Year 916 — The Year of Decision
Multiple Perspectives on the Escalation
THE NORSE PANTHEON'S DECLARATION
Odin, in the Northern Territories
The Titan ultimatum and the Covenant's preparation for war had created a specific situation for the Norse communities: they could be forced into the conflict even if they did not choose to enter it. Communities fleeing the Titans might seek refuge in Norse territories. Covenant forces might attempt to use Norse lands as staging grounds. Titan forces might attempt to occupy Norse territories to prevent the Covenant from doing the same.
The Norse assembled for a formal council in the year 916, and the decision they reached was both strategic and severe.
"We will declare absolute neutrality," I said to the assembled Norse immortals and community leaders. "Not the neutrality of hesitation or the neutrality of uncertainty. The neutrality of a statement of war against anyone who brings conflict to our lands."
"You are declaring war on both sides?" a Norse leader asked.
"We are declaring that any faction — Covenant, Titan, dragon, moroi, any being of any description — that brings warfare into Norse territory will be treated as invaders. We will meet military force with military force. We will purge anyone who attempts to use our lands as a battleground."
"What is the strategic benefit?" another leader asked.
"The strategic benefit is that we survive," I said. "Both sides will be weakened by this war. Whichever side prevails will be damaged. If we preserve our strength and remain apart from the conflict, we maintain the capacity to be relevant in whatever world emerges from this war. If we commit to either side, we risk being destroyed along with them."
The Norse Declaration was delivered to both the Covenant and the Titans in the year 916: the Norse territories were closed to warfare. Any being attempting to bring military action into Norse lands would face unified Norse response. The Norse were not siding with anyone. The Norse were protecting their own survival.
THE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS' EVACUATION
A Human Community Leader, Year 916
The Titan ultimatum and the visible preparations for war had created panic among the human communities living in the borderlands between factions. The communities that had attempted to maintain neutrality or to exist in the spaces between conflict now understood that those spaces were closing.
"We cannot stay here," was the consensus among the human communities. "The war is coming, and the borderlands will be destroyed in it. We must choose: move to the Covenant territories, move to the Titan territories, or attempt to flee to somewhere that the conflict will not reach."
By the year 916, approximately sixty percent of the human communities in the borderlands had relocated. Thirty percent had moved to Covenant-protected territories, seeking the protection that the Covenant had promised. Twenty percent had moved to Titan territories, making the calculation that the Titans would prevail and that being in Titan territory before the war started would provide better protection.
The remaining forty percent had scattered, attempting to find refuge in territories beyond the conflict zones. Some fled to the Norse territories, hoping that the Norse Declaration would protect them from the coming war. Some attempted to negotiate with independent supernatural communities for protection. Some simply fled into remote territories, attempting to place enough distance between themselves and the conflict that the war could not reach them.
What no human community did was remain in the borderlands and attempt to maintain neutrality. The mathematics of what was coming were too stark. Neutrality in a space between two military forces was not survival. Neutrality in that situation was simply death with slightly more time to anticipate it.
THE THANATOS ORDER'S CRISIS
A Senior Order Member, Year 916
The Thanatos Order's commitment to neutrality had always been unstable, but the Titan ultimatum had made it impossible. The Order had attempted to maintain relationships with both the Covenant and the Titans, to document both factions' actions with objectivity, to preserve the historical record regardless of which faction prevailed.
Now the Titans were saying: if you are not with us, you are against us. The Order could not accept that ultimatum without abandoning the principle of neutrality. But the Order also could not fully resist the Titans without abandoning the claim to objectivity.
"We need to formally declare our position," the Order's leadership said, in the year 916. "We cannot maintain this liminal space. One of the factions will prevail. We will need to survive with the prevailing faction."
"If we declare for the Covenant," another member said, "we will be seen as aligned with their position. Our documentation of the Titans' actions will be seen as propaganda rather than history."
"If we declare for the Titans," a third said, "we will be expected to participate in their genocide. They will demand that we document the elimination of their enemies in a way that supports their narrative. Our documentation will become a weapon in their war."
The compromise that the Order reached was painful and explicit: they would continue documenting everything with objectivity, but they would do so from Covenant territories. They would accept the Covenant's protection, which meant they were, in practice if not in formal declaration, aligned with the Covenant. But they would maintain their commitment to document the Titans' perspective as well, to preserve the Titans' narrative alongside the Covenant's narrative, to ensure that the historical record preserved both versions of what was happening.
