Elder Cultivator

Ten days. Ten brutal days in a row, Bear Hug repeatedly threw themselves at the briar patch, hoping for any sort of interaction beyond violence. Anton was willing to give up the briars as hopeless. On the tenth day, the long stemmed creature didn’t whip any blades at Bear Hug as they approached. Instead, they reached out a single spiny branch.

Bear Hug reached out, wrapping a portion of their algae strands around the proffered limb. About the time elation filled Anton’s friend, the thorn patch attacked all at once. Anton nearly annihilated the briar patch despite Bear Hug’s insistence. Surely, they hadn’t meant for him to allow that.

Bear Hug was constantly making active use of their own energy to retain a form, so they were not caught entirely stagnant by the sudden move. Much of what remained was torn away, Bear Hug’s energy control stripped away as the briar patch captures chunks of algae. Yet half of Bear Hug’s effort was to tell Anton not to interfere, while the rest went to shooting a chunk of algae the size of two fists towards Anton.

The small clump was only a tiny portion of Bear Hug. “I don’t think…” weak energy limply spoke. “That our friend is ready to talk to anyone right now.”

With that, Bear Hug collapsed, entrusting their corporeal form to Anton. His senses told him the other body back at the lake was trembling- this was far too close to true destruction.

It wasn’t too late to tear apart the briar patch and steal back more of Bear Hug… but Anton followed their wishes. However, he didn’t take the situation casually.

One step, and Anton was at a nearby lake, dipping his friend into the waters. Hungry fish that like to nibble were kept away by a barrier of energy. Anton amplified the incoming sunlight to bolster the water, and was pleased to see that his friend was hungrily drinking in the power.

At every moment, Anton was tempted to just destroy the aggressor. Bear Hug had to learn that sometimes, people weren’t nice. Not everyone was going to be a friend, or even cordial. Sometimes, people wanted to tear you apart and devour you. In that way, they were worse than beasts. At least beasts were acting without malice simply out of hunger, but it was clear to both Anton and Bear Hug that the briar patch was more than simply mobile plant matter.

Three days passed with Bear Hug’s secondary body in a bitter state. Anton still didn’t understand what the split meant, but whether his friend was dying or merely maimed the circumstances hurt Anton as well. Perhaps as the strongest party present he should have taken responsibility and stopped things long before.

“I’m ready to try again,” Bear Hug said. They were currently a collection of algae the size of Anton’s head, about doubled in volume from their low point. Their energy felt something like an unstable Spirit Building cultivator.

“Absolutely not,” Anton said. This was where he had to draw the line. “You wouldn’t survive.”

Bear Hug thought for a while. “You could save me.”

“Yes. But if you sustained any more damage, I’m certain it would be debilitating. So I’d have to destroy the briar patch.”

“You don’t have to do that. You’re strong. You could just…”

“Suppress it with my overwhelming energy?” Anton suggested. “I don’t think threats would accomplish what you want. You don’t make friends that way. And so, if I have to act it will be the end of things.”

Bear Hug floundered around for a little, flopping around on the surface and creating ripples. That was a way they physically expressed their displeasure without words. “Can’t you just make them listen?”

“I won’t,” Anton declared.

Solving a situation with brute force generally just resulted in death. Sometimes it was necessary, but it was rarely good. Anton wouldn’t mind destroying the duplicitous briar patch, but it would upset Bear Hug. Thus, he had to bring an end to things.

Bear Hug thought for a while longer, slowly cultivating and regrowing. “I’ll have to grow stronger myself. I can do that, then come back here.”

Anton sighed. His energy shaped words for his friend. “If you want to try that, I won’t stop you. But it might grow more quickly than you. After all, it consumed much of your energy.”

“That won’t work forever,” Bear Hug said. “They’ll get all jumbled up. I don’t want that. So I’ll have to get strong fast enough to set them on the right path.”

Anton didn’t have it in himself to dash Bear Hug’s motivations and tell them not to try to be a good person. And seeing that instead of depression their response was motivation, he wasn’t too worried about their first exposure to malignancy would forever ruin them. “We’ll seek out somewhere good for you to grow,” Anton said. “Would being in just one place help?”

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“That’s a long walk. Too many days,” Bear Hug said. Anton wanted to point out he could bring them together in mere seconds, but decided against it. “I don’t think it’s actually better. We’ll go like this.”

Anton nodded. He needed to find waters overflowing with natural energy… but not too many predators that might want to eat Bear Hug. As his energies swept around, he thought about whether he would prefer that his friend was willing to sacrifice their life to try to make a friend or if Bear Hug believing they wouldn’t die was better. One was more sensible, the other noble. Noble sacrifices were usually foolish- failing to accomplish the actual goal- but Anton couldn’t help but respect them in some way.

