Chương 54: Chapter 10: The Fern War

The assembled gods watched from Misse's war room as the battles raged across a score of worlds, an enormous wall of scry-views showing the events happening in the skies. Some of the perspectives were from the ground, showing the sparks and fireballs in the distance, while others were attuned to the Nexus Shards that the Azoths carried with them, showing strange dark craft out in the black.

None of the odd Cato-creations were individually impressive, or threatening, but there were so many of them, on so many worlds, that it became something more.

"This was obviously engineered," Misse said, allowing the statement to carry to her allies. Every world that had been reported on and verified to have the ferns of Cato's make were of the same mortal clan subsidiary to the Eln known as the Tornoks, which certainly was not coincidence. Some might suspect she meant engineered by Cato or the Lundt Clan, but Misse truly suspected the coalition of independent gods, who were among those watching.

"Someone has been dealing with Cato."

Some of the sycophants murmured agreement, and she tore her gaze away from the fights to look over at where the Neyar of the independent coalition stood at the edge of the gathered grouping. There were others, of course, mostly from the Inner Worlds and a few from the fringe, but Neyar was far and away the most powerful of the independent gods. His presence was an implicit threat, considering what had happened with Meshan and the Lundt Clan.

Nobody had imagined that Meshan would carve such a bloody swath and then vanish with his world, locking it down until the purge. There might have been more that he did behind that veil as well, considering how little essence had been extracted in the end, but it was the deaths that had caused the most furor. Enough to stop bulk consolidation of independent worlds for the moment, at least.

Misse was glad enough that it had been the Lundts who had actually lost Clan members, but the leverage it had given them against Misse and the Eln Clan in general was unfortunate. They hardly had the spine or the numbers to stop Misse's campaign entirely, but they'd gotten enough sympathy that the rest of the Nine Great Clans were not nearly as amenable to Misse's overtures. Even when it was ultimately in their favor.

"I can't imagine even them working with Cato," Muar murmured in their private bubble as he followed her gaze to Neyar, Misse's Deity Skills controlling exactly what could be seen or heard by others.

"When I encountered him, he made it entirely clear that every Deity would have to die. While I am sure those small gods are set against you for their own reasons, I find it hard to believe any are entirely suicidal."

Misse hummed acknowledgement, though it would have been far easier to simply write off the entirety of the independent coalition. What was carefully not being said was that Meshan's actions had cowed a lot of the rank and file. Suddenly facing the possibility of violence against themselves changed the way that the lesser members of the Clans thought, even if none of them would dare admit it.

Of course, just because one god went utterly insane before the end didn't change that the rest had to be brought to heel. If anything, it only confirmed that the independent deities were too dangerous and unpredictable to leave to their own devices. All she had to do was to leverage the current situation to her own benefit — even if it seemed like it was a net negative for Clan Eln.

"It's hard to tell if they're winning or not," Moskar Lundt said, who was a poor excuse for her opposite number among his Clan. He was not nearly as successful, of course, but making pretentions in the same direction.

"Though if we believe the intelligence from the other Ahrusk natives, even a victory here wouldn't be quite sufficient if Cato has thoroughly infested the world."

His words were pointed as he glared at her, for he would have much preferred to force a purge of the worlds in question, as had been done for everything before. That was fine for lesser worlds and to punish the independent gods, but the Tornok Clan was a subsidiary with reasonable valuable to Eln, and it would be better to preserve them if possible. They needed to test the tactics and stratagems they had created anyway, which had been argument enough to get some non-Eln factions involved."

We can always take harsher measures," Misse said evenly, her voice casual.

"Unless you think delaying a few hours will imperil other worlds, when we found out weeks ago and are only now taking action." She didn't mention that she was the one who had, indirectly, made those delays as she had taken the time to ensure that they would send elites at the problem first.

Even if the Ahruskians firmly believed in some quite unbelievable abilities on the part of that irritatingly useful pest Cato, she doubted his resources were as formidable as all that. It wouldn't do to underestimate his true capabilities – he had been shown to have weapons that could kill gods, after all – but there was a difference between effectiveness on an individual basis, and marshalling the resources for strategies over long stretches of time and space.

