"You!" The Nivari Patriarch's face darkened the moment he saw the Pyrathi flying toward them.
They were the reason the Nivari had ended up in this mess.
If the Pyrathi hadn't baited them, they never would have come to New Atlas.
The losses from this battle were devastating. Of the more than thirty Stage SSS fighters they had brought, only a handful remained. Sevrin could barely accept it.
"Don't look at me like that." The Pyrathi Patriarch smiled. "All I did was tell you about a magnificent city. I didn't lie, and I never told you to attack. You made that decision yourselves. How is that my fault?"
After spreading the news, the Pyrathi had kept New Atlas under covert observation.
Zareth had been intensely curious about the city and wanted to know exactly how powerful it was. By now, he had a fairly good grasp of its strength.
The answer was simple.
He'd been fooled.
New Atlas was strong, but not nearly strong enough to warrant his earlier fear.
