CHAPTER TWO Reign of Asron

Jake looks at the pictures on the wall of Minbari art, "I have a question Delenn?"

Delenn looks up from her papers that she's been reading periodically. "Yes Jake?"

"How did we get here?"

Delenn puts down the papers, "You were reborn here."

"But we died on Earth!"

Delenn's eyes roll as she tries to explain the process. "When the Minbari leader, Valen fought the Shadows he then married a Human who got stuck in the past. She created the Human race and our race was separated from Humans to Minbari."

Jake looks away from the paintings on the wall, "But why?"

Delenn looks at one painting showing a demonic creature, a creature she knows all to well. "We have a story of our darkest times. I actually met that darkness. They are called the Soldiers of Darkness. Their leader is Asron."

Jake sits down intrigued in the story, "Who is Asron?"

"When I was on Minbar in 2290 I had to watch my city fall. As they invaded my planet I saw the Soldiers of Darkness. They are an ugly creature that feeds on fear. The smell was so vile that it could make you throw up, but probably the most frightening creature was a demonic creature named Asron. Before the wars of the universe he went to the volcano on K'ha'dum named Cerfire and poured out his evil and power in a eye that he wore to increase his power to rule all species."

Jake urges for the story to go on, it sounds like a sequel from the Lord of the Rings. "What does he look like?"

Delenn thinks back. "Well when I saw him he wore all black. He has a metal face with spikes coming out of his head. He wears a black cape and has five fingers that act as claws. When he came out of Mount Cerfire the attack against K'ha'dum was in favor of the alliance, but as Asron came out with a swipe of the eye he was able to destroy an entire army with his hand. As his fleet swarmed from Sector 666, planets fell one after another until they went to a dark green planet in Sector 1257, it was named Z'ha'dum and its sister planet X'ha'dum. Asron knew that if there were any planets to leave alone they were Z'ha'dum, X'ha'dum, Sigma 957, and the Vorlon Empire. As they began their attack the Eye itself wiped out most of their fleets. As Asron watched his fleets fall he focused on the most populated planet named Y'ha'dum. As they began their attack, they destroyed the planet killing 100 billion civilians on that planet. With the lost of the Liberators and Shadows primary home base they made a deal with Asron, serve or die. But Asron figured he could make a stand and the Eye killed Asron and sent the armies of K'ha'dum back to their planet. For almost one million years the Soldiers of Darkness and Asron had been forgotten and the army waited for the Liberators and Shadows to finally go beyond the Rim."

Jake looks up from the table, something caught his interest. "What do you mean 'finally'?"

Delenn takes in a deep breath. "The Liberators were the first species. For one million years the Liberators were alone and they finally were gifted to be reborn in the next race called Shadows, a title given by the Minbari when we first encountered the Shadows. After the Shadows came the Hand of Thirdspace created chaos in the space. The Liberators had made pack with a younger race called the Vorlons to wipe them out, but the Vorlons suggested that the Hand be locked away in Thirdspace. With the success of the attack against the Hand the next event was to help the other first ones, but this was delayed because the Soldiers of Darkness were making their presence in the universe. They at first never attacked anyone and remained to their fiery planet named K'ha'dum. After the Soldiers of Darkness there was an explosion of species and all the First Ones were present. At this time every race had feared the Shadows and the Liberators and called them by two titles: the Liberators were named the Masters of Chaos and the Shadows were named the Agents of Chaos because they usually pulled the triggers. After a thousand years the interbetween races were born, they are called the Minbari. After the interbetween race was present then came the younger races like the Centauri, Narn, Humans, Drazi, Gaim, and so on. When the Minbari became space bearing then the Soldiers of Darkness began destroying races before they evolved, one extinction they caused on your planet—Earth was the ending of the creatures you call dinosaurs by using an asteroid. Only one thousand years later, then the Shadows would begin the Great War, and Valen chose Earth to bear the next generation of Minbari/Humans. When they went against the Shadows of Z'ha'dum the Soldiers of Darkness found that defeating the Shadows was much a harder task! By the middle of the war the Shadows and Liberators attacked back much stronger and the Soldiers of Darkness began to fall. As the Soldiers of Darkness backed off they focused on one planet named Y'ha'dum the base of the Masters and Agents of Chaos. As Asron directed his potential towards Y'ha'dum the planet fell and a quarter of a billion Liberators and Shadows were killed when their planet was destroyed. As Asron saw this as a major victory he did not expect the Vorlons to intercept them, because the Vorlon Empire had a grudge against the Liberators an in the past conducted many terrorist events to weaken the Liberators, but every attempt meet with disastrous results. Maybe the Vorlons did this to force acceptance with the Liberators? If this was the cause it

