I do not own Mythic Ocean. Paralune does.

Chapter published October 6 2020.

As long as they accepted, they would find the moths patient and supportive.

Histarlin

RING! RING! RI -

She smashed a tentacle down on the alarm, silencing it.

With a yawn, she woke up and stretched. She reached her arms to the ceiling, the pair of reaving arms on her back out to the sides, and her four long, spindly tentacle legs out as far as she could.

Ugh. Another day. Couldn't it wait?

... no, it couldn't.

With a groan, she got out of her nook in the walls and stood, stretching. She almost headed out the door, but then caught herself. Bathing. Right. She had to get herself cleaned. She took a left and into her chambers' shower. The doors shut behind her automatically, and she spoke up. "Begin morning shower."

"Beginning morning shower," the gray, cubical room's announcer parroted.

Then she closed her large, brown eyes and grunted as, from various nozzles embedded in the wall, hot soapy water began to forcefully spray over her. The jets took turns alternating on and off, making sure to get her legs, her stomach, her back, underneath the white bone of her reaving arms, everywhere. Tiles slide aside and spinning brushes emerged on long robotic arms, which she allowed to rub over her smooth, brown scales to clean them off.

The arms retracted, and new arms emerged. She opened her mouth and let them brush her teeth; first her front row of venom-filled fangs, then her back row of molars.

"Dry," she commanded. The air around her turned into a whirling, searing cyclone for a few brief seconds, sucking the moisture from her body. She brought up a mirror and spent some time styling the tentacles sprouting from her head back into her favored ponytail, then left the shower.

Histarlin reached out with a tendril leg, and grabbed her personal computing tablet from where she'd left it lying on the ground from the night before. She brought it in, transferred it into her hands, and sheathed her claws and forearm spikes so she could begin tapping along it.

It seemed she was, as her alarm had hinted, on the clock today. She was needed on the surface. She had business all the way through to lunch, then a meeting of some kind at dinner. Her assistant would have the rest of the details.

Her stomach growled. Right, she needed to eat. She could find something on the way there; she didn't keep any food at home, even though she kept telling herself she should.

Histarlin tucked her tablet under her arm and headed for the door. It slid open automatically, and she crawled out on her long tentacles into the streets of Traka, the capitol of the planet. The city was made of a vast array of smoothly-carved underground tunnels, connecting many individual chambers together not unlike the nests dug by some species of insects. Metal tentacle-holds sprouted from every angle of the tunnels, and even as Histarlin watched, she saw many fellow hevaron using them to clamber around the sides or even the tops of the tunnels. Some of them formed groups to travel, but many others traveled alone.

She did the latter; once there was nobody too close for comfort she set out, following the sign posts to head higher and higher, closer to the surface of Xarax. There was little to distinguish the landmarks as she climbed. Just a slight rise in the air temperature, slightly colored different signs, and -

Grrrrggggrlll

Right, she'd forgotten to eat.

She took a right and headed into some rinky-dink little diner, with pale blue electric lights lining the floor and ceiling. She had a quick meal of lichen-covered fruits, and paid for it with her generous government salary. She sat and ate in a forgettable chair while forgettable patrons milled around her. The food tasted weird, and swallowing it felt doubly weird, but it made the hollow, sucking sensation in her stomach vanish and be replaced by a refreshing fullness, so she put up with it.

While there, Histsarlin also drank enough water to drown herself. She got up and left, walking out the open doorway -

Thud

- and ran face-first into another hevaron. She hissed and backed off, flicking her reaving arms out to their full length. The stranger did the same, extending his claws to boot. "Why don't you watch where you're going?!" she snarled.

"How about you open your damn eyes, huh?" he snapped back, lifting a tentacle and pushing her in the chest with it. "People exist outside of your own little high-and-mighty bubble."

She bristled, making the spines along her forearms stick back up sharply. What was this piece of shit thinking, couldn't he see that she was -

She deflated. No, of course he couldn't. He had no idea who she was just by looking at her, of course not. So she relaxed her limbs and gritted her fangs together. "Sorry, sir," she spat, stepping around him.

"Yeah, I'm sure you are!" he called out after her, shaking his head.

Well, at least it hadn't descended into a fight. Though she would've loved to put a claw or two through his skull, and would've in the good old days, she had better to do.

