Travis glared at his brother, ignoring the other shrouded in the room. He had no idea where they were or what was going on, but he didn’t really care at this point. He was so done. Everything, everything he’d done and he still hadn’t managed to do anything more than minorly inconvenience his brother. That was the culmination of all of his efforts. Annoyance.

Of course, Travis would be doing more than just glaring if he could. They’d taken his armor, and even Travis could recognize that Erik had never really tried in their fight. But that wouldn’t stop him from trying to claw his brother’s throat out with his bare hands. No, he wasn’t doing anything else because the stocky dark-skinned shrouded had shoved some kind of needle into his arm that had him completely paralyzed from the neck down.

“Hello? Can he talk with that thing in him?” The tanned lady turned her attention from Travis to the one that had paralyzed him.

“Yes, he can talk just fine. That needle was infused specifically for an interrogation scenario. He's completely paralyzed from the neck down, but he can talk and think just fine. He’s just refusing.” The shrouded explained exactly what he’d done to Travis.

“So he’s just being stubborn.” The woman rolled her eyes.

“Well, he is Erik’s brother,” The stocky one laughed.

Travis rankled at the comparison, mostly because it was a complaint he personally held. His brother, for all his light attitude, was incredibly stubborn and unwilling to bend, even when it would have made all their lives easier. The idea that what he was doing fit the same mold was…

“I have nothing to say.” He snarled, glaring at them all. He wasn’t an idiot. Travis knew he was essentially beyond saving. Losing to his brother had put him in a position where even the Founder couldn’t save him anymore. But he’d be damned if he just rolled over.

“We could just crack him open and dig around.” The tan woman suggested. “Me and Erik could have him talking easily.”

That sent a tingle of dread up Travis’s spine. He didn’t know what these shrouded’s domains were. It was likely that this woman wasn’t lying and that they could just pry all the secrets from his mind. It would make sense that she was here if that was within her power.

“I don’t want to.” His brother jumped in. “We did that with the assassin guy because it didn’t matter if anything happened to him afterward. But messing around with my brother's soul is a no-go. I’m not doing it.”

Travis bit back a scathing comment. He didn’t want his brother’s pity. It was insufferable that Erik still thought of him as someone that needed protection, even after everything that had happened. It was just another marker to show how little he’d done to Erik in their fight.

But he resisted saying anything, because he did need Erik's protection. At this point, the only one that could exact Travis’s revenge was the Founder. The less the shrouded knew about him, the more likely it was that his plans would come to fruition. Travis could only hope to still be alive when the Starry Sea burned down around them all as an ever-escalating war drowned every shrouded nation in blood.

“Oh, come on. It’ll be even easier than with the assassin. He’s not a shrouded, so there’ll be nothing to interfere with our shrouds. It’s as safe as it can get.” The woman cajoled.

“That…” Erik wavered. “That was the main problem last time.”

“And that guy ended up fine anyway,” She added. “Come on, you know you want to find out what he’d been up to anyway. This is the best way to find out. We’ll be extra careful, and Caeden can fix him if anything goes wrong any way.”

“I don’t know, Cat…” Erik looked toward the other man. “Can you…?”

The man nodded. “So long as we’re in the Forge, he’s under my power. Even his soul. I might not be able to replicate him, or any of us, like I can with a blade, but I can definitely undo any damage you do easily. I even practiced it with some undead Cat summoned to make sure. Their souls aren’t the same as a human’s, but the differences essentially don’t matter when it comes to my abilities here. Benefits of owning your own universe.”

“And you guys call my healing ability broken.” Erik snorted.

The man just shrugged unapologetically.

“Well, I guess we’re going to take a look and see what we can see.” Erik sighed, looking toward Travis. “Sorry, bro. This is what you get for throwing in with genocidal mass-murderers and trying to kill my friends. I’ll at least make sure this doesn’t hurt.”

There was only a growing mix of dread and resignation left when Travis heard his brother speak. He’d lost. He knew he’d lost. Ironically, for the first time in his life, Travis felt like he fully understood the Revolution’s message. Instead of anger for his brother fueling him, Travis felt what it was like to have his life, his very existence, in the hands of god-like beings that could do anything they wanted to him.

It didn’t feel good.

{}

“Well, that’s a lot.” Caeden sat back with a heavy sigh. He didn’t think any of them expected Erik’s brother to have reached so high up in the Revolution’s ranks. The fact that there was a single person behind all the technology they used was mind-boggling on its own. Then you added in the hidden plan to use the Revolution as an arms dealer in a technologically elevated Sea-spanning conflict for massive profit.

“It makes a surprising amount of sense.” Lily landed next to him on the couch, leaning her back against his shoulder.

Interrogating Travis under the influence of Cat’s Soul shroud and Erik’s Binding shroud had taken several hours, and everyone had changed into actual clothes instead of basically sleepwear. Something about taking apart someone's mind for answers on a terrorist organization in a bathrobe seemed inappropriate.

“How so?”

“Well, think about it,” Lily held out a hand, into which Caeden created a glass of apple juice. Lily had taken a liking to the drink during their time in the Forge and Caeden willingly obliged her new craving. “The Revolution has continually made moves that seem to make sense, but really don’t if you give it more than a few minutes of thought and aren’t overrun with rage at shrouded.”

