The total amount of experience Taj had to determine someone was ‘innocent’ was extremely limited. Taj themself had been stealing food but was still counted among them. The theft had been to survive, yes, but Madiha had made it clear that theft was still wrong. So few opportunities hade up to learn much, so Taj had to go with their gut. The main judgment was doing nothing wrong, or doing something for others without expecting something in return.
There weren’t any hard and fast rules- especially not that could be applied within the domain of the Swirling Swarm. Taj truly wondered what it was like away from Xiopia… but that wasn’t a thought for the moment.
Rather than safely head to ce thest of the devices they were carrying, Taj was rushing to the location of an incident, slipping through the crowds. It was fortunate that the stronger cultivator- in Essence Collection- was one of the cruel sorts that liked to draw out engagements. Otherwise it would have been over before Taj could even sense Horst’s aura.
Horst was a man barely older than Taj. Less well trained. Unremarkable except perhaps for theck of constant violence in his life. Horst had also once given a stray cat spare food. Not a rabid dog that could have caused some sort of threat to the man, but a helpless animal that hadn’t even been able to move at the time.
That waspassion, Taj thought. Horst didn’t deserve to die. Taj would prevent it, if possible.
“Left arm.” At least, those were the words Taj intended to convey to their resident void ants. Speaking as they slipped through crowds might be a bit too weird, so Taj tried to point the way with energy. Presumably the void ants would notice.
When Taj threw a dagger at the aggressor’s neck, the crowds parted. They didn’t want to be subject to some sort of counterattack. If they had stayed, Taj would have used them as cover- if they weren’t innocents, it was only good for them to die.
The throwing dagger cut through the air, carrying a sharp aura. Making it blend into the Swirling Swarm’s aura was usually a drawback, as it just took more effort, but in this case it had kept it secret for half a moment longer. Not sufficient for Taj’ste Spirit Building cultivation to be sufficient to cause real damage to the woman on the attack, but at least enough to draw attention away from Horst.
A wicked axe flew through the air in retaliation. The strand of energy connecting it to the woman was so thin, Taj <em>almost</em> raised their left arm to sever it. Instead, they used all their effort to dodge out of the way, cognizant that the axe would be spinning around toe in from the back in a moment.
A barrage of attacks from Taj attempted to make the woman off guard as Taj closed the distance. It wasn’t clear if it worked. Taj shed a dagger at the woman’s thigh, raising one hand to catch her wrist as another axe chopped down at her head.
Taj really hoped the void ants hadn’t been on their palm, or at least that they’d been ready for that. Taj refused to give up their grip even though the flying axe was still iing. Even so, they twisted around behind their target as much as possible, drawing out the moment.
The woman snapped Taj’s arm. The axe in her hand chopped down while the one she had already thrown circled around her. Taj dropped almost to the ground, swinging a dagger at the woman’s ankles. A foot kicked out, but it didn’t have enough of the woman’s power to kill Taj. Just send them tumbling across the street- into the new path of the flying axe.
Taj watched as it cut through the air. A slight turn of the head, and it passed by. Obviously that wouldn’t be sufficient to stop an Essence Collection cultivator’s attack- but it wasn’t. It was just an axe. It could only hit where its des touched. Even if it had hit Taj straight in the face, its little momentum would have rebounded off of defensive energy.
Taj threw a dagger as the woman tried to shift her energy to destroy the menace on her own right arm. That energy shifting didn’t matter, except it meant she didn’t have her energy focused elsewhere. The dagger sunk into the woman’s side, half a finger. Not fatal.
A sort of snapping sound and a thunk from the side of the road. A small crossbow held in Horst’s hands had flung a bolt up under the attacking woman’s ribcage. Horst was only in <em>early</em> Spirit Building, and had no chance of piercing the woman’s defensive energy. But without it, her body was just as vulnerable as any Body Tempering cultivator.
Taj jumped to their feet as the woman toppled to the ground. Taj threw a dagger through her head, just to make sure. Taj then walked up to Horst, pulling him to his feet with Taj’s good hand.
“Thank you,” Horst said.
Taj smiled. “You’re wee.” Taj punched Horst in the jaw. It was a precise strike to jostle a nerve. “And sorry for that.”
Taj grabbed Horst’s unconscious body, stuck out a boot for the void ants to crawl onto, and fled the scene.
-----
A few minutester in a back alley, Taj was directing the void ants topletely destroy Horst’s cultivation. Horst was older and had more energy than Taj previously had during the process, so it felt pretty brutal. It was an awful thing to do to someone. Almost as awful as letting them continue to be infested with the Swirling Swarm’s cultivation technique and aura.
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Once the process was far enough along, Taj went looking for Madiha.
“Seriously?” Madiha sighed. “We were apart for a single hour and you got into <em>how much</em> trouble? Who is this?” Madiha poked Horst. “Why is he alive?”
“He’s an innocent,” Taj said, grimacing.
“Fine. What happened to your arm?”
“Combat.”
“With who?”
“Some Essence Collection cultivator.”
