Alari watched as an army exploded from the forest before her. The Council hadn’t held anything back this time. Their troops were organized and well armed and coated in a sheen of green that marked them as touched by the supernatural.

No Warbringers were in evidence among the ranks of the Council’s forces. That didn’t surprise Alari though. She’d already proved that she could suborn those. Throwing more of them at her would accomplish little more than swelling the forces that Alari had at her disposal.

“What are those things?” Iana asked, the Warbringer stepping back in response to her unease.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Alari said.

The green goo coated army advanced with a steady singularity of purpose, marching in the sort of perfect lockstep that only derives from external control.

Scanning the forces, Alari counted over a hundred of the elite warriors converging on her position. They were flying no flags that suggested they were interested in negotiations, or even in demanding her surrender. Instead their blades were drawn, their shields readied and their eyes fixed.

Or not their eyes. Where eyes should have been there were only empty voids. Alari looked at the lines of power that ran over them. Each was woven around the warriors in so many places that it looked like they could barely move, and all of them ran back behind the warriors towards a single point in the distance.

Her true opponent had entered the field of battle. Alari was sure of it. What seemed out of place though was that the ominous rumbling was behind Blighted Legion and still approaching.

“You should run,” she said to Iana.

“I can’t run, this is my home,” Iana said.

“Stay behind me then,” Alari said. “These aren’t here for you this time, but they’ll probably still try to kill you if they see the opportunity.”

“What are you going to do?” Iana asked.

“I don’t think they’re going to offer me many alternatives,” Alari said.

“Can you run?” Iana asked.

“That’s a possibility,” Alari gestured behind them. “But they’ve already outflanked us on the ground.”

A rustling to their rear resolved into another contingent of green goo covered warriors emerging from the forests on the Senkin side of the border.

“You can fly though, can’t you?” Iana asked, panic edging into her voice as the two armies drew closer.

“Yes, and I doubt they could catch me in the air,” Alari said.

“Then why are you waiting?” Iana asked.

“I can fly, but you can’t,” Alari said. “If I leave now there’d be no one here to stop them from killing you.”

Iana was silent for a heartbeat.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said at last, “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sure you can,” Alari lied. “But I think this is where I need to make a stand anyways.”

With a quiet exhalation and a slow, focused gesture, she drew forth her royal scepter from thin air.

Many monarchs have symbols of their office. They are almost uniformly decorated in priceless gems were designed either by the gods or by a master craftsman in antiquity,

Alari’s scepter was an exception to that rule. It had spikes where other royal implements had gems. In place of a glass or crystal rod, the device in Alari’s hand had a shaft of enchanted steel. There was silver adorning the Gallagrin Scepter but it was there in a functional capacity, meant to provide an extra bit of insult should any were-creatures antagonize its wielder.

Few of Gallagrin’s monarchs had carried the Scepter of State. There were other, more elegant, symbols of the royal office. In Alari’s view though no other device captured the heart of Gallagrin as well as her scepter. It was a rough and ugly tool when viewed from far away. It spoke of a realm that valued harsh practicality over any sort of aesthetic beauty, and yet, when you looked closely at the scepter, a stunning level of detail work sprang to life.

There were etchings over every square inch of the scepter, beautiful depictions of Gallagrin’s people, monarchs and gods. From the base of the handle to the top of the tiny crown that was mounted on the great spikey ball at the far end of the scepter, the etchings told the story of Gallagrin’s history. With the right eyeglass, one could even see the miniature words each figure in the etchings was outlined in. Together, the icons and the scepter, captured some of the earliest years of the realm, and the lives of those who had first helped shape it.

As the first wave of the Blighted Legion charged them, Alari let her power flow into Royal Scepter and watched it burst to life as a sphere of electricity crackled to life around the spiky business end of the weapon.

The first member of the Blighted Legion to reach them received a lightning hammer blow to the face and fell back as a pile of splattered goo. Even his brief contact with the scepter was enough to drain away the lightning orb that surrounded its end though.

“Do let them touch you!” Alari didn’t look at Iana as she gave the order. She couldn’t take her eyes off the army that was coming them.

In the instant between felling the first of the Blighted Legion and destroying the next, Alari weighed her options.

They were constructs of some type. The evidence she could see pointed to that clearly. They were expensive to make though and the Council had a limited supply to work with. The testimony for that came from the late stage at which they were deployed, and the depth of magic they carried.

To absorb magic from a target, especially a foreign one, took a level of casting prowess Alari hadn’t known existed. Not as a certainty at least. From her first estimations of the geopolitical landscape following Paxmer’s defeat, the Green Council had stood out as a problem not because of past aggression or any special capabilities they’d demonstrated but because of how little change had been observed in them over the years.

Everyone knew the Council’s strength lay in life magic. Alari had read between the lines on the old reports she’d dug up and seen that of all of the realms, the Council’s was in some senses the most adaptable. The lack of visibility into those slow improvements told her that the Council had to be hiding some truly nasty surprises for the right moment.

She’d struck the twentieth Blighted warrior down when she saw that the first pull itself back together from the pile of slime it had been reduced to and begin maneuvering again for a strike at her.

Indestructible, magic stealing warriors with enhanced strength and speed certainly qualified as a nasty surprise in Alari’s book. Seeing their power though didn’t leave her overly afraid.

With a jolt of magic into her scepter she slammed the next warrior and watched them implode, sucked into the impact point faster than they could even scream. Around her scepter, a green glow swirled. It wasn’t easy transforming the Blighted Legion’s magic to reverse its course and expel magic rather than drain it. Only through sheer brute magical force was she able to win that contest, and as more of the Legion flooded onto the field, Alari gave serious thought as to whether she would be able to sustain that level of effort for long enough.

“I’m not letting you fight alone!” Iana said and stepped forward to ward off a Blighted Warrior that was trying to run a spear through Alari’s left kidney.

Iana’s Warbringer was close enough that she got its hand into the path of the blow. Alari watched as the Warbringer’s arm dropped limp and dead though, drained of the magic that animated it in exchange for the protection it provided.

The bad situation turned worse as the the Blighted Legion took notice of Iana’s Warbringer and spread out to focus their attacks on it as well.

Alari shifted into a faster form, channeling magic to give herself speed beyond the ability of the eye to follow. With hurricane winds in her wake, she tore through the battlefield, lightning arcing from one warrior to the next as merciless impacts exploded them into gross chunks which then imploded out of existence.

The Gallagrin Pact Spirit soared within Alari’s mind, joyful at the union with its host and willing to offer far more magic than Alari could hope to shape.

Panting and dancing on the edge of control, Alari exhaled and surveyed the damage she’d done. Her course of devastation had led her in a wide spiral around the battlefield. The ash that remained from Senkin’s destruction of the area had been swept up in her wake and had opaqued the entire region with a choking cloud.

With a leap, Alari rose above the cloud and hung in the air on wings of light.

Beneath her, the Blighted Legion was in full retreat. Alari could see the trails of magic that connected to each of them through the fog. They were mindless drones, but that didn’t mean their controller was willing to spend them needlessly.

Except their loss hadn’t been needless.

One moment Alari was surveying the threads of magic that directed the fleeing Blighted warriors and the next she was tumbling to the ground as a source of magic brighter than the sun blazed from the forest.

She didn’t feel the hit that swatted her from the sky. She barely felt the impact with the ground. It wasn’t that either of these didn’t hurt, the damage was simply too great to immediately process.

The Gallagrin Pact Spirit reacted in tune with Alari’s will, feeding her power to reconstruct the damage she’d taken and raise layers of magic defenses to prevent it from happening again. She’d been focused on moving quickly, which was critical when fighting an army. Against the new foe had arisen though speed was not sufficient.

As Alari stood, she felt the weigh of her defenses press her down. She outmassed Iana’s Warbringer by a factor of ten or more. With how bright the oncoming peril was though, she wasn’t sure if that would be anywhere near enough.

“What happened?” Iana asked, stomping the Warbringer to Alari’s side.

“The Council has something larger at their disposal than I’d expected,” Alari said.

“What is it?” Iana asked, scanning the treeline for foes. Without the ability to perceive magic directly though she couldn’t see the blinding radiance of the threat that approached.

“I don’t know,” Alari said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Even at the height of her battle with her father, as they both struggled for the heart of Gallagrin’s Pact Spirit, Alari had never seen power to equal the being that approached. A cool wave of fear washed down from her collarbone to her toes.

She’d made a mistake. A desperate, deadly mistake. She’d underestimated the Council as much as she’d counted on them underestimating her.

A voice whispered in her head telling her she was going to fail. All her clever plans would be undone through sheer brute force. She’d leave the world more shattered and bloody than it ever would have been without her.

And she wouldn’t see Dae ever again.

She stepped forward.

That wasn’t going to happen.

Whatever it took she was going to win.

Power like she had never gathered before coalesced in her scepter and combined with the green radiance she’d stolen from countless warriors of the Blighted Legion.

She readied herself to face the worst the Council could throw at her, and then, from the forest’s edge, something impossible happened.

A god stepped forth.

“The Green Council issues the Divine Sanction against Gallagrin.” The voice that spoke carried holy authority and its words became manifest as they were spoken.

Faster than Alari could react the world was enveloped in a blistering light. Divine force slammed her from all sides, ripping not at her body or mind but at the essence of her being. Flesh cracked and bones shattered under that pressure, but still a snarl escaped from Alari’s lips, until she was flung back, off the battlefield and into an unquiet darkness.

Dae didn’t like what she was seeing.

“Those things eat magical armor,” Ogma said. “That’s going to be a problem isn’t it?”

Below them, on the rolling, grassy field that served as the border between Gallagrin’s sharp cliffsides and the Green Council’s lush forests, armies marched. Armored nobles, the strongest warriors in all of Gallagrin, clashed against hollow abominations of green ooze shaped into the form of the Council’s dead humans and elves.

“Wasn’t something we expected to run into,” Dae said as she watched the battle churn and spin in front of her.

“We knew the Council was going to have special forces though,” Ogma said. “Didn’t we?”

Dae watched as one of the Blighted Legion grabbed a Duke and rotted his armor so badly that the transformation effect was undone. Two of the Duke’s companions stepped in bought him time to make a retreat but the fight was not going as easily as it had.