She continued her journey up to the surface. Soon the houses and stores lining the cavern pockets gave way to offices and palatial rises. Then, even further up, to rows upon rows of elevator tubes to make the rest of the journey. With nobody else by her, thank goodness, she pushed her way into one and pressed the button for the surface. The doors shut, and the metal hexagon beneath her began to rise, taking her up and up and up. Her ear-holes popped.

The door opened and she stepped out, now on the surface of Xarax.

Immediately around her was the hustle and bustle of countless hevaron workers doing their jobs. She saw them operating heavy construction equipment that levitated metal pillars across wide-open areas, or adjusting glass panes in the massive greenhouse panels above her, or even just hovering in groups over a hologram, poking and prodding and spinning it around. There were moths doing the same jobs, too; they were giant, green-winged, arthropod-esque things that flew as easily through the vacuum of space as through an atmosphere, not that Xarax made much distinction between the two.

The elevator led to the inside of a massive greenhouse dome, and the moment she stepped forward her tentacles sank into a patch of lichen. The air around her was humid, nearly drizzling. Countless pipes all around her sprayed a fine, barely perceptible mist into the air as they pumped water up from the depths of Xarax's caves. The stuff beneath her legs was grayish-green, heavily leaning towards green, and it seemed to be just... growing everywhere.

It was warm, too. Unconscionably warm. It made Histarlin snarl and wriggle her legs anxiously. The culprits were obvious; the aforementioned greenhouse encircling this part of the surface, made of neosteel girders and reinforced glass panes to trap incoming light. It encased the area around her in a massive dome, but outside she could see construction going on to expand the greenhouse in slow, steady leapfrogs.

Outside the greenhouse's dominion were the desolate wastes of Xarax, all stone and craters as far as the eye could see. Beyond the horizon was the tapestry of space, aglow with the blues and reds of the nebula that surrounded the planet. Far above her was their star Oblivon, which was little more than a painfully blue speck of light she couldn't stand to look at for more than a few moments these days. People worked even in that desolate, radiation-scoured environment, with hevaron donning protective suits and moths simply enduring it with their incredible resilience as they worked to expand the greenhouse over Xarax's surface.

Alright, where do I need to go? she thought. She froze, then pulled her tablet out to look it up. Stupid little thing. She didn't like how dependent she was on it for every tiny little detail of her life. But it couldn't be helped. There were places to go, speeches to give, bugs to meet.

That nobody down in the city might not've recognized her, but the people working up here did. Hevaron scrambled to get out of her way, whispering to each other, while one man strode up to her and dipped his head in greetings. His head-tentacles were let down loosely, reaching to his shoulders, and his large eyes were the same gray as the irradiated rocks outside the greenhouse's reach.

"Miss Histarlin, welcome. You've got an inspection at section 75-N in just a few minutes, so let's walk and talk."

"Let's." She began striding towards 75-N, and her assistant fell into step alongside her. Histarlin allowed herself a little smile; maybe she wasn't as dependent on her tablet as she feared.

"... a review of Alethea's newest nutrient delivery system after that. That shouldn't take up too much time, and after that you're free till dinner. But after that you've got a meeting with Lutra."

She froze. "Lutra?"

"Yes. Makeup." He began dabbing some kind of awful brown sludge along her scales, not at all the thin powder that humans and such used. If her shower had made her scales shine, this cream turned them into iridescent pebbles as it slid off her body. Beautiful, but itchy.

"Go back to what you said about Lutra. My calendar said I was to be meeting with a representative of the moth collective over dinner."

"Yes, and that representative is Lutra itself. It wanted to get a ground's-eye view of the situation on Xarax."

"Cancel it," she said automatically, her claws threatening to burst from her fingertips. "I cannot handle a meeting with Lutra."

He shook his head. "Sorry, I can't. Lutra itself insisted. You'll just have to bite the bullet."

"Damn it," she swore. "Do I at least have anything after that?"

He shook his head again. "Nothing, the rest of the night is free."

Histarlin rolled her eyes. "Well at least there's that," she muttered. "Alright, let's get to the inspection. That's not a total waste."

Section 75-N was relatively close to the borders of the greenhouse, but far enough away that it'd been well established and had been growing food for some months now. She could even recognize some of the food, in its unprocessed forms, as some of the fruits and parts of the salads she liked to eat. Several hevaron technicians were at work here, overseeing the sprinklers and humidifiers and the giant, pole-mounted lights.

