“Lord Howell,” he began but I held up a finger.

  “You’re going to listen and not talk,” I said. “I’m not happy with you.”

  I sat back down, leaning back to look at him.

  “First, why are you not at the frontlines?”

  “The frontlines?” he asked, confused.

  I sighed.

  “Yes, where your people are currently fighting the Incursion. Why are you not there.”

  “I’m not a military leader,” he said. “Much like you. I leave that to those with more experience and training. General Mattias was Army before the System, he has the training to lead the Gray Wolf Militia far better than I ever could.”

  “Right. But why are you not up there helping the fight?”

  “I have to run the Clan,” he said.

  “You have people that do that, just like I do,” I said. “Your place is with your people, fighting. You are one of the strongest in the Gray Wolf Clan, are you not?”

  “Yes,” he said, puffing up a little. “I am one of the top ten highest Levels in the Clan.”

  “So you should be at the front, fighting.”

  “But…”

  “Nope, no buts. As the strongest, our place is out front, leading out people. Using that strength to protect them and defend them. Not in the back, letting others fight. This isn’t the old days,” I said. “We aren’t politicians, sitting back in our offices and giving commands. We lead from the fight, using our strength.”

  “And yet,” Tommy said with a little bit of a sneer. “You are here and not at the front.”

  I smiled. I knew he’d go there.

  “Only because I’ve been ordered to stay here for now,” I replied. “At least until our scouts get back and then I’ll be unleashed.” I leaned forward. “Trust me, I’m just itching to punch something.”

  He swallowed hard.

  “The second mistake,” I said, leaning back again. “Was at least not being here when I arrived. And there should have been someone with a full breakdown of enemy forces, where they are located, what their numbers and Levels are. All that good stuff. And then a breakdown of the Dungeons, what kind they are, what to expect inside. There’s a whole list of stuff that someone should have been here, just waiting to give us a report. Instead I had to deal with Calvin’s little get together.” I leaned forward again. “Did you know he had refugees, your people, outside the walls in tents?”

  “Uhm.. no, I did not know,” Tommy said.

  Which was a lie.

  “You know, maybe there were only two mistakes. They’re big ones, but still just the two.” I tapped my fingers on the table, looking past Tommy in thought. “Oh wait, there was a third. This one is kind of minor compared to the other two, but it’s still a mistake. You came in here acting like you hadn’t screwed up big time.”

  “I came here expecting to be treated with respect,” he said, sitting a little straighter in his chair. “I had heard nothing but good things about how you treat those in your Clan, but this,” he waved his hands at the tent. “This is not what I expected for a Clanchief to treat another.”

  I held up four fingers.

  “There is a fourth mistake, but we’ll get to that one in a minute. Let’s focus on mistake number three. You came in here thinking you were on even footing. You aren’t.”

  “I am the Gray Wolf Clanchief,” he said.

  I smiled.

  “Maybe not for long.”

  He sputtered and stammered a bit.

  “What? That is not how you have treated other Clans in the past. I talked with them before submitting the Gray Wolf Clan to join the Solace Fellowship. They all, every one, said you allowed them to maintain a high level of independence.”

  “Yep, that is true, and I would have done the same here except for one thing, and that brings us to mistake number four.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You tried to take advantage of us.”

  “What do you mean? We had no control over the Incursion.”

  He was starting to look a little squirrelly.

  “No, you had nothing to do with that. Not directly at least.” I held a hand up to stop him from interrupting. “Maybe indirectly and not that you knew, but I think there’s a reason why the Incursion happened here and not somewhere else. But you don’t need to worry about that.” I pointed a finger at him. “What you do need to worry about is the Dungeon Surges. See, it’s awfully convenient that you just happened to ask to join the Solace Fellowship right before you had a couple of Dungeon Surges that you couldn’t handle. So you come to us, knowing that typically we leave the Clans alone, let them keep running themselves. Set up some inner-Clan trade deals, all to the benefit of those that join us. So you did that, knowing we’d most likely leave you alone up here to keep doing the things you’ve been doing.” I held him with my glare. He was bigger than me, older than me, but none of that mattered. I let out a bit of aura, which pushed against him. “I’ve only been here a day and I already don’t like what I’m seeing. We will be investigating everything in Gray Wolf territory and I better like what I see.” I pulled back the aura. I wasn’t really good at it, so it tended to be overbearing, which was the effect I was going for. “So you have this Dungeon problem, come join the Solace Fellowship, knowing that when you request help, we’ll send it. No questions asked. Maybe we’ll be a little suspicious, but there are other things to worry about. I’m in the Tower. Some Dungeon Surges won’t bring me running. We’ll send a couple teams, coordinate with yours, help you get them under control. Maybe we’ll set up some monitoring, since it seems you can’t handle them on your own. But for the most part we’ll leave you and yours alone. That’s the taking advantage of us part. You get to keep your little kingdom and get all the benefits of being part of the Fellowship. Except the Incursion screwed all that up.” I leaned back, putting my feet up on the table. “That brought me up here, and the full military might of the Solace Fellowship. So you hoped to hide in your capital and avoid me, thinking and hoping that I’d be so busy that I wouldn’t bother with you. Didn’t work out that way did it?”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Tommy sat back in his chair. He sighed, all the fight leaving him. He didn’t bother trying to talk his way out of it.

