“We’ve made twelve anchors. Well thirteen, if you count the airship. There is already an anchor at the Yellow Tail tribe. Now, what we need you to do is get these anchors to the other tribes so that we can conduct our negotiations. We understand that it’s going to be a little faster if we have an anchor there between us. And the anchor is only going to work for someone with a gate spell. This is not a full gate. This is just a stone.”
The warriors nodded. Finley had gotten Zan the wizard out to explain what was going on. That day, they were going to do their best to get their message out.
As Sunderland was a very long continent, and the lizard folk had decided not to live right next to each other, it would be simple to just fly the airship across the entire length of the continent or to run across the shoreline.
Simple, but not easy in any way.
Each of the tribes had set up across the shoreline because of the ease of fishing. Some tribes had delved deeper into the woods, but overall, none of them were that far in. Fresh fish was far easier to catch than velociraptor.
With the promise of the legion getting reorganized to fight again so soon, Zan and Finley made it their priority to get to the other tribes. It was probably the only thing that could help the next push. According to the Peace Turtles, most of the other tribes were very interested in fighting as a method of diplomacy. They were less interested in a military action against a similar nation. They would sign up for a fight, but not against other enlightened beings.
Finley couldn’t fault them not wanting to fight the other enlightened. He felt that deep in his soul.
That all the tribes felt that way was reassuring to him. He didn’t know what he was going to do with it, but he thought that was a good place to start from. Now that the dwarves were looking down the road for what had to be a final set of battles, doors were opening all over. Finley was absolutely certain that most of what was going on was because the dwarves now had access to so much money and material that they could make good on their claims to pay for things.
They could reach the Royal treasury, which meant that they could pay. The harvesting of most of their countrymen’s cards left them with extra cards to distribute if needed.
Mindful of the lessons learned by generations of elves that had given cards to the Orcs, the dwarves paid in gold. As much as the people that bought from them wanted their cards, it was the wealth of their nation that they were spending. So, cards were not the first thing to be traded.
When Finley prepared for his first round of negotiations with the various tribes, that was what they were offering him. It wasn’t much, but he could work with it. They offered cards to the lizard folk that signed up to help the war efforts.
Now all they needed to do was to fall in line and become a part of the solution.
---
It wasn’t that Finley didn’t appreciate everything Zan did. It was that he had to rely on her and her energy. She could only castigate so many times a day and he had a lot of work to do. They sent runners with the gate stones nearly two months ago, but those runners hadn’t yet crossed the entire continent. This meant three tribes remained uninformed. Still, he had to work with what he was going to do.
Four days after the Irumian capital was back under their control, Finley was holding court with all 10 tribes that they had contacted so far. The yellowtail tribe and the Peace turtles could speak on their behalf in languages that they had not known and needed a translator for. Tumble and Fen, Finley’s bodyguards and retainers from the Yellowtail tribe, translated Finley’s words as best they could, though they also needed several sub-translators. Due to the physical drift, there was some language drift. There was a lizard folk common tongue that everyone could learn, but it was more like a trader tongue.
Finley made a note to add that to his list of things to do. He wasn’t going to be caught, not knowing a traitor tongue when there was one available to him.
He gave an impassioned speech. It was the best sales pitch he could give. And still it had to be filtered through one or two layers of translators. There was a point in time where he wanted to make a joke, but then he realized they would laugh from two different groups if they got it and that this was not exactly the time for him to bust his chops out. He might hate these people, but what he really needed was the support that they might offer. They wanted his ability to use the gate spell across the continent. Finley has been working hard on his druid class, understanding that he might get the gates bell on a few more levels. So everyday he stretched his hands and tried to grow things. And everyday he could feel his skills edging closer to the level that he needed. Although his druid spellcasting ability didn’t logically impact his other spellcasting abilities, what he read and heard showed they were connected.
He just hoped that he could do enough. So, as you said there with one hand weaving through a small rose bush as he grew it and made it twirl around his fingers, he got his first group of lizard folk to agree. A red scaled group of lizards stood up and, according to their handler, pledged that they would join the fight.
A second group followed quickly on after that. Finley unsurprisingly found the next sale easier. There was only one holdout from a group that needed to confer with their elders back home. A group of green gecko-handed lizard folk had sent a very Junior person for the negotiations, not understanding what they were. Once again finally cursed that he had to deal with layers of translation. At least he could get them in person. If the tribes would help him out? Then maybe after the battles were all done, he could come back and run a trade route through them. By that time, he hoped that he’d be able to use the anchors that Zan was using.
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“And so in closing, we would invite you to speak with your elders at home and your tribe about what you can commit to this because we don’t want to see what happened in Novaria happen here.”
His words echoed through the quiet group. There already been a lot of clenched fists and chest pounding, but right now? All eyes were on him.
And he was making the biggest sale of his life.
He just hoped that it was going to be enough.
---
Anthony and Valerie looked at the new numbers.
“600?”
“That is how many have arrived already. We have some commitments for more and we could even get a larger amount if we commit to carving out some space for them up here. Understanding that we would set up a gate system for them to go back and forth once all this was over.”