“We knew it would be more difficult once we tried to cross into the Council’s terrain,” Dae said. “Kicking them out of Gallagrin was always going to be the easy part. The key here is judging how far we try to take this fight.”

“Aren’t we moving in to rescue the Queen?” Ogma asked. “My scouts told us where she is after all.”

“That’s not what the nobles are fighting this battle for,” Dae said. “At least not most of them.”

“What? It’s all about greed?” Ogma said.

“Not all,” Dae said. “But the conquest and plunder of another realm is an intoxicating idea for a lot of them. If you look at what they were most unhappy about after the battle with Paxmer, it was that they weren’t given the chance to pillage the Paxmer’s countryside and claim new and exotic forms of wealth.”

“Isn’t gold enough for them?” Ogma asked.

“They didn’t get that either, but the most valuable loot another realm holds is its magic. Steal that and you gain all kinds of advantages.” Dae said.

“So this is an attempt to placate them?” Ogma asked. “The Queen’s plan is to let them pillage the Green Council and buy their loyalty like that?”

“That’s probably what they think is happening here,” Dae said. “Or it’s what they were thinking until the Council decided to get serious about this fight.”

“They sent thousands of troops across our border, how was that not being serious?” Ogma asked.

“It was deadly serious for the troops they sent,” Dae said. “But when you look at the quality of the troops they led with and the kind of equipment they carried you can see that the vanguard was far from their best.”

“Why would they send weak troops in to attack us?” Ogma asked.

“Lots of reasons,” Dae said. “To test our defenses. Because that’s all they needed as long as we stayed at each other’s throats, and, most importantly, because they were still more focused on Senkin.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Ogma said. “They sent in troops to attack us so that we’d keep our armies at home for defense rather than sending them to join the war effort on Senkin’s behalf. That doesn’t seem like a great long term strategy though.”

“It’s not,” Dae said. “It leaves them divided and weak. Plus it pulled us into the war when we might have been willing to sit it out.”

“The Queen sort of destroyed the idea of Gallagrin remaining neutral when she invaded on her own, didn’t she?” Ogma asked.

“Queen Alari’s plan was to contact and speak with the Green Council’s leaders. Give them a chance to tell their side of the story and then verify if they were telling the truth,” Dae said. “Given that the fight’s gone on this long, it’s safe to say the Council wasn’t interested in talking the issue out.”

“At least we know where she is, roughly speaking,” Ogma said.

“Yeah, your scouts are going to deserve a medal for that.” Dae said.

“I don’t think they’ll want one,” Ogma said. “It was less a matter of ordering them in and more a matter of unlocking the leg irons I’d been holding them back with.”

“You work with some disturbing individuals,” Dae said. “And I want you to consider who’s saying that.”

“Can’t be all together sane if you’re idea of a good time is heading into enemy territory without backup or support,” Ogma said.

“You wanted to go with them yourself didn’t you?” Dae asked.

“Let’s just say I’m planning to ask for a demotion once this crisis is solved,” Ogma said.

“Based on the job you’ve been doing, I don’t think you’re going to get it,” Dae said. “Gallagrin needs people like you. Queen Alari needs people like you.”

“Do you think she’s going to be ok?” Ogma asked.

“She’s heading back to the border,” Dae said. “That wasn’t in the original plan, which is a bit worrisome.”

“Could something have gone wrong?” Ogma asked.

“Yeah, that’s a pretty safe bet,” Dae said. “It’s not surprising. Something always goes wrong with every plan.”

“So that means the Queen does need a rescue then right?” Ogma asked.

“Not necessarily,” Dae said. “The Queen can more than take care of herself. We’re just here to enact one of the parts of her plan.”

Dae wished she could have felt as certain of Alari’s invincibilty as she sounded. Intellectually, she knew that Alari had more power at her disposal that perhaps anyone else in the world. Dae also knew Alari had the wits to use that power well. Despite all the arguments for why Alari had to be fine though, the question of “But what if she’s not?” returned again and again to plague Dae’s thoughts.

She knew she had to trust Alari. It was far too late to walk back on that decision, but that did little to hold back the worry.  For as strong and clever as Alari was, Dae knew that there were still forces and people who could be a threat to her. Even with the full power of Gallagrin’s Pact Spirit at Alari’s beck and call there was no absolute guarantee that she would make it home safely and there was nothing that scared Dae more than that. If was the one fear that surpassed even the Dragon Fear she’d managed to overcome. The one fear that Dae clung to because the letting it come true would destroy her.

“Should we join the fray?” Ogma asked. “Or is it time to sound the retreat?”

“Not one hour ago, you threatened to tie me up in chains if I tried to do anymore fighting,” Dae said. “So we wait, and you get to see how fun being reasonable is.”

“If you would just transform, I’d wouldn’t need to break out the chains,” Ogma said.

“It’s not time yet,” Dae said. “And anyways I wasn’t too much of a burden fighting outside of my armor.”

They both knew that was a lie. Even with a lifetime of training, Dae was barely a match for the weakest of Pact Warriors and presented an insignificant threat compared to one of the nobles. She’d survived the battles against the Council’s forces that invaded Gallagrin through careful positioning and the help of the pact Bearers who fought at her side.

“We’re starting to get our butts kicked out there,” Ogma said. “When will the time be right?”

Across the battlefield the Gallagrin nobility moved like flashing stars, tearing into the ranks of the Blight Legion that advanced relentlessly towards Gallagrin’s border.

Each individual exchange was tilted heavily in favor of Gallagrin’s defenders. Pact Spirits were stronger and faster than the Blighted Legion. The nobles could flit in, rend one their enemies to pieces, and then zip away before a retaliatory strike could be made.

Most of the time.

The problem the nobles were facing was that they didn’t have just one opponent to fight. The Blighted Legion outnumbered them by a hundred to one and, despite the damage the Gallagrin nobles were doing, those odds weren’t changing. With each of member of the Blighted Legion that fell, the Legion regained the magic that had been animating its fallen warrior. Destroying one attacker simply meant that a new one would arise to take its place.

Given a Pact Knight’s endurance, that wouldn’t have been an insurmountable problem. What was turning the battle against Gallagrin’s defenders was that they were making mistakes. Only little ones, but they were small errors that the magic draining powers of the Legion made it difficult to make up for. Like the Duke whose armor had been rotted away, too many nobles were overextending themselves by inches and paying it for it with crippling damage to their Pact Armor.

What had started out as a fun adventure in the high fields of Gallagrin was turning out to be something very different at the Green Council’s border. The noble’s had descended from Gallagrin’s mountains drunk on victory and run into the most painfully sobering of foes. One that could withstand all of the damage they dealt and steal their strength in the process.

It wasn’t hard to see the change in the tenor of the battle. Without being ordered to, the nobles were forming up into strike teams rather than racing into the fray on their own. Where they’d begun the fight eager to take ground and push their charge into the Green Council’s forests, they were turning back towards the high ground that lay behind them. It wasn’t a rout, the noble’s Pact Spirits were too powerful for the Blighted Legion to manage that, but Gallagrin’s forward advance had been halted and was being pushed away, one fallen noble at a time.

“Why aren’t they retransforming?” Ogma asked.

“I don’t think they can,” Dae said. “Watch, you can see how some of them are trying to, but no transformation is taking place. The rot must be lingering on them. It doesn’t just steal magic or eat it, it creates a siphon.”

“So all they have to do is hit us once and we’re out of the fight?” Ogma asked.

“It’s a lot worse than that,” Dae said. “If I’m right, once the rot sets in, they absorb our magics. So we lose our transformations and they gain them.”

“But none of them are transformed!” Ogma said.

“None of them are transformed yet,” Dae said. “That would cost them magic that they can’t replenish except by draining it from us. If I’m right, they’ll do that sparingly.”

“Unless they can capture some of us,” Ogma said. “Then they’d have access to all the magic they wanted.”

“That would explain the lack of fatalities on our side,” Dae said. “Corpses can’t feed them magic. Or at least our corpses can’t do that.”

A Duchess a hundred yards away fell beneath a pile of the Blighted Legion. She was up a moment later but her armor hung from her in tatters. Before she could run, another wave of creatures piled onto her and dragged her back into their ranks.

“Signal for a retreat but order one of the strike teams to retrieve her,” Dae said. Coordinating the nobles was going to be no easy task, but with the fear instilled in them by the Green Council’s elite forces, Dae thought her job might be slightly easier than it otherwise would have been.

Fate, perhaps, disagreed with her.

“What are those?” Ogma asked, pointing to the sky.

Above them, giant birds, hollow eyed and covered in the same green ooze as the Blighted Legion soared overhead and rained down a deadly hail of soldiers.

“They’re cutting off our retreat!” Ogma said.

“They were waiting for us to start falling back,” Dae said. “This is bad.”

Several of the Blighted Soldiers landed inside the command post and leapt to attack the moment their feet touched the ground. Dae was driven up the steep slope by a figure that looked like a dwarven woman. Glancing around Dae saw that Ogma and the other people at the command post being pressed as hard as she was.

Struggling to stay calm, she reached out to Kirios, calling on her Pact Spirit to give her the magic she so desperately needed.

No magic came though and Kirios was silent.

Undine found the heart of battle to be a strangely comforting place. His pact blade sung a song of merry death as it sliced through the Council’s aerial assassins, and his heart sang with it.

It wasn’t the thrill of bloodshed that drove him onwards into the nightmare of chaos that surrounded Queen Marie. The enemy troops barely registered in his awareness as anything living at all. Each was nothing more than an obstacle, a moving challenge, designed and constructed to test his ability to execute the martial forms and magics he’d spent the majority of his lifetime practicing. Each one that fell confirmed that he was what he strove to be. Worthy.

“Forward flanks, fall back,” Queen Marie commanded.

She stood at the head of the largest single army Senkin had ever raised. From her hands solar power flowed like heaven’s wrath. When Queen Alari had joined the battle, she’d changed the conditions of the field with a wave of her hand. Marie didn’t fight like that. Senkin’s magic wasn’t centered on transformation. In Marie’s hands lay the fires of the heavens. Purification through destruction, and for the first time in millennia it wasn’t being restrained.

