Side Story: The watching Grey

“Really, thank you for stopping by but try not to worry,” Wulo, the king of the mole people told Quilith. “We’ve done all we can at this point, now we just need to hope for the best. Besides, I believe you have your own worries, don’t you?”

“Yes, but that can’t put too much of a stop to my work, can it?” The alien said. “Just try to keep safe, would you? Or at least as safe as you can?”

“Ha, it would hurt my pride if I wasn’t going out to fight with the rest but don’t you worry, I have no intention of dying during this.”

Not many ever do.

He kept the thought to himself though, instead giving a firm nod. “Alright, be well Wulo, unless anything major comes up you won’t be hearing from my people for a few weeks.”

With the goodbyes said and his last meeting of the day done, the illusion came down, leaving Quilith back in a plain white room.

He and many others had been taking what extra time off they could after the loss of their star, but given they had reached the last day their allied world had before chaos kicked off, he couldn’t put off his final meetings, with the last of them running till the remaining hour they had.

With it done though, a part of him wanted to retire for the day, to get some rest and let the details of whatever happened come naturally to him later, even if he knew he couldn’t. His entire world was going to be watching. There had even been talks of if they should project the battles across their artificial sky, even if that had ended up being quickly shut down. Enough of his kind had fallen into a depression from their own loss for having their world lit with images of war and death to be a good idea.

Instead, he went to meet up with his coworkers to commiserate with them, knowing full well where they’d be.

As the ones who interacted with that other world the most, the council had done them the small service or renting out a restaurant for them for the very first day, a place to let them all talk and discuss what they were seeing, for good or ill before such work would return to the strategy rooms, were they’d discuss what they could offer and improvements that could be made.

“You’re late!” Valax called out the moment he’d arrived. “How did you leave with only minutes to spare?”

“You know how the molepeople are. Even in a situation like this, they’re still chatty. Besides, it’s not like it’s kicked off yet.”

There was a screen in front of them switching between hundreds of feeds but he ignored it for the time, instead selecting a drink with his implants and having it appear in his hands a second later before he opened up his internal display.

There were plenty of options to choose from, with each point being watched along with a few of the invader worlds preparing to step through, not to mention targets of special interest. There was no doubt many of them would have eyes on their own kind, he could already see Valax had a feed open watching his son, one of the few that had gotten out of the confines of their doomed planet, only to be tossed onto another one, but Quilith had his own interests as he picked out a few different screens to keep open while he moved on to picking out his meal.

“Of course you’re going for your little pet project,” His companion tsked. “The boy is still that interesting to you?”

“It’s not like I’m the only one watching him, it looks like his views are actually quite high right now. Right below our own kind and the demon worlds.”

“Huh, well I guess it’s not too surprising he’s gotten a few fans,” The other admitted. “Though I still can’t believe his popularity spiked quite that much after he survived that trial.”

“Can’t you? People love an underdog. I’m actually more surprised it didn’t leave him more popular.”

Even when there was nothing they could do for Ben while he’d been stuck in the dead god’s trial, that didn’t mean there was nobody watching. Sure, at first the audience had been small, waiting for someone to die was in rather poor taste, but with each floor he’d conquered the number had grown, capturing the hearts of many of his kind as they watched.

Each desperate struggle he’d overcome, forcefully awakening a new skill and beating the mechanisms that governed some of the rules within, all the way to the last floor where he’d had to put everything on the line to save his companion in the end. It was no exaggeration to say nearly a quarter of the grey had tuned in to witness the final escape, with nearly all of them seeing clips of the event after the fact. It had raised the boy's popularity to a whole other level which in turn made Quilith’s own work that much easier, getting him successfully marked as a high-priority target with the council thanks to the broad civilian support.

Even still, Quilith wasn’t sure what he was expecting of him during the first wave of the war. All he could do was sit back and watch to see what would come.

---

As the hours wore on, the biggest surprise managed to be the efficiency of the weapon at craftsman’s tower. It had drawn a lot of eyes as people across his world switched to view it in all its power, at least at first. It had created a lot of buzz among Quilth and his coworkers, right until it began breaking down under its own strength.

If that could be managed and replicated, then the outlook for that entire planet may have just gotten a lot brighter, but as it stood, it was taking the power of three of that world's best enchanters to not break down and looked like they’d need to keep it up for the entire wave.

Forget making one for every gate, producing even one more would be hard without any massive redesigns. The three on that single one would be destroying their health in a very real way by the end of the month, depending on the level of work and stress it wouldn’t be shocking if one died, the chances of them wanting to risk any other enchanters with the same level of skill just to handle one more gate was ridiculous when there was no knowing how long it could be kept up.

Of course, one life is a small price for all that might be saved and if they do manage to make a few improvements by the third wave then things could get a lot more viable, even if it means each one will need a team of enchanters working around the clock.

He could already imagine that Ben would insist on helping with some of the improvements to the designs himself and expected that any results would go to show just why he was believing in the boy, right until the unthinkable happened. Something just out of view destroyed the weapon, bringing the chaos that every other gate was experiencing to craftsman’s tower.

“Something big!” He yelled out, bringing his view up to the main feed where many of his coworkers were watching and rewound it to the part he’d just seen, letting them all witness the damage.

Because of how well things had been going there despite the hiccup that was the weapon breaking down earlier, most had switched to different views, wanting to see just what was happening to the larger world, but whatever had just gone down had changed that as they all frantically began checking from different angles, trying to see just what had caused it.

“Got it!” One yelled, switching the view again to let the rest see a demon unlike any other, standing in the field of death unbothered before throwing boulders off into the distance.

“Fucking mutable realities,” Valax cursed. “How did it manage to survive that?”

“Some have the rare ability to cancel the effects of another's magic,” A coworker said. “That has to be what we’re seeing here.”

“That’s not a cheap power to be standing against such a strong weapon, there’s no way.”

“It has to mean that’s an awakened skill holder,” Quilith spoke, frustration and powerlessness clear in his voice. “Which means that’s likely one in the deep end of the sapient stage. What a way to find out that some will come early if things get bad enough.”

He was suddenly in even less of a mood to watch anymore, even if he couldn’t make himself leave. It was the sort of thing that demanded it be witnessed, for all of the awful that entailed, but while the others kept talking, he at least focused on a new meal while going back to a smaller view to see how Ben was handling it.

It was lucky enough that it had happened while he’d been stepping away, but that was a small fortune.

The boy looked desperate, digging through the rubble for anything that might help while the armies had to push to their limits to do all they could, but he seemed less bleak the moment he found something. A sphere, about the size of a person's head, that the human was locking his eyes on in deep concentration before the battle changed yet again.

Earth being shot out and elements created, without even knowing it Quilith had gotten to his feet in excitement at the sudden change of fortune, his heart pounding as he watched and he switched the main view again, bringing the scene to his coworkers eyes when what looked like small metal blimps were being created from nothing and shot off through the gate, a flurry of them one after another until for the briefest of seconds the battlefield fell silent. The gate had disappeared, with no one in either world grasping just what that meant.

His coworkers flew into a panic, checking feeds from demon worlds to try and get a sense of what happened, wanting to see if whatever had gone through had really been the cause or if that had been a coincidence of timing, but Quilith held no doubts as he felt a grin touch his lips despite himself.

Looks like the boy may have just gone and upped his stock yet again. If he can keep the momentum going then maybe there’ll be a bit of hope yet.