He is hiding inside of Earth's moon and extending his sensory power toward the planet; it seemed like a sensible way to lurk undetected nearby. But using his sensory power this way is a little disorienting and he hasn't quite—ah, there it goes. Yes, if he tries, he can get his sensory range to extend at least into the first layer of the portal maze. He starts working on the deeper portals thereby revealed. It's slow going, but if he managed to hold his perception on a complete route from out here all the way to the humans' bizarre maze-dwelling planet, he could wait until no one was looking and then bounce all the way through unnoticed.

Probably worth it.

Yeah, that's my analysis. I'm going to try it if I can get the requisite view.

And he gets back to putting his country together.

He's so much calmer than he was a few weeks ago- if aliens had done this to him then he would have just methodically gone through and teleported each of their planets into its star -

What shall I do with the remaining prisoners? inquires Nezhefena.

Are they all suicidal?

Not being personally telepathic, I can't tell, but I didn't get that impression from what I overheard of the interrogations.

Then we can put them all in Lórien. Mental image. They'll run into each other if and only if that's good for their happiness and stability.

Useful. Thank you, I'll do that.

She does that.

Anything else you need me for? If not, I think I'll return to Nuime.

By all means. Esarkan should probably send for updates if he wants them, I anticipate we'll be busy.

I'll let him know. Good luck.

Off she goes.

There's a lot to do putting his kingdom back together, only part of his mind's tracking what the Taliars are doing.

Raika-seren is exploring this alien society via mental eavesdropping.

Turns out there's a secret cult on Ityen-6 that's heard about the successive fleet disappearances and is wondering whether this is the prophesied end of the world and, if so, when exactly they should launch their revolution. He focuses his eavesdropping. Their revolution honestly sounds pretty great, apart from the ritual murder of all the purity-keepers, but ritual murder would at least get the purity-keepers out of the picture and make way for the cultists' new, non-genocidal social order.

Plausible angle: kidnap this planet traumatically enough to set off the revolution, wait for them to establish themselves, get in contact with the resulting government, ask them to help deal with the rest of their species. The rest of the species would probably be worried about the disappearing planet, and might panic unproductively, that's the major flaw he can see in this approach.

How close contact is this civilization in, would they have an opening to stage some kind of natural calamity that put the planet out of touch?

He listens for people who are engaged in interstellar communication. Seems like every planet is exchanging at least one or two messages per second with the rest of the galaxy, although many of them are automated; a vanished one would be noticed in pretty short order, although it might take the rest of the planets a little time to confirm that no, none of them could reach it, it wasn't just a problem with one or two communicators getting misaligned. It'd have to be one hell of a natural calamity...

...some of the weapons research people, unfortunately not on Ityen-6 in particular, are working on a weapon of the kind that one soldier predicted, something that can be launched via FTL and detonate on arrival, and when detonated it's supposed to create a black hole... hard to figure out how to arrange for them to have a testing accident that takes out a totally different planet in a different star system, though. Also, wow, these people are terrifyingly dedicated to the extermination of other sapient species. Raika-seren is glad about the cultists. The cultists give him hope.

Yeah, wow, what a disaster of a species. Alright, cultist-kidnapping it is, though they still don't have a stabilization power for planets they snatch out of orbit.

With Raika-seren spying on the aliens, they can afford to wait on the cultist-kidnapping for a little while; he'll be able to keep an eye on the likelihood of imminent mass panic. Maybe Elaneth-imire will branch the stabilization power fast enough. Alternately, there's probably a way to fix an orbitally destabilized planet, and Elaneth-imire could babysit it with teleportation and landshaping for the interim if necessary.

It's good to have that as a backup plan. Still trying to figure out how to throw a black hole at where Independence used to be?

Yep, they sure are still doing that. They're very clever and brave and resourceful and why did they have to aim these resources at such terrible fucking goals.

It's a good question!

As far as he can tell the answer is literally just 'the ancient purity-keepers made a call', with maybe a latent implication that the ancient purity-keepers expected that all the other sapient species would probably consider them abominations so they might as well be sure to strike first? It's honestly really depressing. But there are the cultists to eavesdrop on whenever he starts feeling down. The cultists are so sensible.

Only the one planet has any cultists?

There are a few of them who are visiting other planets right now, but they haven't branched out substantially - they don't have the numbers to accomplish a second planetary takeover, so they're concentrating themselves on just the one planet in order to be ready for the end of the world to arrive at any moment.

Well, here it is. Being very restrained about it.

They are such a restrained end of the world!