PROLOGUE
For countless millennia the Haillar Dominion grew, protected by its twelve immortal Queens. For countless millennia race after race signed the Accords, thus joining their fate with the Haillar. Initially, nothing more than a pact between the three surviving races of a long-forgotten war, the Dominion Accords became the law binding together thousands of star systems, dozens of races.
Yet, while most species seemed happy to settle on comfortable worlds and make them flourish, the Haillar themselves remained the soldiers of the confederation, the star farers, the explorers, the glue that kept the entire Dominion together.
In theory, the Queens were the rulers of the Haillar race only, while every other species governed itself. In practice, though, the Queens were the sword and shield of the alliance, for all the eka wielding Sen’Haillar were their retainers, which made the fleets, the transport portals and hundreds of other eka based ventures theirs to control.
Aeons ago, a long-forgotten driang ruler described eka as the Haillar gods’ idea of pulling a prank on pretty much every other race. The Haillar themselves did not believe in gods and described eka wielding as the art of manipulating the very fabric of everything that exists.
It’s said that their race mastered the mysteries of eka long before they started to work with metals, and definitely millennia before they raised to the stars. Later, during their stellar quest, the need to survive an implacable enemy taught them new ways to use this power, whether in its naked form or combined with a host of alien technologies. The need to survive taught them ways to create new weapons. Transformed them from a rather peaceful race into the galactic powerhouse they are these days.
Haillar histories mention dozens of ways of wielding eka, dozens of so-called Aspects. Most have been lost ages ago, for using vast amounts of eka always came at a price and, more often than not, strong adepts used to go down in flames driven mad by their terrible powers. Only the Queens survived, having found ways to balance each other as bonded pairs strong in opposite Aspects.
Darkness and Light. Life and Oblivion, Fire and Frost. Order and Chaos, to name just a few.
This led to the rise of six Great Houses, one for each bonded pair, and over time the entire Haillar society structured itself around these. Entire planets placed themselves under the shield of one queen or another, sworn to protect them as their Suzerain. In time the entire Dominion consolidated into six Sectors, each led by a pair of Queens.
Each Queen the guardian of hundreds of worlds and dozens of races.
On such a planet, called Aldeea, a world located in the system known to the Earth’s astronomers as Kepler 452, the humans and the Haillar will meet for the first time
But before the siege of Aldeea, before humanity’s First Contact, a younger woman starts her new life by unravelling an enemy plot on one of the driang colonies in the Dorien Sector.
