Book 9: Chapter 13: Flawed Strategy
If Sen were capable of getting headaches from something other than a horrible injury, he was certain that he would have had one by the time he and Falling Leaf left the ice wolf in his cave. At the very least, he was frustrated. Sen had imagined returning to the academy triumphant with a solution to one of their biggest problems firmly in hand. What he’d gotten was… It wasn’t exactly nothing, but he hesitated to call it something. When they’d gotten into actual discussion, a few things became abundantly clear to Sen. First, the wolf was terrified of him, personally. Second, whatever group the wolf was representing wasn’t even pretending to give a damn about human survival.
It was obvious that they wanted to use humans and human cultivators, in particular, as a hammer to smash their enemies. Anything that deviated from that particular goal was not of interest to them. Objectives like providing information that let humanity preserve cities and the infrastructure there weren’t on the table. A fact that would have become clearer, sooner, if the wolf wasn’t so damned afraid of him. Instead of being upfront about it, though, the wolf tried to sidestep anything he thought might send Sen into a murderous, wolf-slaughtering rage. Unfortunately, that list seemed to include just about anything that might make Sen unhappy to hear. By the end of the conversation, Sen was very nearly in the rage state that Winds of Winter seemed so keen to avoid. He’d finally lost his temper.
“Listen,” Sen said through clenched teeth, “I get that you’d probably be almost as happy as the rest of those spirit beasts to see every human being in the world die.”
“No, I—”
“Don’t me interrupt me again. I’ve been sitting here, listening to you make excuses for almost two hours. Now, it’s your turn to listen.”
Winds of Winter slowly closed his jaws and lowered his eyes. Sen nodded in approval before he continued.
“I understand that helping humanity isn’t even on your list of priorities. Frankly, I’d have called you a liar if you tried to pretend that it was. But what you want is to throw us at your enemies, leaving us and the Beast King weak. All so that you can swoop in and kill off everyone that’s left in the end. It’s so obvious that it’s painful. So, I’ll tell you now that it’s not going to happen that way. No matter who wins this war, you will not be left in charge. You might survive. You might claim back some territory in the wilds, but you will never rule these lands.
“These are your options. You can take your chances with the Beast King, but I think we all know where that leads. You can sit out the war and hope humanity wins. You can throw in with us. If you throw in with us, though, you don’t get it all your own way. You will have to help us achieve some of our goals. One of which is preserving a substantial human population and some of our bigger cities. That is the message you are to take back to your group.”
Winds of Winter was trying to keep the baleful glare out of his eyes and failing spectacularly. Sen supposed being told flat out that their strategy was transparent and wasn’t going to happen wasn’t great political maneuvering on his part. He supposed that he should have played along and pretended he didn’t understand what they were trying to do. Then, he could have tried to use them while they tried to use him and the rest of the human cultivators. Except, Sen wasn’t good at those games, didn’t like them, and suspected he’d get people killed trying to play them. The good news was that he was in the stronger position. The rogue spirit beasts could provide something he desperately wanted. That let them negotiate up to a point.