Tales from The Driftliner

Week after week, they stride. A perpetual force of motion, seemingly never coming to an end. Past the rocky mountains, stepping over vast river beds, the Moro's travel the planet. Their immense size marking them beasts of legend, they'd cast shadows over the volcanos of Tihana and tower the looming icy stagalites of Kalisto. Upon their vast, rocky backs, a village of a small, peaceful race live and thrive. The Aylop. A four-armed nomadic species of artisans and storytellers, travel the plains atop the Moro, carving the village into the living rock of the shell. For these thicked furred creatures, their culture, is shaped by the constant journey.

Seasons are not dictated by the sun's position, but by the Moro's wanderings. A trek through the southern plains means weeks of baking sun and rust-coloured dust. When the Moro feels the pull towards the jagged northern peaks, the Aylop brace for the chill, for weeks of swirling snow and huddling for warmth as the Moro navigates treacherous, icy passes. Until the Long Slumber, a time of rest during the Moro's endless wandering.

Life is communal and practical. Every Aylop has a role. And for a people whose history is a single, unbroken journey, memory and stories are their most prized possessions.

For the Aylop of village Shellton, the Long Slumber was a time of rest. As their Moro, settled into a deep sleep in a lush, green valley, the constant motion of their lives ceased. For Kael and his wife, Elara, it was a time for family. But after the first week of stillness, their children—lively, ten-year-old Lina and her mischievous younger brother, Pip—were buzzing with untapped energy.

“Tell us a story,” Lina demanded one evening, her four arms crossed in a gesture of ultimate boredom. Her radiant yellow eyes, scowled as the excitement of life began to cease. Pip echoed the sentiment, banging a wooden cup on the floor.

Elara smiled, her eyes crinkling. “Alright, alright. I’ll tell you the best one. The story of this home. The day we claimed our nook.”

She told them of finding the rough, unclaimed fissure on the Moro’s shell. She spoke of Kael’s bravery, carving out the room with his own hands while tethered to the high ridges. She described weaving the great crimson weather-sail that now hung on their balcony, a banner of their family. She recounted how a young Lina had drawn the swirling patterns on the inside wall with a piece of chalk, designs they later carved permanently. And her voice softened as she told the last part: how a tiny shell-lizard had wandered in, licking the leathery black nose atop baby Pip's snout, making him laugh for the very first time, a sound like tiny bells.

The children were captivated. The story, familiar and warm, settled the house, and soon they were all asleep.

The next day felt much the same. The children grew restless again by evening, and once more demanded a story.

“The home story!” Pip shouted.

Elara began again, her voice a comforting melody. She told of Kael’s carving and Lina’s chalk designs. “...and then,” she said, “I spent a week weaving that beautiful, sky-blue weather-sail for the balcony.”

Kael frowned slightly. Sky-blue? He was sure it was crimson. He remembered the specific crimson dye they’d traded for. He opened his mouth to correct her, but a wave of uncertainty washed over him. Had it been blue? The stillness made his thoughts feel sluggish. He must be misremembering. He smiled and nodded, letting the story continue.

Kael woke the next morning with no memory of the day before, only a faint, lingering sense of unease. That evening, by the light of the glowing moss-lamps, the scene repeated.

“The home story!” the children cried.

Elara began. She told of Kael’s carving, and how he had designed the beautiful swirling patterns on the wall himself. She spoke of the sky-blue sail.

The knot in Kael’s stomach tightened. He knew that wasn’t right. He knew it. Lina had drawn those patterns; he remembered her small hands, smudged with chalk. He looked at his daughter, but she was listening with rapt attention, her memory apparently atuning to match the tale. Kael felt a surge of panic, but it was like trying to grasp smoke. The details of his own memory felt thin, transparent. Was he going mad? He said nothing, the silence in his throat feeling like a stone.

Each day, the story was told. Each day, another truth flaked away. The colour of the sail, the tool he’d used, the season they’d found the nook—all altered, rewritten, leaving Kael adrift in a sea of doubt. He started to feel a deep, abiding dread as evening approached, his own past becoming a story told by a stranger.

As the loop continued, he was lost in a fog of confusion. He felt brittle, unsure of everything. He barely registered the children's request, simply nodding as Elara began the familiar, now terrifying, ritual.

