Abyssal Road Trip

Amdirlain's PoV - Demi-Plane

Throughout the concert, the audience's excitement had continued to climb. Hours later, after a fifth encore, Amdirlain waved and disappeared from the stadium. At the Demi-Plane's edge, she opened a mental link to the high priests who were present.

"Thank you all for your work. I know that you've saved and healed far more lives than anyone would credit you for. The cities you've helped may never admit it, but I say well done. Hopefully, you all found tonight's songs thought-provoking."

A run of questions had her create mind palaces, just as she'd done with her daughters and the High Priest whose focus on delving she'd cut off. Drawing on her study sessions with Cyrus, she turned each question back towards getting the Priest to examine their understanding of the tenets in the songs.

"Life is a journey, as is understanding. If you are truly seeking it, your understanding will continue to grow and refine as life's landscape changes. Questions are good, as they mean you're still seeking and growing."

Amdirlain broke the remaining connections with those last words and shifted to the Outlands.

She found Sarah sprawled out on a mountain slope, looking like a crystalline hill; the radiant light of the Outlands glistened off her scales.

"How long before you shift some orcs?" Sarah rumbled.

"I'll have to wait for the others to finish setting up the biospheres." Amdirlain sat in front of her and leaned on the polished scales on the inside of her front legs. "You feel filled with questions. Want to share?"

"I think you'll need more worlds than what they can manage in a short time frame. While it's fine to let them get experience, there is nothing wrong with setting up finished worlds in parallel to their efforts."

"I know, but them being stronger will help more people in the long term." Amdirlain nudged her paw. "I've grown, and can admit that I'm not responsible for everyone's choices. Whoever I do rescue will be better off than if I never acted, but I can't save everyone. The realm is so vast that even if I created a trillion systems instantly and moved sizable populations to them a second later, there would still be people dying under tyrants. I will do what I can when I can act safely."

"Good," Sarah rumbled gently.

"My Precognition has changed since I came back without Psychic-Prince evolving again. I got flashes of places while tending to matters on Qil Tris. I think one of them is the world with those orcs that I observed alongside Silpar. They had a Polynesian lifestyle, and the cloister was going to keep them under observation to see how they could improve their lives."

Sarah lifted her head and swivelled her snout towards Amdirlain. "They'll have progressed.".

"Maybe. It depends on whether they've had a need."

"Do you believe they've had a need?"

A shiver ran up Amdirlain's back as she saw an image of hundreds of orcs in a cavern secured by roots growing from the stone. "Yes."

"Is Gideon playing games?"

"Hey, don't blame me. Amdirlain can dredge up all the information she needs to get herself into trouble by herself now." Gideon's voice chimed in their minds. "Pick your battles carefully. You've got your eye on a lot of dangerous foes. Though try to possess some sneakiness, because if their return strikes find you when you're still too weak to deflect them, they won't have your concern about appearing as a bully."

"Any other sage advice?" Sarah drawled.

"Some of your friends have alliances that could be more dangerous to the pair of you than your current enemies. Work always flows downhill to the competent until they drown in it."

Amdirlain asked. "How old are these friendships that we should be wary of?"

"They are individuals you have befriended since your return. You already know some of the older ones that are dangerous to you, but others you'll need to figure out."

"I was going to contact Liranë and the others from the monastery." Amdirlain sent to Sarah.

"Feel free if you want to get dragged into a war in Limbo and the Material Plane with those who genetically engineered the Tambë elves into their current state," Gideon interjected. "You need allies who need your strength, but are also strong enough to support you. You might think about who that doesn't include."

Sarah's brows lifted. "That's the first I've heard of them having an ongoing war."

"They probably see it as their own problem, not something to involve others with," Amdirlain said. "I'll let them know I'm free, but leave them to it. I'm going to check on the primitive Orc world first."

"Can't leave it alone?"

Amdirlain shivered violently. "No."

Analysis revealed changes to the species previously listed for the world: a Formithian incursion and a complete absence of giants.

True Song Crystal rods appeared, and she interwove adjusted themes into the latest version of the surveyors before slipping them into place around the planet.

"Formithians," Amdirlain spat. "I should have treated their situation as a short-term fix, and addressed the problems sooner, instead of using the orcs to fence them in."

"That isn't the only reason you ignored them, sweetie. If you had acted against them, you would have been the same type of meddling God you despised. That you could balance their growth with another species was the most extreme action you could stand to take against beings with souls."

