Year 915-916 — Covenant Mobilization
Kronos, Moving Into War
The Titan ultimatum had clarified something that I had been avoiding fully acknowledging: we were going to war. Not might go to war. Were going to war. The Titans had declared it explicitly. The only question was when and what we could do in the interim to prepare.
I had spent two thousand years building structures that would not require warfare. I had spent two thousand years creating alternatives to conflict. I had spent two thousand years attempting to build a world where differences could coexist without requiring the elimination of opposition.
Now I had to transform myself and the Covenant into a military force capable of defeating an enemy that controlled more territory, commanded more resources, and was willing to use methods of destruction that the Covenant had never permitted itself to use.
The first thing I did was travel to the Dragomir moroi kingdom.
The Dragomir bloodline had been established in the year 682, when the first moroi to carry my blood had been born to a moroi woman who had received my blood through the specific rituals that moroi communities had developed for recognizing immortal connection. The bloodline had persisted through five hundred and thirty years of moroi generations, creating a specific legacy: the Dragomir line understood themselves as carrying the blood of Kronos, as being connected to the ancient immortal who had founded the Covenant's framework.
When I arrived at the Dragomir kingdom in the year 915, I was received not as a stranger or even as a visitor. I was received as a founder returning to see what his work had produced.
"We are your descendants," the current Dragomir queen said, in the formal greeting that was offered. "Your blood runs in our veins. Your principles run through our laws. We would not exist without you. What you need, you have only to ask."
"I am asking for aid in a war that is coming," I said. "The Titans have issued an ultimatum. In one year, they will declare all neutral factions to be enemies. The Covenant is preparing for war, but we are not strong enough without allies. I am asking the Dragomir to commit forces to support the Covenant's defense."
The queen was silent for a long moment. Then she smiled.
"We are already committed," she said. "We have been part of the Covenant since our bloodline was founded. Our kingdom is built on the principles that you established. If the Titans move against the Covenant, they move against us. We will bring our full military capacity to support the defense."
While I was in the Dragomir kingdom, Zara was traveling to the dragon communities, carrying a message that Kronos had asked her to deliver: the Covenant needed dragons. Not the Directorate as a whole — that would have required formal declarations and political negotiations that would have taken far too long. But individual dragons, individual communities, individuals who believed that the genocide was wrong and who were willing to fight against the Titans.
"The dragons are divided," she reported, when she returned to the Covenant's central settlement three months later. "The Directorate officially supports the Covenant's position but is hesitant to commit forces because internal divisions would weaken their governance structure if they commit too heavily. But there are dragons who are willing to fight. The dragon communities that suffered from the Titans' early genocide are willing to participate. The independent communities are willing. I have commitments for approximately three thousand dragons who will fight."
Three thousand dragons was significant. But the Titans were estimated to have five thousand at minimum, plus the nine thousand lesser demons that had been provided by Asmodeus.
The mathematics of the coming war were not favorable to the Covenant.
By the year 916, I had made the decision that I had been avoiding for two thousand years: I would teach my immortals the specific magics that were necessary for warfare.
I gathered Rhea, Pallas, Helios, Themis, and the other immortals who had committed to the Covenant's defense.
"What I am about to teach you," I said, "is something I have never formally codified before. It is the magic that underlies physical combat at the level that immortals are capable of. It is the enhancement of the body through the direct application of mana, the strengthening of the nervous system, the acceleration of movement beyond what mortal physiology can achieve. I am also teaching you battle magic — the specific application of power in coordinated formations designed to maximize destruction."
The teaching took three months. What emerged was an immortal faction that was transformed from a community of beings committed to autonomy and authentic choice into a military force capable of engaging in warfare at the highest level.
Pallas, who had always been the military strategist, understood the specific implications immediately. "We will be effective," she said. "But we will lose something in becoming this. We will lose the specific quality that made the Covenant valuable. We will become something closer to the Titans simply by choosing to fight them with their own methods."
"Yes," I said. "That is the tragic cost of going to war against something that has committed itself to absolute elimination. To defeat it, we must become, in some ways, like it. The question is whether we can defeat it while maintaining enough of our principles that there is something worth preserving afterward."
"I do not know if that is possible," Pallas said.
"Neither do I," I said. "But we have to try."