Drakador_Chaos
Around the sixth hour after the ships had entered the tear, the third after which the unknown ships had arrived, reality shuddered once more, the rift slowly began closing...
...the people in the conference room aboard the visitors ship, stopped their discussion, a large part of the surrounding fleet went back into action, part of it readied its shields and weapons, crew went into positions, preparing for battle, others moved into better positions and a large number of scans ensued from the Rudra and the visitors alike...
Debris trickled out of the wound the tendril had left in reality, then, slowly, one by one ships came out of the rift.
Severly damaged, some with chunks missing, sections of the ships torn open, exposing their insides, other scorched and malformed by immense heat and even those were only the better ones, after about fifteen minutes fifty-three of the originally hundred-fifty ships which had entered the other side of the tear, had returned...
...and the rift closed behind them, around the shattered remnants of the fleet floated debris of those who hadn´t made it, it seems, these were all of the survivors.
As the tear closed, the tendril disappeared as well, leaving an almost strange emptiness in the area behind the fleet.
Transmissions were established, questions asked...
"What happened?!"
"What was on the other side?!"
"Has the foe been beaten?!"
"Where is...?!"
The questions however remained unanswered, from the leading ship a transmission came back, it was the leader of the Vald clan, he had been known to be of a warrior nature, a stern and honorful Rudra and a respected leader, he would send a shuttle over and come answer the questions himself.
Arriving in the conference room, he was a horrible sight, one of his horns seemed have been torn off, he was covered in bandages which covered a number of long and thin cuts, not all of which seemed to have stopped bleeding yet, his left wrist seemed to be held in place by a number of metal rings and thin needles, the fingers on that hand did not move.
He looked at the surrounding members of the Rudra and the men and women clad in white and black armors and robes...
"As Light and Darkness fall,
Chaos will rise.
Judgement will be passed upon the world by the abandoned and fallen,
rising from the ashes of forgotten empires."
He paused and looked at all of them again, there was a moment of complete silence in the room, before anyone could respond anything, he continued, his eyes cold and hollow.
"On the other side of the tear, is hell. Those who did not come back, are dead. The ships which did not return, were destroyed. The enemy will not return."
He turned around and left the room in silence, the ones he left behind likewise fell into silence for almost five minutes, processing what he said. The first one to say something was one of the Rudra, accusing the men in armor of having known of this prior to the arrival and so a long and rather heated discussion followed...
A day later, a shuttle carried the remaining Rudra off the ship of the vistors, it had been cleared up that they had known something like this could have been a possibility, but they didn´t know it actually would, as it had been unlikely, given the circumstances.
The fleet in the meanwhile, was still in high alert, ships were patrolling the border of the system, at least those which were still intact, all other ships were in the repair docks, cargo-, repair-and miningships were cleaning up the debrisfield, salvaging whatever they could as the production of new ships had already started, in the meanwhile, a transmission reached the colony, likely in response to those which had been sent when the crisis began... lighting another discussion amongst the clanleaders.