Elder Cultivator

The first thing Durff knew was that he couldn’t break the Citadel. He wasn’t sure why it was so strong, but it seemed to have the power of a Domination cultivator protecting it. He obviously wasn’t strong enough to crush it whatever the reason. He’d hit it as hard as he could and the only thing he accomplished was shoving it into the ground.

Which is why he was implementing one of their other plans. With everyone focused on attacking the people around the Citadel, they had mostly just let him pass by. That wasn’t quite true, but the few Integration cultivators who threw themselves at him got smacked out of the way by… his arm. That he was carrying in his other arm.

It wasn’t more durable, exactly. Otherwise it probably wouldn’t have gotten cut off. But it was suited for his needs and really good at channeling his energy. So he took it to the other side of the planet and swung it either down or up at the bottom of the Citadel.

Durff realized he might have been able to dig underneath it or something and achieve a similar effect. But somehow, this felt more right. He had experience hitting a planet sized object, after all. Now he was just doing it again.

His attack landed in whatever direction it was going, hitting the planet into the Citadel resting on top of it. That was what Durff wanted to do, so that was what he did. A little bit of the planet also crumbled around where he was, but mostly the other thing.

It was really easy to feel where the Citadel was. It was the source of all the crazy Domination energy. It popped off the planet and flew towards the sun. Vaguely. He didn’t exactly have a lot of control over the accuracy, he was just lucky it was the right time of day to even have the sun in that direction.

The Citadel was big, and getting it moving fast was difficult. But with a good shove from the planet Durff thought it could get there. Until it stopped. Just… stopped.

“Aww man.”

Durff collapsed into the crater around him. It sure was tiring to use that much energy all at once, especially after putting his all into his previous attempts that didn’t do much. He didn’t mind that he would probably die here, but he would have liked to reach Augmentation in a fortuitous moment or actually accomplish their objective. Chikere had gotten in a good cut, but that didn’t seem to do it.

The Citadel rocketed out of the ground, though the ground tremors that came with it were also a concern. Alva watched it fly up, soon becoming a tiny point in the sky. Then it stopped suddenly. If she had to guess, Zaur exercised some sort of control over his anchor. Hopefully, that distracted him at some critical moment or something. There had been a momentary lapse in its defense, but it seemed to be over. Alva doubted it would happen again.

“There went our target,” she said. “No reason to stay here.”

“Good point,” Chikere said. “Get to the ship. I’ll get Durff.” A line of blood slashed apart space, creating a vortex as the vacuum pulled on the gathered cultivators. Then another rift appeared, and the group split.

Their goal was to destroy the Citadel. It had admittedly been a long shot without a full fleet or some sort of superweapon. Now that they couldn’t do that, they might as well survive.

Alva stepped through to space with Velvet and Koralo. They weren’t far from where their ship was, obscured by being near nothing of interest and its own stealth systems.

A moment later Durff was chucked through a rift, along with three arms. One attached to his right shoulder, as it should have been. One was his other arm. The third was Chikere’s arm. But… she didn’t come with it.

The beacon of energy from the planet explained why. She wasn’t leaving. Spikes of sword intent punctuated her attacks, and just as disciples of the Exalted Light began to seek out the energy of the four of them, there was one final burst. Blood red energy appeared in a ring around the planet, then seemingly did nothing. Even so, Alva shivered at how much power was called on at once.

Then she realized, the ring was the aftermath of the attack. It hadn’t circled around the planet menacingly, but instead had burst out of it. Alva’s senses could stretch just far enough to feel the grand scale of things. A planet severed in two, and Chikere’s energy fading away.

When her senses returned to herself, she spun her bow towards the ship.

“Careful,” a voice said. “We wouldn’t want your escape to be hindered by damaging it.” The woman’s form appeared in front of their ship. The one individual who had been conspicuously missing the whole time.

“So you did figure us out,” Velvet said. Or at least… an illusion of her. Alva wasn’t quite certain, but that was her suspicion.

“We track the ships entering our systems more strictly than we want anyone to believe,” Lelka said. “We still almost missed you. But a slight anomaly, followed by our watchers at the starport? That was sufficient. But I’m not here to talk.”

“Planning to kill us?” Velvet asked. No doubt she was moments away from slitting Lelka’s throat. Alva wondered if she should distract her.

“Now why would I want to do that? This ship is my best ticket out of here.”

“Why would we risk trusting you?” Alva asked.

“Because you’re exhausted and risk people finding this ship if we fight. And by risk I mean I’d explode in a very clear manner such that only the most incompetent individuals couldn’t track you down.”

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“Why not just try to kill us then?” Alva countered.

“Because I’d rather survive and that’s what happens if I stay here. Just slower, if this whole thing hadn’t happened.”

“You’ll have to let us restrain you,” Velvet said.

“Make an oath not to kill me,” Lelka countered.

“I swear not to kill you while you’re not a threat,” Velvet agreed.

Lelka clicked her tongue. “That’ll have to do given the time crunch.” She turned her arms to the side, where shackles immediately clacked around her wrists. “The shackles gave you away, by the way.”

Velvet appeared in her actual position once she was confident Lelka’s energy was properly restrained- having moved to behind Lelka’s initial facing. “That’s the energy negation. Can’t do much about it.”

