It didn't take long for two more drakken forms to enter the throne room. Even more notifications hit those gathered. Despite the curse, these dragons didn't seem as eager to attack Miah, who stood off to the side just in case that changed.

  Alliyah waved a hand in the air as she sat back. "Lower your auras, or I will lower them for you. The people here have no need to be intimidated or put in their place."

  "I think that is for us to dec-" A red-scaled drakken tried to speak. Trillia watched a wave of mana surge from Alliyah.

  As the Queen stood, silver armor wrapped itself around her, and the same spear she had used against Caelum appeared in her hands. "Do not fucking question me in my home again, Ignis! Lower your aura, or you will be the first victim of this war!"

  Part of Trillia wanted to flee the throne room and hide from the oceans of mana and power surging in the throne room. The dragon in question glanced at its peers before bowing its head. The auras of all three dragons vanished, allowing the use of skills again.

  "Forgive me, Queen Alliyah. I sometimes forget myself."

  Alliyah shook her head. "Stop with the politics and the niceties. It's a waste of time with me, and the people here don't need to play pretend. Who is the biggest threat to our alliance?"

  Storm took a few steps forward while scratching his chin. "Exardescere will be a very big problem. He has been amassing power and followers for more than two centuries. Leaving him to his own devices on that continent may now be our undoing."

  One of the other drakkens also stepped forward, outstretching a hand, a chair from the corner of the room snapped to her command. Slowly she sat down and glanced over at everyone else present. "None of us could have possibly known that Dawn would take such drastic steps, do we know what set her off?"

  Alliyah nodded and relayed what Dawn had told them. Word for word.

  "By all that is sacred, do you ever stop getting into trouble?" The same red-scaled dragon from earlier groaned as he walked over to grab his own chair.

  "It would seem I am incapable of such a feat, Lord Ignis. I am truly sorry my friends, I know that the coming war will be troublesome."

  "There is more to it than you're all realizing." Stas spoke up as he began moving over a table and enough chairs for everyone.

  "Fill us in butcher." Storm held no malice in his tone as he spoke to the abomination. If anything, there was a great deal of respect there.

  "No one is allowed to ascend." The group all stared at him and waited for his explanation to continue. The kids looked around as chairs were offered.

  "Sit. This will be a good lesson for all of you." Storm commanded, and none of them were brave enough to speak out against the dragon. They were happy to sit in silence and listen.

  Stas reached into a pouch at his side and pulled out a rather large assortment of fruit, passing some to each person seated. "Right. Let me put this another way. She went on about clever wording, right?"

  The group all nodded.

  "No one is allowed to ascend, right?"

  More nods.

  "If you die. You don't ascend."

  The dragons all paused peeling the bright orange fruit that had been handed to them.

  "Now, that might not be true..."

  Cordaos immediately shook his head. "No. Assume the absolute worst interpretation we can imagine. If Dawn is doing this as a form of punishment, the Universe is not going to be outdone by a bunch of idiots like us."

  Alliyah rubbed her eyes as she sat at the table with the others. "I was hoping I was the only one who had thought about that possibility. Do you really think she'd just let so many potential immortals and deities die? Just to prove a point?"

  Now, it was Stas' turn to pause in peeling his fruit. "Do you really, for even the briefest of moments, believe that Dawn cares if the entirety of Alirast is wiped out? We're a single realm of hundreds of trillions. Furthermore, we seem to be a constant thorn in her side."

  She had positively no idea what possessed her to speak up, but Trillia spoke up all the same. "She won't let Alirast fall."

  No one made any move to shush her. Storm looked over with an approving nod. "A good observation."

  "Why?" Brutus looked confusedly between Storm and Trillia.

  Trillia took a deep breath before continuing. "Alirast is a prison, right? At least part of a prison holding someone? She won't let it be broken as a seal. It'd go against the rules that she seems to care deeply about."

  "That doesn't mean she has to save any of the souls that reside on the realm though." Miah added helpfully.

  "So. Who is Exardescere?" Amara broke the momentary silence and forced the group back on topic.

  "A Pyroclastic Void dragon."

  "Well, that sounds fucking terrifying." Stas added rather unhelpfully.

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  Ignis nodded. "It is. He has been prime for ascension for the last few centuries and has been slowly amassing more power and follows for that time. Knowing that he will not be forced to ascend if he gains more direct power, we can safely assume he will absolutely attack others."

  The green-scaled dragon, who must have been Ventus from Trillia's deductive abilities, looked at Miah. "Can any of the deities do things? I know many of the most powerful guardian deities still cannot grant blessings. But regular and lesser ones can, right?"

  "I am in deep talks with a few hundred deities now. It's difficult to discern who stands as allies. Many of them, even those who might support Exardescere, are likely to stop interacting with Alirast altogether for the next half-century."

  "Smart of them." Alliyah said through a mouthful of some sort of crunchy fruit. When the kids looked at her in confusion, she swallowed and continued.

  "Their own survival and not wanting to piss off either Kain or Dawn in choosing sides is going to come before their love and loyalty to a few million mortal souls."

  The doors to the throne room swung open, and a well-armored man ran up next to the Queen. He extended a hand with two scrolls. As she took them, the man turned and ran back out of the room and closed the doors without a word.

  Alliyah's mana wrapped itself around the scrolls and burned them to ash. "One of my captains has brokered peace between the northern leviathans and Kadessa. For now, we can still traverse the seas. The other waterways may not be so lucky. Apparently, he turned in many, many long-standing favors he had been building up."