Madiha looked upset. Taj eventually exined everything, and Madiha now looked <em>differently</em> upset. “I can’t say you did the wrong thing. But I’d appreciate it if you care for yourself.”
“I can fix my arm.”
“It might not have ended with that. So… a cat?”
“... I wanted to feed the cat too,” Taj admitted. “I think she’s still around here somewhere.”
“We shouldn’t do anything that risks the mission,” Madiha said. “Countless lives will be lost if wepromise it. But… if we lose ourselves that will happen just as much. We need to do this. But maybe you should stay with me. Or you should bring more void ants. Speaking of which, what about their traces?”
“I don’t think they caused any of the physical damage,” Taj exined.
“That’ll have to do. Another body won’t be a big deal, as long as nobody was paying too close attention. But you should keep your head down in case that woman’s friendse for revenge in the near future.”
“I doubt she had friends,” Taj said. “But I suppose that won’t stop people from trying to murder me. Oh, I have two devices left to ce.”
“I’ll handle it,” Madiha said. “You get ready to exin to this guy why we ripped apart his cultivation and how he’ll have to live with ants on him for the foreseeable future.”
-----
Once in a while, Velvet felt extremely ufortable being at the top end of cultivation. Sometimes things were too easy. Sure, she had to sneak up on an Augmentation cultivator, create an illusion of their presence as she let void ants swarm over them, and hold that illusion until they slipped away from the scene, gradually letting the thought fade from people’s minds…
But that was too easy. She would have felt a lot worse if the Swirling Swarm seemed like <em>people</em>. “How is it?” she asked. She had a couple queens and a number of royal guard present to taste this cultivator’s energy. They should be the most sensitive to odd flows. Velvet herself was carefully inspecting things. She wanted to find a location, but of course it wouldn’t be that easy.
She hadn’t expected to actually get some of the feeling she was looking for. A mix of foreign devotion and Domination energy. The area she could approximate was quiterge- rather than a proper point or even a line, it was more of a cone of indeterminate length. Velvet carefully recorded what she could along with the input of the void ants so that they didn’t have to rely on memory. That area probably covered about a sixth of Swirling Swarm territory. Still… she could potentially track down the anchor that way. Unless this was leading to one of the Domination cultivators. She actually had no concern about taking one down- alone.
With the rest of the Swirling Swarm around them getting involved, it was a less clear prospect. Then again, she would have void ants with her. Velvet almost thought it was crazy that the Scarlet Alliance had gone without them for so long, but she understood why. Even now, there were risks ofrge scale bacsh at their presence. They just believed that the void ants should overall provide more benefit- and that the enemies that mighte for them had been weakened enough to keep the Alliance safe.
They did have disinformation campaigns going. Within Scarlet Alliance territory they wouldn’t actually lie about what was going on but they had absolutely no such limitations outside. At first it had been hard to get agents into the great powers, but as the decades and centuries stretched on they had built up a finework. Their agents weren’t fiercely loyal to the Alliance, but they would perform tasks that didn’te at too much risk. They were also locals, so they wouldn’t be suspected first.
A bit of propaganda could prevent wars and save lives, so it was a worthwhile effort. Velvet was only tangentially involved in such things, making connections with potential agents long in the past. It was run by people with more suited cultivations. Velvet was meant for sneaking- and her anchor hadn’t changed that at all.
Once they had all the information they thought they could get from the flow of energy, Velvet made the Augmentation cultivator wake up. With energy suppressing shackles and void ants everywhere, there was no hope for them to cause any trouble. Unfortunately, they didn’t know where the anchor was- or even if there was just one.
So they died. Well, they would have died anyway. It might have been a bit slower if they knew and refused to share. Velvet wasn’t fond of torture or anything, but void ants were terrifying enough to strong cultivators to make that less difficult.
She burned the body to ash, and the ash was annihted into even smaller bits that would never again be recognized as a body. Time for a different. Preferably a significant way around the shell of upied systems to help triangte the position she was looking for- or confirm it was mobile. Or that their methods weren’t working.
It would probably take at least a handful of abductions. It could easily be a few years. By then, they might have some information topare with the tech devices. It would be nice to have additional support for any potential theories.
-----
It took a decade of gathering data, a dozen dead Augmentation cultivators from seemingly randoms, and a trip back to the core Scarlet Alliance to analyze the data, but they had a hit. It was an area of a few cubic lightyears, but that was extremely precise as such things went. The only problem was that it didn’t seem to line up with a system- nor a potentially <em>hidden</em> system.
It was too close to the surroundings for that, and there would have been gravitational effects observed. Of course, nobody had closely inspected the nearest system because there was nothing there. It was empty. Dead. Deep in the center of Swirling Swarm territory.
That wasn’t actually too big of a concern. Velvet thought she would feel safer there. She just hoped it was really the anchor. If they could find it and make a move… that would be great. She couldn’t bet on it being undefended, however. And even as a Domination cultivator herself, she was a bit wary given the strangeness of the Swirling Swarm.
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