Reports had been coming in from numerous members of the coalition notifying them of the damage done to the coalition and the city itself. One dirtied younger male member of their coalition entered the meeting chamber to give his own report to further their knowledge of the state of things going on out there.
He reported that starting from the central pillar to the immediate area spanning from it for roughly three miles had all been decimated. There weren’t even bodies to be found within that decimated space since every living soul in that radius had been destroyed. The central pillar’s destruction was also big enough to expose the chambers beneath the pillar or rather whatever remained of the parts beneath it to appear in some places from the surface itself. The destruction had been that severe.
“Thank you for your report,” Rinas said.
The man bowed his head and then left.
His report left a bad taste in all of their mouths. Rinas rested his chin on top of his clasped hands as he rested his elbows on the edge of the table to hold up his weary head.
The death count was easily in the thousands if not tens of thousands for the central parts of the city itself. The numbers outside of it easily could’ve been in the thousands as well. They hadn’t gotten as many reports outside of the central area however although they had seen a bit of it themselves earlier.
“Do you still think Noreko didn’t purposely orchestrate this?” Yorais’s question was a sensible one that few doubted any longer.
Still, Rinas did not appear willing to accept it. “We’ll know once we find him. We’ll even beat it out of him if we have to. Until then, I don’t want to make too many assumptions. For all we know something else is going on here that we cannot yet fully see.”
“It sure looks like I’ve been missing out on some fun conversations.” The voice of Frederek caused them all to see him standing at the entrance of the meeting chamber. He had shown up with tattered clothes and some bruises on his face.
“Frederek,” Rinas said. “We were worried we wouldn’t be able to get to you.”
“Yeah, well. Getting back up to the surface was a bit of a struggle. The lift was hesitant in working but it managed to start working eventually. I can’t say the rest of the underground is doing well though. I’ve gone ahead and ordered my people to aid in getting everyone out of there before more lives are lost from the still-falling debris. Luckily there’s not too many living down there so it should be somewhat manageable to get most people from the depths to the topside.”
Rinas nodded his head. “I’m just glad you’re doing fine. We’ve received plenty of reports of casualties from this disaster. We’re still unsure of whether Temos and his crew survived. I can’t imagine that they did considering they were supposed to be guarding the chambers directly beneath the pillar.”
Frederek tightened one hand into a fist. “Then let me be the one to report this to you. Temos is most certainly not alive or anyone else with him from the damage we’ve seen.”
“How many lives lost from them does that make it then?”
“Several dozen at least.”
All the news they received was bad. There was practically nothing good. It certainly pained Rinas having to hear it all, especially with him being their leader. He was the one who was supposed to somehow lead them through this. How he would manage it, Kiran didn’t know. He felt enormously bad himself feeling at least some responsibility for the conditions the city currently was going through.
But while it would be easy to succumb to his feelings, he tried his best to stifle them so that he could focus on their immediate concerns. He could feel bad or guilty all he liked once things quietened down.
Abigail eventually arrived with an irritated look on her face. Then again, she always kind of had an irritated-looking face most of the time so that wasn’t anything unusual or different than her typical appearance. She chose to sit beside Yorais across from Frederek.
“Anything to report Abigail?” Rinas asked.
“Nope. My agents are all looking for him but so far no luck.”
Rinas leaned back in his chair appearing ready to quit. Frederek chose to take a seat to Kiran’s left as Yorais sat across from him and Rinas to his right at the end of the table. “What exactly are we supposed to do?”
“Is that supposed to be an open question?” Yorais asked.
“Yes.”
Abigail chose to answer first. “Well, first of all, we should probably do more than just sit here. We have to take immediate action and get our butts moving.”
“Then what do you propose we do differently then?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “That’s what you’re here for.”
Yorais lifted her hand eager to have her say on things. “If I may, I believe I have a solution although it is not at all an ideal one.”
“Please go on,” Rinas said.
“At this point, it is inevitable that the entire city is going to fall. An army of monsters is guaranteed to come to this city and assault it soon. If we are to survive, we must flee but we cannot flee to another location in this domain which leaves us with only one option.” She paused and gave everyone a serious look. “We must begin preparations to travel to the fourth domain and bring as many people and supplies there as possible with us.”
“That’s simply not possible,” Abigail replied in haste.
“Don’t tell me what is or isn’t possible.”
“What, you think we can just hop right over the swarms of monsters out there and try to travel through the distorted reality? We’ll all die if we try that.”
“No, I’m not suggesting we travel to that domain through the distorted reality. I would instead suggest allowing me to create a portal to it. That is our best and only option as I see things.”
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Abigail frowned. “Wait, so you’re telling me that you’re capable of creating portals to other domains?”
“Yes,” she said with a nod. “To tell you all the truth, I do not originate from here. I in fact originate from the third domain and the way I reached this domain was by creating a portal to come here.”
“So you’re from an entirely different domain, and you didn’t think to tell any of us that until now? That’s quite the thing to leave out about yourself you know!”
“Abigail,” Rinas said with a hand in the air. “We need not bicker over it. We’re all allies here. Try to remember that. And am I to believe you don’t harbor secrets of your own?”
Abigail crossed her arms and pouted a little bit.
“I imagine we all have secrets we wish to not tell. Yorais has however revealed a gift of hers that may just save not only our lives, but the lives of many others.” He turned his gaze towards the sorceress who became potentially one of the most important people in all of Liall at this point in time. He didn’t know if anyone else could supposedly create portals like her in all of the fifth domain. He got the impression that it was not some arcane spell that any one sorcerer or sorceress could just do or learn. “Are you sure you can create a portal to another domain?”