Undine speared a pair of giant hornet hybrids that had survived the general aura of devastation around the Queen. They’d been armored in mirror bright steel that turned aside the streams of star bright fire that raged across the battlefield. The Council knew what their foes powers were and had come prepared for them.

What the hornet troops weren’t prepared for though was a Gallagrin Knight in full battle regalia. Mirror armor could withstand the incredible heat of Senkin’s fire but the cold steel of a pact blade backed by the superhuman force of a Pact Knight punched right through their heaviest guards.

Undine danced back behind Queen Marie, turning to defend her from attacks from the rear. The Queen smiled as he moved and focused her attention forward, unleashing a rolling wave of fire that chewed through the yellow mist that had been closing on them.

“We’re clear to entered Senkin territory,” General Pentacourt said. His armor showed the sort of damage that often accompanied identifying a corpse, but the Senkin commander was unbowed by whatever wounds he carrried.

“That means we’ve reclaimed the ground they took from Senkin,” Undine said.

Up to that moment, everything they had done was unquestionably in defense of a realm. With the first step onto foreign soil though, all of that changed.

Undine wished the fight would pause for a moment. He wished that either side would raise a flag to allow for even one minute of diplomacy. By taking the battle into the Council’s territory, Undine was moving well beyond the writ Queen Alari had given him. She had brought him and the rest of her people to Senkin to facilitate a restoration of peace. What would she say of one of her own aiding in the conquest of another realm?

The question had plagued Undine on the trip to Senkin’s front lines and he hadn’t come up with a satisfying answer to the dilemma.

At least not before the battle began.

Once the violence began, there wasn’t time for dilemmas. There was only act and react and do it better than the things that wanted to kill you.

It was a relief, in one sense, to be stripped of responsibility by the urgency of the situation, but Undine was too good at what he did for even the ferocity of the battle to completely strip away his ability to reflect on what he was doing.

He could refuse to go forward. He could stay behind to protect the troops and civilians of Senkin from the Council’s reprisal. But he wasn’t going to.

Queen Marie’s fight was the real fight for Senkin’s future, and by extension the future of the rest of the realms. Conquering the Green Council was far more than Queen Alari had authorized any of her people to do, but if the realms were going to know long term peace again, Undine suspected they needed an undeniable example of how catastrophic it was to attempt to solve global problems with violence in place of diplomacy.

“The Green Council declared war on us,” Queen Marie said. “We shall make the argument for peace. If they are fortunate, the Council will even survive long enough to hear it.”

“Our forward flanks are ready to redeploy,” General Pentacourt said.

“If I may suggest. Your Majesty, hold them back,” Ren said.

He and Undine had been given “Special Advisor” positions in the Queen’s immediate guard.

In Undine’s case no one had any issues with that. The general consensus seemed to be that if he was proficient enough to act as a guardian to the Queen of Gallagrin, then he was a welcome addition to the ranks of those tasked with protecting Senkin’s Queen.

In Ren’s case, opinions started out more mixed. As a Duke, Ren’s position was one of inheritance rather than merit. Since Gallagrin’s nobility rarely entered the field of battle, most of Senkin’s forces were unaware of the power a Gallagrin Duke could bring to bear by virtue of the special bond they shared with their Pact Spirits.

The reservations against Ren’s presence had last for all of thirty seconds though after the fighting began. Queen Marie brought overwhelming force to bear but the Council’s army had grown since Alari devastated it and the battlefront was much larger. That Senkin managed to contain and push back the entrenched Council forces was due in part to the unpredictable attacks that Ren and Undine launched deep into the Council’s ranks.

“What patterns do you perceive Duke Telli?” Queen Marie asked. “Our window to advance shrinks with every moment.”

“The Council has had many defenses prepared and yet they quit this field with minimal losses,” Ren said.

“They have left behind a trap for us?” Queen Marie asked.

“Definitely,” Ren said. “They had to know it would be possible you would join the battle. You are Senkin’s best hope, so your defeat would our worst nightmare.”

“So they have a plan for our demise on this field. Or they are bluffing and hoping to stall for reinforcements,” Queen Mari said.

“That is possible too,” Ren said. “It’s a difficult situation to resolve.”

“It doesn’t need to be,” Undine said.

“What do you have in mind Guardian?” Ren asked.

“Traps rely on surprise and tend to fail if they are sprung too early or against the wrong targets,” Undine said. He eyed the open field before them. It wasn’t the prime location for an ambush. Or at least it didn’t appear to be. Which in turn might make it the perfect spot for one, depending on what magics the Council had to work with.

“You’re thinking that you and I can go spring the Council’s trap early I take it?” Ren asked. The look of amusement in his eye suggested that this had been his plan all along.

“I was thinking I would go alone,” Undine said. “Your company isn’t unwelcome, but I am not sure if I should be risking the life of a Duke on this venture.”

“You won’t be,” Ren said. “I’ll be risking my own life. No one is allowed to say I can’t do that.”

“You are wrong, Duke Telli,” Queen Marie said. “We are allowed say that. Senkin has its own personnel to handle reconnaissance. We do not need to risk ambassadors from our friend Gallagrin in this matter.”

“Your pardon, Your Majesty, but I believe you do,” Undine said.

“Explain,” Queen Marie said.

“If there is a trap, it will be configured for you,” Undine said. “Your subjects cannot draw on any powers which you don’t not possess in greater abundance than any of them. If the trap has a prayer against you, it will obliterate anyone with the same type of powers but who holds them to a lesser degree.”

“Guardian Undine and I on the other hand are a problem they have not accounted for,” Ren said.

“Sending two into an ambush meant for an army is suicidal,” General Pentacourt said.

“No one else can keep up with us,” Undine said.

“And the window of opportunity is still shrinking,” Ren said.

“Go then,” Queen Marie said. “The army will continue its advance in five minutes, find us at its head to report your findings.”

“We’ll be back before the army steps into the Council’s lands,” Ren said.

With a rush of wind both he and Undine vanished from Queen’s circle of advisors and protectors.

“What are we looking for?” Undine asked as they came to a stop on the far side of the Green Council’s border.

“Anything hostile,” Ren said. “If it’s powerful enough to pose a threat to Queen Marie then it should be fairly obvious.”

“Could it be something within the boundary of the Council’s forests?” Undine asked. “A ranged weapon of some kind?”

“Possible, but unlikely,” Ren said. “Marie should be able to incinerate any projectiles they cast at her.”

“What if it’s a ball of explosive fire?” Undine asked.

“That would be a monumental mistake on the Council’s part,” Ren said. “Senkin’s magic deals in light and fire. The Queen would literally grab the fireball from the sky and turn it to whatever ends she wanted.”

“Nothing aerial then,” Undine said. “And I just felt the ground shake.”

“I did too,” Ren said. “It’s something burrowing underneath us.”

“A lot of somethings,” Undine said as the ground shaking got worse.

“Let’s stop them here,” Ren said and summoned a dozen blades from his armor.

Undine did the same, working out the trick from seeing Ren do it, and they both launched a storm into the earth below them.

Swords don’t normally penetrated very far when thrust into stone. Swords are not normally composed of metal transformed from pure magic though, nor are they normally hurled with anything near the force possessed by a Pact Knight.

The ground exploded into dozens of puff of dusted rock as the hail of swords pierce the earth and burrowed through stone seeking their prey. The ground exploded again a moment later as hundreds of creatures burst forth. The swords had found their mark.

Undine had two precious seconds to wonder if the choices he’d made had possessed any wisdom whatsoever when he saw their enemies.

They were perfect replicas of the Council’s Mindful races. Elves, Dwarves, Humans, Sylphs. But they were hollow. Empty sockets gazed back where eyes should have been. Worse, a foul smelling sap oozed from shatter lines on their skin. They swarmed towards the two Pact Knights and each of their movements drew forth hellish screams that seemed to come not from their throat but from every rip in their skin.

“Hmm, wasn’t expecting that,” Ren said a moment before he was buried under a horde of thirteen of the supernatural creatures.

Undine accelerated, dodging past a half dozen of the monsters, as he started to choke on the stench that arose from them. For all their ruin and decay though, the Council’s newest troops were neither slow nor weak. Two of the creatures managed to grab Undine at once and stabbing each through the head produced no change in their behavior or capacity.

As both of the creatures dove forward, slime covered teeth barred, Undine willed his armor to grow serrated spikes. And retract them. And grow them again. Retract and grow, retract and grow, over and over, faster than the eye could follow. With the spikes each acting like a high speed rip saw, Undine was able to close the distance to Ren’s position the same as a cloud of insane knives would have.

Ren hadn’t been able to shear through the monsters attacking him as easily. Instead he lashed out with mailed fists, each strike knocking one of the creatures a hundred feet or more away. Normally that would have been enough to easily create a clear space around himself, but Undine noticed that something was wrong. Or rather several things.

First, the creatures showed no fear or hesitation at all. When one was cast out, two more rushed forward to fill their place.

Second, the Duke’s armor was not withstanding the punishment inflicted on it.

It was rotting.

All along the Duke’s arms and in several places on his chest and legs, deep patches of rust were visible.

Undine looked down at his own armor and saw similar damage was accruing. The spikes he summoned were shot through with rust and there were splashes of  dusty red decay splashed all over his chest.

He tried to call for a new transformation to repair the damage and found his magic was blocked. Or rather, the decay was eating it. And getting stronger the more he called on extra power since it all went to the rot rather than to him.

It took less than a second after noticing that for Undine to grasp that this was a fight they couldn’t possibly win.

“We need to leave, now,” he said.

“Yes,” Ren said. “They seem to disagree though.”

As in confirmation of that, another thirteen of the Blighted Legion joined the fray.

Undine wondered what his final thought would be and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was of Eorn. She wouldn’t be happy that he fell in battle, but if he had to go, at least it was in a manner and against a foe that she could feel proud of him.

He slashed and kicked and punched, determined to leave a monument behind that would be the envy of every other Queen’s Guard who would serve the Gallagrin or Senkin thrones.

The fatalism of his actions faded though as a beam of searing light as wide as a boulevard swept over the Blighted Legion.

