Savage Awakening 576. War Plans (II)

Reina and Zane met them at the teleporter hub.

“Evan was just telling me how bad a matchup that Trial Champion was for Chomper,” said Reina. She glanced worriedly at the teleporters. “I hope he’s made it out alright…”

Not long after, Evan barreled through a teleporter with Chomper right behind him. He tackled them both in a hug the moment he saw them. “Chomper won the Trials!” 

Chomper gave a happy bark.

“Oh!” said Reina, relieved. “That’s wonderful.” 

Avery came through a few minutes after Evan. “I’m pleased to report I have made great progress!” she declared. “…In some respects, anyway!”

She seemed a tad defensive.

“Nice,” said Zane.

“Thank you,” said Avery.

Reina shot Zane a look. Reina and Avery had corresponded quite a bit over the years. Reina told him Avery had been a little testy; she hadn’t had much success curbing her gaming addiction. Avery was struggling even more these days than the last time Zane had heard from her. By the sounds of it, she was also a bit sensitive about it.

“I think she just needs a little time,” Reina had said to Zane just before they arrived.

“She’ll figure it out,” Zane had told her. He wasn’t worried about Avery.

“I hope so…” Reina had said, biting her lip.

It went against every Reina instinct not to step in and try to help—maybe by trying to get Avery on a Reina-like strict schedule. But from past experience, she knew it’d be a bad idea. So now she just tried to be supportive, which Zane agreed with.

Picnics tended to be their go-to when they got back together, and this time was no different. Reina found a place back on Earth, a nice little flower field not far from Luminous Faction Headquarters. They had an excellent view of the city, still a flourishing wood-and-stone metropolis, and the river running alongside it. It was late summer back on Earth, so plenty of folks were out there enjoying the sparkling waters.

It’d been a while since Zane had last been back on Earth. Nowadays he tended to split his time between the World Tree, the Azure Flame, and wherever the Barbarian Sage dragged him off to, but he still had fond memories of his first few years coming up here.

Reina had made a charcuterie board, to which Evan contributed several cheeses, crackers, and a tuna spread he made himself.

Evan was also the first to volunteer to share what he’d been up to.

He finished up a cracker, wiped his mouth, and started happily going over how he and Chomper had gone through the Elite Eight.

“…And then the Drillosaur hit Chomper with an earthquake attack,” said Evan. “But Chomper pulled through and gave it one more chomp! And that ended up getting it done.”

Evan had heard over and over that you weren’t supposed to challenge the Elite Eight with just a single beast, but he kept his faith in Chomper. The nice thing about Chomper was—because he was just a single beast, he was quite overleveled compared to the six the Elite Eight used. Evan went over the battles in enthusiastic detail, but it mostly amounted to them throwing attacks at Chomper, which Chomper ate. Chomper then chomped their beasts, which fell over.

“Chomper definitely got a lot of criticism for being one-dimensional,” said Evan, looking a bit upset. “And… I guess early on, I was kind of worried it might be a problem—like it might work against the early trainers, but not against the real powerhouses, y’know? But we kept going, and Chomper kept chomping! And things turned out just fine.”

“Sometimes you’ve got to stick to your guns,” Zane agreed.

Evan nodded happily. “Then we got to the champion, though…”

The champion was this lady called Shirona, who Evan had found quite intimidating. She was blonde, with a fashionable fur coat. She also had a terrifying earth-dragon beast that’d destroyed everything that’d come in front of it for the past fifty years.

It turned out to be a back-and-forth battle that saw Chomper down for the count for a bit. It was by far Chomper’s hardest fight yet. But with Evan’s encouragement, the big dog pulled through in the end, gave Shirona’s dragon a convincing chomp, and that was the end of that.

“It sounds like Chomper fought very bravely," said Reina. 

“Mhm!” 

“I’m very proud of both of you,” Reina told him.  

Evan beamed. “We fought so many trainers!” he said. “…Way more than I thought we’d have to fight, but… I really think it was worth it!” 

Zane, for his part, quite approved of Chomper’s methods. Better a simple, consistent toolset that you mastered than a thousand tools that’d only kind of work.

He fished out a spare 10,000-year Sacred Bone he had lying around in his Interspatial Ring and gave it a toss. Chomper happily ate it up.

Then Evan was inducted into the Floor 70 Hall of Fame. Which was where they were at now. Next Evan was hopeful he could board a ship headed to the next region over. It would cover floors 70 through 90. 

There was supposed to be a powerful organization there which was trying to awaken these ancient legendary beasts in order to dominate the whole Tower. It seemed quite involved. Evan was hoping to put an end to their shenanigans.

“I also have an update!” said Avery. She stood up. “I made it to Legendary Eagle in Counterstrike.”

They all waited for more, but that appeared to be it.

“Nice,” said Zane.

“Thank you.” Avery then sat back down.

“I will admit,” she continued, “things aren’t looking so great, if you look at things objectively, in terms of the timeline. But. There is a way out of my current predicament.”

