“You’ll pay for this!”
It had been trivially easy to lure one Seyyit Tilki into a trap. Once there, Ratna had torn apart the majority of his collection of blood aloe, setting his progression back years at a minimum. She did, however, spare most of the Tilki n members along with him.
“You’re in a terrible position to be making threats,” Ratnamented. “You’re only alive because I need you to deliver a message.”
“I’m not a messenger!”
Ratna pped him across the face. If she’d had any inclination at all, she could have taken off his head with trivial effort. “You are now, since you’re good for nothing else. Here is the message. I will provide you with physical copies for when you are too slow to remember what I said. The Guardians of the Veiled Brilliance are not some minor sect your Tilki n can act against as they please. I, Ratna, a Domination cultivator, will destroy any who approach. Furthermore, the backing of the Scarlet Alliance and their many Domination cultivators will bring swift retribution for further slights.”
This current ‘young master’ in front of her was honestly far too old for the title. He really should have been sidelined several decades before, but he was likely the child of someone important. Or a favored nephew. It was astounding how the Tilki n retained any sort of influence with people like him bringing them down, but perhaps that simply meant they produced enough above average individuals to make up for it.
“I won’t deliver your message!”
“Very well,” Ratna said. With a swish of her fingers, she cut out his tongue. Then she fed it to the remaining blood aloe she had not destroyed. Providing his own blood to the carnivorous nts might be a powerful training method… if it was on purpose. But he wasn’t in any ce to direct the thing’s urges. Now, it would have his taste. Trying to regrow his small army of nts would be much more difficult when they wanted to feed on him as well.
Thus were the risks of imbuing part of yourself into an external source- though in his current state of helplessness Seyyit wouldn’t have been able to resist her digging around inside his dantian, either. No doubt the young man had ambitions of imbuing the nts as his anchor… but he wasn’t even in the Augmentation stage yet. Domination was not in this man’s future. “You all,” Ratna gestured to the others. “You’ll deliver the message, along with him. Take this tongue. Maybe put it on ice.”
They looked properly horrified, as they should. Ratna recorded the state of Seyyit, for future disy. Putting heads on pikes was so outdated. Instead, she was going to disy giant projections of every young master and mistress that dared to step into her territory.
Ratna left Seyitt behind without even another nce. Her subordinates would take care of the rest, setting them up with a ship functional enough to return them to Tilki n territory. Ratna had other things to do, such as nning idents.
She didn’t want all out war with the Tilki n, but if they were going to have it she wanted to win. And that meant killing their younger generation, preferably without them realizing. Hopefully they’d decide it wasn’t worth it before things began. A couple people dying on the way to her territory but not killed by her, and maybe they’d believe things were cursed.
Ratna put the odds at about a third. Two-thirds chance they’d me it on her and start a war anyway, since that seemed to be their intentions to begin with. So along with sudden explosions in subspace, she also had to n their defenses. Taking a look at the historical directness of the Tilki n, she might be able to concentrate her forces in key areas while still leaving <em>some</em> protection elsewhere.
That was only possible because she was increasing the proportion of cultivators under her control while still maintaining quality. Just like the Scarlet Alliance. Or the <em>rest</em> of the Scarlet Alliance. She’d seen how effective they were and begun the transformation some centuries ago, but it was only after she’d officially joined that she was given aprehensive guide. And it really wasplete, covering every aspect of life.
Ratna had thought it was a special honor for important guests to receive soap imbued with energy, with every linen in her quarters imbued with the energy of an expert… but that was just how things were done. At best, she’d received the higher end as an emissary, but the basic principles stood. Everyone did every task they did with the utmost care, cultivating their crafts andbor just as traditional cultivators trained for war. And the Alliance fully supported developing new techniques.
So the overall quality of Ratna’s disciples was rising, allowing her to defend a wider area. But she would really prefer to have some spatial distortions. ns were underway, but unless the Tilki n decided to take a nap until after the shift in the Tides in theing centuries, she’d have to deal with things as they were.
-----
Ratna was quite d she had prepared for the retaliation before even killing any <em>important</em> Tilki n members. She thought they might retaliate for harming Seyyit even though they could <em>easily</em> grow back a tongue that hadn’t even been severed through any supernatural means. Or reattach the other one.
Scouts warned of an iing fleet, and Ratna stood to block its approach to her territory. “This seems a bit much for a diplomatic missions. I must take it that you don’t intend to withdraw to your own territory?”
“How could we?” said the man at the front. An elder of the Tilki n. Nuri, based on her intel. She was quite d for disy screens, because she couldn’t be bothered to memorize so many thousands of names of ‘important’ n members. All the <em>actually</em> important ones, of course, but not him. “With one of our young masters dead by your own hand!”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Ratna frowned. “I sent back Seyyit to you in good health. Trust me, it was harder <em>not</em> to kill your brats, but I put in the effort.”
“Not Seyyit. Serkan, killed onto approach to your territories from among the Wandering Stone to the north. His ship, drained of energy. All the cultivators dead of exposure, trapped between systems. You may have thought your plot would never be discovered, but we are not so easily fooled!”
