster fell into that, revealing for bare seconds a mighty void within, and at its center a huge oval human construct the size of a Greatship, the horrific ring of an Aetherium Gateway sucking it in. And then it was gone with a sound like a Carcinid being turned inside out and screaming all the while. And the rocks and dust fell all around us, and we crouched down against the fury of the violated mountain on which we stood.
There was a horrible braying noise. The human was laughing. His voice was full of dust and pain and triumph.
“Thank you…. Crabs! We couldn’t have… done it! Without you!”
“What have you done, human? What have you accomplished this day?”
“Ten thousand fathers… dying at your hand…. To open the way. Ten thousand mothers. Freely giving their lives. To send them forth. And thirty thousand of our younglings. Away from you.” He grinned, blood on his teeth, eyes mad.
“Where! Did You! Send! Them?!”
He leaned up at me as far as he could. “Away! From! You!”
Enraged by his mockery and smug bloody grin, I grabbed the first weapon to hand, and threw it at him. It turned out to be one of the stasis grenades for capturing specimens, and in a flash, he was encased, still grinning, within a sphere of energies harder than any shell. I ground my palps and slammed my claws against it in impotent frustration. My escort squad politely averted their eye stalks from this breakdown of temper.
And so I had to gather up my surviving claws, and return to the skimmer and my Greatship, and inform the Swarmlord of events. Many, many humans had escaped us. And we had no idea where they had gone.

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I was laughing through the stabbing pain at that damn Crab commander, and then there was nothing.

A haze? Possibly in green?

And then a gray haze. I couldn’t feel a thing. And a voice spoke in a gentle purr, “Can you hear me?”

A womans voice, with some sort of rolling accent. She sounded nice. I tried to answer, but nothing happened. For a moment, I fretted, and she spoke again. “Be at peace, soldier. You are in a medical unit. I will gradually fade in your senses now.”

Which was…. some explanation, I supposed. I could hear a slight machine whirr, the movement of small metal things on a surface. The sound of a machine breathing in and out, simulating human breathing. A slight smell of metal and something astringent. And blood. It certainly smelled like a field hospital, but whose? Where? I began to perceive a ceiling of ribbed stone, with small dim light fittings hanging from it. And then sensation started to come back, and I felt my head cushioned and held in place, upon the surface I lay against, and very little else. I could feel no limbs or lungs. But also no injuries, which was a great improvement.
I took in a breath, and that machine hummed… which was worrying. My mouth felt horrible (I thought it should have blood in it and didn’t), but my tongue seemed to work. “Where….am I?”
“Not far from where you fell in battle, Greatfather. Oh, forgive me.” And she leaned into my field of vision, a shadow outlined against the dim lights. “Greetings! I am Tarasha and I will be rebuilding your body this pulse!” I saw her smile, and her eyes seemed to catch the light, and her head shape looked wrong?
I tried sorting through the mess in my head. Deal with this first. “Can you turn up the lights?”
She paused for a moment, and spoke gently. “Please understand, Greatfather, that I am very much on your side here. I intend to have you walk out of here to stand beneath the sun once more.”
That sounded like a hell of a placating preface to something. Although given that a memory was intruding of being crushed messily under a fallen bunker wall, the idea of walking anywhere was distractingly appealing.
“What’s the problem, Tarasha?”
“I will look quite strange to your eyes, I think. Hold to your calm.” She must have done something, for the lights gradually brightened, and I blinked at her.
Her skin was a pale grey, as of fine ash, with lines of dark purple swirling artistically around her face like fluid tattoos. Her hair was black and cut short, showing off her delicately pointed ears, and the two slim horns that curved up from her temples over her head. She held up a hand in a surgical glove to shield her eyes, which he could now see glowed slightly yellow out of the direct light.
And that was a surprise. I knew there were several alien races out there, apart from the damn crabs, or the Carcinians as they called themselves, but I hadn’t paid much attention to that. But Tarasha here looked…. Exotically pretty. Certainly memorable.
“Like what you see, Greatfather?” And she winked at me. Alien or whatever, she seemed… flirty?
“I…. what are your people called?”
She looked taken aback, and then gave me a brief look of sad pity. “I am as Hyumahn as you are, but there are thirty generations between us.”
I just blinked at her. That made no sense on too many levels.
While I was trying to muster some thoughts, Tarasha hissed and stepped back from my limited view. “I am sorry, this is too bright for me.” And the lights dimmed back to the low level I’d woken to.
“Tarasha, I think I have a hundred questions….”
“And I am the wrong one to answer to all of them, I think. I have much work to do on what’s left of your flesh…”
“What sort of state am I in? I can’t move….”
“I need you awake for the feedback for this, but I also need to focus. May I bring in a partner to talk with you? Will that help?”
I was rather worried by “what’s left of your flesh” to be honest, but if I couldn’t move, panicking was going to get me literally nowhere. I gritted my teeth, took several deep breaths, tried to nod and couldn’t. “Yes. Please. You work, I’ll chat.”
She hummed happily and tapped at a few things. And I heard another conversation.
