Jack and I stood on a hill, overlooking a field in the middle of nowhere. Kalpana wasn’t with us, because she and the other Royals of the Empty-Harvester Colony were meeting to discuss administrative stuff...and afterward, I was 90-percent certain that a large portion of their senior members would be heading to the Valley of Ascension within the Empty-Dream’s Eternal Realm to finally break through to immortality.

Kalpana herself, and a number of her sisters, had already requested prolonged leaves of absence that indicated that they’d not only be securing resources for their own ascent, but they’d gathering materials that would allow the eggs and ‘pupa’ to safely ascend as well. Naturally, I gave her the go-ahead. How could I not? Never mind that I was happy for the Empty-Harvesters as a friend of the colony. The Harvesters would be a much more useful subordinate group once they were all boasting the powers of immortals.

Anywho...Jack and I were out here on our own, overlooking some field. It was quite the pretty field actually. All idyllic and green, with slow waving grasses and flowers, like something out of a painting. However, we’d been living in the Shattered Heavens for quite a while now and had learned that a majority of the terrain here was like this. It wasn’t just the immortals that were closer to the platonic ideal. The very land exemplified what it was supposed to be. Thus in a heavenly realm, the earth was always richer, the stone was always harder, the water was always wetter, the grass always greener...Both literally, and figuratively.

“*Snrkt*”

“What?” I said. Turning towards Jack and giving her a look.

“*Snrkt*”

“What?” I said. Giving her another look as she continued to snicker at my side.

“It’s nothing...It’s nothing...I’m being dumb,” said Jack. Still chuckling to herself.

“Come on...Now I’m curious,” I said.

“Okay, so you know that old joke about how to differentiate your actual friends from your good acquaintances?” said Jack.

I thought Jack’s words over, vaguely recounting having heard a similar joke at some point or the other in time. I couldn’t really remember the timing of the joke, but I think the joke went something along the lines of “Emergency room, dueling seconds, moving, and airport rides… ‘Buddies’, or good acquaintances, were people you hung out with, but it was only your friends that let you be a pain in their ass.”

“Huh...I guess, this ‘is’ a little bit like a ride from the airport,” I said. Somewhat getting the logic that my wife’s thoughts were flowing along, even if I still didn’t get why it had given her such a serious case of the giggles.

“I know, right?! I mean this ascent to a higher plane of existence and form of being, and not just some dumb transcontinental flight, but it’s ‘totally’ the same amount of hassle...And I guess the ordinariness of it all sort of got to me,” laughed Jack.

“Hm...I guess?” I said. Still not getting the humor at the moment. However, then again, maybe I was just too tense at the moment. We weren’t alone in that field. There were thousands of high-powered immortal beings gathered there. All of us were spaced out, like predators in a very tenuous truce.

This field wasn’t just some random field. It was the land where the newly ascended immortals were calculated to arrive at. The space had thinned here just enough that any immortals from the lower worlds would end up funneled here. Which naturally includes our friends from the Shattered World.

The moment we were waiting for came and the ground shattered, becoming a sea of light. Figures began to appear amidst the grass. I was just beginning to sweep the area with my spiritual sense to figure out where our friends were, when suddenly I heard a roaring. I looked up and saw a horde of beings made of smoke, fire, and myriad sinister energies appear. Some had webbed wings, others flew on the wings of flies, wasps, and dragonflies. Many of them had horns. I caught the scent of hell and immediately recognized roughly two-thirds of them as demons. I caught a much fainter scent of the wonderland, and realized that one-third of those forces were fae, who’d elected to disguise themselves as demons to try and capture some slaves for themselves, without taking on the ire of the heavenly realm.

Jack and I exchanged a look, and responded immediately with the kind of “strong objection” we’d gradually learned was respected in the Shattered Heavens. Jack lashed out with branching, tree-sized, bolts of volatile darkness, and an army of fadeling-giants. I joined her by releasing a wave of nullifying-nothingness that erased and attacked all energies that weren’t recognized as friendly. My nullifying-nothingness weakened the demonic and fae armies. The fadeling-giants crushed the demons and fae underfoot, reaping the lives of the rest with their massive swords, axes, and war-hammers.

“You dare!?” bellowed a voice in the distance.

“I dare! I dare! Oh, you best believe I fucking dare! Do you believe this Granny dares to do even more?!” cackled Jack. Eyes blazing with a familiar madness, as she fired a beam of all-consuming darkness into the distance. Reaching through our connection and borrowing my data-analysis abilities, to find the location of the Demon-Lord that had spoken up in outrage.

Everyone heard a howl of pain, fear, and anguish, and I quickly decided to finish things off to keep someone else from doing something troublesome.

“What running away? Good things should be shared with friends, you know?” I growled. Having already located the co-conspirators of the Demon-Lord Jack just ate. Firing a beam of distilled annihilation, an energy created by analyzing my targets and firing out conceptual, and material, antithetical particles at them.

These annihilation rays were essentially antimatter weapons for beings that normally would be able to withstand the physical contradiction of coming across actual antimatter. An upgrade of the nothingness rays that I’d fired the last time. The upgrade enhanced the reverse computation process, and dramatically reduced any usefulness of the immortals’ defenses. Thus Five explosions that shook the entire Shattered Heavens, as five august, and supposedly undying, fae, and infernal, beings met a sudden end. Barely able to defend themselves, never mind, retaliating. Their bodies, spirits, and souls detonated dramatically as their very existence was denied on a fundamental level.

Even I was a little startled to see the effectiveness of my improved void arsenal. Of course, I couldn’t show that. I did my best to look cool and confident as I swept my gaze across to the other immortals. I was even more surprised to see looks of appreciation from many of the other immortals. There was the expected annoyance there too, but a great many faces, either gave us contemplative looks, appreciative looks, and even a few looks of gratitude. This was strange, because aside from the dragons, and a small number of younger immortals, I hadn’t believed we were on good terms with most of these people.

“Huh, I guess those guys weren’t well-liked by this crowd. Cool...that might save us some trouble down the line...maybe. Anyway, let’s grab our friends and GTFO, dearest,” said Jack.

“Right…” I said. Nodding numbly. Still weirdly ill at ease with the increase in attention that we’d gathered. Feeling a little like I’d stepped in something sticky and it’d be a while before I was finally able to scrape it off my shoe.

In any case, after meeting the gaze of the other immortals and doing our best to look nonchalant about everything that had just happened, Jack and I quickly found our friends and got the heck out of there. Moving fast, but being careful to not move so fast that we gave anyone the idea that we were running away.