Silver Stars, Ch 18: Heart of the Void (Patreon)

When Sam arrived at the teleportation gate, the number of nagas following him was too great to send through at once.

He organized them into groups under the command of some of the original Silver Nagas and started to send them through a few thousand at a time.

It was a time-consuming process, but with the differential between here and Aster Fall, they would appear there like a constant river.

A few of his avatars gathered at Caelus, stabilizing the dimensional energy in the area as the Fourth and Fifth Evolution nagas came through. 

Anyone over Level 399, he directed to Silverguard, where they would form his main army. The others, he sent down to Portal, where they could enter the World Seal easily.

It wouldn’t be long until the relic was operational now, and that would keep the World Seal from destabilizing even if Fourth Evolution or higher energy was used on Aster Fall. 

Until then, he had a few options to keep things stable.

His avatars all had the ability to stabilize dimensions around themselves, as did his golems in a more limited way. As long as enough of either went along with the army, it wouldn’t be a problem.

Before long, he would be able to send the stronger nagas down to hunt inside the World Seal. He could also have the World Core lift the World Limit, which would let the Army of Aster Fall and the Legions of Ice level up past 399.

Until that happened, he could send his forces deep enough into the World Seal that their energy wouldn’t disrupt the surface layers, like down near Blood’s realm or one of the other deep prison layers, but they wouldn’t be able to return until the relic was working.

That would soon be a problem of the past.

The instability that had troubled the World Seal and his home for so long would be balanced once he activated the relic. Then the world would enter a fragile status quo, one that he would have to guard carefully.

It would give Asenya a chance to fix the World Seal once he rescued her, but if the relic was damaged again before that, the surface of Aster Fall might be torn apart by rifts.

He wasn’t going to risk everything on it. 

It was too much of a liability.

The enchantment of Emerald gave him some ideas for how to improve the relic’s operation, as well as how to enchant Aster Fall with a strong dimensional stabilization spell that could help to hold it together without relying on a single artifact, but it would take a little while for him to design the right one.

He would need to link it into the elemental dimensions around the world, and that level of spell had to be handled carefully. 

Fortunately, he had an even better time advantage now.

His avatar on Celeste was building a workshop to continue his studies. He’d already dissolved the avatar in the Deep Wild that had been his previous researcher. 

He intended to keep one other avatar in the settled galaxy too, but that one was going to a different destination.

As he continued to send nagas through, he studied the gate in front of him, committing its structure to memory. 

He wouldn’t be able to build one of these himself until he reached the Sixth Evolution, but at least he would know how.

It took several days to send all of the nagas through. 

It would have taken even longer, but he realized that he could carry them through in a dimensional bubble that was larger on the inside, like the Realm of Silver Stars in his bracer or in his cloak.

The Titan Gate was more than capable of handling contained dimensional spaces traveling through it. Otherwise, everyone’s storage artifacts would have exploded.

After that, it didn’t take long to shuttle the rest of his new army to Aster Fall.

Instead of stepping through himself, however, he turned his attention to one of the gates he hadn’t visited yet, but which was still functioning. 

It was in the Deep Wild, near the border of the Great Divide, beside a world that he hadn’t visited in a while.

Alora’s world.

He was looking forward to seeing her again, as well as finding out what she’d done in the century or more that had passed for her while he was on Aster Fall.

Asenya’s memory imprint in the Wild Tree there might also be helpful if he could talk to it again. At the very least, it would have an insight into how best to handle the World Seal.

He had the plans for it, but she was the architect.

He was interested in what she would think of how the dimensional layers had turned into realms of their own.

The gate was very close to her world. Caerlon had probably built it for Asenya.

It wouldn’t take long for him to arrive, but after he checked on the status of the gate, he turned to look at the Deep Wild instead, at the stars in the distance that were even farther out than Aster Fall.

He would visit Alora soon and keep his promise to return. Then he would see if she remembered him.

But first, it was time to hunt.

Every day that passed on Aster Fall was 215 days here, so there should be plenty of time. Even if he was gone for four years, it would only be a week at home. He was going to take advantage of that to get familiar with his new abilities and reach the Fifth Evolution.

