“Well, this is fun, isn’t it?” Hecate sighed, swinging her arms as she wandered through the streets of the tournament city. Dave marched along beside her as an array of undead scoured the streets that had, only moments ago, been under heavy fire.

Now, all the explosions and impacts were confined to the sky above as Lily and Asherta drew the ethership’s attention away from the ground. Of course, the bombardment was going on elsewhere in the city, but not right here, near the arena where all this mess started.

“I’m assuming that was sarcastic.” Dave looked out over the wreckage where her undead were pulling corpses out by the dozens.

“Yes, Dave. That was extremely sarcastic.” Hecate snarked. She was looking at the same sight he was. “This sucks. I’m not the most sensitive person ever, but this is just…awful.”

“I can imagine.” Dave nodded, his pale, undead visage hidden behind his full faceplate. “It’s a bit different for me, certainly. The Necroverse is full of piles of corpses drawn from across dimensions, so I’ve seen far more of the dead than you could ever imagine. Even more…I’m a corpse animated by magic and a soul cobbled together from the scraps of others. It’s hard to be horrified by something on this level when everyone from my home universe is essentially a walking abomination against nature.”

Hecate shrugged. “Yeah, I get that. It’s not like I was expecting you to be appalled or anything. Honestly, it doesn’t hit me the same way I think it does for Caeden or Lily. Or even Asherta. She’s quiet, but I know she cares. Even Erik cares in his own way, even if he has an…odd…relationship with death. But I just…don’t. Like, objectively, I know that this is awful. This amount of death is absurd and wrong.”

“But it’s also something that happens on the Starry Sea all the time. People dying in massive quantities is kinda our watchword. Gramps was never shy about showing me what all went down on our borders or even in the distant corners of the CA. I mean, his shroud is Ghost, and mine is Soul. Death is more familiar to me than most people. So, I get that this is a tragedy, but I’m more annoyed that I have to do cleanup work rather than actually fighting the people that did it.”

“So, you’re a sociopath.” Dave nodded. “Sounds about right. Most Necromancers are. Makes sense that you would be as well. It takes a certain mentality to deal with death and undeath so closely.”

“What’s a sociopath?”

“Oh, right.” Dave chuckled. “You guys don’t have a concept of psychology here. Weird, considering how advanced the medicine generally is.”

“What the heck is psychology?” Hecate turned her full attention to her Familiar. This sounded like extradimensional stuff, which she always found interesting. Dave had traveled all over as a mercenary, seeing the far reaches of existence and learning more than any mortal could ever dream.

“Psychology is the study of the mind, the similarities and differences in mental states and behaviors. A sociopath is the psychology term for someone like you. A person that lacks empathy and compassion for most other people. Also, a tendency toward violent behavior and a lack of permanent emotional attachments.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Hecate shrugged. She knew what she was about, and she wasn’t going to apologize for it. “I honestly found it weird when I got along with the team. Then again, it’s mostly Erik who gets me at all. I don’t think he’s like me, but he gets me. It’s nice. Lily’s more like…a sister I never had? I care about her, but it’s not like we have a lot in common or anything. And that makes Caeden basically my sister’s boyfriend. We don’t really click on any level, but we care about the same people, so there’s that.”

“I’ve said it before, but you have a strange approach to friendship.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure we’re friends, and you’re a corpse. So I think I was never going to have normal relationships since I don’t really think there’s anything weird about that.” Hekate shrugged. Interpersonal relationships were at the bottom of her list of concerns and always had been. She had a friendless childhood that led into a friendless adolescence. Not because others didn’t like her but because she didn’t like them.

“Speaking of relationships, I’m surprised you aren’t worried about that.” Dave shifted focus, waving his gauntleted hand toward the smoldering rubble of the central meeting hall. Isn’t your grandfather supposed to be over there? I’d think you’d be worried about him, at least.”

Hekate snorted. “Gramps? Yeah, I’d be worried if I thought he was in any actual danger.”

“His aura is sealed. Doesn’t that put him in a bad position? I was under the impression that his shroud was heavily aura based.” Dave asked.

“If you’re talking about his offensive abilities, yes. Gramps can’t fight all that well without his aura. But when it comes to surviving, that doesn’t really matter.” Hekate shook her head, amused at the idea of anything being able to harm her Gramps. “You know that thing Lily does where she turns into a cloud and basically becomes untouchable? Well, Gramps can do that too. But instead of turning into gas, he turns into literal soul mass. A collection of raw soul energy. I’m pretty sure the only person on the Starry Sea that could harm him when he’s like that is me. So no, I’m not worried about Gramps.”

“Besides,” Hekate stared at the tower’s rubble. Even from here, she could see shrouded on the ground, defending themselves and fighting back as best they could, even if that only meant throwing up chunks of rubble at the etherships above. “He’s currently at the most well-protected building on the entire island. No wonder they blew it up first. And no wonder the Revolution is still trying to soften them up with the aerial attacks. Even with all that, they’re still fighting like it’s nothing.”

Shifting her gaze a bit closer, Hekate looked at the corpses her undead were pulling from the wreckage of the surroundings, but also the living. Those got swept away, headed back to the healing ministrations of Erik’s capable hands.

“They need our help more. We’ll make our way over there eventually.” She nodded at the stream of injured being carried off.

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“Alright, it’s all the same to me.” Dave shrugged. “Although I still don’t agree with holding back as much as you are right now. You’ve fielded only a tenth of the forces you could.”

“Dave, you’ve seen these revolutionaries, fought them too. They keep bringing out new weapons every time we fight them, each time an order of magnitude more powerful than what we saw last. I’m not overextending my shroud and limited Mana just to clear the field faster. Plus, once we extend outside the gap in enemy fire that Lily and Asherta have created, I’m going to need all the Mana I can manage to keep us moving.”

