Chapter 3

  Dalex and Hitasa hovered a mile over the city, protected from the chill altitude by their warming armor. They watched the flurry of paper coat the city and heard the occasional cry or shout carried to them on the lofty winds. It was going to be an odd day for Ulenbeter.

  The two of them had spent several hours agonizing over what the message on the paper should be. Dalex had initially wanted to make it one of Hitasa’s spells, but she had flatly refused the idea, calling it a declaration of war. When she put it like that, Dalex couldn’t argue. A member of the resistance publicizing any of their spells to a city controlled by the enemy was the same as asking them to help build bombs meant to be dropped on their own heads. In the midst of a war, it would be a viable, if underhanded tactic. If peace was the goal, it was only adding gasoline to the fire.

  They had considered using the manifesto Hitasa had written with her brother, but had ultimately decided to save that one for later. After Ulenbeter had a few days to soften and get used to the idea of being cut off from the rest of the Seven Worlds of Gaia, the manifesto would have more of an impact.

  In the end, Hitasa had liked the simplicity of Dalex’s final idea. Drakko is dead. Feel free to cut loose. It removed all doubt about the situation and invited readers to ponder what they hadn’t been allowed to do while the dragon was alive.

  “I must admit,” Hitasa said, “I am sorely tempted. Ulenbeter is many times larger than Batulan-bar. Even if I showed them the spell for a few seconds, thousands of people would see it.”

  With the armor over her face and the noise of the buffeting winds, her voice was delivered directly into Dalex’s mind through {telepathy}. Of course, Hitasa stuck to its true name, [radio]. She was talking about using her newfound sky writing ability to publicize her most recent {starfall} spell. Apparently, it wasn’t nearly as effective as she intended it to be, and if the population of a city like Ulenbeter saw its definition, the spell’s power would multiply.

  “You never know,” Dalex said. “Making your spell more potent might be worth it. Though, from what you tell me, showing them kirtevas is a declaration of war and admission of heresy all wrapped up in one nasty package.”

  “Yes, it would be unwise. We should leave. I think they’ve spotted us.”

  Dalex looked past his feet at the ground. Sure enough, a barrage of fireballs was ascending to meet them. Someone down there either had really good eyes or a way to magically spot flying targets. The latter made sense, given the threat of giant winged lizards.

  “Seventh,” Dalex said, “{teleport} us home.”

  A light shone on them from above and they were gone, the fireballs floating past the space they had just been occupying to fizzle out harmlessly in the upper atmosphere.

  ***

  Dalex and Hitasa reappeared in the skies over Batulan-bar. Neither of them could really call the city home, but it was starting to feel a bit more like a place Dalex could say he belonged. Even after the dragon Drakko had nearly burned it to the ground, leaving much of the city in ruins, it was still beautiful. The almost orange canyon walls. The way the sun glinted off the river dividing the city down the middle. The simple but lovingly maintained architecture that melded with the city’s natural setting.

  The blackened husks of burned homes and livelihoods still marred an otherwise pristine picture, but the biggest eye sore, the enormous dragon corpse laid across the city, was gone.

  Dalex had made sure to get rid of the body quickly, lest it start to rot and spread disease. The giant hunk of scaley meat had been a significant physical barrier to reconstruction as well, but Dalex had chopped him into several, {teleportable} pieces and stored Drakko in a cold room on his orbiting mobile home, the {voidstalker}.

  Given there were multiple {voidstalkers} in the Expedition 7’s fleet, Dalex figured he should probably give the vessel a proper name, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  Dalex and Hitasa floated down into the heart of the city, landing in a public square which was like a traffic circle around a statue of the deceased dragon. Drakko’s Square had become the de facto headquarters of the resistance. One of the new members of the movement, a modestly wealthy beastkin named Nez, had donated two buildings in the square to the cause, and Dalex had provided two more temporary fabricated shelters of his own. The plastic-looking two-story structures now flanked the statue of Drakko.

  Similar shelters were sprinkled all over Batulan-bar, most of them near the [food distribution centers]—or {fountains of nourishment}—that Seventh had supplied to keep the city fed. Each shelter had a heater to keep its occupants warm and a lock to keep unwelcome guests out.