Her voice was warm and full of love. She told the story of "The Day We Claimed Our Nook." She spoke of Kael's carving, of his intricate designs on the wall, and of her weaving the beautiful blue sail. The story flowed perfectly, a seamless narrative of a husband and wife building a home for their child.

It was a lovely story.

And Kael, his mind eroded by the subtle temporal poison, his sense of truth completely shattered, did not notice what was missing. The story was complete, and so he accepted it.

When Elara finished, she smiled. “Alright, time for bed, little starling.”

Kael turned, his movements feeling slow, heavy. “Come on, Lina, let’s get you tucked in.”

They led their daughter to her room. As Elara pulled the blanket over Lina, she paused, a frown touching her face.

“Do you ever feel like… like we’re missing something?” she whispered, her voice laced with a strange, nameless melancholy.

Kael looked around the quiet dwelling. He felt it too. A hollow ache in his chest. A phantom limb. A silence where a sound should be.

“It’s just the stillness,” he said, the words feeling empty. “It makes the world feel too big.”

He walked to the balcony, needing air. The valley was dark, the sky a familiar blanket of stars. But as he watched, the fabric of the night shimmered, rippled, for just a moment, like heat-haze rising from a fire. In the distance, a single point of faint, crimson light pulsed once, then faded into nothing.

He was left staring into the normal, starry dark, the cold ache in his heart the only proof that something—someone—was gone forever.

He sat on a throne built of lies, waiting. But the end he anticipated was not the one that would come. For she was coming. And for him, she was the end.

The city’s heart was a graveyard of steel, impaled by the shard of a capital warship. It was a jagged, metallic testament to the day the Old Empire fell and the New Empire began its reign. The hulking ruin, broken and silent, had once been the most feared vessel in the stars—a moving fortress armed for annihilation. Now, it was a monument. A tomb.

During the revolt, he and his sister, Tyrielle, had led the mutiny. They had seized this very ship, their victory sending a shockwave of defiance through the fleet. By his side, Tyrielle was a bastion of strength. The crew, drunk on forbidden knowledge of the Empire’s secret and revolutionary fire, rejoiced. But their joy was fleeting. One ship, no matter how powerful, could not outgun an entire armada and the fortified city below.

On the bridge of the captured warship, the air was thick with disbelief. Tyrus stood before the navigation console, his face illuminated by the glowing schematic of the capital city far below. The crew watched him, their faces a mixture of revolutionary fire and raw terror.

"Coordinates locked on the Imperial Plaza," the nav-officer confirmed, his voice trembling. "Sir... they'll tear us apart before we're halfway through the atmosphere."

"We're not flying through the atmosphere," Tyrus said, his voice dangerously calm. He turned to the engineering station. "Full power to the hyperdrive. On my mark."

A wave of understanding and horror washed over the bridge. They weren't flying. They were jumping. A short, blind, suicidal jump of less than a thousand kilometers—an act of physics so violent and forbidden it was considered a myth.

"He's insane," someone whispered. Tyrielle stood by her brother's side, her knuckles white as she gripped a console for support, her faith at war with every law of nature she knew.

"Mark!" Tyrus commanded.

The engineer slammed his palm on the activation panel. There was no lurch, no rumbling acceleration. There was only light. An instantaneous, all-consuming flood of pure, silent white that bleached the bridge of all color and form. The low hum of the ship's engines vanished, replaced by a profound, deafening silence that felt like the universe holding its breath. For a fraction of a second, the ship and everyone on it ceased to exist in normal space, becoming a needle of pure energy aimed at the heart of a city.

The arrival was not a reentry; it was a birth. He hadn't bombed the city. He'd made the ship the bomb.

One moment, there was silent, white oblivion. The next, the universe crashed back in on itself with the fury of a dying god. The ship materialized not in the sky, but within the city. The bridge viewport didn't show an approach; it showed the gut-wrenching, instantaneous close-up of a marble spire and the gilded façade of the Ministry of Commerce tearing past, close enough to touch.

Then came the sound. It was not an explosion, but a continuous, world-ending shriek of metal screaming as it rent through stone, steel, and infrastructure. The forward half of the colossal warship drove into the earth of the Imperial Plaza like a mountain falling from the sky. The impact was not a single, bone-jarring event, but a horrifying, grinding cataclysm that seemed to last an eternity.

