Chapter 63: Turning Point
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 418 – Mike
[Mike POV]
The stack of reports was taller than my breakfast.
That wasn't metaphor—I had placed the documents next to my morning meal specifically to make the comparison.
A bowl of porridge, roughly six inches tall with its accompanying cup of tea. The report stack exceeded it by at least two inches, and more were arriving every hour.
Each report demanded attention. None could wait.
"Sir." A messenger appeared at the entrance to my tent. "Lord Ashton has arrived. He's requesting an immediate meeting."
"Requesting?"
"His exact words were 'demanding,' but I thought 'requesting' sounded more diplomatic."
"Good instinct. Tell him I'll be there in ten minutes."
The messenger departed. I looked at my breakfast, untouched, looked at the reports, also untouched, looked at the morning sun that promised another day of impossible decisions and inadequate resources.
And Claude wasn't here.
Off somewhere "processing," according to his brief message. Internal matters, head-voice issues, things I couldn't help with and wouldn't understand if he tried to explain.
Great. Just great.
I abandoned the porridge and headed for the meeting room.
Lord Ashton was not a patient man.
This was unfortunate because dealing with Lord Ashton required patience in quantities I didn't possess, especially before breakfast.
He was fifty-three, wealthy, influential in three regional courts, and thoroughly convinced that his contributions to Arbalest entitled him to more than gratitude. We had been dancing around this conversation for months. Today, apparently, he had decided to stop dancing.
"My contributions have been substantial." Ashton settled into the chair across from me with the air of a man who expected to be heard. "Funding, political cover, intelligence, I've given much."
"And we appreciate it."
"Appreciation doesn't translate to influence, does it?"
I considered lying, decided against it—Ashton was too experienced to fall for obvious falsehoods, and I wasn't skilled enough to construct subtle ones.
"What do you want, specifically?"
"Veto power on operations in my territory."
The words hung in the air between us. Veto power, the ability to override Arbalest decisions if they conflicted with his interests.
"That's not something I can offer."
"Then we have a problem."
"We can discuss input. Your concerns would be considered before any operations in your territory."
"Input is not the same as control."
"No, it isn't."
Ashton's expression hardened. He was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted, and "no" wasn't a word he heard often.
"I would hate for our partnership to end poorly."
"As would I."
"Consider carefully, Mike. The resources I provide are not easily replaced."
"I'm aware, but the independence Arbalest maintains is the foundation of everything we do. We can't compromise that for any single contributor."
"Not even one whose support has been as consistent as mine?"
"Especially not then. Our ability to operate freely is what makes us valuable. The moment we grant veto power to anyone, we become their tool instead of our own masters."
Claude would have handled this better. He had a way of making people feel heard while giving them nothing.
A diplomatic skill I had never managed to develop. When I tried similar tactics, I just felt like I was lying badly.
Which I was.
"This isn't over," Ashton said, rising.
"I didn't expect it would be."
He left without further comment. I sat in the empty meeting room, wondering how many more conversations like this I would have before the day ended.
The answer, I suspected, was "too many."
The supply meeting was Marcus Fell's domain.
The logistics chief had been with us from the early days—a former merchant guild coordinator who had grown tired of enriching people he didn't respect. His skills were invaluable. His temperament was less so.
"Three weeks," he said, spreading reports across the planning table. "That's what we have in medical supplies, assuming no major incidents."
"That's not enough."
"I'm aware. Thank you for the insight."
I ignored the sarcasm. Marcus was stressed, which meant he was prickly, which meant productive conversation required patience I was rapidly depleting.
"What happened to the Saint Port shipment?"
"Delayed."
"By what?"
"'Weather, ' according to the official report."
"It's not weather, is it."
"It's never weather." Marcus dropped into a chair, exhaustion visible in every line of his face. "Someone's pressuring the guild. Probably Ashton's faction, though I can't prove it. They're not blockading us directly—that would be too obvious. Just creating delays, making things difficult."
"Can we work around it?"
"Possibly. I have alternate routes through the Captain's network, but those have their own costs."
"What kind of costs?"
"The kind where we owe favors to people who trade in favors, the kind where our supply chain becomes dependent on smugglers."
Neither option was good. Direct routes meant political entanglement, alternate routes meant criminal entanglement. Either way, we were compromising something.
"Do what you need to do," I said finally. "Keep the supplies flowing. We'll deal with the consequences later."
"That's becoming our motto, isn't it? 'Deal with it later.'"
"Would you prefer we deal with it now, while also handling everything else that's currently on fire?"
"Fair point."
Marcus gathered his reports and departed, leaving me alone with another stack of problems that didn't have solutions.
I missed the days when our biggest challenge was finding enough food to feed a dozen people.