It was fairly routine. Ask some questions from the foreman, run some scans on the infrastructure, run some more scans on the plants being grown. She half-slept through it, because it was all the sort of menial, drivel tasks that she shouldn't have to do. She remembered when they had robots to do all this stuff for them, to maintain all their infrastructure for them and let hevaron work more important tasks like piloting starships, catching and selling slaves, or expanding their once-vast empire. What was she doing here? Why was she sullying her claws with this work?

Because there are no robots, she remembered. There are no slaves, and there is no empire.

The inspection went off without a hitch and, through gritted fangs, she gave the workers congratulations and keep-it-ups before turning around. What was next?

Right, the nutrient delivery thing the goddess Alethea had devised. It'd gone through Q&A and was just waiting for her to review and sign off on its use on Xarax. She turned to her assistant. "Alright, where's Alethea's tech?"

He checked his tablet. "It's waiting for you on Supremacy Station. I've already arranged a shuttle for you, it's waiting..." He checked again. "... right this way, ma'am."

"Right. Supremacy Station." Just the word rankled on her tongue. Supremacy Station. What a gods-damnable insult.

She followed her assistant away from the sound of drills and constructors, away from the glass panels until they were near the tightly-packed center of the above-ground areas. Sure enough, there was a private shuttle waiting for her, hovering softly in midair by way of four antigravity disks along its bottom, which puttered quietly. It was big enough for twenty of her people, and the rounded top had wide windows to let her sight-see.

The doors on the left and right opened automatically, unhinging upwards to let Histarlin and her nameless, interchangeable assistant climb in. The rounded seats were made of dark blue plastic, with hooks around the bottom for them to grip with their tentacles. She crawled in first and made herself comfortable, and her assistant closed the seat behind her.

The windows flickered with static, transforming into screens. On the other side was a moth's face, peering across at her with a curious glint in its disgusting bug eyes. It didn't make any actual sound, but whatever device it was holding on its end picked up on its telepathy and projected it into the shuttle.

"Hevaron ones in shuttle. Leaving planet. Why?"

She scowled. Ugh, she'd almost forgotten about this. "I am Administrator Histarlin, on a visit to Supremacy Station to approve what I am to understand is the goddess Alethea's newest in the line of nutrient delivery systems. Afterwards I am to meet with - " She forced down the urge to vomit. " - Lutra over dinner."

The moth tapped something out of her view with its forelegs, then nodded. "This one sees one named Histarlin is to travel to great ship-made-station. Approval is granted. Good days are wished."

The transmission ended, and the screens turned back to normal windows. With a thrum the shuttle lifted higher off the ground, and shot forward on autopilot. Histarlin sighed and leaned back in her seat, scraping her reaving arms across the furniture. Her head lolled about and she ended up staring through the window as they traveled. She saw them approach a metal hexagon lodged in the greenhouse, which opened up to reveal an airlock. They shot through with the sort of grace only automation could provide, and soared into space.

Xarax had little to no atmosphere to speak of, outside the greenhouses, so there was no turbulence as they left the gravity well. Histarlin got a glimpse of her world as they turned towards Supremacy Station; a smooth ball of mottled shades of gray, covered in craters and scoured by radiation. There must've been a billion like it in the galaxy, but it was their world, they'd managed to evolve in its caves against all odds, took to the stars even as the universe itself sought to kill them.

They should've been the ones who won the war.

The shuttle coasted through the nebula with ease, maintaining a safe distance from the neutron star that the planet orbited. Xarax receded into the distance, and if she could've magnified her vision she could've seen it the entire trip but, as it was, soon the planet was entirely out of sight.

They sailed away from Oblivon, off towards deep space, and after a few minutes spent in tense silence with her assistant their destination finally materialized in the distance; Supremacy Station. Once the flagship of their empire's space force, an unbelievably powerful mothership of unrivaled firepower, it'd been deweaponized and repurposed into a station at the edge of their territory, to coordinate travel to and from interstellar space. It was shaped like a great many cubes of salt stuck together in a shape that vaguely resembled a torus, with a ships and service vessels crawling over it like insects. Here and there she saw, fluttering through space, a swarm of moths, as easily at home in vacuum as on a planet.

Histarlin scowled, baring her fangs at them.

Sailing smoothly, they approached one of Supremacy's gargantuan docks, embedded into the cubical segments as though a god had come down and scooped a ragged, uneven chunk out of it. Wedged in alongside many other ships, in the design of many other species, they puttered over to a relatively small platform and came to a rest.

