_______________I
_______________The Song of the Cephlon rings eternal.
It has done for countless millennia. The song pervades the heavens, echoes through the cosmos, an everlasting harmony that fills the empty void with something akin to beauty. What is cold and dark becomes solemn and beautiful; what is unknown becomes dear and blessed. The song has guided the younger progeny of the stars to gaze toward the sky, and comforted those in their final throes.
The Cephalrrior had stood for eons: a symbol of life and a reminder that not all must be subject to corruption and despair. When they had first emerged from the Deep, the stars were as empty as the most forlorn depths of Arvioris. It was darker than the formless abyss that gave meaning to the light. It was then that they sought to understand both how the grand mechanism of creation would fit with their understanding of what was, but also to understand the greatest question of them all, for they could not comprehend the infinite disheartenment of it. Why they were alone? They simply did not know.
When the Firstborn Titanopods finally reached a planet beyond their own, it was suffice to say that their intrigue was soon overwhelmed by a deep sense of angst. They had hoped to find a world teeming with the spark of life, but instead found a barren rock. It hung in the shadow of infinity, unassuming, desolate. The sorrowful Cephalrrior had strode across the plains for months on end after that, crying out to those that they knew should have been there. They called to the absence of life in their empty and utterly still universe.
The sky had given them no answer. The world was silent. The universe was bare... Cold. Stark. It was then, for the first time in their history that the Cephalrrior had felt very, very small amongst the stars. Their final frontier was not the crusade of self-discovery that they had always dreamed it would be; it was simply a blind voyage through the darkness - one that had no end nor reason.
They projected their minds as far as they could imagine, into the endless space beyond. They sung what would become known as the Song of the Cephlon, the grand harmony of the Galaxy, but it was borne not through intrinsic wonder and marvel, but of unimaginable loneliness and isolation.
To this day, those that find themselves graced by the Song of those creatures so impossibly ancient and wise, will find themselves not only stricken by it's beautiful harmonies or ethereal melodies; but they also find themselves, too, feeling small and insignificant; all the worries of their brief lives fading into inexplicable foreboding and sadness. Often, the Song has silenced entire worlds so that their inhabitants may gaze skyward, in awe, to search the darkest corners of their souls for something more. They find themselves, without really knowing why, longing for something.
In this way, the Cephalrrior were often seen as creatures of legend and myth when the fledgling nations began their uprisings. They were vast creatures silently drifting high in the skies, watching intently upon the development of every species that would make their existence less desolate and lonely. The Cephalrrior guided as many as they could, setting a few on the path of goodwill and morality; acting as guardians and guides for the fledgling races. After so many years, though, their control faded and faltered into the increasing expanse that they had tried so desperately to cultivate. The young nations warred among themselves, facilitating untold destruction in the Cephalrriors' realm of harmony and peace. They could not be convinced or reasoned with, and within years, all chance at peace was lost.
The Cephalrrior were sent reeling to their depths, completely stricken with anguish and shock that those they had tried so hard to teach the ways of peace to would be capable of such destruction. The Galaxy had fallen into chaos and the Cephalrrior, to their astonishment, felt more lonely in the Galaxy than they ever had when they were truly alone.
The First Cephaol lead the crusade to cleanse the Galaxy of the rash warring factions. The Firstborn Titans took it upon themselves to put down the warmongers and the killers. They tore planets asunder and extinguished the stars to preserve the beauty in the isolation that they sorely missed in hindsight. Atmospheres burned, cities were sunk into the oceans and continents obliterated by the untold fury of the First Cephaol. It was mere years before the Cephalrrior omnicide left the stars once again empty, pure and smouldering in the wake of the Creatures of the Deep.
For the next hundred millennia, the Galaxy belonged to the Deep. The Cephaols all searched for meaning; warring among themselves from time to time, yet content that everything from the most central star to the most distant Galactic horizon was theirs to safeguard. The grand scale of creation was preserved under their vigil, and theirs alone. The younger nations which lacked any foresight into their own actions did not endanger the cosmos any longer.
