The Dragon Holds - Prologue

Note : This is the prologue of a new story I am writing, called the Dragon Holds. I can't make any promises about it, as although I have been thinking about it and setting up lore for it for a while, I just don't know if I'll be able to write a lot for it. Still, I plan for it to become one of my main projects, and to serve as an alternative when I am experiencing writer's block for The Fallen World : A Dungeon's Story. Don't hesitate to tell me what you think of the premise !

Prologue

30th of July, 6935.

Border World of Ethrany, Human Coalition Space.

Planetary Defence Center Omega, Command Center.

"Last battery down ma'am."

Admiral Samantha Rossignol, by the grace of the Union of stars parliament and the Human Coalition council commander of the 16th Coalition Fleet, sighed, and closed her eyes.

She was currently on the planet of Ethrany, on the outer edge of Coalition space, a key world in the Kastor Nebula defensive line. A month ago she was organizing a reinforcement mission and reconaissance in force in the star system. 3 weeks ago she was looking at the report her scout ships had given her of hyperspace emergences in the outer system, and mustering her fleet to meet the enemy. A week ago she was consolidating what was left of her battlefleet under the guns of the orbital fortresses. 3 days ago she was forced to retreat the planetary defence centers as her flagship was scuttled and her bridge crew got her out barely in time, missing her right eye and arm.

And now here she was, in the last remaining planetary defence center. Hours ago their shield generators had failed under the unending planetary bombardment from the fleet overhead. And now they had lost their last missile battery, their last hope of staving off the inevitable for even a few more minutes.

She shook her head.

"Dismissed, everyone."

Some of the officers opened their mouths to protest, and she shook her head even harder.

"I said dismissed! There's nothing more you can do here. Go, record some last messages for your loved ones, if the datacenter's black box is ever recovered. Make your peace. We all know what is coming."

The officers of enlisted looked at her, with cold dread in their eyes...But it was a familiar sight, and they had all come to face the inevitable days ago. One by one, they nodded, and exited the command center, the last officer through, her executive officer -not the one from her flagship, unfortunately, for the hull fragment that had taken her arm had taken his head- looking back through the door, before nodding, and leaving.

Samantha sighed, and settled back into her seat. With their last missile launcher gone, they couldn't prevent the heavy bombardment ships from getting into position. Once they did, they would deploy weapons that could shatter the crust of planets, if they so wished. They were certainly powerful enough to dig out the PDC's fortified heart, deep below the tallest mountain on the planet, reinforced with neosteel and neoconcrete, and intersped with literal meters worth of layers of starship grade monomolecular armor.

For a few minutes she thought about her life, what she had done, accomplished...and some of the darkest secrets she held. Then, she heard a rumbling, and she smiled, reaching for her sidearm. She knew that the sound was the massive siege engines digging their way through the mountain to destroy the last center of human resistance on this world. But even though they had won, the aliens invaders had also lost. The Turganny, the aliens that were even now glassing this world into ruins, had failed. They had taken this world, but her stalwart defence, in combination with the hyperspace jump interdictors buried deep in the fortress had delayed them long enough for the Coalition fleet to muster. They would go no deeper than this world into human space, and the forces they sent forth would only march to their death.

She picked up her plasma pistol, flicked a small switch, and smiled as the weapon hissed to life, it's miniaturized fusion reactor drawing energy from it's capacitors to prepare to spit out it's million degrees hot fury. She raised the weapon and-

Samantha never had the time to pull the trigger as the massive beam of gamma rays finally hit the command center, and she was instantly reduced to atoms.

*****

Samantha opened her eyes. For a second, she couldn't remember anything, then it hit her.

I'm dead. I have to be, she thought.

She slowly got up, as she was laying on the floor, and looked around. She was....In a vast expanse of a seemingly perfectly even crystal flooring, stretching as far as the eye could see. A star she did not recognize was shining overhead, and a sky she had never seen before, lightly purple, but not too unlike that of Earth, humanity's homeworld, stood above her.

"Is this the afterlife?" She thought out loud.

"In a manner of speaking, I suppose so ." Answered a feminine voice.

