10. Alliances

After five years, finally, the fires had gone out. The Necromancer looked around the ruins of his domains and tsked. Not even his own body—his true body! Not even his own body had escaped the conflagration. He had pushed too much of himself through the links to the world of Atla in his greed and opportunism, and when the world awoke and sent its purifying light through the portals he had created, he had been too slow in collapsing the tunnel behind him.

The interdimensional links were gone now, burned away by the very forces that had nearly destroyed him. So much had changed, and the Necromancer had lost so many interesting and promising test subjects. First that contagious technique which had severed the control mechanism that caused the undead to move on their own. Insidious as his own technique, entire armies had been reduced to rotting piles of meat.

What a frightful technique to have followed him home.

But the pure energy of the world of Atla was far more devastating. It had damaged the wards and the seals on his own world, spreading out and burning like wildfire.

And the necromancer could do nothing but watch, for it was directly inimical to him. The power of a world was not to be underestimated, and this one was effectively primed to deal with his particular brand of corruption. Like an inoculation, the energy was effectively an antibody to everything that he stood for, a hard counter which he could not overcome without throwing vast amounts of energy at it.

He was already greatly diminished. He had chosen to allow the fires to burn themselves out.

He sighed and split himself into a dozen avatars, then rolled up his sleeves and began working on rebuilding his domain. He frowned when one of his avatars noticed that he had a message from Empress Nadia. He cursed, since it was her fault that this had befallen him in the first place. He had been happy ruling in his own little corner of nowhere when she--

He reined in his anger and called her back, standing before the communication crystal that projected his image across dimensions.

She answered immediately. “My body is failing. I need your help,” she stated.

He sighed. “You’re burning through your descendants too quickly. Only one in ten are eligible for the procedure to begin with and—”

“And what is the alternative? No. I refuse to die,” she stated.

“I wasn’t suggesting that,” he said. “You misunderstand. By preparing the body more thoroughly before inhabiting it, you’ll be able to extend the use that you get out of your descendant’s bodies. If you could raise them to the platinum realm before you possess them, then—”

“We’ve had this conversation before. It’s easier to breed descendants than raise someone who might defy me,” Nadia answered.

“But you were on the cusp of divinity before you chose this path,” he pointed out. “If you had a stronger body, you could call upon that power once more.”

She was silent. “I have my next body selected. I shall begin seeking candidates for the next one, and, as you suggest, I shall begin pouring resources into them so that they will be fertile soil once I take possession.”

The necromancer bowed in understanding.

“By the way. You failed once more to claim the unbound soul,” she said.

The necromancer swallowed nervously, feeling for the core of corrupted energy within--

He frowned. It was gone.

The energy that she had infected him with had been burned away by the fire of Atla. He felt the ropes of her control attempting to twist the implanted corruption within him and felt as it slipped around the surface of his power.

She had no more power over him, he realized. Yet even as he realized, his act of stoicism vanished and he mimed excruciating agony.

“Because of your failure, I must martial my strength to face the unbound soul directly and crush him before he reaches the mythril realm. If I did not need you to switch bodies, I would have cast you aside by now. Be grateful that you are useful,” she said.

Then the connection was cut.

The necromancer grinned. He glanced around the ruins of his world, then took the most promising tests and experiments that had survived the fires of purification, and he fled to a distant part of the multiverse.

