Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Li Yu returned to the lounge of the warship and found Emperor Xerxis pacing the floor. The Domain King was in a foul mood. The heavy thud of his armored boots vibrated through the polished bone floorboards. He held a crystal cup of glowing wine in his hand but the glass was already spiderwebbed with deep cracks from his tightening grip.

The Hive Empire had suffered public and humiliating defeats in this tournament. His royal children had been eliminated early and the Moth Queen had openly mocked him in front of millions of spectators.

As Li Yu thought, Xerxis was in no mood to watch the third tournament featuring the independent rogue fighters. The Emperor had zero interest in recruiting any of the wandering victors. He just wanted to leave right away and return to his capital to punish his generals and trainers.

"We should depart." Xerxis grumbled while tossing the cracked cup onto a platter. "There is nothing left for us in this wretched and windy territory."

Li Yu sat down on a soft silk cushion and poured himself a cup of nectar tea. "Can we leave before the festival officially ends?"

Xerxis stopped pacing and let out a heavy frustrated sigh. "No. We have to stay another night. The grand reward ceremony is tomorrow morning. As one of the five supreme rulers, I have to be present on the main stage to present the pooled prizes to the winners of the team tournament and the singles tournament. It is a matter of face. If I leave early, that moth bitch will claim I am a sore loser and my empire will lose even more prestige."

Li Yu thought as much. Face and reputation were currencies just as valuable as spirit stones.

"Emperor." Li Yu started as he was taking a sip of the warm tea. "What exactly do you know about the Xylarri?"

Xerxis paused. The mention of the purple creatures brought a dark scowl to his insectoid face. He walked over to the wide observation window and looked out over the floating arena in the distance.

"They are a plague upon the cosmos." Xerxis said, his voice dropping into a serious rumble. "No one truly knows where they came from or what their original domain looks like. They do not conquer to rule or to build empires. They conquer to consume. They eat the Qi, life force and rumor has it that some can consume the very laws of the realms they invade. They leave behind nothing but dead dust."

Xerxis crossed his thick arms. "It was just recently that I began to see more and more of them operating in this realm. I have seen them in realms I have invaded before but never here. Not until recently. Clearly the Hollow Dominion is up to no good. The Termite King is a fool thinking he can work with those people. You cannot ally with a plague. It will eventually turn and eat you too."

Li Yu agreed completely with that assessment. He had seen the gray dust and the devoured lands firsthand.

Xerxis turned his head and looked at Li Yu with a forced dark chuckle. "They operate on a strict hivemind. You must have done something really bad to get that kind of personal attention from them. For them to single you out in front of the entire arena means you truly offended their lineage."

"I did not do much." Li Yu replied. "It seemed to come from me killing one of them during a war."

Xerxis raised an eyebrow. He walked back to his chair and sat down to listen with curiosity.

"You killed one of them? And you said you did it a while ago?" Xerxis asked. "But if it's back then… and at your level… who could you possibly have killed that was of that great of importance? The Xylarri lose millions of drones in their invasions. They do not care about casualties. For them to declare a blood feud over a single death is strange."

Xerxis rubbed his jagged mandibles thoughtfully. "Perhaps it was someone from their royal family. A prince or a princess of the Swarm. They might have been going around and seeing the world just like you are doing now. Unfortunately for them, they ran into a much greater monster."

Li Yu thought about the message that he had killed a sworn sister. It was highly possible the creature he killed was a royal heir to their twisted lineage or someone of equal importance.

"That should not be the case." Li Yu commented as he was shaking his head. "If she was a royal that was out getting experience or leading some operation, wouldn't her protectors and guardians have shown up to stop me from killing her then?"

Xerxis nodded his head in outward agreement. But inside his head the Domain King was thinking something different.

‘Of course they did not stop you!' Xerxis screamed internally. 'Your freakish guardians would have stopped them from interfering with your training! If her protectors even twitched, your hidden masters probably erased them from existence before they could even draw a weapon! No, that’s not right. Your protectors probably killed her protectors right away and of course she didn’t realize that.’

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Xerxis looked at the young human boy sitting calmly on the silk cushion. The Emperor realized Li Yu was playing a very deep game. The boy was pretending he did not know about his own protectors. He was acting like a simple person who just happened to survive.

'I am not going to say anything though.' Xerxis decided. He kept a polite smile on his face. 'Because it seems like you want to pretend you do not have any guardians for some reason. If I expose your game, I might offend the monsters hiding. I will just play along.'

"The cosmos is full of mysteries, young master." Xerxis said smoothly. "Perhaps her guards were simply too slow. Or perhaps fate just favored you that day. They say all great men are smiled upon by lady luck."

Li Yu accepted the answer because he couldn’t think of a better answer. They spent the rest of the evening in quiet contemplation.

