The Path of Ascension Chapter 523

Chapter 523

It only took thirty-five years for Lawrence and Esther to return to the war. Originally, they’d been scheduled to take a full forty years for recovery, with the last ten dedicated to time spent outside their rift-based prison, but they hadn’t made it that far. Things hadn’t been too bad when Maya was there, but when she left, their time in the base had turned cold and sterile, as the only thing to do was heal or dwell on the numerous questions they had.

Ultimately, while the healers and their assistants were nice people, far too many were star struck and neither of them had the energy to deal with them. Their escape to reality hadn’t been all that better, despite their hopes.

In fact, it had, more than anything else, made them confront the passage of time. They’d both thought they were ready for that, but when it happened, some small things still managed to take their metaphorical legs out from under them.

Everything could feel normal for an entire morning, but then one of them would overhear a comment they weren’t expecting and everything would taste like ash.

Each time that happened they were forced to confront the reality that many of the people they had known, grown up with, fought with, and fought against were gone. Washed away by a hundred thousand years of growth and experiences they’d avoided by way of an exploding star.

Even the friends who were still around were reminders. They were the worst of it all.

Seeing their brash and immature friends as old Tier 45s was hard. Seeing the weight of those years heavy on their shoulders was even worse.

So many years gone in what had felt like hours to them.

And then there was Linda.

Lawrence still didn’t quite know how to feel about that and her. He knew what the therapists wanted him to think, he knew what Esther thought, though she hadn’t said anything, he knew what seemingly everyone but he himself thought.

Inside the healing rift he’d been able to keep things distant and removed, but after exiting, he had to confront it all and the reality that his wife was gone. Dead in a way that couldn’t be healed any more than true death.

What made it all so galling was that Lawrence remembered talking to Linda before the war started. He’d reassured her that things would be okay. They’d fought in lower Tier wars before, and there hadn’t been anything about the war that had made them overly worried about their safety. The Clans hadn’t had another Gladiator to match them, and they were confident in their Aspects.

They’d been oh so wrong, but for him, that mistake was less than a century old from his perspective, even if he discounted the extra time from being inside the Tier 35 rift.

Sadly, in talking to his former and possibly still friends, he’d learned something not contained in the information packet. Something he wished had been, but understood why it hadn’t.

Linda had remarried.

He didn’t blame her— he’d been presumed dead— but the knowledge still managed to punch a hole through the carefully constructed walls he’d made. It had been the final straw, and he’d brought the idea of returning to the battlefield early to Esther.

She’d agreed without hesitating, but both of them knew he was running away from his feelings.

They were doing exactly what Maya had said they would, and neither of them missed that fact.

It helped, but there was still downtime where he could get lost in his own thoughts.

Lawrence just didn’t know how to process the dichotomy of their perspectives.

He felt like a part of him should be angry that she ‘betrayed’ their marriage by moving on, but he couldn’t muster any feelings other than shame and self-loathing.

She’d mourned for close to five thousand years. She’d gone completely catatonic for two decades, but as he loved about her, she’d eventually rallied and picked herself back up though the depression clearly lingered. Linda had always been stronger than she’d given herself credit for, but that knowledge didn’t make the suffering she’d clearly experienced over his death worth it.

She’d eventually found happiness with someone new at Tier 40. No matter how their friends tried to skirt around the issue, he could identify where her advancement speed slowed to something more reasonable. She’d been buying slots on any and all teams she could and spent as little time in reality as possible. He hated knowing how she must have felt during those years, but he knew her too well to delude himself after seeing the records.

He didn’t blame her for moving on, or even wish she had done anything different. Well, except mourning for so long, because she didn’t deserve that, but none of that meant he knew how he felt. Their relationship had been strong, with only a few minor points of friction between them that had, after so many millennia together, long since shifted into loving quirks.

Lawrence wasn’t sure how to reconcile it all, and with little to do but talk about ‘the old times', he only made it halfway through their break before wanting to cut it short.

He wanted to feel bad, but he was happy to play the villain. Esther was nearly as overwhelmed as he was, though for other reasons. And for all its flaws, combat was both incredibly simple and all encompassing in thought.

Their return to the battlefield was a return to things they could control, and they desperately needed it.

Still, it felt strange to not only be joining the war late, but being the clear secondary priority for the Republic Military Command.

Maya may have had her foot out the door, but RMC leadership was still built around her. All of the orders, strategies, doctrines, and contingencies the duo saw as they met the new military commanders were built around her. There were obvious signs of that changing, and rapidly, but Lawrence had enough of a strategic mind that he understood any such transition wouldn't happen mid-war.

