Arc 1: The Discovery

Prologue

Elfangor


My name is Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. I am a Prince of the Andalite Fleet currently assigned to GalaxyTree. Or perhaps, was – the great Dome Ship had been ambushed as we approached Earth by a Yeerk squadron hidden behind the planet's only moon. I myself may well be the last Andalite alive within light years of this system, an honor likely to prove temporary as I hurtled towards the surface of the planet in my badly damaged fighter. This was particularly painful as my younger brother, a mere aristh – what the human militaries would call a cadet – had been inside the namesake Dome, which I had seen moments ago splashing into planets' largest ocean.

Depending on what you are, you may find this all quite extraordinary. If you are human, you must now be aware that there are alien species in the galaxy, and we Andalites are the primary opposition to another species – The Yeerks – who seek to destroy you. My species do not tend toward a form of human humor in which the speaker says something while intending to be known to be speaking an untruth - and certainly not on a matter so serious.

If you are an Andalite, you must accept that our battle for Earth began with the complete destruction of a Dome Fleet in a battle in which we had near parity of firepower but were taken by total tactical surprise. It is likely the stories will omit this tale, but I cannot. For one, to do so would be to forget the bravery of the warriors aboard GalaxyTree. This I cannot do. For another, everything that occurred from this point forward was dependent on this first, great loss.

My tale, I am afraid to say, is only likely to appear even more unbelievable as it unfolds. Rest assured, other than a few name changes and some information that has remained censored lest it fall into Yeerk hands, everything I tell you is true.

I had been to Earth before. I had in fact spent many years living among the humans, the most sentient species on that planet. A being whose name I cannot reveal but whose powers of the universe are such that space and time are mere instruments for his machinations brought me back across the vast distance of space and inserted me into a critical moment in a battle against a Yeerk grand fleet, and rearranged the fabric of spacetime so as to fold over thirty years of my absence from my own people into but a fraction of that time.

In the process of transporting me across the fabric, I caught small glimpses of what had been and what could be. I had seen the birth of my human son, destined to never know me in that role and endure great sadness. I had seen his path and how it entangled itself with the Yeerk invasion of his home, along with the possible permutations of others who might walk the path of the warrior alongside him. I had seen the thousand possible moments I might or might not meet him.

I had seen my own death. A thousand different points of possibility with one inevitable constant.

There was a weapon hidden on Earth, a weapon so powerful that I cannot speak of its location or hint at its purpose. My first thought I am ashamed to admit was to deny my fate, to attempt to land at the site where I had hidden this weapon when I first came to Earth in a time that no longer fully was. In that moment, I had at last come to a…there is no word in any human language to describe it. A thiliss – a blank moment in the spacetime when an individual choice must be made and can spawn an infinities of unique outcomes. Free will in its purest form.

I had not known precisely how this moment would come, only that it would. That I had seen the hole in the fabric whose space I now occupied. I had fought many nights imagining what choice I would make in this moment.

I chose my son. I chose to give the humans a chance to save their own world, breaking with the traditions and taboos of my people that had appeared during the long war. I, with no company but my precious forbidden cargo, set my fighter to attempt a landing in a new industrial sector on the outskirts of my old human city.

If you are reading this then you know that ultimately, I chose to give five human children access to the Escafil Device, and in doing so gave them access to technology so restricted that only a fraction of my own people are allowed to undergo its treatment. Whether I am found guilty of treason will be up for the War Princes of the Council to decide but let me at least ease your mind that I did not do so hastily. I had no intention of risking handing this technology over to a Yeerk-Controller! Whatever stories are passed down among our people, know that I at least took some precaution so as to avoid repeating Seerow's Kindness.

Either my landing was not as well executed as it ought to have been, or else my ship was more badly damaged than I had anticipated. The energy diffusers did not work as they should, some of the kinetic energy of the crash was not deflected, but travelled through my ship. and while I survived the impact, My forehooves suffered badly, leaving me limping very badly and favoring my hind legs. There was no time to transform at the moment – a complete cycle to morph and unmorph back into my healed form would have taken approximately six of Earth's minutes, and there was too much to do while every second counted. Quickly – but not hastily, I do not wish to suggest my own Princes during my own tenure as an aristh had not adequately trained me for this eventuality – I disabled all essential equipment within the fighter that I could not take with me. I erased all information from the ship's computing system. The ship, now not even capable of flight even had it been physically repaired, could only self-destruct. I set it to do so in fifteen of Earth's minutes, or when pressure on the exterior hull was compromised. Most likely, the Yeerks would simply blow my ship up from the sky; if they did not, hopefully my ship would take out a handful of Controllers in the process.

All of this took fifty-three of Earth's seconds.

Scanning the interior of my ship one last time with my stalk eyes, I ordered the door open. My plan was to take shelter in one of the nearby structures still under construction and outside the danger zone of either a Yeerk attack or my own ship's self-destruction. I would need to find a place to hide my small but critical cache of supplies and then I would morph into a kafit – a species native to my home planet most analogous to an Earth bird, although one with four legs and twelve wings. From there, I could either take flight or return to my own body depending on my needs.

I confess, although I had known – had hoped – that the intersection of spacetime to meeting my son was near, I did not expect it to happen right then. But the moment I saw him I knew. Tobias. My son, certainly well under twenty earth years, looked at me, slightly crouched behind the debris of human construction materials about eight neths – approximately forty human feet – away. Such was my emotion for a moment that all four eyes were focused upon him, and it took me another eight earth seconds to realize he was not alone. Four others stood with him, their own eyes (two apiece) wide in shock and bodies paralyzed between the need to attack and the need to flee. Another male, slightly taller and broader than my son, with slightly darker hair but the same approximate complexion. A third, this was smaller and slightly darker. And two females, one with very pale features and one dark.

Fourteen seconds after our first contact, my son opened his mouth.

"Who are you?"

((I am Elfangor. Do not be afraid.))