The kits grouped together before the elder, a rare phenomenon in between the Caloxi where a single individual in a billion can live for thousands of human years, for reasons still unknown to their science.
"Do you want to hear the story of the humans?" The elder asked.
The group of nearly forty kits responded, each one differently, but every one of them positively.
"Alright, alright," the elder tried to calm down the younglings, "Who do you think the humans are?"
One of the children got to be the first to respond, "The Engineers! The gods! The omniscient! The all-powerful!"
"Some do think that yes..." he affirmed, "Do all of you take them as gods?"
The elder got the same response as before...
"Ah... I suppose that was what I should've expected..." he said, "Have you ever seen a human?"
"No, The Engineers do not come to our plane!" another kit yelped to answer.
"Nonsense!" the elder responded with a wave of his paw, "I guess, after all this time... the stories turned into a religion, I should've expected that. But now that you're not so small anymore, do you want to hear the real story? For, I will tell you something, I have seen a human, I even have spoken to a couple, very many times at that."
The group started to point their ears at the elder as much as they could, to get all of the stories that he would tell next.
"Oh, eons ago... we started to explore space, and we encountered three races at that time, the Arseur, the Tyraxi, and the humans."
At the mention of the Tyraxi, some of the children were... puzzled, they had never before heard that name, but the elder continued, "When we stepped into the scene, bad blood was boiling between the humans and the Tyraxi, but we didn't think much of it. We were soon invited to start to trade with the three, the Tyraxi and the Arseur have never delivered, lying and trying to milk us for resources, the humans, however, were truthful, and fair. That's when I met my buddy, Mark, who later left for war."
By now the younglings were deep into the story.
"Sixteen years after we entered the outer space scene, the Tyraxi started to wage that war, the war against humans, breaking the rules of war of the humans, bringing so much destruction and death... we did whatever we could to help, but that wasn't much, and the Arseur didn't even think of helping... Soon, the Tyraxi got to the homeworld of the humans, but they didn't just decide to destroy it, or enslave the humans, or do anything that would at least let some live, no..."
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The elder paused for a second, exhaling loudly, "They pushed the human homeworld into a black hole and killed off all of the humans that remained, scattered across space."
"By then," the elder continued, "they thought that they won, but oh how wrong they were... the humans... some say that the black hole told them something, a secret no living being should know, but the humans, they didn't surrender, they used it to escape the reaches of that cursed thing and live."
"Sixteen hundred, that's how many of them returned... sixteen hundred out of the billions that died, the worst of all... most of them were not older than nineteen, their parents sacrificing themselves so that their spawn could live..." he said, "but once they did return, they unleashed horror onto the Tyraxi, horror never seen before, even in the darkest reaches of space, horror that destroyed what the Tyraxi had... then they trapped them on their homeworld with enforcement platforms that will stay there until they are still alive. The Tyraxi, that now is known under the name The Cursed, and they named themselves The Engineers."
Loud gasps could be heard from the group.
"The thing is... the humans came back corrupted, poisoned even by the black hole, wielding its power in their hands, they achieved immortality, towed their world, split into two back from the void and moulded it back together. The star, Sol, which was lost shortly after they lost the battle, they recreated it, from nothing, made a star exist and placed the planets that once swirled around Sol in its orbit. They created cities, and the clouds covering them for all eternity."
"Then they went for the Arseur, reminded them of how they stayed neutral when they were slaughtered. The humans said that they could be neutral forever, placing them in an orbit around the galactic centre, so close to it that they could only dream of using any FTL technology other than the humans' and they would never achieve such a thing, they would never be able to engage in anything, ever again."
"After that... they approached us again," the children gasped at that, "they held out a hand for us and helped us regain what we've lost during the war and gave us the territory of the Arseur."
"What happened to your buddy, Mark?" one of the younglings asked.
"Mark didn't make it... he perished in the black hole, but Mark did have a child, a beautiful child named Max, and they lived..." he said and the children gasped again, "This Max then swore to protect us for all eternity, and they visited me a couple of times not long after... in the memory of their father, my best friend and mother who I have met once or twice... And since then, every new species was uplifted by an Engineer and they swore to protect their subjects... that is until around two hundred years ago..."
"Max? The god of Caloxi? You met them?" one of the kits asked.
"Yes, indeed, that's what some named her."
"Then where are they?" another one of the younglings asked.
"Not far I hope... not far... I hope that they are just around the corner, an asteroid belt or two away..." the elder said quietly as another bomb fell near the capital's bunker in which they sat, "They are nearly here, just give them some time... just a minute..." a tear slowly escaped the elder's eye.