"It's difficult to say how far away, or how long ago all this happened, but the seeds of the crisis start there. Everything started there. And may come off sounding a little too… familiar."

Tesh was not too dissimilar to Earth. Moderate gravity, similarly breathable air, relatively stable tectonics and orbital placement. Maybe a bit colder in climate. But the true standout feature was a mighty, yet unstable, magnetic field that drifted with regularity and impunity. It subjected much of the life living on it to geologically expedient up swells of heavy conductive metals caught in the overly strong wandering poles. Leading to quite a lot of iron in the food chain, and thus in their bodily structures, and conductors supplementing their nervous system. This in turn brought about a strong propensity for bioelectric adaptations. Ones that grew to a more substantial height in the dominant species that rose to inhabit this metallic environ.

"They called themselves the Garkah, warm-blooded reptilian-esque humanoids that… well with just a cursory glance would look a little too much like smaller laceroids. Though their similarities fall closer to inheritance than happenstance. But that comes later. They had power, pretty much the powers I've shown off and told you about but more tame. Personal and directed. They came about because of a particular metal that their planet's wacky geology created. One that I've come to call Ark metal for other later reasons.

"It changes them as beings though, gave them a control over electricity, down to electrons if they were powerful and focused enough. Honestly gave them souls if you're spiritual enough to think of it that way. But... it also marked those with it as greater than those without it. Because there were more than too many who were without. Forming a 'nobility' of sorts. And thus marking those unpowered as peasants to be ruled over."

Thus their society was divided, powered aristocracy using their abilities to build and advance a technological society out of the paths of the unstable magnetic poles. Building great walled and raised cities out of metal and stone. Keeping a peace all their own. But leaving the unpowered to live in squalor bereft of this advancement. Either in the shadow of those high walls, or in the uncertain wilderness that bred beast and hardship alike. But all of this was not without a modicum of upward mobility.

The metal that gave them their powers was rare but still a natural occurrence in their geology, and thus in their biology. Once it was a part of them, it was passed down through the various lineages that marked noble status. But the number of powered was obscenely outstretched by the number of unpowered. Thus, since the process for acquiring these powers was a natural occurrence, down to the whims of the genetic slot machine and environmental factors, it was possible for new lineages to be created. If a peasant suddenly exhibited some amount of ability, they and their immediate family were uplifted. Maybe not quite to the same level of hierarchy, but better than what they had.

Status in this aristocracy was determined by the amount of control one could manage to sustain and the amount of electricity you could hold and use, usually through various displays of vanity or outward works. Hunting the beasts that survived in the pole ravaged lands certainly had glory to spare. As well, the metals that precipitated naturally in their bodies were rendered malleable by enough talent. There were even legends told of truly powerful founders who fought those wondering poles and came away more powerful than before. An incitement more than a myth, but who can say to its truth.

But it all meant something. That those with the considerable focus, with the power necessary, with will and talent and hard work making them staunch, they could do as they pleased. Commonly, coating and color their scales in metals. The truly ostentatious practically transmuting themselves to prove their superiority, at the risk of bodily harm. Many a glittering statue made in the image of suffocating agony. But further on it became a true exaction of will upon electricity and the movement of electrons. The raw course of energy to create machines and weapons and substances profound. If not become that the weapon themselves. Invincible, crushingly strong, and an axis through which the world electric knew its master.

"But all of that was the highest of the highs. The basics to all this focus and control was taught to all young powered Garkah as soon as they could manage, whether they had the ability to reach that height or not. So they had a little more equality to offer up. …But that's where the story truly begins.

"A whel… err. A kid, born to unpowered parents and exhibiting the ability to trail sparks through his fingers, was risen to that nobility. Out of the mud and timber village he'd been born in, up to the plateau that towered over his home. But only just to the lower rungs, a home over a hut and hard work to keep it. Life was better sure, but he was also just a child. Hopeful, happy, enjoying a little too much that he had pulled his family up along with him. I think that may have been a major point of it as well. Fill your prospects with pride so that they will work harder at fulfilling that hubris. And become just like everyone else.

"When he came of age, the kid was sent to learn how to control his powers. Kind of like a boarding school with none of the same trappings and all of the same issues. Or better yet like our training course. I said it was familiar. Only somewhat similarly though, he was bullied mercilessly. Being weak in terms of bred in talent / metal content leave a common disparity. Being new leaves one bereft of social structure. And being unlearned leaves one ill seen by those in authority.

