Skiyja

Skiyja wasn’t even a moon really, not even a dwarf moon, it was a largish asteroid caught in orbit above Balva, barely visible by day, barely noticeable by anyone who didn’t know what to look for. It was that, beside a fluke of classification and zoning, that had saved it. It was the unremarkability of this little pseudomoon that  made it the brightest thing in the night.

Still the brightest thing, even after all these years.

Skiyja history still recorded what most cultures had forgotten in the past ten thousand years. It was a city - the whole moon was covered by city - of scholars and historians with records dating back to colonization - with datafiles containing scraps of precolonization lore, music from the motherplanet, books, movies, scentrecords, seeds. Skiyja kept history - the one remaining seed of light, alive after the five second war.

Balva below shimmered white in the heat. Miles upon miles of salt stretched endlessly across its surface, so that to its shepherd moon there was nothing but white. Look more closely, as some did with telescopes set to scan the sand, you’d see the occasional rocky outcropping, the even rarer nomad clan huddled against it. The salt whipped across the landscape driven by unceasing winds in the day, and nomads traveled at night, using Skiyja’s light to guide them to the shallow wells that were their life.

Skiyja history still remembered a time when Balva had been green, covered in quicksilver oceans and life adapted to them, dotted in rich cities towering above the land. Five seconds war was a bit of a misnomer, most of the damage had happened in the first three. Balva had struck out against her mother even as her mother sought to destroy her. In the first second Millions had died as waves of force flattened cities, and powdered stone. Then allies and adversaries struck, back and forth trying to destroy each other before they were destroyed, commanded by massive mechanical minds to which a second is an eternity.

Suns must have been expended to turn every atom on Balva into salt, but suns were dying anyway, destroyed to crush the planets they sheltered. All across the universe, instantaneously humans cried out in death, while others struggled to survive. Why salt? We’re told Balva developed shields against quantum strikes and began setting them up in those first moments, salt was something they hadn’t been prepared for. So salt Balva became.

Skiyja hadn’t had any quantum transmitters of its own, preferring to reroute through Balva. It had been zoned as a separate planet from Balva, but never given autonomy. It wasn’t listed on any record the massive AIs used when they struck, and it caught nothing but stray shock waves bounced off Balva’s surface.

So that where Balva fell, Skiyja survived.

Gently, quietly, Skiyja tested the worlds. Earth - gone. Luna - gone. Migua, Kaeli, Irin, Ramrak, Knarra, Argune, Reimor, Rhuine, Saskatska, Theirakus, Kem . . . they were silent, dead or dying, the empire that had spanned the universe for a millenium was gone.

Gently, quietly, Skiyja saw survivors. Crash landed on Yawgoth, crawling out of holes on Sril. The scholars and philosophers debated whether to make contact, help the broken people on foreign worlds - but they had seen the devastation of worlds and they thought it better that the worlds forget each other. Forget Skiyja, library of Balva.

They helped those below them, but never so the people who slowly crawled from the cracks could see. If a man or woman of Skiyja went down they never came up again - and they never told the full story. Lest the people of Balva become advanced again, and in war destroy Skiyja and her glory.

Little fear of that. They worshiped Skiyja as their god, those nomads, looking at the twinkle of a thousand lit buildings as a single magical glow. Cast against the salt, surviving on only what animals could survive it, they grew into zealots, fervently awaiting their judgement by their god.

Skiyja the silent god, the keeper of memories, the pseudomoon of Balva, the city of light - she alone remembers. She alone survives of what once was. She alone holds humanity in their glory.