If anything, she suspected Cato was more akin to Meshan or Neyar. An individual, and incredibly dangerous as an individual, to the point where even she would have issues if he attacked her directly. But he was only just that, a single individual and while he might take a world here and there, he wasn't fighting a single deity. Rather, he faced the entire edifice of the Nine Great Clans, and against that no individual could stand.

Something that Meshan would have found out himself if he had not decided to stay with his condemned planet.

"Regardless, so long as we have Azoths on the surface, there is very little he can do," she concluded.

"His forces are surprisingly fragile. I do have to wonder what sort of Skills he is using, that he can create so much, and even artifacts so powerful, yet doesn't have any defenses at all."

"He doesn't use Skills," Muar murmured to her, more as a reminder than argument. She knew that, of course, but it was hardly worth framing the alien nature of Cato's operations as anything other than Skills to all the assembled Deities.

"Everything he does is artifice, so it's inherently unbalanced, lopsided. Unnatural." She gave him an appreciative nod, storing that particular approach for some later topic, one where it might find a more receptive audience. Her initial judgement of Muar's value had demonstrated to be more than correct; not only was he regularly more insightful and competent than many of her subordinates and advisors, but he was a delightful companion and conversationalist besides.

"Yes, so long as," Moskar sneered.

"Have you missed that you've lost several already? And some Bismuths."

Misse didn't bother replying, instead she instructed her Interface to give her the relevant details. A single glance was enough to tell her this wasn't some weapon of Cato's; the Interface was very clear. This was some blessed assassin, taking advantage of the chaos. She could override the blessing of anonymity and find out who it was, but committing such a transgression openly would engender even more discontent than existed. Not that she needed to know.

"A god-blessed assassin, sent against an Eln Clan subordinate at this very moment?" Misse smiled, poisonous and petty.

"I do wonder who would be so very spiteful as to undermine our efforts against this threat. Such things are below the faithful servants of the System."

"You're wasting your insinuations on me," Moskar growled, his irritation making him careless enough not to refute her directly. Exactly the sort of response she could have hoped for.

"I don't care about this nothing mortal clan; I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe that this Cato thing actually mattered. And hadn't already cost my Clan."

There were some rumbles of discontent from others, and Neyar looked like he was about to bring up the sanctity of independent worlds again, though it was hardly the forum for it. He had made some complaints about purging worlds earlier, and it was hard to deny standing to someone who was older than most of the Core Elders. Neyar had been around a truly long time, hundreds of thousands of years if not more, and even the Clans regarded him with some respect.

It wasn't a true worry; she was too powerful for any independent gods, even Neyar, to give her issues, but she didn't want to waste the chance she had been given. Every moment of the crisis could be used to consolidate her power over the rest of the Eln Clan and, ultimately, the Core Worlds themselves. Under the circumstances the Tornok would be of more use as a sacrifice, especially now that it had forced Lundt to make certain mistakes — and given her a chance to prove the superior piety of the Eln clan.

"I believe we have found out how useful our Azoths can be," she said, gesturing to the scry-views where a goodly chunk of Cato's artifice was smashed to pieces or incinerated by whatever fiery reaction occurred in some of the targets.

"We have some ability to defend against an incursion — but preferably one that has been caught earlier." She looked around at the gathered gods, and then made a dismissive motion with one hand.

"These worlds are now condemned. A necessary sacrifice in order to better understand and combat the threat posed by this interloper from outside the System." Misse looked around at the assembled Deities, smiling wide and with teeth.

"Let no one say that I have not the conviction to combat Cato, or that the Eln clan are not faithful servants to the System." She smiled at Moskar Lundt, the implication clear.

