A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 1 : Learning How to Live

Gareth D. Williams A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 5 : Among the Stars, like Giants. Part 1 : Learning How to Live

Chapter 1

The Alliance had been shaken in 2262, the Drazi Conflict representing its first real test since the end of the Shadow War, but ultimately it had held. The union of the Blessed Delenn and General John Sheridan, the Shadowkiller, kept the disparate Alliance together through months that were largely marked by peace and optimism. The completion of the Babylon 5 space station at the end of the year was meant to mark a new beginning for the galaxy.

And it did, although not in the way anyone could have foreseen. Babylon 5 comes later, though. The early weeks and months of 2263 were distinguished by activity elsewhere, by a slow building of forces, by steadily burning tensions.

And by the continued absence of Primarch Sinoval.

NEY, S. E. (2295) The Birth of a New Dream. Chapter 1 of The Rise and Fall of

the United Alliance, the End of the Second Age and the Beginning of the

Third, vol. 4, The Dreaming Years. Ed: S. Barringer, G. Boshears, A. E. Clements, D. G. Goldingay & M. G. Kerr.

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And at the same instant, they all woke up.

They were spread out across the galaxy; rich people, poor people, powerful people, helpless people. They were the people who shaped the galaxy, in one form or another.

And they all woke up at the same time.

Londo Mollari awakes from a dream he can remember now, wet tears on his face. He is a young man again, standing alongside Marrago and Urza and Dugari and Malachi and so many others. He is boasting in the way that only a young man can, and the others are agreeing with him. 'I am going to be Emperor one day,' he says, and they laugh. And then he looks up at the throne, and Refa is there, nailed to it by his own kutari. And then he looks back and sees Dugari covered with blood, coughing up more blood with each breath and taking those awful cough tablets of his which are covered with blood. And he looks back and he sees Marrago is not here any more, and Urza is dead and Malachi is dead and they are all dead except him and only his enemies are left, and Cartagia raises a mocking toast to say 'I won' and Elrisia combs out her long beautiful hair and Kiro plays an open flame across his fingers and it does not burn him and Mariel and Daggair laugh and plot and Morden is behind them all, smiling as he always does and saying, 'You owe me a favour, Emperor or Minister or peasant or wanderer, you owe me a favour and a man must always pay what he owes.'

And Emperor Londo Mollari II wakes up, carefully, so as not to wake Timov, and he goes to a window and looks out over the many lands of his domain.

Dexter Smith awakes from a dream. He was poor once, born in a slum of lost hopes and dead dreams to a mother who barely spoke to him and a father he never knew. Now he is a Senator, a man of importance, a man who is known and respected, a war hero, a champion of the people. But in his dreams he sees green eyes fill with blood as he kills her again and again and each time he hears the voices blaming him.

And Senator Dexter Smith wakes up and lies in his bed for many hours until dawn comes and he has things to do that will make him forget.

David Corwin awakes from a dream he does not want to remember. He cannot move, or think, or even remember his name. All he can do is scream, and there are so many people walking directly in front of him, Susan and Lyta and Mary and John and Delenn and Carolyn and none of them can see him or hear him and he is left to scream alone, the sounds echoing in his mind.

And David Corwin, once a captain but no longer, wakes up to the sensation of the sun on his face, but it is so cold and the sky is full of dust and the water is full of mud and his waking brings him no joy.

Talia Winters, who has more names than friends, awakes from a dream in which she is with her family. Abby is there, and Al, and they have more children, and she isn't wearing gloves, and she has only the one name, but she cannot remember what it is, and everyone is calling her different names.

And Talia Winters, who takes several minutes to remember that that is her name, wakes up and goes to check on her daughter. They have been apart for far too long and she will not let them be parted again.

Satai Kats awakes from a dream where she is in a circle of light, but she is not screaming and she is not afraid and as she touches Kozorr's hand and says the words she is bidden to say, she can feel herself crying, but in a good way. The sun is touching Kozorr's face, and he is looking up into it, unafraid of the light.

And Satai Kats wakes up and touches the necklace around her neck, the last thing he was making for her before he died, his last effort at a life where he created rather than destroyed. It is strangely warm to her touch.

Delenn of Mir awakes from a dream like many others she has had. It is not something she wishes to recall, but she hears that heartbeat echoing from stone and metal always, whether waking or sleeping.

And Delenn of Mir, the most powerful person in the galaxy, rolls over in her oddly horizontal bed and reaches for the person who should be there, but he is not, and she feels the cold where his warmth should be and she lies still for a long time.

And they all wake up and they all remember the same thing. Some recall the dreams, some do not, but in that one instant of half-slumber, half-memory, when what is real and what is not become blurred, a moment that Susan Ivanova would call the 'Hour of the Wolf', they all have one image burned into the back of their minds.

A pair of dark eyes and a fearsome voice saying one word.

'Remember.'

But most of them forget.

* * *

There are more of them than people think, out there in space. They are the ancients, the forgotten, beings who walked the stars at the dawn of time. Mortals call them 'the First Ones' but they do not understand what it is they have named. They do not understand what it means to walk among the stars like giants, to look down at the younger races, at the mortals, beings little more than ants.

They have been forgotten now, largely. The Shadows and the Vorlons chose the twin paths of helping and aiding the younger races and the others.... they have gone, hidden, pursuing their own concerns, inhabiting their own floating cities and dead tombs. For countless millennia they have stood aloof from the rest of the galaxy.

Things change.

There is a world that no outsider has been to in tens of thousands of years. It has no name that anyone can know. The people who live there are forgotten and unknown. It is a world of cities crafted of air and rivers flowing among the skies. It is a world of hazy mists and whispered memories.

No ship has left that world for a very, very long time.

Until now.

It rises from the greatest city on the world, floating upwards on wings of water. As it leaves the atmosphere, the wings fold up and engines come to life.

And the First Ones' ship makes for a secret destination, far away from the worlds of the younger races. They have been apart from the galaxy for far too long. It is now time for them to return. There is one last piece of business for them to attend to.

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