  “So what now?” he asked.

  “Now we see if you can keep your position here in Gray Wolf Territory,” I said and raised my voice. “Sargeant Wilkins,” I called out.

  The guard looked through the opening.

  “Lord?”

  “Go and get Derek please. He should be in his tent next door.”

  “Yessir.”

  He disappeared. Tommy looked at me with a question but I didn’t answer, just leaned back in the chair and waited. It didn’t take long for Derek to enter the tent.

  “You wanted to see me, Lord Howell?”

  “Yeah, Derek. This is Thomas Payton, he’s one of the strongest in the Gray Wolf Territory. He’s going to go with you and answer all your questions. Abilities, Level, Capabilities, the works. You’re then going to assign him to a Solace team, not a Gray Wolf team. He’s to be working with our people.” I put emphasis on that, hoping Derek would understand. He seemed to get it, but I’d double check later. I looked at Tommy. “You can go with Derek and answer all his questions. You’ll go where he tells you to go and you’ll listen to that team leader. You do what they say. If I hear otherwise…,” I left it hanging.

  Tommy stood up, looking like a defeated man. Which he was.

  “And at the end of all this, we’ll see how you did. Maybe you’ll have done enough to keep your status. Maybe not. That’s all up to you.”

  Derek led him out of the tent.

  Maria came in right after. She was smiling.

  “Kat would be proud of you,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “That was masterfully done,” she replied, taking a seat.

  “It sucked,” I said with a sigh. “Never should have needed to do all that.”

  “Price of leadership. That prick was trying to take advantage of us, using us and reaping the benefits. You set him in his place and we now know what a mess it is up here. We can fix it.”

  “After the incursion.”

  “After the incursion,” she agreed.

  ***

  “This is not good,” I said, looking down at the same map but now with lots of marks and notes written all over.

  “No, not at all,” Maria agreed.

  She stood next to me as we both studied the map. Across the table were the three scouts we’d sent out when we’d arrived. They’d just made it back not an hour ago. We’d given them time to mark up the map with what they’d seen. I’d wanted to send them to get some rest and food, but couldn’t do that yet.

  “We didn’t get that close,” Jessica, the lead scout said. “We took a quick tour by airship, staying out of range. I thought getting back was more important than a detailed assessment.”

  “You were right,” Maria said. “We needed to know this.”

  The this was that the invaders, the Grimdar Sect, were not quite surrounding the three about-to-surge Dungeons but they were around them. Kind of a U-shaped formation, with the Dungeon portal being the open side. They were there in enough numbers to prevent any teams from entering the Dungeon. That the invaders knew those three Dungeons were surging, it just increased our concerns that the timing of it all wasn’t a coincidence.

  Jessica had a Sight Essence, same as Tracy and pretty much anyone that used ranged weapons as their main. It helped with seeing things far away and in more detail. It was great for scouts.

  All three Dungeons were the same.

  The scouts hadn’t been able to find where the Invaders were coming from or where their forces were. We knew of one portal, where the Gray Wolf Militia was facing off against them, but we had to assume there were more.

  And had to assume they had the means to create more portals. That was probably how they’d managed to get so many forces at the three Dungeons and so quickly. There was a lot of land up there and the Dungeons were pretty spread out.

  Jessica hadn’t seen any evidence of airships or any other vehicles. Not to say there weren’t any stashed somewhere but portals were a good bet.

  Whatever Clan had invited the Grimdar here, they probably had spies in the Gray Wolf people.

  I felt bad for that Clan when I found out who they were. I was the strongest on Earth and I didn’t throw that weight around, but in this case? In this case, that Clan would feel every bit of that strength.