  With the recent calamity, some of the city’s citizens had tried to take advantage of the chaos and power vacuum to steal from neighbors and act out their baser instincts. Dalex and some recruits for the resistance had managed to tamp down on the worst of it, but there were still a few people in the city with ill intent.

  Luckily, Dalex had managed to harvest enough {adamantine} over the last couple of days to rebuild a part of his {golem} army. Several of them now patrolled the city, on the lookout for harmful behavior. While Dalex would rather not have had to contend with the mutt invasion in the countryside, the must had revealed the deposit of precious metal to the west of Batulan-bar. So, there had been silver linings to that near-catastrophic battle. He hadn’t fully restored the {voidstalker’s} complement of {golems} and other support {constructs}, but with the extra {adamantine} he had been able to field enough of them to keep the city safe and help its people get back on their feet.

  Dalex felt as if the statue of Drakko was watching him as he opened the door to one of the temporary structures for Hitasa. She walked inside the resistance headquarters, and he stared back at the stoney dragon, pondering its oddly lifelike gaze. Dalex had offered to tear the statue down or melt it into slag, but Metsa, the elf currently closest to a leader in the resistance, had told him to leave it be, saying it served as a reminder of what they were facing.

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  Dalex shook his head and followed Hitasa into the plastic building.

  With the resistance in its infancy, the headquarters wasn’t much more than a warm place to meet and talk away from prying eyes. Dava, Metsa’s friend and chosen beastkin lieutenant, had tacked a map of the city to one of the walls and a few others from the resistance had provided some chairs. Given what the people of Batulan-bar had done to defend their city on their own, the movement was deceptively strong. Yes, they didn’t have a strong organizational basis, an extensive army of recruits, or an abundance of material assets, but they were all individually imbued with magic to fight one of the strongest private armies in the world.

  Unfortunately, Dalex had learned over the past few days that there were even stronger armies on other worlds. Though fearsome, Drakko had been a minor dragon policing the backwater world most of the other dragons didn’t want to touch if they couldn’t help it. His army was powerful, but not as large or skilled as the general forces of the Seven Worlds of Gaia or the private armies of the other dragons.

  The main room of the headquarters was occupied by the core members of the resistance. Metsa and Dava stood together in front of the map, talking about reconstruction efforts. They knew of a nearby abandoned quarry that likely had some replacement stone they could still use and were waiting on surveyors to return with good news.

  Staja and Oyuun, fellow party members of Metsa and Dava’s old mutt hunting group, were engaged in a debate on how best to deliver meals from the {fountains of nourishment} to citizens who couldn’t visit the boxes themselves, either because they were too injured or infirm to make the journey from the outskirts of the city.

  Ostensibly, the two elves and two beastkin at the head of the resistance were still mutt hunters belonging to the official Mutt Hunters’ Lodge, but their boss, Lodge Mother Sarnai, had released them from hunting duties. Sarnai herself was deeply connected to the resistance, having directly confronted Drakko before Dalex killed the dragon, but she was most concerned about the mutt threat, reduced but still present.

  Several other new members of the resistance, most of them elves, were discussing recruitment efforts and other issues related to supply distribution across the city. All in all, most of the conversation didn’t sound very revolutionary. There was too much work left to do to put the home of the resistance back together. But with Dalex’s help, it was only a matter of time before the revolution would spread.

  Batulan-bar was used to getting all of its resources from Ulenbeter or other, larger cities still under draconic control. It was a strategy designed to keep the populations of various important cities reliant on the dragons and subservient to their will. Without Dalex’s endless supply of food and water, Batulan-bar probably wouldn’t have lasted a week. But while his temporary structures and {fountains of nourishment} were good, the shelters wouldn’t house the people of the city in the long term. And the industrious citizens wanted to resume making their own food.

  Metsa turned around as Dalex walked into the room. “Did it work?”

  “Yup,” Dalex said. “No one is getting through that barrier any time soon.”

  “And what if they do?” Dava asked.

  “I’ll know, and I’ll figure out how they got through and put an end to it.”

  “Not if you aren’t here,” Metsa said.

  Dalex nodded. “Yes, if all goes to plan and they don’t breach the {tomb seal} in the next few days, I’ll probably be unavailable. But you can rely on the {voidstalker} to support you, and my {golems} will see to things on the ground.”