If anything came up, his avatars would tell him and he could take one of the Titan Gates back. It would only take a moment.

When everything was ready, he stepped onto the platform.

The gate activated with a brilliant flare.

***

When Sam reappeared, it was on the distant edge of the galaxy, almost as far into the Deep Wild as it was possible to go without reaching the emptiness beyond.

Aster Fall was closer to the settled galaxy than he was.

He looked at the gate below him, which was hidden on a silent blue world. It was rich with elemental Water and rare resources, which helped to power the gate, but it had no other life. 

Perhaps one day, as the chaos winds stirred it, it would develop some. 

Just because this world was silent, however, it didn’t mean that the rest of the area was.

Caerlon had built a gate out here to study the emptiness and find a way past it, in one of his many experiments before the Nexus was created.

It was also a place where ancient beasts lived.

There were things in the Void that liked to live out here in the dark, on the edge of things, where their vast size was never a problem and few things except food came to bother them.

Sometimes there were even Vos’Rekan.

It was unlikely that he’d run into one, but it was possible. 

They were hard to find, something stumbled over by luck rather than intention. Their natural ability to camouflage themselves and hide their presence made it difficult.

He wouldn’t mind running into another one, now that he was growing stronger and had some Divine artifacts to back him up, but it wouldn’t be an easy fight.

He was confident enough in being able to escape that if he ran into one, he’d try to kill it, but he hadn’t come out here for Vos’Rekan.

There were other beasts here, things at the Fifth Evolution or perhaps even close to the Sixth that would make for worthwhile opponents. 

Sixth Evolution beasts were nearly impossible to find, since they only reached that level through sheer luck and long lives, but there might be a few.

And this was the place to find them.

He could have hunted in other places closer to the center of the galaxy, but the time differential was the best here. It was even stronger than in the settled galaxy, around 300 times faster than Aster Fall.

He stepped off the world and into the free Void as he let his body rise to a towering height, swiftly reaching over fifteen hundred miles tall, and then he kept going.

Since reaching the Fifth Star, he hadn’t had a chance to really test himself, so now was a good time.

He stepped along an astral thread and swiftly reached the edge of the galaxy, where he paused. It was a faint border, but he could feel the density of astral energy swiftly decreasing and the astral threads becoming thinner.

This was the edge of his birthplace, where the greater Void began.

He let out a deep breath and then continued forward, walking along one of the thinner lines of the astral paths. They still continued out here, but he wasn’t moving as quickly.

As the energy grew thinner, it also became harder to travel along them.

Eventually, they would grow too thin and he would reach the final border, but he wasn’t planning to go that far.

When he found an empty location without stars or anything except some asteroids, he stepped off the path and looked around.

Out here, it didn’t matter if he destroyed something. 

One by one, he ignited his abilities, testing them out at full strength. 

He let the Flame of the First Age surge out first, and his body began to burn with a stellar corona. His height expanded and his aura surged outward as he changed shape.

His body turned to flames and continued to increase, igniting over a vast distance. Energy from the chaos winds and the Void poured into him, fueling the change.

Flames filled his aura until a blazing sun burned in the dark.

The chaos winds continued to burn through him, but he could feel their thinness here. It made it harder to maintain this form, but most of his energy came from the dimensions nearby and from the depths of the Void.

Although the chaos winds were important, he was an Astral Titan and born of the Void. He didn’t need the chaos winds’ energy to burn. He had enough from the Void.

A dark and deep energy from the Void filled him. As it reached his heart, it ignited and turned to pure astral energy, which flooded outward.

It was similar to Stellar Conversion, but more complex and simpler at the same time. It was like breathing, an instinct, and that made it hard to follow.

But not impossible.

He bent his Mind of Primal Chaos to understanding the process, the true origin of a Titan’s energy.

For a time, he simply was.

Then he took a long breath and changed his shape until he was in his familiar body once more.

He’d caught a glimpse of meaning there, of something deep and essential to the Void.

Of the energy that ran below all things, like a dimension to itself.

