Whoever first built the Gates that led from time to time and space to space surely gained from them no good thing.

The qhal found the first Gate in the strange ruins of Silen on a dead world of their own sun. They used the pattern, built other Gates, spanned worlds, spanned stars, spanned time itself.

Therein they fell into the trap, and ensnared others—for qhal experimented in time, experimented in worlds, gathered beings and beasts from the whole of Gate-spanned space. They built civilizations, leaped ahead to see their progress, while their subjects, denied access to the Gates, inched through the centuries at real-time.

At the end of time gathered those who had been through all ages, experienced all things, lived most desperately. There were ominous ripplings in reality itself, backtime violated, accelerating disturbance. Some qhal felt it coming; some went mad, recalling truths that were no longer true, or might have been and would not, and were again—matter and time and space undone, ripped loose, finally imploded.

Worlds lay devastated. There were only the remnants of qhalur works and the worlds qhal-tampered; and there were the Gates, flotsam up out of time, untouched by the catastrophe.

And humans arrived on the ruined worlds, in that patch of space that still bore the scars.

Humans were among the victims of the qhal, scattered on the ruined worlds, with other species also qhal-like. For this reason alone humans distrusted the Gates, and feared them.

A hundred men and women passed the qhalur Gates, bound they knew not where, armed to seal the dangerous portals from the far side of space and time, to the very ultimate Gate. There was a weapon devised for that ultimate passage, an end-all force of Gate-drawn power; and until that Gate, it was necessary to seal world after world, age after age—a battle perhaps endless or fatally circular, perhaps limited to qhalur space or cast to Gates the qhal themselves never made.

There were a hundred at the beginning.

The Gates exacted their toll.