Even her short time completely enveloped within the poison smoke was exceedingly hazardous for Kaido’s health. Not that things were very good before she’d been enshrouded by burning anathema, but as she floats in the cabin of this barely functional voidcraft the cultivator is struggling to hold off unconsciousness.

  She’s at the very tail end of how long she can go without sleep, beyond it even, as she’s been awake continuously for the past ten days, running around performing the audit before immediately being locked in life and death combat.

  But none of that matters.

  Looking out the front viewport at her blackening lights, Kaido struggles against physical and Qi exhaustion as well as her body’s injuries to be ready to fight.

  Because she’s not done.

  Not yet.

  Not while whatever that is still spreads throughout her home.

  Looking back at the mortal, she’s thankful the disappearance of gravity means she doesn't have to work against it to stay upright right now.

  Kaido pulls the wisps of Qi still under her control to accelerate the healing process of the most important aspects of herself for the coming fight. Against both the rebellion and the presumed poison cultivator that created this blackened death.

  …Wait.

  Kaido feels her thoughts slow as something within the mechanism of the machine makes a metallic thunk and she feels her blade being magnetized the smallest amount more toward the rear.

  The girl. The poison cultivator.

  In the hallway, before the poison began to fill the corridors and rebels and mortals alike began to die, she screamed for them to run.

  The poison cultivator releases the controls and turns around in the chair to look at her.

  “Ok, I think I got the engines online. But before we start the burn I– ghk!” She chokes as Kaido wraps a hand around her throat.

  “You knew.” She hisses. “You knew this was going to happen.”

  The near mortal shakes her head frantically and pulls at the fingers wrapped around her neck, and it’s a testament to exactly how weak Kaido is right now that she actually succeeded.

  “...n… No!” She chokes out. “No I didn't!"

  Her intent is nothing but raw animalistic fear, too much fear for any technique Kaido knows to detect lies. But she doesn't need a technique.

  “LIAR!” She roars. “You knew before anything occurred! You were running before there was–”

  “I saw wisps coming from the vents!” She rasps back, managing to pull Kaido’s fingers away enough to breath unimpeded. “I’ve seen what airborne toxins do to people! I know what poison Qi can do! It almost killed me!”

  There’s silence for a moment as Kaido grips her weapon with her other hand, and considers cutting this poison cultivator down right now, forget the fact that she cannot pilot this ship, taking a member of that order with her is a just and fair trade.

  Instead, after ten long seconds, Kaido releases her grip on the girl’s throat. The near mortal gasps, rubbing her neck and appears unsure of whether to glare or drop her gaze in respect.

  But as the cultivator opens her mouth to say something else she looks into the void beyond the viewport and her words die on her lips.

  The black is spreading, like a wave it obscures the light within the windows one after the other, faster and faster as it goes further, darkening the metallic hulk till it’s just a black outline. void of stars.

  She watches as the darkness spreads across the central superstructure of the station and down each of its many reaching arms, until only the brilliant silver jewel of her home remains lit atop the cavernous void.

  “This isn't over. Get us underway.” Kaido barks out, pointing to the silver crown of the station. “I will guide you to a hanger as we get closer.”

  But the mortal doesn't move, instead her eyes flick up and down the dockward arm until settling on a large cargo ship of some kind as it floats a distance away from its berth, clearly trying to get underway as quickly as possible.

  “...Honored cultivator, I don't think… What do you plan to do when you get ther–”

  “Now.” She growls.

  Her master gave his orders, she follows them. Whatever this airborne threat’s nature and hazard may be, her sect will resolve it with the devotion and loyalty of every member. Just as they will put down this rebellion. Just as they have since her sect's founding.

  “Yes, your Excellence.” The near mortal responds after only a fractional delay, reaching out to flip a few more switches and grabbing the controls again. “Hold on to something.”

  The cultivator blinks.

