BOOK 9: CHAPTER 33: FOUND WANTING

Isaiah stood atop the citadel’s front steps, staring down at the bodies. Some were bloated, having been killed as much as a week before. Others were far fresher. They stunk of rot and seawater and death. He acknowledged each of his senses, cataloguing the stunned silence that followed the Druid’s sudden departure. The smells. The sight. Even the goosebumps prickling his exposed skin.

But he didn’t let himself truly feel any of it.

That would prompt an emotional reaction. It would force him to acknowledge his disgust. His fear. The tendril of foreboding wrapping around his mind.

He kept those feelings locked away as he said, “Remove these bodies. Take anything of value and distribute it to the appropriate departments. Then send the remains to composting.”

Joni, his assistant who’d just joined him, asked, “Shouldn’t we give them proper burials?”

Isaiah didn’t miss the tremble in her voice. She was terrified, and rightly so. Elijah had just proven that he was above them all. He’d strolled through the city without flinching. Certainly, Isaiah had cultivated a few powerful assassins, but he hadn’t had the chance to activate them.

Even if he had, he wasn’t certain they could have made a difference. The Druid had grown, and not by a small degree. During the Summit, Isaiah had gotten a decent read on Elijah’s power. Because of his class, he could gain a lot of information about most people, but even then, the gap had grown wide enough that he barely got anything at all.

Even that had been a shock, given that the last time Elijah was in Seattle, Isaiah had been able to read the man’s entire status, even getting a list of his abilities. That kind of information was well out of reach, now.

This time, all he could tell about Elijah was his level.

One-eighty. It was an insane amount of progression, and in only a few months. There was only one explanation, though Isaiah wanted to confirm it before he jumped to those sorts of conclusions.

“No. They are criminals. They can best serve our people by fueling our agriculture,” he stated evenly. “Also, contact the Journal. We want to address this as quickly as possible so people don’t panic. I will have a statement for them in an hour.”

“Yes, sir,” Joni said, clutching a clipboard to her chest. She was such a small girl – almost childlike in her demeanor – but she’d proven herself capable enough. Without her talents as an Administrator, he might have been overwhelmed by the requirements of his station.

“I also need a meeting with the guild leaders.”

“Which ones?” she asked.

“All of them,” he stated. “This is a matter of national security. I expect their responses within the hour. The meeting will be scheduled for four o’clock this afternoon. I expect them all to be present.”

“Yes, sir,” Joni said. “I’m on it.”

With that, she headed back inside. At the same time, Isaiah connected to his drones – he could only do so to a small portion of them without his control apparatus – so he could alert the police force to wrangle the crowd and escort them away from the Citadel. Having an audience for the clean-up wouldn’t serve anyone’s purpose.

Once that was done, he headed inside.

Only when he reached his office did he allow himself to truly feel the terror in his heart. He collapsed onto his chair, barely even seeing the multitude of monitors he used to keep track of the city’s residents. Instead, he focused inward. Elijah was now nearly twice his level, and that was with Isaiah running towers as often as possible. He also got experience for his normal, everyday activities.

But it wasn’t enough.

Elijah had started from ahead, and his leveling rate still outpaced Isaiah’s. Likely, his progression was faster than anyone else’s on Earth. He suspected how that was possible, but he intended to wait until he heard from his spies in Ironshore before he made a determination.

In the interim, he allowed himself to feel the full weight of the consequences of his actions. After Elijah had appeared in his quarters during the Summit and delivered his threat, Isaiah had known he’d made a grave mistake by trying to use the Druid to bolster his own position. In retrospect, it had been a huge miscalculation, based on hubris and the belief that he knew Elijah’s character.

But after seeing all those dead bodies, Isaiah knew that he’d only grasped the smallest portion of his mistake. Because he’d fostered the belief that Elijah might not be as powerful as his levels led people to believe, those pirates – at the behest of the Alchemist, Breeze – had considered him an easy target.

Now they were all dead.

