Interstellar Age

Chapter 440 The Origins of the Great Schism

"So how exactly did Lunaria lure you into the maw? And how did you know who I was when I saw you there?"

The first of these questions was one of minor curiosity. It really didn't have too much of baring on the future of the Galaxy as the damage that could have been done by the truth had already been done long before Erich was even born.

The second question, however, was one that Erich was intimately aware of. During his time in the maw he continuously heard Daelia speaking to him telepathically, saying to him things like "Go away!" and the "Darkness consumed all!"

Not only was Erich invisible when he came across Daelia, but this was nearly a million years in the past. How in the hell did she know who he was?"

Since Daelia had promised to tell Erich these things, she chose not to hide the truth from him. She started by answering the first of these two questions.

"At the time there were rumors that one of our brothers had survived the war with the Star Vampires, escaping the pursuit of one particularly nasty bitch as he fled into the Maw. Lunaria claimed to have found evidence of this.

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And in my efforts to search for my older brother, I commissioned a ship that I believed could withstand the dangers that the Maw presented. The Maw was, after all, quarantined by our parents, and nobody was allowed to go in or out of it.

But after my sister showed me some evidence, which now know was fake, of our brother fleeing into the maw during the ancient war with the Star Vampires, I was convinced that he was alive, and that to find him I needed to enter that darkness.

The thing is, the maw is a sub-dimension of space unconnected from our reality other than from a single, black hole. There is no way to know which direction you are headed once you are inside, as the darkness within it is too thick.

It is also full of terrifying entities, some which are more than capable of piercing through the defenses of even the mightiest warships. One of those entities as you saw was that black ooze which my ship became entangled in.

Luckily for me, that was the worst that my crew and I had to suffer. Had we run into the legendary Maw Weirds, our fate would have been far more cruel.... You see, time in the Maw exists outside of that, within reality.

To me, it appeared that we were within the maw for a mere week at the most. But in reality, tens of thousands of years had passed since I entered the maw, years which my sister spent searching for me. As you have said, not because of any guilt or remorse she felt, but to uplift the exile our parents forced upon her.

By the time she found me, the darkness of the maw had already corrupted me and my crew. Many of which were killed by my sister's boarding party. And that was honestly a mercy. They had lost their minds to the darkness, their bodies mere husks to be controlled by its will.

But I had somehow managed to keep my mind intact, long enough to be dragged out of that abyss by my sister's soldiers. Of course, by then it was too late. I had become something else entirely. What you see here before you is the real me… A being corrupted by a dark entity from a sub-dimension of space outside our reality.

After returning home. I was turned into a lab rat by our parents, who sought to exploit the Maw and its mysterious nature for their own gains. Those years were incredibly painful for me. But eventually I escaped from their clutches.

I mean, who but I knew the true danger that the maw posed to all life in the galaxy? Nay the universe! Because of this, I spent the next few millennia in exile, seeking a way to forever close the Maw, and when I finally thought I found one, I was forced to make a major sacrifice.

To close the maw forever, I had to corrupt my homeworld, and our people who lived upon its surface. I did not intentionally do so, but that was the end result. To keep that darkness from forever entering the galaxy. Unfortunately, a remnant of its power made its way to Alfheim and, in doing so, corrupted the world into what you see today.

You see, the Alfhiem that you are familiar with is not the same world that our race evolved on eons ago. Instead, it is a clone, one made by Lunaria after the Schism had ended. The true world of Alfheim is what we today call Svartalfheim. A world of eternal darkness…

Unfortunately, my sister was spared the corruption that our people underwent. She was offworld at the time, spending her days in one of our colonies. When she realized what had happened, what I had done to our people, and our family. She rallied what remained of the uncorrupted Elves and brought them to Alfheim to destroy us.

You see, she blames me for the death of our parents, but they too were corrupted in the exact same way that I had been. And in her act of purging the darkness from our people, it was Lunaria who dealt the killing blow. An action she would have never taken had I not invited such darkness into the galaxy…

The end result of the war, you already know. We who were corrupted by the influence of the maw became knowns as the Dark Elves. While those who remained "pure" considered themselves as "Light Elves."

The war ended, and in doing so destroyed the very foundation of our people. To this day, the only two beings in this galaxy who were alive to have witnessed the unfolding of this tragic history are myself and Lunaria.

Though the war ended, she and I spent the next few hundred thousands years feuding over minor gains. Waging proxy war after proxy war. Even as other races came to challenge the authority our people once held over the galaxy, we were too busy at each other's throats to prevent them.

Thus establishing the relatively peaceful order in the Galaxy that had persisted until you changed everything just a decade or two ago. So now that you know the truth of my people's history, of the history that Lunaria has worked so hard to rewrite, what will do with this knowledge?"

Erich stared in silence at Daelia for a long time. Things had clearly escalated far beyond his own understanding of the universe, especially the maw itself. Because of this, there was a long silence between the two of them before he finally responded to Daelia's question.