Elder Cultivator

Spirit Arrows cut their way through subspace not to improve their speed but merely to make it more difficult for Zaur Beridze to dodge. Alva saw how quick he could be once threatened, and his movement patterns were nearly impossible to predict. He could move speeds in atmosphere that even Augmentation cultivators could only achieve in space, and he had the awareness and control to actively avoid any threats.

However, he still stopped eventually- and if he didn’t know an attack was coming Alva could hit him. Which was about as effective as if she had tried to shoot down a castle when she was twelve. But… she was slowly chipping away at his energy. She just had to keep up the pressure along with everyone else.

Then, her attack missed. Not because her accuracy was off, or because Zaur dodged out of the way… but because he simply stopped existing. Or rather, he stopped existing in a single piece. His body had transformed into light and it just… lost cohesion. A wave of Domination energy spread at unbelievable speed, but the structure of the planet itself was protected by the quick reactions of the formation masters, limiting the destruction to the size of a small country.

Many surrounding cultivators were vaporized on both sides, though he had moved away from the densest area of battle. Nobody was really prepared, as nothing had happened on their end of space. Which meant the assault team had been successful. Their plans had worked.

Not that Xankeshan wasn’t still in a shaky situation. They’d intentionally focused on the fleets, but there were still vast numbers of enemies remaining.

-----

Before Zaur died, Aconite had been engaged with a very large and uncomfortable ship. Nothing was strictly wrong with it, but it smelled problematic. When she tried to claw it open, she realized what it was. She tried again in a different spot just to confirm, but only managed to hurt her ego and didn’t cause a scratch.

The entire ship was made out of worldheart. Aconite hadn’t been there, but she had seen footage of the ‘planets’ left in the lower realms. They’d had worldheart ships there too… but they were much smaller. Perhaps this explained where the rest of their various systems’ materials went.

Aconite backed away, worried about the needles the ship cultivators were preparing. She wouldn’t want to touch those with her paws. As for the ship… it wasn’t melting.

Just to test, she made her way to another metal ship and renewed her poison. And though her initial claw print did very little to the vessel, in mere moments the ship began to ‘melt’ as the metal eating bacteria began to tear it apart. Xankeshan had special formations dedicated to eradicating just this particular strain of bacteria. Aconite thought it devoured every sort of metal, but perhaps she’d failed to test it with worldheart.

Or it needed a boost. Aconite watched as her mom batted the enemy’s stone ships into the big one. They exploded like chalk thrown at a brick wall, with about as much damage to the battleship as one might expect. Her father who could melt pretty much anything with his flames and tear through the strongest materials… only caused a small scratch on its surface- a scratch which was quickly rectified by the cultivators on the ship.

Right. The best ship would have the best cultivators, and thus the best active defenses. Aconite prepared to bolster her ‘poison’ with her own energy. She needed to apply it in several locations at once, preferably just after the ship took damage. Even if it was just a small amount. That way, the bacterial bloom could surge.

Aconite barked at her mother. She was going to need to strike from several directions in rapid succession, and having platforms to push off of would help. Spikes agreed to her plan quickly, overwhelming the stone control of the Broad Eyed Harvesters and tearing material from their hands.

The battleship clearly felt the setup was threatening, but launching metal shards to break the platforms- but not faster than Spikes could set them up. Then Aconite launched herself- synchronizing with Fuzz.

Spears of metal stabbed into his fur, but they didn’t stop him from impacting the ship and taking a solid bite out of it. Aconite heard a pained howl as the chunks of metal in her father’s mouth sharpened, but a bit of blood wasn’t going to stop him. He began to run along the surface of the ship, dragging his claws while moving in an unpredictable pattern to prevent the ship itself from attacking him.

Aconite struck the ship, dragging her claws. She curled up a tiny bit of the outside, but that was enough. She pushed off, jumping towards a platform of stone and then shoving it away as her momentum rebounded towards another part of the ship. She did that over and over, until she came around to see Fuzz just as the ship folded around him.

She was wary of the same happening to her, but she used her energy to pull the last glass vial of bacteria out of her bags, not bothering to apply it to her claws but instead applying her energy to enhance it as much as possible, providing juicy energy for what she hoped was rapid growth. The vial was propelled forward with great speed towards where the ship was still wriggling around Fuzz. He wouldn’t be killed so easily.

The vial cracked open, and Aconite could sense small patches of the bacteria finally growing on other parts of the ship. But even with exponential growth, they wouldn’t likely expand fast enough to help Fuzz. Spikes was battering the other side of the ship to force the cultivators aboard to split their energy.

Aconite looked around for someone that could help. They were deep in enemy lines, and though allied fleets were fighting towards them there wasn’t much help they could get. The only person who was close happened to be Tauno. He was fighting the Disciples of the Beyond- which meant fighting distortion beasts.

Oh, that was a great idea. Too bad she didn’t carry any distortion bait on her, but she could improvise. She just had to make her energy seem extradimensionally tasty. She rushed over in time to see Tauno get knocked through some enemy ships by a massive leathery wing, then stabbed by some sort of expanding spike. Which he then tore off of the beast and used as a weapon, shifting in his hands as he moved.

Yeah, he could handle that. Aconite just grabbed some attention of one- or part of one? She didn’t know or care. Then she ran back towards the ship, dodging teeth that appeared form nowhere.

She moved around the far side of the ship from Fuzz, nearly getting impaled by metal shards and then quills with some sort of poison she found extremely fascinating but didn't have time to study.

