Caeden watched his friends and teammates go to work with an equal amount of boredom and frustration. A sentiment no doubt shared by Erik, but at least he had the distraction of healing the hundreds of people Cat’s undead were bringing in. He just had to sit around, looking stupid.

That thought was neither fair nor true, not that it helped. Caeden was the reserve force. If anything was going too horribly, he could jump in and shift the odds. Caeden had agreed to that plan and genuinely approved of it. As much as he didn’t like it, the fact of the matter was that he wasn’t well suited to handle their current problems.

Caeden was, without a doubt, the single most individually powerful member of their team. He wasn’t being arrogant in the slightest when he said that one on one, no one else stood a chance. The rate at which he could dish out potent single-target damage was far and away better than his teammates. The only possible exceptions were Lily, if she had the time to charge up and use her most potent Galaxy-based mnemonics, and Cat based purely on Dave.

Caeden always felt that the powerful undead was holding back. Their time in the Forge had only reinforced that opinion. They’d sparred a few times. Considering the circumstances, Caeden was amazed the corpse had even asked. Inside the Blade Forge, Caeden was essentially omnipotent. The only limit to his raw physical power was his own imagination.

Added to that, the Forge was filled to the brim with burning heat and molten metal. It wasn’t exactly an open flame, but the heat alone had a strong suppressive effect on the undead that even Dave’s status as a War Wight couldn’t fully overcome. They hadn’t sparred in that environment, true, but the fact remained.

Despite all that, or maybe because of it, Caeden had never felt that the undead had taken those fights seriously. Rather, he seemed to take the opportunity to adapt to the physical changes of his new form after his magical transformation. He rarely used magic, despite Caeden knowing for a fact that Dave was a knowledgeable and skilled caster in his own right.

And yet, Caeden was still confident that, if they went all-out, he’d come out on top. Well, most of the time. EIght out of ten maybe. Considering the age and experience gap, Caeden could never really guarantee a win. Who knows what tricks Dave had collected over the eons from across existence?

So, Caeden had all this power and nothing to do with it. He wasn’t an aerial combatant like Lily and Asherta. Both could fly completely unassisted, unlike him. He could jump incredible distances with Physical Enhancement, but that wasn’t the same thing. For one, it lacked the aerial mobility necessary for a mid-air battle.

Of course, Blade Forge would have worked. Really, Caeden could do essentially anything he wanted with that shroud. But he currently had no access to it. Both Lily and Cat were actively using his Entrance Blades to complete their objectives, something that was only possible while Blade Forge was Incarnated. If he wanted to use the shroud for himself, he would handicap both of them. That would be both counterproductive and selfish.

No, the fact of the matter was, everyone was better suited to what they were doing right now, and Caeden’s interference wouldn’t be helpful. Instead, he was waiting for the battlefield to shift.

Initially, Caeden’s team had been on the back foot, but not for long. At this point, both Cat and Dave, as well as Lily and Asherta, had seized the momentum. They were dominating their battlefields essentially uncontested. If they just continued along this path, eventually everyone left alive that could be saved would be and every ethership would fall out of the sky.

Except, Caeden wasn’t that naive. There was no way that the Revolution didn’t have more potent weapons waiting in the wings, a fact Caeden knew to be true based off the fact that they were even here. The Revolution had attacked a gathering the strongest shrouded in five countries across the Starry Sea. there was no way they expected a bombardment and suppression field would be enough to win.

They wouldn’t have expected a problem from his group: why would they? But there was no way they didn’t fear the kings, queens, council members, emperors, and other prominent figures they’d just started an all-out war with. While some of the revolutionaries were idiots, Caeden knew that not all of them were. And not fearing shrouded like Damon Vestigious would be foolhardy to the extreme.

The fact that they were here meant they had a high degree of confidence in dealing with at least a few of those peak-strength shrouded even if they slipped through the initial attacks. Caeden wouldn’t even be surprised if the Revolution had expected a few of them to have some way to nullify the suppression field.

That left Caeden sitting here, waiting for one of those weapons to come into play. No doubt whoever was in charge on the Revolution side was reluctant to use something intended for the very strongest of shrouded on a couple of unknown nobodies, but they had made themselves too much of a nuisance to ignore. Too many ships were being lost, and too many people the Revolution wanted to die were being saved.

That was why Caeden wasn’t at all surprised when the flood of Ethermen showed up. For a moment, he contemplated getting involved. But that was just his boredom talking. In reality, he’d known as soon as he’d seen the descending army that Cat and Dave could handle it.

It was what came after the Ethermen that really stole his attention.

The Revolution flagship was massive. Truly, inexplicably, overwhelmingly massive. If it had sat in between the Baserock and the Pillar, the island would have been covered entirely in darkness. Of course, it was both on the far side of the island from the pillar and a good distance into the air, which made judging it’s size difficult based on sight alone.