"But we're not talking about true hoity toity clichés here, just low rungs on ladder being looked down on too. So, instead of rocking the boat for prestige, they just looked down on those lesser than them. An inescapable result of a society like theirs. I think they may have been getting away from the worst of it, not competing with each other anyway. But... sins don't really care if you're trying to rectify them."

And so the ultimate cause of their downfall was begun. This child was subjected to all the injustices that could arise from being the lowest seen. When he was not being electrocuted and beaten by his peers to show their power, he was being lectured at and punished by the same people that were sworn to teach him. Dutifully, he took it, held ground and kept coming back to learn what he could do. Clawing deep at the pride he felt so as to never let it go, but a cycle long repeating was renewed in him. One that only some Garkah even knew to fear.

Where all others found the potential of their lineage through learning and training, there was a subset, a percent of a percent, that were blessed and cursed with more than the rest. More of the metal that caused their abilities to manifest. A critical point that, once passed, changed them further than simply gave them more power. Their abilities becoming irreparably tied to their emotions, harder to control, and inevitably leading to destruction.

"One day, the kid had had enough. One of his bullies had pushed him too far, had claimed his parents were his family's servants and threatened them with expulsion from the city. That didn't stop the kid though. Not in the slightest. He struck back, struck the little ass hole right across the snout, broke their jaw like it wasn't reinforced by the same stuff they both possessed. It would heal, powered Garkah could heal like laceroids turned down to reasonable, but this was different. It was a moment of subjective weakness, a flash of that pride failing and allowing up what had been buried under it. And it left a mark. Better than I did the first time. The kid saw what he could really do, felt a new pride, felt a stature he'd never imagined, felt like he was more than just beneath everyone else. But... all of it came crashing down before he even had time to be the better man with all that strength.

"One of his instructors had seen the retaliation, saw it for what it was. But charged it as an affront perpetuated by one lesser than the other. He struck the kid, struck him again and again. Tore into him with power far outstripping what either of these children could conjure. Tore at his very being for daring to think he was anything but the bottom of the food chain. And so all that pride, all that rising hope, fell in on itself… Over and over again. And so that kid's true power was unleashed. All under a hail of stomps and burning plasma."

Till the sparks faded to nothing but strain, till the teacher's boasts and accusations trailed off to silence. Till the stomping talons lost their edge and strength. So that the child could rise back up from the nearly shattered ground, with an aura caustic bleeding off of him. Like his own blood had lit on fire. With death in his eyes, and control lost in a flash nearly shrieking in its torrential vibration. In the buzzing of the air.

The instructor's offending leg whipping sideways at the knee before either knew, a claw appearing over them as they lurched back off balance. And the opening gong to an entire people's death knell run, as all that collapsed hope slammed them to the ground. As that ground shattered and so was stained with the bloody pulp of what was left of their depowered body. All as it burned in the song of that red burning light.

"I can remember all of it, like I was that kid. The heavy copper taste of his blood being coughed up, the smell of ozone and burning flesh, the warmth of the blood on my hand… The feeling of the hole caved into my chest. I could feel the instructor's death from both angles, the one who dies and the one who kills. It's a feeling I never made sense of… till I felt it for myself. Too many times over."

The kid… the Threat as he would come to be called, had the power not only to control, but to siphon. To draw away and take into one's self what is not so freely available. Controlling energy, its easier material structures and its flowing currents, was but a simple fact of feeling it as one would feel a limb. But this... went beyond that. Taking not only what matter locked away but whole sale that burgeoning soul that facilitated it. Consuming the power from those he lost all control to. Though, he would not wholly be lost to himself quite yet. This doubled flash of weakened restraint had beaten his resolve just as much as his body had been beaten, but that was all they were. Flashes. Moments that would haunt and bury him in guilt. But also glimpses into what he truly was.

The Garkah barely had a word for beings like him, those in the highest power knowing too well and yet choosing to obfuscate their existence. The fear of revolt, of a congregated revenge from below, of artificial creation to level the playing field, it creating panic. Better an ignorant fearful peasantry than one clawing at your walls surrounding a single outlier. Better to have possible competition close. Better to keep a peaceful status quo. But every so often one of them was reveled, and the aristocracy did everything in its power to eliminating them before they grew.

"Threat hardly made it off the grounds of the school before he attacked again. Guards called up by the shell shocked bully were quick to retaliate once they knew he'd punched a hole clean through a teacher. They fired on him nearly as soon as they saw him. Some kind of metallic plasma weaponry, little more than burning metal shot. You have to be pretty cruel to fight things that could heal easily after all. But Threat had surpassed that with his outburst, arguably becoming a laceroid in all but name, stature, and mental break.

