[Ouroboros' End]
Wordlessly standing just above the point to which the water reached on the sloped ramp that led down from the elevated part of the floor into the pool, Darganth swept his gaze across the group of people that had just barged into the hangar. Studying them, he noticed slight gaps in the line they had formed up in, with a second look making him aware of a second emblem on their person.
While the first one was prominently displayed on the short cape-like cloth they wore on the left side of their hips and was uniform across the entire group, this second symbol varied in where on their clothing it was displayed. Furthermore, it reinforced his suspicion that the gaps in their formation were intentional. These gaps gave Darganth a strong indication that the people in front of him belonged to three different groups. The three distinct symbols then all but confirmed it, with individuals bearing the same symbol positioned together along the gaps he had observed.
As these thoughts went through his head, the people in front of him waited in bated silence. Already unsure how to react to the disinterest he showed in the face of their presence, they were simultaneously thrown off further by the brief glimpse of Neandra's power their mana senses had registered when she had flown after Darganth through magic instead of her wings.
Though brief, that instant was enough for them to recognize her as a contender for a place among the top powerhouses of the entire sector of the astral. As such, their eyes kept on flickering toward her with nervous glances, with none of them willing to approach her yet also not willing to just let the matter rest out of fear that she might join a rival organization.
But before any one of them could come to a decision, something Darganth was willing to wait for just to see them be torn apart by the conundrum for longer as payback for the interruption that their intrusion was, the silence was broken by hurried steps followed by the door being flung open for a second time.
The moment it did, the man on the other side froze. Staring at the group standing barely two meters away from him and blocking the hall's entrance, his eyes slowly widened as the smile that had been on his lips faded.
Sighing as the first group abruptly spun around to look at the new arrival, Darganth's eyes widened in shock when barely a moment later, both sides' presences erupted with a wave of mana. Crashing together mere centimeters away from the man's body, sparks flew as he managed to hold back the combined presence of the twelve mythic ranks that opposed him.
The moment the group didn't manage to immediately overwhelm him, their mana shifted as they readied themselves for a fight. Quickly catching on to the signs of this impending escalation, Darganth turned to Neandra only to see her already having the same thought as him.
Faster than any of the offending mana users could implement their plans, Neandra's presence flared up like a lit beacon, causing all attention to snap toward her. And though she didn't enhance it with mana to contest theirs, the moment they met her sharp gaze, all of them instinctively drew back their mana.
In the ensuing silence, Neandra stepped forward and spoke to the newest arrival, "And who might you be?"
As she did, the entire room's attention followed her, with even Darganth's gaze being drawn to her simply because she didn't control her presence like she usually does when not outright suppressing it. Due to that, it becomes far more difficult to overlook or ignore her or any other mana user with such a gap in power compared to him. Furthermore, in this state, her presence draws attention to traits she herself identifies with most, or at least leans into at this time. It also partially carries her intent with it, something that forms the basis for a common communication among mana users despite the, at times, extreme differences between various species and their cultures.
Through this, she could then make her annoyance clear by pushing it into her intent when she caught someone from the large group trying to interrupt her. Not even needing to glare at him for this, her focus thus stayed on the newest arrival as he worked through the shock of sensing her power while gathering the nerves to answer.
"The one whose ship you're using." The man finally replied after a few moments of stunned silence.
Surprised by the revaluation, the twelve people between them spun halfway toward the man, unintentionally creating a path through their formation. Stunned, they only turned their heads to follow his movements as he used that gap to step forward with his arms crossed before his chest, ready to confront Neandra.
"And?" Neandra asked unperturbed.
"First, I want to know what happened to my subordinates. And if they're still alive, I'll take them back and we'll forget you ever did anything to them. Though if they aren't, well then we'll have a problem." The man said.
Not letting the brief pause she internally took at those words show, Neandra held a quick telepathic conversation with Darganth before answering.
"Interesting, what kind of problem do you think you could be for me?" She asked.
"Surely you're captives have already spilled everything about our organization that they know." The man answered her. Chuckling slightly at the questioning look his words got him from Neandra, he added, "Come on, I know these guys. Most of them would sell each other out for a free meal, so of course I always expected them to turn on our boss the moment it saves their skin."
"That doesn't change my question." Neandra told him with a smirk.
At this, the man's expression twisted in confusion. Blinking a few times with a blank look on his face, he took a moment to process her words before bursting out in laughter.
"Don't overestimate yourself, your power has its limits. While you might've been someone of importance where you come from, here you have no allies. And if I want to, I can have my people make it impossible to establish any sort of influence in this realm."
Unfolding his arms, the man's posture relaxed as he lectured Neandra with surprising sincerity. Not even during the thinly veiled threat at the end did his expression show glee or a similar emotion, with his eyes rather appearing as if he regretted even having to speak those words.
