In the morning, Berk was already up and sitting at a big table in a big green tent in the middle of the camp. On the table was a map of the world, little figurines, pencils and papers, everything needed to talk business. One by one others started to arrive. Gurgen, Lucas and Demmie came in at the same time and went to stand at the side, greeting Berk but not starting a conversation. Then came the queen with her daughters together with Jackson and Medi. She also brought the human generals and some lower ranking officers. Not too much after that came Wout and Barta together with their officers. Lastly came Lehtern and Zoala, Zoala bringing her rather big pack of wolves with her but leaving them right outside the tent.

  The day before that, Demmie had before going to bed talked to Zoala, having asked her about every single Gurge and how they all worked so he could take part in these talks. Lucas was the only one who didn’t really belong here as he didn’t have any military knowledge or any actual combat skill that would be useful here.

  Berk waited for everyone to arrive before starting to talk, finding it rather useless to start early and having to repeat everything. “Thank you all for coming here today. I would like to say right now that no matter how the war ends, I will always remember this moment right here.” He then focused on the queen and Jackson. In regards of your offer yesterday, that will be discussed later on.”

  He then focused on the map, already starting with all information that they had. “Seeing as not everyone is from around here…” He said looking at Demmie. “…I will quickly already make clear on what gruges we can hope for help. Obviously the Mer Gruge isn’t going to help.” He took a small banner that he had placed on the map on where the Merfolk were living and took it off the map.

  “Nor can we hope for the Cloud Gruge or the Dwarven Gruge.” He took away a white banner that was placed to the side of the map and three banners of the mountains, one for every dwarf clan. “And Lastly the Stalter Gruge and the Artifact Gruge won’t help as well.” He also removed those banners.

  “In terms of the artificers, they have allied themselves with the skeletons after being forced to do so which makes them our enemies.” He grabbed the banner for the Artifact Gruge and placed them next to the skeleton banner at the entrance of the mountain pass.

  “Our allies are the Zombie Gruge…” He said grabbing a pink and green banner to the right of the skeleton army and puts it in a pass going to a Eastern part of the map. “Sadly we don’t know when they’ll arrive. Last messages we send didn’t seem to reach the zombie leader. All we can do is hope that the skeletons didn’t get to him without us knowing.”

  “…, the Trifa Gruge…” He said grabbing a black banner and placing it behind the forest that they were in right now to the south. “While they can teleport, we also found it difficult to talk to them. They should’ve arrived here two days ago but something happened. My spies have come back saying that they don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “… and lastly there’s us and the Human Gruge.” He said looking at the queen and bowing his head. “Even with all our forces combined, we are with less than the skeleton might.”

  A human general held up his hand, pointing at the last unspoken banner on the table. “What about the arachnids?”

  Berk looked at the map as if he had forgotten something, lost in his thoughts. Zoala saw this as a show of weakness which might look bad to their allies. The Forest Gruge was supposed to be leading this was so she jumped in.

  “We have send delegations to try and convince them into joining the war but they seem to be having their own problems at the moment. Most of them are sympathetic to us but they’re busy with a big project that they don’t seem to be able to put on hold. They said that they might join but they couldn’t give a straight answer yet.”

  Berk seemed to be glad that Zoala had answered that question, giving her a warm smile. “Exactly, what she said.”

  Before he could continue, Emma would come forwards, putting her hands on the table. “Wait, hold on a second. What about this new Bunny Gruge?”

  While Berk didn’t have an answer for this, Lehtern did have one. “Ever since the bunnies have been freed from the artificers, they have been taking out smaller groups of armed and important people. After your dad was killed, they seemed to have been disappearing from the face of the earth. These days no bunnies are around anymore but they’re very much still dangerous if they were to show up. We don’t have a way to stop them. We hope that the stone skin of the Stalters would stop them but you know how the Stalters are.”

  “I did find out what one of their generals does as they too have three generals. This general is able to eat up the corpses of fallen bunnies in order to copy himself. The copies die after 24 hours who then turn to dust. He’s extremely dangerous but his copies are also tied to the general. Kill the general and you kill the copies.”

  “Anyone else having questions right now?” Berk waited as he looked around. Once nobody answered would he continue. “This is the first time that so many gruges get into a fight together so we lack the experience. Humans and forest dwellers have been sworn enemies but I’m glad that the last two hundred years were different. Now Queen Maria, how many troops are arriving today?”

  While the Queen was here for the war, she wasn’t really here to fight. She didn’t know the answer to this and looked at her generals. “General Arthur?”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  General Arthur looked up when his name was called. “In terms of army, we have quite the significant amount of forces. Around 2.500 cavalry men, 4.000 archers and 20.000 infantry of which 2.000 well trained elite forces.”

  While Arthur seemed to be happy with what he just said, Berk and his generals shared concerned looks. “Is this a joke?”

  Queen Maria seemed to be hurt by this implication. “What do you mean? This is the biggest army we ever fielded.”

  “And it’s a joke compared to what we’re facing!” Berk dropped the charade of being a cool headed king. He stood up being not much bigger than the queen and even rather small compared to everyone else but his anger was almost a solid entity.

