Elder Cultivator

The certainty Crossed Antennae had that she had injured Korin lit zealous flames inside her. Unfortunately, some of her companions were less enthusiastic about it.

“I don’t see why everyone is afraid. We will just go and finish her off. It won’t be that hard, if she hasn’t gone into hiding.”

“Just kill a Domination cultivator, huh?” Runa commented.

“For us void ants, the threat is less. Though obviously she might kill a great number of us. We do not necessarily have to find her. Whatever anchor she has will suffice.”

“It’s not so easy to delve deep into enemy systems,” Uduak commented. She maintained an important position, despite her recent loss of limb.

“I just need a few scout ships, and I will be off,” Crossed Antennae explained.

“We need you here to hold the line,” Tessouat said. “And to keep your people in check.”

Crossed Antennae wondered if he thought the rest would go feral without her. Sure, that could happen if you were a bad queen who raised void ants that way- like those ones kept in the lower realms- but she knew better. They were raised with purpose, and they had no reason to betray that. If there were cowards among them… then they could flee as individuals. It would not affect their ranks overall. But Crossed Antennae didn’t believe void ants would act in such a manner.

“The Scarlet Alliance has plans,” Misi explained. “Perhaps we should wait to see if they are effective?”

“The Exalted Quadrant may be weak to infighting,” Crossed Antennae agreed. “But that gives us no reason not to soften some of them before they do so. Better than waiting here for them to come with greater forces… and plans to defeat us. Do not forget that void ants are strong against the strong. But we still have a few weaknesses of our own.”

Fire and Bullet would be able to help counter some amount of poison based dangers, but ultimately void ants couldn’t afford to lose the initiative. Hopefully, she could at least convince some of the right people that they needed to act. If they could finish off one Domination cultivator, the stench of Korin’s death would keep humans away for some time. Unless they were already prepared to swarm, in which case it would make little difference except to ease their future struggles.

-----

It was supposed to be a simple scouting mission. That was what Everheart told himself. No sabotage, theft, or menace. But when he got there, he saw something just lying about asking to be snatched.

Everheart had heard of the structures built about one star in the lower realms. This one was half functional, damage from a previous incident still clearly visible. Everheart knew they were meant to capture the energy of the star. This one was special, because he sensed lower energy within it, though such a small amount slipped through that most wouldn’t notice even if they were right next to it. Certainly not from the next system.

He wondered what people would think when the star disappeared. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be visible from other systems since it was already capturing the light. But the gravitational changes… planets flung out in random directions. Oh yes, that would be exciting. Everyone would talk about it.

Everheart inspected the structure and found it was just perfect for adding some additional formation markings to. He had to first bypass some security measures they had in place, but perhaps unsurprisingly they did not have humans watching every meter of a star sized structure. There were huge gaps in their sensory zones.

He’d just meant to do a couple tests on the flow of energy. But one thing turned into another, and he came up with a perfect formula for redirecting things to his purposes. He already had so much experience with solar based orbital platforms gathering energy. Everheart had never done it on such a large scale- partially because it would have alerted everyone in neighboring systems to his tampering, and partially because it was excessive.

But with that much energy, he could steal a star. Clearly these sects weren’t using their resources efficiently, so they deserved it. All he had to figure out was where he was going to put it. It couldn’t go anywhere else in the Trigold Cluster or they might try to snatch it back. The Exalted Quadrant… nobody would believe they stole it as Everheart’s systems were fairly well known now.

So it would have to go in the 1st Everheart System. It was the only logical solution.

Once he had worked that out, he finished his mental calculations. Then he began creating projections. They would be very temporary, as he was still very aware of the risks associated with long term projections. He might be narcissistic, sure. But that didn’t mean that if the only person who could defeat him was himself that he should let it happen. No. Repeating. Mistakes.

The sun-encompassing structure was actually quite inefficient about turning the energy into a functional form, but the various weapons and formations were decent enough to begin wiping out the Imbued Fragments hanging out on the surface of his new toy. They probably should have done a better job with security. Sure, they probably expected the mass of people beginning to charge him from the middle of the system to do something.

But if there was one thing Everheart was good at, it was formations. One of him could only do so much. A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand, just for a few minutes. He reveled in the power of Domination as he formed a vast number of individually trivial copies, each with their own task. The materials forming the structure were top quality, so Everheart’s additions were easy to make. The structure held even as energy rushed through it in incomplete positions.

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“I’m taking this,” Everheart said, projecting his void towards the approaching fleets. “Thanks for building it for me.”

Then the whole thing winked out of existence, along with Everheart.

-----

There were always lessons to be learned from great acts of power. First, confidence was key. Everheart had plenty of that. If you acted with confidence, the world was more willing to go along with you.