"The shot burned, sliced through his scales and cauterized his wounds before they could close. But those wounds closed regardless. That power he'd taken… The power he'd cannibalized from his instructor was too much to keep back. He healed, but felt all of the pain that came. And the cycle accelerated."

The guards were out matched, pain only adding to Threat's strength. Beating them down like they were not full grown, trained adults with years of disciplined ability under their belts. All of them broken by a child barely into the basics. But they weren't dead. Threat found a modicum of control in his guilt, felt the reins on his power and pulled with everything he held dear. This didn't, couldn't, stop him from siphoning them nearly dry, but it was a start. One that would unfortunately not last forever, but he would hold onto his resolve as long as he was able.

What followed though would be expected of most keepers of the peace, they sent more guards. And so Threat cut through them. They sent more, and he fought them back. They sent more and more and more. They fought and fought, till he couldn't stand fighting anymore. He ran. Fled the city he'd been risen to, jumped from its high plateau and tried to disappear into the wooded steppe that it looked over. More than likely leaving his parents to be persecuted in his stead, but he would have had no moment of peace to even find them. Nor ever again. Common fates and common threads.

By this point though, the leaders of the local nobility had taken notice of the events transpiring. The aristocracy was led and balanced by a council of leaders. Various matriarchs and patriarchs, heads of what could be called trade guilds, generals of the military, and eminent minds in scientific fields. All of them conglomerating and delegating from one massive city to centralize over all. And in turn gather in to discuss and work through the problems of their time. This council in turn was led by a single individual voted into power. A Speaker to represent all equally. At least among those in power.

"I get most of this side of the past second hand, but it's better than having just Threat's experiences. Though, unfortunately, their names are all but lost. Another later thing. But the Speaker at the time was staunch, exemplarily prideful, saw himself at the top of the hierarchy, and saw the emergence of Threat as a… A threat. They were nobles, they weren't very creative. Still, they tasked the military leaders with his elimination, seeing little of his potential for calamity. A few too many peaceful centuries had eroded the knowledge of things like Threat. So... he preferred to turn his hunt into something bordering on sport. Gave the generals free reign to cut him down outside the cities as they saw fit and with all the pomp and circumstance of a royal hunt. Without the royalty, thank god. So Threat's pursuers went from simple guards meant to keep the peace to hardened warriors sworn to kill whoever they are thrown at. And yet, despite that, what followed was... More of the same.

"Every time they caught up, he was confronted and shot at. Every time he tried to hide out, they laid siege and drove him into the open. Every time he fought back, he was challenged by lieutenants trying to show their prowess. And each time he still refused to kill them… or managed not to in most cases. He still couldn't help siphoning off whatever power they couldn't keep a hold of as they fought. This fact keeping the pressure on him even as the body count stayed at one. His elimination was becoming more of a thing, an achievement to raise your status and your lineage. A demand none could pass up. The stupid prideful engine they made starting to backfire. And the constant failures were wearing thin any preconceived honor they would bring to the hunt. So… the grip on those reins wasn't long for this world."

It is difficult to say how long he ran for, possibly months, maybe a year. Wondering the lands and eating nothing but the beasts that he now shared kindred infamy with. But at some point he came upon a village not too dissimilar to his original home. Though with less geography aiding its survival. Foundations made of mud, weak timber holding up rawhide yurts, some just outright tents and shanties. With beaten muddy paths splaying between them. And just as beaten and emaciated faces looking up at him.

The squalor of the unpowered, anything of value demanded from them through their labor. This village had run out of trees to cut, its surrounding lands rendered barren and drying in the cold. And its people were barely able to feed themselves, not allowed to make more farms for when the nearby cities wanted their wood for frivolous decoration. But life wasn't rung out of these unfortunate yet, and that life lit up in them when they caught sight of Threat.

Word had spread far ahead of his wonderings. The appearance of one who could fight back against those in power had come about. One that could defeat them no matter how strong they were. A self-fulfilling of that revolutionary fear. Many tired faces clamored to meet his, scales sagging over contouring bones, limbs weakly raising to acknowledge him. It was like their messiah had come, but Threat felt little of their admiration. He was nearly as beaten as they were, just without the physical toll.

He couldn't help bear his teeth at the crowds and growl them back. Both for his own sake, and theirs. His form had changed after so much fighting. After winning the right to live another day. With every fellow Garkah he'd defeated and took from, energy built up and become physical. Bulking out his once youthful stature into a mass of muscle and spring tension. Eyes glowing a steady red backing. With flashes of the contempt and hate and wished unseen memories behind them.

