Chapter 10: The Fern War
The assembled gods watched from Misse’s war room as the battles raged across a score of worlds, an enormous wall of scry-views showing the events happening in the skies. Some of the perspectives were from the ground, showing the sparks and fireballs in the distance, while others were attuned to the Nexus Shards that the Azoths carried with them, showing strange dark craft out in the black. None of the odd Cato-creations were individually impressive, or threatening, but there were so many of them, on so many worlds, that it became something more.
“This was obviously engineered,” Misse said, allowing the statement to carry to her allies. Every world that had been reported on and verified to have the ferns of Cato’s make were of the same mortal clan subsidiary to the Eln known as the Tornoks, which certainly was not coincidence. Some might suspect she meant engineered by Cato or the Lundt Clan, but Misse truly suspected the coalition of independent gods, who were among those watching. “Someone has been dealing with Cato.”
Some of the sycophants murmured agreement, and she tore her gaze away from the fights to look over at where the Neyar of the independent coalition stood at the edge of the gathered grouping. There were others, of course, mostly from the Inner Worlds and a few from the fringe, but Neyar was far and away the most powerful of the independent gods. His presence was an implicit threat, considering what had happened with Meshan and the Lundt Clan.
Nobody had imagined that Meshan would carve such a bloody swath and then vanish with his world, locking it down until the purge. There might have been more that he did behind that veil as well, considering how little essence had been extracted in the end, but it was the deaths that had caused the most furor. Enough to stop bulk consolidation of independent worlds for the moment, at least.
Misse was glad enough that it had been the Lundts who had actually lost Clan members, but the leverage it had given them against Misse and the Eln Clan in general was unfortunate. They hardly had the spine or the numbers to stop Misse’s campaign entirely, but they’d gotten enough sympathy that the rest of the Nine Great Clans were not nearly as amenable to Misse’s overtures. Even when it was ultimately in their favor.
“I can’t imagine even them working with Cato,” Muar murmured in their private bubble as he followed her gaze to Neyar, Misse’s Deity Skills controlling exactly what could be seen or heard by others. “When I encountered him, he made it entirely clear that every Deity would have to die. While I am sure those small gods are set against you for their own reasons, I find it hard to believe any are entirely suicidal.”
Misse hummed acknowledgement, though it would have been far easier to simply write off the entirety of the independent coalition. What was carefully not being said was that Meshan’s actions had cowed a lot of the rank and file. Suddenly facing the possibility of violence against themselves changed the way that the lesser members of the Clans thought, even if none of them would dare admit it.
Of course, just because one god went utterly insane before the end didn’t change that the rest had to be brought to heel. If anything, it only confirmed that the independent deities were too dangerous and unpredictable to leave to their own devices. All she had to do was to leverage the current situation to her own benefit — even if it seemed like it was a net negative for Clan Eln.
“It’s hard to tell if they’re winning or not,” Moskar Lundt said, who was a poor excuse for her opposite number among his Clan. He was not nearly as successful, of course, but making pretentions in the same direction. “Though if we believe the intelligence from the other Ahrusk natives, even a victory here wouldn’t be quite sufficient if Cato has thoroughly infested the world.”