[Realm of Fire]
Sitting in his realm around the same time as Darganth and his group arrived in the ogre camp, Scalladras wasn't even starting to suspect how eventful his day would turn out to be. Instead, he was still leisurely sitting in his seat of power and conducting business as usual.
That meant overseeing his court as his various vassals, strategists intermingled with the powerhouses in his service. Though especially the last group had suffered noticeable losses in the chaos that followed Darganth's death, over the millennia that had passed since then, Scalladras' forces have recovered to once again be able to demonstrate the power one would expect of a primordial's direct subordinates.
And soon this power would be directed at three of his fellow gods of the highest order. The accompanying plans were already centuries in the making, refined across thousands of gatherings as the one he was presently watching over and their tactics tested in millions of battles into which he had managed to smuggle some of his forces despite the watchful eyes of his three fellow primordials.
For Scalladras, this will be above all a campaign of retribution. While his subordinates were readily joining the war effort to get his approval and blessing while accumulating power and prestige, to him it would be revenge for the over a hundred thousand years he was now already imprisoned in his own realm, justice for his subordinates that had falled in the initial takeover, and of course retribution for his oldest friend and brother in spirit whose death had started all of this.
As such, the day he saw the opportune moment to strike couldn't come fast enough for him. Multiple times throughout his imprisonment, he had already stepped out of the safety of his realm after the posturing of his former colleagues had become too much to bear. Not willing to sacrifice his subjects in these impulsive acts, he had attacked on his own, striking at isolated elemental gods or other servants of the three primordials and inflicting as much damage as he could before he was inevitably caught by them, forcing him to reform his body back in his realm.
When the discussions about target priority, which he was so far above in power that he had long since forgotten how to make a decision, then started to stretch across hours, he felt the urge to consider another attempt at such an attack. He had already noticed it at the time when their readiness for his surprises had abruptly dropped a decade ago, making it by far the earliest they had ever relaxed their defenses after one of his excursions.
'Maybe my repeated losses have made my former colleagues and their puppets forget that I'm still a primordial and that just because I'm imprisoned, I won't weaken compared to them.' Scalladras thought to himself. In fact, he hadn't even felt a noticeable decrease in the worship he was getting from the various mortals and ascendants without divinities. While a lack of this wouldn't have prevented him from growing his power, it would've been a setback and his fellow primordials knew that. So the fact that they hadn't yet used this card worried and confused him.
While before it wasn't enough to make him hesitate, with Irsyr's territory closed to even his subordinates when some of them visited a few years before, he knew something larger was happening. Naturally, he wouldn't want to miss whatever it was, so he stopped himself from following through with his first impulse and instead took a moment to think it through.
But before he could come to a decision, the sensation of a pull on his soul made his considerations irrelevant. Feeling an Asfyrii, a member of a species almost entirely devoted to him, channeling his power, his previous boredom almost immediately vanished. His gathered subjects also noticed the shift as Scalladras' posture straightened, quickly silencing the room as his previously hidden presence unfurled into its normal state and cast an oppressive weight across the crowd.
Ignoring the stares of the crowd that fell on him, Scalladras answered the call and split an echo of his soul from his main body. Sending this still unformed avatar of himself through the spiritual connection to his believer, it crossed a massive portion of the multiverse in an instant and arrived before the Asfyrii.
Unable to interact with the man in any meaningful capacity, Scalladras only managed a short nod before both their soul vanished from the pocket space the two of them had found themselves in. But while the Asfyrii's soul returned to the realm of fire so that he could go through his reformation in safety, Scalladras' soul echo merged with the energy that made up the pocket space. Having been released by the Asfyrii's self-immolation, its unique composition allowed Scalladras to elevate the soul echo into something akin to an avatar of himself, even from half the multiverse away.
As such, what stepped out of the flames wasn't a mere clone but the primordial of fire himself, even if only in mind and not in might. That meant that he both saw through and moved it just as he did his true body and the over a dozen avatars through which he had been living simultaneously even before. Each one was an additional vessel for the same soul and consciousness, resulting in the reaction to the sight of Darganth standing in front of the newest avatar to be visible in all of their expressions.
And while Scalladras quickly caught himself and continued what he had been doing with most of his bodies, his true body swept its gaze across his gathered generals and other subjects.
"There's been a new development. I want every dragon among you to stay, I have something to share with you. The rest of you will start readying their troops. The time to start our plans has just come into the foreseeable future."
[Ogre camp]
While his true body gave his orders, Scalladras' newest avatar stepped back and finally studied Darganth for more than the instant it had taken Scalladras to recognize him. With nobody having the nerves to speak after his dramatic entrance, the attention of the entire room rested on him as his expression slowly took on hints of a wince while studying Darganth's appearance.
"You've certainly seen better days. Though with your current state, that isn't all that difficult." Scalladras said with a shake of his head.
"It's not as bad as it might seem. Certainly an improvement over being dead. And it is something completely new for me, so it does have some entertaining aspects." Darganth said.
"Right, you also never before experienced being this weak. How is it to go about things the usual way for once?" Scalladras asked in amusement.
Grinning at the sarcastic comment, Darganth answered with a shrug, "Don't know, haven't done it, and don't plan to start. But accelerated aging as a dragon is a nice combination, on that I can now comment."
Raising an eyebrow at those words, Scalladras couldn't quite believe what he had just heard. Looking at Darganth questioningly for a moment, he shook his head when he realized that Darganth wasn't joking and let out an exhausted sigh.
"You're impossible sometimes, do you know that? Here I am thinking that I for once have the more impressive recent achievements, and then you one-up me despite being dead for much of the time since our last meeting."
