Zualt hopped down the corridor. His speed could be defined as rapid or brisk, but given he was Namidian, it didn’t have the shuffle that comes with a walk. Namidians hopped, so it looked more like a frog trying to get off a hot surface.
Zualt croaked at his team, “Tell me, what in the world could’ve possibly come undone? I rechecked all of the calculations myself. Everything was perfect. Why am I not staring at Lord Fleon right now?”
Zualt’s team of Aquamancers hopped behind him in kind. Transposition was difficult and complicated magic, but certainly not something that should prove difficult to the level of funding and talent present in the kingdom of the Filary. They had left the Transposition room and were now hopping their way back to Core facilities to determine what went awry.
“Sir, preliminary analysis indicates failure in one of the Filary’s Infinity Engines. It seems like it miscalculated the position of some tangential material in the way between ourselves and Lord Fleon’s empire.”
"How does an Infinity Engine make a mistake? This is not even possible. The only way Infinity Engines make and error is if…”
The other Namidian finished his sentence, “It generated bad data. The checksum is off by an incredibly small percentage, but it appears like the error in the data was from Zenith itself.”
The sentence hung in the air.
The Namidian language contained minimal numbers of slurs. They have no way of speaking ill directly of another person. They do have means to describe actions they find unfortunate. The sentence that Zualt next said would directly translate to “Her actions indicate an unfortunate betrayal that leaves me heartbroken”, but this betrays tonal variations in the Namidian dialect. A closer translation would be:
“That motherfucking bitch fucked us. She fucked us. She fucked us right in the fucking ass. God fucking dammit. I know better than to trust a fucking computer. God. Fucking. Dammit.”
"Sir Zualt, it may be that an honest error has occurred,” one of the younger Namidians croaked from the back.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“And it may be that the Sweetfly swarm is so large this year that our entire population is allowed to double in size, but it doesn’t seem likely now does it? It may be that my mate Zuzaana lays a clutch of eggs so large that I am able to emit streams of my semen for several minutes to ensure fertilization, but it hasn’t ever happened in the past, unless you know something I don’t? Do you know why those things aren’t in our plans, because they aren’t that fucking likely to happen, you know, sort of like an omnipotent supercomputer miscalculating simple arithmetic.” Zualt could feel his body heat rising. He would need to find a cooling stone soon. He had been getting angrier and angrier and it was affecting his performance across the spectrum. It turns out being the paragon of his species wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
“Sir, I am sorry, I just…”
“It’s not your fault youngling. I grow tense and warm. I must have time to allow myself to regain normal temperature. Please, allow me to return to my chambers. We will reconvene in three standard hours. During this time, please come up with any solution that would allow me to believe that we just didn’t leverage the future of the Namidian race only to be thwarted at the very end.”
Zualt’s steam of underlings hopped in random directions, all of them eager to please. He knew the answer though. They would find nothing. He just needed to buy time.
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Zualt was staring into the scrying water.
“Empress, I do not understand.”
Empress Flia Flinya of the Filary stood tall. As Empress, she was expected to maintain her neck to its maximum length at all times. Given her 6 foot tall frame, this placed her at around 13 feet in total. As such, keeping her in frame was very difficult, and Zualt spent much of the time moving the scrying water around trying to get a focused image on her whole figure.
“Well Sorcerer, let me remind you of our deal then. We give you weapons and armor to defeat the Serpen Collective. In exchange, you assist my Foray into Zenith. We gave you weapons, we gave you armor. Now you are not assisting me, and I want to understand why.”
“Your Highness, the Transposition failed. Lord Fleon himself told me this was because of a failure in the calculations….”
“This is a simple alliance. If you cannot hold up your end, then the Saldezians and I will simply split Zenith down the middle.”
Zualt roiled internally, but outwardly he maintained his composure, “What would you propose that I do?”
“You’re a Sorcerer, ensorcell something and get your hopping ass into Zenith. Now.”
Zualt nodded as the scrying waters faded. The Empress was insolent and rude. Their treaty had been a huge gain in his war against the Serpen, but he was starting to wonder just how long he would be paying down this debt. He made a mental note that as soon as possible he would enjoy watching her squirm for breath while she drowned in his waves.