Already about to slap down his offer before he could even fully make it, Neandra briefly paused at his tone. While she certainly didn't like being threatened, the fact that he seemingly did so out of care for his subordinates and the respectful tone he kept during it bought him at least enough goodwill to not be incinerated on the spot.
Though in the resulting brief pause during which she chose her new reply, some members of the larger group seemed to get a wrong impression from her silence.
Stepping forward to come to her aid, one of them contradicted the man's words, "Oh, but she has all the allies she needs. The high priestess has personally permitted me to use everything that's in her authority to recruit someone of her talents. And even destroying whichever of the three pirate groups you're part of wouldn't need the goddesses' approval, so watch out with the threats you make."
The moment the man finished his words, pandemonium broke out in the two other subgroups that made up the crowd they had arrived as. With it, two more individuals stepped in front of their clearly outraged colleagues, their expressions toward the pirate no less unfriendly as they spoke up.
"Yes, yes, but so can we." One of the two spoke.
"Well, at least one of us. With the embarrassing setbacks your organization recently suffered, I wouldn't even trust one of you guys to clean the floors in my house anymore." The woman to his right interrupted, her eyes focused on the man, "And unlike that vain goddess the idiot over there follows, our boss doesn't require converting to a religion that prays to him as a nonnegotiable condition for even an alliance."
With the second sentence, the woman turned to the first out of their group of twelve who had extended his offer to Neandra.
Thanks to her words, Darganth could also finally connect him to one of the organizations he knew about, more precisely the church of the sole god among the three ascendants that ruled over much of the city and the realm shard it exists in. Though that still left the question of which of them serves which of the other two, as he didn't know enough about the two ascendants to connect them to either insignia.
Before Darganth could spend long deliberating on the question, his thoughts drifted back to the presence as the pirate spoke up, "And I have no intention of getting caught in that conflict of yours. I'm just trying to get my subordinates back, you can fight over her after I made my deal."
"Save yourself the time. They are serving their time for the lives they took, you can have them back in twenty-odd years when they are done. As for the starweaver, consider it compensation for the property damage they caused." Neandra said.
"You can't b-" Before the man even finished the first sentence, Neandra interrupted him, "If you can find the right universe, you can take it up with my ally, it were his subordinates they killed after all. Though I should warn you that even your boss wouldn't survive the trip because he isn't just stronger than even me, but also less patient."
Hearing her sharp tone, a few of the three ascendants' subordinates couldn't help but laugh at the man's misfortune. Not missing their taunts, the pirate's eye twitched as he forced himself to stay calm.
Taking a deep breath, he steadied his growing frustrations before speaking, "Then I'll tell my boss as much. Though I can't guarantee that he'll be as accepting of this fact as I am forced to be."
Turning to leave with those words, the pirate barely made it two meters when the church's enforcer stepped into his path.
"Kelzon," The man said, standing his ground even as his far superior opponent raised an eyebrow in response to his actions, "Tell your boss that she is off limits, or the goddess herself might remind him why he's called the drowning captain these days."
Stopping his arm halfway after it reflexively twitched toward the other man's face at the mention of his boss' nickname, Kelzon let out a heavy breath before asking, "For now?"
Briefly glancing at Neandra's impatient expression, the enforcer answered, "As long as she could still find a place in my goddess's design."
With those words, he stepped back to the side, clearing the path for the pirate to leave the hall. Waiting for the massive doors to shut behind him, he then turned to Neandra only. Though as he met her eyes with an inviting smile on his lips, he suddenly froze as he was met with an icy stare in return.
"If the goal of the stunt was to curry favor with me, it failed miserably." She said in an icy tone.
"As if it would've worked otherwise." The man said, "No, that was simply to ensure our discussion doesn't have a time limit."
Only showing a slight reaction to his words, Neandra sarcastically commented in a low tone, "That doesn't help your case."
Speaking just loud enough for the three to hear her, Neandra's words drew out looks of shock in them. Using that opportunity to glance at Darganth, she wordlessly asked for approval to use one of their backup plans.
While he had said that he would only prepare it for an emergency, she was sure he could see the writing on the wall too. But they had simply underestimated the impact her arrival would cause in the realm fragment. Getting some attention from the established organization was something they had expected, planned even, but from the expressions she saw before her, Neandra knew that she had shown too much power.
And though it would take one of the three ascendants personally intervening for her to be worried about their safety, their plans could be completely derailed with far less. As such, when she had realized just how invested they were in recruiting her during the conversation, she understood that they might have to take drastic actions.
But just as she saw him nod ever so slightly to indicate his agreement with her silent request, Neandra's attention was drawn back to the woman as she spoke again.
"You'll get used to it, it's typical for them. Just because their leader has a divinity, they think her doctrines are infallible, so they simply make decisions for people in their stead." She said.