The only threat to the peace was the immense Firstborn. After so many years of experience and searching, they seemed to collapse under the weight of their own wisdom and understanding once civilisations once again began to spring forth in the Galaxy. The chaotic nature of the universe would show through their once amiable personalities; they would show fragmented signs of madness, followed by their dissolution into what some would refer to as ‘Evil’. One by one they fell into the shadow of the universe, driven insane by the grasping tendrils of time. One by one they broke away from their Cephaols to roam the Galaxy in solitude, screaming their perverse versions of the Song across the stars; they crushed fledgling worlds as they rose up, they tore the Cephaols apart when they encountered them. The Firstborn had become beyond notorious in the age of the Cephalrrior; they were shunned by their kin from those days, forever on.
Only one was said to have evaded the impending madness. The last of the lucid Firstborn goes by a name impossible to understand, it’s unimaginable complexity could drive a Cephalion mad. This Firstborn has been called a great deal many other things: ‘God’ was popular among lesser civilisations, ‘The Infinity Serpent’ was one particularly notable example of assigned nomenclature by an unremarkable race, living short lives on an unremarkable world. This Firstborn would encounter a race in the far future that called themselves Humans, and they would give it a name that it found more fitting than the rest:
‘Ephemeral Light’
_______________A l a r o c h
-Home to the Souran of the Singing Sands-
_______________On the first day, the sky was a Cerulean shade of blue. That didn’t happen very often; not in this planetary system. This desolate ring of worlds was known for vast, expansive clouds that would shield the Souran from even the majesty of the nighttime sky. They would almost never see the stars. Instead, they were blanketed by a dense, turbulent and ferociously hungered sheet of ravaging grey.
The Souranah cast his gaze to the strange crystal heavens, his face contorted into a fleshy veil of pandemonium. What was that object drifting high above the mountains and trees? Its shape was not easily defined as its form scattered the thin light from above into a diffuse shadow cast below. Was it this foreign object that bathed Alaroch in the mysterious song from above? He was willing to chance that it was the source.
He had just met with his advisors in regard to this most unusual occurrence. Never had the Souran encountered anything of this like before; it scared them, but also gave them some semblance of hope. The space program was due to begin within days, primarily in the search of alien life to ultimately conquer. The Souran people had voted that their home planet was no longer sufficient to sustain them, and more land would be needed to support their growing economy and production. There was no more space for them to industrialise, nor any to dedicate to corporate greed. The last thirty years had been dedicated to their project of reaching the stars; but ever since then, every Souran had been subject to the same, bizarre experience: a cosmic harmony emanating through the minds of all. Most would be unable to accurately describe the melody, nor the feelings it conveyed when heard.
The Souranah settled for “Madness given sound”.
…
On the second day of the clear skies, Alaroch was host to a grand parlay between the High Commissions of the planet, with votes being held en masse. Every woman and child cast their thoughts forward to discern a plan of action. Most saw this foreign object as a threat, some saw it as a sign, but all agreed that inaction was the course that most resembled folly. When their domination of the stars was so close, could they truly afford to let their ultimate supremacy slip from their grasp?
…
On the fifth day, the Souran central government approved the development and construction of surface-to-space missiles to clear the airspace in preparation for their conquest of the cosmos. The decision was unanimous and uncontested. An order of thirty high-explosive charges with nuclear elements was placed to engineering corporations around the world, which clocked into overtime to produce the weapons that would clear the skies for the Souran. After all, nothing could stand up to their might, for they were the true masters of the stars.
Men applauded as the might of their nation was demonstrated with the decision to destroy with reckless abandon.
…
On the thirtieth day, Souran crowds gathered spiralled streets to witness the demonstration of their might: to see the missiles fired, and their legacy to continue uncontested. No attempt at communication with the object above was made.
The skies rumbled and the ground shook like the growl of a predator as explosive warheads flared from the horizon, setting it ablaze for a moment before they rocketed to the sky. Their target was clear: the single diffused object in the sky — the object that the Souran were so convinced was there to thwart them.
It did not take long for the missiles to breach the upper atmosphere, and even less time for them to find their mark. Flashes of fiery red and brilliant white illuminated the atmosphere for a second. The Souran onlookers were so sure that they would see the object shatter and fall to the ground, broken, burning and utterly ruined.
But this was not the case. The song only intensified, the object only grew more defined; it approached with frightening intent. The Sourans had stopped their cheering for their vain ideologies when the shape became discernible. What they considered a small craft of weakened aliens scouting them from afar turned out to be an immense beast of metal and plate. It spanned into the horizon, its powerful appendages sprawling further than the seas. It were a certain kind of beautiful, yet a certain kind of frightening. Any Souran would have told you so, had they not been obscured by the shadows of such an awesome creature.