Stolen novel; please report.

Just about the time the distortion beast realized there were a bunch of unprotected buffoons inside the ship it could eat, Zaur exploded. That shocked everyone enough for Fuzz to claw his way out of the ship, but it was the thought that counted. Aconite snapped off a quill, hoping she didn’t get any of the poison on her. She probably wasn’t immune to it if it seemed new.

-----

Durff found another chunk of crystal and smacked it towards the sun. Then another.

“Durff.” Velvet appeared next to him.

“Yeah?” he said.

“You can stop now.”

This chunk was about the size of one of those ‘car’ things. It shattered, but its overall momentum carried it in the right direction. “Stop what?”

“Smashing the crystals.”

“But this is the Citadel. We’re here to destroy it,” Durff said.

“It’s… pretty destroyed,” Velvet said. “Zaur is dead.”

“You sure?” Durff asked. “What if he can come back to life from the remaining bits?”

“I… seriously doubt that. But you know what?” Velvet shrugged. “You’re right. Let’s just grab one sample to take back to the Alliance. Assuming we can get back.”

“Why wouldn’t we be able to?”

“We’re still in the middle of enemy territory. I think our ship was far enough from that blast but…” Velvet frowned. “They have to be coming.”

“Would you?” Durff asked. “If you were part of the Exalted Light, would you come here?”

“Of course. We’re invaders.”

“So if you were them… you’d go towards the massive wave of death that used to be your Sect Head. To… avenge him?”

“I, uh…” Velvet frowned.

“Because I bet they’ll run.”

“You don’t know that. Angry people do crazy things.”

Durff gestured towards their main planet- or what was left of it. “Everyone there is running.”

Velvet watched a few fatigued slaps from Prasad annihilate a few swathes of cultivators. Then he stood proudly… before slowly drifting towards the rest of them.

“Are we actually all… alive?” Velvet asked. “I can’t sense Chidi. And those two…” Huge pulses of Zaur’s Domination energy were echoing between Catarina and Timothy. “Do you think it’s safe to move them?”

“It’s not safe to not move them,” Durff said. “Even if these people run, it won’t be everyone.” He spun his one still mobile arm and then swung, most of his remaining energy spreading wide to catch freefloating fragments of the citadel. “Oops.”

“What?”

“I think I hit Chidi. He’s floating… over there. Ish.”

Velvet frowned. Her senses stretched out… and found nothing. But nothing was quite something, when the whole area was suffused with lingering remnants of Domination energy. Velvet herself had only made it through by virtue of being in relatively good shape before… and by sacrificing one of her voidsteel blades to the shockwave. Though she had most of the fragments, so she hoped it could be reforged.

“I’ll grab the ship,” Velvet said. “See if you can gently move those two. And if you can get close enough to visually confirm that Chidi is there.”

-----

Chidi felt different energy, and he was quite glad. It was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Not that surprising, given how overwhelmed all of his senses had been for the whole duration of the battle. He curled around his sword and embraced the chill of space. He sure hoped someone came to get him before he died. Because he was fully bereft of energy now. Like a void ant.

Wait, couldn’t the Great Queen still fly without wings? No, that wasn’t something he should try now. Most likely he’d pass out trying anything complex, and then he could get annihilated by any stray bit of energy.

He slowly began to grow more numb, his lungs screaming for air. He’d been able to refresh his lungs with energy, but now he had to get along with little more than a tempered body. Though upon going down the path of Negation, he’d developed his body a bit more than most. It still wasn’t enough to live in empty space, though.

Large fingers wrapped around his arm. He felt slight vibrations indicating someone was speaking, but his ears probably didn’t work and he couldn’t hear because of the vacuum. He was still negating any energy from touching him, so voice projections wouldn’t work.

He felt a slight tug on his arm, and then a rush of air a short time later. Hot air. Or… neutral air, which felt hot to him. He tried to uncurl, but his body was partially frozen. All he managed was a strained cough as he took a breath. The release of tension caused him to finally pass out.

-----

Somehow, the assault team survived, and their ship was even mostly intact. Chidi was in a coma, Durff had a non-functioning arm, and finally Timothy and Catarina were undergoing a constant cycle of passing energy between them, wrapped around each other. But Prasad hadn’t sustained any deadly injuries, and Velvet was whole enough to man the ship. Though she hoped they didn’t run into anything that would require her active participation in stealth for at least a week.

“I didn’t expect to be coming back,” Prasad admitted.

“I thought I would survive,” Durff said confidently.

Velvet shook her head. “If he ever truly focused on any of us, we wouldn’t have made it. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I wasn’t fighting him,” Prasad said. “Except for the random attacks he flung at me. But each contained killing intent. He believed we would die. But his own state was likely weaker than he expected. Even though he still felt… well, like that.”

“We’ll have to thank Aconite,” Velvet said. “I bet some of the poisons impaired his cognitive functions.”

“Or he was just that arrogant. Domination cultivators don’t die every day,” Prasad pointed out. “The last time was…”

“Just a couple decades ago, right?” Durff said.

Prasad frowned. “Well, yes. But before Sudin… it hadn’t even happened in my lifetime. Probably more than a millennium."

“And now there are two,” Velvet said. “This isn’t going to make things easier on the Scarlet Alliance, though. Now we’re a threat. Though with the other option being to lay down and die, at least this extends our existence for a while. Depending on how things went back on Xankeshan…”

“They’ll be fine,” Durff said. “They have lots of wolves.”