They’d be worked into the existing strategies, not the other way around.

That knowledge only brought up more conflicting emotions, but he was finally able to put his unnecessary thoughts aside as they met their new support staff and their new gear received its final adjustments.

Lawrence had known about some of the new things, like the aura escape talismans, but he hadn’t expected how far even the small things could change. Sure, there hadn’t been many fundamental changes to enchanting weaponry or armor, but he saw the minor refinements everywhere he looked.

Formations were often a hair smaller, a touch more efficient, and had better redundancies. Potions were more potent, lasted longer, and had more side effects mitigated with secondary elixirs. Items used new, slightly tweaked, alloy mixes that helped stabilize their spirits, they had new peak performances, or had started incorporating aura into their creation.

It went on and on, with changes to everything they saw. It made the year they spent testing, refining, adjusting, and just generally getting familiar with their new equipment, hectic in the exact way they needed to forget about their leap through time.

They hadn’t gotten any new gear that interacted with their time abilities, but neither had they expected to. Time-based anything was rare, and the three crafters who’d built their specialised gear originally had long since ascended or died.

It wasn’t until he and Esther were on a top of the line ship with a new engine type, one Esther was already pouring over, that the thoughts started to bubble up again.

Then, for what felt like for the first time since they’d been shot with an entire star, Lawrence was grateful for something unexpected to happen.

Maya broke off from where she was holding down a quadrant of the offensive line with the Corporations to intercept them.

After hearing so much about the new incarnation of the Gladiator Chat, he’d hoped their… older peer felt wrong, but Maya was more experienced and was about to retire, which made it accurate. He’d been hoping she’d visit them after they entered real space, but she’d been busy fighting on the front lines.

Whatever the case, Lawrence spent most of the intervening time arguing the semantics of calling Maya their older peer with himself as a distraction for everything else in his life.

It worked well enough for him to be relaxed when Maya arrived. She did so just before they reached the border region where there was active fighting, and she directed them into a nearby world's real space.

The blonde Gladiator was in a heavier set of armor than the last time he’d seen her in full gear, but the ever repeating cycle of repair and damage was clear to his eyes, even without his Talent.

She didn’t say anything as she used her own blend of magic to create what he assumed was a safe room, given she spoke out loud.

“Glad to see you two up and about. I’ve got good news and… Well, it's not bad news, but yeah, it's news I guess, though that lacks the dramatic duality of the saying. Whatever. After a lot of bickering and arguing from all sides, we’ve decided the two of you are getting restricted access to the Gladiator Chat. While I wasn’t a proponent of the idea we went with at first, I came around after a little convincing and I agree with the logic. To put it plainly, you are getting access to the preexisting war chat and all of the nice and helpful functions. Really, all you are limited from is the general chats.”

Lawrence wasn’t about to complain and he knew Esther wasn’t, but Maya seemed to expect some pushback, as she hurried to raise her hands in defense and placate them.

“There are a lot of personalities, existing rivalries, and just history that we want to ease you into. And at least until the end of the war, there are still three teams besides yourself, which will make it pretty busy. By then, you will be given access to the full chat, so it's not really an important loss.”

Rather than argue, Esther asked, “Are the others watching what we say? Can they speak where we can?”

Maya popped the final letter of the word with her tongue. “Nope! Well kinda. I’m not entirely sure if I mentioned this earlier, but Max, Ellen, and now Matt act as general moderators, and they keep each other in check from abusing their powers well enough. Normally Tier 35’s don’t get such permissions, but Matt and Ellen have done a lot of mental work and can easily handle it, which means that, for once, the war Tier chat is truly just us fighting inside. Though, the others do have read permissions granted to them at the end of the war, so it's not actually private. Normally, this chat is used to settle bets and the like, but an equal amount of the time this chat is for those of us who are in the war. We like to keep a place to talk without the retired guys being able to butt in with helpful suggestions. The war chat has been active, but that's a good thing, given how this war has gone so far. But we can get into that later.”

Before either could ask about the war, she reached into the air and pulled out a simple, small wooden box.

“You two are lucky I’m one of the key holders, or we’d need to grab Allie to act as an intermediary.”

Maya tapped the box once, which opened it and turned it towards them in one motion, revealing two glowing rods of pink crystal.

