Most of the squabbling Senators fell silent.

"As I feared," hUen-dE said, "we are at an impasse. These are turbulent times. The Long Hunt continues as ever, but with frustratingly little progress." She squeezed the head of her staff. "It saddens me to see Vyxit squabble with other Vyxit. We should be fighting the Blight, not one another."

The head-dressed tentacle beast bowed its carapaced head. "Lady hUen-dE, how can we not fight amongst ourselves?" It flicked one of its tentacles against the balcony's energy shield, which sparked in response to the blow. "The Beholders have shown us the truth. We no longer need to wonder what other clans are doing; we can see it for ourselves, for good and for ill."

hUen-dE nodded. "Yes. Knowledge and memory are the great equalizers. They are what unite us."

"But it also divides us!" the creature replied. "We see the inequalities that have taken root among us. We are envious of what others have, and resent what we are asked to give as recompense."

"I am aware of this," hUen-dE said.

"Then what do you propose we do? After all, it was you who called for this assembly."

"That I did," the old twEfE replied. She stepped forward, limbs hobbling beneath her robes. "Long ago, my ancestors were nearly destroyed by chaos and division, until we learned the secret to overcome." She tamped her staff on the ground. "Unity: that is the cure! Unity of mind! Unity of body! Unity of purpose!" She cleared her throat. "In my time, I have led more of our campaigns against the Blight than anyone else here, and let me tell you: on the battlefield, not a single one of my soldiers ever doubted who they were and why they fought, not even for a moment. They saw themselves as they truly were: the sacred links of our great crusade." She pointed her beak at the Senators from before.

"The Blight stole your sylvan homes and murdered your ancient guardians." She looked up to the feather-winged dragon. "It devoured the mountains your people knew ever since the Gods first shaped you into being." She turned to the lizard. "It cast you out of your most hallowed grounds." She glared at the tentacle creature. "It ground your hive's mind symphonies into mewls and whimpers."

hUen-dE stamped her staff on her platform. The sound echoed far and wide.

"If we come at each other's throats, it is only because we have lost sight of our unity. We have become complacent. Listen to me, Vyxit: do you wish to live as refugees till the end of time, with no home but the mediocrity that sustains us?" She stamped her staff again. "Well, I refuse! We are worth more than that! We have suffered for more than that! Our children will know bounty and light, and we will give it to them! We will reclaim what the Blight took from us. We owe vengeance in the name of all that was lost." She stood up straight and then shook her head. "It is clear to me that we need a new beginning, something to remind us why we are here, and why we are Vyxit. We must embrace a single, unified standard for allocation of opportunity and service. But do not mistake this for mere affirmation. I believe my proposition will address the many legitimate grievances raised here today, and address them well. I propose that each clan and species be judged by the value of its contributions to the Long Hunt, inversely weighted according to population size, so that those who have less to give will receive commendation proportionate to how much they have sacrificed for our noble cause."

The dragon reared on her hind legs. "Performance in battle is hardly a fair metric, Lady hUen-dE. You would put your own species on a pedestal, above the rest of us."

hUen-dE whistled in amusement. "That is where you are wrong." She looked up at the longest of the metallocrystalline monoliths extending from the ceiling. "Bring out the aegises!"

Several balconies floated away, revealing the bare, silver wall behind them. The surface altered before my eyes. A hole appeared in the wall, rapidly expanding into a long tunnel whose floor thrusted out, forming a walkway that extended into the room. The walkway widened, unfurling like wings.

Then the aegises entered. They stepped out of the tunnel's dark mouth and marched down the walkway, presenting themselves for all to see.

They set off a fierce commotion.

I saw cyborg centauroids, humanoids with metallic limbs the shape of dinosaurs' legs, and a six-armed twEfE like a silver sleeved god. I saw tails of blades and cannon hands. The aegises hid their deformities behind sleek exosuits, making them seem like steel sculptures that had stepped off the plinths in their mad maker's studio. Glowing circuitry softly purred on the stretches of their chrome perfection.

"What is this, Lady hUen-dE?" a Senator asked. "Explain yourself!"

But then, an aegis spoke up, one of the centauroids. "May I, my lady?" His was a svelte, yet masculine voice.

The old twEfE gave a solemn nod. "You may."

The centauroid took a single step forward. "We are fusions of biology and machine," he said, "and we are the future."

On a whim, I slid down my second eyelids, and then let out a little gasp.

The aegises shone like torches.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"As you may know," hUen-dE said, "long ago, my people implanted dreamshards in the individuals to give them the power they needed to harvest more shards from the Great Dream. I was one of them: a Gatherer" She turned to face the aegises. "The aegises were born from a similar premise, but with a critical difference. Instead of implanting dreamshards within them, we use the shards' power to integrate them with a Vyx module: an aegis, to protect us all. Though the result is not quite as powerful as the Gatherers of old, the aegises are still a force to be reckoned with. Their physical capabilities are immensely enhanced, to say nothing of their mental prowess. Cumbersome biological functions like breathing, sleeping, and eating become options rather than necessities, while their vastly increased lifespans allow them to use their abilities to the fullest. The process is safe, and far more efficient than creating Gatherers, and, best of all, it does not require us to sacrifice dreamshards along the way. We can use the remaining power to help sustain the fleet. With aegises, we can take our future into our own hands. We can take the fight to the Blight. Justice will be ours."