“We might save more people in the short term if I go all out now, but it would be a loss overall if I get killed in the end or run out of Mana partway through.” Hecate sighed. She wanted to summon more undead, as Dave suggested if only to speed up the rescue operations and get them done faster. But she was more wary of what the Revolution might have in store.

Dave only nodded at her words. After centuries of working on her Necromancy and teaching her tactics and strategy, this was the point that their conversations had evolved to. Instead of Dave leading her by the nose with knowledge honed across hundreds of universes, they argued over troop percentages. Dave had agreed with Hekate’s overall plan for how to deal with search and rescue; he was only arguing for a slightly larger force to be deployed.

Hekate found that idea immensely satisfying. When she’d first gained her Necromancy shroud, Dave had outshone her on the battlefield at every turn. He was far more skilled and experienced. After their time in the Forge, that had changed somewhat.

Dave still had live combat knowledge against far more diverse foes than Hekate could even imagine, but the broad strokes of strategy saw their opinions closer than ever before. They’d played war games against each other that spanned decades, using tens of thousands of undead as their pieces in the game.

To this day, Dave was still her tactical superior. Any battle he personally commanded was a loss for her, without exception. But any conflict they modeled that lasted for more than one engagement or spanned multiple battlefields was more of an even conflict. Hekate could hold her own in a larger context.

This search and rescue mission Caeden had handed her was definitely in the second category. The Tournament city was massive, and clearing it would take days at their current pace. In fact, both Hekate and Dave agreed that the overall conflict with the Revolution would not work out like the last one.

The Revolution’s strike on the CA lasted hours at most. They were targeted shock and awe strikes designed to capitalize on their surprise attacks to deal as much damage as possible in a limited time frame. This attack was wholly different. The Revolution wasn’t here to make a statement or send a message. They were here for extermination.

To Dave and Hekate, it was obvious. One could tell simply from the massive allocation of resources. The Revolution was pulling out all the stops, fielding their secret weapons, and attacking with overwhelming force. After all, sending a message only worked if there was someone alive to convey it.

No doubt the supermassive flagship overhead constituted a secret weapon for the Revolution. A fly suppression field was an overwhelming advantage, and they would have to be fools to not try to keep that under wraps for as long as humanly possible. The fact that it was here told Hekate and her familiar that the Revolution didn’t plan on leaving anyone alive to talk about it.

That fact alone turned this into a much longer conflict. Plus, with the amount of ships in the sky, it would take a significant amount of force to take them all down, which was the ultimate end goal here. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of ships of different sizes. Based on that, Hekate and Dave figured the Revolution’s troops numbered no less than the hundreds of thousands, even if only a quarter of that number were acting as troop transports.

All of this numerically made sense, considering they were attacking an island holding over a million shrouded. Even with the aerial bombardment, the explosions, and the suppression field, there were still hundreds of thousands of shrouded on Baserock, and they could still put up a fight. The suppression field couldn’t get rid of their infusions, and that alone made a shrouded worth a hundred unshrouded in combat.

Ethertech weapons could close that power gap, even reverse it. But all indications pointed to the Revolution being in for a slog of a fight to decimate Baserock in its entirety. Especially considering that a significant portion of the shrouded here were some of the top of their kind, the very strongest and best. Those that could take down hundreds or thousands of shrouded single-handedly.

This was going to be an effort of days, if not weeks, of fighting for the shrouded or the Revolution, no matter who came out on top. And Hekate fully intended to win. Thus, search and rescue. Every shrouded they saved now was another fighter down the line. Once Erik had them back on their feet. Essentially every shrouded present had at least some combat training. It was the nature of the Starry Sea.

On that note…”I think the bombardment is about to stop.” Dave looked up. “They’re on the move.”

Hekate nodded. She’d been keeping track of things the same as he had. Especially the battle Lily and Asherta were having. Hekate had summoned a few flying undead just to get a better look. Because the ethership armada was going to be a definitive center to the battle for Baserock, and her teammates were currently the only ones taking the fight to it.

Now, the ships facing down her friends were moving, shifting back from the duo as more ships moved in to engage. There was only one real reason for the ships to do that. They were running out of power.

“We were right, then.” Hekate watched as the retreating ships flew toward the flagship, slipping along its sides only to disappear into massive ports that opened up just long enough to admit them. “That flagship is a massive ether generator. It’s a battery for the whole fleet.”

Hekate and Dave had assumed that there was no way for the armada overhead to sustain their bombardment indefinitely. No matter what, those attacks were taking up resources, whether it be ammunition or raw power. They’d have to stop eventually. And knowing when it would stop was crucial. That would be the moment for her undead army to push out, covering as much ground as possible.

In that regard, Lily and Asherta’s fight was an excellent indicator. Unlike the other ships, the ones fighting her teammates couldn’t simply stop attacking once their resources ran low like the others could. They were in the middle of a battle, after all. Not attacking was asking to become a sitting target.

That meant that they would have to disengage and be replaced by other ships when their reserves ran low. And that was the signal for her to go to work.

“Alright,” Hekate clapped her hands, sparks of Necroflame bleeding off them as more and more ships ceased their attacks. “Time to cover this entire stupid city in bodies.”

She took a deep breath and breathed out, followed by a flood of spellforms and incantations. All her words and hand signs culminated in a massive summoning circle hovering in the air over her head, ringed by three separate lines of Mana symbols.

“Summon Elder Lich. Summon Grand Undead Army. Summon Greater Dread Lord.”

The black abyss of the summoning ritual opened up, the three high-tier summoning spells ripping a hole directly to the Necroverse in the air above her. And her forces flooded out of the breach, covering the ground in a flood of armor, weapons, and corpses.

Hekate laughed. “Here comes the army of the dead to the rescue.”