The next day arrived. Millions of spectators gathered one last time in the grand floating arena for the closing ceremonies. The rogue tournament had concluded late in the night producing a few promising recruits for the lesser sects but the main event was the crowning of the champions.

Li Yu stood near the edge of the grand central platform surrounded by the elite royal guards of the Hive Empire.

The five supreme rulers of the realm stood together in the center of the stage. The Moth Queen radiated dark, regal superiority. The Ant Queen stood like an immovable crimson mountain. The King of Flies hovered slightly above the ground, his talismans glowing brightly. Emperor Xerxis stood tall and was trying to maintain his imposing dignity despite his losses. The Termite King stood at the end of the line, his blind pale face pointed forward.

Massive chests forged from deep sea crystals and rare metals were brought onto the stage. They were filled to the brim with the pooled treasures of the five great empires. They could have used storage rings but they wanted all to see the kinds of treasures being offered as prizes.

There were mountains of refined spirit stones, ancient martial scrolls, weapons forged from the bones of legendary beasts and vials of supreme healing elixirs. The wealth on display was enough to make many drool. Li Yu was also impressed by the amount of treasure being offered up. Many of the items he couldn’t even recognize.

The Moth Queen stepped forward and personally distributed the prizes to her victorious champions. Lady Seraph walked up to claim her reward, her wounds already healing thanks to the medical arrays of the Eclipse Court. She shot a triumphant look toward the Hive delegation.

Xerxis gritted his teeth but performed his diplomatic duties. He handed over his portion of the treasures and kept his face completely stoic. It pained him deeply. The ceremony concluded with a final deafening cheer from the crowds. The spiritual chains holding the arena groaned under the sheer volume of the noise.

Xerxis turned away from the other rulers the very second diplomatic protocol allowed.

"We are leaving." Xerxis muttered as he grabbed Li Yu gently by the shoulder to guide him away from the stage. "Get the fleet ready. We will return to the capital right now."

Li Yu turned to follow the Emperor and was eager to get back to his own quiet room to digest the combat data he had gathered. As Xerxis and Li Yu were about to step off the central platform and head toward the royal docking bays, a pale figure blocked their path.

The Termite King stood perfectly still with his blind face turned directly toward them.

"Emperor Xerxis." The Termite King said as his voice carried a strange hollow resonance. "You can go back to your capital. But the human has to come with me."

Xerxis stopped. For a brief second he thought he had misheard the blind creature. Then a dark and menacing laugh erupted from his chest. It was a laugh completely devoid of humor. It was the sound of a supreme predator who had just been deeply insulted.

Xerxis flared his demonic aura. The heavy pressure warped the air around them and caused the nearby tiles to crack and splinter.

"Go away before I kill you where you stand, fool!" Xerxis growled his mandibles. "Do not test my patience today Termite. I am already in a terrible mood and I would love nothing more than to crush your head into paste."

The Termite King did not flinch under the crushing pressure of the Xerxis. He did not summon his own aura to defend himself. He simply reached into his pale robes and pulled out a small smooth orb made of swirling purple and black energy.

"My new friends want this human boy." The Termite King stated calmly. "And whatever they want they will get."

The Termite King closed his pale hand and crushed the orb. For a single heartbeat absolutely nothing happened. Then the sky above the Aether Swarm territory cracked.

It did not tear open like a normal spatial rift. It shattered like a massive dome of brittle glass. The deafening sound of reality breaking apart echoed across the floating arena and instantly silenced the millions of spectators.

A massive shadow fell over the arena. The sudden darkness plunged the floating platforms into an eerie twilight. The violent winds completely died down, replaced by a heavy and suffocating stillness that made it hard to breathe.

Li Yu looked up and his eyes widened in disbelief.

Pushing through the shattered sky was a structure of incomprehensible scale. It was a massive, asteroid shaped battlestation forged from dark purple rock and thick biological chitin. It was so impossibly huge that it completely blocked out the entire sky stretching from one horizon to the other.

The battlestation pulsed with a malevolent and corrupting purple aura that passively devoured the light and the ambient Qi of the realm. Deep jagged trenches ran along its rocky surface and glowed with a sick and chaotic energy.

It hung in the broken sky like a harbinger of total annihilation.

The spectators in the stands began to scream. Panic erupted instantly as the crushing weight of the asteroid pressed down upon their souls. The spiritual chains holding the arena groaned in agony and were struggling to maintain the structural integrity of the floating platforms under the sudden gravitational shift.

Xerxis stared up at the massive structure, his imposing dark aura flickering slightly in the face of such overwhelming scale.

Li Yu gripped the fabric of his dark robes. He had expected the Xylarri to hunt him. He had expected them to send assassins or perhaps a strike team of their elite prodigies to settle the blood feud. He did not expect this.