The years were creeping up towards the final days of the shifting of the Tides of the World. Chikere was less than a year from having to depart- though the exact timing of that wasn’t clear even for her. She just knew she didn’t want to be late.

Before that, however, she thought it was finally time to deal with her arm. Or maybe… too late. She’d find out when she made the attempt. The length of time would make it quite complicated, as was the fact that nothing was left of her arm. Then again, healing it from being split unevenly up the middle was not something viable to begin with.

She went to Catarina to talk about the subject. “You offered to help grow back my arm before…” Chikere said. “Is it still possible?”

Catarina frowned. “There’s… something that can do it. But I can’t help you directly, not at this point. There’s no memory of your arm to work with.”

“I remember it,” Chikere countered.

Catarina shook her head. “Not good enough. With this long, your body and soul have developed to work without it.”

The swordswoman nodded, “I’d been given the idea to use a phoenix bone poultice, but I don’t think that will work anymore. Maybe a phoenix noodle soup?”

“If phoenixes were so easy to find, maybe,” Catarina said. “But it would require special preparation, not just… chopping it up into a pot.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how to do that,” Chikere admitted. “Anything beyond slicing something up, I mean.”

“The other option… I do my best to keep track of valuable materials and unique opportunities, both for myself and others we know,” the formation grandmaster began to explain. “What you need is Dubet’s Heart. It only grows in the middle of the Bloodsoaked Nebula, feeding off the death of the previous war.”

“So I just go… take it?”

“Something like that,” Catarina laughed. “Expect resistance. Some will be there, intending to harvest it for their own use or to sell it. And the surroundings are not friendly either. The great quantities of energy in the area grow all sorts of creatures even lacking food sources. They would be quite happy to devour such a thing to improve their healing abilities or recover old wounds.”

“So you’re saying… I just have to go snatch one. Do you know if there will actually be any?”

“I do. I can tell you where it is, even, and how to prepare it for usage.”

-----

Hoyt met her outside Catarina’s laboratory area, where she spent most of her time.

“Good day,” Chikere nodded to him. “I presume you aren’t just leaning against the wall for fun?”

“I heard your conversation.”

Chikere nodded, “I decided it was time to get my arm back.”

“There’s a reason she knows about Dubet’s heart,” Hoyt said plainly.

“And that reason is…?” Chikere was not great at understanding people, so she’s prefer it said straight out.

“She was going to use it for something,” Hoyt explained.

“For what?” Chikere asked.

“If she wanted you to know that, she would have told you,” Hoyt shook his head. “Maybe I said too much already. I just wanted you to know you should appreciate her doing this for you.”

“I do,” Chikere said. “And I will remind myself to say that clearly upon my return.”

“You’re going alone?” Hoyt asked as she began to walk away.

“Should I not? Based on my understanding, getting in and out secretly might be best. And… I don’t plan on traveling in a way others can accomplish. Did you want to come along? I can’t offer anything except my words and the offer to slay your enemies. Though the latter is pretty much always available for my friends regardless.”

“I will admit you’re probably effective enough alone. Just know that you can ask if you need help.”

“I do!” Chikere nodded. “But here in the upper realms, our only enemies are mutual. The exceptions to that I would usually prefer to fight alone, regardless of the outcome. I think this time, it is best if I attempt it alone. I can flee swiftly, if I need to.”

Hoyt nodded.

Chikere finished walking outside. The zone around the laboratory was quite extensive, but eventually she reached an area where flying was possible- no formations holding her back. She walked up into the air one step at a time until she was floating above Xankeshan. She continued her motions until she was further out of its influence.

Then she drew her blade. This, too, was a test. Perhaps it would be better to travel by ship, but being able to move independently was preferred. She raised the sword above her head and swung it down, the entire motion taking more than a full second, many times slower than any normal attack she would make. The tip of the blade dragged and cut through nothing- space itself- opening a seam that she stepped through.

Chikere did not know if she could claim her method to be fast or slow, efficient or inefficient. What it was was a method that suited her. Like when she ascended to the upper realms, she cut open a tunnel in space itself. The difference was that the act of ascension itself seemed to aid the cultivator, making possible an impossible task. Whether it was that the cultivators gained temporary and unfathomable insights or something else, Chikere didn’t know- she only knew it was not so easy to repeat the same thing. Moving through the upper realms with a bit more power and perhaps a bit less swiftly, however, she could manage.

She moved forward through a space with only blurred lights of the stars, eventually coming out weeks later… judging by the stars… half the distance she intended to go and a good ten degrees in the wrong direction. Even determining her own position took several hours with special tools- she could not just casually find her position. Otherwise she could have only placed herself in the grand scheme of the Scarlet Midfields due to the flow of energy through the greater galaxy itself, not exactly a precise measure. Though every ten or twenty systems was likely to be occupied, so if she had gotten truly lost she could have flung herself a much shorter distance towards one of them and gotten directions.

Her second tunnel was more accurate in direction, but slightly too far. She was only just barely in the strange pervasive miasma of the Bloodsoaked Nebula. She was aiming for a particular part.

