The weeks that followed were filled with training, crafting, questioning, and preparations.

Ashtoreth was publicly acknowledged and supported by the various world leaders and still-functioning media, even if this was just to assuage people's worries after they'd gotten a message declaring an archfiend the Monarch of Earth.

In a bit of gamesmanship that she had to admire, most mentions of her origins made it unclear exactly how her alliance with humanity had begun, hinting that it had been humanity who had recruited her to their cause by cunningly exploiting Hell's internal divisions.

It was a good lie. It made humanity's enemies seem weaker and their leaders stronger. It sent the message that Ashtoreth was well under control.

Matthews staunchly refused to let her have a platform himself. She wasn't exactly sure what he was worried about specifically… but she could at least understand, in a general way, that they likely considered her too volatile to put in front of a microphone. She assured them that she'd be happy to stick to any lies they needed her to for the sake of the cause—but even this hadn't set him at ease.

She didn't mind. Some day, she knew, there would be fame: late night talk shows and guest appearances in music videos and films, three-hour podcasts in smoky rooms and her own brand of valentine's day candy….

When it came to training, the human soldiers took her seriously from the get-go. Her allies, however, were seemingly another story—Hunter, Kylie, and Frost all had to handily chew through a half-dozen human elites each before they seemed to get the air of quiet respect from them that Ashtoreth did.

The matches weren't even close, of course, but they served the purpose that Ashtoreth—and, she suspected, Matthews—intended. They hammered home into the humans that their old training was mostly obsolete. They needed to relearn what they already knew to be effective, at least at levels higher than 300.

Ashtoreth mostly taught flight and [Armament] fighting. She found that humans had a lot of trouble shooting while in the air, but then she supposed they weren't natural flyers.

Strangely enough, they liked her.

If any of them had known Jeremy Baker, the man she'd killed, they had certainly adopted an infernal attitude about the whole thing. Surely Matthews must have arranged to keep any vengeful human soldiers away from her… after all, how many elite soldiers did they have?

In any case, her days were spent making bawdy jokes and back-and-forth ribbing with a bunch of men who were two to three times her size—if only half as massive as her sword.

She got the feeling that High Command liked her a little less than their elites, but it didn't keep them from cooperating with her. Soon after she'd sent them the data on the Monarchy, Matthews had relayed instructions to alter the restriction settings to exclude infernals, prohibiting the enemy armies that were still trapped on the bastions from using the rift generators to warp to the earth.

It had raised the decay rate to an unsustainable level… but it didn't matter. They only wanted a week of minimized chaos within which to destroy or capture the rest of the bastions as well as deal with the rest of the infernals left on Earth.

Said infernals, as far as Ashtoreth heard, were being judiciously exterminated. In fact, the soldiers reported the numbers as they progressed with a clear sense of grim, quiet satisfaction.

And why not? Nobody knew how many people had died in the initial invasion… but everyone seemed to know someone. Estimates floated around, numbers that were quietly uttered in hushed conversations that Ashtoreth could easily hear through walls… and the most common number that she heard was plain and round and terrible—a billion.

A billion of us, she would here. A billion. Gone.

Humanity, Ashtoreth could see, was in shock. It even settled on her own people despite the fact that they'd had a year to come to terms with it. Some days they simply woke up and seemed unable or unwilling to participate in even the smallest conversations. Frost would leave to speak with a chaplain, Hunter would leave to be with his family, and Kylie would disappear without a word on where she was going or when they'd be back.

Ashtoreth was detached from all of it, almost clinically so: she watched them all intently, trying to gauge whether they were getting better or worse, trying to discern whether they'd be ready for the war that would escalate

But as always, humanity didn't disappoint her.

"We're planning an operation," Matthews told her one morning after crowding her and her people into his office. "There will be combat. We'd like your help."

Ashtoreth grinned. "What's the plan, Sir Matthews?"

"We want you to help us establish permanent contact with the Eldunari Alliance," he said.

"I thought they were too far away to reach so soon," said Frost.

"They were," said Matthews. "But we took a page out of Ashtoreth's book. We've been arranging the bastions so we can skip across them. Here."

He gestured, conjuring an illusion of a simplified map of the cosmos—the inner realms enclosed with a circle. Just outside the boundary of the circle was a collection of three dots in a line: two red to represent the bastions, and then a brighter, pale blue dot to represent Earth.

He waved a hand, and several thick, bright lines were drawn across the scattered glowing orbs that represented the various realms—first from Earth to the two bastions, then to a glowing yellow dot that was just inside the boundary of the inner realms, then to a second, green dot further inward, and finally to a white point that Ashtoreth took to be a an Eldunari world.

"Our scouts have already made the trip," he said. "We've officially made contact with the Eldunari Alliance, and now we need a way to transfer supplies and personnel between their worlds and Earth. A warp conduit."

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Ashtoreth grinned. "Now you're thinking with portals!" Then she frowned at the map. "A little wishfully, if I'm getting you right."

"You are," said Matthews. "The risks involved are high, and the goal is complex—we need to achieve every one of multiple objectives to make this work. The reward, however, is proportional to the difficulties involved. The Eldunari can supply us with the materials and personnel to help us prepare for what, realistically, will be a long, brutal war with our adversaries."

"Realistically, yes," Ashtoreth said.

"Thanks to you, we're in a good position," said Matthews. "If Hell hadn't invaded, we wouldn't even have initialized yet. We'd be weeks away from the tutorials. As it is, the level limit that you can impose on incoming travel is far, far beneath our current capabilities, and will be for a while yet.

"With a human-friendly monarch and the bounty of cores that we've already taken from fighting off their initial invasion, Earth is in an excellent position to weather the days ahead. Hell simply won't be able to attack us with troops whose level is high enough to contend with our defenders, let alone challenge Ashtoreth for the monarchy. We have time. Now we need to be sure we take advantage of it."

