Regeth and I quickly made it to the inner wall of the Core. I slowed down considerably the closer we got, wondering how we were to get out and if Magus the 2nd would try to cause trouble for us. The inner wall of the Core was not made out of cr, as I had expected, instead, it was an interesting mix of technologies that allowed them to harvest as many sources of energy as possible from the sun.

“So… there is an energy field here to protect the panels of matter underneath?” I asked as we flew around the curved wall towards a gateway. The curved wall seemed to sparkle and buzz with some kind of energy. I wasn’t sure what it was doing. It almost acted like a bug zapper, crackling every now and then.

“Yes, clever isn’t it? It is using the power of the sun to harvest power from the sun. It is one of the things that the Tela have always done even before we became virtual beings.” He replied

“Harvesting power from the sun?” I asked.

“No, using the power of something to gain power over it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said as I morphed down into a human form with my cr. I was just more used to moving as a human, not as an eight-legged stop sign. It was comical to me seeing that I was now the same size as a Barbie doll. Since I was three times the size of Regeth I was wearing him like a backpack while we moved closer to a circular gateway.

“What should I expect beyond this point?” I asked as we drew near. I wasn’t too worried about getting caught, I just didn’t want to cause too much damage on my way out. It was one thing to fight an evil dictator and another to blow up every home and hospital in his country just to get to him. Bad analogy, I need to work on those. - I thought as I hovered closer to the edge of the opening. There was an iris, currently open, built into the gateway. I half expected it to slam shut the moment the System registered that I was too close to it.

“Beyond here? It is just the normal housing districts and the occasional business that requires the heat of the sun to process ores or cause reactions in creating elements.” He said as I looked around through the portal. Nothing.

“So. Why isn’t Magus trying to stop us?” I said as I drove us through the opening and out into the large open space that divided the inner layer from the next section.

“I… I really don’t know.” Regeth said softly, almost as though he was fearful of tempting fate.

“Is the quickest way out of here straight through these gateways?” I asked as I spied the next one. For miles and miles around us, all I could see were those bubbles that made up Citizen VR homes.

“So… what is the deal with the bubble wrap design?” I asked as I pointed out the vast expanse of bubbles.

“Hmm? Oh, that is what we originally looked like. I thought you knew.”

“What? You all looked like bubbles?”

“Well yes, we sensed through our outer shells and on the underside we had all of our appendages, eating mandibles, and other sensory tentacles.” He replied as I picked up speed, only slowing down through each of the many portals. There was no sound in space beyond our vocal transmissions being piped to each of us through our interfaces. This made the surroundings seem dead, lifeless, and barren. So what was the sound made from earlier concerning the energy field around the interior of the Core? Electrical emp bursts? I had no clue.

“Something must be happening in VR that is drawing his attention away from us,” Regeth said as I started to see a glimmer of stars through the next portal. Sure enough, we had finally made it to the outer surface of the Core!

I would never get over how stunning it was out in space… how absolutely vast everything was. I could feel my need to explore growing.

Everything was dark around us, save for the very distant speckles of stars and the occasional flare of a trash port opening up on the Core behind us. I felt like something was wrong with this area of space. It was just too empty.

“This part of the Galaxy was harvested to make the Core?” I asked, looking around. Something huge moved, blocking out a vast section of stars. It seemed to be moving around us, around the Core that we were beginning to pull away from.

“Um, Regeth…. what the heck is that?” I asked as a burst of light flashed for a moment, washing the area around us, making us stand out in the void of space.

“That… is a Leva and I suggest that we get out of here as fast as possible,” Regeth said with fear in his voice as another pulse of light happened, washing out the area in brightness and casting a wash of light on the surface of the Core behind us. How powerful was this light to be able to do that? And how big was this creature moving around us?

