Jek Yrie sought allies in any place he could. He had travelled further than any of his peers (he thought he only had a few — those who were among the ascended, and even then only on the most tenuous of levels) seeing the distant lands that were to be of no consequence in the coming battle. There were thousands of small islands, archipelagos, peninsulas, mountain plains, cavernous lakes and natural tunnels underground, forests, deserts — anywhere people could live, there were humans. Some places he could not travel, no matter how powerful he had become since his eyes had turned to red; the blasted planes of the underground, where the Naum were rumoured to exist in their land of perpetual night, within mountain ranges where strange light skinned people lived under the stone, in the depths of the sea. If the Speculate could not see his destination, he could not travel there by magical means. But it did not matter. These hidden peoples, little more than barbaric tribes eking out a pathetic existence, were not players in the final game — the return.
He was not interested in them, but he was interested in an isolated city on the coast of a distant continent — the fourth continent. There lived a people not unlike his own, a diluted race of Hierarchs, touched by time and weakening blood, but the city he saw through his blooded eyes was remarkable in many ways. The Hierarchs there ruled with open cruelty, its humans little more than slaves.
The only problem was how to approach them. He would have to think on it. But he had time yet. If all of his resources could not stop the awakening of the wizard, then he would need all the allies with power he could muster. The future was far from certain. But foolish was the leader who did not plan for every eventuality. He was a proud being, but wise enough to know that even he did not have the foresight of the gods. He was, after all, still mortal.
Well, close enough.