It felt like the First Moment, where all dimensions blended together and all places were one.

He’d also comprehended a bit of how the Titan Gates were formed and of the law that Caerlon had used to create them.

It was based on that realm.

It was where the Void drew its own energy from, the source of power that drove the chaos winds and ignited the stars, and that had fueled the First Moment. 

It was still there. 

The Titans had called it the Heart of the Void or the Realm Beyond.

The names resonated with him.

When they’d built the Path of Stars, they’d tried to harness that energy, but it hadn’t worked. It wasn’t a force that could be constrained by artifacts. 

He’d only touched the edge of it, but he had a connection to it, one that all Primordials had. Even the younger races drew on it in their own way.

But he’d already spent long enough studying it, over a year in the settled galaxy according to his avatar on Celeste. If he let himself get too carried away, he would really lose track of time.

After that, he tested out his Aura of Stellar Beginnings at its full offensive power, incinerating some of the stones flying around him until they melted to dust, and then he gathered that material together, letting his aura and other abilities enhance it until it turned into plates of high-quality astral metal.

He engraved a series of runes onto the plates to turn them into single-use artifacts and then stored them away in his cloak, where they might be useful in the future. 

Even at his current level, it was good to have some scrolls available.

He stepped onto an astral thread and reappeared a little while later in a different system, one with several empty worlds that had no air or life.

But they did have a high concentration of rare resources, from elemental crystals to high-quality ores and essence stones.

He gathered force from the Void around him, and then he pointed at one of the worlds.

A dense beam of silver-black energy shot forward from his finger, blazing so quickly that it reached the world at almost the same instant it appeared.

The beam tore through the world and pierced out the other side, ripping a massive column of space through the center. The hole glowed with blazing silver force, heating the world’s core that had long been cold.

As the intense heat and cold met each other, the world exploded, shattering into fragments in space as a massive cloud of molten stone and dust spread away from the surface.

Sam’s hands reached forward in two golden arcs, and he swiftly sorted through the materials, gathering everything useful from the world and storing them away in his cloak.

The Titans had often harvested asteroids and dead worlds for materials for their projects, including to build new worlds, but this was the first time he’d reached a level where he could do the same thing himself.

There was a reason the Titans ruled the galaxy. 

At his current level, he could walk freely in any part of the Void, with only the Vos’Rekan and other Titans who were his match. The Sixth Evolution beings of the younger races had strong capabilities, but he had nothing to fear from them. 

His domain was at a level where he could keep their laws from affecting him.

It was good that he had his link to Aster Fall and his family to keep him grounded in reality, or it would be all too easy to lose track of time and to become absorbed by projects in the Void.

When you could do almost anything, it was hard to focus on the little things.

He was beginning to understand why the Titans hadn’t come back.

And why they hadn’t strengthened Aster Fall more.

It wouldn’t have felt that important to them.

Then he shook his head and went back to work.

He wasn’t going to let himself get distracted like that, at least not for a long time.

He sent some of the material into the dimensional realms in both his bracer and his cloak, creating small worlds in each of them that could support life.

In one, he spent a little while constructing a palace and some gardens, just in case he needed a place to transport people, as well as a private workshop to store his projects.

It was nice to organize his materials in a real way, rather than having them all float around in a dimensional space.

Then he walked around the astral paths for a while, gathering more materials and resources as he stocked up his supplies and looked for more unique things. 

It would be enough for a long time.

Wealth wasn’t much of a concern, but some of it could also be traded off in the settled galaxy if he needed to. The remaining part would go to Silverguard, where it could be used to create new golems and to enhance the island and the new fortresses that made up the Crown of Stars.

He spent a little while crafting a dense array of artifact plates and some smaller items, as well as some new sets of armor for the Silver Nagas, and then he put everything away for later.

It would take a long time to outfit the entire Silver Army in equipment, but for now these sets could be used to motivate them and handed out as rewards for bravery.

When everything was ready and he’d tested out the rest of his abilities, as well as his bracer and cloak’s new power, he stepped onto another astral thread and headed in search of some beasts.