Just as Silas moved to knock on the door, it swung open before his knuckles made contact. The prophet smiled at him from the other side, stepping back and offering him entry. It was a large house, but Silas could immediately see it hadn’t been lived in for a while. A thin layer of dust covered everything from the floor to the various pieces of furniture, white trails of dust drifting through the sunbeams.

“I apologise, but there is little hospitality I can show you,” the prophet said, taking him to a table which at least looked dusted recently.

“Oh, that’s fine,” Silas replied, taking a seat with a shrug. His eyes narrowed on the fungal satyr. “I’m just here to ask you a few questions.”

“When you put it like that, it sounds like an interrogation,” the prophet said with a humoured expression.

Silas didn’t smile. “I couldn’t help notice that you didn’t choose Meritocracy back then. In fact, I don’t think I saw any message from you, so what’s up?”

“I was undecided then,” the prophet replied, not losing his composure one bit. “But I have since chosen to support the Meritocracy method, so you need not worry over me.”

Humming doubtfully, Silas gave him an unconvinced look. “It’s funny you say that because I remember looking at some of the other options and thinking that they would be far more beneficial for you.”

“Yes,” the prophet admitted, unabashed, “but I also need others to support my choice, which no one would do if I picked a Democracy option. If I go by the strongest factions, yours is definitely up there, and it just so happens it is also the only one in which I can see a future for myself.”

Finally, Silas felt a bit more convinced, and he knew the prophet could read the relief on his face. The fact was that the prophet had spoken truly; out of all the factions with more than one person supporting it, only the Meritocracy one would accept the prophet with his legions of fungal thralls to live in the new world. The only issue was whether the prophet would change his mind as the situation evolved in the future, but Silas supposed that was better suited to think about then. “Do you have any ideas on how we can convince the others?”

“First, know who you can, and cannot, reasonably convince to your camp. The autocrats,” the prophet said, firmly shaking his head. “Whereas you actually have a chance with the drakkar and the shaerd. Besides, you forget the biggest faction of Sovereigns which is, in fact, those who kept quiet - either they do not care about the ruling method, they are too scared to go public with their choice, or they are still undecided. Whichever one it is, they will be the easiest to convince.”

“I see,” Silas said, chewing his lower lip with a thoughtful look. His gaze slid down the length of the room, back onto the prophet. “If I remember right, you’re supposed to have clones of yourselves all over the world, right? So you have accurate information on where everyone is?”

The prophet gave an understanding smile. “My information is at your service.”

****

Hokul peered into the distance, seeing nothing but swaying meadows for as far as his eye could see. The sun shone brilliantly down on the scene, fields of green dotted by vibrant yellows and purples and reds. Other than Bobby beside him, the closest Sovereigns were hundreds of miles away. But he knew this was not to last as he spotted an alarming cloud cutting through the fluffy white of its neighbours.

The cloud was made up of countless triangles. They were ebon with a red tint, the triangles at the tail continuously shooting for the head so that the cloud kept moving forward. It made for a menacing sight, and a downright frightening one when Hokul considered the implications behind it. Well, he had always known this moment would come ever since the Sovereigns meeting.

Bobby’s knees were visibly shaking, his teeth clattering against each other. If the pygmy troll was human, Hokul knew he would be dripping sweat now as well. In all, he looked miserable, his bulbous nose constantly sniffling.

“Don’t worry, lad, we found each other for a reason,” Hokul reminded him. “We knew this was coming, and together we can at least put up a fight.”

Bobby seemed not to hear him at first, only registering the latter sentence. “You haven’t seen him in action. If I could run…” He left the rest of the sentence unsaid as the dark cloud finally neared them.

It stopped some hundreds of metres away, appeared to consider the situation, then dumped a manastone from its body. Immediately after, the cloud collapsed into itself, the triangles all condensing into each other and eventually liquefying and finally turning into a fat glob of smoke which scattered into the air. Simultaneously, the manastone dropped into a field and became hidden by the swaths of grass.

Hokul tightened his grip on his Zweihänder, feeling some measure of calm from the weight of his armour pushing down on his chest.

Several seconds dragged by, crawling and scratching, increasingly irritating Hokul who began to feel his heart pounding as if it was trying to make a getaway from the scene. Unfortunately, his feet stuck themselves to the ground. Then, without warning, a man-sized portal ripped itself into reality above where the manastone had fallen, the wisps of blue and purples swirling around in the inky hole. Out of it stepped a grinning Ajit, followed by an equally jovial Aengus.

The two man-giants regarded their surroundings and, upon spotting the dwarf and the pygmy troll, made for their hill at once. There was a nonchalance about their movement which suggested they saw this more as an outing than a tense meeting. “I thought you said you would run away again,” Ajit yelled out.

Bobby glared at the Warlock, the pygmy troll’s magical presence soaring as his emotions sharpened to a point. He flexed his pudgy fingers, and although Hokul worried Bobby would attack, he vowed to follow up in such an instance, anyway.

“No need to be so tense,” Ajit said with clear humour, now only a few seconds sprint away. “Aengus and I just want to talk, don’t we?”

The Master of War nodded. “Visiting some wee laddies, nothing more.”

“As if we’d believe such bullshit,” Hokul growled.