The doors opened automatically, and she was the first out, furiously lashing her reaving arms at the air around her. Her assistant hung well back to avoid being cleaved. Her fingers trembled and each step she took she was ready to lash out with her tentacles and strangle one of the many, shorter aliens around her. Aliens who no doubt made their homes among stars her people used to own.

"Alright, where's this nutrient system for me to review?" she asked, stopping at an intersection.

Her assistant tapped along his tablet. "Right this way, miss," he said, turning down a corridor lined with languidly blinking lights. "It's being held in a private conference room."

They walked through the station, going up elevators and down stairs. They passed all sorts of aliens as they did; squishy humans milling about in groups, avian midarians hopping around, aquatic turlacs clanking around in water-filled suits, and more. The walls faded from an even white into a myriad of other colors, covered in painted mosaics displaying various scenes from different worlds. Not a one from their own world. There were windows, too, oriented towards the vacuum of space. Security teams waited at intersections, and auto-restaurants sat nestled into nooks in the walls, bustling with patrons.

Eventually the crowds thinned out, the painted walls returned to sterility, and judging by all the stairs they'd gone up they were near the top and middle of the station. She was led to a pair of sealed double-doors which, sensing her presence, slid open to reveal the room with -

- ugh, there was an alien in there too.

She looked over the creature first. He was a human man, dressed in a cross between ceremonial garb and a lab coat; dark blue, but wavy and ruffled and designed with yellow circuitboards. Near his waist it blossomed outward like a skirt, or a gown, and its entire surface was littered with little pockets. Pens, pencils, calculators, tablets, chargers, more and more equipment the longer she looked. The human himself was... rather unremarkable. She didn't have the ability to tell them apart very well; his hair was... black? Skin more brownish than usual? Damn it, she was going cross-eyed just looking at him.

The device resting on the long hovertable in the middle of the room was easier to focus on. It looked, at first glance, like a bunch of old PVC pipes put together into a square and painted blue. But looking closer she could see yellow nozzles on the inside, leading into honeycomb-like ends.

"Administrator Histarlin," he said as the door closed behind her. "Greetings. I am Father Danora, servant of my Lady Alethea. I am pleased to present to you our latest in the line of scalable nutrient distribution systems, the Aerolizing Atmospheric Condensation Replicator. AACR, or as we call it, Acre."

"Fascinating," she deadpanned.

"Would you like a demonstration?" he asked. He reached into one of his innumerable pocket and pulled out a small, black, handheld remote covered in buttons.

She held up both a hand and a tentacle leg. "I have every confidence that something designed by Alethea - "

"Lady Alethea."

She growled and her reaving arms unfolded from her back, their blades of bone schwiniging against each other. Histarlin bared her fangs, and the puny human cowered back under her strained smile. "Yes. Lady Alethea. I have every confidence her invention was tested rigorously and functions perfectly. Simply explain what it is and I can sign off the confirmation."

He gulped nervously. "R-Right, of course. The Acre model is compatible with all nutrient tanks and systems. It features miniaturized pumps that forces liquid and gas and even paste through the yellow tubes there, where the contents are then aerolized and ejected into the atmosphere. Coverage is extensive and can be modified easily. You can also ch-change location of delivery by just adjusting the tubes."

"Power?"

"Self-powered. The blue coating is a solar paint, efficient enough that even the small bits of light Oblivon releases are sufficient for a square this size."

She smiled, sweetly, but kept her reaving arms open. "I see. Fascinating." She lifted her tablet and waved it. "Send me the approval document."

"Right away," he said hurriedly, grabbing his own tablet from a pocket further down his robes. He swiped along its surface, and an electronic document appeared on Histarlin's own device.

She quickly tapped along its surface, signed her name, and then nodded. "Pleasure doing business with you, Father." Without waiting for a response, she turned away and addressed her assistant. "I am free until dinner, yes?"

He nodded. "You are indeed. The meeting is in the upper repository; would you like me to send you the details and leave you for the day?"

"Please do." They stepped out of the room and let the door close behind them.

He swiped from his tablet in her direction, and dipped his head in a bow. "Pleasant day, Miss Histarlin," he said, then began striding away.