Amdirlain shared the information fed from the surveyors with Sarah. From their hunter-gatherer tribes and fishing villages, the local orcs had developed into a Bronze Age culture and secured themselves behind fortified passes and chokepoint fortresses.

A cacophony of miserable themes from within Formithian nests created glaring hotspots on the terrain overlay. She brought out a crystal plate and projected images of sites that were eerily similar to her visions of the imprisoned orcs in greater detail. Masses of prisoners secured in their own filth by roots growing from the stone floor. Along the cavern's edge were brutal slaughter yards, where Formithian butchers used their upper claws to clip apart their still living prisoners. The tortured souls fled to the Astral Plane bearing horrendous scars and blazing hatred.

That's repulsive on so many levels. They're not only mauling them in this life, but inflicting agonies and misery that will stain them in future lives.

"I'll be back in a while. I'm going to sort this out and find a path forward."

With the surveyors providing her details of the world's rifts, Planar Shift took her to the Elemental Plane of Water side of an expansive rift connected to the ocean's depths. She slid through the rift smoothly, the fluctuation in the ley lines barely above the natural spikes she'd detected on other planets.

All the nests had dried Orc flesh among their provisions, and memories of the peaceful villagers had rage pulsing through Amdirlain's body.

This isn't one of their worlds, and they want to treat the inhabitants in a fashion that scars their souls forever. If they care so little, why was that Formithian Celestial even in the Abyss? Had demons been taking Formithian captives?

Among the faith connections the local orcs possessed, she could tell their deities weren't old, but rather local mantle holders.

In minutes, she'd banished the nests wholesale back to their original overcrowded worlds without their accumulated supplies or any equipment. With the screen providing the songs, she closed every rift and renamed the planet to prevent the formithians from returning. After securing the planet, she returned the living prisoners to their homes and then began resurrecting hundreds of thousands of recently murdered orcs whose souls still lingered. Each returned to their own homes with whatever clothing and equipment was necessary to establish themselves. According to the realm's rules, those souls resurrected knew who had called them back to life and the intention behind their return from the dead. Very few souls suspected her of ulterior motives and refused her call.

In the end, thousands of towns and villages found missing members returned to them, with tales of the horrors of being collected by Formithian gatherers followed by a miraculous rescue or revival. With the threat to the planet's natives removed, Amdirlain left them to their lives.

The mellow sounds of the Outlands didn't relax Amdirlain after what she'd seen. The extent of their stay on the world would have seen countless millions of orcs harvested by the nests in that gruesome fashion.

Perhaps it would have been smarter only to help the living, but this gives the recently deceased time to repair some of the damage to their souls. I need to study the Formithian species. The world with the smallest population I know is where I shifted that nest as an experiment. Should I start there?

Amdirlain paused briefly, but Gideon didn't volunteer any information, so she sent her latest surveyors into orbit around the once sparsely inhabited Formithian world. While examining the nests that were spread across the planet, she stopped to consider a blasted and poisoned wasteland. Though arcane cataclysms had buckled and cracked the landscape, the surrounding regions still looked familiar. The chitin shells of the queens and their mates showed where the central chambers of the nest she'd transported had once been.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Someone annihilated the nest, but the formithians are the only sapient species on this planet.

After calculating the trajectory of the star and the planet's location when she'd moved the nest, Amdirlain opened a temporal window to scry from above. This showed the nest leaving the stasis she'd placed them in for the transfer and launching an exploratory expedition. They travelled out among nearby hills and explored the shoreline of the nearest ocean. Following it, they expanded across the world for decades until they encountered another nest. The local scouts acted aggressively, and the hordes of troops swarmed from not only the first nest they'd encountered but dozens of others. The combined force backed the transported nest's network until they reached the first secondary outpost. With no apparent attempt at negotiations, they savagely attacked the nest, ignoring the bodies that piled high on both sides of the conflict.

The same pattern continued with other nests, sending millions forth to obliterate every outpost and secondary nests the newcomers had created during their time on the planet. When they finally destroyed the primary nest and even crushed its eggs, the swarm sterilised that original site. With that done, the survivors returned to their home nests and reverted to their previous duties.

I didn't know that Formithian nests ever fought each other. What went on during that first contact that I missed? Why was the reaction so fierce?

Amdirlain shifted to a forest glade within her Domain to consider the problem in a secure location. With the need for more information pressing at her, she entered the landscape of her essence and found Lethe waiting for her in a form that mirrored a young Orhêthurin. They were standing on the foothills near the pass that concealed the entrance to the memory vault.