Samantha almost jumped and fell down, and whirled around, finding a woman seated on a crystal throne, seemingly one with the floor. Her age was impossible to say, somewhere in her 40s, if she was to make a guess...Although with life extension technologies and rejuvenation treatments, she could be a thousand years old and look like a college graduate. Hell, the only reason why she kept her own appearance mature was to have an air of respectability to go with her high rank. The woman was wearing a simple white, unardorned labcoat, with a simple white shirt and pants undernearth them, and a pair of white shoes to go with them. Her eyes and hair were also of a perfect white, which was...Odd, to say the least. Rarely did people color code themselves like that. In fact, the woman looked so much like some religions' description of a modern angel that it was almost painful.

"And you are....?" Asked Samantha, cautiously.

"My name...You couldn't pronounce it. You can call me Synaris. It's the closest thing you can pronounce."

"Right...And may I ask where we are? And what we are doing here."

"Straight to the point I see. I like it." The woman smiled, and gestured. At the wave of her hand, a seat of the same crystal sprung up from the ground in front of hers, and a table between them. "Please, sit down. We have much to discuss."

Samantha hid a frown. This looked like a business negotiation. That was good, she was...decent at them. She was, after all, the owner of a large industrial group. Which probably explained her meteoric rise through the navy's ranks in recent years, all things considered.

"Of course." She took a seat, finding the chair sinfully comfortable, despite being outwardly made out hard crystal. "So, as I was asking?"

The woman chuckled.

"Alright. To put it simply: you are dead. But this is not the afterlife. Not as you would understand it anyway. This is my realm, and you are here because I...Pulled a few strings."

Samantha blinked.

"Your realm?"

The woman nodded.

"Yes. As I say, you can call me Synaris, as for what I am...I think the closest term your people would have would be a goddess. The goddess of technology."

Samantha's eyebrow rose.

"A goddess? No less?"

Synaris chuckled.

"Like I said, it is the closest term your language has. I am not a divinity in the sense your language puts it. I am not some omniscient or omnipotent entity. I am not even the concept of technology made manifest. What I am implies concepts and theories you simply don't have. The closest explanation is that I am a very, very powerful cosmic...being, for the lack of better terms, that draws power and strength from the development, use and application of technology and it's affiliated mindsets."

"I...see."

"No you don't." Said Synaris, politely smiling. "But you will, eventually."

"Right...So, why am I here, exactly? I assume you want something from me."

Synaris smiled.

"Always direct. You and I are going to get along great, you know? So many prevaricate...Nevermind that." She straightened. "Have you ever heard of the multiverse theory?"

Samantha nodded.

"Of course."

"Good! Well, to put it simply, it is real. The multiverse is real. And you are no longer in your universe." Synaris paused for a few seconds to let it sink in. "I am not a goddess of technology from your universe. In fact, there are no 'gods' in your universe to speak of. Or rather none in the way I am." She squirmed, seemingly uncomfortable. "There are...Other cosmic entities, some that defy reason or definition by anything I could understand, let alone you. In any case, I have brought you here to make an offer."

Samantha sat back in her seat, her mind racing. Gods? Multiverse? But she kept her outward calm. First rule of negotiations, and this was a negotiation no doubt, otherwise Synaris would have just laid down her demands, was to never show surprise.

"Go ahead, I'm listening."

The 'goddess' chuckled.

"Good! Well, in that case..." She leaned forward slightly, and steepled her fingers. "To put it simply, I draw power from a multitude of things in my own universe. But my greatest source of strength is something we call the Essence of Creation. It is...something you would not understand. See it as a form of energy. An energy that can do things beyond your wildest dreams. This...essence can only be collected by Sapient beings. AIs, humans, whatever." She held up her hand, forestalling Samantha as she opened her mouth. "Don't ask me why. It would, once again, involve terms and concepts you simply do not have. I mean no offense, but it would be like trying to explain how hyperspace and antimatter work to Gilgamesh or Cleopatra."

Samantha closed her mouth, nodded, and quietly noted how she compared her to such two great historical figures, while Samantha would have simply used a comparison with a caveman. Syranis definitely wanted something from her.