Then she was alone, with nothing left to do but dread the meeting with Lutra. The all-powerful moth who - if its church was to be believed - had created the entire universe, fully formed, in one great act of Last-Thursdayism. The sole, unquestionable leader of the Collective, and every species that belonged to the alliance. Including her own.

What could it possibly want with her?

She had a few hours to stew on it, so she figured she may as well wait close to the venue and surf the net in the meantime. Refresh herself on the going-ons outside Oblivon. Fortunately she was still in the relatively empty part of Supremacy Station, and the few people who were here were important and self-absorbed enough to pay her no mind. She found a corner and leaned into it, skimming the news on her tablet.

Not a lot had happened since yesterday. There was some hubub between the Neo-Religious groups of the northern galactic rim. Vitra and its brood were getting closer to the Somnambu galaxy, and everyone was all excited about the first intergalactic moth expansion. Politicians from the major Collective species getting into disputes, humiliating themselves, playing underhanded games in an attempt to avoid dragging the moths into their problems and getting a harsh reprimand. Moths this, moths that. Moths, moths, moths.

She meandered around. Got a quick lunch at some out-of-the-way store in the form of a fruit cup. While eating she double-checked the time and place she was set to meet Lutra; an open-dome pavilion near the top of Supremacy Station, far away from the artificial gravity generators that marked its 'bottom'. A high-society restaurant enclosed in a dome of reinforced glass to give the appearance of floating in the vacuum of space. Something that wouldn't have actually been dangerous to her if... if Lutra and the moths had just - !

Histarlin sighed, folding her reaving arms back against her back from where they'd schwung open. It didn't matter.

It was almost time. Even the station's onboard lights were dimming. Steeling herself, Histarlin made her way there.

The Supreme View was staffed mostly by hevaron. A few alien waiters moved around inside the restaurant itself, but it was one of her own kind that greeted her at the marble pillars that defined the entryway.

"Administrator Histarlin," she said simply as she strode up to her. "I have a meeting with..."

The hostess nodded and checked her tablet. "... with Lutra, yes. Right this way, ma'am." She turned and led Histarlin inside, and she reluctantly followed, her stomach churning and the spikes in her forearms prickling with the urge to unsheathe. They ducked through the entryway and... oh wow.

Space stretched around her. Stars sparkled in the distance, and the vast darkness was aglow with the light of Oblivon's multicolored nebula. From this vantage point she couldn't see any of the ships coming and going, nor any of the metal space station underneath her. She couldn't even see the glass dome around her. Just darkness in all directions, illuminated by the glowing strips of light beneath her legs. There was a small waterfall in the corner, and a garden in the other.

Tables made of malleable plastic, designed for all manner of alien physiologies, dotted the area, mostly unoccupied. But she was led away from all of those, to the right, along a narrow path of silver and steel that terminated behind a wall of frosted one-way glass, with sweet-smelling flowers lining the way. The hostess stopped right before it and turned to her. "Enjoy your stay, ma'am."

"I doubt it," she mused as she was left alone. Histarlin took a deep breath, calmed her nerves, and strode behind the glass.

It'd been frosted on one side to preserve the nook's privacy, but once she was on the other side it was all but invisible. And there, in the center of the private room, was Lutra.

Hevaron were tall as far as sapient life went; nearly twice as tall as a human. Moths were even larger, longer than she was tall. And Lutra was the biggest moth of all, a time and a half the size of any of the others. It stood upright on four of its legs, leaving the front two propped on the ground like stilts. The divine moth's wings, broad and blue-green like all of its kind, rested on its back in a way that just nearly hid the bright yellow eyespots on them. Its giant bug-eyes were on her in an instant, and even from so far away she could feel the vast power held within its shell, filling the air with ozone as though lightning had struck.

"Lutra," she said tightly. "Greetings."

Its voice came into her head, louder and stronger than any other moths' telepathy. Not quite shouting, but like a bellowing giant had lowered its voice to a whisper so as not to deafen her. ((ADMINISTRATOR ONE ARRIVES. GREETINGS ENSUE. THIS ONE BECKONS ADMINISTRATOR ONE TO SIT AND EAT.))

"Thank you." Stiffly she walked over to the table and sat down in midair. A seat rose beneath her, and she wrapped her four tentacles around the underside, squeezing tightly.

Lutra gnashed its mandibles together, looking down at her from where it sat. ((TENSENESS. FEARFULNESS. ADMINISTRATOR ONE HAS NOTHING TO FEAR. THIS ONE WANTED CLOSER VIEW OF HOW XARAX FOOD-GROWING IS.))

