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(Page 2 of 4) The Intervention by David Scholes
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"That between the Brell soldier and the army he destroyed. Yet also, I think, something else, something of an even greater order of magnitude." Urrle was silent for quite a while. The elder had never seen him so subdued.
"Whoever or whatever wielded that hammer at the time," concluded the old man "fought in this place against that of which we do not speak."
Urrle just nodded, knowing that the residual mystical energies and godpower could only lead to that conclusion. Urrle's head started to hang a little lower out of respect.
* * *
Under the elder's watchful gaze, Urrle moved first to touch the hammer and then to lift it. As a highly enhanced humanoid his own natural strength would enable him to lift huge machineries, even a Tolden star fighter. With the exo-skeleton implants in his light body armor this natural strength was multiplied many fold. Yet he was unable to budge the hammer even minutely. His Tolden companion smiled as if somehow, he was not at all surprised at Urrle's lack of success.
Unaccustomed to failure on any level Urrle, military adviser and, at times, enforcer for the mighty Tolden gave up in frustration. His ancient companion ran a small instrument over the hammer. "I fear it will require far, far more than your strength to lift this hammer," he smiled, almost apologetically. Intuitively the old man knew that no force, no matter how powerful, other than the rightful one, would ever be able to lift this ancient weapon.
Then the old man's mind drifted to the past. To a time that he was still old enough to remember and to the events that had led to the answers that they still sought.
* * *
He remembered the Brell as they had been. A race that, for long millennia, traversed the stars and even the dimensions as easily as ordinary men might walk to a house in the next street. A benevolent, near omnipotent race, that took it upon themselves to make up for what they perceived as Gods failings.
But even God had enemies.
Those many enemies formed an unwieldy alliance. Brought together with a single purpose. By a dark, vast and manipulative intelligence that may not even have been native to our plain of existence. Intelligence possessed of inconceivable power in its own right.
Even the mighty Brell were surprised by the level of coordination between such disparate alien races, cultures and technologies. It became such that the attackers were everywhere at the same time, overloading even the Brell capacity to respond. An endless stream of starships of all shapes, sizes, and designs moved inexorably onwards and inwards to the very heart of the Brell Empire.
The once many friends of the Brell were conspicuous by their absence and lack of support. In one of the darker, if not darkest, times of our Multiverse it is to the eternal shame of us all that no one raised a hand in their defence.
With just one exception.
* * *
It is a matter of irrefutable historical record that the inevitable destruction of the Brell home worlds never took place.
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