“He did something to the dying suns that illuminated the place, and changed their radiance to death rays that basically slaughtered everything they shone upon. Then millions of his undead servants flooded into the city and began to Animate everything into his service, especially the slave pens.

“Those who were wise fled the city as fast as they could, but many of them fell into ambushes on the far sides. It seems he has been very precise in discerning many of the Portals used from within the city. Thus I picked one to vacate my household through that was of next to no strategic value, located on this world which had fallen under your jurisdiction.”

“You shielded it nicely. We did find the other three on the planet,” I complimented her, and she smiled smugly. “Well, congratulations. A rather large number of the drow are now dead and enslaved to the Tellurian Emperor. Rather the opposite of the typical situation between our peoples.” He had converted the light of dying suns to Blacklight. Wow, how long had it taken Him to get that surprise in place through all the drow sensors?

“This is true,” she acknowledged. “I was curious to see if you have any plans for dealing with that. The Emperor having access to the Portals of Gloom could be a rather disastrous situation for your conquering man-ape and his Fleet.”

Alerts from several Marked Hyn Shadowknives indicated that they had felt something ominous happening in Gloomheart... but something ominous was always happening there, so they hadn’t investigated urgently. The place changing hands from a miserable lot of Warp-feeding depraved hedonists to undead wasn’t actually all that important to the place.

They were, however, heading to get a better read on things, purely as a courtesy to us... and they were getting their kin out of Gloom and to Spidey Base One, since they were pretty sure the undead were going to go a-conquering and killing everything sapient they ran across.

“Would you like a rundown of the strategic situation in the galaxy right now?” I asked politely.

She rolled her eyes. “Ah, games of war. The endless obsession of males. If you must.” Which didn’t hide the fact she was dying of curiosity.

I gave her a simple Holopoint display of the major moves by the Emperor, who was killing who what where, and she listened with a bored expression that didn’t quite hide the intense focus in her crimson eyes.

When I got done, she was silent and thoughtful. The bladewitches all eavesdropping for everything they were worth had some very interesting body language, as if they’d suddenly run up against someone who could move on extremely high levels, and they were watching me VERY carefully.

I gathered Madame Lolith told them to be excessively polite, or I might eat them.

“The Emperor’s campaign to expand human holdings after the Apotheosis was bold, aggressive, and broad, but it does not compare to what he was prepared to do here,” she murmured, sipping at her wine. “He was truly prepared to wipe out most of your species to secure the victory, was he not?”

“Estimations are 95%+, yes. He would have kept some minor worlds around to keep the genome alive, probably taking all their dead as tithes, but yes... the Empire of Tellus would have become an Empire of the Dead, as ageless and powerful as the Tekrons, but with the strongest psion in the galaxy at the head of it, commanding quadrillions of undead.

“I imagine that if he had to extinguish every other sapient race in the galaxy to weaken the Warp enough to win, that’s exactly what he would have done.”

Just like the Anti-Life. I would have wondered if they were talking, except the Xenosyms were still trying to eat human worlds here and there... although since the undead started running around the new incursions coming up from the depleted swarmfleets had tailed off very sharply.

The Emperor also had Blacklight, and could chew them a new one. Pains of being biological organisms without immunity to negative energy yet and all.

“You cannot allow the Emperor to retain control of Gloomheart,” she reasoned calmly. “There are too many worlds that would be put at risk if he can march his armies wherever he wants to.”

“It is Gloom which is the danger, not Gloomheart. Gloomheart’s Portals aren’t a threat to the vast majority of the worlds out there, simply because it’s so small, and the dangerous ones have been broken up a long time ago. It is if he presses out into the Arteries and Capillary tunnels and stumbles upon forgotten Portals that lead to all sorts of interesting places that we have a problem.

“However, that means moving out into the remaining holdings of the drow in Gloom. Are the drow prepared to abandon Shadow entirely? Especially when the Emperor starts taking control over the shades in the umbral wilds?”

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She turned her lips at my logic. “No. It will be a grand fight, but they are ill-equipped to fight with our undead counterparts.”

“And Radiant, Holy, and Vivic energies, the most effective against the undead, are not something you can manufacture, or even use without great pain.” She inclined her head reluctantly at the admission. “Well, then, I suggest you blow the dying suns and eradicate Gloomheart entirely. The outlying Hearts will survive, and probably be spun off into spheres of their own.”

She looked at me, and I looked back at her. I just shrugged. “It’s how we are going to deal with the problem, if we must. Are you going to do it, or are we?”

She quirked a half-smile. “Eradicating the heart of our culture, our defense against the Warp. Nothing is alive there that can be retrieved...”

“And you probably want to kill all the undead drow before they can be properly formed into armies and start scouring the rest of Gloom, getting ever bigger as they do.”

