The eternal sunset cast long shadows across the forests of the Northlands, as Avala surveyed the area from the Abjar Hills. Near the northern horizon, the lights of Centravaj, the City of Trees shone ever bright. From her vantage point, she could see the Centravaji patrol making their way through the trees. She waited for them to leave before running quickly into the forests, looking for somewhere to hide.

 

Reports stated that there this area will riddled with caves. All she needed to do was to find one that was unguarded. She pulled out a flat device, its screen showing the area around her. A point of light flashed on the screen indicating a possible cave entrance. As she headed towards it she thought about what led her to this point.

 

Only a quarter year ago she was still the unhappy wife from a forced marriage. She had discovered that her husband was not Athakarin, but was instead a being from another world called a human. He took her away from her world and granted her freedom from their marriage, asking her to help them end the threat of their long time enemy; the Yajirans.

 

The Yajirans were a race of aliens who relied on an elite group of individuals, known as the Yajixa, to secure their superiority. The Yajixa had the ability to absorb the souls of the fallen into their minds, and could also transfer their consciousness to other bodies at will. As it turned out the Yajixa were bound to the will of the Council of Ten, the group of emperors and empresses of the Yajirans.

 

The Yajixa had for millions of years been presenting themselves as gods to primitives, eventually enslaving them to their empire. Avala's own people worshipped the 'spirits' who turned out to by Yajixa. Her people were the descendants of Humans and Yajiran rebels called Athakri who were killed and their children raised to be primitives. Avala had since made it her mission to free her people.

 

Fortunately for her, she discovered shortly after leaving her world, that she herself had been born with the power of the Yajixa. She escaped the grasp of the Yajiran leaders, and managed to free an ancient being from within her mind. This being was one of the long lost Echarikith.

 

It turned out that the Yajixa got their power from the Echarikith enslaved within their minds. The Echarikith was a massive collection of different appering beings with one thing in common, they were all drones of the Echarikith consciousness. Each one was truly another facet of the consciousness's mind, each with its own personality and appearance.

 

Three million years ago a meteor fell upon the Echarikith homeworld, in response the Echarikith Consciousness left all its body is fear, even those not in danger. This led to the surviving bodies gaining new minds and souls to fill the void were the Echarikith once inhabited. This led to countless sapient, and some non sapient, new species forming across the galaxy in a single instant. Since the Echarikith were capable of making new bodies for themselves on a whim, they decided to leave these new species to their own devices. This proved their undoing.

 

Shortly after this one of the new species, the Yajirans had discovered their powers and secrets, and built a device to capture the Echarikith from their bodies and place them in their minds. As the Echarikith had been forming their new core, which would be capable of creating new Echarikith drones, the Yajirans used their device. The Echarikith were capture all at once, trillions of them absorbed into the ten Yajirans. They became the first Yajixa, and the leaders of the Yajiran Empire.

 

The descendants of the Ten, which all Yajiran other than the Athakri were considered, would sometimes be born as Yajixa with a Echarikith trapped, but not enslaved in their mindscape. These individuals were taken from their families the moment the signs began showing themselves. They would then undergo a procedure to enslave the Echarikith to the Yajixa, and through that the Yajixa to the ten. Others came about due to individuals being made into Yajixa. They would be given a Echarikith into their mind, then would then undergo the same procedure as those born with it.

 

After she discovered her powers, and freed the Echarikith within her, she went on to aid the Republic of Earth in taking the Athakarin city Ecrekio, which was built inside an Echarikith ruins. Along the way she freed several other Echarikith from Yajixa, which resulted in the death of the Yajixa. However when she encountered a Yajixa who seemed to resent the ten, she found a way to save them, yet still free the Echarikith within them. During the final assault of the city she managed to free a whole group of Yajixa, and found a way to let them keep their powers. These former Yajixa would become known as Avalans, named after the first of their kind, her.

 

During the battle for the city, Avala accidentally captured the soul of an Yajiran Empress in her mindscape. This led to the Yajixa's Empress' daughter Namjila, who desired power above all else, seeing this as an opportunity to take he mother's place. She infiltrated Avala's mind and freed all the Echarikith from her mother's mind, killing her in the process.

