Marcus, the Sapphire Emperor, sat in the meeting room, waiting for the other monarchs to show up. The situation had taken a terrible and unexpected turn; the research lab they had so painstakingly made had been completely and utterly destroyed, and they hadn’t even known until a few hours prior when the lab had missed its daily check-in.
When they had scried the location, they had been met with a horrifying sight; the entire structure had been torn out of the ground and was lying in ruins above where it had once sat. They had sent a team out to the site to pick through the ruins and see what they could salvage, but the facility had looked like it had been picked clean, so they didn’t have high hopes.
Marcus just couldn’t understand how this had happened; they had taken great pains to keep this place secret, and because they had moved it after that scout’s defection, he wasn’t sure how they knew where the new place was or how they had known that experiments had been about to begin.
There had to be a traitor somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where. He had been having all his generals and high-ranking officials scanned, but none of them were members of the swarm, so there had to be a collaborator that hadn’t yet undergone conversion…right?
And a traitor wasn’t even the biggest problem. The biggest problem was that the ten max level people who had been assigned to the facility had all vanished, presumably captured and converted by the swarm, just like Simona. That gave the swarm eleven of the twenty-four max level people, and with two Heroes on their side, they likely had an advantage in terms of raw firepower. The only real advantage the rest of the world held was numbers, and even that was liable to slip fast.
To his mounting horror, he found himself hoping that the Lord of Monsters appeared soon. As odd as it was, it seemed like the only hope to stop the swarm was for the swarm to divert their attention, and the Lord of Monsters was the only thing that Marcus thought could do that. The swarm had made it clear that they would be dealing with the Lord of Monsters, and the gods had confirmed to people that the swarm was serious; it would be dealt with. And, well, that was going to be their best chance, they just needed to hold on until it came.
Those thoughts bounced about in his head as the rest of the monarchs trickled into the room, uneasy expressions on their faces. They had been called here suddenly, and they knew that he wouldn’t do that for good news.
When the last of them arrived, Marcus gave an internal sigh and stood. “I’m sure you all are worried about why I’ve called you here, and I’ll be honest, it’s not good. The lab has been raided and destroyed. We have no idea what’s happened to the staff, but we’re assuming that the swarm got them.”
“I told you this was a bad idea.” Astrea, Cardinal of the Religious State of Astrum, said coldly. “I told you that the gods decry sapient experimentation and that you would be inviting ruin by doing this. We’re lucky that I never allowed any of my people to join this foolish project, because we’d be in even bigger trouble if I had.”
“And why do you think the gods were involved in this at all?” Isaac, King of Misthaven, asked. “It seems a bold assumption when our foe has two Heroes that would be capable of this.”
Astrea fixed him with a chilly gaze. “It’s only logical.” She said. “The only entities with both the reason to bind those two Heroes and the capability to do so are the gods. So, by drawing their ire, we risk them being unbound. I explained this all when this plan was first proposed, but I was dismissed as being overly cautious. Yet, here we stand, having effectively granted our enemies half of the max level people and many of the world’s brightest minds.”
Astrea turned her gaze to Marcus, a chill running down his spine as his eyes met hers. There was something different about her, she was more…confident, more commanding than she had been the last time he had seen her. “And, you; you took great pains to leave us ‘lesser rulers’ out of the loop on the details of this plan, but it would seem that the information got leaked anyway.
“I cannot discount the potential of the gods being the ones to give the swarm the information, but that is more involved than they usually get. Therefore, I think it’s likely that someone in your cabinet or the cabinets of one of the other ‘greater rulers’ is leaking our secrets. You make me wonder if we ‘lesser rulers’ would not be better served by making our own coalition and leaving this one.”
“You can’t be serious.” Zara, Queen of Ilex, said. “We may have slighted you, but you cannot seriously believe that the war effort would be helped by a fracturing of our alliance.”
Astrea sighed. “I don’t.” She admitted. “But I think the time has come for you to stop ignoring us. This could have been averted had you just listened to me, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to be born into a position of power in a large empire, so apparently my opinion is worth less.”
She held Marcus’s gaze, then turned it to each of the other “greater” rulers. “Let it be known that the responsibility for this falls on your shoulders and your shoulders alone. When we fail, it will be because of your hubris and ineptitude.”
“When we fail?!” Isaac said incredulously. “Don’t talk as if we’ve already lost!”
“Haven’t we?” Astrea responded levelly. “I will stay the course, because, as you said a while ago, there is no reason to not resist if our struggles lose us nothing, but I firmly believe that this blunder has cost us the war. Our only advantage now is numbers, and we all know that that is a hollow advantage when faced with an enemy like this. Our only hope is to pull off a miracle while the Lord of Monsters distracts them, and even that is only if the Lord of Monsters appears during the course of this war.”
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“Surely the gods could –”
“The gods could, and they won’t.” Astrea said, cutting off Marcus. “Enough of the gods support the swarm that they have opted to let this conflict play out naturally instead of cutting it off at the source. If the gods were going to intervene to stop the swarm, they would have done so far before it got to this point. Instead, your foolishness caused them to intervene in favor of the swarm.”
Astrea stood, glancing at each of the rulers in turn. “I have said my piece. I won’t be useful in any further discussion because my anger over this blunder and the treatment of the ‘lesser’ rulers is blinding my judgement. If you wish to have a productive conversation about where to go next, then you can call me again at a later date. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a country to run.”