"Can you vouch for their efficacy?" the feather-winged dragon asked.

"Yes," hUen-dE replied. "And I plan on joining them."

Then the sequence paused.

"Her proposal worked," EUe said, "too well."

A combat montage flashed before our eyes. Aegises leading the Vyxit troops forward against the fungal hordes, striding across battlefields like King Krog's winged hussars, and leaving craters in their wake.

It was awesome.

"hUen-dE was right. With aegises at our disposal, the tides of our war against the Blight finally started to turn in our favor, and with all that victory, people felt more unified than ever before. But…" EUe lowered his head, "it came at a great cost. The Vyxit's pursuit of vengeance against the Blight became more and more militant. We weren't just competing against it, we were competing against ourselves, and everyone wanted to capture the biggest piece of glory."

The Philharmonium showed entire landing bays filled to the brim with Vyxit legions standing ready for battle. They moved as one, spoke as one, and thought as one. It was terrifying and magnificent.

"Entire clansteads devoted themselves to becoming training grounds for future warriors," V said.

"And the highest honor would be for one of your own to be chosen for aegishood." EUe said. "Soon, it was no longer enough to rescue survivors. There was a push to take the fight directly to the Blight. And so we did."

Turning, EUe waved through more sequences of images.

Fleets of Vyx starfighters collided with swarms of wyrms. Death rays and dreamshard-powered magics erupted across fungal isles in the depths of space.

"Strength was our glory, and glory was our strength, just like it had been, back in the days of the Ecumene," EUe said. "And, just like in the Ecumene, praise of the strong quickly led to condemnation of the weak. We grew hard-hearted and vicious, and ever more daring… even amongst ourselves."

EUe turned away as he brought up the next image.

Lights and color swirled on the Philharmonium sphere as a new image coalesced into view.

Screams. Thrashing bodies. Flailing limbs.

I had to take a step back before what I was seeing began to make sense. I saw beings of various species—twEfE among them—writhing on the floor in pain. Vyx-stuff massed on their bodies like tumors. The machines sent their metallic veins into organic flesh, restructuring their forms from within.

"Angel's breath… what's happening to them?" I asked.

"It's how the aegises are made," EUe said. "Much like with dreamshard implantation, aegishood comes with risks. Yes, vanishingly few aegis candidates died during the procedure, but far too often, a successful aegis suffered a different kind of death."

V drooped downward slightly and shook from side to side. "The Vyx are both many and one, Dr. Howle. Whoever created us gave us minds that could be separated or combined with ease. Merge two modules and their minds become one. As a single module grows, its mind subdivides, eventually becoming a community of individuals. The great ships are hive minds. No individual module is to stray from a mothership for too long, or else they'll start developing minds of their own, beyond the limited diversity that the hive minds allow." He floated near me.

"The thing is," EUe said, "all of this also applies to aegises."

"To an extent," V corrected.

"What?" I asked.

EUe let out a dispirited coo. He folded his wings against his back. "hUen-dE was exceptional. Both the power of her personality and the personality behind that power were distinctive enough and stubborn enough for her to retain her sense of self even after becoming an aegis." The twEfE shook his head. "But most aegises aren't that lucky. Usually, their personalities are severely blunted, though, sometimes, the force of the Vyx hive mind hits them so intensely that their sense of self dissolves away, leaving little more than an obedient, deadly husk."

"In many ways," V said, "the ego death makes them even more effective as living weapons. The most broken aegises make for perfect soldiers, without any attachments or desires to weigh them down."

"That's… awful!"

"I know," EUe said, "but since the aegises were our best hope against the Blight, Vyxit were more than happy to throw their children into this torture. For many, the military benefits the aegises brought outweighed the costs. Some Vyxit even forced their own clansfolk to do it against their will."

"My God…" I muttered.

"You have to understand, Genneth," EUe said. "Until the fall of UlU, you could have counted on one hand the number of species that had survived an encounter with the Blight. If it wasn't for twEfE, and later, Vyxit, so many civilizations would have been lost to the fungus. But Vyxit brought hope. We gave the survivors we rescued a second chance; they got to bring their species back from the brink. Yes, we still do that, but now, they're all just fodder for hUen-dE's war machine. It was like we'd become a second Ecumene."

"Shouldn't this have triggered civil war, or something?" I asked.

"Eventually, it did," EUe said.

"As I became aware of the scale of what was happening, I started to gather like-minded Vyxit. We formed networks of our own, ones of flesh and blood. Though it had been long since I last had a body of my own, there was pretty much no limit to what I could do through the Vyx Network. I could hold secret meetings with my scattered supporters, and if I needed to be somewhere in person, it was just a matter of making a Vyx module that was under my control—a brand new mechanical body for me to use. Bit by bit, we gathered like-minded Vyxit on one side of the oldest ship in the fleet—"

"—Me," V said.

"Yes," EUe said, "and as our numbers grew, so did my conviction that we had to use the second chances we were given to build a place of peace better than what we'd lost" He cooed softly. "The plan was to split our half of V off from the rest of the mothership. Everyone who was tired of the endless fighting would be free to join us as we went our own way. We'd finally start starting over. "

But EUe lowered his head.

"What went wrong?" I asked.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.