Before they could ask, she explained, “The Gladiator Chat is strictly controlled and only two of us have the keys to bring new people in. Currently that's Lila, because she's the current mother hen of the group as the highest Tier, and myself because I can make temporary duplicates and bring people in without revealing where the originals are.”

With a far more serious expression on her face, Maya snapped the box shut with a finger. “All of the Great Powers know that the Chat exists and they all want in. Not only to spy on us, but they’ve all hoped and tried to tap into our instant communications. We don’t let them, and any time any of our Great Powers do so on one of the others, we step in and shut it down. Do not give the Republic access intentionally or allow them to get a hook into your systems, because then Max and Gideon will go in and remind them why that's a very bad idea. And if that doesn't stop them, Lila will just go eat people— fuck the consequences. None of us want to deal with that. Oh! Max also has better security layers you can download for your [AI] but I don’t expect you to do so until after Esther has gone through every tweak. They are safe, but it's better to check yourself. That kind of thorough review is fine for that, but I can’t let you look so closely at these initial keys.”

Lawrence looked to Esther, who looked annoyed but not all that surprised.

After a moment, Esther looked away from him to Maya, where she nodded. “If you say it's safe, we’ll trust you. We—”

Maya cut her off by reopening the box. “Good, then all you need to do is touch the gem.”

Lawrence felt his confusion rise like a tide. “Don’t you mean touch and then download.”

“No, I don’t. These have already been paired to you. All you need to do is touch. Max, Gideon, and I worked on this iteration of keys. After the key bearer does their part, all you need to do is give it a poke.”

Lawrence knew enough about technology that he didn’t think that should work, but copied Esther as she reached out.

Even watching his [AI], he didn’t see the new function download or install. Even his [AI] didn’t register its arrival, but with that single touch something new appeared in his vision.

He tapped it, half expecting to have to forcefully eject his [AI] to prevent it from doing something nefarious, but he was pleasantly surprised to see a chat window open up.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

They already seemed to have accounts and were logged in, with the chat history accessible and going all the way back to when the war started.

That was interesting, but what he didn’t understand were all the additional services that just worked. To test things, he poked at a section of recordings of previous exploits that occurred during the war. It was the current ‘highlight moment’, showing Ascender Titan killing two pinnacle elites along with a peak. While it informed Lawrence to never line up with Esther and the Empire Ascender in a fight, what really caught his attention was how the recording loaded fully and instantly without any noticeable delay.

Having that confirmed, his attention was immediately drawn to a section labeled ‘Hacking and Cracking Tools’.

He’d always had an academic interest in both security and the art of bypassing it. He wasn't an expert by any means, that was Esther’s job, but he considered himself knowledgeable and informed, even if his mental benchmarks were a hundred thousand years out of date.

Inside the section of the Gladiator Chat he found a dozen software cracking programs, with each of them promising ludicrous results. While he knew he’d been out of the loop for a while, he also knew that there was no way to crack XL9 encryptions in ‘a moment or two’. Even after so much time, it was only two generations old, and hadn’t even been fully phased out because it was still secure enough for most civilian uses.

Lawrence had specifically mentioned it as a funny coincidence to Esther on their vacation. They died just after its popularization and came back to life during its sunset.

Except when he downloaded the software and used it on a test file, it opened the document without even needing ‘a moment or two’.

He didn’t quite believe what he was seeing and he reached out beyond the secure room to download a file from the local Senate server. He didn’t grab anything dangerous, just an early draft of a promotion warrant that had been secured with XL9 and tossed it to the decrypter.

Once again, it opened without delay.

He checked out XL11, the newest model of encryption and the one that was used on military ships, but the times listed were closer to what he expected. They were still incredibly fast, but a week to get through some of the best encryptions felt far more reasonable than a moment or two.

Through it all, Lawrence didn’t quite believe what he was seeing and had to check his [AI]’s mana draw. It wasn’t only the impossibly fast everything, it was that he didn’t feel any of the expected mana draw. However, even that result managed to confuse him. He wasn’t Esther, but he knew enough to know he should be using more than a dozen mana per second to run this Gladiator Chat.

At that cost, even a normal Tier 35 melee fighter, let alone a mage with a mana generation of roughly 223 mana a second, could run that forever with basically zero further thought. He was far better off than an average mage, and had spells in his outer spirit that he happily used with higher upkeep costs.

