I smiled slightly. “Well, that will to a large extent be dependent upon you, Brother.”

“I see.” He was silent for a long minute, while we sat there kneeling to him, trying to figure us out. “You say we are... kin?” I could tell he had difficulty with the statement.

I snapped my fingers, and our pigmentation disguises faded. My hair went back to its normal burning auburn, Celestia was base white, Jensa was magneta, and Keva was still dark. I, of course, was a golden tan, Celestia was pale as snow, Jensa was olive-gold, and Keva was a deep bronze. The girls’ eye colors naturally shifted back to pale blue, sharp gold, and deep brown.

“The drow naturally look upon anyone of lighter skin than them as weaker, so we opted to be darker than them and see what happened, Brother,” I informed him.

His Helices rose. We all locked on them, rather excited to see them, and he noticed that, too. He extended them out towards us, and we didn’t bat an eye at all as he did. Bemused, unnerved, and reassured all at once, he played them over us.

His lips pursed, because he was running into our Nulls, which he could tell were being constrained, and were very, very strong, harder than his Helix had the ability to overcome.

They were also delightfully complex and pure, purer than any such power he’d ever felt. There was not a speck of the influence of the Gloom upon them.

Our Curse-Brands, on the other hand, definitely widened his eyes. The Hag Curse was one almighty powerful piece of work, and it had been broken upon us... and yet we were still keeping it around... to use for ourselves!

“This...” he murmured, astonished. “You... are not like me...”

“No, we’re like them.” I gestured to all the other hyn watching all this in both suspicion and fascination.

“None of them are like you...” It was more a protest than a statement.

“Yes, well, that is one of the things we can help you with,” I smiled slightly. “Void Brothers are only one of the three Forsaken types born among humans. We are Nulls, as are most of your people. There are also Sources, but none are present, and hyn do not have Sources.”

His Helices withdrew after sensing the power of a great deal of the Gear we wore, and realizing how fantastically deadly we were likely to be... and we were still kneeling to him!

“Your offer is accepted!” he finally blurted out, and watched us all break out in equal, hard smiles. “Do you wish to visit the Fane first, or after?”

“Let us talk at length after we have done what we came to do,” I answered, and the hyn Void Brother nodded, gesturing to one of the side passages.

“Follow me.”

---------

The room was alive with shadows, constant dim illumination fluctuating and dancing from jewel to jewel in a natural, almost liquid manner, keeping the entire room dancing with bands of light and dark. It was quite enchanting.

I noticed him watching the shadows near us, seeing how they reacted to our presence... and nothing happened, of course.

“The umbvar bend and distort the shadows, do they not, Brother?” I asked him calmly.

“Yes. The power of the Gloom reacts to them, responding to their thoughts and emotions. The shadows will not accumulate for them as a result.” He paused before the Shadowfane that was the center of the room.

It wasn’t made of crystals, and actually looked like it was filled with some kind of liquid shadow, rippling with waves of light and depths of darkness. Atop it danced burning black flames with whites and greys in their depths... the true shadowfire of gloom.

“The weapons you returned to us were all empowered with shadowfire. Could you not have used them to do what you wish?” he asked, watching as Chalice dropped out through my arm and into my hand from body-phase.

“No. This is the original, natural shadowfire. Once imbued into an item, it becomes magical shadowfire, and its nature changes. Using magic to emulate a natural force is easy. Using magic to duplicate a natural force altered into a magical one is significantly harder.”

The dagger point of Chalice expanded to her full black-edged coppery length, and I inserted her humming edge into the Fane.

The cold black flames danced around the length of the metal, dozens of shades of grey breaking out over her as it did so. Her trilling began to jingle, almost as if she was being tickled, and sounded rather improbably merry in such an eye-bending, fantastic place.

“Your weapon has a spirit!” he noticed, as if I hadn’t seen his Helix move out to caress her. “And is very powerful...”

“Another thing I can show you,” I agreed, and his nostrils flared again.

“I have it, Sama,” Chalice said in her crystalline voice, and the Void Brother almost jumped. I lifted her away, and noted a section of runework running with shadowy fires. “I will be able to manifest them on Renewal!”

“Good!” I nodded to the girls, and they went up one by one, starting with Celestia, to do the same.

Shadowfire was the unnatural energy of Gloom, similar to vivus on the Prime. Its properties included giving off oxygen, dimming light yet dispelling darkness close by, and eating away at energies not native to Gloom. It could be distilled and form some extremely powerful and unique weapons if infused into them... and it could Energize materials with Shadow. All in all, precious, useful stuff, and the only ones who could congeal it easily were the hyn. Even native creatures of Gloom or Shadow itself couldn’t do so, as their magical nature threw off the gathering of shadowfire and the jetsilver liquid it gradually condensed into.

