Once Max and Nico had recovered a little, the ancient Darkling continued.
"While the three mortal species were each chosen by one of the Gods as their own, that did not sit well with the Gods whose aspects reflected aspects of nature or a less evolved species, and the jealousy grew within them.
That jealousy only grew and festered as they saw the innovation that the mortal species was capable of. The innovation that the humans spearheaded, the most curious creatures in the universe, then and always."
Max and Nico shared a laugh at those words. The old man wasn't wrong. All the humans needed was a hint of a direction, and they would go off on a tangent, creating entirely new technologies.
"We were caught off guard when the Gods attacked, lashing out at the humans. The human scientists had created a device that one of the gods viewed as a threat to their domain, and that Energy Being rallied the other disgruntled energy beings around them and lashed out, destroying millions of planets in a jealous rage as they tried to wipe out the human race.
The device that they had created was a time travel device, and the leader of the Divine Rebellion, which we now call the Great Enemy, was the self-proclaimed God of Time. It might have succeeded, but the humans had the ability to rewind time, resetting the battle to its beginning while the Gods were gloating about their victory and then freezing time into a linear form in order to take their revenge.
Naturally, the Collectors and the Everborn joined the humans in their revenge. If these corrupted Energy Beings were willing to commit genocide to get their way, then they were too dangerous to be allowed to live.
You see, time travel doesn't work quite the way that you think it might. It reverses the actions, but it doesn't erase the memory. So, everyone who knew of the atrocity that was committed still remembered, even when it had been undone.
On a small scale, that can be called Deja vous. But on a scale this large, there was no question about what had actually happened.
So, the three mortal races put their minds to the development of technology that would keep the Gods in line. In hindsight, that only angered them more and brought more to their side, but such a thing was inevitable.
The Great War began then, with the three mortal species and their allied Gods fighting against the God of Time and their allies.
During the war, a massive region of space was destroyed, turned to dust by the ferocity of the battle, and it seemed hopeless on our part. But at the last moment, when it seemed that all was lost and the Gods Rampage could not be stopped, the humans did the unthinkable.
They detonated their Time Device in battle and killed the God of Time, dispersing his army through the universe and leaving time locked in a permanent line, with no being left alive that was able to reverse the effect.
Only a few ships worth of humans survived the war, as they were the primary target of the Gods, and the war would have ended with their demise. One of those fleets went to your Galaxy, and my people kept watch on them over the Eons to ensure they survived.
The rest were lost to the universe, and none now know if they still live or what they might have evolved into without our guidance keeping their genome stable."
He paused again while Max struggled to accept that the human settlements that they had found in his Galaxy, the million-year-old ruins and technologies, were actually refugee camps from even more ancient humans, and the scraps left over that the Darklings didn't see fit to clean up and take with them.
The Darkling continued. "Once the war had ended, the majority of the surviving Gods fled the prime layer, and their departure irrevocably damaged it, leaving the aspect of space weakened and the boundaries between layers either far too thick or far too thin.
The rest remained in one of the upper layers, either this one or the one where the matter and antimatter coexist in harmony, and chose to guide their favourite species from within those layers.
Many of them had lost everything. Their chosen species were eliminated during the war, and the solar systems that they had come from were obliterated. Some of them chose to sacrifice themselves to reform a portion of the battlefield and recreate their species. Others chose to leave the area and make a whole new one.
One such species is the Myceloids. Their gods recreated them just as they would have wanted them to be. Cunning and Brutal, intelligent enough to make and use technology, but not creative enough to make something that would threaten the universe again.
Then they let them loose on the universe and watched in joy as their new creation fought and lived and loved their lives. I wouldn't call them evil beings but a force of nature, pure chaotic neutrality."
Nico smiled at his words. "I agree with you. They fight because they love to fight. They expand so that they can find new things to fight. They aren't malevolent, but they are a danger to anything that isn't as good at fighting."
The old man nodded in agreement, but the placid emotion on his face and in his mind never changed.
"You are exactly right. That is their nature. Their gods don't care what side of the war they are on this time because it all leads to fighting.
But that brings us to this conflict. You see, many of the Gods who were shattered by the Humans' final gambit did slowly reform, as energy is never destroyed nor created, only transformed. Even the reaction of antimatter, which would seem to obliterate both, actually creates a third form of matter, but that's not on the topic today, and I can sense the young Miss Nico's excitement.
The shattered Gods couldn't reform into their previous selves, though they might if they were given a few hundred million more years. But the energy they were made of still lingers, and it has created the Greater Energy Beings and their offspring. They have been raised within the hidden layer, cultivated by the bitter Gods to hate the mortal species and the creations of the other Gods in the Prime Layer.
Now, they have sensed the resurgence of the three mortal species, and they are gathering to attempt to wipe us out again."
