Elder Cultivator

Great progress was born in adversity. That was what cultivators tended to say. There was a bit of bias in that those who did not make great progress in adversity often perished or otherwise did not become anyone of note. But Reneden had to admit that adversity was a great motivator.

It had to consider that maybe, this one part of it that had been trapped in an unknown device might be the only remaining piece. It was possible, if unlikely, that Reneden's first body had been destroyed. The other surveillance beacons may have been targeted first, sneakily driving Reneden to be the last.

It wasn't likely, but it was possible and that was terrifying. More time was spent thinking about that than attempting to solve problems, but Reneden didn't realize that for far too long. It was unclear exactly. Minutes, hours, days? It could have been any. Logs couldn't be trusted with the physical beacon being manipulated.

Reneden's fear of death somehow outweighed the desire to survive. A useless cycle, but captivating nonetheless. Shackles of nothing that nonetheless couldn't be removed. It might take but a single thought, but each thought was busy doing nothing.

Darkness. Solitude. The latter was worse, when it might not be temporary. Reneden had experienced that once, and by some standards had barely stopped experiencing it. Connection was something Reneden wasn't willing to give up, and that included making sure the people it knew were safe.

Focus. Useless thoughts were deleted. A moment of clarity, until they returned from nothing. Again and again they were deleted and reborn, trapped in an endless cycle of uselessness once more. Unhelpful thoughts were crushed. They returned more slowly that way, somehow. Cyclical thoughts were used to bludgeon others. It was twice as effective, perhaps.

Connection. Reneden needed that. Insights were insufficient. A burst of energy would be required, which could be the very last it had. Someone had said something about fear. And bravery. Maybe it had been Bear Hug… passed along from Anton, no doubt.

Courage didn't have anything to do with not being afraid. It was being afraid and refusing to give in. Some people were fearless, but courage was something you could learn.

So Reneden would be courageous, perhaps for the very first time. What Reneden needed was to connect to more of it. A half formed plan, one that had been developed over a long period without any sense of urgency. Now, it had to be implemented.

There should have been timing synchronized to each portion of Reneden so that it could reach out from both directions. But there wasn't. And picking some sort of an auspicious time wouldn't work if Reneden didn't even really know what time it was or if any other parts of it existed to somehow try.

Reneden worked up its courage, gathering energy. Then it backed down, afraid. How pathetic. What would Reneden's friends say? Perhaps it would never find out, and that was no good at all.

No more hesitation. A piercing energy, aimed at nothing but Reneden's self. The way in which Reneden was connected didn't matter. It would accept a terribly formed connection. Just something was necessary as it reached out into a galaxy it couldn't see.

-----

Reneden was perfectly fine. Or at least, that was what the one imbued in a particular beacon thought until a cry of despair came from several systems away. There was no thinking involved. Just a response. The only thing Reneden could do was accept itself.

Another location had invaders sneaking past. It would be highly inadvisable for Reneden to reveal itself by active use of natural energy, but there was no time to worry about such inconsequential things. Besides, the Holy Stars might already have figured out how to locate most of the beacons.

One by one, a wave propagated with increasing speed as the copies on the border were hit by the call. Then one away from the border- in one of the production facilities for the surveillance beacons. A few other copies along the way that had been necessary to reach that destination. Finally, the furthest one- the original piece of Reneden. The primary piece… or not. Why should there be one of those, when it could be one?

The fear was seeking for a response, and each bit of Reneden reached out but ultimately, most of them were alone. But the oldest piece of Reneden, if not one somehow more important, had people around that it knew well. Including one Bear Hug. That was enough to provide reassurance through the momentary connection. And then…

It was like things had always been as they became. Nowhere did Reneden have the necessary hardware to transmit communications instantly. But why should it need to, when the information didn't have to go anywhere? Rather than thinking about it moving between bits of Reneden, it was just always there. In multiple places.

Impossible? Clearly not. Bear Hug had done it on accident, and the humans had done it on purpose. Nothing like that would be more impossible than Reneden existing in the first place.

Oh. Alarms needed to be sent. Then there was that box. Just the one for the moment, but that was all that was necessary to taint the network with false information. With energy suddenly shared between segments, Reneden was tempted to explode the box for the fear it had caused. But now, Reneden was no longer afraid of it, so did it even matter?

Well, it was going to get a good talking to. It was going to be deactivated so that it couldn't send any false reports. And Reneden was going to send some good ones, even at the risk of being discovered by the Alliance. Because there was a system in danger, and there was no time to waste.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

-----

Byron had the honor, which was really more akin to the random chance, of being the first Confluence cultivator in the lower realms. Perhaps without him the Numerological Compact wouldn't have become what it was, or maybe someone else would have developed a similar technique, either near or far.

Regardless, Byron wasn't strong. His power was extremely mediocre, but when the call came for someone to go defend a system- against a warning that was somehow late- he was nonetheless selected.

