The entire team looked at Thor. All of them were wondering about what he meant by a confession. There were only so many explanations possible.
“Hey! Let me see?” Bao exclaimed while she playfully tried to snatch the note. Thor held the note high above his head. He was sitting cross-legged and Bao was on her knees, but she still couldn’t quite reach it. Then he seemed to reconsider and rather than denying her access he pulled her onto his lap and they proceeded to read it together.
Michael coughed. “Hurry up and share. Who and what have they confessed to?”
“Not them,” Bao clarified. “I think just Selena.”
Thor nodded. “Yes, this was just from Selena. I got it through the private channel I set up exclusively with her. Bear with me, there’s a lot to unpack.”
Michael’s eyes sharpened at the comment. “A private channel? And exactly how did you do that, Thor? You’ve hardly spent a minute in their company and none of it alone.”
“Correct. I set it up two weeks ago. It was hidden in some of the public notes I was exchanging with her debating fate use. I know for a fact Selena purchased the note. Whether someone read it on her side, I can’t tell. I’m sure Tom could check, but I doubt satisfying our curiosity is worth that.”
Michael quirked an eyebrow at that statement, but kept his thoughts to himself.
“Anyway, this note.” He waved it around. “This is a full confession, or at least a statement of what Jenny tried and the current state of play for her group. It’s pretty brave of her to send it and go against the consensus leadership model they run.”
“Bullshit. She doesn’t get credit for fessing up now.” Everlyn stated. “I think it would have been fairly obvious from that damage Tom did to the wador that they didn’t have any secrets from us.”
“True and Selena is good as acknowledges that. States straight out that you probably know all these facts already and then she lists everything she thinks is relevant.”
“There’s nothing new.” Bao confirmed. “Just the same stuff we already knew from Tom, with a few immaterial extra details here and there.”
“Then what’s the point?” Everlyn asked pointedly. “Does it contain anything that can help us.”
Thor grimaced. “She raises two points. One the zone quest has multiple sub quests, and she doesn’t think the chosen can do it. Tom, you should use a directed dream to extract the exact wording. Selena’s interpretation differs from the formal communication sent through earlier today.”
“They did what!” Keikain snarled in anger. “Did they really try to engineer the chosen’s death. That’s inexcusable.”
“It might not be malicious. They might have omitted the information by mistake.” Thor suggested, but he didn’t sound at all convinced.
“I’ll check,” Tom interrupted the argument before it could start. “In a twisted way, it kind of makes sense. Nothing we’ve sent through suggests the chosen will be a benefit in the final battle, I could see Jane or Jenny concluding that getting rid of a competitor now would be best for humanity.”
“It’s not their call.” Keikain said furiously. “The chosen are harmless and will finish lower on the ladder than us. Betraying them like that is non-sensical.”
“No one here is arguing otherwise,” Thor said diplomatically. “The second issue Selena is concerned about is the intentions of the wador and to a limited extent, Jenny. She doesn’t trust the agreement they came to and has been using her truth sensing ability to try to get to the bottom of it. Jenny seems to be blocked from even discussing or alluding to what she agreed with the wador, so Selena’s investigation has got nowhere there.”
“We know all that.” Everlyn stated almost rolling her eyes.
“The questions direct to the wador however were different. They have been deliberately evasive and angry when she raises the topic of…” he nodded in Tom’s direction. “The person who hurt them. There’s a culture issue getting in the way and she is strongly recommending we delay meeting them to the seventh layer.”
Everlyn did not look pleased. “This sounds very self-serving. Not joining them on the sixth just gives Jenny free rein to corrupt the inventor. Are we sure she’s not lying through her teeth to you?”
Thor raised his hands placatingly. “There’s no magical enforced truth pact between us. If she is misleading us with this note, there is no way I can tell.” Once more his eyes went to Tom. The implication was clear. This was something True Dreaming could definitely unravel. “I don’t believe she’s lying to me. Personally, I think she’s reading between the lines and is reacting like any human should when there’s an external threat to one of us. She genuinely believes that Tom is in real danger, but time will let the wador get over their issues.”
Everlyn was not the only one showing scepticism.
“Not my words,” Thor reminded them. “But the wador are not human. We can’t assume that they’ll react in a way we can understand. Selena’s understanding is that if Tom had hurt the wador in battle or even in a ridiculous argument like over the serving size of dinner, there would be no ongoing resentment. A physical fight is how they settle disputes. What Tom did was not that? They equate the loss of the eyes more in terms of an underhanded tactic like poison. Something like that is a massive insult. It is a matter of honour, and the expectation is that if it is proved or even strongly suspected. If the accusation has enough evidence to be expressed then everyone, including loosely allied tribes would also rally to help the aggrieved party get vengeance. Only the most despicable in wador culture do that.”
“It’s just words.” Toni argued. “I think this is another trick.”
