“She did what?”
“She cut ties between the Legion and the Ka’armodo, completely.”
Titus nodded with a satisfied expression on his face as he confirmed the news whereas Morrelia could only sigh and bury her face in her hands.
“Isn’t that, a bit, extreme?” she pleaded with her father. “Isn’t everyone worried about a second cataclysm? Isn’t the Legion being pushed on multiple fronts because we are undermanned and undersupplied? This seems like a poor time to be turning our backs on allies…”
“I agree with you. We shouldn’t be turning our backs on allies right now.”
“Then you agree?”
“No. By creating a race of subservient monsters to wage war on their behalf, the Ka’armodo have shown themselves to be no allies of the Legion. Your mother has only made formal the arrangements their attitudes deserve. Now our Legionaries will not have to fight and die to protect those who would stab us in the back.”
His arms folded across his chest, Titus was an imposing figure. A stern expression was carved into his features, as usual, and the steely glint of absolute confidence could be found in his eyes. Seeing it, Morrelia began to doubt her objections until her head began to swim. She brought both hands up and scratched her head furiously.
She didn’t like dealing with the politics and the wider implications of what the Legion did, but lately she had forced herself onto the path of leadership and so she’d done her best to pick up everything she could. Even so, decisions like this made her knees weak. The repercussions of what her mother had done would resound throughout all of Pangera for decades, possibly centuries!
Titus chuckled and clapped his daughter on the shoulder. Not that long ago she would have been rocked to the side when he did that, now she withstood his hand with ease. Her levels were accumulating rapidly, the training was working.
“Don’t think on it too hard, I guarantee your mother didn’t. Her role as Consul is to faithfully follow the founding principles of the Legion, not to engage in petty politicking. We aren’t sophisticated enough for that. We don’t compromise, we don’t bargain, that’s it.”
“Don’t we have deals with demons in the third stratum to operate in their territory? Pretty big compromise if you ask me,” his daughter pointed out.
“True,” Titus agreed, “we did try to eliminate demons completely but gave up after five hundred years. The final decision was that the effort was totally fruitless, killing them only makes them spawn faster. Trying to block or disperse the spawn points doesn’t work, since they spawn everywhere. In fact, by focusing so many resources on a single front, the Dungeon quickly became hazardous in other areas. A further three hundred years of campaigning were required to settle things down again.”
“Dad, enough history, please. I know about the five hundred year war.”
“Then you know why we compromised with the demons,” Titus raised a brow as he looked down on his daughter.
Only very recently had she started to call him ‘Dad’. He would never admit it, but that simple fact brought him great joy.
“Not that I’m unhappy to see you, but why are you here anyway? I thought you were campaigning with your new Legion. You… didn’t go and fight the Colony again, did you?”
“No,” Titus frowned. “I asked to be deployed back to the second along with four full Legions to run a proper extermination but was denied. Again. We did a snap tour of the third instead. It went well.”
The commander shifted his stance slightly.
“The Colony, as you call it, has been put on the back burner for the time being. We have so many fires to put out that a group of monsters who are actively helping sapients rather than eating them is hard to commit resources to. As long as we can stamp them out before the mana gets too high, it should turn out alright.”
Morrelia hesitated, but eventually spoke her mind.
“If the ants aren’t hurting anyone, and are in fact helping people, then why stamp them out at all? If monsters have to exist, then isn’t that the type of monster we want?”
This was a sore spot between the two and she searched her father for any sign he had relented on this point. There was none.
“What the Ka’armodo have done, creating a race of monsters to do their dirty work, has been done before, even as far back as the Rending. No matter how hard you try, no matter what restrictions you place on them, eventually the monsters go wild. Every time, no exceptions. Even worse, the Ancients had the ability to dominate monsters that came anywhere near them. The servants that had been so carefully reared turned around and decimated the fools who had raised them by the millions.”
Morrelia blinked.
“I’d never heard that,” she said quietly.
“Talking about anything from that time is sensitive. You didn’t have the clearance for it, before now.”
“Great. Any other perspective shattering secrets you want to drop on me?”
“Heaps,” Titus smiled, “but now isn’t the time. I didn’t come here for that. You’ll learn all of it in time.”
She stepped back from her father and sat on her cot in the confined resting domicile they were standing in.
“As happy as I am to see you, Dad, why have you come now? I’m sure you have a ton of things that need doing. Is there something particular happening now, or are you just bored?”
The last was said as a joke, but true to form Titus did not laugh.
“You don’t remember?” he asked.
He didn’t sound mad, but rather slightly amused, which only confused Morrelia further.
“Remember what?” she asked slowly.
The room rumbled slightly.
Titus glanced toward the door and nodded to himself.
“That should be it now.”
The walls shook.
Morrelia looked around carefully, her hands reaching for her weapons as she rose back to her feet and took a fighter’s stance.
“What’s happening?” she demanded, the snap of command entering her tone.
It filled the old campaigner’s chest with pride.
“I’d put the weapons down,” he advised, “they won’t help.”
The shaking was constant now, a steady vibration that only increased with every passing second.
“Dad, seriously, what is happening. Are we under attack?” Morrelia demanded, increasingly worried as the room shook all around her.
“In a way,” Titus shrugged.
“A monster?!”
“Oh definitely.”
“You aren’t helping!”
“I’m not really trying to,” he grinned.
There was something about that smile, so strange to see it on her father’s face, that triggered a memory in her mind. There was only one thing that made him behave like this. Her mind raced. What day was it? Her training had been so intense, time was a blur. She didn’t know. In fact, what week was it?!
All of a sudden the reinforced bulkhead that was her door bulged on its hinges as the reinforced steel buckled under a tremendous impact. The metal warped and twisted like mud as some inhuman force ripped into it from the other side.
“I knew she’d come here straight away,” Titus confessed over the screeching sound of tearing steel. “So I thought I’d be here for the reunion.”
Suddenly an arm punched through the door, the jagged edges doing no harm to the hand or arm as it pulled back through. Rather, it was the metal that bent as the skin brushed against it.
With horrifying casualness, those hands grasped the edges of the hole they had punched through and widened the gap, the metal screeching in protest.
Then a face appeared, grinning wide.
“Hello daughter!” Minerva said. “Give your mother a hug!”
Her term as Consul had finally come to an end.