"A threat to us all brooks neither hesitation nor quarter." ℝ𝙖ＮỔＢƐᶊ With the loss of the Tornok homeworld and the bulk of that clan's resources, their subsidiary status would also come to an end, opening a mortal power vacuum on a hundred more worlds. That was an annoyance, as the Lundt's favored Clan, the Mokrom, was well-positioned to move in and take power in those worlds, perhaps eventually usurping Eln's ownership. But that was a mere hundred worlds when the Eln Clan controlled over fifteen thousand.

The Lundts could nibble at the edges, but each bite would be poison as it would allow Eln to gain influence over all the other Clans.

It was a sacrifice she was willing to make.

Dyen breezed through the halls of the Tornok estate without caring about what alarms he might be setting off. The wards and defenses were already jangling, as panic crept in and people decided that the present was more important than the future. Already he'd stumbled across three different Bismuths looting the place, and not even from an armory or treasury; just taking trophy items off walls and displays.

As a reward for their behavior, he left them as corpses lying beside their ill-gotten gains, bleeding out on the very expensive, high-rank carpet. They were no more than afterthoughts, however, as he worked his way deeper. It had taken little research to find out who the Tornok Elders were and where they were likely to be found, and they were the only real targets.

But they were Azoths, so he had to be at least marginally careful, staying mostly insubstantial and in the shadows as he cast his senses deeper into the palatial estate.

There were of course plenty of lower-ranked servants scurrying about. Some of them were simply trying to attend their usual duties, others were following the example of the dead Bismuths and pilfering from their masters, but most seemed to have little energy for any of that. Something he hardly blamed them for, working for the Tornoks as they did. Many were simply around gossiping, unaware or uncaring of the inevitability of Tornok's end.

The System quests rippled and shifted at the corner of Dyen's attention, Cato's forces appearing and vanishing according to whatever arcane tactics he was using. All of that fell under the constant tug of the Crusade, but he was long used to ignoring that. He knew exactly what he wanted, and it was here.

Elder Chancre, Elder Klo, and Elder Nomak were the three that mattered, the anchors of the Tornok Clan and their most powerful members. It was they who not only decided policy, but actually owned the Clan. Without them, even if the Clan wasn't dissolved, it would lose virtually all the benefits accorded to it by the System.

They were the ones ultimately responsible for the death of his wife, the derailment of his life, and everything that had happened since. Cato had no small part in that himself, but there was a limit to what Dyen could do to make the not-quite-a-god pay. Dyen had to satisfy himself with forcing Cato to dance to Dyen's tune, and whatever incidental damage he had done by revealing the ferns.

He passed through another layer of the estate security, created by special artifacts meant to shroud and protect the signatures of those within — privacy mainly, he thought, since it was fairly obvious that he was in the heart of the estate. As soon as he was through, the vague Azoth-rank signatures he'd sensed earlier crystallized into distinct targets, and he ghosted through the halls to within sight of the trio.

He lurked in the shadow of a tall indoor fountain, [Appraise] giving him the names he was looking for.

[Clan Elder Nomok Tornok – Azoth] [Clan Elder Chancre Tornok – Low Azoth] [Clan Elder Klo Tornok – High Azoth] They were debating some detail of the current crisis, but Dyen had little care for their words. He only cared for their deaths. One against three, two of which technically were superior In rank, was generally considered poor odds, but Dyen was not a normal Azoth. Besides which, if his research was right only Chancre had done anything other than administration in the last century or two.

He reached into his Estate-inventory, bringing out a number of crystals and crushing them to give himself the temporary boosts necessary for the next few seconds. His Domain crept into existence around him, moving forward to infiltrate and surround the carelessly-held power of the trio in the center of the room.

It was a trick he could never have gotten to work with Raine and Leese – their Domains were horrifically dense, perfectly controlled, and the implicit threat of that concentrated power was one of the reasons he'd kept his distance with the pair – but the Elders were sloppy enough that he could prepare without them even noticing.

His first target was Klo. Even if Chancre was potentially a better fighter, there was no underestimating the sheer power High Azoth could bring to bear. Besides, he wanted to save Nomok for last. He was the one most likely to have sent agents to Sydea, and deserved to see everyone else fall before he did.