“Tarasha? Aren’t you with the Greatfather?” This was a deeper voice.
“I am indeed. And he’s awake and chatty and full of questions.”
“Ah. Well done.”
“Thank you Sycorash. Can you project in here to talk to him?”
“Sterile conditions? Of course. Put me through.”
Tarasha’s hands came back into view, and held a metal device in place above my face. A few touches, and it hovered there at an angle, and then projected a neat three-dimensional image of someone who looked a bit like Tarasha. But not really. His face was dark red, with spiky silver stripes, and his four horns were chunkier, and he was bald. His eyes glowed blue a little as they widened, looking at me. But his smile was eager and human, as he piped up, voice tracking perfectly, “Good day, sir. I am Sycorash, and you would know me as a historian. Where shall I begin?”

I had a hundred questions buzzing round and round in my head. I blurted out the first one that came to mind:
“What the fuck happened to me?” It sounded stupid even as I said it, but I felt lost on almost every point. Surely knowing how I got here would help a little.
“Ah!” Sycorash beamed, his blue eyes flashing. “That I can tell you in detail, from both sides!” (Which sounded promising)
“You were fighting in the battle to open the Gate, were injured, and were being interrogated by a Carcinid commander when the gate opened and the Seed passed through….” He cocked an eyebrow.
“Yes, yes, I remember that bit….” I also still felt the rocks crushing my body into pulp, the heat of the stone beneath me, the blood in my mouth…. My memory was declaring that to be less than an hour ago…
“The Carcinid lost his temper and threw a timeless sphere at you, a capture device meant to preserve specimens and prisoners. And then scuttled off in a right rage, leaving you there in the ruins.”
“Hang on, how do you know that?”
“Would you believe that Swarmlord Silversheen wrote a book about it years later?” I blinked. That bastard had helped crush humanity, hounded us to the edge, and then wrote his damn memoirs? Something else to ask about….
“And then?”
“The Carcinid established a small colony on Earth, or Brighthome, as we call it. It didn’t prosper, but you were a minor point of interest among them, frozen in place and time….”
“I was a fucking tourist attraction for the crabs? For how long?”
His red face went solemn. “Greatfather, it took many generations for us to adapt, to grow, to rebuild our technologies and to return. Not to mention that time and space worked differently where we were.” Oh this was not going to be good. “By our best estimates, about 1000 Earth years passed with you sealed in no-time, before we returned to Earth and extracted you a few days ago.” A thousand years? A THOUSAND years!?
“Bloody stasis grenade!” burst out Tarasha, apparently working below me. “99.999% effective, just enough to allow entropic decay to affect your body, and make this harder!”
I felt suddenly a little more comfortable with the idea of not feeling my body right now. “Uh, Sycorash, professional curiosity, how DO you turn off a stasis grenade?”
He nodded as if in understanding. “It wasn’t completely effective. We were able to locate it within the sphere and fire a laser at it, to destroy the grenade and the field it generated. A light-speed weapon moving slowly through the sphere… looked very strange. And then that collapsed, and we had Tarasha and full life support ready.”
“Oh….” I was still dazed, by the thought of a bubble of dust and fury and a dying me, there as the centuries passed, as forests and towns rose and fell around me…
“Might we know your name, Greatfather? And if you can, how you came to be there?” How I’d been there at the mountain? The last step in a thousand backwards bloody steps…

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“I… I am Corporal Daniel Fitz. My wife and I….” Oh Marissa…. “had had our third child, in Heinlein city. And then the crabs came. And we were all soldiers after that. And we fought hard, but we couldn’t stop them. And as the years crushed us back and down, I was just lucky, I suppose, to have kept my children together and safe. I never really got to be the father I wanted to be for them…” My mind shied away from bringing up their faces. Their names. The years of hurried visits to crumbling nurseries and what passed for schools. The few months spent with them, in breaks from the fighting. “Two sons. One daughter.” That was as far as I’d go. “And when the Seed project was announced, we entered it, as a family. It seemed to be the only thing I could do, as a father, to keep them safe. To try.” My eyes were filling, and Tarasha suddenly leaned in, hands gentle as she dabbed at my eyes with an absorbant pad, silent. I took a deep breath (ignore the machine sound), and remembered the last embrace I shared with my children, as they went up to the Seed, and I turned away for the lines.
“And so you stood, one of ten thousand, with the Fathers. Was your wife with the Mothers?” Sycorash, the quiet calm tones of one collecting an after-action report.
“No…. no, we’d lost Marissa at the fall of Mars. So many families shattered in the long retreat. I was unusual in that they were MY children. But at that point, well. They were all my children. Our children….” A thought struck me, and a wild whimsy afterwards.
“Do you know how they fared? Are there records? Are you descended from them, which is why you keep calling me Greatfather?”
Tarasha was stroking my forehead, her hand cool. “We are all your descendants, Danielfitz. And none of us are. Sycorash can tell you of the Bloodpride wars later, but for now, Greatfather is a term for respected elders and patriachs. I think you’ve earned it a hundred-fold.” Well if I was a thousand years their elder, then I couldn’t really argue that one. She ducked down to fiddle with something, and Sycorash gently asked, “How much did you understand about what was going to happen?”
