Ravens of Eternity

459 Crushing Inevitability, Pt The surviving ships of the Specialized Assault Force flashed into orbit around Yggdrasil Station. Everyone aboard seemed to have a pall hanging over their heads, like a deepening shadow. Most were quiet and morose as they angled their ships towards the station itself and entered its widening hangar bays.

Elsewhere, deeper inside the station, a massive council chamber was filled with dozens of people. Some were First Feathers of the Corvus Republic, while others were officers of the Einherjar. The rest were members of the different former nations and organizations and allegiances, such as Imperials or Discordians.

All came to represent their groups, or at least some version of it.

Collectively, they referred to themselves as the Tribes of the End Times. And all were in debate with each other about their sudden and dramatic shift in futures.

Many had shocked or fearful or forlorn faces, unable to come to complete terms with what they had just lost. Especially those who still identified as Einherjar.

“Did you just say 53% of the SAF were annihilated?” Sin asked with utter shock. “And it happened in an instant?”

Halbrecht pursed his lips as he nodded solemnly.

“High Admiral de Jardin was among the casualties,” he said. “Along with her subfleet. One moment, Dreadmother Orsethii and I were holocommed to her bridge, and the next…”

He couldn’t complete what he was trying to say, and choked down his words instead.

.....

A small moment of silence filled the chamber in place of them. To many, she was one of the many ties that bound the Einherjar, and her sudden absence caused everything to loosen and fray.

Sin groaned audibly.

“That’s way too many casualties!” he cried out. “Was it even worth it, huh? Did we even come close to stopping Godeater?”

“The fleet’s efforts resulted in a 14.73% reduction in mirror count,” Raijin replied.

But her response hardly changed Sin’s expression. In fact, he seemed to be even more dejected than before.

“Correct,” added Orsethii. “We were only able to destroy little over a seventh of Godeater’s mirrors before it counterattacked. We can still press our attack. All we need to do is adjust our strategy-”

“It doesn’t matter!” Sin shot back. But before any kind of temper could take over him, he pulled back, breathed out. Though he was still very visibly riled up, he did his best to tamp it down.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said with a calmer disposition. “Just think about it – it took Godeater all of a few seconds to find where our ships were, then another few to wipe them out. All we’d do is get the rest of our fleet – the rest of our people – killed. And for what? What would we accomplish? Another fourteen percent?”

He huffed even as he said those words. Sin simply couldn’t believe their losses.

Of course, all of them already knew something like this was going to happen. Most felt it was an inevitability. One never fought a war expecting to make it back. The only thing that got them back was hope. And also temerity.

Sin simply felt the weight of their dark reality squeezing out the last of what he had left of them.

“We all understood the risk,” Halbrecht said after a moment. “But now isn’t the time to crumble. We’ve so much more to do, and I’m not going to simply give up now. We did do something. We aren’t completely lost. Not everything is bathed in Godeater’s void.

“And I understand if some of the fleet are too shaken to continue. If fighting this thing out there’s too much to bear. I understand if you need to stand down. I can respect that.

“But I don’t think I ever could. Honestly, I’d rather go down like Anali. Even if nothing’s left in the galaxy but me.”

There was a general murmur from around the chamber as others agreed with Halbrecht. Of course, there were also dissenting guffaws from those who agreed with Sin. Although they all came together to fight it out against the dying light, it began to dissolve under the deepening darkness..

“I’m the same,” Orsethii said after a moment. “I was designed to fight, even to the very edges of my abilities. Even if I can’t win. You can ask your Freya for proof, if you want. It’s ingrained deep in me, in many of us. In the High Admiral.

“We showed we could hurt it, and it showed it could hurt us back. Nothing else to see beyond that. Sounds like a regular war to me. So could it end us? Of course. But we can end it, too. Or, at the very least, hold it back.”

“Have you thought that maybe doing all that is ending us quicker, hm?” Sin countered. “That it only struck against the ships only after they fired at it? I mean, for all we know, Godeater’s already aware of where we are at any given time.

“And, and, and – have you maybe thought about maybe not shooting at Godeater? Maybe go try to negotiate with it somehow? Maybe convince it to stop? Have you all tried that? Maybe that way, we won’t lose any of our fleets.”

“How exactly do you propose to do that, hm?” Orsethii hissed. “How would you deal with something we can’t even see? You want us to literally shout out into the void? Don’t you think that all this fighting is literally us doing just that?

“Every cornered animal will bite and scratch and tear whatever it can to prevent being captured or killed. That’s a universal message for the catcher to fall back and rethink.”