Dyen drew his growth weapon, a long black knife that seemed more like a hole into some dark dimension than a physical object, and dove into his Domain. He didn't need to use movement Skills, or stealth Skills, or flex any essence to cross the intervening space. While his Domain was not as expansive as some others, it let him get far closer than anyone would believe, and more importantly focus his weapon into not just rending flesh but also disabling Skills and resistances.

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Dyen surfaced just behind Klo, driving his dagger into the small gap between the protective gorget the Tornok Elder wore and the robes that were Azoth-rank armor. The impossibly sharp edge, rendered subtle and insidious by Dyen's Domain, drove through Klo's stone-affinity flesh without truly touching it and shredded through the man's spine. Additional Skills flared, dumping even more essence into the blow as it landed and infiltrating the man's Domain with corrosive shadow.

Unlike most warriors at Azoth, whose empowered blows could shred mountains and punch through walls, Dyen's Skills drove all that power into internal disruption, rupturing flesh and blood and shredding control over Skills and essence. The result was a dark whisper, almost silent, as Klo's body collapsed into itself in a swirl of shadow — but Klo still wasn't dead.

All the elders had multiple lives, so Dyen invoked [Unstoppable Pursuit], which he had selected specifically for dealing with Azoths. It let him latch onto Klo's essence as it swirled through the world back to his resurrection point, riding along its wake, but just before he vanished Dyen flicked out tracking darts at the other Elders, the Skill sinking into their shadows so he could find them again, wherever they went.

He focused his senses forward, seeking out their destination as he felt several Skills crash through the space he'd just been. Klo's resurrection point was an estate near the one where he'd stalked the elders, and while Dyen would have preferred to strike instantly, there was a certain small period of grace granted after a resurrection where attack Skills had a drastically reduced effect.

But not necessarily other Skills, so Dyen rapidly and systematically dismantled the protections within the Estate while the Elder got his bearings, with a precision borne of the body Cato had granted him. While he knew the sisters had benefitted far more than he, the superlative focus and speed of Dyen's current self made him distinctly more dangerous than his rank would suggest.

Klo reconstituted himself in the next few seconds, bringing out a massive stone pole and covering himself in an obsidian shell, but by then Dyen had destroyed all the shields and boosts from the Estate, mostly by brute force. Klo clearly tried to summon them, then roared in frustration when nothing happened and swung his weapon. The near city-sized estate exploded into shrapnel with no regard for anyone within, though as incorporeal as he was it mattered little to Dyen.

Instead he focused his Domain on tearing apart Klo's, his shadows infiltrating the hardiness of earth and crumbling it to dust.

He exploded out of a cloud's shadow, through the still-falling debris of the Estate, and punched his dagger through Klo's neck once again, in the exact same spot, moving faster than a Low Azoth had any right to. Klo's body detonated that time, turning their contest into a momentary grapple of Domains — but his was insidious and ephemeral, and earth could do little against it. The Azoth's remnants were pulled into shadow, and destroyed. Dyen noted the death message, and vanished again.

The other two appeared only a moment later, having overcome their surprise at the sudden attack, but it was too late. Dyen watched from the shadow cast by a tumbling bit of stone skipping over churned and blood-spattered earth, and after a moment to appraise the situation shifted his dagger into a long pointed rapier. Then he delved into his supplies and crushed additional booster crystals.

Most people didn't use them, as they only lasted a few seconds or a minute at most, and at Azoth fights with creatures or in dungeons took far longer. But for an assassin, such things were invaluable.

He exploded from underneath Chancre, driving four feet of shadow steel into her belly, the corrosive essence of his Skills rotting through her Domain as well as her body as he vanished again, incorporeal and invisible. Chancre's metal influence tried to lock down the area, but the tendrils he'd put inside her Domain earlier had rusted away bits and pieces, letting him easily hide while she and Nomok swept the area.

"Whoever you are," Nomok roared, glaring about as his sword-whip cracked.

"You have made a grave mistake. The might of the Tornok Clan will destroy you and everything you hold dear."