Bugger all, in retrospect. “We knew it was a technique stolen from the crabs. We knew it was going to need most of us, all of us, to die. But we’d pretty much expected that, one way or the other. But it was the only chance anyone could find. So we said goodbye to the women…” I remembered that too, the farewells between lovers and partners and comrades, of years and lifetimes. I’d felt relief that I’d lost Marissa, and guilt at that…. “and marched out to die, killing as many crabs as we could…”
“Do you know what your numbers were, in that battle?”
“About twelve thousand men holding the various fortifications. A shade under ten thousand women staring at their own knives. They had the harder task. And 30,215 children and teens, aboard the Seed…. We all knew that number. The last scrapings of humanity….” We’d recited that number, as we filed into the bunkers and the dug-outs and the gun-emplacements.
“Sycorash….” Tarasha’s tone was chiding. “I am not rebuilding his body for you to break his spirit with memories of despair.”
“Sorry, but how often will I get a witness for those days?” He did look abashed, but not that sorry.
Her intonation changed, as if she was reciting. “ They shall not know, for news will never reach them.”
“Oh no. Really?” Sycorash’s look was amusement. “You’re going to quote [Arrival] at the poor man?”
I’d been quiet, memories dragging at me, but interest sparked.
“Do the Seed speech from Arrival, historian. I know you know it.”
He sighed, in slight exasperation, and recited in turn. “We know not where we send them, but only that we must. In our darkest hour, in our last hour, we take the light from our hearts, and fling it into the future. In a direction they can never catch it, in the hope that the Seed of Humanity will grow and prosper, far from here. We cannot know if it will succeed, only that we must try. May they remember us.”
After the first line, I was whispering along. “That was the announcement of the Seed project. We all knew that one. It was carved into the entrance ramp. They all walked up it….”
Tarasha leaned forwards, and placed her hands on the sides of my face. “Greatfather. You did it. By all the Mothers, by all the Fathers, you succeeded. You got us out. And we grew strong. And we remember you. We made it, Father. You saved us. You did it….” And then she kissed me on the forehead, long and steady, as within me a frozen mountain of desperate hope and screaming defiance, years in the building, crumbled into a hot sea of exhausted calm.
I was heaving gasps of air, and tears were hot down my cheeks, and as she stood back she said, off-handedly, “pad in your left hand”, and I raised my hand to my face, and wiped at my eyes before I’d time to think.
And her smile in that moment was brighter than her eyes.

A few minutes later, she was pointing out what she’d done to my other hand. Which was weird. Not because it was a clunky metal prosthetic, but because it was not.
“I’m having to use almost all artifice instead of your original flesh, but given the treck of your tissues they’re still solid enough for integration workings, which allows excellent neural re-integration.”
I was just trying to keep up at this point, marvelling as I turned what looked like my forearm, seeing cables of metal and stuff slide smoothly over each other.
“Now, I just need to calibrate the feedback, so….” And then she grabbed my ring finger and bent it back hard. I gave her a blank look. “Nothing? Ah, hold your flame….” And she fiddled with a series of small gemlike dials above my new wrist.
“This?” And she poked me with a pointy finger, and I shrieked as it felt like a metal spear through my whole arm!
“Ah, got it! Tell me when this becomes painful…” and then she started nibbling on my fingers, her hands gently adjusting my arm. It felt weird, then it felt tingly, then it started to hurt as she dug a tooth in, “Ow!” and she stood up with a smile.
“How can I even feel that at all?” She looked rather smug for someone whose diagnostic method including biting her patient.
“I have successfully deployed an enchantment along your new limb, giving you not just control, but full sensation. Given your lack of aura I have had to build in power gems to maintain it, but it’s still better than almost anything on this planet, if not in Shadowhome itself!” Okay, she was probably right to be proud.
“What’s the next step?”
She smiled again, horns tilting back, eyes bright in her grey face. I was starting to get used to it. “I switched over your breathing back to your originals while you were discussing the Seed project. Try taking as deep a breath as you can.”
Surprised, I did so, inhaling as if for a big dive (how long since I went swimming for pleasure?), and then winced as a stab of pain stopped me into a gasp.
“Ah, not quite healed that bit. I will re-check.”
I was able to crane my head up a bit now, to look at where she had a large screen set up across my midriff. With wires, cables, pipes and similar leading in. It looked awful.
“Tarasha….”
“Hmm?”
“If I asked, would you tell me the extent of my injuries?”
She sighed and looked up, her golden eyes locked onto mine. “I shall if you wish. I would flare early that I am confident I can restore you to walk out of here and live for many years, just with what I have here. I can grow syn-skin to cover your artifice completely, if you so wish. Given time and study, I can probably grow replacement flesh for you completely. It will take years, but I can do it.”
She looked certain. For me, this morning, I’d expected to die. Pretty much anything was an improvement. “That’s the good news, what’s the bad news?”
