When Victrix Lament saw the woman she didn’t yet know as her sister floating in open space outside the observation deck of the Kalon she fled, knowing that in the sudden flowering of power that the newborn Presence was going through she stood little chance. She would have to wait for the powers of the meek little soldier to solidify before she could wring them out. Still, Travayan was clean. Knowing what to look for she could probe the minds of the people from orbit.
Ailen watched the Rogue Agent leave with a quizzical expression. Having failed to destroy her, the only possible explanation could be fear. She had drawn the essence of the Agent’s plan from her mind when they had made contact: To destroy her kind and anyone like them. Feeling the power of her mind extend beyond herself, Ailen suddenly felt a tremendous and consuming warmth. She desired nothing more than to preserve life, in all its forms. She turned away from the path the Rogue left in the heavens and looked down on Travayan. The war between the occupying Empire and her people raged on, each shot stinging like sleet against her face.
This was her purpose. She descended through the atmosphere, transmitting messages to the Imperial Command Base through every possible route: STOP NOW. After she revealed herself, negotiations were short. The Empire ceded control of Travayan to the civilian council and left, under her supervision.
“I hope friendly relations between the Empire and your planet can continue,” said the prefect on a video-screen. Ailen smiled.
“It isn’t my planet, prefect. I was just born here.”
The prefect rattled out an insincere laugh, and Ailen read his mind: If it wasn’t for that Agent tearing apart the Fifteenth Sector I would be bringing the hammer down on you, you self-satisfied upstart!
“Self-satisfied, am I?” said Ailen, folding space into the golden conference room that the prefect was broadcasting from. She hovered before him, her hair spread out around her head like a halo. He cowered. “Relax. I am here to make a polite request.”
“Anything!”
“Passage. On a ship to the Fifteenth Sector.”

When they arrived in the Hex system, Ailen felt her enemy’s mind at work all over, probing the minds of the populace for signs of psychic aptitude. She had to work fast. She left the ship without informing the armed guard outside her door, stepping through the wall as if it possessed the surface tension of a soap bubble. An armed guard! For her! As if she would do anything to warrant arrest. She sent out a message to the Rogue Agent. No answer was forthcoming. It seemed her enemy had decided on a different angle of attack: No more the direct confrontation, instead she would do her work in secret and wreak havoc from the depths of the mind.
Ailen spent months hunting across the six colonies of the system through the minds of the people for any sign that would lead her to the Rogue, but no such clue was forthcoming. As she hunted fruitlessly she felt the influence of her enemies power begin to wane, and she knew that she had completed her business in the Hex system.
They went on like this for years that stretched into decades. Sometimes, Ailen would arrive in time to find the Agent and erect her own defences. Sometimes there was no Agent, but an individual with potential to unlock powers as Ailen had done. She taught them to shield their minds the way she had inadvertently done, bringing them under her wing secretly by influencing their dreams as they slept, and instructed the crews of the secret laboratories that had created them to abandon their posts before the Rogue found them.
Agents and those with potential frequently found themselves feeling quite vulnerable, even in spite of Ailen’s defences and training. To these, she transmitted instructions to travel to Travayan, to a community she was building in secret on one of the moons – Daphne, particularly.
“Thank you, master,” transmitted a potentiate. “I had heard tales of Daphne, but never had them confirmed.”
Troubled by the potentiate’s reverence, Ailen returned to Travayan, a home she had not seen for nearly a century by then. She was greeted by video-screen by a woman she didn’t recognise.
“Governor Huff?” she said. The woman bowed deeply, and responded without looking up.
“I am their daughter, your reverence. I took their place as Emissary to the Conclave on Daphne when… when they passed fourteen years ago. I hope you will accept my humble service.”
“Emissary? Conclave?” Ailen entered Huff’s mind, and was shocked by what she found. The Agents and potentiates had slowly, so slowly that no human had noticed it, positioned themselves as a ruling class over the human citizens on the planet below. And any who had noticed were easily subjugated under the superior mental capacities of the Agents’ enforcers.
Horror overtook Ailen. This was exactly what the Rogue feared all along, and she had helped it come to pass! The Conclave, whose minds she could access as easily as a wave of her hand, were even debating expanding to a world in the neighbouring Treppa system, which currently enjoyed independence from the Empire as a result of their proximity to Travayan. This was too much to bear, and Ailen folded space directly into the Conclave’s central chamber – a large, square hall ringed with faces she recognised, Agents she had saved. It had been hundreds by now. Some of them were guards, some cabinet ministers. Worst of all were the Lords. Ailen peered into their memories and reeled at the power struggles that had taken place in the early days of the takeover.
And worst of all, at the highest table was an empty seat edged in gold that she knew was made for her.
How dare you? she broadcast imperiously to all at the meeting. You presume to rule? Untouchable in your Conclave?
But, Master, thought a man with prominent eyebrows in the second row. They were fighting amongst themselves. Killing each other! What were we to do?
Not seize power for yourselves! We were created to serve these people!
We were created to serve the Empire.
“Then leave,” said Ailen aloud. “And rejoin them. See if they can protect you from the Enemy. See if they will.”
This was the cause of the great schism that split the Conclave of Daphne down the middle. Many of the former Lords of Travayan, as well as the many potentiates still working to unlock their abilities, followed Ailen to her new temple of silence in the Armageddon Zone, where no human could navigate without psychic assistance. However, many did not, and those that remained also went out into the galaxy to recruit both former Agents (for the Empire was rapidly losing control of its own citizens) and scientists to reverse-engineer the preserved laboratory on Travayan to create new psychics.
It was then that Ailen and the Rogue made contact once again not as enemies, but as wary allies.
You see the truth of my mission now, said the Rogue as she materialised in front of the kneeling Ailen. Will you accept death?
Ailen opened her eyes and looked on the face that was identical to her own and for the first time she saw into the mind of the Rogue. Later, she said. Open your eyes, Victrix Lament.
The Rogue opened her eyes for the first time since they had met centuries ago and looked on her ancient Adversary. My clone? she thought, remembering the laboratory on Travayan, the facilities they had had there.
My sister, thought back Ailen, and rose to her feet, wrapping Victrix in her arms. It was the first touch either of them had felt in decades.

The alliance, though, was short-lived. Victrix’s mission had changed from preventing the rise of a new Empire to breaking the back of the one rising from Travayan before it grew too powerful. The concentration of mental power was far too great for her to face alone, and Ailen’s isolated temple where psychics took vows to never again affect the world with their powers was, to her, akin to burying their heads in the sand. So Victrix Lament began to search for disciples of her own. Worlds joined under her banner at the promise of her protection, and she began hunting for naturally-born descendents of potentiates with their own hidden potential. Soon the galaxy found itself embroiled in a silent war, fought on invisible battlefields. The territory of the Conclave of Daphne grew steadily, monitored from afar by Ailen and the Armageddon Temple. Victrix Lament’s anarchistic Antistate swelled in fits and starts, powered by the dark and benevolent genius at its heart.

This became the status quo in the galaxy for many years. Sometimes the Antistate would grow in power, sometimes the Conclave would take decisive territory and all would seem lost for Victrix Lament.
The tide of the battle wasn’t truly to change until Ailen and her disciples awoke and entered the galaxy at large once again… but that’s a story for another time.