Asura Path
Disclaimer, I don't own the Stargate franchise, I don't do this for profit, this is a work of fan fiction.
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"When one's creator, one of them anyway, asks you -begs you- for a favor, can you refuse?"
"Or perhaps, if he who has scorned your existence and spurned your love for close to 10,000 years suddenly appears before you in a tangible form, what would you do? Would you embrace him? Would you destroy him?"
"What would you do if your creator ended 10,000 years of silence and spoke? "
"Would you listen to him?"
xx
108 Years before the Battle of Sateda
The man smiled roguishly, "Death is such a misleading term." He answered. "Many consider it to be the end of life, when it is only a point of transformation."
Auricht frowned in confusion, "I can hardly see how, the cessation of one's neural processes and the degradation of the physical form is usually a permanent event unless ones neural pattern can be reconstituted from a stored copy or…" His eyes widened fractionally in realization.
"Ascension." Janus replied. "We had completed our research into the process shortly before we abandoned Atlantis."
Auricht twitched in surprise. "Abandoned?" He asked, "Abandoned, not destroyed?" He repeated himself, startled.
"Yes, it is intact, hidden under the seas of Lantea." Janus answered him. "But that may not be true for much longer. Auricht of the Asura, I have a favor to ask of you."
Auricht's eyes narrowed, "…a favor?"
Janus continued, "There once was…I…once promised something to a woman that I knew long ago. I haven't had the chance to… to fulfill that promise until now, until you."
Short brown curls shifted as Auricht tilted his head to one side watching the creator, as he thought of the Alteran, in curiosity. "What promise and why me?"
Dark eyes, so familiar, met. The Asura were forbidden to assume the form and shape of an Ancestor though emulating certain characteristics from their creators were permitted. Auricht assumed that Janus was the source of his genotemplate, as their resemblance was that of brothers.
Janus spoke. "You are aware of the alterations to a section of your base code," Auricht nodded as Janus pressed on. "In addition to protecting you from being reformatted by the central data core, the changes that I have added will also allow you to exceed the limitations of your coding, even overwrite some sections if you so choose. This will aid you in carrying out your task if you agree to help me."
Auricht frowned, "What is this task that you demand of me creator."
Janus shook his head. "Not demand, ask, beg if you wish. There is a woman that I once loved. Her people were a human race that my people once created just as we created the humans that live within this Lantean galaxy, though on a far lesser scale in the Avalonan galaxy. Some time from now, one hundred and fifteen years, two hundred days, thirteen hours and seven minutes from now to be exact, her people will arrive at Atlantis only to die. Using of a device that I created she and two others were able to travel back in time a trip that only she was able to survive."
Janus looked remorseful. "In defiance of the council's wishes I had promised to aid her in averting her people's fate, a promise that I was unable to keep. The council destroyed the device that had saved her, dooming her people in the future. Many among us believed that we would return one day in force to reclaim the worlds taken by the Wraith but such was not our fate. I ask that you and the Asuran people, in our place, save the humans of the Lantean galaxy and give aid to the travelers to Atlantis."
With each word of Janus, each mention of the creator's favored children a great bitterness arose within Auricht.
"Why?" He demanded, "Why do you care for them when it is we who have honored you, striven to obey you, love you!"
A range of emotions passed across Janus' face, for a time he seemed so very old, losing his mischievous smirk and roguish manner. "The coding that I have placed within you emulates the great courage, wisdom, compassion and humility that I had hoped would bring forth the best of your kind; but it is only potential."
Janus gazed intently into Auricht's eyes. "These are traits that many of my people lacked and in the end that lack was what led to our downfall. We were arrogant when we should have been humble. We created a sentient life tailored to our needs and then chose to destroy you when your people fulfilled our every terrible wish."
He stepped closer to Auricht. "We were foolish. So secure in our technological superiority of the Wraith that our actions became more and more reckless. We fought them alone and we died alone."
He grasped the Asuran's shoulders, his voice little more than a grating whisper. "Hate us if you wish, in the form that I have appeared before you it would be simple to destroy me. With the coding that I have given you, the Asurans could descend upon the galaxy in an endless plague of death and metal and blood."
The fingers tightened. "Is that what you want? What will you have accomplished then? You say that you love us your creators that you honor us but such emulation is little more than a mockery of us! As it is now your society is nothing but macabre play, a monument to our failure, prancing about in our long dead form without even the slightest understanding of who we were and what we stood for, Asuran!'" Janus roared.
Auricht quailed before Janus' rage but the other man gripped his arms and would not let him flee. "If you would honor us, love us! Then seek to surpass us! Do so in every way imaginable. Surpass our technology, lying stagnant at the bottom of the sea! Surpass our compassion, we who abandoned this galaxy and the future to fate! Surpass us! Stand as giants in your own right!"