She took a deep breath. “Given your crushing injuries and the degradation in your timeless bubble, most of you beneath the ribs was unsalvageable. Your heart escaped damage, and I have already restored your lungs to 90%. With some patching, I think I can rebuild your stomach so you can eat normally. One kidney, enough of your liver to grow back…. The rest is lost.”
I fell back on my pillow. “Ooof. How am I even alive now?”
“We had plenty of time to work out what was likely needed before cracking you out, Greatfather. Everything ready to blaze in and enfold you.”
Which seemed reasonable. If I was in a stasis bubble, they could have taken weeks getting ready and wouldn’t even have noticed. I hadn’t. “You can make me new legs?”
“Yes.” A comforting surety. “As good as your new arm.”
“Anything else for the damage listing?”
“Sorry Greatfather, but you aren’t going to be doing any fucking for a long time.”
I started chuckling, and couldn’t stop. “That’s…. not been a priority for a while, Tarasha…. Ow!” I’d jarred my lung again, and lay back, gasping with a silly grin on my face.
“I can send you to my friend Dettian for that, they’d love a chance to play with you. In a professional sense. They do specialist work like that….”
“You just carry on, please. Great job so far. Patch the lung first.”
I turned my head, to where the projection of Sycorash had been cheerfully working on something off-camera while he listened to this banter.
“So, historian….”
“What’s next, Danielfitz?”
“I’ve told you my story. I want to know yours. Where did the Seed go?”

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Sycorash rubbed his hands together in glee (good to see that gesture had survived) blue glowing eyes wide, took a deep breath, and began with the sonorous tones of a storyteller. Which to be fair, was what I’d asked for.

“With the Gate (known to the Carcinid as an Aetherium Causeway) opened by the sacrifice of our Mothers and Fathers, the First Generation fell through a void and landed somewhere further away than expected. They emerged into a realm of vast caverns in stone, lit by pools of liquid, flaring fire. Into a darker place than they had come from. Into a world without sun or stars, where time and space and gravity acted strangely to them. Into the realm known to us as Shadowhome.”
He looked me in the eye and rubbed a horn. “That name was chosen because it was a shadow of where we’d come from, and also darker. Earth has been referred to as Brighthome in contrast, for much of our history.”
He checked something below him. “Apparently, an Aetherium Causeway destination is affected by the will of those opening it. So while we found a world with space and resources and safety, it was pretty grim. And as it turned out, it was somewhere students of Earth mythology identified.”
“Huh? What?” I was not quite following his thread here. He poked something, and his projection changed to a video clip, a panorama.
Fiery lakes on the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling of an impossibly big cavern gave outline if not illumination to stone plains, and pillars, mazes of rubble, and a few regular if spiky…. Structures? “That looks…. Hellish. Oh. Oh no….”
Sycorash reappeared, holding up a hand to forstall me. “Yes Danielfitz, you sent us to Hell. You sent all left of humanities youth to a Realm that had once haunted your nightmares.” He grinned, a predators grin, evoking sharper teeth than he had. “And we conquered it.”
I hadn’t actually considered what the arrival of tens of thousands of angry orphans would do to wherever they arrived….
“There was a people dwelling there. Our records show them as a withered, tired remnant, a scattered and divided folk holding to crumbling ruins and old grudges. The First Generation was desperate and angry, and we killed them all in a handful of years. They were no match for our weapons and numbers and knowledge.”
And just like that, another genocide. Xenocide? Devilcide? Fuck ‘em. Them or us.
“Time is difficult to measure without celestial bodies, Danielfitz, but given the narrow age range of the First Generation, we came to measure things by ourselves. Each generation covered approximately 30 Earth-years, although of course we lived longer than that, especially as… I jump ahead.”
Tarasha piped up from behind the screen “He’s too keen to get to his favourite bits.”
Sycorash shot her a scathing look she couldn’t see, and went on.
“We spread out from the Seed, at first relying on its resources and workshops and hydroponics, then discovering new sources of food and materials as we explored. Some we took from the old Hell dwellers, along with a few words of their language, a few names, and some dwellings. But mostly we were able to apply the knowledge we brought to the land before us. And slowly our numbers grew.”
He sat back, ran his point-fingered hands up his stout horns, and widened his blue eyes. Over his shoulder and into the projection flicked a pointed red tail. I was past surprise at this point.
“Over the next few generations, as we ate and drank and danced by the firelakes, we absorbed the energies of that place, before we were really able to detect or use them. At first it was our eyes, grown sharp in the dark, and then our skin slowly shifting to the hundred hues, until we came to look much as you see today. It was a quite a shock, as you can imagine. We had many images of what we used to look like, and could tell that we had changed and how far.”
“And how did the people of the time take it?” I asked, with a certain trepidation. I knew enough of Earth’s history to know that “they don’t look like us” had caused a lot of deaths down the years.
He nodded, in recognition. “Badly. Some families who had changed the least claimed to be the purest humans. Others embraced the changes as signs of their new home. Others tried fruitlessly to reverse it. There were accusations of betrayal, and decadence, and mutation, and impurity…. And it led to our first civil war there in Shadowhome, as families began killing each other for pride or lack of it in their heritage and bloodlines.”
