And surprisingly, as time went on, he began to realize that he understood the language of the plagues. And of different plagues. Gora was more than sure that plagues are different like people, from different races, nations, and that he should not have understood them all at the same time. But no, that was exactly what was happening. And now it was not even a secret to him why the plagues themselves had no problem with it – they too spoke one, apparently, some unified plague language.
How far this would go was yet to be seen, but Guzoh was not opposed to extending the autonomy of the Mountain to neighboring factions if the people who would fall under his command also believed in the Black Stone.
For her part, Ananhr was not against it either, as long as the nominal subordination of the other factions' sectors was left to the JFC, and the Hivi would provide ground cover for those facilities.
This was a very successful mechanism for expanding the prefect's influence. It had been practiced first in the Diza sector, and then in the entire Donetsk-Makeevka grouping. From the point of view of the Empire's development, it should not have hindered anything, but it was obvious that such a situation would not suit either the High Priest Nevrokh or the Imperial administration represented by Bluh. But both problems were more than solvable.
Lately Gora had changed his attitude to the word "problem" in general. Now the word did not exist for him at all in its usual sense. Now he had only the words "issue" or "situation", which could be important, urgent, inconvenient, dangerous, paramount, critical, extraordinary. None of these are problems. They were tasks that needed and absolutely could be solved.
And scrolling back over some of these issues, such as Samokh's attempt to get into the mine of the Korsa sector, when the man of the Mountain blew up the elevator with him, and the stairwells became inaccessible through smoke and periodic gunfire – all of these were just deliberately calculated moves according to a certain already calculated combination. And before, he would have considered all this a suicide....
Power. That's what gives you a completely different awareness of reality. And adjusts this reality to himself, not the other way around. But Gora himself understood perfectly well that it was not worth mentioning that he was first and foremost a human being. Capable of being wrong, deluded, and self-righteous. Those three traits in general were his most dangerous enemies now, and not at all plagues, chivi, or maquis. Now that his resources and capabilities were counted in units of a completely different order than before, it was these three enemies that were now prioritized. By virtue of their stealth… They were impossible for him to calculate. Whether he wanted to or not. But the same mind that was supposed to calculate them was itself the object of their use.