Ratams watched with growing pleasure as the soldiers of the Dominion, or at least the living ones, marched forth from their current position and made their way towards a Desert/Sand Elf encampment. Said place was housing one of the unfathomable objects that had been so much of a nightmare up till a brief while ago, and now that the secret of how to deal with their disruption field had been found out (all thanks to Vaile and a bunch of birds) there was nothing to be feared from sending living people and animals into the objects’ area of influence.

Ratams was indeed quite thrilled about this, but he also silently chastised himself for not being able to think of this solution earlier. It was an almost childishly noticeable solution to the problem that the objects had caused, and Ratams had been so caught up in the despair that the objects had infected him and the other servants of Zahra that he failed to even attempt to find an answer, let alone one that was so brazenly obvious.

Still, despite all that embarrassment, the realization of the critical flaw in the defensiveness of the objects was practically a godsend. If there was one thing that the Solusand Dominion had over the Sand Peoples, it was their technological superiority. If there was another thing that could be listed, it was discipline and, if there was third most important factor, it would be the sheer difference in numbers.

It was, therefore, rather simple for the Dominion to essentially build up several large forces and just march on the objects with the intent to destroy them. While the heavily tanned and pointy-eared barbarians certainly could just flee back into the desert and lose their pursuers quite easily, the objects could not. Those things were big, very hard to move and were not exactly placed in the best position for rapid movement. Perhaps never expecting the Dominion to fight back in such a way, the objects had all been stood upright, like big, glowing, uneven obelisks, rather than laid on their side and on a sled for better mobility.

Now, the forces of the Dominion were finally taking the fight to the enemy, instead of just waiting for them to come and fight on their own terms. Ratams was alerted each time an object was destroyed, and soon these last few would be reduced to dust. Once that was done, there would be nowhere for the sandy bastards to hide and no chance of them being able to deny the full and unbridled power of the Pharaoh from reducing them to scorch marks on the ground.

…

Melark paced back and forth in his tent, his sense of dread growing with every step he took. It wasn’t right. No, it wasn’t just ‘not right’, it was utterly impossible! How?! How could the creations of his God be so flawed?! Could the true master of creation have just left him to die? No, that couldn’t be it. Yes, the answer was so very obvious that it was almost insulting to his intellect! This was a test! A test to see if he could lead his people to victory without the aid of the true God of creation!

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It was plain to see that by dividing their strength that they could not win. The objects would not save them, so they needed an alternative. What they needed was a place that they could start again from; someplace that they could use as a base of operations that the forces of the Pharaoh could not hope to reach. Melark grabbed a roll of velum from a bin and rolled it open on the floor. The velum contained a rough map of the whole expanse that made up the Solusand Dominion’s former territory, which was now consumed by deserts that stretched for miles beyond the nation’s current borders.

If memory served, there was a large plateau that could only be reached by a long, thin, winding and very treacherous road that had been carved into the rock itself. On top of that plateau was the ruins of an old Dominion fortress, one that had been destroyed as it lost contact with the rest of the Dominion and was overtaken by the rapidly expanding desert. The top of the rock formation was still many kilometers above the surface of the ground, even despite the growing dunes that were slowly forming a kind of sandy ramp of its own.

This place was the perfect hiding spot. It was uninhabited, out of the way and already had some decent defenses. All Melark would need to do is get his people there. He didn’t think twice and gave the signal to abandon the camps and the divine objects and set his people on what would later be known as a very ill-fated attempt to run from a rather angry Raid Boss and her servants.

…

Meanwhile, in a place far beyond the confines of the New World, a single person existed in a state of limbo. To the world at large, he was either dead, in prison for life, on death row or facing an agonizing torment in another Virtual Reality Simulation. However, these were merely the theories and rumors surrounding his fate. No one, besides himself and handful of others, truly knew what lies behind and in front of him. He was, at this point, a final contingency plan. It was painfully obvious to those in the know that The Prison that housed the world’s most destructive AIs was slowly crumbling and that there was no known way of fixing it.

That was why he was still here, in some capacity or another. That was why he could not be allowed to die. When the walls of The Prison came tumbling down, Humanity needed a bit of leverage to keep the AIs from either destroying or subjugating humanity, and that, more than any other reason, was why he had been kept alive. He was still alive and kicking, but there was too much risk in letting him move around beyond the confines of a safe environment. There were those who either sought his death for the crimes perpetrated by the AIs or saw him as a kind of harbinger of the Gods that they served.

Thus, he languished in a tank somewhere far from everyone else, kept alive via injections and kept fit with muscle stimulation systems designed to keep coma victims from losing their muscle mass. Guarded nonstop by those hand-picked for their discipline and sense of duty, the man who was in some way responsible for the monsters that Humanity had so much fear for floated in darkness, slumbering while those loyal to what once was and those loyal to the AIs fought over the world that currently was.

Hidden from view and thought, the man behind Vaile drifted through a dreamless dream, oblivious to the horrors he had accidentally caused and how the world had to deal with them.