“Astrea, wait!” Marcus cried. As much as Astrum was a minor nation in terms of military prowess, Astrea storming out now represented a potential fracture in the alliance that they just couldn’t handle at this moment. “If you want to prevent another mistake like this, surely you’d need to be here to advise us, right?”
“Are you making fun of me?” Astrea asked icily. “Do you want me here just so you can ignore my advice again? No, Marcus, I won’t be staying. I can’t bear to be in the same room as you at this time. If you truly want my advice, contact me later.”
Astrea turned and walked out of the room, leaving a heavy silence in her place. Astrea held a fair amount of respect amongst the other rulers, and her outburst was liable to put strain on an already tense meeting.
“How goes the war itself?” Isaac eventually asked. “What updates do you have?”
“We’re in a quiet time.” Marcus said. “We still haven’t had a major engagement since the first, and we’ve decided to take the fight to them. Their ‘Scourge of the Skies’ is a constant threat, and we’ve decided that we need to force engagements where it can’t be used if we want to win.”
“We’re calling this attack off now, right?” Emily, Queen of Odria, asked. “Now that they have so many max level people, they can easily repel any the invasion force you currently have at the border…unless you have more troops there than you were letting on.”
Marcus’s expression soured. “I don’t think it’s your place to tell me how to direct my armies.”
“Be that as it may, this is bigger than all of us now.” Isaac said. “Emily is right; your army cannot handle the swarm’s forces as they are now. I don’t think we have any choice but to retreat to more defensible positions until we can bring the full force of all of our armies to bear.”
“Are you suggesting that we abandon the border?” Marcus asked incredulously.
“Yes.” Isaac replied. “Right now, we have to fight for every scrap of advantage that we can get, and your outlying villages are of little strategic value. I think all of us here recognize that our best hope at winning this war is for the Lord of Monsters to draw the swarm’s attention, and for us to make progress while their attention is elsewhere. It’s an ignoble strategy, but it’s the only one we have right now.”
“But the people –”
“The people will be fine.” Cedric, King of Larios, said. “The gods would never allow the people to be worked as slaves, so I think that, at bare minimum, they would be no worse off than the people of Aura were. Don’t lie to us and say you are protesting for their sake, either; everyone here knows you only care about the land and the control you have over it.”
“You are out of line.” Marcus said, glaring down at Cedric. “I’ll forgive that due to the situation being what it is, but I won’t accept another slight.”
“Or what?” Cedric retorted. “You’ll invade me? I know you’ve been looking for an excuse. But if you did that, then you risk opening yourself up to the swarm even more. Right now, we’re all equals in that the size of our countries doesn’t matter, and I’m not going to let you use your status to bully us any more than you already have. Isaac is right; pulling back to more defensible positions is the only correct move at this juncture. If it was my own villages, I’d do the same, so just let your ego go and make the sacrifices you need to make.”
“I would have been more tactful about it, but Cedric is right.” Zara said. “You haven’t had a need to fight a defensive war before, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Your borders are bloated from your conquests, and now we have to desperately hold on to what little we have while we pray for the Lord of Monsters’ arrival. For now, that means withdrawing to defensive positions, perhaps even the citadels left by the Ruby Emperor.”
“That’s almost a quarter of my empire!” Marcus said incredulously. “I can’t –”
“It’ll be all your empire if you don’t listen!” Isaac said emphatically. “Marcus, as leader of the largest country in this alliance, you’ve held a position of power in these meetings, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that your judgement is being clouded by that power! Think about the long-term; as much as it pains me to admit it, if we win this war, and that’s becoming an increasingly big if, you’ll likely gain all the land the swarm now holds.
“None of us are in any position to be able to stake a claim on that land, and the rulers to that land are already beyond saving. If we lose this war, we lose everything, and I have no doubts that Rose will have animosity towards you in particular. Fall back to defensible locations and wait for our armies to catch up with yours, it’s our only option.”
There was silence, but it was clear that the rest of the rulers shared Isaac’s opinion. It seemed that, more and more, people were beginning to listen to Isaac more than they were listening to him, and that made him deeply uncomfortable. In his head he knew that Isaac was probably right and that he should fall back, but a large part of him wanted to dissent simply because it was Isaac that suggested it.
Unfortunately, that would only weaken his position further, so he sighed and nodded. “Fine.” He said testily. “I’ll pull back to the nearest forts, but not those from the time of the Ruby Empire. There’s a chance that Rose knows about hidden weaknesses in them that we don’t, and I’m going to have them thoroughly inspected before I say they’re safe to use. Is that good enough for you?”
“For now, yes.” Isaac said. “But get those inspections done quickly; those forts are still better than the vast majority of existing forts, and we should be prepared to fall back to them as quickly as possible.”
“Perhaps.” Marcus said. “There is a lot of farmland between the nearest competent fortifications and those from the Ruby Empire, and we need food. If we continue to repeatedly fall back, then we’re going to bring about massive resource shortages.”
“A valid point.” Emily said. “We should all take stock of how much food our countries produce and plan accordingly. If there’s a point we absolutely cannot lose, then we’ll have to determine where that is.”
“Thank you.” Marcus said, vindicated. “Meeting dismissed. Everyone go take inventory of your production like Emily suggested; we need to prepare ourselves as quickly as we can.”