"Being among the living was good for you," Lethe offered.

"I felt tensions shift. Hopefully, they don't return, but I need your help with retrieving memories related to the formithians."

Lethe wrinkled her nose. "Another species that got worse over the years. Have you considered that they might have reached the point where their usefulness has run its course?"

"I will not wipe out another species."

"You don't possess the strength to go up against their Pantheon," Lethe said casually.

"Even if I did, I'm not committing xenocide."

Lethe raised an eyebrow. "You let me see what you witnessed. The formithians seem to have no problem with wiping out others, even turning other species with souls into their livestock. Would you get upset if it were cows they were killing? You seem to have no problem with predators fulfilling their niche in an ecosystem."

"They're not just killing them, they're putting them through events that distort their souls."

"Souls? Is that your limit?" Lethe questioned curiously. "Have you even decided where you'll set your limits? You educated your followers or family on what you stood for, but what do you stand against? What lines won't you cross?"

"There have to be consequences for choices. The consequence for me allowing them to expand without proper checks in place is not leaving them for someone else to clean up now."

Lethe smiled approvingly and clasped Amdirlain's shoulder. "What do you believe you need to put them in perspective?"

"I'm here trying to understand them better. I want to start with their creation and see what I can learn from that song. Then I need any memories of dealing with their Pantheon."

"The second part is simple. You avoided them and let other Anar talk to the mortals and gods alike."

Amdirlain grunted unhappily. "I would have heard them occasionally?"

"Yeah."

"Then, how about the starting song and then some memories after they started their spread?"

On the grassy plain beyond the foothills, the memory of thousands of formithians came into existence, spread out in a circle around the three queens and their mates.

As the queens stirred, light music drifted on the breeze, and the pheromones for safety spread, while the closest workers ripped at the grass and began digging a tunnel. Amdirlain took into the song of their creation, along with the themes in the species' biological processes. Filaments along their limbs leaked fluids that mixed with the soil of the tunnel, turning it rock-hard and supporting the walls, allowing them to tunnel deeper.

Amdirlain nodded, and themes of slightly more recent nests manifested on and below the nearby plain. After the first deities manifested, the genetic shift of the species ceased to alter their themes, which remained constant and unaltered throughout the aeons, regardless of their world's environmental situation. Their mindset became sharper and less tolerant of anything new they encountered, especially if it opposed them.

The Pantheon stopped them from physically changing, and their attitudes spiralled.

"Their melodies are as harsh as the most recent ones." Amdirlain nodded to Lethe. "Thanks for the confirmation. I'll discuss the next steps with Sarah."

When she transmitted the location to Sarah, she teleported to her side.

"You've yet to visit my Domain," Sarah noted, sitting cross-legged on the grass as Amdirlain began to pace about. "Everyone safe?"

"One world is safe from the formithians, but I need to do more," Amdirlain huffed. "You remember the nest I moved from that Lizardfolk world?"

"How would I forget? I take it you're feeling nervous if you're asking rhetorical questions."

"Well, other formithians wiped it out, and I can think of a cause. I made modifications to their biology for the new planet I moved them to."

While she couldn't share the exact music, Amdirlain shared a mental chart of the percentage of genetic drift in the Formithian species over the aeons. The billions of years since the Titan's forge room was sealed off were represented by a flat line.

"Their priests probably use divine blessings to resolve any environmental issues." Sarah hummed thoughtfully. "I remember they tasted the same through the aeons. Though I'll admit I never paid that much attention to it, one fried bug is much like another. While most of the time I didn't live on the Material Plane, I occasionally helped metallic dragons on worlds suffering from their incursions."

"Am I being too precious? I'm objecting to them chopping up orcs for food while dragons burned them to eat them."

"No, I burned them to stop their attacks. Afterwards, I ate them since the bodies were there and I was hungry. It saved me from putting pressure on the locals' food and Mana supplies, which were already strained because of the incursion. If they hadn't been attacking the locals and kidnapping them to toss in a larder, I wouldn't have gone."

Amdirlain nodded, understanding her distinction. "Sorry, the situation with the orcs, and then the way they wiped out that nest of their own species, it all has me on edge."

"It's alright, chromatics would have done the same thing as the formithians. Yet while metallics work to keep the chromatics in check, the formithians have overrun many worlds. Though, with the nest, consider that the plinth didn't hold you responsible, so you didn't directly cause their demise."