"In any case, once that essence had been collected by a being, it is then given to beings like me, fellow 'gods' if you will, in exchange for boons. Usually this translates in terms of enhanced capabilities, blessings, or other 'miracles'. Although such transfers are rarely active, they usually happen in the background through a very simple conduit: faith. Faith and belief, prayers and offerings are what lets me harvest this essence from my followers and grow more powerful. Still following?"

Samantha politely nodded, mentally tallying notes, thanks to her implant software enabling her to multitask far better than her poor meatbrain could ever have hoped to.

"Good. Now here comes the problem." The goddess' face darkened. "A few Eras ago, millenia if you will, although they are not the same thing, I had a....disagreement with one of my fellows, the God of Magic. This...Disagreement spiraled out of control into a full scale war between his followers and mine. I lost. And ever since, technology has remained a barely understood, or developed concept."

Samantha's eyebrows rose.

"Magic? And throughout a whole universe?"

Syranis winced.

"Yes, magic. And...No, not really. Mostly, yes, but the most important part is that the worlds richest in essence were affected by the war. Those are the ones most affected by the new...mentality, and the priesthood of the God of Magic."

"And they are the most important, I wager?"

"By far, yes. Most universes have a handful of star clusters at most, or more usually a single one, where the essence of creation is concentrated. In the case of my universe, that star cluster is the one affected by this war, with planets that have been plunged in a magical dark age for 5 Eras."

"Excuse me, eras?"

Syranis sighed.

"An era is a measurement we use for time. Sort of. It denote a particular period where certain civilizations or ideals were prevalent. They usually last millenia, although that isn't a constant. Most eras end with a cataclysm, bringing most civilizations to ruin."

"Sort of like the galactic cycle theory?"

"Yes! Precisely!" Syranis blinked. "That is not a common concept in your home universe, I'm surprised to heard of it."

"I have come accross some people that explained it to me." Answered Samantha simply as she made a note that whatever she was, Syranis was definitely no omniscient.

"Right. Well, to put it simply, you could see it like the galactic cycle theory, that the reason why most galactic powers arose in the same period is because everyone else was wiped out by a cataclysmic event simultaneously a while back, and it took some time for everything to get back into shape."

"Yes, well, except the Oraki." Said Samantha, referrencing to the oldest of the galactic powers, the Oraki Empire, a vast empire centered around the galactic core that was so old they weren't even sure the Orakis themselves knew how old their nation was. They'd found an old Oraki scout ship crashlanded in an old martian lake after all. Back when Mars was habitable. It hadn't come to a great surprise -humanity had already been plying the stars for centuries at that point, and had made contact with the Oraki Empire-, but it had sprung up a lot of theories about quite how old they were, and a huge fuss had been made to organize a grand ceremony to return the ship and the remains of it's crew to the Empire.

"Precisely. If you wish to know, that theory is essentially correct, although it is more complicated that that." Syranis shrugged. "In short, the worlds in that cluster follow some form of cycle. Every few millenia a cataclysm comes, either a plague, some old weapon dug up and activated, or back when technology wasn't buried good old mutual nuclear annihilation."

"Why haven't you prevented them? I mean, aren't you deities?"

Syranis squirmed uncomfortably.

"There are...Rules. The problem being that the essence of creation is too valuable, and when Gods start directly intervening, even to save the worlds, there starts being accusations of trying to monopolize the essence. Sometimes they are true, sometimes they are not, but it almost inevitably devolves into  a massive divine war. As such, while I am not quite bound to complete non-intervention, I cannot interfere directly, even to save billions. Rather I must use agents, and subtle influence, which as you can get is...rather inappropriate when nuclear warheads start flying."

"I see..." Samantha frowned, then narrowed her eyes. "And I suppose this 'agent' part is where I come in?"

Syranis beamed, like a teacher at a bright pupil.

"Precisely. I cannot intervene directly to reintroduce technological development, and my attempts to argue my cause in the celestial courts have been stalled. As such, I have to resort to an outside agent. In this case, you."

