Elder Cultivator

It was not important for Anton to immediately leave his position on the ground, despite the word of approaching enemies. In addition to the fact that he could target anyone over the hemisphere of Rutera he was on without issue, it would take time for enemies to reach the planet from the edges of the system. He didn’t linger overly much, though. Merve would require more time to get in position due to her speed, but at least she didn’t require assistance to leave the atmosphere.

Most cultivators didn’t fly. There was an exception among cultivators beyond Life Transformation, at least in the lower realms- given how much conflict had happened over Ceretos, all of their Assimilation cultivators had learned to fly, and it seemed that the Sylanis Cluster’s Worldbinding cultivators did the same. As for Life Transformation cultivators, they at least learned to maneuver in lower gravity, specifically all of those who had fought around Rutera before.

Radiant energy poured from Merve as from her back sprang two wings, giving her a wingspan more than twice her height. The wings were white except for a few stray feathers of black, many feathers overly large for the size of the wing- but with her control of energy, they would still be functional for flight. In short, they appeared to be angelic- though Anton hadn’t ever seen an actual angel, if they existed. Regardless, Merve raising her energy provided a soothing aura that would amplify allies in the area, the effect would be amplified if she concentrated.

“Ready?” Anton asked as they flew upwards, Anton lacking any visible means of motion.

“I hope so,” Merve said, looking at her wings. Her eyes lingered on the stray black feathers breaking up the purity of her wings. “It’s funny, you know. Before you told me my technique was tainted, these were pure white.”

“Yet now it’s so much better,” Anton grinned. “It wasn’t pleasant to see the first reveal. Personally, you’ve done so much I can’t even pick out the flaws in your technique myself.”

“I still feel them,” Merve stated clearly. “Enough that I’m not comfortable trying any sort of advancement yet.” She still hadn’t decided what path she would attempt, Ascension or Assimilation. Given her origins, calling the second Worldbinding might have been more appropriate- but Anton felt that Assimilation had more flexibility in its design. Then again, he only had actual information on three out of a hundred or so techniques, so he had to admit his knowledge was limited.

Anton looked out into the stars, his actual vision doing very little. “I don’t feel a Worldbinding cultivator,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Merve asked.

“That they’re extremely weak or stealthy. Probably the latter,” Anton admitted.

“We… they didn’t really have that many to throw around. Perhaps the Sylanis Cluster thought they could do without?”

“They should know better by now,” Anton shook his head, opening himself to the smaller fluctuations of the world. Only because he knew they were there could he even get a hint of the incoming fleet, far beyond the true range of his senses. It was less of an actual sensation and more an itching at the back of his mind. Nothing happened for a few minutes, then a small beeping sound caught Anton’s attention. The sound would not have had a medium to travel were it not for Anton’s energy providing an environment for it, with the intention of letting Merve speak if he wished- but the communications device was a secondary reason. “General Nicodemo. I assume you have some kind of update for me?”

“The fleet isn’t heading for Rutera,” came the straightforward reply. “Their actual goal isn’t quite clear, but the sensors are picking up a general trajectory that would lead to one of the outer planets.”

“Anything important?” Anton asked. There was the matter of a super secret battleship that was hardly secret anymore.

“If that is their target… they’re going the wrong way,” Nicodemo admitted.

“Someone will have to stop them,” Anton said. “So… which one is the trap?”

Nicodemo got what Anton was implying immediately. “There are no signs yet of a secondary fleet incoming. Either way, someone has to go…”

“You mean me, then.”

“I probably couldn’t stop you if I said anything else,” Nicodemo was almost certainly shrugging on the other end of the comms. “With the tactical options we have, it’s more of a question of where the Great Queen is placed.”

A slight pressure on Anton’s arm had him look down. A series of gestures from the ant herself told Anton her opinion. “She is staying with me.”

“That’s… expected. She can hear me, right?”

“Yep,” Anton acknowledged.

“If you kill a Worldbinding cultivator in this engagement I’ll do my utmost to push through your proposal for colonies in our system,” General Nicodemo promised.

“Trying to bribe royalty?” Anton asked.

“I’m aiming for proper motivation. I would never resort to bribery on official communication channels.” And with cultivators being so mercenary, anything he offered for exceptional efforts wasn’t really considered bribery. Perhaps if Nicodemo offered something for a personal favor… but even then, the exchange wouldn’t have the same connotations that the word implied.

“Alright then. Give me some coordinates and I’ll be off.”

When Anton ended the call, Merve sighed. “I guess I’m saying here, then?”

“Do you want to?” Anton asked.

“I can’t exactly get anywhere in a reasonable time,” she said. “I have enough trouble just breathing. It would take me months to reach an outer planet.”

Anton held out his hand, “Do you want to go?”

“Will I fight here?” she asked.

“Most likely there will be combat in either location. Mine will have fewer allies.”

She thought for a few moments. “I’ll still go with you.”

“Great,” Anton said, his hand grasping around her wrist. “The acceleration should be even across your body, but holding on will make this easier.” Anton turned his head to look at an orbital platform in the far distance, which was little more than a plate of fortified metal floating in space. The relevant feature it had was who was on it- not a squad of fighters using it as a launch point or a bunch of cultivators from Ceretos. Instead, it was just Nthanda, holding her bow in one hand while her other hand played idly by the quiver on her back that appeared to have somewhere around a dozen arrows. Though Anton was well aware it was a special type of storage bag, and each arrow drawn would be replaced by another until she actually ran out of the significant quantity of ammunition prepared for her. Their eyes met over a great distance, and they nodded.