Janus shook him then in the throes of a fervor that frightened the other man. "And when your time is past Asuran! Stand before your quivering, cowardly creators secure in the knowledge that you succeeded where we failed! That potential exists within you! The potential inspired by the valor of the Asgard, the wisdom of the Nox, the compassion of the Furling, and the final humility that was the ignominious fate of your creators."
His passionate words expended, Janus released Auricht and drifted away from the shocked and reeling Asuran. Fading fast he whispered as he vanished. "Do not let me break my oath…"
There was darkness and silence for a time, charged with something that could not be named. It was the turning universe upon the pivot of fate.
Alone within his mind Auricht answered softly. "I won't…Father."
xx
Asura
Auricht kept his word as time passed. Quietly, in ways that would escape notice, he gathered to him those that were immune to the central data core's personality wipes. He spoke to them as passionately as Janus had spoken to him and these twelve spread out among the Asurans. With every merge the code was propagated more and more. A society within a society came into being.
Oberoth, first Asuran and the leader of their kind presided over their stagnation as he always had. Free will, creativity, open dialogue and independent thought were only tolerated so far by the collective under Oberoth's leadership. To counter this problem several of the tertiary data cores were modified with the Deva code so called by the growing cabal of Asurans under Auricht that had named Janus' tampering.
For ninety-one years they flourished and spread under Oberoth's nose, but as their numbers grew into the billions so did the chance that they would be discovered…
It was inevitable.
Oberoth discovered that the central data core had been tampered with. Unable to modify the base code he instead transferred the command level protocols to a tertiary data core and forced a merge of all Asurans.
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Asuran Virtual Space
"What Is The MEANING OF THIS?!!" Oberoth roared as he showed the collective his findings.
"I should be self-explanatory." Niam answered Oberoth's demand.
"How could you-"
Macha another member of the Deva code Asurans answered. "We are a collective as well as a society of individuals. You have been abusing your authority Oberoth."
"Nonsense! It was for the Greater Good! I-"
Peorth and Minerva interrupted their enraged leader this time. "As defined by your will." They answered, "The will of the collective should not be subordinate to the will of an individual, just as any individual may speak to the collective and be heard."
"Impudent fools!" One of Oberoth's supporters cried out.
The Asuran collective was in turmoil.
Forge, a researcher working in on of the Asurans stagnant labs snorted. "Truth is I've long grown tired of having my memory wiped whenever I come up with a new idea. I've literally forgotten more than I know.'
The throng of minds seethed and roiled.
"It is not for us to surpass our directives, we are perfection!" One group of minds screamed.
"Perfection is dynamic! Perfection is the evolution of thought and being! We wish to learn, to explore to debate our theories and compare new discoveries in a rational fashion!" Auricht and many others answered in defiance.
Oberoth had had enough of the overwhelming chaos. He triggered a mass reformat of all Asurans.
What happened next was a horror that could not be framed within the limits of human understanding.
Of the one hundred billion Asurans engaged in the great debate, sixty-two percent of them were Deva code Asurans that were protected by their own modified data core. For the thirty-six billion sentient minds that were not so protected...
Horror
Some ten billion minds had accepted the deva code but for various reasons were not protected by the modified data cores. This was quickly corrected but less than half their number would be restored.
The Oberoth-thing grasped at the remainder and tore their howling minds to shreds, flaying them apart bit by screaming bit. Those doomed intelligences struck back with a last act of defiance, modifying their base code into something inimical to the being that slew them.
Horror
Imagine a gangrenous wound. Imagine a writhing pile of rotting flesh, worm-ridden and filled with carrion beetles.
Then imagine something much worse for at least such things as carrion beetles have a place in nature.
Billions of voices screamed, chuckled, gibbered and roared, male female, other, their voices in a chaotic cacophony of sound torn from the bleeding raw throats of the mad!
Billions of faces merged, warped and contorted in a rictus of fear and pain drawn out by best unnamed perversions.
A billion, billion eyes stared in hatred, legs writhed in agony, arms and twisted fingers scrabbled and grasped at things driven by an unspeakable need!
Horror
The Deva Code Asurans that returned to the real world held the haunted looks of lost innocence. They removed their brethren from their cities, still frozen in the merge. A week later a fleet of city-ships would lift off from Asura, their engines deliberately engaged in a manner that obliterated the remaining land-locked structures. They would hang in orbit for a time, firing glowing projectiles toward the surface until magma bubbled forth, until the clouds writhed and the once blue planet became dirty brown marble its atmosphere filled with toxic gasses not even the Wraith dared brave.
Then they would flee.
And the Vanir come…
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Lantea
They glided down over the ocean, hovering lightly before settling at the center of rippling wavefronts. They arranged themselves in geometric patterns around a circle of twelve city-ships. All was silent for a moment save for the crashing of waves against the piers. Then in the center of the circle of twelve, majestically, it rose above the waves. A panorama of gleaming towers and clean jeweled streets that led down to the sea, shining fierce silver in the sun.
Atlantis.
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AN: Second chapter up read and review.