"What Orc Pantheon would you recommend talking to about the formithians and the orcs living in the slums?"

"I'd suggest approaching some of the maternal Orc deities as they'll focus on benefiting their species, not just their worshippers." Sarah mentally shared the names of a few deities across the Orc pantheons related to motherhood and protection.

Urtila, Mother of Hordes. Such an interesting title, I'll need to deliver a suitable gift to capture their attention. Not that the titles of other deities don't sound equally impressive. Goddess of Blood, Daughter of the Feral Tide, Goddess of the Swollen Moon. In comparison, my titles are so tame, but I'll figure out who to talk to later.

"Would you tell me what you make of two constructs?"

"Alright."

Amdirlain created the bodies of two Formithian workers, devoid of minds or souls; little better than psionic biological constructs. The first mimicked the formithians she'd sent from the Orc world, while the second matched the alterations she'd performed on the nest.

Shortly, Sarah's nostrils flared. "The second smells sweeter."

Amdirlain removed her filtering and restricted her hearing to metres.

Their pheromones are isomers. Although the elements remain the same, they form in a different bonding order, resulting in distinct properties. That's why my filtering masked these differences.

Entirely focused on the molecules in the surrounding air, she soon traced them to specific glands.

"I used the same song as the adapted Formithian for the second construct. The sweetness is from differences in their pheromones, which must be what triggered the locals to attack. That means my next problem is figuring out how to shift their pheromone production without altering the formithians directly."

"Two reasons not to do that: it would require visiting every world, and it would be something their deities would certainly undo once discovered," Sarah said.

"Or it also needs to be something that healing spells can't reverse."

"You're going to break the homogeneity of the hives? Won't their deities change them to resist whatever trick you're going to pull?"

"They seem to possess a mindset resistant to change. Maybe chemicals included in the biology of species they prey on, or plants since they're omnivorous. It would need to be something that doesn't harm the host but screws the formithians consuming them. It's going to take some calculations to get it done correctly, and I'll need various deities to help me with the adjustments to their species." Amdirlain grinned. "It's like Gideon's exercises splicing attributes into plants, which then flowed onto the animals eating them."

A brightly plumed bird swooped down from a tree and landed on the first Formithian's upper claws. When the construct didn't shift, it used it as a perch to trill out a mating call.

I'm here, look at me.

Sarah smirked. "Not going to do a Sleeping Beauty and have it perch on your hand?"

"Bite me. Just tell me what you think," Amdirlain huffed.

"It doesn't seem like it's going to be easy. You almost need something like heavy metals that their system won't just flush out since you can't change the environment in regions of each world."

"There are some technical aspects I'll have to figure out. If all the nests end up smelling the same, their pheromones won't be repulsive to each other. Also, if they restrict their diet to the moss they grow inside their hives, they'll avoid outside influences."

"I can see lots of conditional situations like that arising. What if only certain individuals in the nest eat the preserved meat, or some eat more than others, or a hundred other permutations? Will the nest tear itself apart or just get attacked from the outside by other nests?"

"It could take millennia to fracture them enough to ease the pressure on other species," Amdirlain sighed. "Yet if I get enough of the formithians to compete against each other, it will slow their momentum."

"They've been an ongoing problem for billions of years. If you ease the threat they represent that quickly, it would be quite the accomplishment."

Amdirlain's mouth tightened. "I still have trouble planning beyond decades. Would you come with me to meet the first Orc deity?"

Such a mafia conversation can't use names without attracting attention; it's just the thing we do. We all know that thing, right?

"Taking a Dragon with you might not be the best approach. Orcs and elves rarely get on, but dragons are way outside the danger levels that orcs will tolerate close to their homes."

Gideon projected the True Song Domain coordinates for the various goddesses' names that Sarah had provided.

Most are in the Beastlands, where the wilderness ensures that food is plentiful. Even on a spiritual level, the symbolism is important.

"Thanks for the assist with that, Gideon."

Sarah's brows lifted, and so Gideon included her in the link. "There are still some things that I can't advise you about, as you wanted certain things restricted from yourself as well."

"You planning to rush off?" Sarah asked.

"No, first I need to figure out what chemicals affect their pheromone production. No point trying an Orc deity's patience with incomplete information." Amdirlain smiled suddenly. "I'll ask the others to come visit and see what we can come up with together."

"Brainstorming a problem is a good excuse to get people together. While I can understand that involving the Enyalië could be problematic, resolving planetary issues was part of what the Anar and Lómë were supposed to do."