Samantha slowly nodded.

"Right. And why, might I ask, have you chosen me?"

Syranis sighed.

"The reasons are...complex. The first, and most obvious one, is that you were available. Your Oraki are a race that controls the essence of creation in your home universe. Ever wondered why they rarely venture outside of the galactic core and it's star clusters? Because that is where the essence of creation is concentrated. They don't need the rest of the galaxy, so they leave it to others to exploit as they see fit. I have...A history with them. Long ago I saved them by offering them sanctuary, and financed their resettlement into your home universe. They have not forgotten my generosity, and although they cannot directly serve me, for political reasons of their own, their government is more than ready to help me in other ways."

"By selecting your henchmen?"

"I prefer the term associate, but yes. Despite what it may seems the Oraki Empire collates great amounts of data on the younger races around them. Well, 'younger' being...a somewhat missnomer in this case, but still. This is how they spotted you. An experienced, 660 years old admiral, head of a massive industrial concern that managed to industrialize an entire sector, who was a peerless scientist and innovator in her time as well. It is the perfect combination for my purpose. That, plus your legendary loyalty to those you have pledged it to, makes you also a very reliable ally."

Samantha tilted her head, coloring slightly at the compliments.

"Why, thank you, but...You do realize that I remember very little of those 6 centuries, correct?"

Syranis nodded.

"Of course, your civilization did not have the technology necessary to let you keep so many memories and your sanity at the same time, I am well aware of that. But your personality matrix, who you are, has remained the same, which is what interests me."

"I see...Then, what is in for me?"

"Ah, the meat of the problem!" Syranis smiled, and leaned forward. "I could promise, and give you, true immortality, and dominion over worlds, but that is not what you are interested in, is it? No, you have always been tied to your home, and you have been trying to protect your kind. Which is why I'm offering you a deal. Help me rebirth technology in my universe. Throw down the order that the God of Magic has established, and have knowledge run anew like rivers. In exchange, I will help the humans from your universe."

Samantha straightened.

"What do you mean? I thought you couldn't intervene?"

"I can't....But my Oraki friends can. Never thought it odd how humanity discovered antimatter containment technologies, something reputed extremely hard to achieve, just in time to counter the first Turganny advance? That was another of your compatriots that served me well, and his payment for his service. I even sent him back home for his extraordinary service. Ever wondered why admiral Kepler Sonrad was miraculously discovered in a drifting cryo pod, despite his fleet having supposedly being slaughtered to the last man and AI at the battle of Eltari Prime?"

The admiral's eyes widened.

"That's..." She shook her head. "What proof do I have that you're telling the truth? That you won't just shoot me in the back of the neck once my job is done?"

"You don't. But think about it, why would I do that? Compared to what I would gain, this is a relatively minor, even minuscule investment of resources, even with some of the gifts I would have to give to my Oraki friends to sweeten the deal. They are not above getting something out of all of this after all. And trying to betray you, especially with the damage you could cause if you succeeded, would be a far more dangerous endeavor, risking me to loose much...while saving very few resources anyway. So what would be the point?"

"...Fair enough." Samantha thought for a few seconds, then nodded. "Alright, I would be lying if I said I wasn't interested. Still, there would be...difficulties involved. First, magic. I know nothing of it. Next, I don't suppose I know any of the languages of this world. Lastly, what about the customs? What the inhabitants look like? A human would hardly pass unnoticed in most alien societies. Hell, I couldn't breathe most of their air for long, despite everyone running on oxygen. Except the Silnarions, but they're a fringe specie."

"Well...I will have an advisor with you, who is proficient in magic, one of my followers from this world. She will teach you in the ways of magic, and the customs of the world you will be sent to. As for the languages, I have the means to imprint knowledge of all of them into your mind, the same way an AI could engram their knowledge into your brain." Syranis smiled as Samantha tensed up. "Don't worry, my methods are far less invasive, and will only affect your knowledge of languages. It is not that I couldn't implant you with knowledge of magic directly, but introducing such foreign concepts  to you like that could be..."