He opened his mouth to share, but Maya shook her head. “Don’t ask because I don’t know, beyond a lot of things are handled server-side. You can download everything, or I can, I don’t know if you got that permission, but I don’t see why you wouldn’t have. Whatever the case may be, Max has like four or five crazy big AI helping run things. But if you want to talk specifics beyond that, bother Matt, Ellen, or Brian. Or you can wait until after the war and irritate Max or Gideon. All I know is that it's good and it works. That's all I care about. Anyway, feel free to play around. You can and should download things you want to mess with during your travels or…”

She waggled a small coffin that looked sized for a mouse if the heraldry plastered garishly was indicative of its content. “You can carry one of these. It's a sealed Tier 1 undead something, usually a mouse or rat, that Brian has possessed and Max managed to turn into whatever it is. They are very much not durable, so if you need privacy, just squish it. You’ll lose instant access to the Chat, but you can pop into any settled space world and reconnect.”

Esther carefully examined the box before Maya snapped her fingers and dissolved the room around them. His sister moved to hide the coffin, but like everything else in the room, it vanished as if it hadn’t been there as the three of them were returned to the emptiness of space.

Lawrence had to check his [AI] just in case everything had been an incredible illusion, but the new feature was still there, along with the recording he’d watched. He couldn’t help but be far more intrigued about their peers after that. Combined with his desire to fight, he finally managed to push his worries aside completely for the first time since they’d recovered.

Maya returned to her ship only a moment after the room dissolved, but her messages came through the new chat perfectly. “Keeping the chat on hand makes travel a lot less annoying.”

Esther's response arrived as he was still reading the message. “Is the war that bad? And it says I can’t private message you, is an open chat really secure enough for this?”

“This war sucks for all of us, but you can blame most of that on Matt if you want. After the initial pushes— right after he made his Aspect mind you— the Great Powers came to an agreement to settle in and start wearing down the numbers. At the same time, they started playing keep away with their peak and pinnacle elites. I vote you blame Matt like the rest of us, but whatever the case may be, no one wants to engage and lose elite forces if they can help it. Now, if they see you coming their way, the elites scatter. It’s led to all of us pushing back normal battles over and over between small bursts of catching an elite off-guard. You might as well start playing with the chat because it's the only thing you can really do most of the time. We are only forty percent through the required lower Tier losses, so don’t expect things to change any time soon. Well, not for us.”

When they were on their ship back in chaotic space, he was mildly shocked to find their connection remained stable.

Esther explained as she pulled them into a timeline they immediately discarded. “The box appeared in my storage ring. My sealed one. I have to say Maya is very good at what she does. I had to search a dozen pasts to figure it out, but I caught her. She wasn’t lying when she said she warped reality. She made illusions of having the installs already and was able to override reality when we accepted it via touch. She definitely used one of what we saw referenced as Laws in the reports about here there. Something about touching the gems and accepting her deal let her do all of that. It’s… impressive to say the least. As for the coffin? She seemed to deliberately ape us. She overwrote what happened with a… not timeline because she’s not messing with time, but a ‘potential future’ for lack of a better word where I’d already put the coffin away. I’m not sure if that was a shot across the bow, her just showing off, or what it might mean in general, but it most certainly displayed her ability.”

Lawrence hadn’t felt a thing. Though, now that he knew what to look for, he was already thinking up potential countermeasures.

The one thing he agreed with was that Maya was good. So much so, he understood her desire to leave the war Tiers a tad bit better. Without Esther there to have experienced the oddity of an item that appeared in a sealed storage ring, he never would have questioned what he experienced.

However, before he could make much progress in countermeasures, he was distracted by the chat.

No one beyond Maya seemed active at the moment, but there was still nearly fifty years of content to go through. With a new toy at hand, he couldn’t help but skimming through to get a feel for the other two Tier 35 teams.

More attention went to the dwarven team than was probably warranted, given their decision to leave the war Tiers, but he didn’t see that as a negative.

Not that it took the others long to get word of their additions. Only twenty minutes later and almost in unison, both foreign groups joined, with Ellen getting in the first welcome message by a narrow margin.

Most were simple and casual, but Brian included a small but surprisingly tasteful introductory biography of himself, while Krodag cracked open a beer for the occasion, along with a picture so they knew he’d drank for both of them as well.

Lawrence wasn’t entirely sure if Moe asking if they wanted to brawl was a threat or a welcoming gesture, but he’d also seen enough that he knew he wasn’t particularly interested in taking the man up on his offer. At least not this soon back.

He needed more time to create countermeasures before he’d be confident in that fight.

It irked him to know that in another timeline they would have been long Ascended before this generation of Gladiators had been born, but the thought lacked some of the venom such earlier thoughts had contained.