“Like the fact that they’ve been attacking shrouded out in the continents for years. There’s no reason to do that if they had the suppression field, or were even just planning to make it. The same with the massive attack on the CA. Why’d they do that? They attacked key parts of infrastructure, but they didn’t commit to anything close to a genocidal level of death.”

“It doesn’t track. They were supposedly ‘announcing their power to the Starry Sea’ or something along those lines, but why? I’m sure that sentiment sounds really nice to most of the people in the Revolution. They’ve felt powerless in a world controlled by people born with an inherent advantage over them. I’m sure the idea of ‘showing up’ the shrouded was easily accepted. But if their true goal was genocide against all shrouded, they would have been far better off biding their time.”

“I mean, really think about it. They had access to hidden mines of ether that only they could use because their advanced ethertech let them access places too hazardous for normal mining operations. They had a massive intelligence network of unshrouded that could hide in plain sight, supplemented with deadly and stealthy infiltration Ethermen to make sure the network stayed secure.”

“If you combine all that with a continuously growing anti-shrouded sentiment as the CA continues to stagnate and they continue to advance and the fact that the birth-rate of unshrouded is way higher than the shrouded birth-rate, then you’ve got a recipe for an inevitable victory if they’d just waited.”

“It would have been easy.” Caeden muttered, sinking farther into the cushions as the implications hit him. “Just keep arming more and more unshrouded, train them up. Make more ships, make more suppression fields. Keep stockpiling and keep living without anyone knowing about you. Eventually, they would have reached a point where no amount of shrouded would have stood up to them. Especially not with the absolutely abysmal speed of ethertech advancement in shrouded society.”

“It’s even worse than that.” Lily added. “Ethetech was first discovered by unshrouded. How much would you bet that this Founder character was involved in that? Maybe a predecessor of theirs, but either way. It really seems like they might have deliberately introduced ethertech to shrouded. A sort of ‘sample’ of the product he was planning to sell.”

Caeden nodded gravely. “Of course. If they’d just dumped ethertech in front of any ruling body on the Starry Sea, they wouldn’t even know what to do with it. Instead, they added little bits of tech, the bare minimum, until it had integrated into all of shrouded society. Then, when everyone is used to it, you show them that this thing they’ve been using this whole time could do even more than they ever believed. Maybe you scare them a little. Or scare them a lot.”

“Now they’re desperate to get control of this new thing,” Lily picked up where he’d left off, “Maybe you abuse a little political instability in a weaker country, one you’ve all but taken over with your ethertech. Maybe you get a foreign power interested in taking over the weakened country. Of course, a Tournament of Power gets called. Everyone can sense the looming escalation in the ongoing conflict. It’s not that difficult to figure out who’s going to show up.”

“Then,” Caeden slammed a fist into his palm, “You take out the leadership in one big movement. All the chaos and conflict and confusion reignites a multi-national conflict. One that was started with ethertech. Ethertech you made. And now everyone really wants what you’re selling, because they watched it decimate the people they thought were keeping them safe.”

“It’s brilliant. Evil, but brilliant.” Caeden shook his head.

“I don’t know about that.” Dave, sitting in chair, had joined them partway through the interrogation. “I don’t think either of you would be surprised to learn that your universe is pretty uncomplicated politically. Lots of power tends to make people choose violence before words. Shrouded politics is so straightforward that children in some universes could chart it out with a crayon. The fact that someone managed to play everyone this easily isn’t that surprising. Most of your leaders don’t exactly seem like mental titans.”

Caeden snorted. “You can say that again. It's all power and nothing else. You’re right. It’s not that hard for someone on the outside looking in to see the obvious weak points in everyone’s mentality. Most shrouded aren’t exactly introspective people.”

“So, what do you plan to do?” Dave asked, looking between them.

“We can’t ignore this Founder character.” Lily said what Caeden was thinking. “He’s most likely the one that ordered the Entrance Blade taken, considering he sent Travis on essentially a suicide mission. I find it hard to believe he knew Erik was there, or that they were related. We can chalk that up to Erik’s terrible luck. More likely he simply wanted the barrier out of the way and assumed that the suit he gave Travis would be enough to draw the defender’s attention.”

“And he was right,” Caeden shook his head. “Not for the right reasons, but he got what he wanted. Assumedly. Regardless, Lily is right. He’s got a hold of technology that is likely to get our universe erased if he starts messing with it. Even if its unlikely that he’d stumble into something that would get the researcher’s attention, we can’t really risk it.”

“You’re the only one who’s interacted with him. You think this researcher would destroy the Starry Sea if the quarantine was breached without his permission?” Dave asked.

“I have no doubts. This place is an experiment for him. It becomes worthless as soon as too many variables slip from his control. Someone poking a hole in the side of the universe is a heck of a big variable. If anything, he’d pull me out of here and shove me into another universe to keep the experiment going under more favorable conditions. I’m the one he’s really interested in, after all.”

Caeden stared at the floor. Once he’d said it, he was sure he was right. The researcher’s interest in the Starry Sea extended as far as his control did, and no further. Someone in this universe slipping his control was enough to get him to ‘end the experiment’. Especially since he could just restart, but this time with a prime example of what he was looking for involved from the start.

“For all that I’ve gained powers I never would have imagined, I know there’s nothing I could do if the researcher decided to end this universe. Worse, I couldn’t stop him from pulling me out and dropping me somewhere else. Our best chance is stopping this ‘founder’ before they trigger something we can’t fix.”

“So, we need to storm the flagship.” Dave clarified. “Immediately.”