  Wha–

  Then she's forced to tighten her grip on the seatback as gravity appears to return, this time pulling her towards the back of the ship and the airlock.

  Kaido lets out a small wheeze of strain as her almost completely exhausted body struggles to not lose grip under a mere three gravities of force, the acceleration meaning she’s now subjectively hanging over a drop by one hand.

  How can there be no inertial dampeners on this craft!? This is just wishing for death!

  Especially for a mortal! Who this craft was ostensibly made for.

  Not only that, as the ship accelerates Kaido can hear every part and seam of the craft groan and whine under the strain, as if barely holding together with every second being another roll of the dice.

  Those noises do not grow quieter as time goes on, and as the seconds tick by the cultivator is increasingly certain this craft is going to either fall apart around her or explode into an expanding cloud of plasma.

  But, in a result that can only be luck, the tug of acceleration lessens after a few seconds, leaving her floating in the craft again.

  “I apologize, your Excellence.” The pilot says as she turns around in her seat. “I don't have a navigation computer or a rangefinder installed, so this is as fast as I’m comfortable eyeballing it. We’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”

  Kaido nods, then watches out the viewport as the craft glides silently over the black station, though now seeing the occasional arc of green electricity flash across the surface.

  But as her sect grows larger in her view, she struggles to believe her senses when she sees one of the smaller tertiary domes begin to swirl with black smoke, coiling like a living thing until it’s completely full.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Impossible.

  She looks away, refusing to allow her traitorous sight to continue this insult.

  She hears the poison cultivator open her mouth and breathe in, but before she says anything the silence of the cabin is broken by a hissing crackle.

  “...The radio?” The poison cultivator mutters, reaching out to flip another switch before a familiar voice fills the cabin.

  Kaido’s head snaps up to the console again before even the first syllable.

  Elder Jingwei!

  She grasps at the lifeline of the elder’s voice, waiting for…

  The thought trails off to dread and disbelief as the seconds tick by.

  He’s laughing.

  A long and violently emotive laugh that sounds wrong in his normally stoic voice.

  “One hundred seventy five years!” He shouts. “That is how long I’ve waited for this single moment! So many times I could have been stopped if even a single thing went wrong! If just one person behaved beyond what I expected! All for this moment! To feel every single one of their unambitious idiotic souls be harvested and added to my grandeur!”

  Another dome blackens, quicker this time, and through the radio Kaido thinks she can hear screams.

  “How many quiet moments I’ve imagined the feeling! Of the souls and cultivation of millions being harvested by the right of my genius!” He stops to take a deep breath and two more domes blacken. “My imagination could not even compare!”

  More domes blacken ever faster until –almost without ceremony– the last speck of light from the shining silver beacon of her home is swallowed up. Before it’s almost immediately replaced by the flashing green of poison electricity.

  The traitor laughs again, and in time with his voice, green arks shoot down the entire station's stuperstructure.

  “It is the magnitude of my genius that I allow the ships fleeing my domain to do so! For my mercy I demand only one thing! That the memory of my masterstroke may be spread across the universe! That you will spread the name of Jingwei, the hydrargyrum, to all you meet!”

  The largest dome of the silver firmament sect begins to glow with green power and the glass begins to crack.

  “That you will whisper in fear and awe at the memory of my culmination!”

  Then the dome shatters, erupting into a towering pillar of smoke that crackles with power as an amorphous shape from within becomes ever more solid.

  Inhuman from the base, a massive glowing green eye over an elongated face and cavernous maw, attached to a seemingly endless neck that loosely begins to coil and wrap around the station.

  Kaido pushes against the feeling of despair, denying it with wholehearted conviction as she readies herself to charge into certain death.

  By her last breath and her last drop of strength, she will–

  Then she feels everything jolt to the side, and her vision rotates away from the sight of the abomination and toward the cargo ship just as it ignites its engines to move away from the station.

