With official negotiations done for the day, Lynette invited Daris and Kinslee out to the gardens. Of course, she was aware that anything that happened on Ozemdu would still appear official in some regard. Their distant embassy was the only point of contact for the two groups, and everything that happened would shape their view of each other.
There were some small cherries in season, and Lynette picked some then made her way over to some of the benches with the others. The benches were rather crude, carved from single boulders found elsewhere on the planet, but they were comfortable enough, and provided a place to observe the gardens.
She offered some of her gathered cherries to Kinslee first, and then to Daris. She was please to see the envoy took a few, as it was a sign of some level of trust. He even began munching on the snack before Lynette did, not counting the ones she’d snagged during the process of picking. She had to check for ripeness, after all.
“You were speaking earlier of the fortunate circumstances that led to your breaking away from the Trigold Cluster’s infiltration,” Lynette commented. “Do you have time to elaborate?” She tried to leave the option open for him to pick another topic, if he wished, but it was a subject of interest to her personally, and to the Lower Realms Alliance as a whole.
The man took a few moments as he rolled a cherry around in his mouth, peeling the fruit from the seed. He followed Lynette’s lead, tossing the seed onto an empty patch of ground. “I was not there for everything myself,” he began. “But my master was.”
That was a good start. Lynette and Kinslee knew that interrupting and prompting him for more might be less effective than simply waiting for him to talk at his own pace, so they exercised patience.
“He was alive before the end of the previous cycle,” Daris continued. “His name is Ravil. At the time, he was but a novice disciple of the Righteous Inscription Sect, on the planet Netrao. Over the course of that cycle, they had become aware of the nature of the previous catastrophe. However, they were too late to meaningfully react, except to store what knowledge they could in a sealed vault. The power of formations and a remote location kept it hidden from the spies of the Trigold Cluster and their invading forces.”
That wasn’t too far from the story on Ceretos, though it differed in that Everheart had discovered the truth much earlier in the cycle, and merely delayed revealing information about it until near the end- the past handful of decades or so. Though even that was enough to give people time to prepare, especially with how the tomb devastated the Trigold Cluster forces that went to the moon.
“Once it was discovered that the next cycle would be unnaturally short, even with the information and techniques they had managed to save, it was a frantic effort to eradicate any spies and prepare for the incoming invasion. Fortunately, a technique to divine the true cultivation of Twin Soul Sect members was partially developed by the end of the previous cycle, and perfected early on. The actual results were quite devastating as many old masters who survived the purge were found to be beholden to the Trigold Cluster in one manner or another. And others died fighting them.”
Lynette nodded, indicating her attention. “That is much like we would expect.”
“I was among the generation that was primed to reach Life Transformation around the end of the rapid cycle, though I can’t say that my personal contributions were anything great. However, Kybele was a hero in that war. She somehow obtained a flying ship, transporting powerful squads of soldiers all around the world to where they were needed. When we realized that the Trigold Cluster was likely polluting other nearby worlds, she was one of the first to be given captaincy of a stellar ship.” He shrugged, “The first generation was rough. The second and third generations came quickly enough afterwards that they could have almost caught up to the first as they reached the neighboring systems.”
“Yes, early interstellar travel can feasibly take years or decades to go a few lightyears,” Kinslee nodded. “Or even longer. Though if that were the case for your people, I doubt you would be here now.”
“Indeed. If it took a century to reach neighboring systems, we would have barely met our closest neighbors. As it is, we were able to more rapidly mobilize our forces, allowing us to deal with problems one by one. Only a few, lowly populated worlds were entirely free of the taint of the Trigold Cluster. The rest required all of our armies, plus recruits from each consecutive world, to barely eradicate. We have not encountered more planets in need of rescue in the past few decades, however. And the direct route here was unpopulated.”
Lynette nodded. Ten to thirty systems might seem like a long way to go to find populated planets, but ones suitable for humans with lower cultivations- which was necessary to grow from the ground up- were much rarer than that. It was just that there were many times more if one diverged from a straight line, as stars filled three dimensions around a point, easily reaching between five and ten times as many systems along a route depending on what one counted as adjacent.
It seemed Daris had said as much as he was going to for the moment, so Lynette began with some information she could easily share. “Our start was from a few neighboring systems all at the same time. One system learned of the repeated invasions for enough time to prepare. Another had those of great strength that the spies couldn’t match, forcing the spies into hiding and repelling the invaders. And one was never a target to begin with, the levels of natural energy around their planet deemed insufficient for any resources.”
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Those planets were Ceretos, Weos, and Rutera respectively. Speaking of Ruteran technology might be giving away too much just yet, so she avoided that topic.