“I am.”
Frederek grumbled beneath his breath making it clear he wanted to speak his own mind as well. “If you are capable of opening a portal to another domain, then what are we to do then? We will need lots of food, water, and supplies to sustain ourselves and if large swaths of people in this city travel with us, that will only become more burdensome. I very much like the idea of escaping our current predicament, but there’s nothing easy about this process with the way I see it. The logistics alone will be quite intensive I imagine.”
“We can figure that out as we go,” Yorais replied. “What matters most is buying ourselves time. If we stay here in Liall, we are surely going to die. We still have time, but our hours left to us all are limited.”
Kiran had his own thoughts and questions he could ask, but he thought it better to let the faction leaders all discuss it themselves. All he could do was sit there and listen in to this important conversation.
“Is the fourth domain even a viable place for us to go to? Frederek said. “Our now deceased queen devoted herself to this domain in particular because in her eyes—at the time—it was the only viable place to sustain a proper human civilization or any civilization for that matter.”
Yorais put both of her hands beneath the table. “Our now-deceased queen may have thought that this place was the only viable option back then, but I have seen at least two other domains with my own eyes from the time that I have been alive. I would not personally recommend the third domain as it’s quite hostile towards humans in particular in a lot of places. The fourth domain however didn’t appear all that bad during the brief period I was there many years ago. It didn’t seem to have quite the monster problem we have here as well.”
He could never really tell how old Yorais was. She spoke like someone who had lived a long life and yet looked no older than thirty. He got the feeling though that she was a fair bit older than she tried to portray.
“If we are to travel to another domain, what will you require?” Rinas asked the question that she appeared completely prepared to answer.
“In order for me to create one, I will need a place or thing to amplify my mana. Luckily we have here in this city the Grand Sorcerer’s Tower at the Liall Sorcerer’s University. which will be sufficient enough to give me the power I require. Although if it has been damaged or destroyed by what has happened in this city, then it’s quite possible I won’t be able to create a portal. But assuming it hasn’t been destroyed, we will need that tower if I am to be able to create a stable enough portal for large amounts of people to travel through it.”
“You still have strong connections to the university don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Then it will be your duty to persuade them to allow you to use their resources and open the university up for a large-scale evacuation of the city’s inhabitants. I see no other option for us at this point. The only problem we may find however is with whatever is left of the queen’s administration.”
“Oh they must be in love with us right now. The queen’s dead and their city is on fire.” Abigail began to laugh. “We’re for sure not going to encounter any trouble from them whatsoever!”
“Should we be that concerned?” Frederek said. “They can hate us all they want and perhaps it’s well deserved. But right now all anyone ought to be concerned about is surviving. They know just as well as we do that if we don’t escape, we’re all going to perish. I believe that even they would set aside their desire to kill us all if it means we can grant them their lives.”
It almost made him feel that they were the ones with the true power in the city. If they truly were the only ones able to provide a method of escape from this place, then who were the real ones in charge? Kiran thought he knew the answer.
Still, that didn’t mean that they would get cooperation from whoever was taking charge of the monarchy. As far as he was aware, the queen didn’t have an heir so the question of who that person to take her place was, was completely up in the air. Perhaps the issue has already been settled and we just haven’t heard about it ourselves.
“We will need to make contact with them,” Rinas said. “It will be incredibly dangerous so we will have to be careful. I will send a courier to them and try to get us into talks. If we are to save as many people as possible, we will need their cooperation and resources to direct their efforts to alert the public to go to the Grand Sorcerer’s Tower and scrummage up all of the resources they can retrieve to take as well to the other domain with us.”
Half a day ago, the thought of trying to form amenable relations with the monarchy would sound ridiculous. Now it was necessary for their survival and it wasn’t like it was a one-way street. It was a two-way street meaning both sides needed to compromise and join hands and fight one another on another day. Survival was the only goal anyone ought to have at this moment at least in Kiran’s mind. Everything else was secondary.
“Yorais,” Rinas said continuing, “how long will it take you to create this portal?”
“To create a fully stable portal, at least half a day or more. Once I am done forming it, it should last for a few hours. It won’t be enough time to get everyone out, but it should be up long enough to ensure a lot of people still make it out.”
Rinas nodded his head. “Alright. Yorais I want you to go ahead and try to convince the people at the university to give us access to that tower. Go ahead and bring a large number of our people with you as well as a show of force. If we must, we may have to use force to seize it which I would prefer to avoid, but if it means living or dying, we have few other options.”
“I doubt they will give any pushback given everything,” she said standing up. She walked around the table and left the meeting chamber.
“As for the rest of us,” Rinas said to the rest of them. “Some of us have to begin immediate preparations so that we can make contact with those in power.”
“I suggest we make it clear that we are the ones with all of the power,” Abigail said. “They need to know that if they’re going to survive, their lives are in our hands, not theirs.”
“I mostly agree,” he said. “Although I would suggest we act cordial towards them even if they are our enemies. As for everyone else, begin mobilizing everyone towards the tower. Oh, and Abigail.”
“Yes?
“Continue to do whatever must be done to find Noreko.”
She stood up, gave a slight salute, and left to carry out this most important task.
The night was still practically only beginning. And already he was feeling quite grim about things. There were a lot of moving parts and pieces; all of which played an important role in whether they would succeed or not.
Yorais had to successfully create a stable portal. They had to convince the current person or people in charge of Liall to not simply murder them all and instead work together to get everyone they could to escape in time before the city became swarmed by monsters.
Nervous sweat trickled down his back. Can we really make it out of this situation alive?