  Trillia knew who that Captain was immediately, and she couldn't help the small smile that spread on her face.

  "What about all the retired heroes?" Storm reached into the air next to him and pulled out two scrolls of his own. One of them was perhaps the most detailed map of the continents that Trillia had ever seen. The other was a long list of names glowing in a variety of colors.

  "I would have said that the beast war Generals would be on our side, but after Perishsong tried to kill Trillia, I don't know anymore." Worry seemed etched into Alliyah's face as she looked over at the Storm dragon. "Honestly, I have no idea how many threats we face. Fifty years of death being final and there being no downside to slaughtering and amassing power? For all I know, half of the people at this table might go insane and start killing people."

  "I mean, I am absolutely going to do that, yes." Stas said cheerfully. "All of you are, don't lie. Let's be honest, if you don't, you're an idiot who is going to die."

  More than a few of the gathered people shot him dirty looks. Stas didn't cower in the face of so many powerful creatures.

  "Think about it. How many hundreds, if not thousands, of people are only alive because killing them would risk tipping us over into ascension? Ignis. Wasn't there an orc chieftain on one of the Eastern Continents that took five of your whelps and forced them to be his pact-bound creatures? Ventus, you lost one of your young adult children to a dragon hunter from the North. There are a dozen or more slavers that have done unspeakable things to the people of Kadessa."

  Stas looked to each person in question as he went on. "The only reason none of you completely and totally rational people haven't wiped out their entire life and everyone they know is because the death you'd leave in your wakes would have forced an ascension. Alirast has always been on the edge of all-out war, held in check only because no one wanted to leave it all behind."

  Alliyah snapped her fingers. "Enough, Stas. We get it."

  Amelia managed to find enough bravery to speak. "Is...are we all going to die? With people like all of you fighting, aren't a lot of us at risk of being wiped out?"

  "No. Actually, other than perhaps some minor warlords wanting to make a name for themselves, there will probably be quite minimal attacks on city centers." As Storm finished his statement, everyone but the other dragons looked at him in doubt.

  The Grand Dragon smiled and continued. "Just because people can't ascend doesn't mean people want to make permanent enemies of a bunch of deities. Losing a few thousand people who might ascend as one of their followers is very different from millions of people who pray and send power to their chosen deity being wiped out. That's not to say there will be no collateral damage, but even we dragons have no interest in wiping out a city. We wouldn't gain any experience, and any traits we might pick up are going to be offset by pissing off a deity."

  Ventus followed his words with her own. "This is more true than ever before, thanks to the young Heroine of Destiny's post-war efforts." The drakken motioned to Alliyah as she spoke.

  "Oh fuck off, I hate that title." Alliyah groaned and sunk even further back in her chair.

  "I know. That's why I use it." Ventus smiled happily at the Queen as she popped another orange into her mouth.

  Layla slowly raised her hand.

  "You don't have to raise your hand. If you have something to say, speak. Alliyah has already vouched for your importance." Storm said as he motioned for the young orc to go ahead.

  "What post-war efforts? I...I don't want to see towns get wiped out."

  "The Churches of Mercy. They were set up entirely because of Alliyah. After the worst of the wars with the [Primordials], there were hundreds of thousands of orphans who would have starved to death. So the Queen here convinced her husband and a local deity of Hope and Healing to start setting up churches that would take in the orphans and teach them."

  Layla looked over at the Queen with an odd look in her eyes. Trillia couldn't quite place it.

  "Alliyah is quite convincing when she needs to be. She managed to convince at least a hundred deities to put small statues in every single Church, as well as most of the Dragon and Leviathan clan leaders to put a token or statue of our own power in each."

  The group all looked back over to Storm, who had been explaining. "The idea was that no one in their right mind would ever attack a church that had physical representations of that many powerful people gathered in it. She's right. Destroying the statue of a dragon clan is a good way for that clan to hunt you down. Those statues feed our monarchs and our own deities with power whenever someone prays near them. It's like a small siphon of mana."

  Ignis finished off the short history lesson. "That gets way, way worse if you desecrate a god's place of worship. That is why Alliyah had them named the Churches of Mercy. Because finding one was a bastion of goodwill and mercy. A few bandits tried to ransack them over the years. The worst I ever saw was one of the Head Priests of one of the northern continent's churches. The old man was a retired adventurer, beat the twelve bandits senseless and hung them by their feet outside the church doors. Said he would take them down if any of the deities saw something worth salvaging."

  Storm clapped his hands with a laugh. "I remember that! The old codger sent a letter to the Queen and to one of my human settlements, asking for replacement statues of those that had broken and said he'd pay whatever price was needed."

  "Jacob." Alliyah said with a wistful smile. "I remember heading to the Church myself to make sure that it hadn't suffered more damage that the man just wasn't mentioning. He sticks out in my memory because he didn't kneel when I approached him."

  "Really? I didn't think it was possible for most humans to resist your Presence." Storm asked quizzically.

  The Queen shrugged. "I didn't question him on it. I figured he was either powerful enough to not care, in which case it was his business to share if he wanted, or enough gods favored him that he didn't have to care, in which case I didn't want to anger them. Either way, he offered to pay for the statues and apologized for failing to protect them. He was an odd man."

  "Father Jacob Breakshire." Layla spoke quietly. Both Storm and Alliyah snapped and pointed at her in remembrance, then looked at her oddly that she knew the name.

  "He was the Father of the church I was raised in."

  Suddenly, the little orc's sudden reverence of the Queen made sense.