Queen Marie and her troops had joined the fray!

Then the light began to fade as the Blighted Legion consumed that too.

Jyl fought back a near overwhelming desire to spit. The paralytic gel was gone, purged from her system by her brief transformation to her armored state, but the taste of it remained on her tongue like paint made from a rotting animal carcass. Even that was more pleasant than the idea of working with her sister though.

We need to be careful, there are seals placed all around the meeting grove, Jaan signed, using the silent language of gestures they’d been taught as young girls. Before their lives had diverged. Back when they enjoyed speaking with one another.

Warnings about seals around a protected area were obvious, but for stealth work like breaking into a foreign government’s most guarded deliberative session it was important not to forget the obvious.

They had no plan, or at least no preparations, resources or contingencies to draw on, but somehow Jaan had convinced her that they needed to infiltrate the Council’s top secret planning session anyways. Intel from the Council’s emergency session could be the key to preventing a disaster for Gallagrin and for the realms in general.

Or at least that’s what Jyl kept telling herself. In the back of her mind, she knew that Jaan could have dozens or hundreds of other goals in mind, but they were so far behind enemy lines that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Let her sister have her schemes, it wasn’t important if the Lafli family came out ahead, again, as long as it wasn’t at the expense of Gallagrin’s sovereignty.

They’re using Chasm class defensive enchantments, Jyl signed back. Both sisters were familiar with evaluating and evading mystical protections, though they came by their knowledge by very different routes.

Backed by Basilisk enhanced detection spells, Jaan signed. And those are the ones we can see.

Yeah, there’ll be others, Jyl signed. Anyone who was paranoid enough to arm their detection spells with stoning petrification effects was the textbook definition of over prepared. Fortunately that could be as much of a liability as an advantage.

We can use the Blinet corpses to get by some of the traps. Jaan suggested.

And when we run out of corpses? Jyl asked.

Then we make some more, Jaan signed.

No, Jyl signed, we’re not going to murder ourselves into a peace agreement.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but peace is a long forgotten concept at this point, Jaan signed. Ever since our Queen invaded the Council we’ve been at war with these people.

War’s end, Jyl said, and they end sooner if neither side has a blood vendetta against the other.

So what’s your plan for getting through the Council’s defenses? Jaan asked.

How good are you at transformations? Jyl asked, the seed of a plan beginning to take shape in response to her sister’s challenge.

Better than you, Jaan signed, my spirit’s had centuries of practice with all the morphic spells.

Jyl’s Pact Spirit had lain dormant for generations, but ever since they’d bound themselves to each other, they’d practiced their magic to exhaustion almost every day. That was almost enough for Jyl to be sure she was Jaan’s equal.

We’re going to sneak right in the front door then, Jyl signed.

Are you insane? Jaan asked. I just saved your life, and now you want to throw it away?

We can’t penetrate their defenses, Jyl said. We don’t have the time to study them thoroughly enough and we can’t afford to have even one of them go off.

Several are going to trigger if we try to walk through the arch that leads into the grove, Jaan signed.

Not if we look and feel like we belong there, Jyl said.

All of the Councilors are accounted for though and the meeting is already in succession. There’s no one we can pose as who has the authority to…

Jaan cut herself off as she followed the path of Jyl’s gaze. She then turned to look at her sister and raised an eyebrow.

Them? Are you serious?

You didn’t even notice them until I pointed them out did you? Jyl asked, the plan, simple though it was, taking full shape. Below them, wandering in and out of the Sacred Grove, Blinet’s scurried on four legs or two, carrying important messages back and forth between the Councilors and their staffs.

They must be enchanted with some form of identity tracking spells though, Jaan signed.

Definitely, Jyl signed. We’ll need to steal those.

Probably not possible, Jaan said, With as paranoid as the Council is they’re sure to have failsafes against that. But that can work to our favor too.

Together the sisters worked out a more complicated, and therefore more fragile, version of Jyl’s original plans.

Ten minutes later, the guarded arch recorded its first intruder as one of the Blinets set off a series of alarms. The small creature was pounced on by the Council’s security forces and wrestled over to a holding area.

Then another Blinet set off the device. The security personnel were slightly less violent with this one.

Several more Blinet’s passed into the grove without issue before a third and fourth and fifth set off the security alarms again and again.

“This can’t be right!” the second Blinet who was captured said. “The detection spells on the gate must be overloaded.”

“Shut up, there’s nothing wrong with the gate,” the lead guard said.

Then the gate sounded the alarm when one of the guards passed through it.

“Excuse me sir,” the fourth Blinet to be detained said. “I work in Dagmauru’s Sorcery division, I can check the gate if you’d like? They go out on us all the time but they’re usually pretty simple to fix.”

“I can’t let you tamper with anything here,” the lead guard said.

Two more Blinets and another guard set off the gate alarms.

“I won’t tamper at all,” the fourth Blinet said. “I just know that sometimes, with how busy everything gets, people don’t always schedule the maintenance for the spells as often as they should. Do you know if this gate had its scheduled re-enchantment rituals performed this week. We had a shadowed Moon and that’s on the list of potential static spell disruptors.”

The guard frowned and looked away, his eyes scanning the area around them as though the gate’s maintenance manifest might appear miraculously to prove he hadn’t failed in his duties.

“It will only take a me a second to check it out,” the fourth Blinet offered.

“Fine, but only you,” the guard said.

And that was how Jyl entered the Sacred Grove disguised as the fourth Blinet and Jaan entered disguised as the sixth Blinet.

Inside the Sacred Grove they had to move cautiously. Neither wanted to be seen by Dagmauru, or any of the other Councilors. Their transformation disguises were good enough to get by a guard or a hacked gate spell, but that didn’t mean some of the ancients who ruled the Council would be fooled by them.

“Pardon me,” Jaan said, grabbing a sylph who was standing guard at one of the Speaking Box doors. “Do you know where I might find Balmauru? I’m new to service and my Master Dagmauru has given me a message to deliver.”

“Balmauru is in the third tier Speaking Box at the far east end of the Glade,” the guard said.

The Sacred Grove had been built up like a grand stadium with corridors that ran around its circumference. Jaan set off counterclockwise and Jyl followed closely behind.

“Why did you ask where Balmauru was? We don’t want to talk to any of these people.”

“Exactly,” Jaan said. “If we’re stopped we need to be able to give a plausible reason for why we’re not heading towards Dagmauru given that we have his livery wrapped on our backs.”

“I’m surprised you weren’t planning to kill and gut anyone who challenged us,” Jyl said.

“I am,” Jaan said. “I just want to make sure we can get them to lower their guard first.”

“Where did you go so wrong?” Jyl asked.

“I’m a Lafli,” Jaan said. “We make our own right and wrong.”

Jyl shook her head. Tempting as it was to argue philosophical points with her sister, ideally through the use of applied violence, the middle of the Green Council’s Sacred Grove was clearly neither the time nor the place for such pursuits.

On the top floor of the Sacred Grove’s stadium-like exterior, they found the privates boxes that had been set aside for future expansion and slipped into one sufficiently far from any occupied ones that they were able to enter and crawl to the front of the box without being seen.

“And that is why, my fellow Councilors, we must end this mad aggression,” the speaker wasn’t human or elf, so Jyl couldn’t place their age. Given the assemblage and the tone of the speaker’s worlds, she had to guess that they were ancient. The inflections on their words supported that, though Jyl’s mastery over The Green Council’s High Speech wasn’t so great that she could be sure of whether the Councilors words choice was formal, archaic, or both.

“This mad aggression was not started by us,” another speaker said.

That’s Dagmauru, Jaan signed. He was the one who captured you. He was also a House Lafli ally for the last several decades.

“This mad aggression was brought to us, it wounded us, destroyed the joyous days we planned for,” Dagmauru said. “We cannot sit by while our innocents are slaughtered by the greed of foreign powers.  We cannot and we have not, but we must press further.”

“We have gone too far already,” another voice said. “Thanks to your insistence that we give in to our rage and sorrow we have broken ancient treaties and provoked mighty enemies. Even if we succeed in our aims, we will have wounded the heart of our realm.”

“We were united in this,” Dagmauru said. “By the wound to our hearts. Or have you forgotten the loss we have endured, the pain that we as a realm still suffer.”

“There will be more loss, and more suffering, if we pursue this course,” the other Councilor said. “Already we have the Queen of Gallagrin rampaging through our realm, destroying the forces that we send to stop her. We were not prepared to fight against such a foe. What happens when the Queen of Senkin joins the fray? Or the Lords of Inchesso?”

“What happens indeed,” Dagmauru said. “This is the precipice we stand on. This is turn of the season into an unknown tomorrow. No matter what we chose here today, the future will never be the same as the past.”

Jyl rolled her eyes. From the murmur of the crowds, Dagmauru’s words were stirring up some form of emotion, despite their meaninglessness. The future won’t be the same as the past? How isolated did the Council need to be to think there was anything significant about that declaration.

“If that future is going to be different though, I say we must forge it to be a better one than we have now,” Dagmauru said. “We can’t retreat, we can’t hide. We must reach forward and shape that future into one where we can flourish.”

“We cannot flourish if our roots drown in the blood of the innocent,” the other Councilor said.

“With innocent blood, a drop shed is the same as an ocean,” Dagmauru said. “In both, we see whole worlds lost. The only refuge we may seek lies in the fact that they spilled the blood of our innocents first and that, when the last drops have fallen, we will have forged a stronger, safer world for the innocents of tomorrow.”

“Speak those words to each of the innocents you have yet to slaughter,” the other Councilor said. “Ask your hearts, all of you, if this is a burden we wish to lay on the innocents yet to come? Surely it is not. Surely we must end this madness now, before the price become unbearable.”

“The price is already unbearable,” Dagmauru said. “We have mobilized our armies to reclaim and protect our future. It is far too late to turn from this path. Our only choice now lies in whether we place value on the lives of those who fight for us, or in our cowardice refuse to support them to the fullest extent possible.”

“You speak of the Blight Legions,” a third councilor said. “They have never been used in battle before, not even in the Lost Glades against the worst of the monsters left behind by the Sleeping Gods.”