“Not terribly long after the end of the latest full cycle, they managed to meet each other. From there, they formed the core of the Lower Realms Alliance as we know it today. When the end of the unnatural cycle came around, they united to deal a resounding blow to the greater number of invaders. From there, they found isolated systems that were untainted, some who had thrown off the shackles already, and more still dealing with such issues.”
She skipped past the conflict with the Sylanis Cluster- that would come up at some point and Ekict, neither of which conflicts involved the direct participation of upper realms invaders.
“You said there were greater numbers of invaders at the end of the short cycle?” Daris asked.
“That is correct. Most likely they were offended by their previous defeat and wanted to make an example of us. But fortunately, we had the strength to do more than just drive them off the second time.”
“Hmm,” Daris nodded. “It is good to hear you caused them significant consternation. And good that you are able to stand on your own, as with the distances between us we likely couldn’t stand with you. Oh!” He said as if suddenly remembering something. “Kybele asked about the man she met. The head of the Order of One Hundred Stars, Anton Krantz. She had hoped to meet him again. And I must admit being interested as well. She said he felt… impossibly strong. Though I supposed that is the case with more than a few of your guards here.” He looked around more for looks than practicality, as the Assimilation cultivators were keeping respectful distances. Except for Nthanda.
They had never really intended to hide Assimilation and other such post-Life Transformation options from them forever, so it wasn’t a problem to let them observe Anton more closely. “He was actually here,” Lynette commented. “He’s responsible for these gardens. At least, the initial growth phases. We have other skillful hands maintaining them, now.”
“Ah yes, the earliest scouts said they detected his presence,” Daris commented. Had he left that out on purpose, just to see if she would admit something? Lynette didn’t mind a bit of maneuvering like that.
“If you wish to meet him, I believe it can be arranged. He expressed some interest in nearby stars, and should be nearby. I can attempt to contact him.” Attempt was a bit of a flat word there. She could contact him unless he completely ignored her or fell into a black hole or something. And even then, she could only say that his communications devices would be destroyed in the process. His own life… that was something that would hopefully never be tested.
“Is that so? How long will it take?”
Eagerness, or information gathering? It could be both. “Perhaps several weeks,” Lynette hedged.
“Hopefully he will agree to meet Kybele and her crew again,” Daris said. “She kept saying that if not for this embassy, she would doubt her meeting with him entirely.”
“Sometimes it’s like that with him,” Lynette grinned.
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Crossed Antennae supposed her planet ought to have a name, even if there would be no one to share it with for quite some time. She considered such names like New Akrys- which would be far too confusing considering the neighbors, even if one was across an extremely difficult border. Colony #1 was perhaps a bit too soulless, though the Great Queen might have preferred such a naming custom.
She’d had more than a small amount of time to think about it, and decided she had to settle for something. Perhaps she would change the name before telling anyone. But in her heart, once it had a name, it was too late.
Bounty was the name she chose. The entire planet was filled with plentiful, dense energy. This ascension energy was truly something special. But the name was also filled with her hopes. As planets with life went, it was a bit lacking. There were various issues, such as the original inhabitants thinking that tossing a few grasses and trees on a planet counted as life seeding, but at least for plants she had a solution.
As for other necessary parts of the cycle of a world, Crossed Antennae had only brought bacteria- and those were more unintentional if rather necessary passengers. The first years had been rough, as trees failed to fruit and flowers died without reproducing. She almost lost whole strains. But then she remembered her lessons.
What they were missing was other insects, like bees for example. Crossed Antennae couldn’t just make those, but what she could make were winged ants. Princesses… by some definitions. Normally, they would have had the make of future queens, but void ants had more control over such things than unintelligent insects. For the moment, she didn’t need any others breeding. But she did need flight, so the ants would have wings.
She wondered for a bit why she did not give all void ants wings, but the answer was rather simple. They were inconvenient in tunnels, and required more food to upkeep among other considerations. And despite the powerful energy, the void ants did need food. Most new void ants couldn’t directly eat energy out of the air, they had to digest it from within a food source. Bounty- or at least the small region she had taken control of so far- was still developing its new balance of nature. It would eventually spread throughout the planet, with many seeds the relatively small ship still had in reserve in its storage bays intended for particular environments.
On that note, she was quite glad that the majority of the storage spaces had survived the transition between lower and upper energy. They had a selection of food sources available in normal-space storage, but they would have lost much of the needed variety.
Plus more of them failing might have otherwise damaged the ship. It seemed to be in good condition, with ants checking it over daily for defects because they would need it in working condition to move onto other planets. Unless the people from the upper realms came to get them, but it was somewhat risky for them to be seen out at the border planets so they might take their time coming.
Until then, Crossed Antennae would be a little bit lonely. But being down on a planet surrounded by nature she had helped form, dozens of ants squeezing past her at any moment, she didn’t feel quite so alone as when all of her people were within a few meters but asleep.