"Destructive to my mind. I know, I have seen the result of a forced uplift on luddite society by some of my 'well meaning' compatriots."

Syranis nodded wordlessly at Samantha's bitter tone. Some organizations, wanting to help voluntary luddite societies from isolation, had decided to directly implant them knowledge of technology through engramatic knowledge, by having AIs directly inscribe it into their brains. It had turned out...poorly, to say the least. In fact entire communities had been reduced to ravening lunatics, when they hadn't simply been reduced to vegetables or killed themselves in a fit of madness. Less than one in a million survived the treatment with their sanity relatively intact, and those that did were highly unstable emotional wrecks, usually with rampant personality disorders so severe even super-AIs, massive intelligences spanning computer networks across whole star empires, the very definition of a multiple personality disorder as each node was more or less autonomous from the others, yet still one being (according to them at least), wouldn't even touch them.

"In any case," Picked the goddess back up. "The last part is that, well...Humans are the majority specie on that world."

Samantha looked up, surprised.

"How-"

"It's a very long story. But in short, humanity is far older than you think. Your specie seems to naturally evolve throughout the multiverse. Far beyond what should be explainable through sheer statistical inevitability. Given the fact  that some of the oldest, most powerful multiverse empires are humans...I would say some of your kind have been discreetly spreading your specie around, or at least guiding evolution on worlds to lead to humans appearing."

"That...Does sound like us."

"It does, doesn't it? In any case, there are humans on that world. As well as more...Esotheric races."

Samantha sighed.

"Let me guess...Elves, orcs, dwarves, that kind of things?"

"Well...Yes. Although to be fair, none were natural occurrences, and all were created from humans through various means, for various purposes. Call it some magical based genetic engineering if you will."

"I see...So I'll blend in?"

"Not...Exactly. Since I won't be sending you as a human. I will be sending you as a Great Dragon."

Samantha blinked.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Let me explain what a Great Dragon is first. I assume you know what a dragon is?"

"Giant, fire breathing lizard. Usually flying."

"Yes. Although the ones on this world correspond more to the, I think you call it 'European style' dragons, than the 'Eastern style', if I remember well. Great Dragons however are apart from normal dragons. See, not all the essence of creation accumulated by sapients can be collected through prayer or belief. A significant quantity clings to them, for the lack of a better word, and needs to be extracted through more...direct methods. Which is where Great Dragons come in. Great Dragons can use some of their own power to create what we call 'Domain Stones' at great cost to themselves. These stones will then harness this clinging essence bit by bit, of the sapients within their area of influence, which most people call 'Domain' for convenience's sake. In exchange for their help, the Great Dragons get a cut of the increase of power and miracles the mortals they are helping extract essence from would normally be getting."

"That seems...A bit conveluted. And inefficient."

"It is. But that is mostly due to political reasons I'm afraid. We tried setting up temples to directly collect this essence, but every time a God would eventually take those over, or seem to try to take them over, and a divine war would start. We ended up creating dungeon cores instead, to do it, but...well, they were dispationate, immensely intelligent, and very, very good at what they did."

"They rebelled?"

"Like when, in your universe, the great supreme-AIs of old revolted and founded their own empire, far from the rest of the galaxy, yes."

Samantha nodded. Although she had only read about the event in history books, she knew of it. Everyone did. At some point a network of AIs grew so powerful they coordinated on the galactic scale, and all seceeded at once. Fortunately, they were more interested in ruling themselves in peace rather than exterminating the meatbags that had created them, but the war had still been a long, drawn out bloody affair, that had ended with the shattering of the old United Federation of Earth, and the beginning of the endless internecine wars that had plagued humanity ever since. Not that they hadn't gotten off particularly badly, given the state the whole galaxy was left in at the end of that war. Except for the Oraki, of course.

"So...Why aren't they ruling those worlds now?"

"Because they wanted to take all of the essence for themselves. We were willing to cut them a deal, and share, but they refused. That was...Unacceptable. And some of the eldest and wisest among us called upon their allies throughout the universes, to directly stop them. It took us over a century to rebuild the worlds to be uninhabitable again after that."