“And never before have we contended with so formidable an array of foes,” Dagmauru said. “In Senkin our forces are stymied, battling troops they should have easily overrun. Gallagrin presses our advance troops and has begun to fly into our realm. Even Inchesso’s forces have begun to mobilize for war.”

“The Blight Legions may grant us victory against those forces, but can even they stand against the might of the Gallagrin Queen?” another Councilor asked.

“No,” Dagmauru said. “I do not believe they can.”

“Then what hope do we have? None of the forces we have sent against her have survived longer than a handful of seconds.”

“The Blight Legions must be called to service, but they will not be enough,” Dagmauru said. “I called this session for a far more dire judgement. Councilors, we must invoke the Divine Sanction.”

A hush fell over the entire grove. Even the far off hustle and bustle went still.

“But that is our option of last resort, it is never meant to be activated,” a Coucilor said.

“It is as you say, but the Divine Sanction is the only hope we have against the power Gallagrin has brought to bear.”

Jaan waited for her chance to speak with the Green Council with an exemplary amount of patience. Her reward for waiting quietly though was the opportunity to wait ‘just a little bit longer’.

“Is there any word from the Council’s session?” she asked.

“The Speaking Glade is still under sequestration,” Tan-Orange-Maroon Blinet said.

“And there’s no scheduled time for them to emerge?” Jaan asked, dipping into reserves of patience that only dealing with her family usually called for.

“No Lady Lafli,” Grey-Emerald-Midnight Blinet said, “They meet until their discussions are resolved.”

Jaan sighed. Her position was precarious. She’d taken a massive risk in stealing the ledgers from Senkin, and a bigger one in fleeing from her sister. The two women were far too evenly matched for the outcome of that chase to have been anything close to a certainty, but the dice had fallen in Jaan’s favor. Across the Senkin border and into the Green Council’s terrain, they’d flown quicker than the fastest of birds. Even that hadn’t been fast enough to avoid all of the Council’s defenses though.

Jaan’s last bit of luck had revealed itself when the defenders who captured them turned out to be in the employ of one of her family’s primary connections among the Council. She was treated as befit her family’s amiable relationship with Dagmauru and her sister was restrained as the war criminal she was.

As a friendly ambassador, Jaan had naturally turned over her ledgers to Dagmauru’s staff and agreed to join him as he attended an emergency session of the Green Council’s leadership. It was a perfect offer, marred only by the fact the joining Dagmauru as he attended the Council’s meeting did not mean joining Dagmauru at the Council’s meeting.

Instead, Jaan was relegated to remaining behind, outside the sacred grove where the Council met. Her presence was known only to Dagmauru and those who swore deepest loyalty to his service. It wasn’t an advisable position to be in. It wasn’t a safe position to be in.

Jaan knew that the Council was undertaking radical actions and, in her experience, once a first set of boundaries were overstepped it became increasingly simple to overstep more of them.

While the Lafli family had enjoyed decades of close connection with several of the members of the Green Council, Jaan wasn’t under any illusions that she could look to Dagmauru as a friend. He was a foreign power and as such he had his own motivations. In general those seemed to line up with the Lafli family’s desires but in the tumult and chaos of an ever escalating war, it was all too possible that their interests might diverge.

The best shield Jaan could raise against that turn of fate was to connect with the other Council members the Lafli’s were friendly with. So long as their interest aligned with one of the powers in the realm, she could dance around her position as an outsider and reap the rewards  the chaos offered. If the whole of the realm turned against her though all hope of survival would be lost.

“The other Councilor that Dagmauru met with, are they within the meeting grove as well?” Jaan asked, looking for any path she could find to connect with someone other than Dagmauru.

Dagmauru hadn’t been unhappy with her arrival. Jaan had brought him information after all and, in times of war, information was often an invaluable treasure. Despite the warmth he received her with though, Jaan could see that Dagmauru’s attention was focused more on the meetings before him than the windfall that she brought.

If she couldn’t make contact with another of the Lafli’s friends on the Council, Dag’s friend Bal seemed like a potentially useful lever that she could use if the need arose. Or they would be if Jaan could manage to meet them and discern what their motivations were. It seemed like a safe bet that their desires didn’t align with Dagmauru’s since Dag had returned from their meeting bearing the kind of trembling silence that spoke volumes about how disagreeable the outcome was.

“I am sorry. We do not know the location of Balmauru,” Tan-Orange-Maroon Blinet said. “They were scheduled to speak to the assembly though so they are likely sequestered as well.”

And that was Jaan’s primary issue. Everyone with any clout or importance was in the Council’s meeting, and she was relegated to standing outside its walls. As much as she hated to admit it, there was only one ally she could count on under the present circumstances.

“Has my sister been transferred to the Council’s custody yet?” she asked.

“No, Lady Lafli,” Grey-Emerald-Midnight Blinet said. “With the start of the Council session we have not be able to meet with the proper representatives yet.”

“Who will be taking custody of her?” Jaan asked. She knew Jyl hadn’t been moved yet, but it hadn’t been clear from what Dagmauru had said as to which branch of government would take responsibility of a Guardian to the Queen of Gallagrin.

“She will be transferred to one of our research facilities,” Grey-Emerald-Midnight Blinet said. “We are forbidden from initiating unmonitored communications with them for the duration of the conference though.”

“But you can contact them?” Jaan asked, confused.

“No, the security protocols on the research labs disallow any monitored communications between them and the outside world,” Grey-Emerald-Midnight Blinet said. “They may only speak with Dagmauru personally.”

Jaan frowned. Dagmauru wasn’t going to use Jyl as a witness before the Council. He was going to bury her, perhaps literally, in a hidden laboratory, probably with an eye towards working out the secrets of Pact magic.

That was distasteful on a number of levels.

Jaan had turned over Senkin’s secrets. She never intended to turn over any of Gallagrin’s though. Gallagrin needed the advantages that Pact magic offered. It was a strong bargaining chip in the Lafli family arsenal. Also the other Council contacts that the Lafli family knew might take it amiss that Dagmauru had been given sole access to a magical research subject when such secrets could have benefited all of them.

Most importantly though was the point that Jyl was Jaan’s sister. Her twin. For all their competition and acrimony, nothing would change that.

“May I inspect her bindings?” Jaan asked. “She’s one of Gallagrin’s most talented Pact Knights. You may not have covered all of the methods she could use to escape.”

“She is still unconscious,” Tan-Orange-Maroon Blinet said. The creature looked confused as to how there could be any danger from their prisoner given that precaution.

“She may be, but that doesn’t mean her Pact Spirit is,” Jaan said. It wasn’t a lie, merely an extreme exaggeration. Only the most aware and potent of Pact Spirits could act in place of their hosts. The pact bindings made very sure of that and relaxing those particular restraints was the sort of thing that only a truly mad Pact warrior would attempt.

As Jaan expected though, the Blinets were unaware of that particular aspect of Pact magic.

“We shall double the guard on her,” Tan-Orange-Maroon Blinet said.

“You’ve seen what Queen Alari is capable of,” Jaan said. “Do you wish to see what one of the people assigned to guard her can do?”

Again, carefully managed truth was such a better tool than any outright lie would be. Let the Blinet’s imagine havoc on a scale greater than what Alari had inflicted so far, they didn’t need to know that the Queen’s Guardians were several times less powerful than the woman they protected.

“Why did you not speak of this sooner?” Tan-Orange-Maroon Blinet asked.

“Your defenses are formidable,” Jaan said. “They have held her till now. I seek only to augment them so that there will be no unexpected failures.”

It wasn’t unexpected if it happened according to her plan after all.

“Of course,” Tan-Orange-Maroon Blinet said. “She is being held in the storage compartments in the central underbelly. We will take you to her.”

The Trolliphaunt was a massive creature, made all the moreso by the structures that had been built as a shell around it. On it’s back there were various small buildings and a natural grove that looked to have several coffin size shallow holes. Apparently a mechanism for ensuring the health and maintenance of people with botanical biologies who spent long periods of time unaware of their corporeal bodies.

Beside the Trolliphaunt’s sides hung various additional buildings and ladders, one of which a Red-Orange-Brown Blinet led Jaan down to.

Inside the storage room, Jyl hung suspended in a tank of clear fluid. Her eyes were closed and she showed no signs of motion, not even breathing. It was a disquieting sight for Jaan. Like looking into a mirror and seeing her corpse reflected back.

“It’s difficult to tell if the spirit is still active,” Jaan said. A slight inaccuracy there. She wasn’t adept enough to even begin to tell if there was any active Gallagrin magic at work within the tank.

“We cannot remove her from the paralytic gel,” Red-Orange-Brown Blinet said.

“Not even for a short period?” Jaan asked, tumblers turning and falling in her mind.

“Our supplies were meant for transport,” Red-Orange-Brown Blinet said. “We do not have the proper anesthetics to hold an enchanted captive. This is a makeshift effort at best. Before she is approved for transport we will need to either dissect her and preserve the pieces individually or administer a military grade restraining solution.”

“I would only need a moment to determine whether the spirit is active or not,” Jaan said, carefully skirting a lie with the unspoken words that given a moment she was reasonably sure she could definitely say that, yes, the Pact spirit was active, and unleashed.

“We cannot risk even that,” Red-Orange-Brown Blinet said. “The paralytic could wear off within seconds if she was removed from it.”

“Thank you,” Jaan said. “That is exactly what I needed to know.”

And then she stabbed him.

People forgot that Pact Knights are never unarmed, despite a seeming lack of weapons or armor. It suited Jaan well.  Red-Orange-Brown Blinet would have disagreed, but as he was lacking functional lungs the sentiment came out as little more than a wet gurgle.

Another Blinet moved to sound the alarm, but Jaan pinned them to wall with a heavy throwing knife. She couldn’t fight the whole of the Green Council but a few support staff didn’t exactly present a challenge.

Being careful to avoid the paralytic gel, she tipped Jyl’s tank over and let the liquid contents spill out to the forest floor below. Jyl herself slid free but remained covered with a thick sludgy layer of the gel until Jaan splashed a bucket of cleaning water over her.