“The Bloodpride wars. It was a fucking mess” interjected Tarasha from her work. “Good news Greatfather, I’ll be able to use silembi vines to stabilise your stomach. You can try my cooking!”
Sycorash blurted out “You can’t implant those in him, they’ll completely screw up his…. Oh. Ash that.”
“Don’t tell me how to work my arts, and I won’t tell you in yours.” Shot back my doctor/mechanic. “But now you’ll have to explain that to him as well.”
A grin split the red face, and I thought that perhaps Sycorash had been glad to get past the grim bit of his tale. “Indeed. After the Bloodpride wars had burnt themselves out, snuffed by the will of many that humans should not escape one threat to die at their own hand, we re-organised in the aftermath. And part of that was the scrubbing of the lineages of all families. Our genealogies were burnt, and our oldest family names forgotten.”
“That sounds pretty drastic…” I put in.
“There had been battles over who was truly a child of the Fathers, and who was kin-less in the Seed, and who had changed first or last, and whose family had been largest through the Gate…. Such petty things to kill and die over. Better, it was decided, to char the lot, and start on a clean hearth.”
I could understand that. It would not have been my choice, but I could see it making sense to them. “Is that why, when I asked about my children….?”
He bowed his head for a moment. “Indeed, Danielfitz. We thus have no records or names of the First Generation, or indeed of the first five. We cannot say if we are truly descended from any one of them, including your offspring. The tradition is thus, for any of them before the Bloodpride Wars, to say that we are all so descended, all and none. You have thus many billions of children, and none at all.”
“Well damn. Billions?”
“Yes. And we all stand equal. No more dying over ancestry. We think this a better way. What say you, Greatfather?”
This was a hell (hah!) of a loaded question. They were hardly going to throw me to the crabs (were THEY still around?) but I suspected I’d lose a lot of respect if I fluffed it. I answered honestly. “That is not a solution I would have thought of. I don’t know if the humans of my time could have done it. But if it worked for you, and still works centuries later, then it was the right choice.”
Sycorash nodded. Tarasha freed a hand and gave my flesh one a reassuring squeeze.
“The generations of rebuilding after the Bloodpride Wars brought surprises. We found ourselves gradually able to perceive then manipulate the energies burning through all in Shadowhome, energies we simply decided to call magic.”
That was a surprise. “Humans became able to use magic? In your new world? How?”
“Oh Mothers, here we go….” Muttered Tarasha, aside.
“Ah!” Sycorash’s eyes flared blue as he grinned. “The conventional view is that our slow adaptation to the Realm attuned us to the magics, a growing sensitivity to the constant stimulation, mirrored in our physical changes on the cellular level and more. However, there is a growing opinion, shared by myself and others, that this was to at least some extent caused by a psychological shifting, a re-definition of our selves from Brighthome exiles to Shadowhome natives. As we perceived ourselves to belong there, we were able to accept the powers of that Realm as part of us, and thus in acceptance, use!” He beamed.
“That, Greatfather, is the simple version.” Tarasha sounded unimpressed. As for me, it had been a long time since I heard anyone geeking out about a topic they obviously loved, and I just smiled back as Sycorash.
“You can explain in detail later,” I promised him with a nod, “for now, you had gained magic, and that was in which generation?”
“The Ninth generation is normally credited with formally using it for the first time, although….” Apparently about to go off on another enthusiastic tangent, he held up a finger, paused, and then continued. “Although that’s not important. With the addition of magic to our culture and skills, we were able to grow and expand further and faster. Late in the Tenth generation, the Hyumahns breached the walls of Shadowhome.”
He paused for emphasis, and I asked the obvious question. “Into where?”
“At first, into a realm we called the Shattering Spires. Also a near endless series of caverns, in this case glowing with crystal growths of all sorts. It was as profitable as it was hazardous, but once we’d done so once, combining magic and science to step beyond the world we’d built, we could do it again. Opening portal after portal. And so we did.”
“And so the Tenth generation and descendants swept out of Shadowhome, exploring, looting, conquering….?” Ah, our devilish little Hyumahn children. A chip off the old block.
“Heh heh, yes, indeed. For a time.” Sycorash seemed a little embarrassed. “For what would be hundreds of years, we plundered one after another of the Strangeling Realms. That’s what we called all the places we visited,and included Shadowhome therin. All in seemingly impossible caverns, each with their own varied physical laws. Some with life, some without. Until, during the 16th generation, we….”
“Silembi vines. And treck flesh.” Tarasha interrupted, pointedly.
“Fine. Thaumo-biology explanation.” Sycorash looked as if he’d been interrupted in the build-up to something. “As I said, our bodies had adapted to Shadowhome, and our tissues had become saturated with magical energy. To the point that magic makes up our a portion of our flesh on the cellular level, replacing matter with energy.”
“Woot!” I threw up a fist. “Humans evolving into energy beings!” There was a baffled silence. “Sorry, private joke. Please, carry on.”