Sighing at the woman's obvious attempt to smear her rival organization, Neandra almost sighed in relief when she heard Darganth step closer. Though before he reached her side, the woman's next words caused him to pause and her eyes to snap wide open in interest, "And that despite neither prophecy nor wisdom or any other domain that would warrant such a belief in her words being a part of her divinity.
In regard to that point, Neandra had to give the goddess some credit. While many of the rumors surrounding her portrayed her as fickle and somewhat unreliable, neither the pirates they had captured nor the, admittedly superficial, investigations Irsyr had ordered had managed to uncover what exactly the goddess's divinity was. The only thing that they knew was that it were at least two unrelated domains, though not which ones or how many closely related concepts formed either group.
With her interest obvious in her expression, the second man among them, the one not serving the goddess, quickly spoke up. Mentally noting to ask whether Darganth knew which species the green-skinned humanoid man belonged to, a small grin simultaneously crept on her lips as she listened to him freely giving out what had to be expensive to obtain intel.
"Beauty and war are her two domains, though we suspect she is actively trying to acquire a third, something specific. And it is to note that we don't know if it's truly just those two or if we accidentally attributed another domain's ability to either of the two." He said.
"War?"
"The concept, not the element." The man clarified, much to Neandra's relief. From what Darganth told her, divinities of elements were both harder to form and had more potential, making it important to clarify the type in the two cases where they shared a name with a concept.
"That's certainly a helpful piece of information." Neandra commented with amusement in her tone.
At the same time, Darganth finally arrived next to her. Still displaying only his wings as draconic features, something that was hardly an identifying factor on its own, he stepped to Neandra's side with a confidence that contrasted his weak presence so strongly that it slightly unsettled the three enforcers.
"But nothing more, so I think we need to escalate this to a higher authority if we want to achieve our goals."
As he spoke, Darganth let a dragon scale that was distinctly not his own appear between his fingers in a flash of silver. Pushing a minuscule amount of his draconic mana into it, he let a symbol flare up on its outer sides before throwing it toward the three enforcers with a flick of his hand.
Landing in the palms of the woman as her hand shot forward to catch it, her gaze kept lingering on Neandra and Darganth as she slowly brought it closer and turned the inscribed side toward her. Unsure what to expect, she hesitantly lowered her gaze a moment later, only for her eyebrows to furrow when she saw the symbol glowing before her eyes.
Seeing her reaction, the two men quickly followed suit and glanced at the symbol, only for all three's eyes to snap toward Darganth a brief moment later.
The moment their eyes met his, Darganth then let his dragon mana burst forth. Actively suppressing any parts that would display his nature beyond those shared by all dragons, he also didn't manifest the illusion of his true form behind him. Originally, the plan had even called for Neandra to conjure an illusion of a vitaeda dragon, or among humanoids more commonly known as lifebringer dragons and the kin of the dragon goddess Idaia, they weren't sure whether that would be a smart idea in the long run.
Instead, they relied on the token with Idaia's personal signature, and thus also hints of her presence, as well as hiding any other indications of which dragon species Darganth belonged to, to hopefully create a false impression. Not only would the identity of a vitaeda dragon draw far less scrutiny than that of a Locis, but the goodwill that Idaia's kin had across the multiverse far outweighed the fact that he could more easily imitate a Locis.
While he could rely on and cash in the direct favors owed to them thanks to his identity as the progenitor of dragonkind, people who owed such favors were few and tended to be powerful enough not to bother with such remote regions of the astral. But that didn't mean that lifebringer dragons weren't active in these regions, just that they acted purely out of compassion there and not because someone made a deal with them to save or restore a certain universe.
As such, they enjoyed the same reputation across practically the whole multiverse. And with that reputation as backing, Darganth spoke to the three enforcers with a grin, "Now, for a few ground rules. Firstly, next time we'll want to meet with someone higher-ranking. Someone like the high priestess. I'm assuming each of your organizations has a rough equivalent?"
Pausing briefly until all three people before him nodded, Darganth then continued, "Secondly, we'll only meet on our terms. We have some plans beforehand, so I'll contact you when we're ready to discuss any potential cooperation. Anything else that you'd need to know, I'll get to you in the same way, understood?"
Seeing them nod at his question, Neandra raised her hand and telekinetically pulled back the dragon scale the woman still held.
"Now then, I believe that means this is the end of this meeting. Oh, and be thorough in your report, I don't want to have to repeat anything I already told you to your bosses." Neandra told them.
Smiling when they acknowledged her words, Neandra briefly let her gaze linger on the group as they gave them a few more polite words as farewell. Waiting until they had taken the first steps on their way to leave before turning around herself, she followed after when Darganth started making his way back to the starweaver.