NOVEL NEXT Interlude: Athwart the Gunwales of the Ship of Destiny
Vius Mak Ghiroth, Wielder of Fortunes, Prince of Spies, Betrayer of Kholoth and Lieutenant of the Demon Lord, is very hungover.
Despite his condition, he is dressed in his most formal attire this day; a twenty-foot towering, bat-winged form with jeweled horns and giant fangs which are a real pain in the ass to talk around. He hopes he'll be able to take them off before doing any real work, but first he has to stand around like an idiot with all the other high-ranking demons and watch Tyal Ex Zedeus, Unforgiving Queen of Swords, depart with an unpleasantly large percentage of their forces towards Pioren, where she will make a big ruckus and hopefully kill a whole bunch of humans before the next phase of the plan can be executed. The situation there has deteriorated so badly that Vius is only getting about a third of the reports he expects, and he's so nervous most of the time now that sleep can only come after consumption of copious amounts of blood liquor.
Nevertheless, he has a job to do, so he does his best to keep from throwing up while glaring about imperiously at all the other assembled lesser demons and looking as intimidating as possible; it's all for show, since Vius has the martial prowess of a wet paper bag, but a high-ranking demon has to look scary as fuck and Vius is a big believer in executing his duties as competently as possible. This is not to imply he could not kill every one of them without breaking a sweat; his Spymaster Class has only slightly more direct combat power than, say, a restaurant waiter, but has an awful lot of underhanded ways to murder people -- even towering, invincible demons -- while eating a sandwich and drinking a latte. It suits him, but makes public appearances like this super awkward.
Eventually, after more than an hour of tedious speeches and grand parades and a lot of sweating, the event ends; the arrayed columns of soldiers march off to the north, to make a very convincing facsimile of an assault that will make all the humans shit their pants and come up with some ruinously expensive last-minute plan to hold them off before executing a whole bunch of tricky feints and wiping a few towns off the map until one of the Archmages shows up to put a stop to the fun. Zum Velbat and Hox Manceris have spent almost every hour of every day for the last month on an endless, sweat-lathered conference call, coming up with thick tomes worth of planning and counter-planning in an attempt to confound the few Otherworlders with True Diviniation-related Skills; as a result, Tyal Ex Zedeus has a playbook to rival God's own script, right down to exactly how many of her soldiers will be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice (three) and exactly which disloyal pieces of shit should be maneuvered into the necessary positions when it occurs. Vius's contributions were minor, but critical; being the Prince of Spies sounds really impressive on your business card, but also means listening to a lot of tawdry and treasonous chatter and writing a lot of prim little notes in a lot of prim little files about exactly who is going to be at the business end of the soap when the Apparatus of State washes its hands. The fact that the occasional personal grudge is settled during such transactions is immaterial, Vius feels; unfortunately he is quite incorrect and will not find out how badly he has fucked himself over for some weeks yet. After the ceremony, he returns to his office, assumes a much more functional form, then does a bunch of paperwork before getting drunk and crying himself to sleep. His situation will not soon improve.
In Pioren, Shuji Takano has gotten a little carried away; after obediently executing a large amount of violence at Quint Aumraham's inscrutable direction, he has somehow wound up at the head of some kind of revolutionary movement, which he feels he is well-suited for; his ridiculous Battle Inspiration Skill is capable of turning an army of filthy, ignorant peasants into the Righteous Fist of God with a couple of pithy speeches, and the friendly gentlemen with all the big gold rings and necklaces keep giving him helpful suggestions about where to go, who to judge, and how to distribute the spoils. The result is that Ascendant Pioren and Virtuous Pioren have, after nearly six decades of a fragile and apprehensive peace, resumed their hundred-year civil and/or reunification war, and a lot of people are being quite seriously inconvenienced by events comprising various mixtures of economics, logistics, and applied physics of various sorts. As the orderly ship of state begins to list ever so slightly to starboard and sprout exciting little pockets of oxidation, ripple effects proliferate throughout the civilized lands; important goods become scarce, critical alliances start to unravel, and things generally begin to go to shit. Various people exercise their opportunistic impulses, poor decisions are made in response to various crises, and consequently perverse incentives start to drive the gears of events; Sahlerra Siukh will be the most prominently affected, but she is by no means alone in this circumstance.
In a week, most of Pioren will be in flames; in two, Tyal Ex Zedeus's army will arrive and make a bad situation much, much worse in an attempt to capitalize upon the confusion. In doing so, the situation will be badly misread, and Sahlerra Siukh will make what will later be referred to as a "questionable judgment call", the consequences of which will be fairly dire; but these events are yet to come (and will prove unpleasantly novel to Zum Velbat and Hox Manceris, because Sahlerra Siukh, Archmage of the Black Tower, definitely does not suck at counter-divination). Meanwhile, Sora Sugimoto and his merry band of ambulatory hormones are carving their way through the upper floors of the Infinite Dungeon and having a lot of formative experiences; most of them will survive, though there will be a lot of sex and violence (and one pregnancy!) that will really knock everyone's plans quite askew long before anybody gets near the nine hundredth level.
Quint Aumraham is nowhere to be found; he is very busy behind the scenes and having a lot of fun, but his lack of continuing access to Tetsuo Okano's divinatory capabilities are going to lead him unpleasantly far down a garden path not of his choosing. By the time he reenters the war, the situation will have deteriorated so badly that he'll have to really roll up his sleeves to salvage even a fraction of what he had originally hoped for, and his towering, unshakable confidence will desert him, never to return. To be clear, this will be a good thing; Quint Aumraham is kind of insufferable, and will eventually view this comeuppance as character growth. Unfortunately, a hell of a lot of people are going to have to die first.