They were standing next to the large display wall that Anthony had back at the headquarters. After days and days of using her as a human PowerPoint machine, Anthony had finally just had someone paint over some lines on the wall so that they could just know where they were working. This caused them having larger walls for different maps but were the right amount of paint and effort from the wounded but willing. They had created a bunch of maps of the kingdoms so they could quickly reference it. Using Valerie’s topographical powers, they were now looking at the difference between the elvish kingdom and the orcish meritocracy.
“If we get $600 600 fighters, right? Then we can expand our lines a little. I still think we just need to bunker up where we are and then sweep through areas.”
“If we bunker up where we are, then we’re just giving up the space to them. Right now we’re trying to reclaim the space. I think the best thing that Bob did was to help us sanctify the area,” Anthony said. “Now we just need him to... Be predictable.”
And the 3 days since the lizard folk began arriving in Earnest, the battle plan had changed. Cedric was still deciding on which way to pursue the next death knight.
They were next to each other. It would be easy. But they had set up their headquarters right in smack dab in the middle of them.
If they went south, they saw zombies. If they went east, they saw zombies. If they...
It was a logistical nightmare. Just getting out of the country. And it wasn’t even a country anymore. A country can’t truly exist when most of its economy focuses on killing its citizens.
And it was really on Cedric to decide what he was doing. Valerie was in charge of the Civic population and also the liaison to The Chosen. Their choice of her as queen or princess general gave her influence. What you did not have was the experience that Cedric had. Sure. She had been on the road with them for ages and experienced zombies, but he had been fighting alongside them for months. His legion had suffered losses and paved the way for dwarves to return to their sacred homeland.
As much as it had been an issue getting a legion there, it had been such a relief to just have them as an option now that they were an option and now that things had been moving in a positive direction, Anthony could consider things that weren’t directly related to their survival.
“Valerie with that many helpers. If the zombies aren’t that hard to kill, we can steamroll them eventually. It’s just going to take longer.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, Valerie, too. Just because that was the closest continent doesn’t mean that we can’t reach out to the other nations. I think there’s a nation of dwarves somewhere near the lost continent. If I had my history book, I would bring it up.”
“You know, we never talked about the other nations. We were just trying to find the fastest way to get to the legion because we thought the legion would save us all. Because that’s what you said. And they’re here now. And they’re great. But I don’t know no kid. How long can we wait?”
“Things are already in motion that can’t be stopped. So we need to keep going. If we can do without them, great.”
Anthony put a hand on her shoulder. The map didn’t show how the girl felt. It used to be that it would waver. He could see that something was happening internally to her. Probably her emotions. Clashing and then her display of a map would quiver or shake for a second. No one else would notice except for him, but he always noticed.
He always wanted to say something to her, but she had given him the look. He understood it. Heavy was the head that wore the long con of becoming a queen in order to save your nation.
“Valerie, have you thought about what’s going to happen? When is all over, I mean?”
“I have given it a fair bit of thought,” she said. “I think I will be a good and just queen.”
“I meant more nuts and bolts. Valerie. There used to be millions of dwarves. Now there’s only what a little over a thousand of you guys here on this continent? This is a very large continent. This thing that we’re doing right now? This is a generational project. Your children and their children might still clear out zombies for years and years until we’re all done.”
Valerie sighed.
He didn’t want to be hard on the girl, but what was going to happen? Back on Earth, there was a strong ratio in the military of 100 women to every 700 men. Even if every single female dwarf in the legion decided to have children, that was what about another thousand dwarfs?
“How are you going to repopulate? Are you going to repopulate? Does it even make sense?”
“I guess we can ask other dwarves to migrate here?”
“But what’s to here for them to migrate? For? What opportunities? Are they going to be the janitors at the end of the world?”
Valerie’s landed fist down on the map.
“This isn’t the end of the world. This is the rebirth of our kingdom. We’ve been through fire and curses and we’re going to come out on the other side.”
Anthony raised a hand and stepped back. The fire in her eyes was palpable. She gave off a smell that tickled his brain. And then he realized it was that same smell he had used when he was a teenager way too much in order to make it seem like he was a cool kid. She had either learned how to cast the cleanse spell or she had borrowed the card. Either way, he smirked.
“Valerie, that’s beautiful. That’s amazing and I promise I’ll be with you every step of the way,” he said. “Just promise me one thing.”
“Name your price.”
“Promise me you’re not going to marry me off to a duchess just to get back. I mean, for that time that I slighted you.”
Valerie, consider this for a long moment. Far longer than she really needed to consider it for.
“Agreed.”
A knot of tension disappeared from Anthony’s back.
“After all, all my dukes are going to need to marry somebody. Why not another man?”
---
With Sophie’s new handy dandy tracker card, she could figure out the direction of the two remaining death knights. He could use the same tricks that they had used before to triangulate them, and she did. From their location, what Sophie could find out and give to Cedric was the rough distance that they needed to travel.
That, combined with the map overlay card Valerie used, gave them a rough taste of whatever the trek would be to both.
It was going to be a long Trek either way. But they had given him the best information he needed to decide. Now they just needed him to get off his analysis paralysis and pick one.