On the bridge, the world became a maelstrom of violence. The crew were thrown across the deck like dolls. Consoles exploded in showers of sparks as the ship's power grid buckled. The obsidian floor tilted to a sickening forty-five-degree angle, and the immense viewport fractured, splintering into a million crystalline veins but miraculously holding against the pressure of the collapsing earth around it. A concussive boom, felt in the bones and teeth more than it was heard, resonated through the hull as the ship’s kinetic energy displaced thousands of tons of rock and buildings.

Emergency lights bathed the chaos in a pulsating, crimson gloom. The air filled with the smell of ozone, burning metal, and pulverized stone. For a long moment, the only sound was the deep, groaning protest of the ship's hull settling into its new, man-made crater—a tomb half-buried in the city it was built to protect.

Slowly, amid the groans of the dying ship and the injured crew, Tyrus pulled himself up, his face bleeding but his eyes blazing with savage triumph. He looked out at the fractured viewport, at the view of his own impossible destruction. The ship had become the bomb, the crater, and the beachhead, all in a single, mad instant.

"Regroup," he roared over the klaxons. "The assault begins now."

As they stormed the capital, the sky rained fire. The loyalist fleet in orbit, in a final act of denial, began orbital bombardment, sacrificing their own city to stop the rebellion. They breached the palace doors, the last of the Imperial Guard falling before them. Only a handful of the original crew remained as they charged the Emperor’s court.

Tyrus stopped and gazed at the entrance. Just beyond him, his final objective. His fate. “Arm the nuclear bomb, we’re going to bring this god-forsaken hell down” 

To stand at the entrance of the Emperor's Court was to be humbled by history and power. The room was a vast, sepulchral chamber designed to make even kings feel insignificant. The floor was a single, unbroken expanse of polished black obsidian, so flawless it mirrored the shadowed ceiling high above, creating the dizzying illusion of standing on the edge of a starless void. Colossal marble columns, veined with gold, lined the walls, rising up into the oppressive darkness. High above, narrow, slit-like windows let in disciplined shafts of light that cut through the gloom like spotlights. Along the walls, massive, threadbare banners depicted the Empire's long and brutal history—worlds conquered, fleets commissioned, dynasties established.

At the far end of the chamber, raised upon a three-tiered dais of the same black obsidian, sat the five thrones. The arrangement was a shallow, intimidating arc designed for judgment, not counsel. The four Council Chairs were immense, high-backed thrones carved from petrified, dark-grey wood, resembling judgmental headstones. Set in the center and on the highest tier was the Emperor's Throne. Forged from a single block of meteoric iron, it seemed to absorb the light around it, a patch of absolute blackness at the heart of the court.

It was into this crushing silence that Tyrus strode, his crew faltering behind him as they faced the five council members. The figures were not panicked. They were not prepared. They simply… were.

They greeted his arrival with a serene, unnerving courtesy. Tyrus cursed them, his voice raw. He knew their secret—the endless war was a lie, a grand performance orchestrated by their hand to control the populace and strip-mine worlds.

"The people need this war," one of the council members explained, his voice calm, unphased. "We create the enemy so that civilization can flourish on the resources they 'discover.' There is no better way. We tried."

"This stops now," Tyrus snarled. "I will end this war. I will save them."

He made his stand, but as he looked back, he found he was alone. His crew, even Tyrielle, hesitated.

"Maybe they're right, Tyrus," his sister pleaded. "We need the resources. If the war ends, how do we survive?" One of the crew stepped forward. He grabbed Tyrus’s shoulder, pulling him back.  "You're wrong this time. Let it go."

Tyrus’s face hardened. A single, fluid motion. The crack of the pistol was an obscenity in the hallowed hall, painting an Imperial banner with his crewman's blood.

Tyrielle screamed his name. Before she could rush to him, the remaining crew dragged her back. "Ms, a nuke is inbound! We have to go now!"

She fought with all her might, but they pulled her from the court. Tyrus stood his ground, his gun still smoking. "I will do better than all of you," he vowed to the court. "I will save them all."

The shadowy figure on the Emperor's central throne finally spoke, his voice an echoing whisper.

"Good luck."

As the steel doors closed behind them, Tyrielle’s last view of her brother, standing defiantly looking up at the five shadow figures, high on their perches. “Ms. to the ship now!” Her face swelled with hatred as her stare lingered. This was not a heroic act, this was a tragedy, a mistake. 

