“You too.” You fumbled to release me. “Show me that sexy come-face.”
A few minutes later, with clean clothing and our lusts freshly sated, we were on our way to meet with the warborn. They’d set up one of their tents as a control room with maps laid out on tables and their computer systems running off of solar-powered batteries. Hyas was as frustrated as you’d been when I told him there was no Internet access or cell service. Beneath Lena’s lands was a maze-like network of catacombs where she’d trapped the souls of her fate demons over the centuries, stored in the skulls of her conquests by some black magic ritual she’d learned from the shadowborn. Her personal Shade Vale made crypts look like candy stores by comparison, and it prevented most advanced technologies from operating with any reliability.
There were rope burns around your neck and wrists and a bite mark on your neck that was far from healed. You must not have noticed the marks yourself, because you kept rubbing at your neck, drawing more attention to the torn and bruised skin. Aretha noticed but didn’t comment. Hyas, however, raised his eyebrows and winked at me as though it were some achievement on my part. I’d need to be more discreet in the future.
“This is where we believe your human relative is being held,” Aretha said to the group of us, which included Lena and a few other Grigori elders. Aretha pointed on the map to the Imperium stronghold in Athens. She must have already been briefed by Lena as to our goals.
“But,” you said, sensing her hesitation.
“This is where we believe we should strike first.” She pointed to Aswan, a city along the Nile River in the southeastern quadrant of Egypt.
“Why is that?” you asked while I marveled at their intelligence. I knew of the Imperium’s base of operations in Cairo, but I didn’t know they also had one in Aswan.
“Azrael won’t be expecting it. And it’s where they store a significant number of aircraft and artillery. We could bomb the airfields, but we’d rather not destroy valuable resources that could be used against them later.”
“How do you think he’ll retaliate?” you asked. I assumed you were thinking about how Xavier might suffer at Azrael’s hands as a result of the attack.
“I know how I’d retaliate,” Aretha said. “Locate his main bases of operations and destroy his best and brightest.”
“Are you prepared for that?” I asked.
“We’ve moved our headquarters to undisclosed locations,” Aretha said. “Underground bases that even our own commanders don’t know about.”
Beside me, Lena stirred but said nothing. You studied the map, the gears in your head turning. “What if we launched two attacks at the same time?” you said. “Most of our resources would go to Aswan, but we could send a smaller force to Athens?”
“Those are our ancestral lands,” said the grizzled seaborn Grigori named Tyre. “There are underground passages from Pireas to Athens. The seaborn know the way”
“I know of at least three seaborn who were our captives,” I said. “Unless they were reassigned, it’s likely they were returned to Athens. If we could get to them first, we might be able to commandeer the compound without much bloodshed.”
“If we succeed in taking over the base,” the seaborn said, “we’re not just handing it over to the warborn.”
“We’re not risking our resources out of the kindness of our hearts,” Hyas said hotly while Aretha took a moment to consider it. I gathered she was a better diplomat than her brother.
“Those are our lands,” Tyre argued.
“That you lost to the Imperium,” Hyas countered. “When the warborn asked your tribe for soldiers to defend against Azrael’s expanding empire, you told us the seaborn were safe in your castles surrounded by the sea. And look at you know. Your tribesmen are spread across the globe, trapped in landlocked places. How long has it been since some of them have even smelled the ocean?”
“Whoa there,” you interrupted, placing your hands against Hyas’s chest and pushing him backward and away from the stormy-eyed seaborn. “Chill, Hyas. No need to get personal. Imagine if it was your ancestral lands we were talking about. Speaking of which, do you have a map of the territories before Azrael took over?”
Aretha gestured to one of her soldiers, and they swiftly provided the map of the original tribal lands. The markings were in Greek, and the boundaries were completely different from the human demarcations. It was alarming to see how large the territories once were. Even Lena’s present-day lands were only a fraction of their former magnitude.
“Can’t we just divvy up land this way?” you asked as if the solution were at once so simple and obvious. “The warborn keep their bases wherever they are, and the ancestral lands revert back to the original owners. Tribes are responsible for defending their own territories, which means they’ll have to invest in recruitment and training a militia to help them. And when there are disputes, we settle them by tribal council.”
“What would we be gaining in all of this?” Aretha asked.
“Well, you won’t have to constantly be prepping for a war with the Imperium, so you might actually get to take a vacation.” You laid a hand on Hyas’s bunched shoulder. “Which you could really use, my dude. You’re super tense.”
“And Azrael is vanquished,” Lena said. “Without the Imperium, he has no claim on the human realm. He can join the other Potestas who rule on high and leave us to our own devices.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re going to be living in some demon paradise,” you said, picking up on her unspoken implication. “We have to have rules. You can’t go around slaughtering humans and inciting wars just cuz.”
“Of course, Vincent,” she said with a subservient dip of her head. Your scowl said that you did not appreciate her performative meekness.
“And you,” you continued, turning to address the seaborn. “You can’t dip out of this revolution once you get your lands back. There has to be some requirements of all the tribes. Mandatory service or taxes or whatever.”
“Sounds like we’re rebuilding the Roman Empire,” Aretha mused, shooting a pointed look at me.
“But without the slavery,” you said, making sure everyone understood. “Or the crazy tyrant emperors.”
