The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 523 - Spiking The Parameters Of A Casual Conversation
At the center of the spreading canopy of tendrils, the massive main body descended. Unlike the rounder amorphous shape of a Leader, a Colonizer appeared from a distance to be a cube. Of course, it only appeared that way because of the ’material’ it was made from. Spiritual sense and certain Physiques could show a cultivator the truth. That within the vantablack ’nothing’ was more geometry than one really wanted to think about.
Stellation and truncations turned it into a mathematical conceptual nightmare for most, though one brunette was sure that Madrigil would find it quite compelling to talk about for the next five days. If he got close enough to give it a look before things were over. And saw the hundreds of white flames that shot across the Escher-esque surfaces.
Sevra had frozen mid-step, with every survival instinct in her body screaming warnings that her mind couldn’t process fast enough. She honestly felt like nothing had changed since last time she came here. Though at least the being she was scared of last time was in a nice small form that wanted to befriend her. Somehow the scout doubted that was the case.
Nohre’s hand had found Zyris’s arm in a grip that was probably painful, though the older woman didn’t seem to notice. Staring upward with an expression and spiritual state that the heiress recognized - someone seeing an ocean for the first time after spending their life splashing in a small pond. The sheer volume of Void essence, materialized into the unreal ichor, represented more of the anti-substance in one location than had been present across the entire continent’s last invasion cycle.
Truly, if one stacked all of the Lessers, Intermediates, and even Leaders all inside of it... it would not be too far off to say it could amount to the volume of the entire world’s last four or five sets of 18 years. Considering the billions of such eldritch constructs that could be stacked inside even its stellated shape, which was significantly less volume than a true cube.
’Exploding into fifty billion Lessers would be an amusing trick, if it was such simpler to calculate geometry. Thank the Void for preferring the ridiculous and only being a tenth of that. Though did it really have to send one of the full size ones here?’
Being a schemer, Elua had accounted for that possibility but was annoyed anyway. Like when you prepare the funds to cover the full replacement cost of a carriage while hoping only a wheel and maybe axle needed replaced. Setting her chisel into Adhesion with care and brushing stone fragments from her Silver dress as if she had all the time in the world to face this threat...
"Hm. I was wondering if you’d noticed us the first time. I guess you did. Welcome to my beloved husband-wife’s private sanctuary, Arbiter."
Her voice was pitched at a conversational volume - yet dozens of the burning eyes locked onto her calm movements as she stepped forward and curtsied. Positioning herself as the seat of attention between the cosmic census-taker and her guests. Of course, she wasn’t talking to the intelligence behind those eyes exactly - the Hivemind aspect made that a bit complicated - but the other creature that remained attached to the much larger one.
’Like a remora or a wispy barnacle.’
The first time she’d seen a Greater of any kind, she’d still been a Breacher like now. Uvraneht - or as the continent now knew her, the Acid Tongued Villainess - had been centuries into her first life and plenty arrogant enough to think her cultivation speed meant something. A Greater Colonizer a third this size had descended on a city she’d been passing through at the start of the invasion period, drawn by the concentration of Defiers basing in a nearby Guild academy.
She hadn’t been the target, just another statistic that caused it release another squadron of Intermediates. However, her portion of the defense hadn’t ultimately mattered all too much - and the city ceased to exist in the space of an intense afternoon of fighting. Those stronger than her, with better artifacts on their person, had rallied and killed the enemy spawning more and more.
But not before hundreds of thousand died.
It wasn’t the first time she was shown what it meant to be irrelevant. In fact, she knew quite well that using her illusions to *seek* that state of consideration in others was the best way to stay out of trouble. But since that awful day she had risen to the Upper Realm after passing her Trials. To the Peak of Demi-God and even died once. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢
Of course, she had also killed or driven back Arbiter, Colonizer, and Nemesis type Greaters in amounts that would more than fill up every inch of the atmosphere this one was descending through. The fact that she was only a Breacher again theoretically should make her feel as impotent as anyone else there - as if she wore those manacles she designed - and fundamentally she still *was* beneath these creature’s notice in the traditional hierarchy of cultivator power.
’Five thousand years of learning how to make oneself easy to ignore coincidentally teaches you every way to make yourself *very difficult* to ignore.’
The essence in the air thrummed, with something that wasn’t quite sound but was more like the space between vibrations. A dissonant pressure against her spirit that still carried meaning, translated through the Arbiter’s role as a herald for something far greater.
/ Population density exceeded. Dimensional stability assessed positive. Descent necessity deemed provisional. /
She made no attempt to trap the words like she once had for the Voidling scout that was spying on Qatrand. While she could have done so if she’d used her time on building the sigilscript up to do that, it would have meant being trapped with two Defier that knew they were trapped. Not a very smart scheme at all!