Tom raised his hand to quieten the debate. “I think we need to check the wording of the quest. If the chosen can enter the zone, we’ll discuss the optimal choice then. But if Selena’s not lying, then what the wador wants to do to me is a moot point, because we won’t meet them for weeks, anyway.”
They agreed, and they continued on. That night when he was preparing to sleep. Tom bit the bullet and shook his head slightly when he made eye contact with Everlyn. She nodded gave him a thumbs up and he fell asleep by himself, with a focus of, ‘would the zone Selena’s squad was in work for the chosen.’
The true dream swept up instantly.
It took Tom a moment to understand what he was seeing. He was in a modern sleek apartment, with low elegant couches, fancy light fittings and the closing credits of an episode of friends on the large flatscreen TV that filled a wall.
With a sigh, he raised a beer bottle to his lips and sipped. It was perfectly cold and hit the spot after a long day of fighting, especially when the first half had been in the lava zone. He wiped his mouth, burped loudly while being thankful for the privacy he got here, and then used the physical remote to turn off the TV. The routine, the familiarity, the ready alcohol of this room helped him to remain sane.
Squad rules gave him an hour here and thankfully Selena had kept the allowance intact despite the wador behaviour. Fucking Jenny screwing things up, he thought bitterly.
He drained the beer bottle and then clicked it down on the glass coffee table. He loved this place.
A second fresh beer appeared in front of him and the empty one vanished. Especially that. He wished he could just relax, but there wasn’t time for that.
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With a thought, the zone quest appeared on the TV. He rubbed his eyes and skimmed through the text once more.
The remaining zones have a more complicated quest system than the earlier ones. To complete the zone, global quests need to be satisfied along with personal ones.
Maher sighed when reading that declaimer. It hadn’t been joking, and he wasn’t looking forward to seeing what the requirements in zone seven were, but considering the giant and Phil had completed a zone together, hopefully it wouldn’t be that bad. He continued to read.
Zone of Eternal War.
To gain access to the exits all of the following need to be achieved.
Global requirements. No singular force has a military might greater than ten percent. (2 forces to be reduced: Troglodytes (18%), Tree Wisps (11%)) No species may control more than one node. (4 species to be dislodged from existing nodes: Troglodyte(4), Tree Wisps (2), Kobolds(2), AirMoles(3)) All emperor level leaders have been defeated. (One opponent to defeat: Troglodyte Emperor)
Personal Requirements War contribution of five thousand points. (Progress 305 of 5000) Have imprinted on eight nodes. (Progress 1 of 8)
Maher’s frown deepened. It was like Selena had mentioned. There had been next to no progress in the last few hours.
They had a couple of skirmishes against the troglodytes, and he had gotten two hundred and fifty-three contribution points out of it. Since then, they had fought against wolf like monsters to gain access to a node and had only received fifty-two points. Maher knew for a fact that he had killed far more wolves than troglodytes and at least on a ranking level they were similarly rated threats.
The conclusion was unmissable. Creatures not assigned to an official war fraction apparently yielded only a tenth of the points of the endorsed opponents. That was fine. They could work around that restriction.
With a frown, a whisky glass appeared in his hand, and he took a large sip and appreciated the burn down his throat. This place sucked.
The lack of progress against nonaligned fractions was frustrating, but they would focus on killing the mimicry of civilised creatures and the contribution points would roll in.
The dream broke apart around him.
Tom filed the information away and was swept up in a vivid dream. In this one, he had evolved his earth domain further. He had increased range and could create swords of stone that the giant couldn’t even block because the stone swords were so large.
Another true dream grabbed him much to his surprise.
Tom felt dismay flow through him. Two in a single night was going to impact his ability to function normally even with the buffed food he was receiving. The senses that hit him were garbled and nearly impossible to understand, but after a moment he resolved the sensory input.
A monster was directly in front of him. It was metallic and the size of a bus with hundreds of arms that ended in hands with many of them holding weapons. There was no panic from the mind he was in, and he linked the clues together. The creature in front of him was one of the creations of the inventor, a golem but probably of far superior make than the versions Tom could produce. This particular version had a certain crazy beauty to it despite it being an instrument of war.
Behind the construct was a mountain that looked a lot like an axe head sticking out of the ground. It was massive being easily three kilometres high, and that Tom decided was a landmark that the others could use to track down the inventor.
A person who was thinking deeply. In fact, as was often the case he had arrived at an opportune moment as the inventor was planning its immediate future.
All he had to do was to defeat the tree wisps at the base and he would be free to leave the zone. That would take two days max. He was unsure how the zone worked, but suspected that no matter what the challenger did one of the races would be above ten percent. It made sense that as he reduced the strength of one species then another one’s percent contribution had to increase, but according to the quest that had never happened.