Of course, he knew about Bloodrock Bay. Gathering information was his talent, after all. But he’d left them to their own devices because he considered attacking them to be too risky. There was a chance that, even with Seattle’s might behind him, he would lose that battle. Even if he won, he’d lose plenty of people in the effort.

No – it just wasn’t worth it.

And Elijah had destroyed the pirate enclave on his own. Isaiah still needed to confirm it, but he’d seen the truth in the Druid’s eyes. There wouldn’t be anything left. Objectively, it wasn’t a terrible eventuality. Having less pirates roaming the western ocean was a good thing.

Yet, it confirmed that Elijah could easily make good on his threats of destroying Seattle. That was what worried Isaiah more than anything else.

The loss of the Alchemist would hurt as well, though. Some of Seattle’s Merchants had been working hard at developing a relationship with the elf. Now, all that effort would have been for nothing. What’s more, Isaiah was depending on Breeze to help him bolster the city’s body cultivation.

He let out a rare sigh.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Elijah really was a thorn in his side. And yet, he couldn’t do anything against the man. He considered attacking, but he knew it wouldn’t be successful. Even if he threw thousands of soldiers at the problem, all he’d accomplish was making the Druid angrier. If that happened, he wouldn’t hesitate to drown Seattle in blood.

Not for the first time, Isaiah wished he’d fostered a better relationship with the man. He could have. They’d started off on the right foot, and he’d even helped Seattle become what it became.

And yet, Isaiah had misevaluated the man at every turn.

It was his failing, and if he continued to fail, Seattle – and its people – would pay the price. Everything would come crashing down around him, and everything he’d worked so hard for would be destroyed. He couldn’t stomach that.

But he also couldn’t change the past. Instead, he needed to look to the future. To that end, he contacted his most reliable spy in Ironshore.

“Report,” Isaiah said into the communicator. It looked a little like an old short-wave radio, but it ran on ethera and could only connect to its mate.

The spy – named Nolan – answered immediately, explaining the goings-on in Ironshore. Some of the information was mundane – like the city’s continued investment in its infrastructure, including the Forge of Creation – but the rest of it was more troubling. It appeared that Elijah had already intertwined himself with the city’s fate. That wasn’t unexpected, but the timing was more than a little problematic.

“He killed some huge whale-like monster as well,” Nolan explained. “It had been harassing some of the city’s ships, and he just went out there and killed it. I couldn’t get close to it, but the thing was full of ethera. It was at least ascended. That’s not the worst of it, though. There’s only rumors right now, but…”

“Go on.”

“The space mages are freaking out, sir. Something about a pile of bodies. It has something to do with Hart, but I’m not sure exactly how he fits into it. Might just be gossip, like I said, but people are worried.”

And they should be, Isaiah wanted to say. He restrained himself, telling Nolan to keep going.

“Then there’s the other thing. Details are a little thin on the ground, but they say he went into a Primal Realm. By himself. He conquered it, too. Spent months in there just killing. The rumors say it’s far out to sea on that island in the middle of the storm,” Nolan explained. Of course, Isaiah knew all about the people that had been rescued. What he hadn’t expected was that the island hosted a Primal Realm.

And certainly, he hadn’t anticipated that Elijah would have conquered one on his own. That was an unheard-of achievement, and he would have discounted it straightaway – if it wasn’t for one glaring detail.

Elijah had clearly grown stronger. He might have done so via towers or killing monsters, but the amount of death that would have required was astounding. No – a Primal Realm, as unlikely as it was, explained it far better.

Which gave Isaiah some hope to go with the fear gripping his mind.

The rest of the report covered more mundane topics, like a visit from one of the most powerful Merchants in the world. It wasn’t surprising, given that Atticus Ariti had developed a close, personal relationship with Elijah Hart. He intended to keep a close eye on how that affected the rest of the world. Would Ariti use his money and influence to isolate Seattle? He could, and that just added to Isaiah’s worry.

After disconnecting from Nolan, Isaiah spent the next hour planning his response to Elijah. He wouldn’t contact the man directly – rather, he needed to prepare for the worst. Then, the time for the meeting came, and he soon found himself in the private council chambers, where he was confronted the leaders of the most powerful guilds in Seattle.