------

“Ask your questions. I will answer them if I can. If I cannot, I will tell you why.”

A few of the elders of the hyn had come out of the shadows, looking at us with wary eyes. They were the ones who could be sacrificed if we proved to be hostile... but despite how dangerous we were, they were feeling inexplicably relaxed and confident with us. After all, we also qualified as Human/3’s, and instincts were to trust one another at that level.

The Shadowknife was seated opposite us... atop the Disk, which he found novel and amusing despite himself.

“Who are you?” he began forthrightly.

“I am Sama Rantha the Second, called Sensei Sama by most of the normal folk under me, and Mom by the rest.” I gestured at the girls around me. “These are some of my daughters: Celestial, Jensa, and Keva Rantha.”

Given how similar we looked in age, he had some doubt that was actually the relationship, but the girls all nodded, clearly amused despite themselves.

“Do you have many children?”

The girls looked at me wickedly. “Thousands,” I admitted, without batting an eye. The hyn stared at me. “You may or may not be aware that there are ways to grow children by artificial means via technology and psionics and the like. I employed such means to rapidly grow my children to self-sufficiency and use the Hag Curse to empower them with the skills and knowledge of a Rantha Hag like myself, or for my sons, with the Briggs Brothers template.” I smiled despite myself. “My lads are head and shoulders taller than we are.”

“Mmm!” Keva licked her lips.

“So... you have thousands of daughters?” the hyn asked again, clearly finding it hard to believe.

“Yes. And about five thousand are looking out my eyes at you right now, delighted to know a Shadowknife is about.”

He froze despite himself, looking at the others, back at me. “You are in contact with them? Right now?” he asked faintly.

“That is correct.” His Helices swirled through the air. “You’re sensing for the wrong energy.” I pointed to the Marks around my waist, and his Helices naturally came in and swirled around them.

“Those... there is pure magic within them...” he hesitated, and my eyebrow prompted him further. “It is... very tightly bound up and within other energies...”

“And that tickles.” I flashed my Null, pushing his Helices back, making the other hyn gasp at the display as the swirls of shadows were unceremoniously pushed back in his direction. “They are very old Rune magic, from before the Warp affected magic. They allow telepathic communication at any distance, including across dimensions, and provide an impressive buff to a foundational Stat.” I nodded at him. “As Nulls, we and most of your population can eventually carry up to nine of them. As a Void, you could only carry one before your Void would wipe off the rest as disruptive.”

Multiple questions were popping up in his mind. “Where... are these daughters of yours?”

“On a world called Janus III in the mortal plane. We are currently in an artificial realm created by the ancient Elvar called the Underweb, created within the Gloom to allow them rapid transit throughout the galaxy, and perhaps as a sort of nature preserve. Your ancestors were humans kidnapped from the mortal plane and brought here as slaves. The hyn genome has been bred out of existing humanity, but they must have rediscovered it and brought it back.

“Thus, while you have been born in the Underweb and it is all you know, your ancestors came from the mortal plane. Go far enough back, and we all hail from the Imperial homeworld of Tellus.”

Their breaths caught. “Can... we return there?” he asked shortly, the light of hope in their eyes.

“I am not sure you can. You have probably been Claimed by Gloom.” His lips pursed, and he nodded slowly. “Likewise, I am not sure the older ones among you could survive in the mortal realm after so long on Gloom. Your younger members, the answer is yes... but we would have to find a place for you to live.

“As I mentioned, the hyn have long been bred out of the human race. Introducing you to an existing human population would be, hmm, unsettling, to say the least. It would be best if you were brought somewhere you could develop by yourselves, and then we ‘accidentally stumble across a lost human evolutionary strain’.”

Their expressions showed understanding of the subterfuge.

“Why are you here... in the Gloom?” the Shadowknife asked. “Certainly not just for your swords.”

“No. The galaxy of the mortal world has recently been cut in half by a tremendous disturbance in the Warp bleeding out into the mortal world. I am from the far side of the rift from Tellus, the human imperial capital, and the worlds thereof. I am seeking to get a foothold on the other side of the Rift, using the Underweb as an alternate path around the Rift. We entered using an Underweb point near an ancient elvar Portal to Janus III. We are seeking egress Portals on the far side of the Rift... but will naturally also take any locations on other worlds allowing us to co-opt the work of the elvar.” I smiled thinly. “If you know of any close by, we would be obliged.”

He nodded slowly. “I... know of a great number of them.” I was thunderously lacking in surprise, and all our eyes were dancing. “But... if you wish me to guide you to them, we will need things in exchange.”

“Eh.” My total lack of surprise or care seemed to amuse him. “A Brother always has shit he needs done.”

“That... is very true.” He could read that I understood his situation very well indeed...