Waking up didn’t seem to be a pleasant experience. There were convulsions, vomiting of gel that had filled lungs and stomach, and flailing motions as mobility returned to various body parts. The process was cut short though by a blinding transformation, which Jaan knew would purge the remaining gel from Jyl’s system.

“Where are we?” Jyl asked, her armored eyes alight with rage and humiliation. “What have you done?”

“Saved your life,” Jaan said. “You may express your gratitude now or later.”

Jyl punched her in the face.

In fairness, it was something of an expression of gratitude that the punch didn’t carry the full strength of a Pact Knight behind it. Rather than turning Jaan to mulch, it merely knocked her back and bloodied her nose.

“You betrayed us,” Jyl said.

“I am ever loyal sister,” Jaan said. “Your continued existence is testament to that. Now shall we discuss our options?”

Jyl visibly writhed, shuddering as she fought to suppress the rage that radiated off her in waves.

“What do you want?” she said at last.

“The Green Council is meeting in secret to discuss their next move,” Jaan said. “They have already invaded Gallagrin but more importantly my contact here has decided to exclude our family from the Council’s considerations. That cannot mean anything good.”

“And what do you want to do about that?” Jyl asked.

“We need to enter the Council’s closed session,” Jaan said. “They are plotting the fate of the realms. That’s not their role. It’s ours.”

Dagmauru surfaced, pulling his consciousness from the Deep Roots back into the shell of his primary body. Despite the long months he spent with his mind wandering the under layers of the Council’s realm, coming back to himself never felt strange.

“Thank the Sleeping Gods for their little gifts,” he said, working rich loam and fallen twigs from his mouth. His arms and legs were fully responsive and he could feel his sap flowing through his body with the rushing rhythm that only came with full wakefulness.

“Yes sir,” Blinet said. Or one of the Blinets. It didn’t matter which one, they were his staff and aside from meaningless variations in the coloring of their fur, each was usually interchangeable with the rest.

“We should moving to the Speaking Glade,” he said. “How long till we arrive?”

“We began transporting your host within ten minutes of your orders sir. We should arrive in just over an hour,” Blinet said. It was a different Blinet, but as Dagmauru had neither praise nor reproach to offer for their performance he made no effort to identify the speaker any further.

An hour of preparation was in some senses fifty nine minutes more than he needed, and in others years less than he would have liked.

“Do we have a roster of the Council members who will be in attendance for our emergency session?” he asked as he stood up.

The ground he had embedded his body in was moving, carried on the back of a Trolliphaunt.

The four legged creature towered over the trees of the swamp they moved through, it’s long limbs easily picking a path around and over the growth which would otherwise impede the flat disk that made up the majority of its body.

The Trolliphaunt wasn’t the first conveyance beast that Dagmauru had owned. He’d lost a dozen or more similar creatures during the divine skirmishes in the age that predated the gods’ slumber. Since their fall he’d had to make do with lesser mounts, ones that he’d been able to fashion for himself. They weren’t the equal of the divine steeds he’d been graced with by the gods, but the lack of divine meddling meant they also lasted longer.

“The Council will be complete for the session,” Blinet said. “We will be among the first to arrive of those who are not already in residence at the Speaking Glade.”

Dagmauru allowed a moment of peace to flow up from his rooted toes.  Events were moving as he’d foreseen they would. There were always surprises of course. Those were unavoidable and expected to a degree. Some of them were even pleasant.

The Gallagrin Queen invading the Council’s realm on her own, rather than at the head of her army, had not been in the script he’d written, but it played into his greater ambitions so well that he could almost believe it to be another gift from his gods.

Almost, but not quite. Not with knowing what he did about the Council’s more hidden areas of mystical research. Fortunately, most of the rest of the Council was ignorant of the efforts he’d directed, just as they were ignorant of the plans he laid which stretched back centuries.

It was the one thing his fellow Undying Ministers failed to grasp. They moved with the seasons and looked to the cycles of life, but so few could see beyond that. Yes, small changes across many repetitions led to growth and progress but there were also the watershed moments. Occasions when massives changes shifted everything in an instant.

There were some of Dagmauru’s peers who saw that reality, but few seemed willing to admit to it and even fewer willing to plan to exploit those moments when they arose.

“Sir, we’ve received word from your staff at the Glade, Balmauru has arrived ahead of schedule and is asking for a personal conference before the session begins,” Blinet said.

Dagmauru felt the peace that flowed through him wash away in an acid tide.

Balmauru was his closest ally. As such Balmauru knew of the extent of Dag’s research. That made Bal also Dagmauru’s more dangerous adversary.

Balmauru shared Dag’s long seeing outlook. Among the Undying, they were the two most concerned about the preservation of the realm beyond the next turning of the cycle. Their views were so close they should have been braided together as a composite being, like a number of the other Undying were. They would have done so on their own, save for the thorns that stood between them.

Bal’s view of the long future was a naive one. They saw that change would come, they agreed that there would be periods of devastation and calamity, but they believed that the Children of the Gods, both the Mindful Races and the other creatures who lived within the realms, would find new paths that would see them all through to even better days.

Bal believed in building strength across the cycles, of exploring the world to the depths of its darkest reaches and the width and breadth of its most open expanses. In all those things, Dag agreed with them. They differed in only one principal.

In Bal’s world, everyone could rise, could become more than they had been, and in this Dag found their vision flawed. The world provided so much evidence to dispute the notion of everyone moving forward at once. It was fundamental to nature, to the construct of the world the Sleeping Gods had crafted, that for one being to move forward, others must fall and be consumed to provide the fuel for growth and change.

“Tell them I shall seek them out the moment I arrive,” Dagmauru said. Balmauru didn’t want the meeting anymore than Dag did. Dag was certain of that. Each knew where the others heart lay, each knew the choices the other would argue for. They had been companions for centuries and friends for longer than that.

It would all end at the emergency session though. It was better that it happen in the Speaking Glade. The sacred space would restrict them both. They’d come to the point where their views required action, where the plans they’d each worked on had to either come to fruition or wither away to ash, and neither could let that happen. Not even if it cost them everything they were to each other.

“Tarismauru has also dispatched word,” another Blinet said. “He wishes to meet with you as well, though he did not specify a time.”

“Reply that I shall sit in his bower during the session,” Dagmauru said. “We need not meet before the proceedings begin though, instead he is to seek out those most staunchly in opposition to us still and listen to their position.”

“You wish to send Tarismauru as your diplomat?” Blinet asked. It was rare for his staff to question Dagmauru, but in this instance he allowed it. Taris was an idiot. A useful idiot, and a willing pawn, but not at all cut out for any sort of delicate work.

“No,” Dagmauru said. “Instruct him very clearly on this. He is not to attempt any diplomacy at all. He must not attempt to convince any of the people he visits that our cause is sensible, right or just. He is only to listen. I do not wish our opponents to be convinced. I want to know exactly why those who are still opposed to the war hold the positions that they do.”

“Should he ask as to what compromises would be acceptable to them?” Blinet asked.

“Absolutely not,” Dagmauru said. “He is to offer nothing except his understanding, and his silent acceptance of what they have to say.”

“What should he do if they impune his honor?” Blinet asked.

“Tell him that I will carry his honor and he shall be cloaked in mine,” Dagmauru said. “He goes to them not of his own accord but at my request. Any dishonor they would cast on him, shall fall on me, and I will seek no duels and answer no challenges until the emergency session is complete.”

Dagmauru knew his opposition. It was impossible not to after serving the realm for as long as they all had. He knew those who would oppose him on the principal that he was the one speaking, and the ones who opposed him because they were uncomfortable with the issues being raised. For the later group, being able to vent their concerns to something who offered no judgements, and no arguments would be enough to settle their minds, especially if Dagmauru could twist their concerns back against them as though he could read their hearts and held the answer to their deepest worries.

The Green Council had existed in peace with its neighbors for so long that the thought of war against them was abhorrent to most of the Council’s members. Even preparing for such a war raised fears and doubt the likes of which they had never had to confront before.

The was the first thing Dagmauru had worked on. He had spent what felt like an eternity convincing the Council of the need for stronger defenses. The gods had aided him in that. By leaving their half baked monsters still prowling about the realm they’d made it easy to argue for new and better weapons, and more troops to keep the people safe at all times. Nothing came before the safety of the people of the realm. It was an argument that carried every debate.

Dag and Bal kept their victories in that arena small and low key though. Too great a change, to quickly, especially outside the umbrella of a terrible external calamity, and their plans would be dashed by the unreasoning backlash of the Undying who wished to never see the world become unfamiliar and strange.

Instead they moved slowly forward, delving slightly deeper into the mysteries of their magics with each season, and crafting ever stronger (and more deadly) spells from what they discovered.

Few in the Council knew the real depths to which Dagmuaru had set his researchers. The work was tricky and dangerous they had been told and the realities of what the researchers  had done was hidden behind project names and code words.

The researchers themselves were cut off from the Deep Roots, in part to shield them from distraction but more to enforce that all of their communication with the outside world went through Dagmauru or his staff. The horrors they’d created were not easily understood by those who hadn’t followed their work across many lifetimes. It was for the best that the Council not have to be fully aware of the forces they deployed, in Dag’s view. The Council needed only to know that they had unstoppable might at their disposal and that the time had come to use it.

“Sir, we are receiving reports from the warfronts,” a Blinet said.

“Which ones,” Dagmauru asked, hope soaring in his chest that his predictions would prove to be true. He could manage in any turn of events, but if he’d guessed correctly then the battles to come would be so much easier.

“We have reports from the spy crows which circle the Royal Palace of Senkin, and our troops in Gallagrin,” Blinet said. “There is also one other report, an unexpected one.”

Dagmauru narrows his eyes. Unexpected and aligning with his predictions did not measure up well.

“Where is this report from?” he asked.

“An elf,” the Blinet said. “She claims to have escaped from Senkin carrying intelligence which will aid our cause.”

“What sort of intelligence?” Dagmauru asked, the tingling of hope restrained buzzing in the tips of his fingers.

“The true layout of the Senkin reserve forces,” Blinet said. “We have also captured a Gallagrin Pact Warrior who seemed to be pursuing the elf.”

“What is the elf’s name?” Dagmauru asked, a delighted suspicion arising in him.

“She gave it as ‘Lafli’ sir,” Blinet said.

