Fel. 1100 years ago.

Neither Fel nor any of the other Revi cities had a central government. Most Revi were long-lived scholars, more interested in their own fields of study than each other. Trade and communities typically arose from a shared interest in a branch of study or a discovery that had interdisciplinary benefits.

That was what had drawn Reylynn and Nilaa together. Reylynn had needed a more powerful telescope, Nilaa enjoyed tinkering with mechanical devices.

Nilaa was sitting outside their shared lab with a few of the refugees gathered around. She was attaching a lower arm to the clockwork device she'd been working on prior to the fighting, which had itself been joined to the space just above where the elbow joint would have been on a smaller Ikhwezi sitting on the steps.

“Check the chest under my desk. You'll find what you need,” Nilaa signed without waiting for Reylynn’s question.

Anathi took a seat on Reylynn’s desk. He was a little over fifteen feet tall, having nearly six feet on Reylynn. She still had to stand on her chair to reconnect the hoses and hydraulic tubing that made up Anathi’s musculature while he held his arm in place.

Spider-like creatures, smaller than the tips of Reylynn’s fingers, crawled out from under his armor plating, working to weld and repair the parts of his shoulder joint Reylynn couldn't mend.

Anathi studied the documents before him. One was Reylynn’s calculations on the meteor she'd been studying and the other was a collection of words written in Anathi’s language with their Revi translations Reylynn had written ahead of time.

He hadn't believed at first when Reylynn had told him she had actually seen this day coming. But as he read the note Reylynn had written in his own language, words she'd only gotten from him from the future, he began to understand.

“My people fled a great evil. A being of malice who wants nothing more than to bring about the extinction of all life to build a world he can rule.” Anathi said. He'd switched to using telepathy while Reylynn wrote on the notebook beside him.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Isiphelo,” Reylynn wrote in Ikhwezi. A name which translates roughly to “the end” in Revi. Though the connotation was far bleaker than the simple phrase implied.

“Yes,” Anathi replied a little startled. “That will take some getting used to.”

“You never will get used to it,” Reylynn wrote, smiling as she watched the rumble of his laughter. She held up Lindsong, which had changed back into a small white crystal. It had bothered her that she hadn't seen the vision with Taika in her Dream or Lindsong’s true nature.

Anathi pulled his bag from its resting place on the ground and opened it, taking out a crystal just like it. It shifted and changed into a long, black staff, the crystal becoming its focusing crystal at the tip.

“It is a weapon that was intended to kill Isiphelo. It draws upon the energy that makes up our people. The longer one fights with it, the stronger they should become. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Of the twelve of us who fought him together only I remain.”

The Ikhwezi weren't alive in the same way Reylynn and the beings of Terre were. There were, as far as Anathi understood it and explained it to her, three basic energies in the universe. Mana, the ethereal force all around them that gave rise to the physical, from rocks to stars, to the empty space between planets. Soul, which was what Reylynn and every other living being came from. Beings of Soul could manipulate the mana around them, bending the physical world to their whim.

And then there were the Ikhwezi, which translated to “star”, again not quite right in Revi. They were beings whose body and consciousness was formed when their energy bonded with either of the other two energies.

Isiphelo intended to steal as much of the Ikhwezi energy as he could to strengthen himself and bind the other two energies to recreate a world in which the Ikhwezi were the dominant beings, not those of the soul energy.

He had been, up until this point, very successful in that goal. The couple hundred who had come through the portal were the only ones left out of the millions there had once been. The monsters they fought were Isiphelo’s horrible perversions of the bond that created the Ikhwezi people.

“There is nowhere left to run. The world you call Ciel was the last spot where we could make our stand on our own. We failed and we've fallen back here.” There was a tiredness in his words. Reylynn still couldn't quite read his emotions as well as another Revi, but it was getting easier the longer he maintained their telepathic connection. “You knew when we would come. You know why we are here. Then you must know what I have to ask of you.”

Reylynn nodded. You are going to consign her entire people, and what remained of his, to death. Reylynn wrote instead, “You need our help, the mana we can draw upon, to fight Isiphelo.”

“I have a plan that should succeed where the last one failed.”