Yeah. Love you.

He's definitely still on top of the situation. Now it's just a matter of picking the exact right moment to kidnap the planet, and planning out the theatrics...

It would be interesting to include the healing aura. But it would interfere with them ritually sacrificing the purity-keepers - but if he just had Elaneth-imire burn all the purity-keepers on the spot, that would undermine the cult's self-determination - perhaps if Elaneth-imire burned all the purity-keepers individually as each ritual sacrifice was about to begin... yes, that feels right. And, hmm... light and darkness. Have the planet arrive in total darkness - use conjured obstacles to block light from reaching the destination, maybe - and then take away the obstacles and flood the place with healing aura and announce the end of the world. Yeah. They can do this.

The prophecies they're trying to match are kind of astonishingly pragmatic. The cult's criteria for the prophesied end of the world are very very close to just being exactly the criteria for a situation in which their revolution would be likely to succeed if they tried it. There is a prophesied figure called the Destroyer, but they seem like more of a metaphor than a person and could easily be interpreted that way. Fortunately, they could just as easily be interpreted as referring to Raika-seren, at least once he claims credit for the world ending.

He passes the plan to Elaneth-imire, confers with him about it for a few minutes while watching for the right moment, and then gives him the go-ahead.

The sixth planet in the Ityen system vanishes, and reappears in perfect darkness orbiting a similar star in a different universe.

Raika-seren focuses most of his eavesdropping on them, keeping track of their panic. And oh boy are they panicking. Except for the cultists, who are getting increasingly excited and then finally springing into action once they reach consensus that it's really definitely the end of the world this time.

The revolution is beautifully organized. Raika-seren is impressed. They hit hard and win fast, while everyone else is still panicking over the sudden darkness and total cutoff of communications with the outside world. A few of the cultists wonder whether the world might be ending a little too thoroughly for their efforts to matter, but they don't let those doubts slow them down: they have a job to do and they're going to do it.

Two hours in, he has Elaneth-imire burn the planetary blackout curtains, and he floods the planet with his healing aura and broadcasts to everyone on it: The world has ended. A new world begins.

Some of the cultists are kind of alarmed to discover that the Destroyer is a real person who can talk and everything. But they adapt.

As soon as enough reports have confirmed that everyone really did hear that and the whole world really is covered in highly restorative golden light, they call for volunteers to try talking back directly. Of the volunteers, they select the one with the highest rank. It takes them about five minutes from the moment the healing aura appears to the moment their chosen representative says,

Um, hello. Are you the Destroyer?

Hmm. What's the best approach to take with this particular alien...

That would be a fair description, yes. Who are you?

Assistant Coordinator Sikyal Tegati! How can I help you?

...he likes this one.

I am enriched by your acquaintance, Assistant Coordinator Sikyal Tegati. I would like to assist you in establishing order.

Assistant Coordinator Sikyal Tegati has an almost Taliar-ish combination of sociability, optimism, and willingness to dig into hard problems. They're delighted to be the liaison between the cult and the unexpectedly helpful Destroyer.

The ritual sacrifices of the purity-keepers go forward on an accelerated schedule, with Elaneth-imire dramatically incinerating them on cue. The cult handles almost everything by itself, but here and there the Taliars lend a hand. It's astonishingly tidy for a revolution. Whoever founded this cult understood their own society on a very deep level.

Meanwhile, at around the fourth hour, someone finally dares to send a ship to the Ityen system actually looking for the vanished planet.

The cult isn't quite ready to take on the rest of the galaxy yet. Raika-seren vanishes the exploratory vessel.

The military concludes that it's definitely all part of the same problem. They tighten their information security so as not to cause a mass panic. Sure, everyone knows something happened to Ityen-6, but everyone does not yet know that what happened to Ityen-6 might have been planet-eating filth creatures, and they'd like to keep it that way. Raika-seren is happy to let them do his work for him. He goes back to coordinating with Sikyal.

How long before the coup's ready to handle another planet?

I dream of letting them have a whole day, but I don't expect to be that lucky. I'd give them maybe another four hours before I'd expect it not to be a disaster? The condition the other planet is in when it arrives also matters. I'm hoping to be able to just kidnap planets one by one and bring them here to be dealt with by the cult, until enough of them have accepted the cult's consensus that I can put them all back and let them convert the rest. Have to leave Tseiza-3 where it is because we have no way to test teleporting a planet with dead Sphere portals attached, but any of the others are theoretically kidnappable, it's all down to which ones look most promising when the time comes.

Does Dawn still have their set of Silmarils? In principle you can do crazy time dilation with those, give the cult as long as it needs, but I don't know if they'd have developed it yet, we were admittedly handicapped by my father being dead but it took us years...

Yeah, we have them, says Elaneth-imire. I haven't heard anything about crazy time dilation, though.

Encourage your alt of my father to figure it out before the next ridiculous large-scale crisis, it's very useful.

Will do.

Raika-seren has to vanish three more ships from the Ityen system before the cult has their planet stabilized well enough to think about outreach. They're really starting to pile up, and some of them aren't supplied to last indefinitely floating in space, so he does the obvious thing and lets them find the planet they're looking for.

As a test case, it's very promising. The crews of the exploratory vessels observe that an alien force with no discernible physical form has been moving them around like someone playing a cosmic board game, and they see the cult planet covered in golden light and efficiently adapting to the new situation, and they join the consensus in front of them after only a few minutes of dithering each.

It's going to be harder than this when it's a whole planet at a time. Society versus society, instead of society versus individual.