The other team was more normal at least, with their greetings being polite and well mannered.

It was the ichor mage, Elizabeth, who offered, “While it’s a bit early, I wanted to extend an invitation to a get-together we are going to have after the war, during the ceremonies. It's going to be hosted at Minkalla for obvious reasons, but we are having a thing at our house and we wanted to make sure you knew you were welcome.”

A petty part of Lawrence wanted to believe the woman was acting, but nothing he saw in his own research of their peers indicated that was the case. It was just hard to mesh his previous memories of the Empire with what he was seeing.

It didn’t help that Ronnie ‘The Bastard’ Shelton had been the Empire Gladiator of their time, and he was what Lawrence thought of when he pictured an Empire Gladiator. The man hadn’t only earned his name from the weapon he carried, a bastard sword, he’d been a petty and petulant man none of the Gladiators of the time had liked.

He’d been ruthlessly efficient in battle, even as a Tier 25, but his real trouble came from the way he used his Talent to feed on emotions to strengthen himself and his sword. The man may have been able to turn his Talent off, but he was the type to enjoy the discomfort he engendered. And as same Tier peers, they’d gotten more than their fair share of time temporarily empty of emotions.

That hollow feeling was one that Lawrence almost missed now, but Ronnie had never been one to use his abilities for therapy. He’d learned all the tricks, but he only ever used them after he twisted their purposes.

Instead of bringing any of that up, Lawrence tried to be gracious in his deflection. “We might take you up on that, but we have to see what the war has in store for us before we make any plans. Given everything that’s happened, we’ve been keeping things… short term.”

Wanting to push the conversation anywhere but their stumble through time, he jumped on the talk of their house. “Maya mentioned your house was special, but she wouldn’t share. Now that you bring it up, I have to ask, what is so special?”

Matthew was the one to respond. “I’m not surprised she teased you about it, but I also know the others will strangle me if I spoil their fun. Not that I’m keen on telling you myself. After all, some things can only be experienced once, but I will acknowledge it's rude to not spill here after you asked. I can already see it becoming a ‘Thing’ and I’m not sure if I like it or not.”

All four members of On The Last Line chimed in with their agreement that the two of them needed to wait, but Lawrence took special note of Maya doing the same without any noticeable delay. The strange response turned Lawrence's interest from feigned to real, but he tempered it all the same, seeing that it was a lost cause.

Esther thankfully kept the conversation moving as he faltered. “That seems like a consensus, which I doubt happens often. We’ll use it as an extra reason to look forward to the end of the war. Speaking of which, some of the previous comments made here seem a little… concerning.”

Lawrence knew what she meant, and was glad she’d brought it up.

While he understood the Empire and Clans teams collaborating and sharing information about the Federation elites, given they were allies in that war, he didn’t understand why Maya chimed in just as often with suggestions. Or why the other two helped Maya uncover the Corporations’ newly revealed skill-linked integrated weapons some of their elite troops were using.

Though, he didn’t miss how both Maya and On The Last Line pestered Matthew for information he refused to give. Or how that indicated Matthew, an Empire Gladiator, had secret knowledge of the Corporations’ unique skill.

Maya had taken a few rough fights due to the unexpected boosts in power that several of the Paladins had shown after upgrading their suits with what he quickly learned was a new type of skill-item linkage that empowered their personally cast skills, but she hadn’t been alone. Even the Empire team shared a few hard battles seemingly enabled by the new Great Power ‘The Monster Collective’ and their new type of bloodline boosting potions.

Lawrence saw all of that and understood that those from any particular Great Power wouldn’t aid in dismantling any of their factions' secrets, or ones that had been deliberately shared with them, but Maya hadn’t seemed all too concerned as the other two teams dismantled one of the latest developments in the Between called Slipstreams.

The two of them had only just been briefed about those latest developments before they left. They’d incorporated a mana aspect developed by one of the other Empire Gladiators, Zack, into rivers of faster directional movement. Even in its limited military trial, it had enabled large interconnected loops between worlds, which facilitated an increasingly incredible efficiency in military logistics. Yet despite it only being rolled out a decade into the war, the seven non-Republic people in the chat had disassembled most of its limits in a matter of months.

And it was all done for some game called ‘Blades and Glory’ he’d never heard about, but from context, understood it was some kind of war sim.

However, the others seemed to take Esther's comment about the war a different way than she’d intended to question how much was being shared.