  “You come out here with a generous number of 27.000 men against the skeletons who brought their entire country of over a million creatures for as far as we know!” He slammed with his fist on the table, knocking over all banners.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! We have a population of an estimated 450.000 people! How is it that they have so many?” The queen seemed to be just as mad as Berk now but it was also clear that her anger wasn’t able to compete with his.

  “Lady… Are you delusional? When we die, we turn into zombies. The nature eats away the brain turning them into skeletons. While bones do degrade, a living skeleton is different than a dead one. Dead bones can take hundreds of years to decompose but the Skeleton Gruge are protected by magic, making it take much longer for them to die naturally.”

  “How do you not know this? They live in houses to protect themselves from the weather and animals seeing as they don’t have living tissue to replaced lost pieces of bones! This army is something never seen before. This is the entire reason that they’re attacking us and you. They need space for the huge amount of citizens they have.”

  The longer he talked the less he yelled at her, remaining to his seat as he felt defeated. “Pan… We’re doomed.”

  While he was done with his anger, the queen wasn’t, walking to the table and slamming a dagger into the wood of my table. “Then how many are you bringing to the war!?”

  Berk looked up at her as if she was joking, looking at his generals as he wanted to spare his energy for what is next to come.

  Wout grabbed a scroll out of a chest standing next to the table and rolled it out. “Centaur chargers or in human terms cavalry we bring 11.000, centaur archers… another 7.000, Elven infantry… 80.000, archers 25.000, Elf centaur elites 500, satyr archers 11.000, satyr infantry 103.000, no satyr archers. Our centaur population have been going downhill so the king forced most of the centaurs to hold back.”

  After Wout was done, Berk looked up at the queen who seemed to finally realize how wrong she was. “So what is that? Around 230.000 troops against your 27.000. We have a lesser total population than you yet we manage to field over eight times your army.”

  “Let’s forget this for now, we have to focus on making up a battle plan. According to our estimations, the Zombie Gruge fields a total of 300.000 creature which is literally all he has and they’re literally meat shields. They can’t do much tactics let alone win against skeletons.”

  “Archers are much less effective against them as well so we have to try and find something else. Before anyone asks, we don’t know how much troops the Trifas have.” He looked at the group as he was trying to see if he had forgotten something. When nobody said anything, he continued with a battle plan.

  “Seeing the small group of humans helping in this war, we have to change up how we’ll approach.” He had started to talk as if the humans weren’t even there. It was a sign of disrespect but it wasn’t unjustified.

  Demmie held up his hand as he looked at some papers he was holding. “What weapons are the skeletons most prone to using?”

  “Well, the skeletons are known for using mostly bows due to inability to take heavy blows. They want to stay as far away from any action as possible.”

  Demmie nodded slowly as he turned a paper around and looked up at Berk. “But if they’re invading then they have to be the ones to advance. Wouldn’t it then be better to not go at them and let them come to us? Due to having to fire uphill, they’ll have less range.”

  “While that’s true, we also have the problem that our superior cavalry won’t be able to work properly in the woods. Not only that, if we try to use our homeland as a defensive advantage and they send in the bunnies then we have a bigger problem. We can’t see them coming through the bushes. They’ll cause chaos and we’ll die without being able to do anything.”

  Barta the new minotaur came forwards, bowing down to take a better look at the map. “If what you say is true about the bunnies than we need to attack now. Attack them while they’re still coming out of the pass. Right now according to Lehtern, they need three more days to fully get their army out.”

  Lehtern nodded, rubbing his chin with his index finger as he though about it. “And if we stay back ad fight with the forest to our back then we’ll be stuck. With the bunnies being stronger in the woods, it’s better that we have the open dry valley to our backs than the forest.”

  Berk looked back at the queen and then her commanders. He motioned for everyone to stop talking as he tried to think about what was being said. He hadn’t seen the bunnies himself but only had to go on what he heard. “Okay… I think that we gather every axe we have and give them to the human troops. Repurpose them as woodcutters and let them cut down every tree they can see. Burn down the bushes as well, leave no place alive for the bunnies.”

  Queen Maria smirked, laughing softly as she shook her head. “This is a joke. You’re all insane. I’m going to gather my troops and go back home. Bunnies… Fucking joke.”

  While she and her commanders seemed to find this all funny, Emma and Lilly looked at the ground at first. Lilly then looked up at Berk. “Yes your majesty, we’ll make sure that we cut down the trees.” She then looked at her mother as she seemed to try and get her to shut up.

  “Lilly? What is the meaning of this? You have no say over my people.” Maria looked at her daughter as if she was joking. “We’re going back to our own gruge to prepair for the skeletons to come, have fun.”

  As she turned around to leave, Lilly would grab a dagger and looked up at her mother. The act of grabbing this weapon immediately put everyone on high alert, confused on why it was drawn. Due to Maria having turned her back as she was leaving, she hadn’t noticed it yet.

  Everyone except Lucas and Gurgen seemed to have a plan, both of them looking at the weapon before taking a step back. Everyone else though grabbed put their hands on their own weapons. The sudden silence warned the queen, turning around to look at her daughter.

  Before she could talk, Lilly jumped forwards and plunged the dagger into her chest, pushing down until the hilt was touching her flesh. Not much blood appeared until she pulled the dagger out.