Dyen sneered to himself. Tornok had already done that, and he had lived ten years knowing that he would never see her smile or the quizzical curl of her tail again. There was nothing Nomok could possibly threaten Dyen with — but it was exactly the response he had expected. Bitter, useless arrogance.

Chancre was trying to heal, pulling items out of her inventory, but Dyen wasn't going to let that happen. His crossbow was slightly less powerful than his dagger, but it had the advantage of carrying payloads and used most of the same Skills besides. He silently cocked the magazine of bolts and fired a salvo through his Domain, the screaming, corruptive projectiles appearing from shadows all about the pair.

The ensuing explosions ripped enormous holes in the ground, bubbles of black silence annihilating everything around.

Except the Azoths, whose resistances were enough to hold up against the detonations. It did, however, utterly annihilate the healing items and give Dyen an opening to appear behind Chancre's armored form. His rapier ripped into her spine, his Domain sharpened to a spiteful point, and he felt her essence fail as he got the kill notification. She, it seemed, hadn't had any resurrections remaining.

That time, Nomok caught a glimpse of Dyen before he vanished again, metal whip lashing a hole in Dyen's own armor. Assassins just didn't have the defense Skills for a slugfest, not that Dyen was intending to give him one. He just ignored the pain as he dove into the shadows cast by the few remaining pieces of estate, straggling pillars jutting from the ruined ground at odd angles.

"You!" Nomok said, stalking around the blasted battlefield, his Domain forming a wall around the area as he tried to find Dyen. Stealth Skills warned Dyen about Nomok's perceptions, but Dyen's mastery of his Domain – and more recent experience with fighting – kept the Tornok-Clan Elder from finding him.

"Muar told us about you. Dane? Durn?"

Dyen gritted his teeth, almost certain that Nomok was mocking him intentionally. Trying to get under his skin and force him into mistakes. Not that Dyen intended to be so careless at this juncture, not when he was finally at the end.

[This world has been condemned by Cato. Evacuation has begun. Leave through any world portal at the Planetary Capital] The notification popped into Dyen's vision, along with a timer beginning to tick down, and his grimace turned into a grin. The feeling of victory was a flighty, heady thing, as if his aspect was suddenly air and he was flying. With that notification, the power of Tornok was broken, their homeworld condemned – along, he hoped, with dozens of others – and their future erased.

But he still had personal business to attend to.

"Tornok Clan won't be destroying anything, anymore," Dyen said, projecting his voice from behind Nomok, who wasn't quite naïve enough to turn around and look.

"Death has come for you, and your people. How fitting, considering how much death you visited on others."

"As if you haven't gotten where you are by wading through a river of blood," Nomok scoffed.

"It is the way of the System."

"As is this," Dyen growled, and hammered his Domain into one of the weaknesses he could feel in Nomok's control — then launched himself at the Tornok-Clan Elder from a different direction. Even at the highest levels, misdirection still worked, but unlike with Klo there was no fresh surprise on Dyen's side, nor did he have the raw power advantage like he held over Chancre.

Nomak's armor fended off Dyen's dagger, but barely, the corrosive shadow crackling and hissing across a rent in the metal while the return crack of Nomok's whip nearly took off Dyen's tail. Dyen dove into the shadows immediately, hopping from one piece of darkness to another as Nomak's empowered weapon pursued, shredding both cover and shadow essence itself. Great canyons opened up in the landscape, cracks big enough to swallow cities, with each missed blow.

The timer ticked down as they fought, the sky above punctuated with blooming suns from distant explosions, each sudden point of light creating hard-edged shadows for Dyen to use. Occasionally he felt the brush of other Azoth ranks in the distance, but his concealing shadows strangled any attempt of Nomok's to get their attention. This was just the two of them.

Dyen merely needed to not die; he dipped into his inventory and shattered expensive booster crystals, as well as his most valuable asset — one that had given him a Feat of Glory just to acquire. A temporary boost to his Domain that prevented resurrection. It was unbelievable beyond price, but he didn't care about the cost and simply dove onto Nomok, his weapon slicing through armor to the flesh within, his Domain tearing at the impossible toughness that held the Tornok Elder together.