Let Nadia fix her own damn body-swapping problem. Ant was free!

~~~~~

I awoke in bed and was not alone. Atla was awake and looking at me, his face inches away from my own. I blinked in surprise and he smiled.

“Good morning father,” he said.

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“Good morning Atla,” I answered. “Did you sleep?”

“There are birds migrating in another place. I watched them through the night, although it is day there. Did you know that birds can sense where my head and feet are because of something in their brain? Why don’t humans have that?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it sounds very useful. Come, let’s get ready for the day.”

I assisted my world-child in dressing his eidolon and did my own morning routine. He clung to my side, talking about migratory birds and magnetism. I smiled and listened with half of my mind while the other half focused on the coming day.

“Atla, now that you’ve manifested your Eidolon once, you should find it easier to do it again in the future,” I told him. “If you want to go back to focusing on your world-body, you can just leave anytime you want. I’m going to be busy with many boring things during the coming hours, and while you’re welcome to watch, you don’t really have to be present. So if you want to go play, or if you want to focus on your world-self for a while, that’s fine.”

“Okay,” he said cheerfully. “The Southern Green Billed duck flies up to a thousand miles during its journey, but they usually nest within miles of where they were hatched. Sometimes a single nest is used for six generations.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah!”

Once it was clear that Atla was content to follow me for the day, I made my way to the courtyard, where I was somewhat surprised to find that my retainers were all already present.

“Lord Little Bug!” Pi Phon shouted, piercing through the slight din of conversation. “And the Young Master, Atla.”

The various heads of various factions within the Many Peaks Alliance turned and bowed to various depths depending upon their relative positions, but they all showed respect. I noticed that there was a seat of honor placed in the front of the courtyard, next to the elm tree. And Di Ram was decidedly not taking it.

I held a conversation with him in silent exchanges, but it was clear that the seat was for me. Reluctantly, I took the spot to get the meeting started.

Atla giggled and ran straight into the tree, becoming one with it. Incorporeal once more, I still heard his voice as he began talking about the root structure of the tree he’d planted yesterday and how it stretched out and tangled with many others.

The child’s casual display had various effects on the gathered men and women, but I simply picked up the first sheet of paper that was handed to me.

“Alright then,” I said. “Let us discuss matters of this little alliance which seems to believe that I am their patriarch.”

Two hours later, Atla pulled at my attention, whispering in my ear “I’m glad that I started playing with the trees instead of staying to listen. These people are so boring!”

“Yes, well, they are dealing with important matters which might shape the future of the alliance of humans in the future. I am hoping to set things up so that everyone is happy on your world and that there are no wars. You were very sad about the war in the Lokoto region until we put a stop to it, remember? So they’re working on keeping you happy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I like this tree.”

“The tree you planted yesterday?”

“No, a different one. I’ll show you. It’s neat.”

I allowed myself to be swept away in the vision, and Atla was right. The tree was a very good tree.

“Patriarch?” the young retainer said, confused by the vacant look on my face.

I blinked around and realized that my focus on Atla had derailed the meeting for a moment. “Apologies. I was focused on Atla, who is playing with a tree many miles southwest of here.”

The retainer smiled. “It makes sense now why you have only interacted with us through avatars. You were busy with a powerful and precocious child. Seeing Atla in the flesh has reassured everyone that you are indeed the leader we thought you were.”

“Is that so?” I asked. “Well, remember that I am just a figurehead. Di Ram rules the Many Peak Alliance in my name. His word is law, I am just here as the world-father to give his own judgments additional weight.”

“As you say,” the retainer said.

The meeting continued the entire day. The Many Peaks Alliance was slowly spreading out. It covered the southern central continent already, with only a few sects or clans who had not thrown their lots in with the organization. They were in the process of reclaiming and repopulating the northern continent after the devastation of the undead invasion, which meant that they had a considerable amount of land to build their foundation upon.

However, most of that remained wilderness, and they were in a race against Atla’s wildlife to claim that territory, as just like the human cultivators, the sudden abundance of Qi in the environment meant that animals that were previously restricted in their growth were awakening as spirit beasts.

More significantly and requiring far more importance, however, were the negotiations with the other factions throughout the world. Some of them were anxious to throw their lot in with the alliance, as the rewards for doing so were substantial. Included in membership was access to the Library of the Six Mountain Sect, which contained one of the most extensive repositories of knowledge and heritages of powerful cultivators, including the personal notes of many ascendants.

Including an entire section dedicated to my own notes on a plethora of topics.

Then there were the holdouts, such as Nonpo and other regions which either did not trust our open offer of friendship, or which feared our rising power, or which jealously guarded their own lands and secrets.

Fortunately, I was able to delegate the majority of this work to Di Ram’s subordinates after simply listening to their reports and assuring them that they were doing a good job.

I was happy with the direction that the Alliance was taking overall.

Once the state of the alliance had been determined, however, it was time for me to make several announcements which would shake things up considerably.

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