Chapter 494: One Last Chance
A few more minutes passed without any further catastrophic changes to our environment. During that time, it felt like our entire alliance of clans was simply holding its breath, waiting for the final problem to fall on our head and finish us off. Finally, after five minutes, I realized that things had stabilized. We weren’t safe - far from it. But at the very least, we weren’t about to continue travelling from one dimension to another against our will - and it also didn’t seem like the new laws of reality were eradicating our bodies, which was a relief.
A few minutes later, I heard a loud ringing sound start to blast through the town. I recognized it as a [Sound Mage] making random noises in order to get everyone to gather up. I made my way towards the sound, and found several other members of our clan gathering together. Several of them nodded at me as I passed by, and made a little space for me to move through the crowd unimpeded. Soon, I came to the front of the crowd.
I spent a few moments observing the people around me, and resisted the urge to frown.
We had already been down to a few thousand survivors before we started our march back towards the crack in our former dimension. With all of the losses we had suffered during the march, especially the final battle, our numbers had dwindled further. I suspected we didn’t even number two thousand anymore - we probably had a little over 1500 people in total. Maybe we have 1800. However, so many of us had died. From a clan that had once had a little under ten thousand people, our losses in the past few years had been nothing short of catastrophic.
“I called all of us here because circumstances had, obviously, changed. Again. First of all, we need to establish what happened,” said the mayor. “My current understanding is that we have literally been dragged out of our home plane, and integrated into the homeland of the invaders. A few of the [Spatial Mages] from two of our allied clans make this claim, and I have no expertise in spatial magic, so I have no way to verify or refute their claim.”
I raised my hand. The mayor nodded at me to indicate I could speak. I was glad that I had proven myself enough to have speaking rights in the clan, despite my youth. “I have a compound spark related to spatial magic. I also believe we were dragged out of our home plane and into a new one. We should now be literally attached to the origin of the invaders in a very physical way. I suspect we might even be able to travel up and down that tree branch to reach their homeland - which also means that they no longer need spatial magic or portals to reach us. They can literally just walk over to us.”
The mayor nodded. He didn’t seem surprised by my statements, just… numb. The other members of our clan had similar expressions. They seemed absolutely exhausted from the constant losses, struggling, and fighting.
“Miria has confirmed the statements of these mages. So that brings us to the real question. We are now in the most vulnerable position we have ever been in. What do we do now?” asked the mayor. The mayor actually turned towards me, as if hoping that I had answers that could save the entire clan.
I paused. What could we do? We had been dragged into another dimension. The universal tree branch we were at war with had straight up dragged us into their home planet and integrated us. Any amount of combat power we had was now functionally irrelevant - the gap between the two sides was just too vast. We had a [Sound Mage] again, so we could coordinate with the other clans, but at this point, I was not optimistic about the odds of 30,000 or so survivors trying to fight an entire branch of the universal tree.
“I don’t think there’s much we can do,” I finally said, after several seconds of hesitation. “There’s nowhere to run, and no rescue coming.” Even though I was the eldritch embodiment of hope, I didn’t have a way to produce miracles from thin air. At this point, a miracle was the only thing that would save our civilization. Even hope had its limits - and I felt like I had reached mine, at least. I had absolutely no idea how to proceed.
“There has to be some way for us to resist,” said the mayor. “A way to preserve a few people, or… something. Even if things are hopeless, perhaps there is a way we can hide from the enemy and pray that they never find us?”
<Miria, would it be possible to send a small group of refugees back to our original dimensional cluster?> asked Felix. <As a spatial mage, you have at least some potential to do that, right? And I don’t really see any way for us to keep fighting - but a group of refugees might still preserve at least a few survivors from our clan.>
I paused as I thought about Felix’s words. There was some merit to Felix’s new idea, even though all of our previous grand plans to turn the situation around had failed.
I was pretty sure our civilization as a whole was a lost cause. We were now integrated into the universal tree, and in a few days - or less - they would probably pour through the root and swarm us like a tidal wave. Their biggest earlier problem had probably been logistics, and that problem was now quite definitively solved. There was no way we could ever keep up with the manpower and individual power of a multiversal civilization by ourselves - that was just an unrealistic pipe dream.
On the other hand, taking a small group of people and fleeing might be possible. I knew for a fact that in our old dimensional cluster, interdimensional travel had been possible for people who were strong enough. I was also a {Frozen Void Mage] now - which probably meant that I had some kind of link to dimensional travel, along with spatial manipulation. It would still probably mean we would have to leave many people behind - but we could potentially smuggle a group of survivors out.
