The Ring of Acies

Interlude: The Aciin

A being leaves a moment—a moment it considered to be safe and welcoming. The being, which in words the human mind can comprehend is best described as Aciin, enters a new moment. It can never predict when the moment will change. It can only predict that it will.

The moment the Aciin enters is not like the last. This moment lacks the star's brightness, the presence of others, and something it does not understand since it has never once lived in a moment where it was not there.

As the Aciin looks around the moment, it sees things it thought were not possible. It floats in a ring of death and destruction. Remnants of a structure float broken and in disarray around the planet. But that is only the first of the many horrors. It makes contact with the flesh of its kind. Only this flesh is different. This flesh is cold and unmoving. This flesh is dead.

The Aciin suddenly realizes the last thing it feels this moment is missing, the feeling of life. The Aciin can no longer pull from the planet as it once could. It does not understand. It feels cold, and it begins to stop moving. It sees that the mess it is in is no ordinary array of chaos. It floats in a ring of death orbiting a planet once known to it as Life.

The Aciin struggles as it sees more dead flesh floating in the ring. It wants to leave, and it wants to know why such a moment exists. Despite the burning desire of the Aciin to leave this moment, it has no choice. Its body begins to stiffen. Its eyes begin to dim when suddenly, it is no longer in that moment.

The Aciin is in a moment where it does not recognize its surroundings. It feels life again and momentarily feels comfort. It is still feeling fear from the previous moment. It needs to know what caused that moment to occur and if there is anything it can do to stop it. It refocuses on the moment in which it has just arrived. There are other beings here, different from itself and unlike anything it has seen before. There is also something surrounding it, a fluid that exerts pressure on its body.

The Aciin must adapt; the Aciin must optimize. As it grows organs to navigate the environment around it and process the fluid putting pressure on its body, the other beings approach it. They are holding metallic structures in a way that is strange to the Aciin.

The Aciin is not comfortable in this environment. It needs space. It needs to be free to move. It needs to breathe for the first time in its existence, but the beings come closer. It looks around at the surrounding structures looking for a way to be free. As the other beings get closer to it, it senses something different, not another of its kind, but one that shares a similar neural sequence.

The Aciin turns to the structure behind it and jumps towards the sequence. It finally sees the sequence; it is another being. The Aciin shares its eyes with the being as it rushes towards it, but it leaves the moment before it can reach the being.