Risen: Shatterverse

A Sailin' Subspace We Go!

I was carefully sliding together the last components of the energy converter we had assembled to pull power from our captive blue-white giant in the quantum storage pod when a shift off my left shoulder made me hesitate. A glance over my shoulder yielded a familiar scintillating column of light.

"Lux?"

"My apologies for the interruption, my lord," the light-based AI said as it glided forward the handful of steps between me and it. "The technology you appear to have access to seems capable. However, I think it might be advantageous for our efforts here to run a comparison between your technology database and my own database from the multiple millennia of Demdagon advancements."

I turned to look at Lux directly with a raised brow.

"And what would that accomplish?" I asked before immediately grimacing, knowing the answer even as I asked the question.

It would point out where current Risen tech compared to the very powerful Demdagon technology is what it would do. Technology that, while it couldn't defeat the T'sang in the end, could bend time and reality itself. I was pretty sure we could find something useful out of that!

"Okay, so that was a stupid question," I admitted ruefully. "That's a pretty good suggestion, Lux. How do we do that, though? I don't have a Risen tech database handy for you to access."

Lux appeared to look at me for a moment.

"Not entirely true, Two," it then said. "Encapsulated in your body is a fragment of an entity known as Legion."

"The k'ethik neoshell?" I frowned. "But like you said, Lux, it's just a fragment. It barely remembers even being Legion."

"True. However Legion had access to, and in fact, created a great amount of current Risen technology. Using a temporal lens, I can use the fragment as a conduit to access what the original Legion had access to."

I had to put a hand down to keep from toppling over in astonishment. Temporal lens? Using the fragment to access the real Legion in the past?? Like seriously, was that even possible?

I then snorted. Yet again I had the answer even as I asked the question. Was not Lux itself from the distant past? The Demdagon AI had already demonstrated that it could do things that should be impossible. Made sense: if you had walked as gods in the universe for hundreds of thousands of years, was there anything the Demdagon couldn't do? Well, outside defeating the Collector, that is.

"Okay. Let's do it. Lens the fragment and do your comparison."

There was a swirl of light that rushed up the column of energy then slender tendrils of crackling energy were peeling away from the central pillar to reach towards me. Watching those tendrils come closer, I felt the slightest thrill of anxiety abruptly wash through me.

"This isn't going to hurt, is it?" I asked as the nearest one moved towards my right arm. Then it was touching my silvery flesh to send a warm surge rippling up my arm. A heartbeat later the other tendrils were touching me and the surge filled the rest of my body.

"Urk!" I grunted as the surge became uncomfortable. "How ... how long will this take, exactly?"

The tendrils lifted off me before Lux answered.

"Already finished, my lord," the AI indicated with a satisfied tone to its voice as the tendrils returned to its central column. "And I will be the first to say that Legion was quite accomplished for a construct. Your cause was fortunate to have access to its abilities. However, as much as it advanced Risen technology, you must forgive me for saying but it is nowhere close to the heights that the Demdagon managed to achieve before their demise at the hands of the T'sang."