I don’t have many phobias or fears in my life. I have been around the world and messed with some pretty scary things that turned out to be rather benign in reality. Then, someone had to go and make me watch the movie “Jaws” when I was a child. Now, for whatever reason, I always have this fear that something will surge up and bite me when I am swimming in the ocean. For some reason, this creature was spiking the holy heck out of that fear right now. I think it was because I couldn’t see it clearly. It wasn’t until the length of stars became visible to the right that Regeth started to scream that we had to move right now that I snapped out of my fear daze. I slowed time down a little, just enough so that I could hear if Regeth told me to do anything, and zoomed to the side as quickly as I could. Just for a brief moment, I thought my life was going to end from how fast the stars to my right vanished from sight. Something planet-sized and eel-like passed by in a rush. Several quick pulses of light flooded the area in rapid succession, spiraling around the surface of the Leva, flooding the entire area with light the moment the Leva learned that it had missed its prey. Those pulses of light showed me all I hoped to ever see of this monster.

The mouth and nose of the monster looked like they belonged to a blind dragon. It sported a truly massive jaw and mouth filled with something that waved and moved. Teeth tentacles? The body looked like an emaciated bonefish with a dark scaly reflective skin stretched tight along its insane length. I guess the reflective skin was what made it hard to be seen. It got close to the surface of the Core before veering away, swimming around the surface as though it was protecting its brood.

It’s brood?

I sped away, returning time to normal speed so I could talk to Regeth as we vanished into the darkness.

“Was that here because Magus has its children?” I asked, already guessing the truth behind the creature's presence.

“Yes… He is trying to become their alpha so he can build something that his father, Magus the 1st owns, a star citadel.”

“That is crazy, that thing is huge, it could wrap partway around the Core if it wanted to,” I said as I watched the distance to my habitat slowly shrink. George and Tutor had needed to go quite a distance from the Core it seemed.

“Yes, but the technology of the cr makes a perfect cage. She is unable to get her children back no matter how thin the wall is.” Regeth said.

Light flared behind us, more of a soft sad pulse than a hunting strobe.

“How did your race manage to get those things to do anything for you?” I marveled as we passed through complete darkness. If I kept our speed to a jog, we would reach the habitat in a matter of moments. I was maintaining a walking pace so that it would give Regeth time to answer me, arriving would lead to Regeth regaining his freedom and I wanted to get a feel for the guy while he was with me.

“It was done differently back then. We didn’t capture the Leva’s offspring, that would never have worked without cr technology. There were two methods used, to varying degrees of success and cost. One was to befriend the Leva and to guide it to prosperous hunting grounds while slowly training it to labor for us, harvesting and dragging parts of planets for us to build our first dyson spheres with. The second method was to harm the offspring, using them as collateral for labor by the alphas. The first took longer but had better long-term results while the second produced results straight away yet suffered in the long term. They will no longer breed when that method is done.”

“What the heck Regeth?” I asked before I remembered how we treated and broke horses back on earth.

“Every civilization does horrible things to advance its control and power. Don’t judge us, I have seen what your race has done to its own kind for the sake of labor and power.”

“Yeah, I have nothing to say in that regard. Sorry, I know I can’t be a judge of what the Tela have done.” I said as I thought back to the atrocities that had been committed throughout time to various peoples and animal species simply because they were at a disadvantage to others.

A somber silence lasted between us as we both got lost in our own thoughts.

I picked up the pace after a little bit, impatient to finally be able to see George and Tutor again. The habitat was sitting still well out in deep space. I wouldn’t have known where it was if not for the map in my head telling me which way to go. I wondered why I couldn’t see clearly like I had been able to see inside the sun.

Well, that was surprising. - I thought as I read the answer that my alien cr deemed to respond with. It seemed afraid of empty space.

A small dot of blue light turned on a little bit below the direction that I had been heading. It appeared that my AI had noticed our approach. I wondered what sort of welcome I would get.

I angled our movement downwards and approached the light, revealing a ship that looked like a walnut shell. “Huh, kind of looks like a seed.” I mused aloud as I flew closer and landed us onto the surface of the ship, near the light. A section of the hull flowed away, revealing a tiny doll-sized entry for me and Regeth.

“Hello? Is anyone home?” I called out as we entered the large empty space inside the shell.

No one was there to greet us.