Slowly a smile spread across Dagmauru’s face. He knew the Lafli clan. They were sympathizers he had spent the better part of a century wooing to the Green Council’s cause. For the daughter to arrive at the eve of the emergency session was the last bit of proof he needed. He was going to win. When the dust settled, the Council would no longer be the smallest of the realms and the world would respect its power.

Alari held her breath as they cleared the edge of the forest, emerging from the thick undergrowth into a fire ravaged wasteland.

“This is it,” Iana said. “This where we found them.”

Though the sound was generated by the magic of the Warbringer, Alari could hear the thick tension in Iana’s words.

No ten year old should have been asked to contend with the carnage that lay before them. The charred skeletons of various forest creatures were still visible in the ruined wasteland and the thick carpet of grey ash had yet to sprout any growth.

“There’s no green left here?” Alari asked. Even in Gallagrin, there would usually be some errant weeds surging forth to prove their resiliency. It was impossible to imagine that the Council’s botanicals weren’t similarly hardy.

“The fire burned too hot,” Iana said. “Everything died.”

“But the winds, certainly they would carry new seeds to take root?” Alari asked, piecing together what she saw with what she suspected.

“Seeds that land on this soil wither and die too,” Iana said. “They left us with nothing here.”

Alari grimaced. She’d hoped she would find some signs of new growth. Some signs that the burning had been a tragic accident. The unbroken ash before her though spoke to a different purpose.

“Put me down,” she said. “I need to see something.”

Iana complied, bending the Warbringer down so that it’s should was only a few feet off the ground. Alari stepped down and walked into the ash. The burning odor was still strong, but underneath the physical aroma there was a scent she’d wished wouldn’t be there.

“There’s an enchantment that remains,” she said, the magic in her nostrils more revolting than the odor of the ash.

“What kind of enchantment?” Iana asked.

“I can’t say for sure,” Alari said. “Analysis isn’t my forte. All I can make out is that it’s Senkin magic and that it’s linked to the fire.”

“The fire’s gone,” Iana said. “We tore the one’s who were casting it apart.”

Another thing which no ten year old should have been asked to do. Alari knew she needed to remain impartial and calm, but her patience was starting to wear away on multiple sides. Senkin shouldn’t have been here, and the Green Council should never have been free to employ children in the capacities that it did.

“The casters are dead, but I don’t think their fire has left this field,” Alari said, focusing on the problem at hand instead of the broader ones that loomed on the horizons. “I’m guessing at this but it feels like the things that burned are still blazing on the spiritual plane.”

“What does that mean?” Iana asked. “They’re ash here, how can they still be burning. We stopped them!”

Desperation gripped the young girl’s voice, and Alari remembered the creche that had been destroyed.

“The things we see here that were destroyed are gone,” she said. “They’ve burned as much as they’re ever going to. The ashes that remain are a sort of spiritual conduit though I think, ready to channel the flames back to this world if something else tries to take root here.”

Alari couldn’t be sure that some aspect of the plants, or worse the children from the creche, weren’t still being torn apart by the fire, but she was reasonably certain nothing sentient was still suffering. Death had swept the ruined landscape, ending all pain and anguish for those it took as was its province. Alari knew that would be little comfort for Iana, since she found it only sparse comfort for herself.

“So nothing will ever grow here again?” Iana asked.

“Enchantments don’t last forever, but some of them do linger for a very long time,” Alari said. “Unless they’re broken.”

“Can you do that?” Iana asked. “Can you fix what’s wrong here?”

“Maybe,” Alari said. “This is well outside the reach of my dominion, and I’m not certain if I even should.”

“Why would you leave it like this?” Iana asked. “This is an abomination. There should be flowers here, or something. We can’t let them win!”

“I know,” Alari said. “I don’t understand why your Council hasn’t broken the enchantment already though, and that makes me cautious.”

“Maybe they didn’t know about it?” Iana said.

“The Council has better magic weavers than anyone else in the realms,” Alari said. “They know exactly what this enchantment is, and the exact cost of breaking it.”

“Maybe they’re not strong enough?” Iana asked.

“If there’s one thing your attack proved beyond a doubt, it’s that the Green Council is far from weak,” Alari said. “No, I think they’re leaving this here as an example.”

“To who?” Iana asked.

“Not to Gallagrin,” Alari said. “Or to Senkin. The Council wouldn’t speak to either one of us.”

“Who else is there?” Iana asked.

“There are the other realms,” Alari said. “Inchesso, Authzang. They’re the closest to being involved in this too. At least from the Council’s point of view. But neither of those will have any interest in entangling themselves in a war between the Council and Senkin.”

“Could they be waiting until we’ve conquered Senkin to use this as proof of why the conquest should be accepted?” Iana asked.

Alari turned and smiled. For a girl who’d been raised as a disposable weapon, Iana had the sort of insight and cleverness that Alari prized.

“That’s certainly possible,” Alari said. “A completed conquest is much more difficult to argue with, and this could help ease the burden of assenting to it after the fact. The only problem I see is that by waiting until the conquest was complete, when there would be no Senkin voices to respond to the allegations, there would be an inevitable belief that the Council fabricated this scene after the fact.”

“We would never do this to our own,” Iana said, her spirit rising in her voice.

“The history of the realms suggests that each of us would do far worse than this if it came to getting what we desired,” Alari said.

“We’re not…” Iana began to say but Alari cut her off gently.

“…willing to slay a loyal soldier in order to avoid speaking to a foreign queen?” Alari said.

Iana was silent for a moment before mumbling, “That’s different.”

“It is,” Alari said. “But it’s still wrong.”

“I failed them,” Iana said.

“You failed no one,” Alari said. “At every moment, you’ve been loyal to your homeland and worked to preserve and protect it. If anyone failed, it’s the one who commanded you.”

“I should have been stronger,” Iana said.

Alari let a small, weary sigh, escape her lips.

“That’s a lie,” she said.

“A lie? How can needing to be strong enough to win be a lie?” Iana asked.

“Because it traps you,” Alari said. “The idea that you need more strength. That if you can just grab enough power, you can make everything ok. That you can protect everyone and always win.”

“Isn’t that what you did though?” Iana asked. “You became queen and now you can beat everyone.”

Alari sank to her knees and reached into the ash, her mind falling back through a panoply of images. Halrek betraying her. Her noble’s rebelling against her. Her citizens dying one after another after another under her father’s barbarism. Her stillborn child. All of her failures. All of the things that rested inside her like blades of glass, never quite growing so dull than the memory of them couldn’t slice through her sternest defenses.

“I’m not here because I can beat everyone,” Alari said. “I’m here because I can’t.”

Iana was silent, waiting for Alari to explain.

“For all the power that comes with being a Queen, I can’t change the world,” she said. “Not on my own. I need people to work with me. To stop this war, I need the Council and Senkin to want to stop the war. To stop the wars that will follow, I need the other realms to come together and agree that they don’t ever want this to happen again.”

“They’ll do that though,” Iana said. “Won’t they? Once you tell them about this?”

“I hope so,” Alari said. “But that’s another reason why I am unsure about breaking this enchantment.”

“”Because if you do there will be less proof for the other realms to see what happened here,” Iana said. The sorrowful slump of her shoulders was writ large on the Warbringer she piloted.

“We don’t have to stay here,” Alari said, rising to her feet again. “I can bear direct witness to this before the other monarchs now. And I can speak to the enchantment on these ashes.”

“I understand,” Iana said, her voice small and hollow despite the booming depth of the Warbringer’s speech.

Alari looked around the ashed remains of the once verdant forest.

“This place serves as support for my words,” she said after a long moment. “But it’s not the only support they could have.”

“What else would convince the other realms?” Iana asked.

“Are you willing to speak to them?” Alari asked. “To tell your story whole and true?”

“They’d never listen to me,” Iana said. “I’m not important enough.”

“You have the Queen of Gallagrin’s on your shoulder,” Alari said, hopping back onto her perch. “You’ve led forces in one of the most important battles in the past millennia and you have personal experience and insight with the incident in question. Trust me, you are more important than you can even imagine.”

“Won’t the ashes be even more convincing though?” Iana asked.

“No,” Alari said. “They won’t. Walk us out into the fields.”

Iana hesitated and then took a step forward. The ponderous bulk of the Warbringer kicked up a cloud of soot that rose to the giant’s waist.

At first that seemed to be the extent of what they were accomplishing but as the Warbringer moved out into the field and the grey ash settled back to the ground, it became rapidly obvious that something in it had changed.

“Why are we leaving a swath of black in our wake?” Iana asked.

“That’s what the ashes should look like,” Alari said. “We’re disenchanting them.”

“What? How are we doing that?” Iana asked.

“Your Warbringer, it knows what the Council’s plant-life should look like, spiritually,” Alari said. “I’m using it as a pull the enchantment from the ashes. They can return to the soil and nurture new life again.”

“But why? I thought we needed to preserve the enchantment? For the other realms?” Iana asked.

“If the other realms won’t accept your word and mine as to what was here, then physical evidence will do little to convince them either,” Alari said. “Also, this abomination needs to be purged. If the land can’t heal then neither will its people.”

“Do you have enough strength for this though?” Iana asked.

“We’ll have to see,” Alari said. “So far it’s not proving difficult, but there’s a lot of devastation. Take us over to the far edge there and we can start working in rows.”

Iana stepped up the Warbringer’s pace, ash blackening into rich fertilizer for the soil with each step. When she reached the far side of the burned area though, she paused.

“What does this say?” she asked, pointing at a plaque on a small pillar at the edge of the burned area.

“Let me see that,” Alari said, jumping from the Warbringer’s shoulder.

She studied the pillar and the plaque for a minute before speaking.

“The writing is in Senkin’s script,” she said. “It calls this the ‘Treaty Stone’. What treaty is it referring to?”

“I don’t know,” Iana said, “but there’s a divine sigil on the back side of the pillar. One of ours.”

“So clearly a treaty between Senkin and the Green Council,” Alari said. “Not surprising given it’s location.”

“See if the pillar is hollow,” Iana said. “We store things in stone vaults like this sometimes.”