  Metsa looked skeptical, but Dalex was starting to realize she always looked like that. She was a worrier. To be fair, there was a lot to worry about. The city and her resistance had been a second or two away from annihilation a few days ago. Had Dalex not shown up at the last second, Batulan-bar would probably be a lake about now.

  “You’ve got a lot of firepower on this side of portal. And believe me, if anyone breaks through the barrier, I’ll know about it. The second that happens, I’ll be on my way back here as fast as I can. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I can make it back here faster than a dragon can fly from Ulenbeter to Batulan-bar.”

  Metsa’s studying gaze remained unconvinced. But Dava wore a confident smile, so Dalex decided to call it a wash.

  “Are you going somewhere?” Oyuun asked from across the room.

  Dalex had looped Metsa and Dava in on his plans in a meeting the day before, but Oyuun had been elsewhere in the city.

  “I’m mounting an expedition,” Dalex said. “Hitasa, Seventh, and I are going to spend some time in Gaia Zeta. I want to learn more about that world before we make any serious moves, since no one here seems to know much about it.”

  He could probably learn a fair bit about Gaia Zeta just from the people in Ulenbeter who seemed to have stronger connections across the Waterfall Portal, but what better way to learn about a place than to dig his toes in its sand?

  Of course, such an expedition came with problems. One of the reasons Dalex was interested in the sixth world from the realm’s sun was because the {voidstalker} couldn’t actually get close to it. There was some kind of barrier between the orbits of Gaia Eta and Gaia Zeta, and he wanted to investigate what that might be.

  Once Dalex was on Gaia Zeta, he wouldn’t have the {voidstalker} to back him up. He wouldn’t even be able to bring any of the bigger {golems} until the {tomb seal} was removed. That meant no access to certain skills like {Newton’s hammer} or {prismatic strike}, and no easy way to {teleport}. It was one of the reasons he had given Hitasa a suit of {adamantine} armor and invited her on the scouting mission. Backup would be essential. In fact, Hitasa would be more of an asset than Seventh, who, by her programming, couldn’t harm any life other than a mutt’s.

  “We’ll be leaving in a couple of days,” Dalex said, facing Metsa. “Is there anything else you need before I leave?”

  Metsa shrugged. “Not right now. You’ve given us what we need, and we know how to talk to your [drones] to get more.”

  Dalex sighed. No one seemed interested in adopting his fanciful nomenclature. Rugged and mystical {golems} were so much cooler than slick and boring [drones].”

  “There is one thing!” Dava piped up, his voice excited. “A name!”

  “That’s not important,” Metsa said.

  “What do you mean it’s not important? Our name is the first thing people will hear of us. It needs to make an impact. It needs to brush a painting.”

  Oyuun snorted. “The only thing people will call us is ‘those dissidents.’”

  Dava wagged his pointer finger back and forth at her. “That’s true, but when they hear about the resistance from us, it should have a name that inspires confidence. Trust. Something that speaks to our mission.”

  “How about the Squabbling Meerkats?” Dalex offered.

  “What?” Dava said.

  “What’s a meerkat?” Oyuun asked.

  “I’ll take name suggestions from anyone other than Dalex,” Metsa said.

  They shot names back and forth for a few minutes, making references to elven freedom, elven and beastkin cooperation, and historical movements similar to their own. No one could come up with anything that everyone liked. Dalex kept his mouth shut. This wasn’t really his revolution, after all. He was just helping.

  Until finally, Hitasa’s eyes went wide. A moment later, a shadow crossed her eyes. She looked down at the floor.

  “What is it?” Dalex asked. The others in the group focused on her.

  After a moment, Hitasa lifted her head. “Would—” Her lip quivered, and she stopped to take a breath. “Would you consider, Sitoa’s Rebellion?”

  The room was quiet for several seconds. Dalex held back a smile. He already knew what the others would say.

  “Girl,” Metsa said, “you don’t know when to stop, do you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Hitasa said, lowering her gaze.

  “Don’t apologize,” Metsa continued. “You’ve just given us our new name. Oyuun’s right. To our enemies, we’ll probably just be ‘those dissidents,’ but, to those who know who we really are, we will be Sitoa’s Rebellion.”

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