None would recall any words being said in those few, fleeting moments, but the same thoughts seemed to occur in the heads of every Souran on Alaroch at that moment:
“The Universe is mine to conquer”
…
On the thirty-first day, the Souran of the Singing Sands were no more. They were wiped from all history, and their industrious world had been reduced to naught but smoke and ashes, and the Song of the Cephlon still rang eternal.
Ephemeral Light had found Alaroch only four days after it had been decimated by some unknown force. The disturbance in the quantum world was massive; it felt like a shockwave being forced across the entire Galaxy. The Firstborn was quick to arrive at the site of such a shocking manifestation of evil.
The rest of the Radiance Cephaol materialised some kilometres behind, each doing so with a distinctive blast of light that quickly faded back into the void. As each appeared at the scene, they marvelled with great distress at the scene the Firstborn had lead them to: a once prosperous world was charred black, it’s oceans replaced with bubbling expanses of magma. Volcanoes had erupted from the crust, claiming every city on the surface and dragging them to their fiery dooms. A hole, several hundred metres wide, scarred the surface; it seemed to reach down into the depths of the planet, far below the crust. An entire species had been eradicated overnight with not a single act of provocation on the galactic scale. They were young and ignorant, but they were not evil.
“The Firstborn still live,” Ephemeral Light said to it’s Cephaol. It emitted the thought slowly, befitting the gloom before them.
The Cephaol agreed, but did not add to the analysis.
The surface fared no better than the image from above. Canyons had been carved in the place of forests, and scattered craters littered the plains. Little remained of what were once cities. The unshakeable feeling of déjà vu overcame Ephemeral Light, a stark reminder of the days when the universe was empty. It was not dissimilar to the first, lifeless, barren planet that the Firstborn had walked across nearly a million years before. But this place used to harbour life, a crucible for men and women and children that all had dreams and aspirations and hopes. Yet it had been extinguished in the blink of an eye.
Ephemeral Light strode across the land, stepping over the mountains and canyons, stopping itself at the strange hole that stretched deep into the bowels of the world. It was the unmistakable work of a Titan Avinesar.
There was a Firstborn Titan prowling the cosmos, one that feared the whims of no nation, one that wished to see the Galaxy as it once was: Empty and still.
Ephemeral Light could not let it live.
_______________T h e A q u a s p h e r e
_______________The current was strong, brining with it a torrent of fresh, cold water that would crash against the gargantuan rocky structures that littered the darkness of the upper trenches. The oceans of Arvioris were far deeper than any other known in the Galaxy, stretching over seventy kilometres into the looming abyss, where no light could penetrate. These depths were frighteningly empty, void of all life save for the mysterious, bioluminescent fish that prowled. Only glimpses of such beings could be caught by even the most attuned of eyes. Only occasionally would one feel the presence of something greater, where one could swear to see something immense and powerful moving in the shadow. The home of the Cephalrrior was a mysterious and enigmatic place indeed, for above the water was an eternal raging storm that threw the surface into turbulent, crashing waves. Great shoals of Firefish darted between bolts of Aonite Sharks only slightly below, in the bright waters of the shallows; yet somewhere in this vast ocean lived creatures more immense and powerful than one could ever hope to understand: The Cephalrrior themselves.
They would often roam the ocean seeking their understanding; they would conduct experiments of the most peculiar kinds. They would fight and play, relax and live; the young would experience and the old would settle down to fade away in peace.
There was one, somewhere in these oceans that was not like the others. A Titanopod of immense natural wisdom and strength of will, crippled in it’s youth, unable to leave it’s watery world, nor barely move within. Shattered Winter, some call it. The broken Titan who was incapable of building a Cephlonar. Cephalrrior would often come to Shattered Winter to seek wisdom and counsel, aid and guidance, for it had had time to contemplate, more so than the others. Yet this one was stricken with a deep feeling of regret and loss. It felt useless and unworthy of being one of the fabled Titanopods.
So when a mysterious technocracy vessel appeared above Arvioris, asking for it, and it alone, it jumped at the consideration of the possibilities. For the first time in decades, Shattered Winter projected it’s voice skyward, directly at the vessels requesting it’s presence.
“This is I. What do you wish with a broken Cephalrrior, young ones?”
- Polyp
- Medusaeus
- Cephalion