The troglodytes had been at ten percent when he started. He had killed a few to drop them below the maximum threshold they were allowed and then moved on. They had filled the space behind him as he destroyed the rollers, and he had expected them to reappear on the list, but they never had.
So if his theory was right he would defeat this last group of monsters and then he could move on.
The dream broke apart and what felt like a moment later he was woken by a spear prodding him in the shoulder. He managed to resist the impulse to react and leapt to his feet ready to start the day. “Thor, contact Selena’s squad immediately. The inventor is at the base of a mountain that looks like an axe. They have two days to get there and then he will go to the next zone.”
Thor looked at him in surprise. “A mountain that resembles an axe. Are you serious?”
With a flick of his mind, the earth reorganised at his feet to resemble the mountain that he had seen.
“Oh, you meant an axe head. I’ll scribble a diagram to make it clear to them.”
“It’s like three kilometres high. It should be very visible to them.”
The big man nodded his understanding.
Something tickled his instincts, and he remembered the first dream and the second. The reasoned educated position of the inventor versus Maher’s acceptance of the text. The shades of difference between the two outlooks and the potential confusion it might cause. “Um, if you don’t mind tell them that the quest is set when you enter the zone. The inventor has a different list of requirements he needs to clear to them.”
Thor did so while Tom recounted both dreams and the news that because of the chosen, their team would need to target the second zone they had access to.
The note was sent, and they set off to acquire the kills they all needed. Given the fact that Tom had two true dreams the previous night and the inventor situation Everlyn collapsed them into two groups again for safety. His role was to sleep the whole time. His domain allowed him to jury rig a stone bed that could hold him, which he linked with the golem. After that, the golem could drag his levitating body along behind it and still contribute to the fights that were occurring. The arrangement was significantly more comfortable than when the spider golem had been given the same task.
The others confirmed that when he fell asleep, the floating rock didn’t change its weight.
His domain was extraordinary.
At lunch time Thor showed a note from Selena that said simply. “Wador convinced. Mountain is visible. We’re detouring to link up with the inventor.”
He continued the sleeping strategy for the rest of the afternoon and there were no further True Dreams.
“Tom, you up for playing?” Michael asked, shuffling a pack of cards suggestively in his hands.
Tom studied the group that had been put together. It was substantial and after a day of rest he was feeling, if not well-rested then close to it.
“We’ll be doing two tables.” The healer clarified. “But rotating so you’ll get to play with everyone.”
Tom nodded and glanced at their surroundings. “Yeah, I’ll join.” They were not in a safe room but with warning rituals put down, his golem and one of the scouts on duty they weren’t going to be surprised by any of the monsters and the last few days had shown only weaker ones left their territory. There would be no boss strength beasts stumbling upon them.
The games were fun even if he was losing slightly. He stared suspiciously at Harry.
The ritualist was the only one winning and based on the glowers he was receiving the streak of good fortune had been noticed.
“I didn’t cheat. I’ve just gotten lucky.”
“I don’t believe you,” Usko declared and pushed the cards that had just been dealt away. He was grinning. “Hitting on the river once. I’d trust you if you said it was a fluke but four times is ridiculous.”
“I didn’t cheat. I wouldn’t waste fate on something like that.”
Everyone laughed. It was also notable that only Usko, Owen and Soetanto had been a victim of the bad luck.
“Harry, it was a good joke,” Michael said. “But next time, throw the excess into a prayer.”
There was an awkward silence.
“That’s bad news,” Bao said quietly, but everyone heard because the usual loud chatter around the card table had dropped to nothing. Everyone turned to stare at her. She was sitting with her back to a tree on the other side of the camp. Thor was next to her a scrap of paper in his hands.
Both of them looked up guiltily.
“What’s bad news?” Michael demanded immediately.
“I don’t know if it’s bad as such. I’m actually not sure how to think about it. In summary, the pace the combined team was setting was too slow, so the wador went off without them to try to reach the inventor in time.”
“The wador are going to recruit the inventor?” the healer asked his eyes wide. “That’s worse than bloody Jenny getting the first bite.”
They were all annoyed, but there was nothing they could do. Between that news and Harry, the jovial atmosphere that the relaxing evening had generated vanished. The card game broke up permanently, with everyone settling in for the night. Everlyn doled out watch details and Tom was assigned a section of the camp isolated from everyone else. His allocated spot was on top of the stone card tables. He flexed his domain, and they collapsed to leave him with soft flat soil to sleep on.
He fell asleep and a True Dream swept him up.
Nothingness greeted him.
Complete static without a trace of a physical input or a stray thought.
It was better than any sensory deprivation chamber that had ever been made, but the fact the true dream had brought him here again made him smile.
For two hundred and forty seconds, he imagined what was happening to the dragon’s skill. The build-up of power that must be occurring. He could envisage a massive explosion when the cap gave way. Hopefully, it would be like what happened to the wador but magnified further. It was possible this was the edge they needed.