“Uh, right. Interesting side effects of this include a longer life span, decreased non-cosmetic physical senescence, and our heartfires.”
“Uh, what. Sorry, you lost me.”
“We look as old as we feel, but we don’t feel as old as we look.”
I gave him a baffled stare.
“In terms of your aging process, we die aged 120, looking about 60, and feeling about 40 on the inside.”
What? “You’ve beaten old age?” Wow. “What are the downsides? And heartfires?”
Sycorash sighed. “For a historian, the downside is that our physical bodies break down rapidly, flaring energy, when we eventually die. We have lost the need for graveyards and tombs and the like. We have memorials and similar, but the last burials took place in the 11th generation. And anything that affects magic and magical fields affects us too, quite strongly. The silembi vines, which we discovered in the Emerald Dream, would be excellent for tissue repair, if not that they absorb magic they contact.”
“Oh, but she’s using them in me, because….”
“Because you have no magic at that level. Your flesh is far more treck, that is magic poor, than it is faysh, magic rich.”
“Oh. New words to learn.”
“Indeed. And Tarasha?”
She was, as I craned my neck, opening a storage box to the side of the room. “Hmmm?”
“Heartfires. Could you flare yours for demonstration?”
She grinned, struck a slight pose (she also had a tail I now noticed, slim and grey and elegant), and held out a hand. And on her palm gathered a spark of light, and then a ball of fire, fuelled by nothing, the size of her fist. Tarasha grinned at me, looking like many a picture of ancient devils, and then made a fist, crushing out the fire in it.
“Thank you.” Sycorash regained my attention. “The Shadowhome was a Realm of, well, shadows and fires. And we now can generate our own. Each to different degrees, although it improves with practise. It’s a potent weapon in some circumstances. And has also crept into our language. You may notice a lot of terms related to fire and burning and similar in our speech. I have tried to restrain this, to avoid confusing you.”
I had noticed. Nice to see it wasn’t just me, but I suppose that that was still a tiny amount of linguistic drift over a freaking thousand years…..
“Right. Thank you. Onwards. The 16th Generation?”
Sycorash rubbed his eyes and sighed. “I have studied what records there were from the Seed, on the rise of human civilisation on Brighthome. And it appears that we went through cycles of expansion, colonisation, exploitation and the like before. To be stopped by rebellions, ethical dilemmas, and resource depletion? ” He cocked a questioning eyebrow.
“I’m no historian, but that sounds vaguely right? I think we did that on Earth, and then again when we colonised our system…. So yeah?”
He nodded, his red horns dipping. “And so we did again. Expanding, exploiting, shipping resources back to Shadowhome…. Until what become known as the Blinding Light incident.”
There was a muffled snicker from Tarasha, who was causing small metallic noises around where my hips should be.
“During the 16th Generation, another of the Strangeling Realms was opened. The first few explorers reported no visible ceiling, bright lights, distant golden spires, and music. They fortified, started drilling, sent out probes…. And the Light came.”
Sycorash winced in memory. “Our scouts were thrown back through their portal, violently. Along with most if not all of their equipment. A burning white light blinded them for life, and everyone in the Realm they’d come from for days, and lit up all our Realms. The first and only time Shadowhome has been fully illuminated. It lasted only a second of two, but everyone, EVERYONE, noticed it.”
“What was it?”
“We still don’t know. When Hyumahns eventually got back to the portal site from which the Blinding Light had come, the portal was still there. And it led to a small grey room, containing nothing, built of nothing. Other portals back to that Realm just failed to operate.”
“You broke in. You got evicted and barred.”
“That’s… certainly a common assertion. And it helped teach us humility. It taught us that there were way bigger and more powerful things out there, and perhaps we shouldn’t poke them so enthusiastically.”
“That sounds like a good lesson for a people to learn. What then?”
Sycorash leaned back, and a camera moved to keep him in pickup. “Not a huge amount, that you’d be interested in. Steady but gentle expansion in the Realms we’d already visited. A couple of very careful portals into quiet Realms, where we treaded lightly and studied more than looted. And a steady rise in the sciences and magical arts, as Shadowhome felt ready to seek Brighthome once more. The research program for meta-creational resonators was the life-work of my father, and grandmother, and great grandmother, as an example. Given what we’d left behind, opening portals that were NOT huge and noisy and obvious was deemed a necessity, and that took long work as well.”
He gave a proud and tired smile. “But about seven years ago, as time is measured here, we opened subtle Gates to Brighthome, and sent scouts through.”
Sycorash stopped, and brought an absorbant pad to his eyes, that were filling with tears. “As with the Blinding Light, they returned dazzled and in tears. But unlike then, it was in joy. They had seen the sun of their Fathers, and the stars of their Mothers, and breathed the sweet air of Brighthome, the first to do so for 30 generations….” He stopped, and took a deep and obviously calming moment.
And I saw then that while I’d been desperate to get them away (30,215), our children, all the long years in the shadows, had been longing to get home. And I’m no poet, but I thought here was a chance to pay back a little of the welcome and care they’d given me.
