Tatehan leaned back in the library's solitary chair, letting the details of Loenitt settle in his mind. His imagination began to drift, sketching the city vividly in his mind.

He imagined narrow, winding streets carved between soaring stone structures that looked less built and more risen, like the fossilized spines of ancient beasts. He imagined the citizens. He pictured market stalls set up in plazas where the ground itself formed the tables, and children playing on steps that grew seamlessly out of the floor.

His thoughts then turned to the founder herself. Kryana Smith. A widow's daughter, born from grief and survival. What had she looked like, shaping the first walls with nothing but her will and the trembling ground? He could almost see her: not as some polished statue in a city square, but as a young woman with dirt under her nails and a fierce, lonely light in her eyes, pulling a home from the red dust for people who had none.

A flicker of curiosity pulled him from the reverie. He reached forward and reactivated the hologram, navigating to the personal biography of Kryana.

The data streamed. She had died at 48.

"Forty-eight?" Tatehan muttered into the quiet silence of the library. "That's surprisingly short." Even with the hardships of early colonization, it felt like a flame extinguished too soon.

He dug deeper. A footnote in the medical archives explained it: Early Martian Adaptation Syndrome (EMAS). The first generations, while physically modified to survive, had paid a steep price. Their cellular structures, their organs: everything had been under constant, low-grade stress from a world that was still fundamentally hostile. Lifespans were truncated, often ending in the fifth or sixth decade from cascading system failures. It was the cost of being a pioneer on a new world.

But then, a contradiction nagged at him. The Obscuron. He was one of the very first too.

If these records were true (the radio device at the spaceship), he should have turned to dust centuries ago. Yet he was still alive? How? Tatehan furrowed a brow. The Obscuron was an anomaly, maybe he had found a way to live longer?

He just didn't know with that crazy, stupid, insane and baddd guy.

The biography continued. Kryana had married a fellow survivor named Corin. She had borne two sons. Her lineage had persisted actually. The current head of Loenitt City, was a direct descendant, she was a woman named Elara Voss-Smith.

Tatehan sat for a long moment, letting it all sink in. A founder's bloodline, still steering the city she pulled from the stone.

With a slow exhale, he turned his attention to the next entry. The holographic list shimmered, and he selected: New Helios.

---

The presentation was stark, more visual than the text-heavy Loenitt archive. It opened with a flash of archival footage from Earth: grainy, pre-war. It showed rugged, scowling men and women with braided hair and painted faces, clad in furs and forged metal, standing defiantly before sleek, silver skyscrapers.

Captions scrolled:

"Final anthropological study of the Helios Enclave."

"Subjects reject modern attire, societal integration.

" A clip played of a diplomat in a crisp suit sighing, "Please, stop dressing like primitive men. Wear normal clothes."

They were the last Vikings. Not a recreation, not a cult, but the actual, unbroken lineage, the final stubborn remnant of an old world, deemed barbaric lunatics by a glittering, futuristic Earth.

You couldn't blame the people though. It would be crazy seeing people clothed barbaric attires in a up to day normal world.

Then the screen dissolved into chaos. The Space Dragon Wars. Cities of light became cities of ash. The footage was horrific and apocalyptic. When it cleared, the casualty estimates scrolled: billions dead! Earth was a shattered tomb.

And in a single, stark line of text, the record stated: Helios Enclave survivor rate: 87%.

A grim, shocked respect went over Tatehan. Their "primitiveness," their brutal pragmatism, their ingrained culture of survival against impossible odds, had actually saved them!

While advanced civilizations crumbled under an unimaginable threat, the Vikings of Helios did what their ancestors had always done: they fought, they endured, and they lived.

When the desperate exodus to Mars began, it was the Helios survivors who were chosen for the first, most dangerous wave. The reasoning was coldly logical: "Projected highest probability of surviving initial hostile environment." They weren't scientists or diplomats. They were the toughest bastards humanity had left, and they were thrown at the Red Planet like a spear.

The archive showed the first landings. Hulking, armored figures in hybrid pressure-suit/fur cloaks, stepping onto the barren rock. They didn't cower. Instead they raised axes and hammers to the sky and roared. They terraformed not with delicate machines first, but with bloody-minded will, battling the planet for every breath of thickened air.

They built their city. And they named it New Helios!

Tatehan scrolled through the modern data. New Helios hadn't abandoned its soul. It instead had assimilated the future. He saw images of towering longhouses built not of timber, but of dark, nano-forged carbon alloy. Instead of horse-drawn chariots, there were armored, eight-legged robotic horses (mechanized steeds).

Warriors wore plated armor that hummed with kinetic dampeners, but it was styled with horned helms, intricate fur mantles, and cloaks made from the hides of genetically-engineered Martian creatures.

They were, the archive confirmed dispassionately, one of the most formidably militant polities on Mars. An estimated 98% of the adult population were rated as combat-proficient. Their strength wasn't just in technology or numbers; it was in a culture that had been forged in the harshest fires of two worlds and had come out harder each time.

They were basically created for brutality.

They still retained all the mediaval traits of their previous life on Earth, but they made it 'techy', like most things on Mars now.

Robotic horses...

High tech armors...

High tech swords...

High tech shields...

Tatehan was impressed, a low whistle escaping his lips. He tried to picture it: the thunder of robotic hooves on parade grounds, the glow of holographic colors in mead-halls, the fierce, proud faces of people who looked to the future without ever forgetting the axe in their hand.

New Helios still lived in the medival world, but made it futuristic.

Were they friendly? He highly doubted it. Respectful, maybe. If you earned it. Which probably involved some kind of trial by combat, like what he did to Mub.

Eager now, his finger swiped the air, pulling up the next city on the list.

Reon Outpost.

He leaned forward, the blue light bright in his eyes.

"Checking the history of these cities," he said aloud, his voice full of wonder, "is so much fun!"

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