"I see. Well, the greenhouses - "

It held up a limb. ((FIRST, EATING. SHARING THOUGHTS IS EASIER WITH NO HUNGER THOUGHTS.))

She nodded. "Very well." Histarlin looked down at the table, where two flaps had slid open to reveal a touchscreen; one for her, and one for Lutra. They ordered food in silence, and soon their meals came hovering in on drones; a salad for her, and a salad for Lutra that seemed to be made of some kind of strange, bulbous purple fronds. She ate carefully and delicately, keeping an eye on the way the moth tore the plants apart and devoured them. Hard to believe, with how easily they could rip flesh from bone, that the moths were herbivores.

Not that it was too surprising. Hevaron were herbivores, too.

Once she was done, she washed her meal down with a glass of water and pushed the bowl away, no less tense for having some good food in her. Histarlin crossed her arms, claws quivering in their sheathes. "So. You wanted to know how the greenhouses are going?"

((AGREEMENT,)) it said, still feasting. Lutra was on its fifth bowl, and each one was substantially larger than her own, too.

"They are progressing quite nicely." She tapped along her tablet for last week's reports. "Section 82-A was completed the day before yesterday, putting us at three percent coverage. Brawls are also down ten percent from last quarter."

It nodded. ((HAPPINESS. SATISFACTION. THIS ONE IS GLAD TO SEE HEVARON VIOLENCE GOING DOWN. BUT.)) Its front-like antennae, which'd been flowing about as if underwater, curled inward. ((THIS ONE STILL HAS WORRY. THAT THERE IS STILL... RESENTMENT.))

"Between our people and yours." She sighed, and look around. "You haven't been to Oblivon in a while."

It tilted its head to the side, compound eyes twinkling brightly. ((BESUMENT. CONFIRMATION. THIS ONE HAS NOT BEEN TO GREAT SHIP-MADE-STATION SINCE WAR.))

The war, she thought. Where you took down Supremacy single-handedly, without breaking a sweat. "It's hard," she said. "Many of us... I'm still not used to this body." She flexed her arms, staring as the muscles tensed, the scaly hide moved, the sinews bent. The soft, fragile meat, the dark blood. Nothing at all like the plastic and metal she'd been used to all her life. "It's usually not so bad, back home. I can stop myself from thinking about it most of the time," she whispered solemnly.

Lutra nodded. ((THIS ONE REGRETS THAT HARSHNESS WAS NEEDED, BUT HEVARON PUT MORTAL ONES IN DANGER.))

"I know!" she shouted. Then realization set in; she'd raised her voice to Lutra. Her scales turned to ice and she shrank back. "My... my apologies, Great Lutra. But... it's hard."

It stared at her. ((THIS ONE... FORGIVES. SADNESS. BUT WHAT WAS EXPECTED OF THESE ONES?))

Histarlin grimaced. Her stomach churned again, despite all she'd eaten. "I know. And... I can understand most of it. We went against you, and we lost. I can understand forcing us to follow your rules. I can understand confining us to our homeworld. I can understand dismantling our starfleets. I can even understand making Xarax all... lush and overgrown." Her voice tightened and she clenched her fists. "B-But what I can't understand is... is why you did this to us!" she shouted, gesturing to herself.

Lutra was quiet, and she took that as permission to continue. Not that she could've stopped herself; it'd been roiling around in her ever since that fateful day, building up inside of her like black, putrid filth and now it all came vomiting forth in a geyser as she shook and teared up. "We'd tried so hard to get away from it all and we did! We escaped our flesh, we made those bodies for ourselves and you took them away from us! You made us have to deal with, with being sick, and bleeding, and needing to eat and sleep and drink and you made us get old and die! I-I was going to live forever, i-it was all I'd ever known and you cut me out, you cut us all out, you killed us all! We're still moving around for now but WE ARE DEAD! YOU KILLED ALL OF US!"

With that, Histarlin collapsed into her seat, arms limp on the table. She felt raw, scoured clean, and it wasn't enough because she wanted to fight, she wanted to kill something, but who? How? The only one here was Lutra and that... that wasn't an option.