I waved my flesh hand at the floating image. “Hey, Sycorash.”
He looked up at me.
“You did it. You grew strong, and maybe even wise, and you made it home at last. Well done my children. You did it.”
The historian sagged forwards, gasping a little as he mopped at his eyes. Tarasha walked around the table I was on and embraced me around the shoulders. “Thank you Greatfather. Yes, we did.”
“So, to bring you up to date….” Sycorash resumed, a slight husk in his throat. “We were able to establish look-outs and some bases on Brighthome, and survey the Carcinid colony here. And two years ago, we struck! The Carcinids here and across the solar system were attacked and burned. It turns out our heartfires are highly effective on them, and we swept them before us….”
“They were delicious.” Butted in Tarasha, from where she was clicking things together.
“What?”
“I was deployed here for the last few battles, as medical support. And having cooked the crabs in their own shells, we ate some of them. Very tasty.”
There was a whole ‘nother moral argument to be had there. Given that there’d been some speculation as to how much the Carcinids shared with our sea-going crabs, down to flavour, during my war…. I’m not sure I had a leg to stand on there. Speaking of which…. “Tarasha, what are you working on?”
“I have, Danielfitz, accomplished fucking miracles with the pre-engineered parts I’d brought, and having gotten the bio-mechanical interfaces in place, calibrated on the same sortraana as your arm, I am now connecting up and adjusting your new legs!”
“What, already?”
“I am a veritable queen of the dance of blood and steel, Greatfather. And I said you’d walk out of here. Give me a few more minutes.”
I blinked. It had been a very strange… morning? My mind was still protesting that it had been early evening when I’d fallen under that damn rock in the defence, so it must be about midnight now….
“Sycorash, what time is it outside?”
“About midway between noon and sunset.”
Okay. Call it 4pm then. What other questions had I been holding back? Oh yes. “What state are the Carcinid in now? What happened to the crab who tried interrogating me a little too late?”
“Oh, I think you’ll like this, Greatfather.” Sycorash was smiling again. “Silversheen rose to the rank of Swarmlord, partially due to his efforts in the Human War, and eventually retired, and wrote up his very unofficial accounts. In which he revealed that the humans had got away at the last, and tried to warn his people about our return.”
I thought of the time between the flight of a huge steel seed, and the return through the shadows of the devilish Hyumahns…. “Did anyone pay attention?”
“In the worst way, as it happened. His people felt betrayed by his revelation, could find no sign of us in many years of looking, and it became a running joke for some time. He died years later, in disgrace. In fact, ‘the humans will return to get us’ became such a joke that the Carcinids abandoned a lot of scouting and monitoring programs that might have seen us coming. Silvershell ended up doing us quite the favour in that. Some have even suggested an ironic memorial to him. The entire thing is in the Carcinid historical records we seized with this colony, as was your location.”
I gave an evil grin. That damn crab had worked out what was going on, far too quickly. Let him rot. “And then you found me and got me out. I imagine that was a bit of a shock?”
“It left us charred in surprise, Greatfather. You were, you are, a blessing beyond hope or reason.”
I could feel myself blushing. I mean, this was getting ridiculous.
“Yes, well, we’ll see if you still like me tomorrow. How goes the war?”
“Well, I don’t have the latest… oooo.” His expression grew thoughtful, then mischevious. “Oh Tarasha, what if the Last Father placed a call to Vortiz?”
Her pale ash face popped up again, golden eyes twinkling, with a smile. “Why historian, what a dreadful surprise to play on our dear governor!”
She bent the table so I was propped up a bit, and it felt quite strange to now be sitting almost upright. What was downright horrible was to look down at hips and legs in polished metal. It was, is that really me? Is that really who I am now? I had to take a few moments to breathe, and remind myself that barely a few hours ago (subjectively) I was dying crushed under a pile of rocks. And that morning (subjectively again, dammit), I was certain it’d be my last.
Tarasha moved up to my side, a gentle hand on my shoulder. I could feel the warmth of her through her gloves, and it was a surprising comfort. When had a woman last touched me in reassurance? Aaargh, “when” questions were getting silly. She was a bit shorter than I’d expected. I looked at her, strange skin and ears and eyes and horns, and tried to see the human woman beneath or behind the devilish Hyumahn. She smiled shyly, and I found her pretty then.
“Bare bones at the moment, Greatfather. One step at a time. How it looks can be tweaked, and covered in sensitive skin as you like.”

-----------------

And after a bit of briefing from these two tricksters, I put in a video call to Governor Vortiz of Brighthome.
He was a Hyuman of mottled royal blue colouration, with similar horns to Sycorash, who answered the call looking aside, muttering “who’s calling me on this number, burn it….” And then turned to look at me and froze. I surpressed a grin.
“Governor Vortiz. I am Daniel Fitz, of the Zeroth generation. I fought with the Fathers. I understand you may have the latest updates on the Carcinid War?”
Yes, it was and is pretentious as anything, but I always enjoyed surprising people who could take it. As it turned out, Vortiz had the unflappable and fast-thinking mind you want in his position. He blinked twice, took a breath, and replied entirely calmly;
“Greatfather. I was told you were in recovery. It warms me to see you so together. Is Tarasha there with you?”