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The movements of people were weird. That was what Velvet’s instincts told her, though she couldn’t say why. Cultivators moving to claim systems for a particular goal- that of stretching the pact around the Scarlet Midfields while also pushing what the Alliance would let them get away with made sense. Everyone wanted to try to take as much as they could. The void ants at the turn of the tides of the world had been a decent excuse.

Velvet understood all of that, and that they would bring in a supporting population of lesser cultivators and non-cultivators. But there were too many, and she couldn’t say why she thought that. In fact, their numbers might not have been the actual problem.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

If it was a small group, she might have resolved to believe they were spies- but that didn’t exactly match up. Would the Exalted Quadrant be spying on the Exalted Quadrant?

Absolutely, yes. But she couldn’t imagine how this would be efficient. And spies were just her personal first guess because of her own occupation. In short, she only understood that something was wrong with the masses of people. Maybe it was just that they were far poorer than she expected. Some people didn’t even have enough to eat, which was insane because the planet was producing more than enough food. It was like ancient Ceretos, back before unification. The Exalted Quadrant had held together for millennia, how could they not have solved this issue?

Oh right. It was because they didn’t care. If people weren’t cultivators, they didn’t matter. Everyone in the Scarlet Alliance was a cultivator, at least to some extent, but that wouldn’t have been enough. Nobody cared about potential unless they also had connections. In fact, those with potential that weren’t part of some larger group were either snapped up or eliminated as threats.

How annoying. Velvet decided to go look at turtles. The Ponderous Turtle Clan had been quite prolific about settling one particular planet. It had a decent atmosphere and tolerably lively seas, so that was something. The turtles were just turtles though. Kind of big sea turtles and little more. Nothing even resembled the size that the Exalted One Cynbel was supposed to possess, and they certainly weren’t like Paradise.

Paradise was great. He roamed around and provided a port for ships, even before people actually knew what he was. He was a noble turtle that provided a home for a whole sect and hunted the terrors of the sea.

And then there were pet turtles. Velvet thought they were pretty decent turtles, but that was it. Clan members rode them around, including underwater. They directed them with special reigns when they were about the size of horses. Maybe Velvet was biased, but they felt more like a clan that had turtles than a proper turtle clan.

But enough of that. She had to determine if they were planning to invade the Scarlet Alliance. If so, would it be now or later? A year, a decade, a century? Were they building up a new empire that would try to crush the Alliance in a millennium?

Obviously they wouldn't be able to do it alone, but if this was just a way of expanding their growth as part of the Exalted Quadrant, the Ponderous Turtle Clan could be part of some greater operation. Unfortunately, nobody went around speaking about their plans, and they didn’t just carry papers that talked about secret plans either. All of the stated goals were to confirm the annihilation of void ants- which was stupid because people didn’t have to settle a planet for that.

Storage bags were a pain. Without them people might leave important documents back at some office just for the taking. If there were only a few layers of security alarms and traps, they were as good as out in the open. However, Velvet found it was much more difficult to reach into someone’s storage bag and pull out a bunch of papers, scrolls, and communication devices.

She could do it, obviously. It was just a much slower process. She had way more information than she wanted to know about how many people were sleeping with other people behind their official partner’s backs. And that wasn’t even the information that was counted as worthy of being blackmail material.

The steady flow of information was no doubt going to be valuable for their information warfare division. The potential ways that the Scarlet Alliance could deploy information to sow division in their neighbors were growing. For the most part they were resisting such influence within themselves, but obviously Velvet couldn’t say trillions of individuals were without corruption. That was why they had special security for all of the important things.

One piece of information Velvet had actually tied to the Ponderous Turtle Clan- through the lower realms. It was top secret not because the particular piece of information was particularly important, but because of the category it fell into. Specifically, Everheart. Everheart seemed to have more enemies than there were people in the galaxy, and for good reason. He was dangerous and an asshole. Just recently, he’d taken several systems from the Citadel of Exalted Light’s territory. The Scarlet Alliance didn’t mind when it was their enemies, but at any time Everheart could turn away from his vaguely neutral stance towards them. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t stolen from them at any point.

As for the pertinent connection, it was actually Paradise. Nobody knew the full truth, but Paradise had likely been stolen from the Ponderous Turtle Clan in the lower realms. Then he became ‘Everheart’s Turtle’. A few centuries passed and everyone forgot that, while Paradise grew even bigger. Velvet wasn’t going to say that Everheart couldn’t raise a giant turtle up himself, but the independence certainly seemed to have boosted Paradise by more than a few kilometers.

If Everheart had been a decent owner, he would have taken Paradise with him upon ascension. He had enough tricks that had to be possible. On the other hand, Paradise- or whatever he might have been called before- almost certainly would have become a casualty of the extremely frequent trouble Everheart got himself into. Just like almost everyone Everheart interacted with.

Becoming a cultivator whose name was spoken throughout the upper realms- even as a curse- sure sounded like a lonely prospect. Then again, Everheart had friends now. Or allies. Or subordinates. Whatever they were, they only made him more dangerous.