He feared he would kill them just by touching them, siphon away what little they had. But his fear found no backing, no truth, these people had not the power to have their soul be real and electric. And so that fear drained away, as he was approached by a single villager brave enough to ignore it. And break his plight.

"It was a whelp. No real other way to say it. Much younger than him, practically a hatchling. He almost didn't have any scales, skin little more than intricately segmented leather draped over a skeleton. His tail dragging behind him, too big and too weak to keep off the ground. His claws were dirty and pitiful, talons thin and cracked to nubs. But his eyes… They were wide, bright, and blue green. They still shined despite his frightening gauntness, and in his trembling claws he held something. A figure, some twigs and bark lashed together with mud filling it out. And at its drooping head, two pebbles stained with dots of blood. It was him, an effigy at least. Made from the stories the hatchling had overheard and filled with all of the hope it gave him."

A hope that burned before it could blossom. With that spread word had come spread reward. The cunning in the military using the desperation of the unpowered to hunt him down without endangering more of their warriors. Villagers offered status and money for telling their handlers when he came through. Told to rile up sentiment, to sow seeds of admiration.

To slow him down, should he find his way there.

To make him a sitting duck, for the heavy guns brought to bear.

The call went out without notice, the spy not even knowing what they'd done till the steppes thundered to life. Till the guns fired from every direction. They were little more than low velocity lobbers, but their ordinance was beyond lethal. That overheated metal, that plasma shot, brought to its maximum and turned to jellied fire. Like massive whistling barrels spiraling down from the sky, with all of the hell they wrought without mercy.

The first shot caved a pitiful roof like a wanton stone, shook the ground for the barest moment of mundane impact. Before washing all of it away in fire. Flash fired chunks of mud bricks and splattered timber, scattered and spread before an inescapable flame. A sickly, caustic, green hued igniting anything that had the misfortune of being caught in its light. Rawhide, timber, stumps, mud, flesh, bone. It burned too hot for the atmosphere to even react in time, bodies simply alight for being in its presence. And that was just the first shell to land.

Threat heard the whistling, tried to react, tried to run or fight or do anything. But all he could do as that first ball of baleful manifest hell burned toward him… was to lurch over and shelter the hatchling before him. Even as his scales melted on his back, as his bones boiled under his skin, as the sound of that first strike roared the world away. As the ground heaved from each successive strike. As the screams flared and fell silent. As the world lost its composure. And as even this tyrannical agony lording over his being melted away…

He held that child for whatever his life was worth at that point. Whatever all that power was worth. All this control and struggle and cancerous fate. He held him…

Even as their already meager weight disappeared from between his cradling arms.

"I don't know how long he stayed like that. The memory... burned with the village. Seared itself in to everything and just became pure emotional scar. But what I saw, what I felt, was that eventually he came to. Still huddling over that child. Still cradling him like he was his. Still trying to shelter him from the worst their world could do. But, when the world returned to him and his eyes could open again, he saw the worth of it all made poignant… and inescapable.

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"Because they were nothing but a charred husk, flacking away in his grip. A barely recognizable claw grasping at his arm, turning to dust as his bulk reformed back from the burning brink. The smell was worse than the white phosphorous that fell on us during the crisis, like the air was turned to acid that ate away at you from every angle. But that feeling, that horrid feeling of it all crumbling away in your hands…

"It all fell away. Everything that held him to this world. The weight of the ash piled up on his arms, the burn of the fires still defiantly scorching the air, even the feeling of his own heart beating in his chest. All of it disappeared… was swallowed whole. As something far worse rose from that blackened hellscape. Something I have felt too... much...

"It's... it's like who you are, your wants and needs, your life, your memories, your being wrapped up in all this meat. It's like all of it is sucked away, like your own powers are turned against you. Like something else was feeding off of you from the inside. Or at least pulling you away from yourself. A darkness, an empty void surrounding you. Pulling what it wants off, pulling what it can. And corrupting it into more of itself. The purest embodiment of where my power comes from… and the part that still haunts me. Because it refuses to let me forget what I've done. Nor what Threat did when his control was finally lost."

The world through his eyes ceased to see victims, ceased to see pity or fear. His body could not feel the pain that drowned it, could not feel the weight that it had been yoked to since he first lashed out. The yoke that he had placed upon himself now burning and falling away. There was nothing. No one. No blackened earth or caustic glare. No burned away husks in vague familiar shapes and horrifying shadows forever cast. There was only the ones who cause his pain. And the singularity that pain fueled.