“You do not seem unduly concerned by his securing of such forces.”

“The undead have their strengths, and their weaknesses. Unlike you, we are very good at hitting their weaknesses. If he brings the undead out onto a world, they will rapidly cease to exist.”

That really interested her. “By what means?”

“You witnessed the Blacklight that killed everything living?” She nodded quickly. “There is a Whitelight equivalent that kills everything undead, naturally enough.”

“Could such a thing be detonated in Gloomheart?” she asked quickly. It would save a lot of property damage.

“Gloom would sense the incoming energies and eject the bomb before it could detonate. It’s not big on Radiant energy, you see.” The three dying suns were only tolerated because they were so suppressed by ancient Elvar technology. If those restraints were let go, there’d be a second of lots of light and fire, and then the dimension would kick them out as not belonging.

Enough time to reduce Gloomheart to ash, but not threaten the rest of the place. Multi-layered and very powerful ancient defenses there, and it was a living pocket dimension, had plenty of ability to eject things that didn’t belong there.

I didn’t tell her that Gloom was probably looking forwards to this... because it was much, much easier to grow up a lot of small worlds than the colossal superworld that formed most of it. It would literally be taking the opportunity to ‘spawn’, maybe even expend the entire energy of those suns to grow the pocket dimension it was made of, or stabilize its existence against the Warp.

There was a reason why the Void Brothers weren’t all that concerned about the invasion. If the Plane itself didn’t care, they weren’t too worried. All they had to do was hide from the undead, and the place was the size of Jupiter, with more tunnels and holes than Swiss cheese. Hundreds of billions of undead would not be enough to secure all the territory there.

I was looking forward to seeing what would happen when those chained suns went off. The simple impetus to Grow was as primal to Planes as to biological organisms.

It was unfortunate that shadowfire was so hard to produce, or this process would have been a lot easier. Unfortunate consequences of being a minor plane; its Essential Fires weren’t firm enough, unlike vivus.

“I have also heard an interesting rumor.” I cocked an eyebrow, knowing what was coming. “There are Elvar that are saying that you have a way to reverse the Greying.”

I nodded calmly. “And it works, too.”

All the drow carefully not listening in over there tensed, and even she looked wildly interested. “How does this work?” she inquired in a carefully neutral tone.

“You have to embrace the Light of non-Elvar souls, using it to purge the dark elements of your own souls, and leave your own Light intact.” I shrugged. “It is not something that works on true Drow, of course. You’ve already lost your Light, and you’re trying to leech a replacement out of other beings. Your only choice is to transcend the need. Break Twenty, become Eternal, and you won’t need to worry about pissant Warp Gods wanting to feast on your tender souls.”

The bladewitches over there all looked away so I couldn’t see their snarls. Nope, kidnapping a lot of Good people and trying to siphon away the Light in their souls wouldn’t do anything for them. Embracing the Light didn’t allow you to create more Dark while you were trying to do so.

“So simple!” she had to half-smile.

“If you don’t try, you’ll never get there,” I replied firmly, and hooked a thumb at myself. “Twenty.”

She twitched despite herself. I had heard/seen that she had taken to battling Summoned demons in the Heart of Blood, and a couple Shadowfire Weapons had mysteriously found their way to her. She had reached Nineteen after she soloed a Vile Dancer, somehow resisting its Rapturing effect and avoiding all those arms and blades while cutting it down.

She probably hadn’t thought she could do it. Breaking her limits after a few thousand years was indeed a thing.

“And how would you recommend I do so?”

“Well, you’re going to need to kill at least one Greater Demon of each of the Warp Gods to make Twenty. Once you’re at Twenty, you’re going to have to walk into that fight knowing you can butcher them, and be looking for something greater. I’d get to work on that.

“My suggestion for you reaching Eternal? Find a way to duel and kill one of the Six Demon Princes.”

That widened her eyes. Pure chutzpah, that. All six of the surviving sons of the Emperor were out and ravaging worlds... or rather, had been ravaging worlds, and now were fighting the undead troops of their father, as the living ones had largely decided to leave, or been subsumed into undeath.

They’d thought they were ruthless, and they were certainly more sadistic. But when the Emperor acted, he’d extracted quite the pound of flesh... and was proving to be even more merciless to his own people to do what had to be done.

He was sending their own dead out to kill them. The irony didn’t escape them, as those undead were everything they were, and more, except they couldn’t really grow much.

And they were slaves. Everything they were doing, even if it was just a veneer, was to avoid becoming slaves... ignoring the reality that they already were, because their struggle not to be ones basically made them obedient to whatever the Warped wanted them to do.

Irony they willfully ignored, of course.

Finding a way to kill one of His kids would definitely be epic enough to make Eternal.

Going after the Emperor? That was suicide...