“Didn’t exactly work, did it?” asked a man in a frayed Federation uniform. “How much of the galaxy’s in shadow now, hm? Did anything we do even slow it down a smidge?”

Silence filled the chamber once again as the words fell on their ears. Some tried to come to some conclusion, but others already knew what the answer was.

“Nearly half,” Azrael said. “Godeater has taken half the known galaxy. All kinds of planets and people – gone. And yes, at a steady pace from the beginning. Its spreading has been consistent from the moment it sent itself out.

“Although, our attacks have caused momentary pauses in its takeover. Nothing large or long enough to make a real difference.”

There was a collective gasp as Azrael spoke. All knew that it was spreading, but none realized it had reached a massive extent.

And she certainly confirmed many fears – that their actions had done little to curb Godeater’s spread.

“There’s more,” Azrael continued. “I… I just received an alert that all of our Sanctuary Protectorates have been swallowed up by Godeater. Their emergency signals flared out, then… stopped.”

The room erupted in numerous murmurs all around – many also placed their hopes on their settlements as some way to escape the creeping darkness. But those too were quickly neutralized.

A heavy shadow fell on many on realizing the true amount of losses they just suffered.

“D-did anyone get out?” asked a drogar engineer.

“A few were able to lift off before Godeater consumed their planet,” Raijin replied. “I do not have the details, however they are on their way here now. We will know more soon.”

“And yeah, not everyone got out,” Azrael added. “I-I don’t mean to be glum. And I don’t mean to add to the… depression we’re all feeling. But we all need to know what’s happening, and we need to… to weather it. We need to, if we’re going to survive this at all.”

Azrael did her best to lift up everyone’s spirits, but it was tough. She only maybe got through to a few, perhaps those who had sunk deepest. But otherwise, that heavy weight continued to press down over all of them.

Dread and hopelessness seemed to thicken in the air, enough to stifle their breaths.

The fact that both their major attempts to reclaim their futures ended in absolute disaster, in utter annihilation. Despite all their efforts, Godeater had won. Those with the most hope risked themselves bravely, but only met the same bleak end as everyone else.

“We need to think about what we’re going to do next, alright?” Azrael continued. “Godeater’s clearly an intelligent being, or whatever you wanna classify it. I agree with Sin – it probably knows where we are, what we’re doing. Might even know what we’re going to do before we even do it.”

The albino drogar stood up and coughed as she bid for the chamber’s attention.

“There’s more,” Colviss added. “It’s possibly driven by retribution. Let’s consider the fact that it did attack our settlements as punishment for attacking its mirrors. This means it understands loss, and temperance. More importantly, it knows where we are – and didn’t attack until we harmed it.

“So, I say we just hang back from now on. Bide our time. Wait for Godeater to do its thing, then do what we can after.”

“Are you telling me we oughta then just bend over backwards and let ourselves get killed?” Orsethii sneered. “Do nothing as Godeater up and erases our lives, our histories, our… everything?”

“Yes, we bend,” Colviss replied. “We bend or we get erased. The part where we break first? We don’t get that choice.

“To me, Godeater is telling us to sit down and shut up. To take our medicine and weather its storm. Because if it could have just wiped us outright, it could’ve. Godeater could have easily known about the settlements and left them alone. At least until we hit it hard.

“You swipe at me, then I’m gonna swipe back at you. That’s what I’m understanding, anyway.”

Orsethii exhaled deeply as many audibly agreed with Colviss. That perhaps retreating into Yggdrasil was their only option, as they had originally thought from the beginning. But she found it incredibly difficult to accept.

“I agree, and I believe that stopping Godeater is possible,” Raijin interjected. “However, we cannot presume that its nature is the same as our own. We know nothing about it. Nothing solid, in any case.

“After all, we cannot measure it in any way. It transcends the speed of light, which is mostly beyond our collective understanding of our reality. How could we possibly understand anything that exists beyond that?”

Orsethii harrumphed on hearing Raijin’s words. It didn’t matter how truly she spoke, that didn’t change their natures.

“So you’re saying it’s some kind of ultragenius,” she said. “Something beyond all of our current geniuses combined couldn’t hope to fight, right? So what?”

“It doesn’t matter if it is,” Azrael replied. “Our histories are filled with the unknown. Every culture in every species always struggled against them, and persisted through the worst. Godeater isn’t really anything different.

“I think what does matter at this point, is what we can save. Not just people and ideas and whatnot. But animals and plants from across the galaxy. Insects and fungi and everything in between. And maybe we do stay here on Yggdrasil where it’s safe. Even if that means being here for tens of thousands of years.

“We all fight for survival in our own way. I say we continue being ourselves until the end. What else is there to do, you know?”