Assuming it was true- which Nuri at least believed- it sounded to Ratna like they had some sort of breakdown of their power stores aboard the ship, and none had the skill to move the ship. But if she wanted people to actually disappear, she would have chucked them into a star. Or at least a gas giant.
“I swear that neither myself, my people, nor anyone in my alliance touched this Serkan or his ship. If there was some viin, perhaps it was those whose territory he was passing through?”
A sparkle of intelligence shed behind Nuri’s eyes. “They shall see retribution as well, for allowing your assassins into their territory!”
“I see. You and what army?”
“Why, the armies behind me, of course!”
Ratna released her aura. “Such disrespect. I don’t know how any of you think you cane here after my deration and live. I. Am. Domination.”
“Y-you wouldn’t dare! Our own Domination cultivators will overwhelm you!”
“What makes you think you’ll be alive to see it?”
In the moment that he processed her words, Ratna had slipped behind light itself… and ultimately behind <em>him</em>. His head came off easily enough. There was little point in slicing just partly through. She was surprised to find some inorganic additions. Cybeics. Had the Tilki n developed their own technology along that track, or was this from the Scarlet Alliance… or others?
Nuri was just important enough to be added to the projections. His arrival was a sign that the Tilki n wasn’t letting up no matter what. So there was no reason to hold back. What were they going to do, kill her twice? If they could do that, she was ready to fight back in the brief moment of life, however it existed. And she would have allies. The question was… who else might they convince to fight alongside them? Because if it was just a question of Domination cultivators, the Scarlet Alliance could send her one or two and the Tilki n would be in a bad state.
She needed to get them to go to war with the Wandering Stone first. Ratna wondered how many other Trigold Sects she could turn the Tilki n against. It would be a difficult bncing act, because if she killed people in their name she <em>might</em> draw them into the war against her. The Tilki n might demand their services in exchange for ‘forgiveness’. But they might also just try to wipe them out.
Most people didn’t have a Domination cultivator or nearly as many Augmentation cultivators, so they wouldn’tst. Well, the Tilki n was down one of thetter today. She wondered if he was <em>supposed</em> to be a sacrifice to get the war started, but they hadn’t really given her much choice. Letting him live would just mean he could cause trouble elsewhere at ater date. They hadn’t listened to her ultimatum or chosen to negotiate, so death was all they would get.
-----
Before the war escted in Veiled Brilliance territory, the Scarlet Alliance had been working in a particr project for some time. It had be ever more relevant upon discovering more Domination cultivators from the Swirling Swarm. Essentially, they were looking into ways to defeat the sect aside from simply wiping them out with overwhelming force.
That was impractical. There were simply too many people, and their territory was too far to enter openly without risking getting surrounded by them <em>and</em> other Trigold cultivators.
They had ideas for wide area weapons. Low power ship bound weapons that would essentially weaponize aura. That would help against the masses to some extent. But they still had to be taken seriously as well as the Domination cultivators.
“It’s simple,” Aconite said. “All I have to do is infect a few of them with this, and then… bam, they’re dead.”
“There are… more than a few problems with that,” Uzunmented.
“I’m pretty sure it will work,” Aconite said. “You see, it’s attuned to their particr style of energy.”
“First,” Uzunmented. “Let’s say it does work. How many people die?”
“Well… probably everyone. Which is…”
“Trillions,” Uzun dered. “If not quadrillions. Even if we are convinced they have no civilian poption at all… it would create a field of resentment and misery that far outdoes the Bloodsoaked Neb. Are you prepared to face that?”
“... it could drive me to Domination,” Aconitemented. “But I concede the point. It has some risks.”
“Furthermore,” Uzun continued. “Who is to say this virus will not mutate? You are the foremost expert in poisons, but this is somewhat outside your field of expertise.”
“Many of the poison I use live as well,” Aconitemented. “But… how would it mutate? That’s so unlikely.”
“I don''t know. Perhaps by devouring the energy of cultivators? It would only take <em>one</em> incident.”
“Right,” Aconite said. “Then I’m out of ideas. And you’ve made <em>another</em> idea I have much harder.”
Catarina cleared her throat. “We do appreciate your contribution. And as long as we speak only in theory, there are few things too extreme to consider against a threat such as them. We did already wipe out a poption center… and they barely flinched. However, I believe Uzun has some methods that may prove helpful.”
He nodded. “Along with the wide area assaults, our chief concern is the Domination cultivators themselves. They rely on anonymity among the swarm. Their actual strength, while still significant, is generally on the weaker end of Domination. So we need some way to find and mark them. The n is to use devotional resonance to reveal them. We have tested some scanners that are promising, and once we have locked onto any of them we should be able to effectively force their aura to concentrate around them, and not distribute it among their allies.”
“Then I can kill them,” Chidi said.
Uzun nodded. “And then Chidi can kill them. Or a battle fleet. Or our other Domination cultivators. That is the ‘easy’ part.”
The work would continue even during the war with the Tilki n, but it would be somewhat more distracted. However, the Scarlet Alliance didn’t intend to suffer against any threat repeatedly. They would learn and ovee. And even if they’d been victorious against the Swirling Swarm, it didn’t always <em>feel</em> like it.