Dz'oan Arclight, Defender of Life

Ni'vaan and the Warrens

Tears filled Dz’oan’s eyes as they once again fell on the heavy manacles clasped about her thin wrists.  With her heart weighed down with despair, she once more tried to understand why and how it all had happened.

“They are called the Lekun.”  The prefect couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice, audible through the hisses and snarls of his people’s language.

 “A sub-race of aliens infesting Gaulisel when humans first colonized the planet nearly 500 years ago.  Possessing a backward, nature-loving culture, they did nothing to stop the humans from taking their world from them.  Nor did they do anything to stop us, or aide the humans when we arrived to claim our rightful possession 50 years ago.”

The Ni’vaan governor slowly nodded as he looked at her and three of her companions, all clad in traditional lekun homespuns.  Resplendent in his shimmering metallic power armor, the humanoid alien with his long, muscular arms, thick legs and broad shoulders towered nearly a full metre over top of her.  Behind him, the slightly shorter prefect, also clad in power armor, its angled surfaces dancing with the energy fields that both enhanced and protected it, went on.

“Too weak to be laborers, and not attractive enough to serve as personal slaves, we’ve followed the human lead with regards to the Lekun: we ignored them.”

The governor’s silvery helmeted head slowly turned to let his gaze fall onto the prefect who, helmetless, could be seen with a look of distaste on his chiseled ni’vaani face, with its bony cheeks, pointed chin and high forehead.

“So why arrest them now, prefect?” The governor’s voice was deceptively mild.  Yet, knowing the tone, the prefect’s gray skin paled.

“Intelligence suggest they aide the human resistance in some way, sir.”  He quickly explained, reaching into a courier pouch that sat on a table beside him to draw out a cylindrical data crystal, which he then handed to the governor.  Taking it, the governor inserted the crystal into a port on the inside of his arm and proceeded to watch its contents stream across the inside of his helmet’s visor.

“They been observed taking supplies to known rebel locations through the swamps surrounding Lutetia, the former human capital.”

The data cylinder popped out of the access port in the governor’s armor with a soft ‘hiss’.

“We use them to ferry supplies through the swamps as well, prefect.  They know this world and its nuances well and so make excellent porters, despite your misgivings.”  The governor handed the crystal back to the prefect, whose face had paled even further, the bony tips of his jutting cheekbones almost white against the gray of his skin.

“Still, it won’t hurt to keep an eye on them as we move the Dauphin from his holding cell at Lutetia to our primary facility at Kalaisport.”

Which had essentially meant house arrest for any lekun caught in Lutetia or Kalaisport.  What little interaction with either the ni’vaani, who held vast tracks of northern Gaulisel, or the humans which barely clung to the rest, vanished.  Along with it went the income the interactions had provided.  That forced Dz’oan and her sisters to seek work where they could find it, to support the hungry children and weakened elders back in the clan’s traditional home hold.

One of those jobs had found her carrying apa’thae crystals into Lutetia a few days later despite the ban, desperate for income with several children sick with a fever and needing medication.   A city then dominated by the human allies of the Ni’vaan, Lutetia had a thriving black market where lekun could bring in illicit but heavily demanded items like the apa’thae crystals.  Prized for their ability to store energy, both the humans and the ni’vaani used them in their machines. 

Normally the crystals grew naturally in the dense swamps that filled the lowlands surrounding Lutetia, where her people could easily harvest them. Yet, for all their technology, neither the humans nor the ni’vaani could reach them through the overgrown pools, thick undergrowth and dense grasses of the te’berath, the lekun name for the great swamps of the north.

Dz’oan remembered slipping through the southeast gate of the walled city, her slender form almost bent over double under the weight of the heavy crystals in the burlap sack she carried on her back.  There she was stopped by a human guard, the red sigil on the shoulder of its body armor marking it as a Burgundian, the faction that tentatively supported the ni’vaan occupation of the planet’s northern hemisphere. 

A heavy helmet hid the guard’s face, glowing red eyes indicating night vision was active thanks to the heavy sky overhead making everything murky and dark.  An old style slug thrower was gripped in a gauntleted hand, a weapon made popular by ni’vaan armor having the ability to scatter beams from energy weapons.  It was an irony not lost on the young lekun, the weapon’s presence only underlying the uneasy agreement that gave the Ni’vaan the north, and the Burgundians their freedom.

A gesture with the hand gun by the guard in his heavy armor, and she was slipping deeper into the city, intent on the warrens packing the city’s core. An old city, Lutetia was the first that could claim that title when it was built over 470 years ago.  Its streets were narrow, its buildings crammed close, as the early human settlers tried to keep everything on the rare mound of dry ground they had found in the heart of the vast swamp that dominated the northern continent they picked to land on.

It was as she had slipped past yet another Burgundian checkpoint close to the warren that she had caught sight of the ni’vaani escort.  No less than ten heavily armored and armed troopers, energy shields dancing in the low light managing to penetrate the dense clouds overhead, they marched on foot over the worn paving of the road they occupied, their heavy boots making heavy, thumping sounds on the crumbling ground.  In their midst was a solitary human male, head bowed and hands bound in front of him, moving almost without sound in contrast, his escort head and shoulders taller and nearly hiding him behind a wall of shimmering metal.

As humans went, he wasn’t an attractive creature, possessing an unkempt thatch of dirty blonde hair, unremarkable features and plain, ragged clothing.  Yet, as Dz’oan’s eyes had fallen on him, she had felt a strange surge of recognition even though she had never before laid eyes on this man.

He was the one the rebels called the Dauphin, an ancient term for The Anointed.  From a family called the Valois, he was neither Burgundian, nor Armagnacian, the faction that fought to free Gaulisel from the grip of the ni’vaan.  Yet, if he could be allowed to come to power, the whispers around the rebel camps said he could unite the two factions and drive the ni’vaani from Gaulisel.

Dz’oan remembered looking away as the ni’vaani escort walked the Dauphin past where she had hidden herself in the shadows.  What did it matter who this human was?  Human, Ni’vaan; regardless of who ruled the drylands, they left the swamps to the Lekun.  Why would she care if this Dauphin could unify the human factions?

It was then the voice spoke for the first time.

- Daughter of Life. -  It had whispered into the depths of her mind. - The Ni’vaan seek this world’s death.  You will act to defeat them and preserve this world by saving this man’s life. –

“I, I will do what?”  She had stammered in her native tongue, the smooth syllables of the lekunish language filling her ears even as the voice filled her mind.

- You will save the Dauphin from the Ni’vaan. -  The voice carefully repeated. - Activating defensive protocols.  Stand by for bio-physical augmentation.  -

“Aug,…Augmentation?”  Then she was dropping to the ground as pain rippled through her body.

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