The Dweller contemplates the Human.

  The creature is an odd little thing. It is so frail and diminutive, both in comparison to the Dweller, whose bronze-colored form looms over the Human at nearly three times its height, and to the other Greater Sentients that the Dweller has encountered. It appears far more like an aquatic newborn or a newly-hatched youngling than a Realm-strider of great power.

  More strangeness: the Humans' warrior-caste members are armored, but they seem to don those vestments of destruction only just prior to battle. The creature before Orash, for instance, despite clearly being one of the Human species’ preeminent warriors, has only a fine mesh of mechanical enhancements running through its biologic body; nothing that would prevent Orash from crushing the creature with one claw if it so chose.

  Well, all aliens are puzzling in their own way. But not all aliens are Greater Sentients.

  And this one certainly is. The Dweller—Orash, as their lengthy name might be condensed and reproduced if vocal cords were a part of their physiology—can feel the resonance of power dripping from the Human’s mind, lapping at the edges of time and space like an avian testing the limits of its cage.

  How long have some among this species contained this power? Orash wonders. Millennia, perhaps, but they have only wielded it through the Realm for less than three centuries, if the Spire crystals’ deductions are to be believed.

  It is incredible that the Spires had not encountered the Human species prior to this present emergency. Orash has a sense of delayed shock toward this fact, along with a sad resignation toward the failure. The Spires are so few now. So distant. So consumed by strife. They are only a faint echo of what once was.

  Casting the Human’s appearance aside for later reflection, Orash considers the species’ method of Realm traversal. Here is the true oddity, and the secret that Orash must reveal.

  The Realm demands an ability to exist in multiple dimensions. Such a thing should not be possible for a single Sentient to achieve. Ur-existence, after all, is final—or at least it should be. To solve this riddle, a tether point is required: a psychic rope with which to descend into the Realm and then climb back out safely. But this creature has no Crystalline-contained lineage of ancestors with which to guide it into the Realm and back, such as the Dwellers possess; nor do they appear to debase themselves in any form of sacrifice, either in the killing or mutilation of others or themselves.

  Perhaps it is the other consciousness alongside the Human that is its secret.

  The machine, a black orb suspended within a dense metal casing upon which the Human rests one of its appendages, does not give off a psychic aura. However, Orash can detect the passing of waveforms passing between the machine and the Human, little packets of information that are as yet inaccessible to the Dweller’s probing.

  The other Humans treated it almost like a fellow Greater Sentient when they unloaded it, but Orash senses no pulsing of biological matter beneath its casing. Only the thrum of power cells pushing electrical charges through filament wires into a cortex of indecipherable complexity.

  A machine? Truly?

  No. More than that. A spirit crystal, of sorts, Uran thinks.

  The second Dweller, Uran, bends forwards, their fore-wings curving downward in a show of curiosity toward the strange machine-box. Orash feels the human tense, a more rapid exchange of thought patterns passing between it and the machine, and Orash attempts to push a gentle feeling of reassurance toward the creature.

  The Lanis, Orash reminds themself. A woman, as the gonochoric species references itself.

  This is your secret? Orash thinks toward the Lanis woman. Your tether? They feel the alien mind try to make sense of the question, pushed toward it through layers of feelings and imaginations rather than any waveform-based language. Your… slave? Orash tries to keep the surge of disgust from intruding into this last thought. They are uncertain, but a mind-slave of such complexity could be an abomination on the level of the Bellitran’s reliance on sacrificial sub-species or the Ir-Lani torture vats.

  Tentatively, a fumbling answer drifts back from the little creature, a series of images and references points to alien history that the Dweller does not yet fully grasp, but in which hues of meaning are apparent enough.

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  She is not a slave, the Lanis thinks. Not a secret? She has a name. Ether. An artificial intelligence. A friend. A… partner.

  Uran slowly withdraws from the machine. From the secret. From the Ether.

  Orash is unnerved. Uncertain again. A machine mind? An artifice? Orash probes the meaning and implications of such a statement.

  To Orash’s knowledge there is no species native to the vacuum of space. The leap from planet-bound Lesser Sentient, to space, to the Greater Sentients who practice Realm traversal, necessitates the construction of complex structures beyond what any pure-form organism can produce on its own. Artificiality then, born of intelligence, expressed through a multitude of machines: ships, weapons, and the power to propel them. Even the Ursox Wyrm Weavers use a form of computational machinery, though they are formed from purpose-grown organisms rather than engineered alloys.