“I do believe we should be moving along,” Koralo said, reaching out towards the ship. “The shock of… that,” he gestured vaguely back towards the planet. “Will only last so long.”

Five people piled into the small airlock on the ship, though they didn’t wait for the chamber to properly pressurize, just the outer doors to close. Such safety protocols could be bypassed in emergencies, and on ships where the only expected travelers should be cultivators who could survive in space.

“Chikere…?” Velvet asked as a sort of question, looking towards Alva.

Alva shook her head. “She’d need to have either energy or blood in her body, and she had neither. I’m pretty sure she was disintegrated a moment later.”

The ship was moving, but local vessels were scrambling into action.

“Will they be able to track us?” Velvet asked Lelka.

“Not precisely, but we have enough to scour the area. And that spatial rift should have been sensed by at least a few people with high enough accuracy.”

“Should we change our escape route…?” Velvet wondered.

“I know you probably don’t trust me, but I’d say you shouldn’t,” Lelka commented. “I didn’t hear anything of your approach, though I’d predicted a chance of countermeasures.”

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to be kept out of the cockpit,” Velvet said.

Lelka shrugged. “I was just following people. And I’ll definitely die if this ship gets blasted apart.”

“I’ll determine your true intentions later. Alva?”

“I’ll watch her,” Alva agreed.

-----

The unmitigated flight of Zaur Beridze, sect master of the Citadel of Exalted Light, came with a tremendous shift in morale. The Scarlet Alliance hadn’t been particularly hopeless, confident in their plans but knowing they faced off against tremendous foes. Their foes, however, had been more than confident in their victory.

Then a third of them turned to flee the moment Zaur did. Perhaps they were the smart ones, because only a small portion of them died in their haste. Others had hesitated, not truly believing Zaur would flee. But his energy signature was more than clear, able to be felt even as he went further and further out of the system.

It didn’t matter to the Scarlet Alliance precisely why he was running. All they knew was that without him, they were at a sudden advantage- even before their enemies began to flee en masse.

With enemy ships having been destroyed in great quantities, each cultivator fleeing did so as an individual instead of part of a greater whole. Some broke into a fighting retreat, vaguely covering the others with them whether intentionally or not. But overall, their various speeds were staggered. Those who were slower fell far behind the rest in mere moments, and the Scarlet Alliance formed uniform battle lines that pressed in on their foes.

When they could, they focused on Augmentation cultivators. That would cause the greatest damage to the Exalted Quadrant, each of their deaths being precious. The rest… the enemy had nearly limitless populations to draw upon, and they would hardly be missed. But of course, Augmentation cultivators tended to be the sturdiest and the fastest, so most of them were able to flee.

Except for Kigal, who was still wrestling with Sly- not by her choice. His body was broken and bruised, with wounds far sufficient to kill most cultivators. But the smile on his face was as big and bright as it could be. “Look at that. There goes the big guy.”

Kigal responded by stabbing her fingers into his gut, creating a sharpened blade of energy. She reached only a centimeter deep before Sly’s muscles clamped down around her fingers, his energy flooding his body.

Then two palms crushed Kigal’s head. She was focused first on escape, second on Sly. Prasad of the Thousand Palm Sect had no qualms taking advantage of her distraction. Even with that he couldn’t have killed her from full power, but Sly had been fighting with her the whole battle, and others had already taken advantage of that to wear down Kigal. Prasad just happened to be the final one.

“That totally counts as Sly’s kill,” Tauno commented.

Prasad just shrugged. He was not interested in the kill count. He just wanted to maintain his security, and eradicating their enemies was the best way to do so. He hadn’t actually expected any of their plans to drive off a Domination cultivator to succeed, but Prasad was more than happy to be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Zaur’s energy faded beyond the senses of all but the very best of them. “I don’t think he’s coming back,” Prospeo commented to Hoyt beside him.

Catarina had used her husband’s own blood to put together a formation that was stabilizing his condition. He just smiled at her with a hole through him.

“You’re not allowed to die,” Catarina said.

“Wasn’t planning to,” Timothy retorted painfully.

Chidi was currently trying to figure out how to put his adjustable shackles on a singular thumb and forefinger. They tightened down to quite narrow, but not that narrow. Then again, they did their job without perfect contact. Also, he was fairly certain there was nothing special about them. Zaur didn’t seem to have been a particularly advanced body cultivator of any sort.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Catarina said. “Well, I mean…”

“That you had great confidence in me but it was an impossible task,” Chidi nodded. “I wasn’t the one who caused the first wound, though.”

“Indeed…” Catarina frowned. “I wonder who did?”

“Chikere, obviously.” Chidi replied. “The cut on his forehead made that very clear. A shame she couldn’t do more, but I expect the circumstances on the far end were difficult.” His thoughts were clearly on the far end, but he expressed no further opinion on how he thought things had gone.

Most likely if it had been a complete success there would have been a more drastic result. But they hadn’t actually expected to successfully kill a Domination cultivator. They were just trying everything they could and hoping something worked. Though now, they didn’t feel as if they could lose against Zaur in particular ever again. He lacked the proper conviction to concern them. And hopefully, his injuries would make him weaker for a long period of time.