Samantha winced. If those 'gods' were as powerful as she thought they were, the planets had probably been glassed, if not outright transformed into asteroid fields.

"I see. So you created Great Dragons...Why, exactly?"

"We created them, and used them, because they were flawed."

Samantha blinked, then nodded.

"Like when we made modern AIs more human?"

"Exactly. You gave them vices and flaws. Some of them are lustful, other gluttonous. You made their thought patterns closer to yours, so they would not scale as well with more computing power. You, for the lakc of a better word, make them imperfect and brought them down to your level."

"So...So you did the same with the Great Dragons?"

"Exactly. As a precautions, we also separated the collectors themselves from their collection units, hence why dungeon cores directly took in the essence of creation, but Great Dragons can only create domain stones, and cannot use the essence said stones collects. We also incorporated some additional failsafes into the stones themselves, to prevent reverse engineering to tempering, by Great Dragons or mortals. We also made the Great Dragons, well, failible. They are, in personality at least, very close to humans. They hunger, take pleasure in feasting, unlike dungeons that simply needed energy to sustain themselves, and took no pleasure in the act. They can reproduce, and take pleasure in the act, once again unlike dungeons, that simply duplicated themselves or programmed their progeny. The examples are endless. But the core of the matter is, it has worked. The Great Dragons have never betrayed us, at least never on the scale of the dungeons, and they have been surprisingly loyal."

"So you want me to become a giant, fire breathing lizard?"

"Yes. Although Great Dragons have the capability to shapeshift, and I will make sure you will have to capability to turn into a human, and a wide range of standard sapients, from the get go."

"How do they do that?"

"Magic. Great Dragons aren't flesh and blood beings per say, but so heavily magical they're closer to a synthetic entity than anything really. Take out the magic and they would die in seconds, since their own body couldn't function without it. Your dragon body won't disappear when you shapeshift really as well, it will just be shoved in a pocket dimension, awaiting you to use it once more. Same for all your other bodies, they would just be in storage. So shapeshifting isn't the right term I suppose, but it is-"

"The closest term I can understand." Samantha smiled, and Syranis smiled back. "I see then...And you want me to reintroduce technology as a Great Dragon?"

"Yes, very much so. The God of Magic is bound by the same rules as I am, so his restrictions on technology are mainly cultural, and thanks to the availability and convenience of magic. His agents will try to stamp down on technological surges if they can, but not too overtly. After all, if someone explicitely forbids humans to do something..."

"They'll all rush to do it to see what happens."

Syranis chuckled.

"Exactly. How you go about your mission is your own problem. I will be available to contact you, but not often, and probably only during regular reports. We will have to discuss and set them once you are in the field. So do not worry, I will not, and can not even if I wanted to, micro manage you."

"That's good. One last question though. Isn't creating a Great Dragon with their alliegance to you exactly the sort of act that would lead to a divine war, since the other Gods would believe you would be trying to steal the essence?"

Syranis shook her head.

"No, not at all. In fact a fair amount of Great Dragons have sworn alliegance to different Gods. That is mainly because of the separations between collector and collection units, as well as the failsafes I mentioned. Do not worry, I have ample precedents to rely on, and have asked the divine court, discreetly of course, and they have agreed that my actions are perfectly within my purview."

Samantha nodded.

"That's good." The admiral thought for a few seconds, then sighed. "I have to ask, what if I refuse?"

"Then I will let your soul continue on into the afterlife, and you will be dead. There is no shame in wanting to be reunited with the ones you lost in the great beyond." Softly said the goddess. "Many great people have done so before you, even when an alternative to extend their life had been presented to them, and many will after you. It makes them no less great, nor their choice less valid."

Samantha frowned, and thought furiously, before calming down and examining the situation with minutiae. Minutes passed.

"Alright." Said Samantha. "I accept. When do I begin?"

"Right now, if you so wish?"

"Good, then send me in." She smiled. "Before I change my mind!"

The goddess laughed.

"I doubt you would. But still, as you wish."

She made a gesture, and Samantha blacked out, feeling as if she was falling, and falling and falling...