I nodded, trying to maintain a suitably authoritative look.
“Then give her a clip round the horns from me, and tell her I’ll get her for this!” And then he grinned, in a good-natured humour. I leaned over and flicked Tarasha on a horn (she was giggling and not paying attention), and replied in a much more friendly tone.
“Seriously Governor, I’ve been awake and catching up for a few hours, but would like to know how my old enemies are faring. And given that I’ve been acquiring seniority while locked in a timeless bubble, I thought I could ask you. Yes, it was Tarasha’s idea.”
Vortiz nodded, and explained. “Much of what I can tell you is public knowledge among us anyway. It’s not as if the Carcinians are able to monitor this sort of communication.”
“Noted. So what’s happening?”
“Two years ago, we flamed out from Shadowhome and retook Brighthome and their outposts beneath the Sun. Over the next year or so we were able to open portals from sites in Shadowhome to strike at their outlying colonies and daughter worlds. The fighting goes pretty well for us, with our combination of heartfires and magics and our advanced technology proving quite difficult for the crabs to stop.”
“For me, it was barely a day since they were killing me and my comrades. I have no pity for them.”
He looked at me, the Governor of Brighthome, maybe-kin 30 generations removed, and his eyes were sad for a moment. He clicked several things off screen, and the image wavered and stabilised. “I have engaged encryption, Greatfather. For you may wish to know this, and the Carcinians may guess, but I take no chances.”
“Okay….?” This sounded interesting.
“We have had so very many Hyumahns training and preparing for the assault on the Carcinian homeworld. They are armed with our most deadly magics and weaponry, and are already gathering in the assembly areas of the Strangeling Realms.”
Holy fuck, a counter-invasion. Something we’d only sketched in at the outer edge of rabidly optimistic speculations…. “How many? And when?”
“This is a purpose towards which we have been pushing for generations Greatfather. The forces for it, the Ancient Fires Legion, numbers about 1.2 billion strong.” My heart nearly stopped. Good thing it was undamaged. An army measured by the billion?! Even if the Hyumahns had spread out to twice the living space that humans had every enjoyed, that was a huge chunk of population mustered for war….. and that was just this one force! Okay, likely their biggest force. The most important one. The army they’d been building towards for subjective centuries. But… damn! Vortiz noticed, gave me a moment, then continued. “As for when, I don’t have the schedule myself, but soon. Within the year, I think.”
I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, contemplating the concept. “I saw the start of this war. I may see the end of it…”
Vortiz nodded, in understanding. “The universe is strange sometimes. Perhaps the best we can do is roll with the blasts and rise brightly again.” He paused, a thought occurring. “Would you like to play a role in that final assault, Greatfather?”
No. Also fuck no. If I never marched into another warzone, that’d do me just fine. “I’m a bit out of practise for the field, Governor!”
“Oh no. You misread my flames. Would you be willing, after a few days rest and preparation, to record an address for the troops?”
Ah! Heh. Heh heh heh…. “A message to the invading Legion? From me?”
“Yes. Something from the Last Father, to speed their way, would set quite the fire in their hearts….”
I smiled. A slasher smile of malice and hatred. “Oh yes. Some words of fury and vengeance from an old veteran, to finish my part in this war? I think I can do that, Governor. I can do that indeed!”

------------------

I walked out onto the terrace. I walked with Tarasha holding my hand, and Sycorash trotting up some stairs to meet us, and I walked on legs of metal and crystal that did what I commanded, and I could feel the warm stone beneath my “feet”…. But I walked. Behind me, a tall building in golden stone with brass metal supports. Ahead of me, the setting sun.
We were silent. There were Hyumahns bustling around and driving vehicles below me, on terraces and balconies and the open grasslands beyond. But the sun was setting in a riot of reds and oranges and gold-edged clouds. As it had yesterday and a thousand years ago.
As Sycorash joined us (he was a little shorter and stouter than I expected, but bounced to us with enthusiastic energy), Tarasha nudged me to look to the side.
At a massive gateway, set into the side of the building, surrounded by cables and glowing inscriptions and mysterious boxes, outlining a door to somewhere a very long way from Earth. The gate to Shadowhome, left open for sight but closed at this hour for passage.
And so I looked at where we’d sent our children, at where they’d settled and changed and prospered and grown.
I could still see the pillars of dark stone, the endless caverns and lakes of fire. But now the pillars were trimmed with multiple rising tiers of glowing buildings, the caverns lined to the edge with tended forests of something, and the firelakes surrounded by shaped plazas and industrial units. It was a city, just in this view rivalling any city Earth had ever supported, with millions upon millions of Hyumahns laughing and building and tossing their horned heads and flaring their heartfires, and hearing news of a war across the stars, started so long ago for them, and so long ago for me.
An ancient piece of poetry came to me.
“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here….”
“No, Greatfather,” Sycorash corrected gently. “Hell is quite full, and all the devils are kin.”