The village turned to grassy steppe in an instant, a distance crossed before any could realize what had become real. What had ascended in all but the worst of ways. But in turn that grassy steppe was turned to shocked forms, metal barricades, stacks of barrels and pointed guns. And all-consuming fire. As Threat tore his way into the artillery batteries that had fired on him.

The crews flashed by, caught mid standby as their spotters tried to confirm the results. The faces frozen by an overpowering of even the passage of time, as a clawed bulk, cloaked in burning red, tore through their lines. And set off their stores for all to see.

And know what they had done.

The horizon ignited into green caustic sun rise, born and dying in the same instant. A traumatic birth that tore the air apart and threatened to light the atmosphere on fire. The other batteries beaten and shown the light, felling as their world groaned and heaved and burned and screamed before them. Like divine justice for the drops of hell they had brought down on to it. And for the wrath it had wrought.

One by one each battery was detonated, each corner of the horizon turn to that acidic green dawn. The lands ignited to seas of fire, dried grass and felled timber washing away into orange and red under that sudden flash. The last battery could only watch on in horror, get buffeted off their feet by every kick of the air they had scorched, get thrown to the ground with every turbulent heave. Their ordinance nearly following them down, threatening to set off the last and brightest star they would ever see.

But from that ground, from the eyes of the leader who had been empowered by his Speaker to quell this Threat. The leader who had orchestrated this plot and wholesale condemnation of the innocent, who had doomed those he saw as useless to maintain his people's pride and stature. From those eyes, a far worse star was shining down upon them. Instead of that caustic green that wanted nothing but to engulf all it saw, to destroy and end permanent. It burned a malicious red that knew nothing but how to take. And so all that they were was taken from them.

"He killed them… all of them. Tore them apart like a rabid animal with a nuclear reactor for a heart. His skin was still burning, reforming with all of the power it had taken in. But that didn't stop him from taking more. The only reason I know all of this is because he took all they were and swallowed it whole. Their nerve impulses, their memories, their feelings, their wants, their fears. Their souls. He tore them apart and siphoned them to nothing but more smears to stain the earth with. Even to him after the fact, after this long immutable fact, all the memories he'd accumulated turned to indecipherable jumble. Only the most clear and concise even being seen for what they were. And unfortunately there would be an overwhelming deluge for him to sift through. Because that star would burn down his world."

When the extermination force was nothing but blood stains and obliterated shadows burned into the scoured land, Threat continued listless his path. Even when he was still in control he had no clear goal, only a road forward to keep moving down and away. Now he was nothing but a wanton storm loosed across the land. A new pole with which no science could predict. Subject to nothing but its own, lost whims.

The operation had been a failure of grand proportions, the ruling council could see no silver lining amid the black clouds that swallowed the horizon from their attempt at total elimination. Now all they saw was a black stain on their pride as wielders of the power they clung to. A shadow they refused to see for the star casting it upon them in the distance. Even as both would become bigger while they worked to rectify the latter.

Armies, munitions, technological feats. All were brought to readiness and brought to bear on Threat now truly named as such. For his conceptualizing meant more than whatever name he used to have. A single lesson was learned from their first engagement, that fire meant nothing no matter how hot it burned. So at the very least they avoided turning vast swaths of their world to uninhabitable scars. But still, the steppes would be stained with the blood and dust of the armies they sent.

There were no honorable duels, no groaning fields of beaten bodies, no mercy shown by the misunderstood. There was only grass stained with the blackened dust of those leading the charge, trees splattered with the blood of the unenviably lucky who were caught in the wake rather than siphoned, and burning dry steppes charred by that wake too excessive not to burn. Twisted hulks of metal that used to be armored vehicles and heavy weapons littering blackened landscapes. But always that red star wondered further and further into the horizon. And always there were more waiting. More wanting to end this Threat.

This onslaught, this cycle of slaughter and escalation, that continued on for years. Continued in spite, as tactical acumen fell at the wayside. As manpower dwindled yet was poured on to the bonfire. Some on the council saw better of wasting armies by throwing them at a meat grinder, but still others could not accept that their pride as the powered elite of this world was tarnishing with every failure. Soon most of the military seats in their chamber sat empty, and soon more would follow. This stupid pride driving vast swaths to little more than suicide in the path of that star.

Yet Threat only followed his path in little more than hollow direction. If he hit water he circumvented it, if he hit an army he just kept walking in whatever direction he stopped killing them in. Sometimes he walked through unpowered villages, most understanding and fearing the power he had and the doom it spelled for any who got in the way. Sometimes he came upon cities far more fearful and much less elastic than the villages. Their garrisons attempted to defend with their lives, but all that came from it was drawing him toward them and sealing their doom. So city after city burned in his wake.

