The king of the Osmium Court, one of the nations of the short lived, three-eyed creatures adrift on the seas of Fundament, was old. He was senile. He was dying. His three daughters, Xi Ro a warrior, Sathona a leader and thinker, and Aurash an explorer, were skilled in their own fields, but it would have been difficult for any one of them to assume the throne.
Their teacher, the sterile mother Taox certainly thought this, which is why she made a deal with the Helium Drinkers, a nearby warlike nation of their own species, to overthrow the sickly king and kill his heirs.
Fortunately, the three sisters managed to escape. Xi Ro distracted the attackers with the bright glowing “bait stars” that her combat skills had previously allowed her to cut from the tentacles of the predators that inhabited the clouds above. Sathona’s tricks and cleverness allowed the sisters to evade their enemies, flee their home, and reach their nation’s coast. And once there, Aurash’s exceptional sailing skills allowed them to escape their enemies by fleeing their home and country on her personal sailing ship.
For over a year, a good tenth of their lives, the three sisters sailed away from home. They sailed passed many dozen foreign continents. They lived off the sea, catching and eating creatures they’d never seen before. They encountered and escaped powerful monsters through skilled sailing and risky maneuvers.
And they explored.
And they explored.
And they explored.
And what these brave seafaring sisters found out in the vast ocean in the heart of a powerful maelstrom would not only change their fates, it would change the fates of thousands of races and hundreds of trillions of lives spread across the spiral arms of our galaxy.
Sources:
II: The Hateful Verse
IV: Syzygy
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