She munched a cracker. She got back up—she seemed to have thought of an addition to her speech while munching.

“I just need to get back on my original training program,” she said. “The 100 squat, 100 push-up thing. It was very successful before and I saw massive gains. I still believe I’m on track to one-shot Malzareth as long as I can stay at least a bit consistent over the next thirty-five years! Thank you.”

“Sure thing,” said Zane.

“You can do it!” cried Evan.

“I think that’s a fine plan,” said Reina brightly.

Zane knew Reina still had some doubts about the one-shotting Malzareth bit. But Reina and Avery had discussed it over several letters, and Reina felt it was a good step in the right direction. Which, she decided, was what ultimately mattered.

They left it at that.

***

Evan and Avery still weren’t too sure what their roles would be in the war. The Constellation Order and the Thousand Seas Tribe were defending the same general stretch of territory, so they were pretty optimistic they could team up—maybe remake Team Sunshower and start up rescue team operations. They’d go around the battlefront, helping out wherever they could.

That was only if Avery was unable to achieve one-shot Malzareth power levels in the next forty years, which she was still determined to do.

The next morning, Reina took Zane aside to give him his promised war briefing. She led him up to the Evergreen Grove, which was the highest bough of the World Tree and one of its most heavily warded. She nodded to the guards at the gates, who admitted them and activated a script circle. Runes shimmered briefly over the domed roof before vanishing.

“Those are some of the highest-grade runes the Artificers at the Conclave could make, with input from your master, Noughtfire,” Reina told him. “Even if Malzareth himself tried to scry here, all he’d see is a dome of nothing.”

Zane wasn’t a rune expert, but he did notice some familiar ones up there. Ones that bore quite a resemblance to the concealment runes he’d seen Kain experimenting with back in the Pure Yang.

He turned to Reina, feeling eager. “Noughtfire said you had a role in mind I’d like.”

“Mhm! We’ll get there. First, though…”

There she unfurled a scroll—this massive map of all of Dragonspire, by the looks of it, with each of the Nine Great Factions marked out by a shining sigil.

“You have to understand the ground we’re fighting on.”

The scroll was two-dimensional, but the map was three-dimensional; almost like the scroll was a portal through which you could see a mini-model of the Galaxy. It could also be manipulated, moved around with ease.

“It’s the Scryers Guild’s Godsight Scroll,” said Reina, playing around with it a little for him, showing him various sprays of stars all over Dragonspire. “There are only nine copies, one given to each Great Faction. It’s a snapshot of a singular moment in spacetime, frozen forever. It’s been incredibly helpful for war planning.”

He glanced over it, fascinated. There was a star that looked like a hyper-condensed ball of orange-red-white, the purest color of fire—“That’s the Phoenix Star, isn’t it?”

The star around which the Azure Flame Faction was built.

“Yes, it is,” said Reina with a grin. “The brightest parts on the map show the most essence-dense places.”

There were other bright spots scattered around—a cluster of smoking shadows, another of stark bright blues that reminded him of the Everfrost Glacier, and yet another of pure gold-whites all the same color—it had to be the home of the Constellation Order.

There were nine in total, one for each Great Faction.

“They’re arranged in a loose sphere, as you can see, around Dragonspire’s Core,” said Reina, marking it out on the map. “And once the war begins, they’ll all be linked through the System. By making ‘alliances’ through their home beacons, the nine Great Factions will secure the regions between them. Meaning they’ll share a sphere of protection.”

“They’re making one big Safe Zone, essentially.”

“Mhm. There are a few benefits from doing it, but the clearest is that there’s simply much less area to worry about. Now all nine Great Factions will defend one long, continuous front—the edge of the territory of the alliance.”

She marked that out too.

“The World Tree’s relatively protected. It’s one of our biggest advantages,” said Reina. “We’re located quite close to the core of the Galaxy, meaning we’re not exposed much. And we’re not the only ones. The Guild of Endless Shadows and the Constellation Order are situated in that ‘inner’ zone too—which also means they’re much less at risk.”

Zane nodded. He could see what Noughtfire meant now when he referred to the geography of the battlefield. The implications were pretty clear. The World Tree had just a small stretch of territory exposed; the rest of it was hidden behind other Great Factions. By and large, you’d have to break through the Factions on the outside before you could get at the ones near the core. 

“But that doesn’t mean we’ll just sit back and let the outer Factions take the heavy casualties,” said Reina. “Every one of the more insulated Factions has sworn to play an extensive battlefield support role, since we’re all in this together. My Silver Winds, for instance, will be dispatched to help the nearest front-line Great Factions—the ones effectively shielding us from Malzareth’s forces. That’s…”

She marked them down.

“The Azure Flame, Mount Thundercrest, and the Steelheart Conclave. Which was why I thought this stretch of territory—”

She marked out the border going from Azure Flame, across Mount Thundercrest territory, all the way to the edge of the Steelheart.

“—would make a good battlefield for you.”