Caeden noted this as a portion of the flagship opened up. A section of it’s side that, relative to a normal vessel, would be no bigger than a porthole. From it emerged another ethership. Compared to the flagship, it was tiny. Despite that, it still dwarfed every other ethership Caeden had ever seen. It was big enough to hold a dozen other mid-sized etherships at once, large enough to house thousands of crew.

Unsurprisingly, the new ship moved straight toward where Lily and Asherta were taking down yet another ethership. Unlike the army approaching Cat and Dave, this was actually problematic. Caeden was almost certain that Lily didn’t have enough shroud, even at her peak, to encase that ship. Worse, Caeden knew that they didn’t have an Entrance Blade large enough to fit it.

All of this left them in an uncomfortable position. No doubt, Lily and Asherta could probably bring down the ship just fine. But what then? They couldn’t just drop it on the city below. At least, not in any area that the undead hadn’t already cleared of survivors. Plus, Caeden was guessing that this particular ship had at least a few surprises in store specifically for his airborne teammates.

“Should I go?” he muttered. But no, that was also his boredom talking. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough of a threat to warrant closing down the Forge. Instead, he knew exactly what to do.

Hey buddy, I think it’s your turn to go. Caeden sighed. He didn’t want to make this call, mostly because he’d rather handle it himself. Oh well.

A strong impression roared back. From the Entrance Blade next to him, a slender, long, silvery form emerged. An actual, physical roar sounded out, much louder than the small body should project.

“Ok, take it down a notch.” Caeden laughed. Not that the roar was funny, but rather that Noodle’s current form was less than threatening. “We’re trying to kill as few people as possible here.”

Caeden felt a sense of disdain eminate through their connection. The not-so-baby dragon huffed.

“Because, if you’re the stronger one and you decide to start killing, no one can stop you. And then it just keeps going, on and on.” Caeden sighed. Untold ages in isolation could bring a real sense of clarity, and he’d had more than enough time to figure out where he fell when it came to killing.

Ultimately, the need to kill was a sign of weakness, moral and physical. Morally, for obvious reasons. But also physically, because a need to kill indicated that you weren’t strong enough to leave your enemy alive, unconcerned about reprisals.

But more than that, killing was a failure or unwillingness to recognize that people could change. Caeden had killed someone when he was only a child, did that make him a bad person for the rest of his life? Yes, it had been in self defense, but the fact remained.

Worse, the Revolution had essentially the same justification. Unshrouded had been killed and oppressed by shrouded for hundreds of thousands of years. If that wasn’t a strong justification, he didn’t know what was. If he couldn’t acknowledge that, despite all their atrocities, the revolutionaries could be and become good people, he had to condemn himself as well. After all, they were also fighting for their lives.

With a snort, Caeden felt Noodle tune out his words, not for the first time. Along with that dismissal, Caeden felt impatience.

“Just get that new ship out of the way,” Caeden waved his hand toward the rapidly descending vessel. “Lily and Asherta are busy, plus I think they’ve got some nasty traps on that thing. Whatever they planned for the girls almost certainly won’t work on you.”

Despite both being half-dragons, Noodle and Asherta had little overlap in any practical way. After all, dragons were deeply diverse creatures. As far as Caeden knew, there was no way to attack the ‘dragon-ness’ of a dragon, which meant that the ship would likely be trying to counter Asherta’s molten Mithril breath. If so, that wouldn’t do much against Noodle despite their slightly similar origins.

Conversely, Lily and Noodle had essentially no overlap. Anything that would work on her would do nothing to him, or even help. Their power sets were as far apart as you could get. Most importantly of all, and the main reason why Caeden didn’t go himself, Noodle could fly.

Of course, Noodle didn’t really care about Caeden’s reasoning, or even the situation in general. He was hungry for a fight, and Caeden was offering it. That was all the little half-dragon needed to know. He launched into the air, streaming toward the ships overhead faster than Caeden could easily track.

“Well, I guess I’m stuck sitting here again.” He sighed.

{}

Noodle ascended up, staring at all the small ships circling. They were large compared to him now, but that would soon change. He had grown in the strange world his father controlled. It was somehow here, but not here. And the time inside was far more than out. If he had been more concerned with things like that, he might have wondered how it worked.

Instead, he was simply happy that he was stronger now. Noodle knew he was not like Father or Mother. They thought about many things, knew more than he could even imagine. Instead, Noodle was more like his brother and sister, Sky and Snowball. He knew how to do what he needed to do, and everything else was unimportant.

Even now, he had hardly followed what his father had told him. He could understand through their bond, but most of it ended up being stuff that didn’t matter. Father had said a whole lot that boiled down to two things; stop the bigger ship, kill as little as possible.

The first part made sense, the ships were enemies. The second part still felt weird to Noodle. His instincts screamed to end the lives of that which attacked him and his family. But Father was a lot smarter than Noodle, so he would listen.

Besides, even if the people needed to survive, the ship…the ship was fair game.