Epilogue

A million light years away, in a dying universe that mirrored the one that Misha now found herself transfixed in, developments were happening.

Developments that would forever change the evolutionary track of the Psychers.

The Psychers, once the universes’ premier warriors, sages, and problem solvers had now been slowly ground to dust by the ravages of time and the Bakshee war machine.

Worse, was the way that the Bakshee maneuvered behind the scenes. Constantly maneuvering and posturing for resources, public opinion, and moral platitudes.

The Psycher Fleet had been decimated, in a slow unending war of attrition that ground the once indomitable war fleet to dust. Dust that was lost to time, and time that now and forever seemed to favor the Bakshee, rather than the seemingly immortal Psychers.

There in the crumbling fragments of the Psycher’s last flagship, the Psycher Matriarch saw true death coming for her.

As fragments of her ships hull, and resurrection chambers flew past her body that refused to accept the final release of her last remaining pristine shell, she saw it. Inevitability.

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She had fought off this exact moment for millennia, but now that it was upon her, she realized that despite her long life she still had regrets, wants, and desires.

The Matriarch had seen the beginning of the Psychers, and now she would see their end.

Not wanting to give in, to accept her fate, she still realized that her grudge against the Bakshee held higher sway over her now, than her feeble attempts to cling to life.

With her last act of life, the Psycher Matriarch gave the ultimate sacrifice for her people, and with it, she all but condemned those that remained, those that had somehow managed to survive despite everything, she now gave them one final task.

As the final fragments of her ship slowly got pulled into the gravitational well of the nearest star, the Matriarch could only marvel at the sheer audacity and lack of compassion for life that the Bakshee had. The Bakshee had committed everything to this final battle, a hundred battleships, a thousand cruisers, and no less than twenty flagships.

Countless millions of lives lost, all to prove that the universe could if they tried hard enough unite together and destroy the Bakshee.

The Matriarch wasn’t alone in her inevitable descent into the gravity well of the sun, but for the first time in her life she felt truly alone, as she knew that even now parts of her psyche were slowly being ripped away the closer she got to the glowing star.

At this point the Matriarch gave her final command to the survivors of her fleet.

“My children, I, your Matriarch release you from your previous vows, and ask that you only do one thing. Survive long enough to make the Bakshee pay for what they have done.”

The Matriarch sent out her last command, infusing the last remnants of her full mental power and abilities into the transmission of that last command. Then she slowly sat and stared at the last form of beauty that she had only read about but had never fully witnessed herself. That of watching a star slowly dissolve and cause all the millions of particles around her to break apart into a series of highly condensed atoms, atoms that were broken down and burned away into smaller base components, until finally nothing remained of what originally had entered.

Millions of light years away, in a universe that was separated by a layer of time as well as power, the pulse of a command was sent, only to be received by not one but two people who had somehow found refuge on the same discarded planet that was capable of bearing carbon-based life forms.