The Orsted question sat in the corner of my mind, demanding attention I couldn't spare.
Intelligence reports had been trickling in for months. Sightings, patterns, the Dragon God moving through the world with purpose that no one understood, touching lives and events in ways that seemed random but probably weren't.
Claude wanted to confront him.
That sentence, by itself, was enough to stop me mid-report. Orsted, the god-killer, the timeline walker.
The being who had killed gods and reshaped reality, and accumulated power that made mortal armies look like children playing at war.
And Claude wanted to... what, exactly? Talk to him?
Fight him? Negotiate some kind of arrangement?
Every report said the same thing. Unstoppable.
Unfathomable. Unkillable by any conventional means.
Beings that should have been able to stand against him had fallen like wheat before a scythe.
"We have to try," Claude had said during our last conversation about it.
"Try what?" I had wanted to scream.
"Try dying? Try getting everyone who depends on us killed?"
But I hadn't screamed. I had listened to his reasoning, his assessment of the risks, his belief that proactive engagement was better than waiting for Orsted to notice us on his own terms.
The reasoning wasn't unreasonable. If Orsted was going to interact with Arbalest eventually, and Claude seemed convinced that he would, then meeting that interaction prepared was better than meeting it surprised.
But "prepared" for Orsted was like being "prepared" for a natural disaster. You could make plans.
You could stockpile resources. You could practice responses and drill scenarios.
None of it would matter if the disaster simply chose to erase you from existence.
Claude would go. With or without a plan.
With or without my support. That was who he was.
Someone who ran toward impossible challenges. Because the alternative was letting them come to him on their terms.
My job, then, was making sure there was a plan. Making sure that when Claude did something insane, he did it with every possible advantage.
Even if those advantages were inadequate.
Even if the best plan in the world wouldn't be enough.
Evening found me alone with the last of the reports.
Everything was urgent. Nothing was solved.
The noble problem was festering, the supply problem was worsening, the Orsted problem was looming, and Claude was off dealing with internal matters while I juggled fires that multiplied faster than I could extinguish them.
"I didn't sign up for this," I muttered to the empty tent.
But I had. The moment I said yes to Arbalest, the moment I agreed to help a thirteen-year-old boy build something that would matter, I had signed up for exactly this.
The impossible workload, the inadequate resources, the constant pressure of knowing that people depended on decisions I made while exhausted and overwhelmed.
That was leadership. Not the glamorous parts that stories focused on, but the unglamorous parts where you reviewed supply reports and negotiated with difficult nobles and managed crises that never seemed to end.
Claude got to be the visionary, the warrior, the leader who inspired people with his presence and his capabilities.
I got to be the one who made sure the visionary had supplies to eat and people to lead and an organization that functioned when he wasn't watching.
The job wasn't fair. But it was necessary.
And I wouldn't trade it for anything simpler.
Sleep wouldn't come that night.
I lay in my cot, staring at the canvas ceiling, thinking about Orsted and supply chains and noble factions and a hundred other problems that demanded attention I couldn't give.
Claude would go after the Dragon God.
Nothing I said would stop him. I had known Claude long enough to recognize when his mind was made up, and on this issue, it was set like stone.
So I wouldn't try to stop him, wouldn't waste energy on arguments I couldn't win.
Instead, I would help. Build the plan, gather the forces, prepare the fallbacks and contingencies and escape routes. If Claude was determined to do something crazy, then my job was making sure we did it with the best possible chances of survival.
Make crazy work. That was my specialty.
I thought about the years we had spent together, the Nightmare Dungeon survivors who had somehow become an organization that mattered, the impossible things we had accomplished through sheer stubbornness and refusal to accept limitations.
Orsted was the ultimate limitation, the being that couldn't be overcome through effort or preparation or accumulated advantage.
We would try anyway.
"You're going to get us killed," I whispered to the absent Claude.
But I was smiling when I said it.
Because if we were going down, we were going down swinging, together, the way we had faced everything since the beginning.
That wasn't a bad way to end.
And maybe, maybe, it wouldn't be an ending at all. Maybe we would find a way, the way we always found a way.
The thought was probably naive. The desperate hope of someone who didn't want to acknowledge impossible odds.
I held onto it anyway.
Morning came too soon.
Another stack of reports, another day of impossible decisions, another round of managing crises while the biggest crisis of all loomed on the horizon.
I ate breakfast this time, properly. The reports would still be there when I finished.
Claude would return eventually. We would plan, we would prepare, we would do everything in our power to survive what was coming.
And if it wasn't enough, if Orsted proved to be exactly as impossible as everyone said, then at least we would have tried.
That had to count for something.
I finished my porridge, drained my tea, and turned to the first report.
Another day. Another chance to make crazy work.
Let's see what we could accomplish.
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