At the end of her final tunnel, she found herself pulled into real space by the massive gravity of a nearby star- an extremely tiny point that she had not even been able to see. She was not so careless that she would end up inside a star or a planet, but she felt it almost dragging her in, despite it appearing almost as small as more distant stars. How big was it? Certainly measured in simple kilometers instead of hundreds of thousands like was proper for a star. Chikere knew there was some name for those. Neutron stars, perhaps?

It was possible for life sustaining planets to appear about them, but this one should not have any typical forms of life. Instead, she was looking for a large ring, a shell of debris that might have once been a planet in the same orbit. Yet according to Catarina, it seemed too uniform to be entirely accidental.

-----

It took some time to find her goal, but Chikere found that like many planets, the strange feature drew energy to it, so it was almost as if it signaled its location. As she descended towards it, she could certainly feel something special about parts of it. The ring was thin in both thickness and width- that is to say, it was only a few hundred kilometers on the flat side, and at most a few hundred meters deep, between the inside and outside of the ring.

Where it was there at all, of course. There were vast gaps, where whatever it was before had not collapsed into its current shape. In short, Chikere could find her way around while exploring the entire thing… she only needed to walk somewhere around a billion or two kilometers. At a thousand kilometers per day that would take… three years. So she would have to keep up a much faster pace than that. She still had to return, after all.

If the place had a proper gravity or atmosphere it would not have been possible. Instead, she more or less flew forward, letting things sweep by and occasionally adjusting herself on the inside of the ring. Most of what she was stone, like a cobblestone road made of asteroids. A few plants existed, forming their ecosystems with bubbles of air and water, growing from the nutrients in the soil and the light of the miniscule sun. And likely a few heaping doses of upper energy. For all that this place clearly did not produce much of its own, this was a powerful location.

The other things she passed tended to be some of the few mobile, living inhabitants. Batlike creatures and worms and many other things. She did not slow her speed, so she could not even begin to react to see what they might regard as important things to defend- treasures, food sources, or anything similar.

Then there were a few people- generally with ships. Her rapid speed gave them little time but to draw weapons and flare their energy, at which point she had generally already passed them by, her relative motion extreme.

Her speed did make her search more efficient, with the downside of not taking in all of the interesting sights… and that when she approached something of value it being very difficult to slow down. The first thing of great worth she felt she couldn’t catch with her eyes- and she nearly turned around as she careened past it, except that she was quite certain it had no relation to the particular bloom she was looking for.

Upon thinking about her sense of what she passed, she identified it as a worldheart- or rather, a small fragment of one. There was no chance the complete worldheart would be present in this place after however many centuries it had been in its current state. Even if others were a bit more cautious in their progression, there had to be many who would have found such a great call. That particular shard had simply been sharp, not quite a blade… but not terribly unlike one either. That was why it caught her attention.

Chikere reluctantly slowed herself, though she knew it might mean her mission would fail- regardless of the current existence of what she sought. Catarina’s information would be solid, as much as it could be. There certainly should have been at least one Dubet’s Heart growing here, both when the information was gathered and in general. The only issue was that even if there were many, they could take decades or up to a century to bloom- a moment of greatness that lasted a scant few ‘days’ by standard planetary terms.

After that, the building sized flower would shrivel up and leave behind a small bulb, which was the part of the phenomenon known as Dubet’s Heart that was harvested.

Chikere didn’t like to think about the various things that might stop her beyond someone trying to kill her. It was possible none were in bloom at this moment. They would not grow away from this location or somewhere quite similar- there were other potential locations in the Bloodsoaked Nebula, but they were less consistent. Then there were the people and beasts. They might harvest the plants, and because of their rarity they wouldn’t necessarily wait until it was through the full cycle. It would not be nearly as potent, of course- but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be pawned off as a fully ripe version. And some would have lesser injuries that did not require restoring a long removed limb to perfect working status.

It would require some luck to stumble upon the opportunity- but what Integration cultivator was not lucky? Being born with ‘talent’ and surviving to use it, learning the right things from the right people or even managing to steal them, growing to this level of power either through Ascension or otherwise. Only a tiny fraction of people could ever achieve that, no matter how much they would support each other or fight against each other along the way.

So it was that after a mere three months of traversing her way along the strange ring that might have once been one or a handful of planets that Chikere sensed something. She did not know what Dubet’s Heart would feel like, beyond powerful, but she could certainly feel that. And more than a handful of Integration cultivators and beasts of equivalent strength. No sword cultivators, sadly.

Chikere had sailed above them before either side could properly react, and she took some time to slow and reverse her direction. She had to hurry, as she did not want to arrive at the conflict after it concluded. Once someone had something of value well in hand, it was simpler to flee than to chase after them.

Slight vibrations could be felt through the barely substantial structure of the ring as she returned, though the little light meant it was hard for her eyes to pick out anything of note until she approached closer. It came to mind that she had missed a combatant- the plant itself. Because of course the continuation of its life was in its interests- or those of its kind, at least. That was what living things liked to do, though Chikere herself had no interest in that specifically. Unless swords counted as life? Probably not. Even the one grown on a tree couldn’t be considered alive at the current moment.