I had the appropriate spark for it, and we were basically screwed at this point. This was still a massive shot in the dark - but I didn’t see any other way out anymore. Not to mention, unlike our earlier attempts to fight back against the universal tree, there was actually a reasonable chance the universal tree wouldn’t bother stopping us. After all, they hadn’t pursued us after we escaped from that disastrous battle earlier, and at this point I didn’t think that was because they lacked the ability to do so. They probably just didn’t care about us. We were too insignificant to bother with. They probably wanted land and resources - not people. If we escaped, there was a chance they would outright ignore us.
Or perhaps I was simply being too hopeful. Still, at this point, there wasn’t much else we could bet on.
“I think we could try to flee,” I said. “Travelling from one plane to another was already possible for people who were strong enough before this mess happened. We might be able to cobble together a way to smuggle some survivors out using spatial magic. It’ll mean abandoning a lot… but I don’t see any other way out at this point.”
The mayor looked at me thoughtfully, before he turned to the rest of our clan.
“Does anyone object or support this idea?”
One of the other townsfolk stood up a moment later. It was a woman who appeared to be over thirty years old. “I support the idea. I think we should prioritize the evacuation of children, with a few protectors.”
“So you want to just abandon the rest of us to die?” asked one of the men in the clan, a warrior I vaguely recognized. He appeared to be a little over twenty years old.
“What else can we do?” asked the woman who had first spoken up. “Miria is right. This position is completely hopeless, and we only have a few days before their armies arrive. At that point, we’ll be sitting ducks for the enemy to slaughter. Better we at least save a few children, so that they can preserve the name and memory of our clan. I certainly don’t want my daughter to die with me. She’s only six. She doesn’t deserve to perish here.”
Other people from the clan started to argue, but I quickly noticed that the clan mostly favored the decision - especially parents who had surviving children. Most of them favored the idea of sending the children back home, along with a few protectors, by whatever means necessary - even if it meant abandoning the rest of the clan.”
The [Sound Mage], meanwhile, looked thoughtful. I sensed him send information to and from the other clans near us for several seconds. Eventually, the [Sound Mage] nodded.
“The other mayors are mostly supportive of the idea,” he said, silencing the debate. “Our position is a lost cause. We should send out a few survivors and hope that they can keep the memory of our people alive.” Then, the sound mage paused, and his expression became more grim. “Unfortunately, while they think it’s a good idea, the number of spatially inclined mages is quite low - we don’t have an exact census yet, but the other mayors estimate that we can muster a few dozen, at maximum. Many of them are like you, Miria - their spatial magic skills are low tier and weak. After all, most variants of [Spatial Mage] require compound seeds.”
I winced. That was far less of a spellcaster group to work with than I had been hoping for. I had been keeping my fingers crossed for a few hundred [Spatial Mages], at least. Still, wishing things were better wasn’t going to make more [Spatial Mages] appear out of thin air. I sighed. At least this seemed like a good opportunity for my hope-related abilities to play a role again.
“We’ll have to work with what cards we’ve been given. Arrange a meeting with the other spatial mages. Now. We don’t have time to waste,” said our mayor. “Every moment we delay is a moment the enemy is likely moving towards us.”
The [Sound Mage] nodded, and began sending a flurry of messages out again. A few moments later, the man smiled.
“The other spatially inclined mages have agreed to your plan as well. They will come over here within a few minutes. I hope that your meeting proves fruitful - if there’s any chance at all for our clans, or at least some of our clan, to escape this calamity, we’ll take it. Some hope is better than none at all.”
A few moments later, the first portal appeared in front of me. An elderly grandmother stepped out of it. Her wizened face and grey hair stuck out like a halo of silver and gold, and she gave me a cheery grin as she stepped onto the village-bearing beast and looked at me.
A few minutes later, the next portal appeared. A middle-aged man stepped out.
Then another portal. A few other [Spatial Mages] didn’t even have the mastery to open person-sized portals. They used flying to reach our village. Most of them also brought along a mayor or other decision-makers from their own clan, in order to work out the exact details of who would leave, how to coordinate everything, and what our final plans were. I ignored them and eyed the spatial mages themselves. In total, I counted thirty seven spatial mages. It wasn’t a lot - but it would have to do.