Aster finally said more than a greeting as she replied, “Sorry about that. All of us have been running around battlefields and butchering regular soldiers for the last few decades. We’ve tried to keep the chat light, but there have definitely been some vents here and there. It's been the worst kind of repetitive work, with the only good fights coming when we pick them or there are overwhelming odds against us.”

Krodag tossed an agreement in so quickly, neither of them had time to correct her. “She’s right. Also take my word and just avoid even checking in on the Tier 25 and below Tiers. They are half of the reason for how hard it has been for us Tier 35s. With so many bodies to throw at the frontlines, the assholes who direct us have been doing exactly that. Push, defend, repel, push. The cycle has been continuing with only a few interruptions as one of us catches an elite team out. That’s held true for a while now.”

Lawrence went with the flow rather than forcefully try to redirect the conversation. “I’ve rarely heard good things about a population war. We can’t speak from experience though. We finished the Trials only a thousand years after one concluded, so while I’m sure they happened after our ‘deaths’, we never had to fight in one.”

“Our first war was one, and now it seems like it's going to be our last. That war was awful for more reasons than one, but it had nothing on this go round. The truth of it is, there are too many lower Tiers in relation to us Tier 35’s. That's a good thing in some way’s, but it also means every push has to be accompanied by high Tier escorts who need to occupy the enemy Tier 35’s. All three of our Great Powers have mainly had us on the offensive, using us to aid the attacks, or block the opposition's latest thrust. However, none of the other Great Powers are stupid enough to let us easily catch one of their teams alone, which leads to a lot of cat and mouse as they are happy to fight us but like to run away well before anyone is close to death. Blame Matt and Allie for this. First the Night of Long Shadow, now that triple kill. It has them all skittish. No one wants to risk any more elites.”

Lawrence could almost hear the sigh at the end of Ellen’s message.

The news didn’t sound all that bad to him, however he also knew they were unlikely to experience the same reaction to their reentrance to the war Tiers.

It was far more likely that the Corporations would go all-out to try to take them down. He—

“You should prepare for the Corporations to try and ambush you sooner than later, even with you having Aspects. This is still the weakest you'll ever be, which means they are eventually going to try. The Federation was willing to hit Matt, Liz, and Aster with a team of five pinnacles and three peak elites before Matt formed his Aspect. They even brought out new teleporting ships to do so and everything. Those are fancy little buggers that are a right pain in the ass to track down. Though they burn a fuck load of resources to keep running. Unless you have a way to [Portal] like Matt, it's a bit of a crap shoot to deal with them harassing you. Better to keep breaking shit and force them to engage with you. Less annoying.” Moe helpfully added into the pause, seeming to forget they weren’t at war with the Federation.

Lawrence shared a look at Esther, but they’d barely begun their silent communication when he was distracted by a message from Maya.

“Until Matt reveals the specifics of his Aspect, there is no way they are going to risk losing any more of their pinnacles. They have to be pissed about losing two pinnacle teams in their attempt. They might be able to rebuild Tristian’s group around his second in command, but it’s unlikely. No way they risk any more, even if they don’t think Liz has hers. Liz, time to spill when you formed it. Bets need to be paid out, you bitch! I was rooting for you when I bet an early time, stop fucking me over like this and tell us if you made it so I can get my deserved winnings!”

Maya’s comment sparked a few rebuttals from On The Last Line, but they seemed more wishful than factual, stemming around a bet about when Elizabeth made her Aspect, with the Clans team clamoring she hadn’t managed it.

The ichor mage in question only responded with obvious deflections, but the chat quickly shifted into something more interesting a moment later as Aster asked. “So now that you guys are here, do you have any interest in helping us with our earlier predicament?”

Lawrence shared a look with Esther, but after not knowing how to respond, he returned, “In what way, and what predicament exactly?”

“Oh, you know how we were saying the war was too boring? Well, On The Last Line and us have been thinking that if our enemies want to play keep away, we might as well force their hands and the idea snowballed from there. However, to do so efficiently, we’d need to slip both our own Great Powers’ leashes and the Federation’s spies. Your arrival into the war Tiers is the best distraction we could ask for. We wanted to know if you’ll help us time things so we can be in place to slip into Federation space for a little… Well, let’s say a little mischief, and a whole lot of mayhem!”

Lawrence shared another look with Esther, but unlike before, they knew exactly how to respond to the ice support mage’s offer.

After all, they'd already intended to make a splash with their entrance into the war Tiers, and there was no reason not to help their peers at the detriment of a faction that had only gotten worse in their absence.

“What’s your plan?”