[civ2buf]

The Sun God Luminostra

Luminostra sensed the kilocycles counting down in the collectives' waveforms. He searched the brainwaves as quickly as he could, while glancing at the totem.

collapse...energy conVersion...overload...explosion...

He manipulated the totem, finally sending a charge of his own energy which caused the totem to collapse in on itself like an imploding skyscraper. When that happened, all brainwaves, his own and his recognition of the collectives', halted and he was unconscious. Being unconscious is not a state that Crystals tend to be in. A few seconds before being shattered, other crystals might be in such a state.

When did he regain consciousness is completely unknown. He examined his memory, noticed that billions of new bits of information had somehow been absorbed while he was unconscious, and tried to orient himself by the collective. But he was plunged in the deepest core of the SunWorld, the collective brainwave had no power to reach through this much energy.

The totem dispelled all of the SunWorlds' energy as it approached him. It glowed brightly, but Luminostra was too distracted by the intoxicating effect of all of this energy. The SunWorld strengthened him every moment, without the barest harm coming to him. Energy was the Cryslonites' highest ambition, and highest exultation.

Luminostra's brain waves were pulsing a million times faster than the normal Crystal. With a billionfold the force.

His newfound thoughts beckoned him to return to the emergence world and claim command of the collective as the SunGod, the one who merges with the sun. Just as these thoughts circulated he began to breech the SunWorlds' protection against the collectives' thoughtwaves. Something was wrong, he thought.

The thoughts of the collective did not reflect the collective he knew. They were meek, grasping at weak things no Crystal would ever pursue. The emergence world was armed with pathetic defenses and there was barely a fleet of warships to be found. The collective knew nothing of any of the previous conquests. It seemed to only know of a single race, and they liked them.

The Piundon Empire had cowed the collective, but how? The collective seemed to extend to nowhere at all, a minor neutral blip in the galaxy. The more Luminostra looked at the thoughtwaves, the more alarming the situation was. Then he searched his memory and found out the truth.

The SunWorld was a portal, in a different manner than the portals that went to different star systems, this portal crossed into a parallel universe. Everyone who went on the pilgrimage had crossed over, transplanted onto the alternate emergence world, except Luminostra.

One thing he still did not know, is where his information came from. The collective was a wreck, the true religion was hated on this side, as all of those who crossed over found themselves in a much worse universe for the Imperium. The collective still was a collective, which meant that every newcomer from the first universe quickly found any ambitions of reinstating the religion among the atheist collective dashed.

Fear and meek humility had overwhelmed the collective brainwave. All they had achieved in thousands of teracycles was a large number of construction spaceyards that sat idling, a bunch of pacifistic Crystal transports and large numbers of weapon platforms.

Already Luminostra's outrage was subtly affecting the collective. Luminostra had a great amount of outrage from his old self of the proud Cryslonite instead of this pathetic group of fools.

This was one collective that certainly needed a SunGod and Luminostra was going to pound some sense into the collective and the rest of this universe. "No way in hell are we weaklings."

The universe would soon know the name of the collective.