((THIS ONE HAD TO,)) it said at last, quietly. ((HEVARON ONES WERE NOT NATURAL ANYMORE, NO RESPECT GIVEN TO NATURE. WOULD HAVE MADE ALL WORLDS ARTIFICIAL, HOLLOW, THESE ONES AND MORTAL ONES SLAVES. EVEN WITHOUT SHIPS, WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT, WOULD HAVE BEEN SEPARATE AND WOULD HAVE SEEN SELVES AS BETTER AGAIN. AND... THIS ONE ADMITS, IF HEVARON STAYED ARTIFICIAL, WOULD NOT NEED THESE ONES TO PROVIDE FOOD.)) It shook its head. ((NO GOOD ANSWER. BUT HEVARON ONES WOULD NEVER LIVE FOREVER. THINGS END, AND NEW THINGS BEGIN.))

"We didn't need to end," she muttered, her fury gone and leaving only ashes behind. "We were clever, and strong, and we'd found a way to avoid having to die before you came along and took it from us."

((DISAGREEMENT,)) it said quietly. ((ALL THINGS END. IF NOT BECAUSE OF THESE ONES, THEN BY OTHERS. WORLD ENDED, BEFORE THIS ONE WAS GIVEN CHOICE.)) It look up at the stars, scanning its many eyes across the heavens. ((THIS ONE THINKS... ALL THINGS WILL END AGAIN SOMEDAY, AND SOME OTHER WILL BE GIVEN CHOICE AGAIN.))

"That's beyond me," she said bitterly. "That's for you and the gods to worry about. We... I had so much time ahead of me, so much to look forward to, and you took it all away." Histarlin sighed, and got up from her seat. "I need to go before I do something I'll regret. Thank you for the meal, Lutra."

((THIS ONE ALLOWS...)) Then it seemed to think better of whatever it was about to say. ((THIS ONE WISHES GOOD DAYS TO ADMINISTRATOR ONE. THIS ONE IS SAD BUT UNSURPRISED TO SEE THERE IS STILL MUCH PAIN IN HEVARON.))

"Thank you," she repeated tensely, already storming away. She pushed past the entrance to the restaurant briskly and, her thoughts a tempest, found a shuttle back to Xarax. Back to her home.

The ride back, she was numb. She could barely even think about the justifications Lutra had given her. The excuses. None of them would give her back what she'd had, all the time she'd lost. Was this really all Lutra had wanted? A status report on its precious greenhouses and to know that her entire species still hated its kind for what they'd done to them? For how low they'd been brought?

She wasn't an idiot. She knew they'd been the aggressors.

... but why had Lutra gone so far?

By instinct, Histarlin tried to access the web and see how long it'd be before she got home. But of course, she couldn't do that anymore. She needed a tablet to do it for her.

Her answer, when she bothered to check, was 'not soon enough'.

She soared through space and landed back on the surface of Xarax, shrouded in greenhouse panels and inflamed with agriculture. Histarlin made her way down through the tunnels, passing more and more of her kind with each step. When she made it back to her flat, carved into the stone tunnels beneath the radiation-blasted surface, she crawled listlessly towards her nook. Then she paused, and walked away from it. She found the nearest window, overlooking Traka city, and stared through it.

Histarlin sighed, her body going limp. She was tired. She'd gone through her day and had her meeting with Lutra, and shouted her rage at it, and all for what? What good did it do? She just felt so hollow.

Tomorrow was another day. Another day of work, another day of checking up on her subordinates. Another day on the grind. Another day of feeling her body ache with the slightest of exertions, another day of feeling herself being hollowed out by hunger and tiredness. Another day of feeling herself slowly dying. Lutra didn't understand. Couldn't understand, because it was immortal, unaging. She'd been like that, too, from the moment she'd been assembled. Lutra would never know how horrible this was.

... maybe that was for the best. She wouldn't wish this on anyone.

Her eyes wandered away from the window and towards the nook she slept in, and the drawers next to it. She reached a tentacle over and, without actually walking towards it, fished out a bottle of pills and dragged it over to her.

Tomorrow was another day. Another day of drifting through the world, breathing but not living. But... she'd get through it. And the next day, and the next, and the next. What other choice did she have? This was her punishment. Her entire species's punishment.

Histarlin popped the bottle open, took one of the pills inside, and placed the whole thing back in its place. With the promise of blissful, dreamless sleep, she curled up in her bedding and fell fast asleep.

If they didn't... they would face Lutra's wrath, and the results would not be pleasant.

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