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Zeff had to wonder if that passion had anything to do with why Field Marshal Graves had decided to pull out of Ridgemark.

That whole decision was still bothering him. It had worked out in the Rainlords' favor, of course, but did the Vanguard really think that abandoning Vantalay was a strategically wise course of action? If Abolish sunk its claws fully into Ridgemark and seized control over all its resources, that would spell disaster for this entire region. Vantalay would almost certainly succeed in its invasion of Czacoa, and the other neighboring countries would likely fall soon thereafter.

Abandoning Ridgemark meant abandoning this entire warfront.

Unless, that was, the Vanguard actually believed that the RPMP could handle it. Which Zeff very much doubted. The Vanguard wasn't exactly known for having faith in other groups.

More likely, Zeff thought, the decision was just an indication of how desperate the Vanguard was becoming. It was no secret that the war wasn't going their way. Perhaps they were thinking that they needed to take bold action in order to turn the tide before it was too late. A few of the reapers had theorized as much during their analyses back at Warrenhold.

But if that was really the logic behind the Vanguard's strategy, then Zeff was even more concerned. "Bold action" was basically just a euphemism for doing something incredibly risky and probably stupid. Moreover, it wasn't even necessary.

There was a lot more to winning a war than just "turning the tide" with a "decisive battle." Typically, when the scale of things grew this large, it wasn't at all clear whether or not a battle had truly been decisive until long after the fact--perhaps even after the war itself was over. Such terms were a luxury of historians, who had the benefit of hindsight.