worked because in one year the Liberators and Vorlons had joined forces into an alliance of a thousand years peace. The Shadows on the other hand did not agree with the peace treaty and would not sign the treaty. After the alliance was created the Liberators, Shadows, Eye, Vorlons, and Walkers of Sigma 957 set out for a full out assault against K'ha'dum. As the battle raged on, Asron watched from his black towers watching his cities fall, watching the murder of his citizens, and the fall of his fleet. As the armies of the Liberators approached the black towers Asron decided to meet them and kill them all. As he grabbed his mater-disrupter staff he meet the Liberators. As he swung the device violently many of the Liberators were injured, but not killed. As thousand apond thousands swarm Asron they made their approach, they used their acid in their saliva to melt away the metal and then begin ripping apart his flesh. As the body of Asron fell towards the ground, the Soldiers of Darkness turned to dust. At that moment the war was over and the alliance won the war. The last thing the Liberators and Shadows did was close the jump gate and put a lock on it to only be opened if both the Shadows and Liberators were to be defeated in any battle. As the Vorlon Empire created star charts they left out the planet Z'ha'dum and X'ha'dum. When the Liberators found out their planet were uncharted they felt as if the Vorlons were trying to erase them from history. So as they tried to have their planet included and the Vorlons and surprising even the Shadows even said no and this begun the war of the ancients. As the Shadows, Vorlons, and Walkers of Sigma 957 fought against the Liberators they were almost defeated horribly and that is when the Vorlons meet the Minbari. We weren't much a space-bearing race and at that time were involved in massive civil war. The Vorlons advanced us and told us that we would be involved in a great war with darkness. When the Liberators invaded our planet we were defended by the Vorlon Empire—our closes neighbor and defeated the Liberators at Taralenn II, that because part of the Minbari Federation. As the war turned against the Liberators, the Shadows and Vorlons had created a rip in space and placed the home world of the Liberators named X'ha'dum within the vast black plasma space. The Liberators all fled to this rip in space to protect their home world and in turn were trapped in space concealed by only shadows. The war was over and for the first time the war had brought the Shadows and Vorlons together, but this did not last long. For a few years later the Minbari became space bearing and found that space travel was shorter with hyperspace. The Shadows really did not care where we ventured as long as we stayed away from Alpha Omega 3 in Sigma 1257."

Jake is trying to follow alone with the story, "What is in Sigma 1257?"

Delenn takes in another deep breath and pauses, Jake sits there waiting for the reply and begins to gather the ideas the Sigma 1257 must be a very bad place. As Delenn looks at Jake she says the name in a dry tone. "Z'ha'dum—the once alive and lush green home world of the Shadows. We obeyed the rules of the Shadows and seek help from the Vorlon instead. The Vorlon Empire was quite secretive about their home world and told us that if any one came to Vorlon they would be destroyed. When we encountered the Centauri Republic we also encountered the Shadows. One of our captains described them as a black spiny ship that screamed in there minds. As it danced in the black veil of space it disappeared like the shadows on a planet after the sun removes its light. As we surveyed the Centauri we were surprised that they too had jump gate technology, but they had to use a stationary device to make the jump. We saw them as a race that was power hungry for they had conquered many planets except one, a lush green planet with marsupial like creatures. They were called Narns and their planet was called the Narn Regime. They were a barbaric race that were strong fighters and worked in slaved one another. We found no interest with the Narn or the Centauri and we left them. The Centauri decided to turn their war efforts against the Minbari, and we slaughtered them back to their planet and delayed the evolution by one thousand years. If we knew that the Centauri were to allied with the Shadows we would have never took our eye off of them. After the Narn came around then came races like the Dilgar, Drazi, and the other non-aligned worlds, but just before the non-aligned races a race was born in this universe 1000 years after the Great War, it was the Humans—they were not that technologically advanced, but then the sector the Human's planet was in was undisturbed by all except for four races, the Liberators, Shadows, Soldiers of Darkness, and the Vorlons. After the Human's became space bearing a race named the Dilgar was selecting a race to experiment on, and the Human race appeared not to be much of an enemy. As much as the Dilgar knew Humans had no allies with other races and mostly with the Shadows or Vorlons, but as I am guessing I just remembered that I left out a universe changing war."

Jake looks at Delenn, he is so amazed on how much the Human race does not know about, and wants to hear the rest of the story, as Jake looks at Delenn he spurts out one word. "What?"

Delenn gets up from the table and walks over to a picture. Jake does not stand up, but instead turns around to see where Delenn is going. As Delenn stops at one painting, it is of a space station surrounded by squid and spider looking vessels, the angel-fish-looking vessels are depicted as being toasted, the spiders are ripping them apart! As Delenn looks back at Jake, she lowers her eyes back to the floor, a sign of submissive in Minbari traditions, but not for Delenn, the memory is just to brutal to recall, as Delenn sums up the power to speak, she gives the titles to the war. "The Great War."

Jake looks at Delenn, just hearing the titles gives Jake the chills, if these wars were as bad as they sounded, they would be in comparence to Earth's World Wars, but 1000 times worse, instead of guns with bullets, we have lasers, spacemines, dirty play and of course the fear of these Shadow things, if they are offspring of the Liberator's and they acted in this Great War, then the results must be disastrous, but what Jake did not know Is that there would not be one Great War, but two Great Wars, 1000 years apart, sort of like the Revelations of the Great Beast and Satan.