Chapter 700 - A Plan of Attack

Zeke clenched his fists as he stared out at the battlefield.  Initially, he’d thought that the fight had been fairly one-sided, with his people coming out on top.  However, when Simeon fled, his army had gone wild.  That increased ferocity had claimed multiple lives before Zeke could even respond. 

Once he’d stepped onto the beach, the battle had turned.  The lesser gods – no matter how numerous – were incapable of truly harming him, though they certainly tried.  A barrage of skills hit him with ever passing second, and yet, they barely scratched his titanic form. 

The same couldn’t be said for his followers.

By any measure, the fight had ended in a rout.  The collected forces of the Crimson Tower had taken many times more lives than they’d surrendered.  Yet, to Zeke, even a single loss was a great tragedy.  And hundreds had died.

All because he was incapable of adequately protecting them. 

“It’s not your fault,” Eveline reminded him.  She had been mostly silent during the battle, likely in an effort to keep from distracting him.  Now that it was finished, she was once again willing to offer her insights.  “You realize that, don’t you?”

“If not me, then who?”

“Oberon.”

“He told me he wasn’t capable of defending his domain.  He said it flat-out.  I knew it, and I did nothing,” Zeke argued.  Indeed, if he’d taken it seriously, he would have spent the few weeks since arriving in Oberon’s domain shoring up the defenses.  Perhaps it might not have made much difference, but if it had allowed them to save even one life, it would have been worth it. 

“Don’t do that to yourself.”

“What?” he asked.

“Torture yourself with what-ifs.  You know you did everything you could.  And even if you didn’t, you don’t focus on what you might’ve done differently.  You focus on the things you’ll do going forward.”

Zeke didn’t respond.  Instead, he wondered if one could ever fix the mistakes of the past and prevent repeating those errors without a true accounting of what went wrong.  Still, he recognized the spirit of Eveline’s admonishment, even if his instincts told him to disregard it in favor of self-pity and guilt.

He chose to take her advice.

Turning away, he said, “I’m not going to let this stand.  You know that, don’t you?”

“You wouldn’t be you if you were willing to let it go.  And I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t support the notion of unrepentant vengeance,” she responded with no small degree of vehemence. 

“Glad we’re on the same page.”

“Always.”

With that, Zeke strode through the battlefield, watching the other kobolds gather the fallen.  If any were alive, he stepped in and used [Hand of Creation] to mend their wounds, but the opportunities to do so just weren’t there.  All but a few were long dead, and despite the power he’d gathered, Zeke couldn’t heal that. 

Yet.

Perhaps one day he could. 

Still, he needed to acknowledge their sacrifice, to lend himself to their mourning.  Of course, the kobolds took note, many of them weeping in his presence.  And those he healed were even more affected, many of them prostrating themselves before him and pledging undying devotion. 

To Zeke’s surprise, the undead who’d participated in the battle were the most appreciative of his healing, and it didn’t take long to figure out why.  They couldn’t use the Crimson Spring within the tower.  Nor could they endure a normal healer’s touch.  So, if they were injured, they were forced to rely on their own vitality to mend those wounds.  Often, they died simply because they were incapable of tolerating a healer’s skills. 

But [Hand of Creation] was powered by divine energy instead of mana.  It was all attunements and none, all at the same time.  As such, the restrictions of a normal healing spell did not apply.  Zeke healed the undead just as easily as anyone else.

However, that ability did not go unnoticed or unappreciated.  If the kobolds were effusive in their gratitude, then there were no words for how the undead saw him.  It was a grim reminder that, for many of them, such a simple act that most races took for granted was tantamount to a miracle. 

And they saw it in that light. 

It took hours for Zeke to canvas the entire battlefield, so by the time he returned to the tower, the sun had long since set.  Before he passed through the arch, he saw Oberon sitting nearby.  Perched on a rock, he stared out at the surf, his leafy beard waving in the ocean breeze.

Zeke sat next to him, and for a few moments, neither said anything.

“I failed them,” the dwarf said.

“You did.”

Oberon glanced in his direction, and for a second, anger flashed in his eyes.  It didn’t last long before it was replaced by incalculable fatigue.  Suddenly, the dwarf looked so much older than ever before.  Like a gnarled oak whose leaves had been slowly stripped away by time and erosion.  Limbs rotted, trunk cracked, and roots long since withered – it still stood, but its fate was sealed. 

Like that tree, Oberon was dying.  Perhaps not soon – at least in a mortal’s sense – but on the timescale of an eternal god, his eventual death was only minutes away. 

All of that clouded the dwarf’s expression before he said, “There was a time when I could have destroyed an upstart like Simeon with nothing but a stray thought.  Now, he invades my domain with impunity.  If you hadn’t been here…”

“He wouldn’t have bothered,” Zeke reasoned.  “Simeon came for me.  Not for you.” 

“Does that make it better or worse?”

“Neither.  Just different.  What will you do?” Zeke asked.

Oberon shrugged.  “What can I do?  Rebuild?  For what reason?  He will return.  If not him, then someone on the cusp of greater godhood.  I am vulnerable.  Killing me and taking my followers would be quite a boon for someone like that.”  He sighed.  “I am going to send them to the Ways.  They can settle in the Nexus.  My connection with them will suffer, but they will be safe.”

“And you?”

“I will remain.  I will ready myself to repel any invaders.  I am not so weak that I can’t do that, at least.”