  But a machine mind—an artificial intelligence—is a foreign concept to the Dweller. After all, why would such a thing be needed when one has the knowledge of a hundred generations encased in Crystalline to draw upon? The accumulated experience of a millenia of pilots, engineers, poets, doctors, each specialty unbelievably refined and born from one’s own lineage. That is intelligence.

  Indeed, Orash knows of no other Greater Sentient who relies on artificial minds, likely for good reason. It smacks of recklessness beyond reason: the danger of rebellion from such an object does not seem a risk, but rather a certainty.

  So, a secret built upon another secret: that this young species has managed to avoid destruction at the hands of its own artificial creation, and that this creation plays some key role in the Humans’ method of Realm traversal.

  They will get to the root of these mysteries. That is why they were left orbiting this planet by the Spire. To examine, to warn. Perhaps to teach.

  The Spire could yet be recalled, Orash thinks. This species could yet be wiped from existence, though Orash has a new wary respect for the Humans, young as they are. Their homeworld would not be so difficult to destroy, except for the glints of light which are already passing between the surface and their low-orbit ships. The largest among them already appears half-functional again, and while it and the others could not kill the Spire, it might be that they could wound it. Such wounds are not easily borne, and time is short if such a decision is to be reached.

  Such is the depth of Orash’s private pondering that their fellow Dweller senses their uneasiness, and speaks out:

  But what right have we to destroy them? We who have brought such horror upon the universe?

  Orash’s hindwings quiver in despair, anger, dismissal, acceptance, and they see the Lanis take a small step back at the display, confusion apparent in her psychic aura.

  Orash feels a glowing pulse from their direct ancestors, Crystalline embedded in flesh beneath armor, the spirit stones acknowledging the truth of what Uran says. The oldest of the spirits, black gems whose edges are now ridged by the inevitable disintegration of time, were there: there when the ancient ancestors of the Dwellers, in their monumental hubris, believed they could harness the Realm for immortality.

  Instead, they were driven mad, consciousnesses congealing into a rotten, tortured existence within the Realm that was neither the true death nor life. A nightmare. A Rot which the Dwellers have fought for millenia across the Realm and Realspace, numbers dwindling, holding the Rot at bay, but only just.

  The Humans triggered this incursion with their naive recklessness. Artificial mind or no, they lack a proper tether. Their traversal method is unfamiliar, their artificial minds uncanny, Orash thinks, compound eyes glittering in the dim light, their tall body swaying. The Rot is ascendent, this portion of the Realm plunged into darkness.

  Can ignorance be true recklessness? An incursion, yes, but the Lanis prevented a full Breach. The Lanis fought back, striking a blow felt across the Realms. She called the Spire to her planet, Uran replies. Who else among the other Sentients is capable of such a thing? A pause, and a quietude of gloom, as Uran’s own spirit crystals speak through them. The Rot is coming for them all. Who else will fight back? The Bellitran have not the wisdom, and the Androvans lack strength. The Ir’Lani may go willingly into the Rot’s embrace. And the Ursox…. well.

  They lean down again, their tilting bronze head almost touching the Human. She does not step back now, but rather lifts her head, staring back with mind and body. Oran feels that she can understand some of what passes between the two Dwellers; there is fear, strangely expressed through a drop of fluid leaking out of her oculi. Fear, but also a determined resolve.

  Most of the other Realm-striders of this species are dead, across all their worlds. So, let us see what this primus of the Humans is capable of. Let us see what barriers she may construct against a facsimile of the Rot’s probing. Let us see how her machine mind guides her, and the nature of her secret. And then, if she succeeds, let us share knowledge with these little allies.

  An ally, Orash thinks. What a strange idea. The Spires have never had an ally. None are willing to listen, none are willing to believe. But then, the Spires have never been so weak, and a Breach has never been so inevitable.

  Orash considers the odd little Human again, through yet another lens. So frail. So curiously strong.

  They will see.

  The testing begins.

  not omnipotent or all-knowing; in this scene they're still pretty confused about the relationship between Lanis and Ether (and Humans and AIs). I know it's maybe a leap to think that Humans are the first "Greater Sentients" that the Dwellers encounter who are using such advanced AIs, but I wanted to get across maybe how unique the integration model is, and also imply that there have probably been other civilizations where the AIs have gone rogue and destroyed those civilizations before they could ever achieve Warp capabilities.