Everyone was represented, from the hunters to the crafters and everyone in between. Each organization was powerful in its own right, but some were clearly more important than others. They fought amongst themselves at least as much as they tried to influence public policy – which was by design so that Isaiah saw little resistance to most of his decisions.

He stood at the head of the table, remembering that not so long ago, he’d used it to host many of the strongest people in the world. They’d established a doctrine of cooperation against the threat the Primal Realms represented to everyone on the planet. So far, that plan was going well, with people setting out to conquer those Primal Realms. However, only one had made any real progress. To date, the people of Svotogorsk were the only ones who’d even entered a Primal Realm. The rest were still in the early stages of preparation.

Except Elijah, who’d conquered one on his own.

“We face an existential threat,” Isaiah stated. “One that puts the entire city at risk. Indeed, the world itself should stand up and take note.”

“We know all about the Primal Realms,” said Skyler Green, the vice-chairman of the Hunter’s Guild. Wearing hardened leather armor and carrying a bow – not to mention a brace of knives across her chest – she looked every ounce the fighter she was. “We’re working on it.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said. “I’m sure by now you all know about the incident on the steps of the Citadel.”

“You mean when you pissed off the strongest man in the world?” asked Maury Bream, one of the city’s highest-level crafters. “We heard.”

“Good. Then you know what he’s capable of. That man has the power to destroy our city on a whim,” Isaiah stated. “Our army is useless against him. Our countermeasures are likely insufficient. We need to –”

“Elijah wouldn’t destroy this city,” came a feminine voice. Isaiah turned his head to see Lucy Graves – the woman responsible for feeding the entire city. Without her, Seattle would have long since starved. More importantly, she had a history with Hart. At first, Isaiah had hoped to use that to gain an advantage, but his attempts at using Lucy had failed at every turn. “I know him. He only kills when necessary.”

“Tell that to the people of Easton. Or Bloodrock Bay. He just murdered a prominent Tradesman – an Alchemist that we needed to facilitate the body cultivation of our forces. He is clearly willing to kill, and on a massive scale,” Isaiah stated.

“Then why did you go and piss him off?” asked another Tradesman.

“That is irrelevant. Our task now is to determine a way to counter him. More importantly, I have it on good authority that he intends to make a power play using his skills as a Druid to colonize whole swaths of the world,” Isaiah went on. He knew all about the seed project. Lucy hadn’t told him, but she didn’t need to. In his city, he could gather all the information he wanted, with or without other people’s consent. “Already, we are working on a counter for that. However, we need to shift some of our focus toward defenses. Until we are safe from that madman, we will never prosper.”

“We could just remove you,” said Skyler Green. “Seems that you’re where his problems begin and end. Without you at the top, he has no reason to target us.”

“If that’s what you want, I will step down,” Isaiah said.

What he didn’t say – what he didn’t need to say was that doing so would cripple Seattle, both militarily and financially. Without his abilities, both from his class as well as his status as a system-recognized city lord, Seattle would fail. And they all knew it.

“No,” Lucy interjected. “No one is really suggesting that. Why don’t we try diplomacy? He’s a reasonable person.”

“I disagree,” Isaiah replied. Then, he described the other meeting he’d endured during the Summit. He told them how Elijah had threatened him, though he did leave out the reasons why. “I’m done with his threats. We cannot exist – not as a real society – if we let him walk all over us. However, as always, I will cede judgement to the council. I call for a vote on a resolution to meet the threat posed by the Druid, Elijah Hart. Once we’ve decided to consider him a hostile entity, then we can choose what steps we need to take.”

After that, they voted. Thirty-nine people, including Isaiah. Twenty-two went his way, while fifteen joined Lucy in opposing the declaration. Only two abstained.

“Motion passed,” Isaiah announced. “Now, we must turn words into action. I expect full cooperation, even from those who voted against this resolution.”

They all nodded in agreement. Even Lucy, who didn’t look happy about it. That’s when the real work began. Hopefully, by the end of the meeting, they would have a plan for how to deal with the most dangerous man in the world.