Max cleared his throat. "You say the three mortal species, but from my perspective, it doesn't look like the Arisen are Mortal at all."
The Darkling sighed, with a single tear running down his cheek.
"They will forever be one of us. But during the battles of the Great War, their God sacrificed herself to save their species. It was the first time one of the Gods had fallen, and we had no idea what would happen.
The energy of her life force seeped into her most beloved species and brought them back to life, inhabiting any form of body that they could, mostly the battle robots of the human fleet. Their species was saved, but the Everborn, whose lives extended to a million years, became the Arisen, which are a form of Energy Being that returns to a chosen body when its host is destroyed.
Well, not all of them. There are still some Everborn among the ranks of the living, but it is taboo to speak of their location in case the Bitter Gods are listening and find them."
Max nodded. "So the last of the mortal species to remain intact are the Darklings, or the Collectors, as you call yourselves?"
"That is somewhat correct. Our home is gone, and our culture is shattered. Now, we live on these ships or on similar ones flung all across the Universe looking for survivors of the Great War.
Most of our fleet works for the Gods who were once our allies. We keep an eye on their creations, guiding them or culling them if they diverge from their intended pattern too far, then reseeding the new creations so that the species can have a fresh chance to prosper.
We aren't as creative as humans are. We are still using what we had at the end of the Great War, and we have no way of creating better. It is not for a lack of trying. We simply lack the unique thought processes that lead to that level of innovation.
Again, it is likely the humans who have threatened the Bitter Gods, but I suspect that the truth is that they have realized what my people and the Arisen have been doing in our attempts to form an army capable of defeating them a second time.
They dare not show their faces yet, for our Gods still stand with us, and hiding in a single, separated layer has stunted the powers of the Bitter Gods, but they have no problem sending their minions.
Between the three Mortal species, we have now killed five Greater Energy Beings since the battle started, and this one left so little of the energy in a usable form that the next wave couldn't even stabilize.
I think that this will make them pause their plans. Perhaps for months or years. But likely no longer than that.
The Death of a God splits their essence into a thousand Greater Energy Beings. The Death of a Greater Energy Being splits their essence into a million lesser Beings. Or it does if they die in a more conventional way.
Today, the energy was trapped between layers and dispersed. I have never seen anything like it, and I was born at the end of the Great War. What happened here today might have seemed like a fluke, but if it happens again, the loss to their side will be too great to bear.
They view themselves as eternal, despite the fact that they have suffered losses at our hands before."
Those words seemed to open something in Max's mind, and a flood of memories came rushing back, the last of the memories that had been locked away. They were the memories of the Great War, as the Ancient Darkling had described it. Only the humans he was fighting alongside were unlike any humans he had ever seen before.
He recognized them all as humans, but some had gills, and others had skin as hard as stone or wings. But now he understood. They were all humans, but humans at the time had no qualms about individual genetic engineering, and they had modified themselves and their offspring to better fit their environments.
Humanity as a whole still recognized them as part of the collective, though genetically, the current humans would call them a hundred different species.
It was the last day of a losing war, and only a few small fleets and the mightiest of champions still stood, Max among them. Then it was all over, and the war had never happened except in their minds.
That was Max's previous life, a great champion of the thousands of years of war that was the first wave of the Great War before the humans locked time into a linear state and reset their own species extinction.
It didn't end with his death, so there must be more to the memory, but the words of the ancient Darkling brought Max out of his reverie.
"Our challenge in this battle is to keep the Greater Energy Beings at bay but to do it in a way that doesn't provoke the Bitter Gods into acting directly. Our goal is to avoid another Great War, even if it means decades or centuries of hostilities." The old man explained.
Max frowned. "What of the cost, though?"
"We have a sample of every species that is currently in existence. If the worst should happen, we can recreate them in a new location after the war has ended. They might be starting out with a fresh culture and one planet, but we will look out for them, and if they have any surviving Gods, they will surely rise again."
Nico looked confused as she did the math in her head.
"There were only a thousand Gods to begin with, and some of them are dead. How many species even still have a living God of their own?" She asked.
The old man counted on his fingers, making Max hide a chuckle.
"I would say that there are about fifty species with their own God, though some of them are sharing one. For example, the same being that showed favour to the Humans is also overseeing the Innu.
His aspect is creativity, and both species appeal to his nature, though all of the surviving gods tend to pay attention to the three mortal species simply because we were the originals and we are still the most advanced."