But not all by his doing.

Passing village after village had drawn both fear and hope in equal measure. The unpowered saw him as a force of destruction, and a force of change. A means to free themselves from underneath the nobility's rule. An army all its own following him. At a distance of course, but his trail was hard to avoid. They picked up weapons from the decimated armies, cloaked themselves in the same blood red that their guiding star wore, and cemented their new paradigm in the cities that were passed by. Those smart enough not to draw Threat's ire, or smart enough to draw it away from themselves, found an army of peasants at their walls instead. No reinforcement would come to break up the siege, and no power gap would spare them from the fall. But Threat cared little for what happened behind him, or in front of him…

Or really at all.

"His existence was like the center of an actual singularity, crushed and smothered on all sides by his own power. By all the power and being he'd taken in. By all the… all the carrion just globed over him. The bits and pieces of consciousness he'd siphoned off and taken into himself. All of it on full blast and all of it drowned out. He knew nothing of what was happening, what he was doing to his world, what his world was doing to itself. Just that… he was hungry."

The toll for the Garkah's pride was coming due, and its price was felt on all facets of their lives. Millions were dead, cities across their world were either lost to their rule or razed to the ground. The peasant hoards were growing and sought near equal retribution to the Threat that denied their stable reign. Refugees were swelling every surviving city they could reach. And all feared when that star would come over the horizon.

The council was in upheaval, a sizable minority refused to accept their defeat, rallying as much force as they could behind them and their original Speaker. But the rest refused to continue this suicidal endeavor, electing a Speaker of their own. One more in tune with the gravity of his people's plight. And…

"And one that I know just as well as Threat. He still held to the same pride his people suffered under, that was a hard thing to escape, but he understood that their position was untenable. And their doom was of their own making. So he decided that their survival would be too."

A massive undertaking was enacted, the best minds and greatest craftsmen their people had were set to one goal. Build an ark for their people to flee their now inhospitable world, one that could spare them from what looked to be pure extinction. The issue presented to them though was one of significant difficulty. One only rectified with sacrifice.

Their technology was advanced, but they had little in the way of spacefaring craft. Their world clung to them too tightly, its magnetic instability rendered manned flights a harsh endeavor. Thus they could not create a large ship to flee to the stars in, but they could make something far smaller, far more sustainable.

"You've already seen it, held it, and tested yourself against its… subjective destructibility. The laceroid sphere was that ark. The Ark they all would flee to when the time came. Made of the very same metal that gave them their powers, that was why I call it Ark metal. I never said I was creative either. It was segmented up and wired together into a massive supercomputer. So that the spiritual could be rendered known and quantifiable. Electron threading. I lied a little when I said I came up with it, apparently I always had it in me since I'd got my powers. Their like infinitesimal connections, strings of electrons altered in their nature into binding my... our beings. Acting like an extra expression of consciousness made more physical. The souls in this equation.

"They resonate, sing with the tune of the being made up of them. Every moment, every memory, everything that makes you who you are as a person. All of it an orchestra full of too many instruments humming away inside. Suffused through every bone and organ and cell. A framework of the body and mind. It's how we heal, basically. And how we control our powers. How we... I... control electrons. By filling the world with my song... yeah... But... but also they can be spread. Used. They control, but can also be controlled.

"Outside the axis of their abilities, they are far more unstable. Or rather, they're corruptive in a way. They have a background resonance to them that causes them to stick together, to elicit that control and in turn focus it on whatever it is that the Garkah wanted to do. But it also spreads out, resonates atoms around it, draws other electrons to them if that resonance is too strong. So you need something stable enough to hold them, thus the Ark metal. I don't know how they acquired so much of it, and admittedly I was afraid to ask when I learned it was a part of their bodies as well, but you pull out all of the stops to survive. And they understood just what they had to do to use it."

It was a simulation engine, a crafter of a false reality and a solidifier of abstracted consciousness. Layer after layer of computational matrices, combined with the steady pull and familiar substrate of the electron threads, allowed the Garkah to transfer their minds to new, arguably smaller, simulated bodies. Ones made of pure energy and not bound by the same laws as their physical ones. In the deep core of this sphere sat a single space, yet through the matrix of all of the rest of the Ark's systems, that space became a near infinite reality all its own. One that these new beings could mold to their liking, and one that could be shot into the void without fear of the restraints of orbital mechanics. It still needed propulsion and sensors to avoid any gravitational behemoths that could melt or spaghettifi or doom its cargo to the slow death of an empty dead world. Because it ultimately needed a destination as well. One hopefully with life amenable or at least comparable to the ones they formally owned.

