The Humans. They arrived as refugees, claiming that their home, Earth, lay among the stars well beyond ours. They journeyed an impossible distance, made short by their surprisingly clever ability to make use of a natural tear in the fabric between worlds: wormholes, they called them.
Had they met us first, the Eugenes, the tale of their arrival would have been different. Perhaps we would have even helped them. But the Fates placed them in the path of the Sceeloid, our sworn enemy.
Of course, there were those Eugenes who welcomed the Humans as the Palari, the lost children. It was a story passed down through the hundred ages even before the Council of First sat in judgment of all. Every Eugenes child, noble or base born, knew it well.
The Fates, mystical sisters that governed the lives of all living things: Natus, the mother; Metauri, the task maker, and Nyxa, the cruel. There had once been a fourth sister, Miri, the youngest and granter of mercies. She was the one charged with determining the Paths of Eugenes souls, but the task grew heavy on her heart. Miri sought to rebel against her sisters and created the Palari, brothers and sisters of the Eugenes that had free lives with no set Paths. She hid her children away and sent them into the far darkness of the wild
stars, the place we now call the Reaches, to fend for themselves. There they dwelled, well beyond the roving, wizened eyes of her older sisters.
One day the fierce dragon, Sceelo, came to the Fates, demanding the gift of Sight that the Fates possessed. He wished to see into the hearts of all Eugenes, his enemy, and to better know their weaknesses.
The Fates laughed at Sceelo’s boldness, sending him away. But Miri followed him in secret. Worried for her lost children, she struck a deal with him: She would grant him the Sight, and in exchange, Sceelo would protect the Palari. The cunning dragon agreed, but the moment his Sight was granted, he killed Miri and consumed her body. The children of his body came to possess the Sight as well.
When the remaining Fates learned of Miri’s murder, they were powerless to destroy Sceelo, for he could see into their hearts and minds and outsmart their schemes in battle. For many years, Sceelo terrorized the Eugenes, slaughtering them easily by using his stolen gift. Although the Fates could not take back Miri’s gift, they could change the Eugenes. If a Fate touched a newborn Eugenes within three nights of his birth, his heart and mind would be protected from the prying eyes of Sceelo’s wicked Sight.
After many years, the Eugenes grew stronger, vanquishing Sceelo and his soldiers. He was forced back to his lair at the entrance to the Reaches, where he ruled all. The children of the Fates were safe from Sceelo, except for the forgotten Palari, who would forever be vulnerable to Sceelo’s Sight.
When the Humans came in their great battered vessels full of many families, you would not know one from a Eugenes. The differences were minor and easily missed by the untrained eye. Of course, their speech was indecipherable. Their tech was miserably primitive. To many, it was an embarrassment to embrace these frail backward beings as kin. This small, pitiful group fell upon Eugenes shores seeking refuge from the Sceeloid, who had tried to consume them like the great fabled dragon from long ago. The Sceeloid had enslaved many of them, burning into their minds with the Sight.
The Humans that had escaped this danger brought the disease of
weakness with them. And, in the end, some believe we had little choice but to do what came next: extermination.
“Observations on a Ruined World”
Helio Veradin, Seventh Councilman of Argos
Excerpt from his speech to the 498th Assembly of the Council of the First Children of the Fates in protest against the Purge of Humans from Eugenes space.