The following data is an account recovered from the memory of the Maras, circa YE 29. As such, it is written in the present tense of whatever era the Maras is from and is written from a perspective where Sourcians are still pervasive and not extinct.

The document was successfully decoded in YE 36 and is highly classified within the LSDF and Lazarus Consortium.

The account below details the formation of what is described as “successor”, “beyonder” and “ender” – a transmutation of intelligence into immaterial form. The purpose was as a last ditch effort to survive the end of the universe as we know it after no other methods were discovered which would work. Exactly what the method was is not detailed, only the consequences and how the events involved changed Sourcian history.

The data comes in the form of a diary of events. The exact meanings of many terms, phrases and even dates is unknown. Given the enormous differences in cognition between humanoids and what is known about the Sourcians, much of it is incomprehensible in our terms.

For this purpose, what is detailed below is a subjective interpretation following dialog with a revived Sourcian intelligence, focusing primarily on trying to create a cohesive sense of sentiment, meaning, relation and progression in terms we can understand, rather than a clear timeline.

The end of all was not an unknown concept to the us. The great compression. The great nothing. The great end. All things theorized and feared.

We believed merit within ourselves, and within those we loved. That we had not come all this way for naught. We tried to find ways to survive the end. To see the tide of the universe roll in, to drown us: To climb from the beach and allow the tide to come in and then to come out. We had to be somewhere that our essence could not be harmed by the ending of all things.

We theorized a state of being where cognizance could exist without the body or without even stuff, surviving purely on its own sense of self-belief and of its own merit elsewhere: Substrate independent intelligence.

Countless attempts were made: Incomprehensible and indescribable in sheer scope and depth, explored for literal eons until finally success was found. The gulf was enormous and frightening and perhaps there would be no return. A valient few offered themselves. They knew of the end and loved their people so dearly, with such deep and intense care that regardless of the cost, would sacrifice themselves until we had achieved our goal. They would make the ultimate sacrifice to survive the end of all things.

For painful lengths of time, there was silence: Our explorers said nothing from the other side. We had no way of knowing if there even was another side, a place to be or a place to respond from. Perhaps there was no return.

And then it happened: Whispers in the night. Scarce and strange. Sporadic. Without clarity but with identity. They were trying to reach us.

They wanted to sing, but could only whisper. These whispers revealed they had no concept of space or time as we knew it. they were incomprehensible. But they kept reaching to us, desperate to tell us of their discoveries.

They learned, they told us, that they needed a condenser of whim: A receiver of their being as muse to communicate with us. Just as the maesus was a thing of order, thought, memory and dream, they needed something to solidity themselves. A listener for will. We learned that using their light from the beyond, they could alter what was meant to happen. They could not only see probability as we could but affect it directly, impressing change upon potential. Natural formations of highly organised matter could be made to form circuitry like the maesus, though of their own design.

We watched in awe, in baited breath.

The cultivation of this seed, this condenser of will would become what we could scorn as the audiraus. It could inhale the breath of other spaces to supply itself with substinance. It could turn light into light-matter to represent themselves and to further change real-matter and they could manipulate the pull of space to give themselves position, placement and anchorage. It gave them an anchor into our time and space and a means of representing themselves.

Discourse began.

So much they had change. They tried to resemble us, to discourse with us. To explain the joy of where they were.

But they would not allow us to join them.

We soon learned they were saboutaging our attempts to ascend, to go into the great beyond. They refused to tell us why: they told us only that we mustn't and that the breath of spaces should not be taken by us. We learned that in taking from their space, they replaced what they took from ours. Infitesimal amounts, forgivable amounts. We took this development upon ourselves, but only anger followed.

We wanted so desperately to leave. To be with them. To be all we could be. To escape the tide. But they would not let us.

First, they turned us away at the door. And then we learned to force the door open. And then the door was saboutaged: first by destroying our side of it, then by locking it from their side. They refused to allow us in.

As much as we loved them, they owed us. We gave them everything. This was our birth-right: To survive and allow those we cared about to survive. We could not reconcile and they would not explain themselves.

So we fought.

We soon learned if harmed, they vanished. Only the audiraus remained. If left, they would recompose their will from the other side and then finally, reform themselves once cohesive and able. If the audiraus was damaged, their will seeped through fractured. They would be represented differently: Often in bestial and terrifying ways, becoming worse the more we fought with them: cognition surrendered for strength.

We surrendered, knowing we could never beat them. And yet some of us did not: Repurposing their broken forms, studying them to advance ourselves. And then war again, the second war: We fought on their level with only our own mortality standing between us and them. We, the trilogy of mind, flesh and mineral. Them, the breath of beyond and the stuff of light.

We lost. They allowed us to lose gracefully, still loving us on some level. But our cries to survive the ending tide grew louder. Our cries would never ever end and they could not stand the sound of it. As if the song drove them to madness, we argued once more. It happened again. And again. And again. Each time they reduced us to our beginnings and each time we evolved and grew and learned of the need once more. And each time, they reduced us to our beginnings.

Seeing the pattern, they learned we would never be silenced. That our begging could not be ignored, that it would anger them eternally, perhaps even after the end as other species wished to survive their end of their own tides.

The last of us were ash before the tide ever even came.

There was no refuge.