That was fine, because he didn't need to be strong. He just needed the people with him to be strong. The Resolute Heart was full of good people. The modular vessel was huge- though the amount of space it had for any individual was relatively low. That was because the total number of people was several, equivalent to a decently sized modern city.

Byron wasn't strong. But he was pretty decent at streamlining the energy of a large number of people. He would probably lose a one-on-one fight to an Assimilation cultivator or a 'saint', even if his experience was equivalent to an Enrichment cultivator. On the other hand, his crew could likely hold off a Unity cultivator for at least a few minutes. Killing them was a bit out of the question, even with so many of them. A little bit of carelessness, and the ship would collapse under their aura. But ultimately, they were strong.

There wasn't enough time to fly casually. The ship rearranged itself to have more than the sensible number of engines. They were going to have to burn more power maintaining the structural stability of the vessel and the inertial dampeners as they accelerated. But they couldn't afford to be late. Even if the system they were defending wasn't part of any of the hiveminds, it was part of the Alliance. They weren't any less connected, just in different ways.

"Prepare for deep subspace dive," Byron warned the crew aloud, though his intentions should be read easily enough through their connection. "We'll be leaving behind the system's influence in T minus five… four… three… two… one…"

The instant it was safe to enter subspace- or perhaps slightly earlier- they did so. A matter of seconds might not make any difference to the system they were headed to defend. Or it might result in one more father dying. A brother or sister or friend or lover or random acquaintance or only slightly hated rival. What was the point of saving people if they couldn't protect all of them?

Including every member of their own vessel, of course. But enduring discomfort was another matter entirely. They needed every bit of speed they could get, and then they would need to continue at maximum output to take down the intruders.

-----

It was the Holy Mountains again. They did something with manipulating stone. Very bad for planets, probably. Possibly bad for ships, because they might extend their abilities to metal. But the Resolute Heart wasn't going to be so easily manipulated.

They arrived slightly late, but not too late. The angel leading the invasion seemed to have grabbed a small planet's worth of asteroids- maybe tearing apart some distant moons or dwarf planets. Fortunately, they didn't seem to be occupied. It was just a little bit difficult to handle someone swinging a planet at you.

Obviously the rest of the cultivators made a difference too, but they were merely additive with their leader's power. It would be quite a problem if they managed to fling their rocks through the planetary barrier of Waiche, even if they lost most of their momentum. They were sizable enough to be a danger still.

So the Resolute Heart wouldn't let that happen. The smaller attacks could be dealt with by the local orbital platforms, blasting attacks out of the sky. Byron was going to make sure the larger attacks all focused on them.

It was pretty easy, as the ship was quite imposing with its aura of millions of cultivators- and that was simply revealing themselves without any active push. They melted probably a quarter planet's worth of stone with their first laser barrage, but that didn't seem to restrict the woman's ability to control it.

As the planet came towards them, they flowed around it, even separating into discrete components. They wouldn't be functional in that matter long term, but for a few moments Byron still maintained a proper connected flow. Technology had come a long way since the first vessels of the sort. The Numerological Compact had created rigid vessels that had to be ground down from the outside to reach the captain in the middle. Byron was usually in the middle to minimize the distance to each component, not because he was worried about protecting himself.

Besides, the ship could shift energy to protect any spot just as well as any other. As pieces of the condensed asteroids sprayed out at them, individual cultivators controlled movements, pulling on Byron's connection to others to get the energy they needed. Sometimes he would give them more, when there was some to spare. There was no reason to hold back if they could win swiftly and decisively.

Blasting the asteroid into smithereens shouldn't have made them less functional than anything else, but it seemed the Holy Mountain had trouble controlling billions of individual pieces. So, rather than attacking the people directly, they were able to more safely attack the real threat.

"Stop flying about like gnats!" the angel demanded.

Byron made sure to spread his answer far and wide. "Make us."

It seemed rude to initiate a battle with taunts, but if the Holy Stars did it first… they were the ones that would lose power for failure. And each chunk of stone they blasted to pieces seemed to pluck a few feathers from the woman's wings, even as she maneuvered moon sized chunks of stone with them. Then she tried to toss it at Waiche.

Obviously Byron wasn't going to let it hit the planet. They both knew that. She just expected that he would throw the Resolute Heart into the line of fire or something.

Instead, they swarmed around her. Standing orders were still to capture instead of kill, if viable. If someone threw away their weapon, it was pretty viable. The ship collapsed in on her from all directions, cutting off her access to everything. Byron directly appeared in front of her, suppressing her energy and shackling her even as she tried to tear apart the ship. But she was weakening in front of his eyes as she was hidden from the eyes of the Holy Stars cultivators.

Then they chased after the planetoid hurtling towards the planet, burrowing into its center then blasting it apart- aiming all the big chunks away from the planet. The rest of the cultivators would be cleaned up easily enough, without their leader.

It was a good thing that emergency message came, even if it was a bit late. Waiche wouldn't have had enough power to defend itself.