 

Shortly after, Avala ended up absorbing the soul of a powerful world sized creature known as an Chardrik. Absorbing this creature's soul led her to gain power beyond what any Echarikith could grant her. She used this power to help defend the Echarikith in creating their new core. However she found out during the battle that Namjila also had been using a Chardrik as her power source, causing the two young girls to become bitter rivals.

 

Now several human months later, the Republic and the Avalans were attempting to take the area known as Northlands of Evelon II, the tidally locked homeworld of the Athakarins. The Echarikith were busy with matters on their core, and could not aid them, leaving them without the power of their ancient voice.

 

Avala reached the cave entrance, and found it was just a crack in the ground, barely big enough to fit through. She took a climbing grapple hook of of her waist and attached it to a nearby tree. She then climbed into the hole, using the nanofiber rope attached to her harness to support her weight. The cave opened up significantly once inside. It appeared that no major tunnels left the chamber other then one possibly at the bottom of a small pond. The cave floor was slanted, but its angle was not enough to hinder possible construction.

 

She pressed the release button for the grapple hook above and it came falling down the hole, activating anti gravity stabilizers within it to slow its descent. She took a head sized device out her pack and placed it down, pressing a button to activate it. The light at the top lit up and started flashing, indicating it was functioning. Moments nearly a dozen Yajirans melted out of the ground around it. She reached for a weapon at her side, pointing it at them.

 

“No need Avala,” the lead one said. His purple strands of scales on his head matched his large purple eyes, Avala recognized him as Evyn's Yajiran body, he was the first Yajixa who she had freed from the Yajirans. “Its just us Avalans.”

 

She lowered her weapon a bit, then probed into the mind of each of the Yajirans present. Each one let her mental probes in, allow their identity to be revealed to her. They were indeed Avalans, so she put the weapon back at her side.

 

She nodded at them, “When is Alvaj getting here?”

 

“He should be right after us, speaking of which we should clear the MELT area,” he said leading the other Avalans off to the side. He looked around the cave, smiling, and said, “this cave ought to do. It's big enough. And once we block off that hole up there we shouldn't have problems with flooding, we just need to find an entrance cave. But that's Aeli's job.”

 

Avala recognized the name of the Youngest Avalan, Aeli. She had been only five years old when she awoke as an Yajixa, though it had been more than a few decades since then when she was freed, her soul and mind was still that of a child's in many ways, since everything but the body of a Yajixa aged at extremely slow rates. She had been rescued at the battle for the Echarikith's new core, after she had possessed Avala's body. Though she was a child, she like all the other child Avalans, had so much battle experience by the time she was freed, that it nearly rivalled that of many human fighters. That meant that to refuse her aid on moral principles alone was foolish. She wanted to free her people as much as Avala wanted to free hers.

 

A group of humans and several large crates melted out of the floor around the beacon. They all wore form fitting white clothing with coloured strips down the right side. Since first seeing official Republic uniforms, she had since learned what the different colours meant. Gold meant command position. Red meant their job was in the field of Combat and Tactics. Green meant their job was in the field of Science, Medical, or Engineering. Blue meant they were non-essential personnel, meaning they were mostly civilians. The rare silver stripe was an indication of an agent or operative that was not out in the field. The purple stripe was a sign of diplomats.

 

The lead human man, the only one with a gold stripe, stepped forward and bowed to her and the Avalans. She had only seen Alvaj wearing this uniform within the last few weeks. He had recently been promoted due to his involvement in the events with the Echarikith.

 

“Greeting Sub Commander Allan,” Evyn bowed back.

 

Avala nodded, “Hi Alvaj.” She still called him by the name he had used when he infiltrated her home village. Back then she had been forced to marry him when she was eight, but he had never violated her. When he took her to his people, he had annulled the marriage due to multiple laws, including ones that prohibited forced marriage, and set the legal age of marriage at sixteen. She had come to appreciate him as a friend and mentor since then.

 

Alvaj nodded in acknowledgement. “We have work to do. We need this base operational by the time the moon next rises,” he said professionally.