"Usually your little administrative clerks are more decisive. Are we on the schedule for next cycle or not?"
Something fell from the ’moon’, which was now close enough to cast a bit of shade over the land below. Tumbling and twisting down like a cat falling from a high railing it had just been sleeping on, with its wispy amorphous shape looking like the miasma released when ichor dispersed. An Arbiter’s body was in a state of constant flux, though they looked quite a bit like a miniaturized form of the scout.
Which is to say... a bit of a jellyfish. A ghostly one that splatted right on the ground a few hundred feet away and caused all of the onlookers to sink to their knees from the spiritual pressure it emitted. Including Elua er Goltbred... because it would not be so strange to make that motion in the circumstance, even should it mean that her chisel would drive right into the ground next to her, destroying a certain containment sigil.
A fluke of happenings and absolutely not something *intentional*, or so enemies were meant to think. The kind of trick that succeeded in creating chain of events that doomed any number of confident cultivators that thought they had her trapped over the years. Though in this case, it merely lead to a conversation.
\\ Haa... you. Again. Already. \\
"Me again. Not as funny this time, I know. But your presence is still appreciated in what is possibly my dear Qat’s future home away from home.."
She spread her hands in a gesture that was almost welcoming before rising to her feet. There was more to do while the Void Divinity decided he didn’t want to talk and not much time to do that in. Behind her, she could feel Sevra’s spirit stuttering with familiar contained panic, Nohre trying desperately to make sense of what was happening, and Zyris... crying silently. Not like someone who was waiting for death so much as an arsonist witnessing the glory of a thermobaric bomb.
\\ An unfamiliar place. One of The First’s projects. And Silver specifically bothered me about your existence not so long ago. Twice. Word from the Lower Realms should not be traveling this far upward. \\
"It makes me quite uncomfortable too, believe me. But your Mandate is what it is. You only have yourself to blame for placing your connection ritual within your own constructs."
\\ I would blame myself if I had ever been contacted more than twice by anyone other than you through a method anything close to this. \\
The weary voice spoke while the vapor-form ichor floated back up. It’s main body looked something like a pair of human hands... with its fingers and thumbs touched together, flexing in and out. Undulating in a disconcerting way for something that made the brain see nothing through the impossible black - and everything through it all at once in a way that hurt the brain even more than other Voidlings.
\\ The Divinities speak. Occasionally. When anomalies warrant discussion. Too many at my level have eyes on your trajectory for their own reasons. I do not wish to be one of them. \\
"If you had any reason to trust me, I would assure you that I greatly prefer that none of you pay any attention to me at all. Though you are free to praise and expect great things of Qatrand gil Yecine - so long as none of you cheat her maliciously."
With a mix of chiseling and refining the shaping of sigils with various Gas techniques to perfect the surface so that what was coming would never harm her people... she continued to backtalk the being so many magnitudes over her cultivation that he literally could only exist in their side of the universe, without collapsing it, through links with constructed avatars.
\\ The Descent cycles are automated. Clean. Impersonal. I have survived being ancient by not involving myself in the spikes in the patterns. For aid, ill, or ilk. \\
"And again. I never asked you to pay extra attention to me, I work only within the very parameters you’ve set. Same as everyone else."
\\ Working within them? ...This is a fancy way to say that you’ve done your best to find every loophole possible. You stress my framework like few have. \\
Elua felt a sharp smile pulling her lips into a state nothing near her old facade’s pleasant and saccharine expression. More of the person she was now after years of adolescence had come and gone again, with what was left of Uvraneht underneath after the millennia of seeking distractions. A woman who had become quite good at making fair bargains thanks to experiencing unfair ones from both sides of a party..
\~"Well. Speaking of loopholes and debts."~\
Daring to link her mind while speaking in the Old Tongue, she sent along the memory of what happened at the essence convergence point early in the continent’s Descent. The clear violation of a Voidling appearing directly at one to stabilize a spatial rift. Where she showed a Fox and a dagger-wielding Vixen just what happens if you got on her bad side. She’d wondered for a while now if this incident was a change in rules, but everything else she saw and that the Divinity said just now made it clearer.
\\ Another seems to be working ’within’ the rules. Are you expecting I owe you their name and location? \\
"Hm? No, I don’t particularly care about that at this time. But you promised me ~/ long ago /~ that you would *consider* my request because of what I once did. Yes. I believe it is time to call in that favor and have you kindly think about this."
A finger pointed up into the sky, with twenty... millions of eyes on her. From the Colonizer’s hundreds of burning white spots, from the three cultivators who were stuck kneeling while she roamed about, and from the eldritch viewport that existed on every single aerosolized ichor droplet that made up the archon of a Greater’s Hivemind.
"I don’t suppose I could have permission to harvest it?"