They hoped to find a world they could uplift with their advanced technology. Someplace they could endear themselves to and use as a surrogate home. A place they could ultimately use to regrow bodies they could return to. If it was possible to anyway. Their Ark outfitted with vast suites of sensors and ionic thrusters, means to see worlds in their path, gauge their usefulness, and reach without material demands. And to top it off, a final suite to scan the denizens for compatibility. A safeguard in case they were unwelcome.

Once on an acceptable world, the Ark would split its core into insignificant fragments and shoot them into the minds of their new hosts. There they would work to teach, steer, and make them as advanced as they were. Push them toward their ultimate goal of reconstitution while offering up the uplift. But plans don't always survive contact with a Threat.

The cycle of pride and slaughter came to a head as he neared the council's grand city. The armies and forces sent by the minority Speaker had dwindled to little more than the garrison on the city's walls. But still they sent out attempts, and still their only result was fueling the retribution bearing down on them. If not outright drawing him right to their last bastion.

In this desperation, the villages under the city's subjugation were conscripted. A bulwark of flesh to slow the Threat down long enough for everyone to evacuate. A tacit acknowledgment of the Ark as their only hope. As could be expected though, only the best were set with a place inside. Much of the teams that built the Ark were spared spots, along with the council. To preserve their culture, places were reserved for masters and artisans of all crafts the Garkah had created. Chefs and architects, strategists and scientists, artists and composers, shapers of wood and metal and hide, and lastly anyone else who could make it aboard should the hour come too soon.

The process had started as Threat crested the horizon, that red star nearly as bright as the dawn opposite. The armies assembled in haste and fear filling the steppe before this city's grand gate. Every manner of weapon had, directed and gathered to that singular side. All aim at that single approaching point of glaring crimson light.

Inside the city, throngs crowded the central rise where the Ark was installed. A large offshoot of the council's chambers repurposed into a launch bunker, a rail extending deep underground stuck out at a precise angle. Impossible to go unnoticed. A magnetic gun to shoot the Ark into space and out of their world's influence. A final garrison surrounded the bunker, guiding those that had been chosen to leave in, and keeping the rest at bay. An unenviable duty in the face of their certain deaths. Either by the hands of their own people or the Threat's.

Inside the chamber though the attitude was not spared of tension. The time scale had been too short for testing the completed systems, and few knew if the Ark would work as intended. But the tension wasn't selfish in nature, all eyes were watching the sole volunteer step up to ensure his people were spared. The Speaker, the rightful one who had accepted his people's guilt and set this exodus in motion. His clawed hand hovering over the matte surface with the last vestiges of his hesitation trying to force him away. But the innate pull of the Ark countering it with unnatural compounding greed. A cautious balance, a last step to take before nothing mattered anymore.

"It's an odd feeling to have and accept, to know you won't have to worry about anything you used to. Food, temperature, thirst, sleep. They wouldn't be necessary once he placed his hand down, once he left his body behind. And yet he held to it, hesitated giving it up. Even as a true death approached. One that was certain, and one that gave the same outcome. Just with less prolonging of his suffering. But that suffering was still a life, and he'd rather he and his people lived."

His hand pushed passed his hesitation and accepted the uncertain better fate. And the world disappeared into an empty sea of black. One with an odd horizon to level to, and a floor to land on. His senses flaring like fresh regrowth, ears ring and scales shrinking away. Like they were calibrating back to what they should be, calibrating to this new normal. A normal of hardened dense simulation, with barely a feeling lost in the transfer. He breathed in and the air was cold, his lungs filled and releasing without a catch. His talons tapping on the blacked out floor, like he was stood on a glass pane. He looked down and saw himself as he was now, as he would be for as long as it took. Scales hued a dulled gold he could see right through. Transparencies in the spaces between the stars that made him up, points of light mimicking his body down to nearly the cell, making sure he could accept this new normalcy. That he could accept it and not be burdened by any absence of what his life used to be. A perfect enough simulation, and one that proved the escape he'd hoped for.

Outside in the chamber the tension was crashing. The limp body of their beloved Speaker was crumpled on the floor. Like death had refused them this escape. The frightened scientists, the gathered councilmembers, the throngs waiting for their turn. All waited in silence, fretting that it was permanent. That their hopes were dashed at the final hurdle. That their deaths were certain no matter what they chose. That this was the end of their world. But their silence broke as the Ark thrummed to life, and a connection was made between outside and in. The voice of their Speaker ringing through that chamber. A message that their deaths were not so certain anymore.