Then Anton began to accelerate. He didn’t just tug Merve along by her wrist, instead wrapping them both in his natural energy and shoving them forward together. Even so, the effort seemed to be difficult for Merve, so Anton limited his acceleration for a moment.

“Just… hold on,” Merve said, closing her eyes. “I guess I need to be a bit more serious about this.” As she concentrated, she drew upon more of her energy, two more pairs of wings springing out of her back, the large wings overlapping at various points but not getting in each other’s way. Instead of spreading out like the others, the two pairs of wings folded around her, covering her upper and lower body respectively. Anton felt the power flowing through them, providing cover for more than just the visible area, but a sort of barrier around her, more resilient than simple covers of natural energy. At the same time, the energy flowing from her to Anton increased as well, a pleasant warmth that was not the fires of his stars. “Alright, go.”

As Anton accelerated them further, he was able to attain even higher rates of change without causing Merve any discomfort, though presumably she would garner some fatigue from her efforts. Still, he picked up speed, gaining assistance from convenient planets or moons if they would slingshot him faster, and otherwise cutting corners through open space itself. He couldn’t quite manage the same techniques as functioned outside of a system for interstellar travel, but he could make up for his lack of acceleration time by cheating a little.

He corrected their trajectory with continued updates from Nicodemo. “It’s weird,” the man said. “There’s not even a planet there. Just some asteroids. As best we can determine they’re going for IGE94, which is just an unremarkable rock.”

“How certain are you about that?” Anton asked.

“Very. Both the location and the remarkability. But I don’t like the idea of letting them act freely in our system.”

“Agreed,” Anton nodded. As Anton approached the destination, he began to feel something. First, the actual fleet- he was used to the method of concealment they used, and as they had to use his solar energy to maneuver and turn invisible, they couldn’t actually escape his senses. But there was something else, beneath them. Not ‘down’, as if that had any real meaning in space. Rather, something behind the space itself. Something familiar. “Bala Sykora is here,” Anton said.

Communications within a system were near-instant, at least with the quality of comms Nicodemo had given Anton. Even so, there was a decent pause before he answered. “... Dammit. Can you handle her?”

“As long as I get to pick the range? I should at least have the option to retreat.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I wouldn’t die for a target of unclear priority. How about that second fleet? They there yet?”

“Not yet,” Nicodemo said, “But we can assume they’ll show up soon enough.” He sighed, “I wish Ty were here.”

“Why?” Anton asked. “I know he’s decently strong but he’s still just one person. You have Nthanda there.”

“He’s the strongest native we have,” Nicodemo pointed out. “And though I think he’s completely insane, he’s also good for morale.”

“Fair point,” Anton conceded. “I don’t imagine I’ll have much time to say anything from now on. I’ll keep my ears open if you have something to say, but don’t expect anything.”

“Alright,” Nicodemo said. “... Also, how far away are you? We put sensors on nearly every hunk of rock so we even have some on IGE94, and they haven’t picked you up yet.”

Anton pulled his bow off his back, “Plenty close,” Anton said as he began to decelerate. He stopped activating the comm with his energy. Then he felt movement from inside his shirt, where the Great Queen had been hunkering down to deal with the acceleration- her body wouldn’t be hurt from anything Anton did on accident, but hanging onto him if he suddenly maneuvered was awkward from elsewhere. As she poked out of the top of his shirt, her legs were held onto by some of her royal guard, then more of them in a chain. When the last ones surpassed that threshold, they were suddenly blasted away.. Or rather, he was decelerating and she was not. A strand of his energy reached out towards her, to provide a line of communication. “I hope you meant to do that!”

She twisted so he could see her front legs and antennae- though it was difficult given her size and the rapidly increasing distance. “Of course! How am I gonna fight if I don’t smash into them at great speed?”

Anton didn’t have anything to say to that, partly because he didn’t know how to reply, and partly because she was so far already. And he had to admit if she waited for him to stop and moved herself, the couple thousand kilometers between his current location, the rock, and the fleet landing on it would take her a while to traverse. He just hoped she was sensible enough to decelerate herself. Terminal velocity in an atmosphere couldn’t do anything to her, but this was a whole different level of speed. But she was smart enough to know that, so it was really just general worry for her going off ‘alone’. At least he knew the way she selectively devoured energy to change her momentum would also apply to her royal guard.

Merve was still with Anton, their physical configuration not actually being relevant to acceleration and deceleration meaning she didn’t suddenly swing past him. She gave him a look, and the small clump of black that was soon going to be invisible to anything. “Kinda weird to carry a colony of ants in your shirt. But not as weird as the ones who have bugs live inside them.”

“That sounds unpleasant… and risky,” Anton said.

“They have an astronomical death rate,” Merve commented. “And no Worldbinding cultivators yet.”

Anton nodded. He pushed his mind away from the topic and considered whether he could hit someone hanging out in subspace. Then he shrugged. Either he could, Bala would reveal herself before his arrow arrived, or he would take out one of the other ships. Either way, he took his bow, aimed it directly perpendicular to where the arrow needed to go, and shot. He was far enough away that he might be able to hide his energy, in which case he needed the arrow to go the long way around to get a believable trajectory.