It was not true neutrality. But it was the closest that truth-telling could come in a conflict where both sides were demanding that documentation serve their purposes.
THE DRAGON DIRECTORATE'S FINAL DECISION
The Red Clan Elder, Year 916
The Dragon Directorate had been officially aligned with the Covenant since the year 913. But the Titan ultimatum had forced the Directorate to confront a specific question: how much of their military force were they willing to commit to the Covenant's defense?
Committing deeply meant risking the stability of the dragon governance structure itself. If significant numbers of dragons died in the war, the Directorate's ability to manage the dragon communities would be compromised. If the Directorate committed its full force and the Covenant lost, the dragons would be left without the capacity to protect themselves.
"We will commit fifty percent of our available forces," the Directorate council decided in the year 916. "We will support the Covenant militarily, but we will preserve enough force to maintain our own governance structures and to protect our territories if the Covenant is defeated."
It was a pragmatic position, but it was also a limitation. The Covenant had hoped for stronger dragon support. What the Directorate offered was support that was designed to be sustainable regardless of the war's outcome.
THE MOROI COURTS' FRACTURE
A Moroi Court Elder, Year 916
The moroi courts, which had always been divided since the Titan ultimatum, now faced the reality of open warfare. The courts aligned with the Covenant prepared their forces. The courts that had maintained relationships with the Titans made the decision, in the year 916, to formally commit to the Titan faction.
What this meant was that the moroi world itself would be split, with moroi fighting against moroi, with the specific horror of the Royal Assembly fracturing into two opposed forces.
"This is the cost of our earlier choices," the Dragomir queen said, in communication with the other Covenant-aligned moroi courts. "We created a hierarchy that divided our people. Now the hierarchy has become a weapon that splits us into opposing factions."
By the year 916, it was clear that the moroi would not enter the war as a unified force. Instead, approximately forty percent of the moroi communities would support the Covenant, and approximately thirty percent would support the Titans. The remaining thirty percent would attempt to maintain something approximating neutrality, but they would be isolated communities trying to survive in a world that was increasingly hostile to the possibility of neutrality.
KRONOS'S ASSESSMENT, YEAR 916
Before the War Begins
I had spent the year 916 preparing the Covenant for warfare. I had taught the immortals battle magic. I had negotiated alliances with the Dragomir moroi, the dragon communities, and various independent factions. I had watched the Norse declare their neutrality and seal their borders. I had watched the Thanatos Order attempt the impossible task of documenting a war while being perceived as aligned with one side.
What I understood, as the year 916 ended and the war moved from theoretical to imminent, was that I had lost the world I had spent two thousand years building.
The Covenant would likely survive the coming war. We had committed allies. We had military capability. We had the moral authority that came from opposing genocide.
But the world that would emerge from the war would not be the world of autonomy and authentic choice that I had attempted to create. It would be a world where survival required military strength, where communities that could not defend themselves were eliminated, where the framework of the world was determined by the specific victor of the conflict.
I had gone to war to prevent genocide. But in going to war, I had become, in essential ways, like the thing I was fighting. I had become a being willing to use absolute force to eliminate opposition. I had become a being willing to teach the methods of destruction to those under my authority. I had become a being willing to commit communities to warfare even when those communities would have preferred to remain at peace.
The specific tragedy was that I had been right. The genocide was wrong. The Titans needed to be stopped. The only method of stopping them was war.
But the cost of that war was the transformation of the Covenant into something that, in some essential ways, was not fundamentally different from the Titans. We were choosing to fight them with their own methods because those methods were the only methods that could actually defeat them.
"What comes after the war?" Rhea asked me, in the final conversation before open hostilities began.
"I do not know," I said. "I have prepared for the war. I have not prepared for what comes after it. I have not prepared for the specific question of whether it is possible to win the war and preserve enough of the principles we were fighting for that there is something worth having survived the war to protect."
"Then you should prepare for that now," Rhea said. "Because the war will determine what the world becomes, but it will not determine what the world should become. That will depend on what you choose to build in the aftermath."
By the year 917, the formal declarations had ended. The ultimatums had been issued. The alliances had been established. The preparations had been completed.
What remained was the war itself.