The Shadow of the Moon-Lydia's Tale

Postscript

So there it is. The story of my time with the humans. It is with a heavy heart I recall those memories, of the lost battle at Rama and terrible thing we encountered off Ax. History shows that it was banished from the realm of the living never to return. 

So Lydia or should I say the Nergalrhod as even now this remains a paradox to me went off through the wormhole at Ak-Hol with the Swam ship, as she said, to complete the circle. Father Rytt seemed convinced that the wormhole is a portal to an earlier time in the universes history. The Halout seemed certain that the events of the time proved the wormholes efficacy.  

She did offer that I go with her but I chose to stay with my friend Aiexsky, we had been through too much together to leave. We worked our way back through the outer planets eliminating what was left of The Swam and helped what was left of the populaces return to some sense of normality.  

At what point Lydia became the Nergalrhod I cannot tell and I suspect she too would struggle to say, most certainly there was a tentative link all along, a destiny that the Nergalrhod already knew and urged to completion. The tests the Nergalrhod set Lydia allowed her to build her confidence from the skinny shy girl I first met at the hab-huts to something quite remarkable when she faced down the Gozzeth Ka at Ax.  

Lydia will presumably put the Aephren back in place with the Halout's forefathers and make the arrangement that will allow her younger self to retrieve it many years after. What arrangement was it? That the Halout would hold the Aephren securely and in return Lydia or should I say the Nergalrhod forewarned them of the coming of the Swarm. While we fought the Regeneration Wars and expended our resources on each other the Assassins methodically went about stealing all of our technological secrets to build a fleet they hoped would ultimately save their own planet. How could they know an innocent girl would drag them back to the forefront of the battle in league with their long standing enemy, the humans?  

And when did Lydia work out the Swarm ship was on Ax, possibly the idea seeded itself when she picked up the burnt earth from beneath my ship and slipped it into her pocket, possibly later. Who can tell but at some stage she will return to Ax, land and bury the Swarm ship leaving the evidence of a giant crater above, in the centre of which the people will build a temple to worship their new god. The ship will sit there hidden for millennia ready to be retrieved in the time of our greatest need. 

The girl who managed to retrieve the Aephren was also the girl who was able to reunite all the combatants of the Regeneration Wars in one single crusade against the unknown enemy. All races ultimately stood together under her banner and they have all remained together since, ever watchful against other threats that may emerge from deep beyond the known territories.  

Time is a strange thing and the girl who became a god or is it the god that became a girl will go down in the annuals of many races throughout the universes as fact, fiction or in years to come just a myth. 

I miss her deeply. 

I must go, for the evening draws on and my muscles ache in the cold. I will return my diary to the shelves and hope that in many years when I feel the need it will be here to draw out the emotions that lie deep within me and remind me of the great friendships and loyalties I found with the humans.  

Faulke, Sixth son of Aallock of Geron. CXVXI