"To be fair, from what I heard, you haven't exactly gotten much done over these years, so the bar isn't high." Darganth said.
"Admittedly, yes. But that just means that I'll have to make up for that in the coming years. You in on that too?"
"Of course, like the good old times. And a war against the three primordials is certainly a grandiose start to the chaos." Darganth said with a grin.
By that point in the conversation, the two had completely lost the rest of Darganth's group. Only listening in silence, they had given up on understanding the interaction and waited for the two to finish their reunion at their own pace.
"But enough of these far-off things. Traleor mentioned you'd be able to tell me what he was doing here, so what's up with that? And also why send an Asfyrii that seemingly hadn't had long to recover since his last rebirth?" Darganth asked.
"Urgh, that." Scalladras said with a wince, "Well, the short of it is that he isn't alone with how short it has been since the last death. Even with how quickly they tend to recover after their rebirth, ascending in under a century is still hard, so I have to rely on mortal Asfyrii more than I'd like to."
Raising an eyebrow, Darganth narrowed his eyes in response to Scalladra's evasion of the topic.
"What did you do?"
"Spent the time since your death regularly hunting any gods loyal to the three that I could get my hands on. The problem is that many of my direct subordinates were caught in the retribution, so I have to more or less solely rely on the Asfyrii or risk even more permanent losses."
The last part of this explanation caused Darganth's mood to turn somber. Getting a bed premonition from the tone of Scalladras' voice, his face already twisted into a frown before he asked further.
"How many?"
"Vunreon stepped in before it could escalate to include my believers and those loyal to me in general, so only a couple hundred. Furthermore, the elemental and pseudo-elemental gods under me all survived this. While the awakened legends in my ranks fared a bit worse, the two that fell took down more than their fair share of enemies with them."
"Did I know either of them?" Darganth asked concerned.
"Neither of these two. But among the other casualties were tree dragons, one of whom you might have heard the name of. Does Kare ring a bell?" Scalladras said. When Darganth had to start combing through his memories with furrowed brows, he added, "He was present during the court you held after the Uldar Pantheon's rebellion against Vunreon. A lightning dragon from the high-tier branch of that species and a mildly famous rising star at that time. A few even considered it a possibility that he might become a dragon god one day, though that sentiment died when his growth plateaued a few decades later."
The more Scalladras spoke, the more vivid the picture in Darganth's mind became. Soon nodding along as he started to pull the sight associated with the name from the depths of his memory, his enthusiasm soon gave way to sorrow as he remembered why they were even talking about the dragon in question.
"Who?" Darganth asked soon after as his rage bubbled to the surface.
"Some lesser god attacked him from behind while he was fighting two awakened legends in Araquios' service. I only know which pantheon he belonged to, and they were all destroyed by Irena before I could get my hands on them. But while I can't guarantee it, knowing her, I'm confident that that god is no more."
"Irsyr already told me that she's alive, so I take it that it wasn't as revenge for Kare's death? Or did she just get away with it?"
Scalladras could only shrug his shoulders helplessly at this question, "No idea. She's been keeping a low profile since your death as she is, understandably, not really on good terms with my three former colleagues and vice versa. But at least publicly, she claimed that the pantheon had been intruding into her territory and targeting her believers. Nobody deemed them important enough to investigate these accusations, especially after the deed was already done. So if it was for revenge, she certainly got away with it."
Darganth chuckled in response to this. He might not be sure whether their friendship would've caused the elemental goddess of war to eradicate a pantheon for the sake of a dragon, but he knew her well enough to understand how she would approach such a thing.
"Even if the accusation wasn't true, Irena is far more methodical than she's often given credit for, so she'd have already faked the evidence before even making the claim. And if she really wants to fabricate or hide evidence, there are maybe one or two dozen beings I know of that could see through it." Darganth said confidently.
"Really? Damn, maybe I should've made more of an effort to recruit her back when she first rose to prominence. Or gotten her to help me when this whole conflict first erupted. Someone who could cover my tracks would've spared me easily half a dozen deaths." Scalladras said with a laugh.
"With the second idea, you might've even had success. But Irena serving someone else? Never." Darganth told him with amusement.
"And she probably would've never reached her current heights, so maybe it is for the better." Scalladras admitted.
As Darganth nodded an agreement with him, Scalladras finally started paying some attention to the rest of the room. Only briefly glancing over the two still kneeling ogres, his focus soon fell onto the rest of Darganth's group. At first surprised that most of them were completely unbothered by his presence, with only Vika, Sonita, and Venrie showing any sort of reaction, his eyes soon widened when he noticed the draconic mana Allaire and Jennia wielded and which suffused Serania's whole body.
"Looks like I'm not the only one with a few stories to share." He said. Just as he said this, his eyebrows rose a second time as he noticed the similarities Yldra's mana signature had with that of Irsyr, prompting him to draw the connection and identify her as the latter's daughter.
"And it looks like I have to train some of my subordinates better. You, Locis, you're what, three hundred? Four hundred? Irsyr only stopped letting my people into his universe a decade and a half ago, that I never learned of your birth doesn't reflect well on my people's competence."
"Approaching three hundred and sixty. And yes, it doesn't. While I don't remember ever being introduced as my father's daughter to anyone but the one Tempestus visitor we had a few decades ago, he also didn't hide me or my identity."
Already during Scalladras' words, Darganth's eyes widened in realization.
"So that's why Traleor was here, Irsyr's blockade."
"That was the original topic, wasn't it? This got off topic really fast, but yes." Scalladras answered after a brief moment of confusion.
"I have time. So let's maybe get the introductions done, then I can start telling you what I've been up to since my rebirth." Darganth said.
"Sounds like a plan."