"By staging an attack," said Frost.

Matthews nodded. "The decision that faces us is this: we can bunker down and focus on defending against an onslaught we know is coming, or we can take advantage of the fact that we're as close to being able to attack with impunity as we ever will be."

"As such, we're going to turn our current advantage into an even greater one. Eldunari reinforcements could secure the Earth for years to come. Eldunari supplies can kickstart the military industries we're going to need to wage war."

"You want to start building Earth into an inner power before it ever even reaches the inner realms," Dazel said. "You're right in that it's a big advantage. But how?"

"To establish a warp conduit, we need control of this realm here." He waved a hand, and a white highlight appeared around the yellow dot that was just past the two bastions. "This is Dereemo," he said. "It's an artificial plane—much like the bastions, but larger. Eldunari intelligence tells us that Dereemo is a mining colony established by a slaver some hundred years ago."

Beside Ashtoreth, Frost seemed to bristle. "We have some experience with those," he said.

"Good," said Matthews. "The people of Dereemo exploit the nearby primeval expanse, here." He highlighted the green point that came next in his connect-the-dots warp conduit route. "This green world is a place that the Eldunari call Primeval Karaz. By working out of a nearby demiplane, the Dereemans can gather cores and valuable minerals from Primeval Karaz while still enjoying the protections of a monarchy."

Ashtoreth nodded as he said all this. Primeval expanses tended to have extremely powerful, intelligent apex predators as their monarchs. Said monarchs almost never used highly restrictive rules for travel, and rarely cared about hunters unless they were scorching entire ecosystems. Installations like Dereemo were very common.

"We need Dereemo," said Matthews. "Which means we need the Dereeman monarchy, which means that we need to strike fast and kill their monarch to trigger an election—which means that one of our fighters needs to be able to fight the next-strongest person after the Dereeman monarch, alone."

"I volunteer!" Ashtoreth said immediately. "Ooh! Pick me!"

"The Dereeman monarch is a level 800 dragon by the name of the Morax Tol the Detailer."

Ashtoreth snickered. "Detailer?"

"Yes," said Matthews, a faint trace of amusement detectable in his voice. "I'm told we're getting a bit of a translation failure, with this one. His epithet is supposed to suggest that he's known for… well, for sinister micromanagement. Apparently draconic tongues have a very robust arsenal of words that describe different ways of imposing control."

"Gee, I wonder why that is," Ashtoreth whispered to Dazel.

Frost cleared his throat "We can handle a dragon, sir," he said. He looked back at Ashtoreth."Escalating support style, probably."

Ashtoreth grinned. "You bet!"

But then Frost turned back to Matthews. "At the same time, you're still asking her to face off against a level 800 in their own stronghold. If she falls, we can lose everything."

Matthews nodded, pausing to draw in a breath. "The queen is the strongest piece," he said. "Too much anxiety about sending her into battle is a weakness. Our intelligence is given to understand that Hell's monarchs are often so interested in self-preservation that an operation like this would seem inconceivable to them. I'm also given to understand that Ashtoreth will not be threatened by a level 800, even one that she'd have to fight on own." He looked expectantly at Ashtoreth.

"Pfft," she said. "It's only three tier four advancements," she said. "And there's a good chance I'll have higher stats than them—in addition to my way better sense of style."

"She'll have support, and we'll pull her out if things don't look good," said Matthews. "I'm given to understand that dragons don't typically have underlings who can challenge them—after assassinating the Detailer, the ensuing contest for the monarchy shouldn't be a problem for her."

"Heh," Dazel said. "There's a high chance that everyone will opt out and just give it to Ashtoreth. No dragon's minion is going to stick around to fight the gal who killed their boss."

"That's how the Eldunari feel about it as well," said Matthews.

"Will they be joining us?" Ashtoreth asked. She wasn't much looking forward to meeting some of them for the first time.

Matthews shook his head. "No. The reason why not will become apparent soon enough."

Ashtoreth cocked her head and started at Matthews' glowing illusion, trying to figure out what he might mean.

"For now, let's consider Primeval Karaz," he said, highlighting the green point near the one that represented Dereemo. I'm told the risks are generally megafauna and some elementals. There will be creatures there that are beyond any of our capabilities to fight—but they're almost certain to ignore us."

"We still can't seize the monarchy," said Frost. "Anything you build there will be open to attack. Any people you leave there, any warp relay that you place to extend a portal… even if you can protect it from the local wildlife, there's nothing to stop Hell from warping in and destroying it."

"Indeed," said Matthews. "And while Dazel has assured us that stealth spells can get us very far in concealing an installation, it won't be enough to hide forever—which is where the plan gets a lot more complicated."

"Gotta be honest, I'm not even fond of regular complicated," said Dazel. "Let alone a lot more complicated."

"Reserve your judgements for now," said Matthews. "See, Primeval Karaz isn't only being exploited by the Dereemans and their dragon king. In fact, Dereemo accounts for fewer than one percent of the core farming and strip mining that goes on there."

He gestured, and another point on his illusory map flashed—a red dot, further inward from the edge of the inner realms but still close enough to Primeval Karaz for transit.

"The rest of the activity on Primeval Karaz comes from this realm—a small planet called Fallen Harana. A planet controlled by our principal adversary, Hell."

Ashtoreth's eyes widened as she realized where General Matthews was taking this. "Oh," she said, raising a hand to cover her mouth as she grinned in shocked surprise.

"Quick on the uptake as always, Your Highness," said Matthews, nodding to her. He turned to the rest of the room. "But yes. We will—at least in appearance—be launching a full-scale assault against Fallen Harana."

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