“You have joined them?” Kelmaran said in disgust…then flinched when he remembered who he was talking to.
“No, but he offered to take us into his empire. We are not worthy of it, and I declined. We are far older than them, and in many ways we are superior. But with that superiority comes a responsibility that we have failed to uphold. We should be their superiors, but we are not. We are inferior, and I will not let that inferiority stand. I must destroy Neofan culture in order to save our race, for unless it is built back up in the lightside, we are as good as dead already. I see that now. You do not. You are blind to our atrocities, our laziness, and our cowardice. The Endgame is upon us, and I will not allow us to stand by and allow others to determine its fate. The Neofan will rise to the challenge and dominate in the war to come, or we will be ground into dust by either our enemies or ourselves. I will not allow the status quo to continue, for we are on the wrong side.”
“How can you say that?” someone else asked, although more respectfully than Kelmaran had.
“I say it because I have a responsibility as Reignor, and I have previous failed you. When I began to learn from my mistakes and adjust course, the Diem betrayed me. I did not see it coming. But I see what is coming now, and we are not ready for it. Star Force will ignite the Endgame war, and succeed or fail, they will draw all darkside races to them. They will come here, and try to destroy everything Star Force has built, and they will run over us at the same time. The Natural Order will be abandoned, and even if Star Force is defeated, all the darkside races will be in the same place at the same time…and our nature will ensure our quick erasure.”
“But I have seen more than this, both in vision and in person. The Endgame has happened before, billions of years ago, and it was completed. A lightside civilization triggered it, and out of it a new race was birthed. One far more advanced than us. A few of them are still alive, and their memories of their beginning make one thing clear. They were spawned by the lifesprings into a galaxy that was devastated. The lightsiders were nowhere to be found, nor were the darksiders. All that was left was rubble, and my vision tells me that this will happen again even if Star Force succeeds in achieving the Endgame. Our mission is not to trigger it, or to stop it. Our mission is to survive it when all other civilizations are destroyed…and the only way we can do that is to work together with our natural allies. The lightside bonds all together. There is no Natural Order to be maintained. And as such, our fate is now intrinsically linked with Star Force’s. We live or die together, and I intend for us to live.”
“I have asked Director Davis for you, and he has given me possession of you to do with as I please. If you choose to embrace the path I put before you, you will return with me to our Temples and begin learning the power of the lightside. If you do not, then you were hereby ordered to travel to the nearest Zotav and leave this galaxy…either into exile or to travel to Yenoiv and beg House Mutavi to take you in. Their anger with me will be so great they might accept you into a reformed House Atriark, but if you choose to go to them you take your chances. If you stay here and oppose me, you will meet your doom, for I will suffer no more delays and treachery. I have seen the path our race must take, and all those who will not walk it must be removed. If I am not swift in making the necessary changes, we will not be ready for the Endgame war, and it could be upon us sooner than even I anticipate, for I do not know what the initial trigger is.”
Plausious looked at all of them, crowded together naked and with looks of horror and relief mixed together. “You look stunned. Speak your minds freely.”
“The Diem would not remove you unless you were compromised,” Kelmaran said.
“I no longer care for our useless rules,” Plausious said dismissively, which seemed to cement his treachery in the faces of many of the onlooking Neofan. “But if you care, then you should remember that a Reignor cannot be forcibly exiled. I must leave voluntarily or be killed in combat. The Diem broke our rules when they marooned me.”
“They said you were killed by the Hadarak because you insisted on single combat without help from the warship you traveled there on,” another said.
“Is that the lie they told you?” Plausious asked rhetorically. “Interesting. Did no one want to see my body recovered?”
“They said it was eaten