Nomak's whip cut at Dyen's armor, flensing scales from flesh, but Dyen hardly cared. At Azoth, such injuries took only seconds to recover from if they weren't capitalized upon, anyway.

A particularly close detonation, something eye-searing just above them in the sky, made Nomok flinch for a brief fraction of a second. Not long, but long enough for Dyen to close the gap and bury his weapon in Nomok's eye. The Elder screamed as corrosive shadow-essence flooded his brain, and Dyen stabbed him again, then again, turning Nomok's face into a bloody mass of sizzling shadow-corrupted flesh.

Finally, Dyen got the kill notification. With Nomok died Tornok as a clan, and just as there were no more lives for Nomok, there would be no more chances for the clan itself.

He let out a long breath and dropped onto the ground in the middle of the ruined former estate, all strength gone. Some portion of him urged him to get up, to keep fighting, but there was no more fight to be had. He'd finished.

Once, long ago, he'd made plans with his wife, to rise up in ranks together, to go out and see the System. To fight together forever, the two of them as one. Perhaps if he had been given the chance to do so, they wouldn't have gotten nearly as far, stopping at Gold or Platinum. And maybe he would have felt that wasn't enough, but here at Azoth, surrounded by the ruins of what had driven him to those ranks, he didn't think it was at all a fair trade.

Dyan contemplated what might have been as he lay in the ashes of Tornok's power. Above him, strange stars flared and died in the twilight, while here and there meteors streaked through the heavens. In the corner of his vision, the timer ticked down.

"You need to get out before the System goes."

Cato's transmission dragged him from his contemplations, making him realize he'd been sitting there for hours.

"No," he sent back, for he was exactly where and when he wanted to be.

"Don't bring me back."

There would be no extra lives for him, either. For some time there was no reply, but eventually Cato found the words.

"Very well," he said.

"Good bye, Dyen."

In the silence, the timer ticked down, and finally ended.

Dyen sat and watched as the world caved in.

Cato-Tornok solemnly and ceremoniously purged the few gestalts he had of Dyen. He wished he could say he didn't understand Dyen's actions, but the young man had always been bent on only one thing. With his purpose fulfilled, it seemed that even the imposed programming of the post-Bismuth transition wasn't enough to hold him in the world.

"It's hard to believe he's gone," Leese of the Sydean Lineage said. As soon as the fighting had started he'd made sure to inform them to stay well away — but still kept them informed.

"Aside from Muar, he was the only other Sydean we've seen."

"It can be a lonely thing," Cato commiserated, more than understanding the position the sisters found themselves in. The only other humans in the System were on the opposing side, some victims, others merely gleeful psychopaths who enjoyed a world of violence. Even if the sisters got along with him, and he with them, it wasn't the same thing.

"Might be that we're better off without him," Raine said, more grimly.

"I'd bet that he was the one who tipped the Azoths off about the ferns."

"Did he even know?"

Cato asked. He hadn't even bothered to try and run the probabilities, since it really didn't matter why it happened, at least it hadn't in the past few hours of fighting.

"He could have, since he knew there was something and he could easily have followed us at any time before we got those capelets," Leese said thoughtfully.

"And the fact that it centered on Tornok-Clan certainly is no coincidence."

"Oh, it was obviously targeted, but I figured it was god politics," Cato confessed.

"Considering what I've heard from Mii-Es."

He could figure it out later, after the current crisis. For the moment, he just held a moment of silence not only for Dyen, but for all those who had died on Tornok. He was impotent to do more, forced to watch once again as millions of people were murdered by the System, solely because he was there. Killed by the powers that be, who would rather slit the throats of their slaves than allow Cato to free them.

It hadn't just been Dyen, or a few Azoths, but millions of lower-ranks who hadn't been able to evacuate. The System types had performed a fighting retreat, keeping the bulk of Cato's forces from reaching the surface until just a few minutes before the exterminatus. Which was not enough time to de-orbit anything, and as a result Cato had only been able to digitize a few thousand people, almost entirely of the servant races.