Yeah. Any planets that seem better-suited -

He's thinking about it. There are a few candidates. It's easier to think of planets that he wants to do early-but-not-first than planets that would work well for the very first try. It would be nice to use the planet with the smallest population first, but that's Tseiza-3 by a wide margin, and keeping Tseiza-3 cut off from the rest of the galaxy long enough without moving it anywhere would be difficult to the point where they might actually slip up and let a message get through, and that would be bad. The planet with the next smallest population is one of the candidates he's considering; the two that he wants to do early-but-not-first are the aliens' first-ever colony world (their homeworld is abandoned) and the galaxy's most renowed center of culture and learning.

And then a rumour escapes the military about two fleets and a scout vanishing exactly the way Ityen-6 vanished, from the location of a newly discovered planetful of filth creatures.

He tracks it. Skimming the surface thoughts of thousands of people at a time is starting to be second nature, it's kind of amazing, but no time to think about that now - it's not quite to the point of mass panic but people are definitely getting worried - they're not going to make it another hour before the first riot. Okay. He tells Sikyal to get ready, and he watches all his candidate planets, and when one of them hits just the right point - widespread unease, but not yet to the point of disrupting social order - he has Elaneth-imire kidnap it.

Ityen-6 welcomes their new neighbour.

There's some violence, but not much, and mostly disorganized. He timed it right. The biggest problem is the purity-keepers, and Elaneth-imire incinerates those whenever one tries to hurt someone. They get the picture. They switch allegiance to the cult of the Destroyer, most of them sincerely. Elaneth-imire floods the planet in his healing aura for a few minutes when the conversion is complete.

Next planet. This one is already rioting. This is going to be the least fun part of the whole process, when people are dying and the best thing Raika-seren can do for them is not to intervene but to watch—

The rest of the galaxy freaks the fuck out. But the cult of the Destroyer establishes their hold on the second planet even faster than the first. Raika-seren picks out a third and has Elaneth-imire bring it over. Four. Five. Both vanished fleets and the vanished scout. Six. Seven. Eight. And all of the ships sent to look for all of these planets, they're coming pretty fast now, it's getting difficult for the two of them to keep up; they pull in Liran-alore to help with miscellaneous teleportation. There's mass rioting in the galaxy at large, but they're going as fast as they can, the best he can do for them is watch, the best he can do for them is watch...

The tenth planet they kidnap is the home of the military headquarters. This is going to be the hardest one. He drops all his eavesdropping on the original galaxy - very few things that could happen there would affect what he's going to do in the next couple of hours - and focuses on the situation at hand.

Elaneth-imire uses his sensory power to spy extensively on the planet while the emissaries from Ityen-6 approach. It looks like the rioting has been surprisingly minimal on this one. He's not sure if that's a good sign.

The weapons development people don't have their long-range black hole generator fully worked out yet, but they have enough of a prototype to set it off on the surface of their own fucking planet, which they manage to do because the Taliars were watching the launch infrastructure, not the payloads themselves, because who fucking does that—he catches it in time to mitigate the damage with landshaping, and then he decides that enough is enough and systematically destroys every large-scale weapon on and around the planet.

They find this very intimidating!

Raika-seren - can't be horrified he's too busy to be horrified he has to keep on top of this, it sucked down half a city before Elaneth-imire stopped it but he did stop it and it's not going to happen again - he listens as hard as he can, listens to everything, he is the flow of information -

And they'll have resurrection pretty soon and altogether this is a very clean handling of genocide aliens. He doesn't interrupt this. 

The tenth planet is stubborn, but they're outnumbered, local consensus is against them, and also they have no weapons, and most of them disagree with the decision of the technicians who set off the black hole device. They accept the cult of the Destroyer as the new foundation of society.

Which is good, because it was getting a little crowded in this star system.

Raika-seren has Elaneth-imire put all the planets back where they came from. They send emissaries and reassuring messages to their neighbours. The neighbours' reactions are mixed. The Taliars keep one planet-sized healing aura active on Ityen-6 at all times, for the symbolism, and they have the converted planets send their emissaries to the planets that are having the worst trouble with rioting, and they deploy the second available planet-sized healing aura to reward conversion. It goes... more smoothly than they had any right to expect. So of course Raika-seren is disappointed in himself for not doing an even better job. People, probably millions of people, have died today who wouldn't have died if he'd made better decisions.

But if he'd known what the better decisions were, he'd have made them. He's not going to waste time hating himself while he has shit to do.

He coordinates with Sikyal and eavesdrops on the galaxy and directs his alts for hours. When the last planet converts, it's been about a day in total. What a day. He feels like going home and sleeping for twelve hours, but there's something he needs to do first...

Assistant Coordinator Sikyal Tegati consents to be teleported to the Destroyer's home to meet them.

When they see Raika-seren standing inside the anonymous conjured space station, they need a moment to collect their thoughts.

"You're - really an outsider," they murmur wonderingly. "I - I wasn't sure - "

"Yeah," he says. "You really need to push the point of view that lets you say 'outsider' instead of, uh, a certain other phrase. First of all because your people attacked my planet and killed almost everyone on it, and second of all because I'm not totally sure that every single member of your species hasn't caught the wing contagion from my healing aura."

...Sikyal has to take another moment to absorb that.

"I am enriched by your acquaintance," they say after a few seconds. "I'll make sure we prioritize reintegrating the people from the Maze of the Dead - they've started withdrawing already, right?"