As Tyrielle's ship clawed its way into the sky, she watched the nuke arrive—a silent, screeching star falling from orbit. A white light consumed the palace. Her brother, still inside, still slaughtering, was deluded to the very end. Or so she thought.

Years passed. The war ended. A mysterious "New Empire" rose from the ashes, its authority absolute. Then came the second coming—the great thinning. Cities and planets perished, abandoned. The population dwindled to scattered remnants clinging to survival. No one knew who led this New Empire, but Tyrielle had a cold, sinking suspicion.

She returned to the capital. The city was a husk, haunted by scavengers. The shard of the warship still pierced its center. She walked the broken streets to the palace, the immense metallic doors screeching as she forced them open.

The court was a desecrated ruin, a testament to the violence of its end. The magnificent obsidian floor was a shattered mosaic, cratered and cracked. The ceiling had caved in, creating a massive, jagged hole open to the elements, and a harsh, grey light now flooded the chamber, revealing every flaw and failure. The priceless banners lay in rotted, muddy heaps, their grand histories dissolving into muck.

The dais was still there, but the arrangement of power had been violently reconfigured. The four lesser thrones of the council were now nothing but charred, splintered husks. But the Emperor's Throne, forged from a fallen star, had endured. Scarred, burned, and pitted even more deeply than before, it stood firm—a jagged monolith on a ruined landscape. All subordinate authority had been erased, leaving only the central, tyrannical seat.

And upon it sat a figure.

"Tyrus!" she shouted, a cry of anger and disbelief. "Is that you?"

A grin stretched across a face of scarred, burned flesh as he leaned into the light. "Tyrielle, my dear sister. You have returned to your new home."

“But the nuclear bomb? The bombardment? How are you here?” She didn’t understand. It was impossible to survive the bomb that close.

He dismisses her comment with a grim laugh echoing across the room, fueling her rage. 

"Millions are dead, brother," she said, her voice shaking with rage. "This needs to stop. The Old Empire was right."

"Millions are dead, sister," he corrected, his voice a low rasp. "Better a million die now to cleanse the slate, than to breed billions for a war that kills millions every day. I ended the war. I will see my new world through… even if I have to walk it alone."

He stood, his shattered armor glinting in the gloom. He reached down and lifted a sword that rested against the arm of his throne.

It was not the heavy broadsword of an imperial executioner, but something far more personal and sinister. The blade itself was long, straight, and impossibly thin, forged from a dark, star-fallen metal that seemed to drink the grey light of the ruined court. It had no fuller, no central groove, just a smooth, dark plane of razor-edged steel tapering to a needle-sharp point. It was a weapon designed for finding the smallest gap in a person's armor, or their soul.

In stark contrast, the hilt was a work of grim elegance. A complex basket guard of darkened silver swirled around his hand, the intricate metalwork crafted to resemble grasping shadows or the tendrils of a dying nebula. As he brought it to bear, the sword made almost no sound. It moved with a silent, weightless grace, a duelist's weapon that was both a thing of terrible beauty and an instrument for swift, precise murder. It was an extension of his will, menacing not in its size, but in its perfect, elegant lethality.

This was his end. This was her purpose.

Tyrielle braced herself, pouring all her energy into her stance until the marble floor cracked beneath her feet. She launched herself across the room, a blur of motion, her own sword aimed at his heart. With impossible speed, Tyrus sidestepped, the dark blade whispering past his ear.

The air between them fractured as their swords met, a clash of shattered steel and blinding speed. Sparks showered the ruined court, illuminating the fury on their faces. Their movements were a dance of ghosts, too fast for any mortal eye, a battle for the soul of a dead empire.

Their blades locked, the shriek of tortured metal echoing off the broken thrones. Inches from her face, Tyrielle looked past the scarred flesh and deep into her brother’s eyes. She saw no flicker of the boy she grew up with, no trace of the revolutionary who fought by her side. There was only the hollow echo of a man, consumed by the very power he had sought to destroy.

The years of doubt, of running, of gnawing uncertainty—they all burned away in the searing heat of their clash, forged into a single, perfect point of purpose. He was a monument to failure, and she was the sculptor who would bring him down. He was a ghost on a throne, and she was the exorcist.

The battle raged on, a whirlwind of silver and shadow. But for Tyrielle, the war within was already over. And in that absolute clarity, there was a terrible, final satisfaction.