  “Shoot, they're really booking it.” The near mortal mutters as she aligns the ship at some seemingly arbitrary point in front of where the cargo ship is pointed. “I’m gonna need to–”

  “What are you doing?” Kaido hisses. “Turn this craft–”

  “You’re insane!” She shouts back. “I’m not killing myself so you can die to that! That’s stupid!”

  Kaido grips her weapon.

  How dare she disobey! She’ll–

  The thought is cut off with a grunt when the ship starts accelerating even faster than before and the cultivator is thrown up into the ceiling of the cabin then dragged to the back with a grunt.

  But as she rights herself and looks up at the near mortal where she’s piloting the craft, a terrible realization strikes her.

  Because the girl is right.

  Kaido feels her battered body and Qi network slowly ease from attempted combat readiness as, with the sudden loss of certainty, she’s no longer capable of remaining in that state.

  The traitor is a poison cultivator, and one of the first things she was taught about poison cultivation was how it grows stronger with death, destructively gorging itself on every energy that falls within its grasp. To attack now is just to make the traitor stronger.

  But as she feels her core begin to flutter with lack of conviction, lack of purpose, she steadies it with a silent vow.

  She will kill the traitor.

  She will grow stronger. She will work until her bones wear thin and her blood boils.

  She will train and learn until she’s strong enough that when she returns her might will lay the traitor low.

  She will make him suffer every indignity, every agony, until she finally allows the broken husk of whatever remains to die.

  No matter how long it takes. She will–

  Kaido is brought out of her mind as the acceleration of the craft comes to a stop and suddenly it spins around, banging the cultivator into more walls until they’re facing the other direction.

  Across the cabin the near mortal is muttering something, which becomes audible as it goes on.

  “–easePleasePleasePleasePleasePleasePleaseYes!” She shouts, flicking a switch which causes an electronic buzzing sound at the airlock just as they thud against the exterior hull of the cargo ship and stick. “First try!”

  Looking out the front viewport where she sees that they’re stuck right next to the base of one of the ship’s main engines, Kaido blinks in confusion.

  In her state of heightened emotion she didn't try to figure out whatever the plan was to get away from this station without being able to jump. She’d assumed it would be something like trying to beg to be let inside the cargo ship, which would obviously be refused now that she’s thinking about it.

  But now that they’re attached and Kaido turns over the problem in her head, she’s struggling to figure out the next step.

  Because they’re not getting inside that ship conventionally, and going into folded space without being inside the ship's envelope is a death sentence if they’re… lucky…

  Kaido blinks as the realization dawns.

  No.

  She looks over to the girl, looking for clues to whatever the next phase of this plan is and seeing her calmly looking out the window.

  Surely not.

  Then, with a shudder, the light of the cargo ship’s large engines cut off and the near mortal sighs.

  “There we go. Entering jumpspace.”

  Rage flows through the cultivator as she starts scrambling for leverage in zero gravity to get over to the flight controls.

  “Idiot!” She shouts. “If you’re going to kill us at least let me die with honor!”

  The girl has the audacity to look confused as she turns around in her seat.

  “We're not going to die!” She shouts back. “ The ships envelope will–”

  She’s cut off by the vibrating warble of a ship preparing to jump and Kaido roars in rage and panic as she finally manages to get her legs beneath her and leaps across the space to do something with the controls. She must detach this craft or they’ll–

  Everything twists, distance and direction becomes meaningless as the laws of time and space are ripped apart around them. In that moment, Kaido screams, knowing it will be the last thing she ever does.

  Then everything is normal again, and the cultivator‘s head thuds painfully against the glass of the viewport as she hisses in pain.

  Outside are the streaking greens and blues of jumpspace.

  Kaido pushes herself off the glass and stops herself from rubbing her head before staring at the woman sitting calmly in the pilot's seat as they fly through jumpspace unshielded.

  “See?” The completely mad mortal says calmly, gesturing at the window. “Protected.”