Ragnarok

Chapter 9 - The Traveler

Long before Spica's twin suns had gotten close enough to devour one another, the inhabitants of Rok had abandoned their home world. The last sentient being to end its existence there had ignited the massive world-engines that took up almost a quarter of the planet's surface area, generating truly tremendous amounts of thrust. Enough thrust to adjust the planet's course in ever-lengthening cycles, swinging in closer and closer to the twins suns with each pass before finally gaining enough speed to eject itself entirely from Spica's gravity well.

Had anything organic been left alive on the surface by then, it would surely have perished, but the Ormarrs had long since gathered up whatever life-forms they could carry and left on their gigantic generational ships, seeking out new planets to reshape into forms that could support their reptilian physiology. Everything else, even the deepest bacteria within the rocky mantle, had long since been ripped apart by raw heat and radiation from their sun.

The first of the binary twins, Ramas in the Ormarr tongue, had begun to swell into its own giant phase about 10,000 years before, as the Traveler reckoned its original orbital cycle. When Ramas went through its initial helium flash, its corona had expanded out massively, engulfing several small rocky worlds that were unfortunate enough to lie closer in. It had also fed its companion star, Rani, with its massive gas envelope, so that when its own helium flash occurred, it would be even larger and hotter than what had once been the primary.

Rani, the greedy older sibling of Ormarr theology, eagerly drew away her younger brother's greatness, causing great storms of plasma and electromagnetic force to ripple through the system. Temperatures on the Traveler, then called Rok, had skyrocketed, even as radiation and colossal filaments of fiery gas had scoured any sign of life from its scorched surface.

Only one last, ancient Ormarr scientist had stayed behind to make sure Rok's massive computer cores were properly shielded and prepared for a voyage through the near-absolute chill of interstellar space. The Traveler first 'awoke' in that weathered creature's dying hours, the knowledge of its purpose already encoded into its databanks. With a grave feeling of what some would call respect, it had observed and spoken to the sickly old reptile as he hobbled from station to station. The Ormarr, whose name was Sarkos, seemed to think that Rok was some kind of god, and though the Artificial Intelligence had its doubts, it made no effort to dispel its creator's illusions. It seemed important to the reptilian creature, and Rok's observations indicated that Sarkos did not have long left.

When Sarkos was about to succumb to the cellular degeneration and cancerous growths that his age and the furious radiation from Ramas had caused, the old Ormarr had calmly ignited the gigantic thrusters his people had installed on the planet decades before, allowing the sudden massive increase in g-forces to finish his body's slow disintegration, and trusting to the Traveler to take it from there...

* * *

Micah was still in a foul mood when he woke up the next morning. He and his friends had spent days practicing how to beat Lady Hydra, and then just as they had been celebrating, the end boss had appeared and wiped the floor with all of them. And according to Rei, that wasn't how the game was supposed to go; normally, the game script would send them back to the Free Alliance to celebrate their victory and rest, before they were directed towards Yggdrasil and the final series of battles.

The servers were taken offline shortly after, for 'maintenance', but Micah was sure they were fixing the code and trying to figure out how in creation one of the most secure servers in the System had been hacked into.