The Ender was not happy with the results of their "visit" to what the humans called a "prophet". A madman was what he was in all likelihood, shouting incoherent drivel all day long because his hallucinations were all that was left in his shattered mind. He had vanished before they could see him, though, so who knew?
This, however, did not change that they had learned virtually nothing and at the same time had spooked the population. One or two people had talked, yes, but probably out of not entirely irrational fear of being executed. The scraps of information they had gotten out of it boiled down to the fact that some of the escapees had been seen in the village closest to the Tower. By now they could be anywhere in the wilderness, which was something Nexus had a lot of.
The Ender was currently standing in front of the squadron she had taken with her, they stood there in perfect formation, awaiting her words.
She spoke in the screeching language of the End: "This operation was a failure." After a brief pause she continued. "None of you is individually at fault but the reason why you failed is still clear."
As she started pacing up and down the ranks the soldiers started shifting uncomfortably, they knew that she would only tolerate so much failure.
The Ender decided to address the issue directly. "You need to better understand and speak the human language."
In an instant all semblance of discipline had vanished from the squadron.
A soldier said: "You want us to degrade ourselves further and speak like those lesser beings?"
Similar complaints followed. Usually the Ender would have these soldiers punished on the spot but this was indeed a delicate topic, one she herself had spent the longest time wrestling with.
She spoke again, immediately suffocating any protest: "There is not the shadow of a doubt that humans are inferior to us, just as there is no doubt that our ancestors will frown upon us for speaking their tongue. But do you know what would make our ancestors even more furious? Us letting those roaches crawl away simply because we were unable to interrogate their brethren! As much as they have strayed otherwise, this is something the Grey Ones have learned."
Slowly the soldiers shifted back into formation, then they called out in unison: "Yes General! What are your orders?"
That was something the Ender loved to hear. She continued: "You will pass this on to any other members of the army you should encounter. Each of you is to seek out one of our human mercenaries and let them teach you more of the human tongue. Hostilities from either side will be treated as defiance of a direct order and punished accordingly. Are we clear?"
"Yes General!"
The Ender turned around, before teleporting into her office she said: "Dismissed."
She re-appeared in a sitting position at her desk. A map of the immediate area around the Tower was already on it, as well as various cartographing tools. She was in the process of systematically assigning patrol areas and exchange routes that would minimize the possibility of evading a search.
This was no easy task and it once again came to her mind how poorly they controlled the area around the Tower. The Entity was more in favor of expansion outside of Nexus and the mages and scientists in the lower levels very much shared this sentiment since it gave them a steady influx of test subjects and of those crystals. It had been a while since she had taken a look at their machine, she didn't know about its exact purpose but she hoped this one would function instead of killing their most valuable researchers in a dimensional vortex.
Back to the map. Her eyes wandered across the various biomes that surrounded the Tower. Flatlands were easier to overlook so larger areas could be assigned to a single unit. What still gave her headaches though were the vast cave systems below, they were hardly explored and if someone knew their way around caves they could easily evade a search.
She shuddered at the thought… caves. Wet and confined, the exact opposite of what her kind thrived in. Naturally this meant that only human mercenaries could be sent to explore down there, which she didn't have high hopes for seeing how some of them had performed recently.
Back to the map again. She drew arrows between the areas to symbolize the paths patrols should take when transitioning between zones, preferably sweeping potential hideouts while doing so.
She let out a frustrated grunt. She just couldn't properly focus. Was it because of the failed mission? Was it because of the fact that she could have given her order to learn the human tongue earlier and thus could have made the mission turn out better?
"What the hell is wrong with me?" She said intentionally in the human tongue. Despite what it was, speaking it helped her distance herself from her emotions, it felt like she was putting on a mask.
It just was no use, working on the map now would just result in faulty patrols. She pushed herself away from the table and left the room in order to take a walk through the corridors of the Tower. She passed stacks of cushions, glass vitrines filled with preserved corpses, paintings of landscapes, collections of materials that didn't quite seem to fit into this world…
After a few random turns she came across a niche that was filled with books. Her mind flashed back in time to a comparatively pleasant memory. It had been here where she had met Fire, he was someone she could at least hold an interesting conversation with. The first in a while when she thought about it, the Entity's mind was too foreign and on top of that notoriously uncreative. Freak was agreeable but no intellectual; he couldn't go a minute without some jab or snide remark. She rarely had to do with the scientists and mages, they took orders directly from the Entity. Glibby mostly did his own thing, or, the Silhouette's thing to be exact, they only ever spoke when it came to coordinating and that only when it was absolutely necessary. Perhaps that should change as well, she couldn't let something as trivial as him effectively stealing a hand full of squadrons worth of already trained warriors from her from talking with him.
The Ender hissed. No, she'd keep contact with that honorless brute at a minimum.
Fire was the closest thing she had met in Nexus to someone that she could call an equal, especially when he revealed on the way to the storerooms that he could speak her language. Though the fact that he waited that long also lead her to believe that during their information tango he had walked away with significantly more than she had. The Ender admitted to herself that she had been uncharacteristically careless, she really should have watched him more closely from the start, especially from when he told her how old and therefore experienced he was. It sure would be nice to have someone like him here in the tower, it certainly would make the strategic side of things easier.
Before she could properly finish that thought the Ender realized she was standing at the door of her office again. Had she been that absorbed in her musings? No matter, after her little walk she felt significantly more able to focus on her task. If this state of mind kept up, she'd have a complete patrol plan for the area before the next day.
She smiled to herself. No matter where they were hiding, soon they would have to try a lot harder.