But just because you did something confidently didn’t mean it was a good idea. If you happened to, for example, throw an entire structure and the star it encompassed into higher order subspace, you needed to think about the potential consequences.

Everheart was lucky that the only immediate consequence was that the extra layers of dimensionality made the star wrap outside the previously external shell. The outer side wasn’t meant to take that much heat. In fact, it was meant to radiate as much as possible out into the rest of the universe.

No big deal. Just some overheating. And he might have skipped an order or two of subspace and ended up somewhere deeper than he’d ever intended. He could handle that.

First order of business? One hundred percent conversion and entrapment of solar energy. Otherwise he was going to have to work directly with plasma to try to form a new structure capable of jogging him out of this place.

Second order of business? Make a plan for drawing upon his anchor while in… whatever order subspace he was in. It was very interesting that it didn’t work.

Third, make plans to take out the other copies of himself outside in case they didn’t merge properly when he returned to the real world. He’d have to consider that they would expect him to survive, of course.

Working outside a sun was sweaty business. Being both outside and inside a star was downright uncomfortable. Everheart reduced the number of him so that the projections wouldn’t spontaneously combust under the great power.

Stars were strong. No wonder Anton liked them. Too obvious though. Everheart didn’t like that. Having one that was hiding its light from other systems was the best.

Everheart filled himself with positive affirmations that he wasn’t going to die. He could handle this. It wasn’t really an unforeseen danger if he’d thought about something like this happening once, right? Surely nothing starproof would be coming to eat him. And nothing would overlap with his organs coincidentally. He would be fine. He probably needed to work quickly though.

-----

Everheart had felt part of him disappear. That was expected. With some subspace shenanigans, he could effectively teleport anything a vast difference in at most days. With effectively infinite power, he wasn’t worried about that.

It was a bit concerning that one particular part of him wasn’t drawing upon the anchor, though. Maybe it wasn’t necessary.

After a week, Everheart began making plans. Had he managed to diverge from his own self in a single instant? How would he try to kill himself and claim power?

He couldn’t be dead. That was ridiculous. It would also be inconvenient. At least the devotion would be flowing in soon. Positive or negative, he didn’t care. People would hear about this, so the him outside would probably grow more quickly.

For the first month, he went through about a hundred potential scenarios. At six months he was bored. After a year he was worried. Not that he was going to tell anyone that.

He had other things to deal with in the immediate. Cynbel had been too cowardly to fight Everheart in his own system, so that wasn’t too bad, but he still had to watch that. His Trigold systems would be under attack soon enough. He wasn’t sure which ones, but certainly some of them.

It didn’t matter if the star never showed up again. People would still know he did it, and they’d just assume that he hid it so well nobody could find it. He wasn’t worried at all. But maybe he should make some preparations for in case he accidentally turned every star in the local section of the galaxy into a black hole. It wasn’t that likely, but it wasn’t impossible. Especially if he ended up in the wrong place.

-----

The Imbued Harvesters didn’t advertise they had a star stolen, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could hide. In fact, their attempts just made things worse.

The Scarlet Alliance didn’t know that it was Everheart. Not because everyone wasn’t saying that, but because everyone would assume everything like that was Everheart. It could have been some other cause. Perhaps a civil war in the Trigold Cluster, or a long term failure of the star. Velvet had seen it after the lower realms incident, and it had been quite unstable.

Fighting in the Scarlet Midfields. Battle upon the western edge of the Exalted Quadrant. Their own efforts on their border, setting up new systems. The lower realms pulling a planet into their control. And now this.

Trouble was breaking out everywhere. The chances of everything suddenly settling down and letting them take another long break were slim.

The only question was when and where the problems would come.

-----

Lev directed their falling group towards a large body of water. Bear Hug had insisted.

Alongside them fell many beasts, but Lev didn’t bother to slow their falls, nor direct them towards anything. Except for the few that Bear Hug pointed out that they said were cute.

Technically, they didn’t have to crash land at all, but Bear Hug and Liberty were far too excited. So Lev was happy to give them at least the partial experience. At their speeds water wouldn’t slow their fall, but everywhere was equally bad.

Bear Hug spread out wide, like a parachute, as they held onto Lev and Liberty. They were getting rather dry, which might be why they insisted on a water landing. There were many gaps in their strands, but Lev was doing the bulk of slowing them down anyway. Otherwise, the others would probably have caught on fire already.

“A new planet,” Liberty said calmly. “Truly, the freedom to explore is the greatest truth.”

Well, as long as they were enjoying it. Lev didn’t think this place was so bad, despite the danger. He wondered if planting some willows would screw things up too much.

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