One by one the elated and fearful alike stepped up to the behemoth that would ferry them away from their doom. And one by one their emptied bodies piled up at its side. Another consequence of this drastic change, the body count would pile up either way. Guards dragged them clear as more and more chosen survivors were allowed aboard. And before long the bodies proved too thick to clear. Yet they still came, did their duty, monitored the transition and ensured the order was kept. Even as the city rumbled to life with the final resorts of the prideful.

The artillery sang its bass backed whistling tune, smaller rails buzzed and thrummed to crescendo, and armies chained to service stood at attention as the horizon was crowded with rival stars. More caustic light of that baleful green fire, sudden cutting bash of accelerated metal from those rails, onwaiting hoard staring down that defiant red menace. All of it was lost to Threat.

Not even the pain of having to relive that wholesale burn, at having holes blown through and limbs obliterated by slugs going way too fast. Nothing slowed down his far more baleful advance. Yet still they hammered away at him, scorched his scales to black and ash, blew chunks in his body that rippled and flailed. But each time those scales grew back to the grey spackle they always were, those holes closing without a hint of the cavity they created left to see. Limbs disintegrating and regrowing, even his head refused to stay gone as a lucky slug turned it into discoloring mist. Nothing stopped him, because there was nothing to stop for. Not till all those that attacked him were dust and splatters across every surface.

The guns ceased their ineffectual barrage and the walls erupted in a more effective order to the hoard below, their chains released to loose them at their target, to hold him back but a moment if possible. For even the briefest of seconds so more could flee to safety.

But those chains clanged to the ground alone, no taloned steps followed suite, no vast movement of those gathered below. The hoard of unpowered promised a better life or uplifting riches or noble status or whatever their subjugators promised to see them throw themselves at their enemy. None of it mattered, because those promised below knew far more than those above did. And knew the true result of those same promises. So instead of a vast hoard of walling meat, the walls and their defenders received countless eyes turning about on them, and a single line spared down the middle. A line straight to that grand gate.

A line that malicious star walked right through.

Nothing stopping it, nothing seeking to feed it, and nothing left to stand in its way. The gate exploded to metal splinters, stalwart defenders giving their last gasp at keeping their pride were dashed and skewered. But their number was exponentially smaller than their final retorts. A rout already scrambling away, running toward the rise at the city's center. Toward the escape promised in spite of them.

The stone streets were empty, trashed by both the fearful and the opportunistic. The hoard at Threat's back following behind him, spreading out through the city they had been enslaved to enrichen. Began to burn it in his wake. The unlucky or too fearful caught and dragged away, or burned in their hides. Yet still that red star advanced.

The slope to the rise was littered with the baggage of the ignorant and entitled. The bodies of the unfortunate caught in stampede to exodus, or the wrathful overzealous rebuke of the guards. But none stood still, no one trailed behind this rout. All knew it was now or never.

The rise was empty save for the path of once thronged thoroughfares leading straight to the council chambers. A path Threat still walked, still unconsciously stanch in his advance. But the barest crack in that overwhelming void was growing. One more of confusion than calm. A confusion that mounted to its precipice as he slammed through the council chamber doors, and saw the end result of desperate exodus.

Mountains rolled through the grandiose hall, crawled up the walls and valleyed through the central path. They spilled through the doors to outer chambers, through windows and out culverts. But they all spread apart around the central edifice of this grotesque landscape. The bodies of the transposed seemingly being pushed away from the Ark like the alter of a dark god. An alter only still manned by two initiates left to take the final plunge. A master of some wooden musical instrument too hesitant and helpful, and a final dutiful guard left behind by his brothers. Both though cowering away as their last bastion burst open, as the light of their certain screaming doom was allowed in to the sanctum of their shame. A light that disregarded them to take in the magnitude of what it now saw.

The confusion dredged through the void in Threat, not enough to escape, but enough to try and make sense of what it saw. Of what it felt. Enough to rouse the unfortunate companion to confusion.

Curiosity.

That central edifice, this gargantuan perfect sphere of black circuitry. It called to him without words, pulled at the power inside of him. A pull he could not ignore even from a distance. This pull and this curiosity compounding, drew him in close. Too close to escape, too close to avoid the inevitable. Those left behind unfortunates could do nothing but watch as their hoped for escape was caught in the light of the Threat they wanted to flee from. And their despair was made crushing as the reality dawned on them.

A cry of warning, a brave last hope against fate. But it meant nothing as Threat's claw rose and was pulled down onto that matte black surface. And all of the hell that had been carried to this point, followed the guilty in their diaspora.

As their sins followed them forever more.

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