Zeke fell silent for a few moments that stretched into a couple of minutes.  Finally, he asked, “What if I have an alternative to martyring yourself?”

“I do not intend to die.  Not until I have –”

“I want to attack,” Zeke interrupted.  “We know where Simeon lives, right?  Where his domain is.  He attacks us, then we attack him.  It’s that simple.”

“You don’t know what you’re suggesting, Zeke.  That army you just saw – it was merely a fraction of the forces he can field.  Your kobolds, as strong as they are, would be buried beneath the sheer weight of numbers,” Oberon stated unequivocally.  “They cannot win that battle.”

“Unless?”

“There is no unless.  It isn’t possible.”

“What if I don’t hold back?” Zeke asked.  “I can use [Primordial Wrath] and destroy his planet just as I did with Mak’tar.”

Oberon shook his head. “Not possible.  To do that, you would need to undermine his entire domain.  To do that would require…”

“What?” asked Zeke when the dwarf trailed off and didn’t continue.

“Seven temples.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Simeon’s domain features seven temples.  If we destroy those, then his hold on the world will be temporarily compromised,” Oberon explained.  “Normally, to even attempt something like that would be suicide.  Assaulting a greater god’s temples is tantamount to attacking his person.  Simeon would not let it stand.  Not unless he was occupied.”

“That’s where I come in,” Zeke reasoned.  He was no great strategist, but the idea seemed simple enough that even he could easily grasp it.  “I attack Simeon, keeping him busy while you all destroy the temples.  When the domain is broken…I hit him with everything I’ve got.”

“Indeed.  There are issues with this plan, though.”

“What are they?”

“First, getting away.  I witnessed the aftermath of your attack on Mak’tar.  Your people would not survive that.”

“Second?”

“You can’t fight Simeon toe-to-toe on his own turf,” Oberon answered.

“Sure I can.”

“You’ll be destroyed.”

Zeke shrugged.  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.  “Listen, I don’t have to win this fight, do I?  Just survive.  And if there’s one thing I’m good at it, it’s surviving.  Believe me, I’ve had plenty of practice.”

“It will be torturous.  You understand what you’re suggesting, don’t you?  He will rip you to pieces.  It doesn’t matter how strong you are.  Even if you were more powerful than Simeon – which you are not – his domain will –”

“Could you watch me while I was in Hell, Oberon?” Zeke asked.

“No.  Not until you reached the end.  I was blind to your struggles, though I felt them.”

“I defeated a god in there,” Zeke said.  “Not by overpowering him.  Not by outsmarting him.  I outlasted him.  He ripped me to pieces so many times that I couldn’t even begin to keep count of the passing days.  And in the end, he ran out of energy.  I didn’t.”

“This is no lesser god confined to hell.  This is –”

“And then I was impaled and had my body ripped apart, one bite at a time, by crows.  I couldn’t fight back then, either.  I just had to endure.  No…I had to surrender.  That was the lesson of that circle of hell.  To just accept my guilt and surrender to the consequences.  So, I did.  I died.  Tens of thousands of times,” Zeke recounted. “But I kept coming back.  I could have just let myself go.  I could have drifted off into nothingness.  But I never even considered it at the time.  I just kept coming back for more.

“Then there was Valhalla.  I fought tens of thousands of battles.  I died so many times that I lost count.  I killed more people than I want to think about.  I kept going then, too.”

He sighed.  “My point is that if you’re concerned about whether or not I can take the punishment, I’m telling you that you shouldn’t worry.  I’m good.  I can take it.  I’ll endure what I need to endure until I can turn on that asshole.”

“Are you certain?” asked Oberon, fear evident in his eyes.  In that moment, Zeke understood that the dwarf never would have volunteered for such a task.  He didn’t have it in him.

But for Zeke, it was just another day.

“I am.”

After that, they retreated into the tower.  Once inside, Oberon stumbled, though he quickly recovered.  It only took a moment for Zeke to recognize what had happened.  If the planet outside was Oberon’s domain, then the tower was Zeke’s.  And once inside, Oberon had no real power.

It was a dark reminder of what was in store for Zeke when he attempted to attack Simeon.

Soon enough, the found their way to a conference room within the Pillar where every major leader met to establish their plan of attack.  Fortunately, Iris came through when she revealed that her ship was more than capable of traversing the void.  It did so via one of her skills, and if passage was at all interrupted, they would all be lost.  However, she’d used the skill often enough to know that it was reliable.

That was enough for Zeke.

Gradually, they hammered out the details, and Zeke discovered that Jasper had become the de facto spymaster for the tower.  He managed an entire network of informants, many of whom visited the various domains of greater gods – usually for trade.  And as such, he provided vital information concerning the orientation of the temples and the best avenues of attack.

Zeke listened to all of the plans, and as he did so, he was more than impressed with the no-nonsense attitude from his friends and followers.  They were obviously old hands and war, and they showed it with their immense aptitude for planning.

But then he saw Talia.

The battle had taken its toll on her, and though she’d been physically healed, her psyche remained damaged. 

“Go to her,” Eveline said.  “The second this planning session is over, you need to talk to her.  Comfort her.  Be the friend she needs.”

So, when the meeting concluded, Zeke did just that, asking her to accompany him to the manor.  But to his surprise, she refused, making some excuse about checking in on the undead.  She was gone before he could press the subject.

“You need to find her.”

“I know,” he said.  Then, he set off to chase her down.  Whether she wanted to or not, she was going to talk to him about what had happened in the battle.