“You have two options before you here,” Ajit said, displaying two open palms. “In one of them, you decide that Meritocracy is actually the best idea you’ve ever heard, and you decide to vote for it. In the other—”

“We kill ye,” Aengus interrupted.

“… Yes, we’ll have some difficulties between us, which Aengus and I unfortunately won’t be able to overlook. In such a case, we’ll have to rough you up a bit.” Ajit chortled and shook his head. “Okay, okay, that was a lie. We’ll have to rough you up a lot.”

Hokul glanced at Bobby and nodded. “Fine, we’ll pick your blood Meritocracy.”

“Oh,” Aengus said, the light dimming from his eyes. His greatsword seemed to sag with him.

“What he means is that’s great news,” Ajit said. “I’m so glad we came to an agreement.”

Hokul gulped. “That’s it? We can go now?”

The Warlock looked at the Master of War. “Well, I mean, I guess you can. We can always find you if we want, but…” He appeared to be in thought. “Oh, what the hell, you might as well come with us. Let’s go meet the rest of the gang.”

“Do we have to?” Bobby asked meekly.

Ajit put his golden grillz on full display. “Yep.”

****

The small army stopped outside the cave, the clattering of their armour and tense sighs sounding across the rows. Freddie cracked his neck from side to side, then started with his fists, a ravenous look on his already fearsome face.

“Is it in there?” one of his lieutenants asked him, which he answered with a grunt. “Are you sure you don’t want backup, Freddie? It’s supposed to be as strong as you, so the rest of us could seriously weigh it in your favour.”

“I’m not going to lose,” Freddie said, his voice hoarse. “Remember I entered the world stage by killing a shambler. That one was meant to be stronger than me then as well, and you saw what happened. This’ll be no different.”

“If you say so,” the lieutenant said, bowing slightly.

“I do.” Freddie spun on his heels and addressed his soldiers from Newford. “No matter what you hear from in there,” he started, hooking a finger over his shoulders, “don’t come in. You’ll just die for nothing. But if it tries to run away from me and comes to this entrance, you all know what to do then. It’ll be blind in the sun as well, so don’t worry about it.”

Nodding at them, Freddie wheeled about and entered the inky dark cave. Although its passage was considerably spacious, the darkness still squeezed around his figure as he marched through, a rancid reek immediately assailing his nose. Wet dripping echoed through the passage, overshadowed by the stamps of his feet, but still masking the gravelly breathing from afar. At least it almost did, but Freddie’s ears picked up on the sound, anyway.

He wore ordinary armour and wielded no weapons on his person, instead having only leather gloves on his hands. Not that any of this mattered; he was the Dreadnought. Although he could very well lose his life here, he felt no stress. He was a machine of war - scarred, scratched, and grim - this was his element.

Over a minute passed before he closed in on his target, and he knew exactly when he had arrived as, although he could hardly see, he was graciously greeted by two jagged tentacles which torpedoed for his stomach. He reacted in an instant, grabbing them just before they made contact and yanking them with such force he heard distinct plops from further on. They should have sliced deep into his flesh, but they couldn’t. He cast them to the side, blocking his ears from the shambler’s deathly shrieking.

More tentacles came for him, but now the shambler knew better than to attack him directly. Its tentacles went to trip him up this time. However, Freddie had no interest in being bound up, so he charged forward. The tentacles tried to latch around his ankles, but they ripped apart from his ridiculous forward force. He was now in striking range of the shambler.

It opened its maw and roared in his direction, a high-pitched howl while blasted him with a dizzying stench, but even with his senses confused, his body knew what to do. One hand shot up to grab the descending fangs, easily gripping around its slimy, cutting teeth, before pulling back and tearing half its maw off. The second hand smashed down like a cudgel, snapping the other half of its maw off.

Its screams were so loud now that he could no longer hear, his ears ringing with piercing intensity. Freddie could hardly feel the tentacles slashing at him as he stepped back for a second, gripping his brow in agony. If he could, he would have held his nose and batted at the stomach-wringing smell, but there was no point when it surrounded him, permeating into his very skin. In this moment of confusion, he came under further attack as the shambler vomited bucketloads of caustic saliva onto him. The slime tingled his skin but failed to melt through as it should have.

Unable to sense his surroundings at all anymore, Freddie swung both of his arms like a madman. He didn’t know if he was hitting anything or merely flailing at the air, but this seemed to be the only option remaining to him with his senses completely disabled. All he could do was swing, swing, and swing. He had no idea how much time passed, but eventually he became aware that his ears had popped back into hearing. Freddie wiped the gore and acid from his face but didn’t bother unclogging his nose.

It took time for him to realise where he was exactly, but the walls of sloshing flesh around him was a dead giveaway once he tried moving his arms and legs. Fortunately, the path he had made in was easy to find, and it was equally easy to split apart the bars of flesh which tried to block his exit. Slogging through, he came back into the cave, behind him a truck-sized mass of muscle which had once been a shambler. It still bore a resemblance, too, although now there was a giant split in its body.

Spitting out the sour taste in his mouth, Freddie cracked his neck from side to side, then his knuckles.

Freddie Littlewood (human), the Dreadnought, has killed Shrjkle (shambler)

39 Sovereigns remaining.