Cato-Tornok and the sisters had transmitted out with their few rescuees before the collapse, having no desire to inherit a scoured, destroyed world, turned half-molten by the fall of its moon.

He knew that some of the worlds had undergone similar calamities, while others were still fighting. The various Catos were learning which tactics were useful, but most of his ability to adapt required preparation time, in order to put his factories to work. The System types, on the other hand, were all individuals with bespoke sets of abilities, and one-on-one did a better job of adapting to his – or really, Raine's – defenses than his industrial base could in the same time frame.

Were it not for the time limit, they still could have won. The sheer weight of war material he could throw at the Azoths made defense a losing proposition, or at least it would have been with the original numbers, spread out as they were. As worlds closed, the hundred-to-one ratio of fighters to Azoths dropped precipitously as System types reinforced the remaining battlegrounds — and some new faces joined.

"I'll take those three," Cato-Enshar sighed as he spotted a certain trio of neo-humans breaking atmosphere. He checked for the nearest ship that had a useable warframe, and then began to flash that ship's lights. The pattern was something any child from Sol would be familiar with, or at least those who had lived out in the black. The most basic pattern meaning I want to talk, something that was comprehensible even to the unaugmented, naked eye.

He half-expected the trio to ignore it. They'd made it obvious that the neo-humans here in the System had no desire to treat with him, but at the same time, he wasn't sure either side would want pass up a chance to talk when it came up. He still wanted to convince his cousins away from the System, and he was sure they wanted to try and convince him to leave the System be.

But they veered toward the ship in question, which went entirely dead as the bubble of System-reality slagged all the technology save for the warframes. Cato remote-piloted one toward the cargo bay where the trio were aimed, and locked his feet on the hull as Morvan simply tore away the door. Air should have rushed out into vacuum, but the System-reality seemed to stop that, keeping a breathable atmosphere despite the surroundings.

"Here we are again," Cato said, as the three touched down in defiance of the zero-gravity environment.

"For what good that'll do," Morvan sneered.

"Haven't you understood by now? You're not saving anyone. You're just destroying things you don't like."

"I could argue with you," Cato sighed.

"I could show you all the terrible things the System has done, but I don't think that would matter to you, would it?"

"If you don't think it would, why did you signal you wanted to talk?" Kiersten asked, scowling at his warframe.

"Because I don't want to fight you," Cato growled.

"People living in the System aren't the problem; even the worst of them are still just people. It's the System itself, and I would really rather give people the option of leaving, let them do whatever they want, as long as they're not part of a reality that goes around genociding civilizations."

"Anything they want, so long as it's not what you don't want," Morvan scoffed.

"What I would really like is some way to talk to the System-Gods," Cato said at length, realizing he would make no headway by arguing directly and not wanting to betray that he already had some contacts within the System.

"It's one thing to prosecute a war, and it's another to do so when you don't have any way of negotiating."

"I doubt many gods will wish to parley with such a monster," said the third neo-human, the giant wolf.

"All they need to know is that you are something to be destroyed."

"What would it hurt?" Cato asked, wishing that Mii-Es would respond to his ping. Thanks to the portal network he had only a few seconds of round-trip time for messages, and getting some insight on how exactly to appeal to a priest would be greatly appreciated.

"Surely it's better to at least have the chance at diplomacy over blindly throwing forces at each other."

"What could you possibly have to offer a god?" The wolf asked, deep and gravely.

"A way out?" Cato suggested.

"And that's why there is no point in negotiation," Morvan said, though Kiersten chewed her lip — a sign of disagreement that Cato immediately pounced on.

"Is it really your place to make that choice?" He could have needled them about whether they were afraid of him actually convincing people, but that would have been counterproductive. That wasn't the kind of challenge that would provoke Morvan to useful action. Or Kiersten, for that matter.

"Think about it. After all, we'll meet again." Then he terminated the connection, sending the self-destruct command for the warframe.

He really didn't want to be killed by his cousins again.