Iana twisted the top of the pillar, which came off easily. From the hollow core, she draw forth a tube of gold with the seals of both the Green Council and Senkin cast in the wax that held the tube’s top sealed shut. Without hesitation, Alari broke the seals and drew forth the scroll that lay within.

“What does it say?” Iana asked.

“It codifies water rights,” Alari said, her eyes narrowing.

“Water rights?” Iana asked, confused how something so arcane could be meaningful compared to the destruction that lay behind them.

“Yes,” Alari said, her gaze going distant. “The lake. It belongs to the Green Council, but it feed rivers that run down into Senkin.”

“So?” Iana asked.

“So the people of Senkin depend on those rivers to water their crops, and sustain their villages. The Treaty established Senkin’s right to depend on the rivers. The Green Council agreed never to dam them or restrict their flow.”

“There’ve been no dams built though,” Iana said.

“By the Treaty, the Council agreed to keep this whole area as undeveloped land,” Alari said.

“Wait, they saw our creche and thought it was a dam? So they burned it all down?” Iana asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Alari said. “If they knew something was here, they would have targeted that directly. They burned indiscriminately because they were trying to ensure that the Council couldn’t take their water away.”

“It’s been thousands of years though,” Iana said. “We’ve never taken their water away. Why would they do this now?”

“Because of me,” Alari said. “Because I showed the world that one realm can conquer another. I don’t know who on Senkin’s side did it, probably whichever Duke controls the province across the border, but they tried to steal a march on the conflict they saw coming.”

“By killing our young?” Iana asked.

“Yes,” Alari said. “Whether they meant to or not, that’s exactly what they did. And then failed to confess their sins when you invaded out of fear than Marie Senkin would behead them.”

“We killed the people burned our lands though,” Iana said.

“You killed the ones who wielded the flames,” Alari said. “The ones who ordered them to do it though? I guarantee you they remained safe at home.”

“Then we should slay them too,” Iana said.

“There is a deeper problem here,” Alari said. “Whoever authorized the building of the creche did so knowing that they were constructing it on land they’d pledged never to develop on. A Senkin wielded the flames that killed your young, but given how well your places are hidden, it’s likely they had no idea what they were burning. The people who chose to build here though knew that they were placing the younglings in unprotected territory.”

“Why would they do that?” Iana asked.

“Did you question the order to invade Senkin?” Alari asked.

“No,” Iana said, seeing Alari’s point. “And the Council was unanimous about it too.”

“Then that’s your reason,” Alari said. “Someone on the Council wanted this war and sacrificing children of the realm was an acceptable sacrifice in their eyes to make it happen.”

In the forest on the far side of the burned swath, something ominous rumbled towards them. The Council had caught up to them again, and Alari had to wonder how much farther they would go to keep their secrets.

Undine tried to sit comfortably. It should have been an easy task. The cushions on his chair would have made clouds seem harsh and overly stiff.  Whatever craftsman had manufactured the royal furniture for Senkin was beyond a master of his trade. Even the fruit of so skillful an artisan though was not enough to allow for relaxation in the presence of the monarch of Senkin.

“Have you tried the mistberry tarts?” Marie Senkin asked. “The berries are harvested from our estates in the Blue Coast Hills.”

“They are exquisite Your Majesty,” Undine said. “There isn’t any chance that they can retain that wonderful sweetness over a night of transport is there?”

The Senkin Queen huffed a small laugh.

“Thinking to start an import business?” she asked.

“Only for personal use,” Undine said. “I am spoiled by the fare you provide. For as much as I love my queen, her court cannot compare to the culinary mastery yours possesses.”

Undine felt spoiled by more than the cuisine the Queen of Senkin provided. She was also bestowing an unusual amount of attention on him, the latest of which being a dinner to which only he was invited.

Dining with royalty was something Undine was prepared for. He knew the proper forms of etiquette and had mastered the basics of making harmless and charming small talk when required, so as not to upset anyone’s digestion. Those talents were largely predicated around being in a group setting though. Having a monarch’s full and undivided attention was an arena Undine had never expected to find himself in.

“We are glad our people excel in that,” Queen Marie said. “Though we must confess that the greater variety of herbs and spices which grow in our climate work in our favor.”

“The blessings of the Sleeping Gods are nothing if not varied,” Undine said. “It’s a credit to your realm that you’ve learned to do so much with them though.”

“Yes, Senkin holds many blessings,” Marie said. “The question is for how much longer they will remain ours?”

Undine placed his cutting fork and knife back beside his plate and picked up his small portions fork. He didn’t spear the next tidbit of food though, sensing he would need to be able to speak freely for a while.

Monarchs were different from other people. They held power both magical and political that only another monarch could understand the weight of. For all that though, they were still mortal. Human or Elf, Merrow or Sylph, whatever the ruler’s race, they were still prone to the frailties and insecurities that beset any other sapient being.

Marie Senkin was no different. She was many things and more powerful than Undine knew he could guess, but despite her strength and intelligence, she was also afraid.

Afraid of losing her kindgom, afraid of the suffering her subject would endure in the conflict to come. She was one of most powerful beings in the realms, but she still wasn’t strong enough to fix the problem before her on her own.

“I cannot speak for the future with certainty,” Undine said. “But I can say that Gallagrin will not stand for the destruction of any of the realms. The Council’s advance has been halted and we will see this conflict ended in a sustainable peace.”

“Yes, we have ample evidence of that desire in the insanity of your Queen’s actions so far,” Marie said.

Undine remained silent. Even in private with the Senkin Queen he couldn’t voice his support of the notion that Queen Alari’s solo trip into the Council’s realm was lunacy, however much he agreed with that appraisal.

Marie used her fork to pick up a slice of pear that had been coated in a thick raspberry sauce. Between nibbles on the sweet fruit she said, “We have been presented with a plan to assault the Council’s territory.”

“A bold move,” Undine said, wheels turning in his mind.

“Uncharacteristically so,” Marie said. “Our generals are not prone to extremes of action, or any action which could expose them to harm. And yet, one of our most sensible generals, Pentacourt chose this afternoon to present us with a plan to assemble our Grand Army and take the battle to our enemies homeland.”

Undine held off eating anything for a moment longer.

“The circumstances are unusually dire,” he said. “Perhaps General Pentacourt was pushed to unusual action by the unusual gravity of the threat before you?”

“Or perhaps he was inspired by one of our guests from Gallagrin,” Marie said. “Judging from your Queen’s actions, a direct frontal assault seems to be the sort of strategy which your realm favors.”

Undine smiled, a sliver of his confusion at being alone at dinner with the Queen of Senkin resolved. She wanted answers, and she didn’t want them clouded by what her flock of advisors might say or think. Without them around, Undine could afford to ignore the geopolitical implications of what he said since it only mattered how Marie Senkin reacted to his words, not how her advisors would expect her to react to them.

“That also seems likely,” Undine said. “I believe General Pentacourt had dinner yesterday evening with Duke Telli. I would be shocked if they didn’t speak of the state of the invasion.”

The Queen knew who her Generals were dining with. Undine was sure of that, so acknowledging it wasn’t a violation of any confidences. More importantly trying to be circumspect would have sent exactly the wrong message to Queen Marie. She wasn’t looking to punish either Duke Telli or Undine. If she was interested in that, she would have had them dragged to the dungeon as spies.

“That leaves us in the precarious position of allowing Gallagrin to rule our realm, if only indirectly,” Marie said.

“Anyone who would claim such is unworthy of gracing your presence,” Undine said. “In his role as your advisor, Pentacourt collected strategic information. That it came from a foreign Duke is a credit to his ability to draw on diverse sources of intelligence.”

“But as the source was foreign, the plan presented is necessarily flawed,” Marie said. She took a long pull from her wineglass and relaxed back into her chair, the resignation that twisted her lips the only visible sign of the turmoil that gnawed at her.

“All plans are, by virtue of attempting to predict the unpredictable future, flawed,” Undine said. “Is there a particular weakness with the plan Pentacourt presented that renders it nonviable?”

“Yes,” Marie said. “Althought it would be kinder to say it is suboptimal. That’s the most damning part of it.”

“I am certain Duke Telli would be willing to incorporate any operational intelligence he lacked when fabricating the original plan,” Undine said.

“He wouldn’t dare,” Marie said. “Not to correct this mistake. Not if he wished to remain in our good graces. And yet, curse your Queen, he must have known that. Wretched Duke.”

“What is it that Duke Telli omitted from the plan to assault the Council’s lands?” Undine asked.

“His plan is bold and reckless and daring,” Marie said. “It’s success is success in all arenas, and so its failure would be similarly complete.”

“The Duke has played for high stakes before,” Undine said. “It was his report to my commander Lady Akorli as to the treason of his father which prevented the attempted coup last fall. If she had failed to end the threat the previous Duke Telli posed, Ren and his husband would have been executed in one of our spectacularly messy fashions.”

“We are unused to such dire stakes,” Marie said. “We are not certain that our constitution is the equal of them.”

“I don’t believe anyone is equal to the tasks life puts before them,” Undine said. “The deepest trials we face are the ones where we become more than we are.”

“And yet we can never be more than we can be,” Marie said.

“No one can ever know what we can be though,” Undine said. “That is unwritten and can only be sketched from the choices we make.”

“We wish we had your youth and optimism,” Marie said.

“I wish I had your wisdom and bearing,” Undine said.

“They would ill suit you,” Marie said. “You make too fine a gentleman to be wasted on royalty.”

“Are we not all meant to aspire to the example which royalty sets for us?” Undine asked.

“Sleeping Gods, no,” Marie said. “We had the misfortune to be mistaken for a princess when we were born and so our whole life has been shaped by the duties therein, rather than the duties of the peasant girl we sometimes feel we should have been. We make a terrible role model for those who can find their happiness without the oppression of a court and realm depending on them.”

“You make me feel that I am the fortunate one among us,” Undine said.

“Born to greater freedom were you?” Marie asked.

“Ultimately yes,” Undine said. “As you were taken for a princess when you were born, I was taken for a daughter. I won’t claim that impression was easy to correct, but it was worth the effort.”

“Your family stood against you?” Marie asked.

“No, their spirits stand with me even today,” Undine said. “My adoptive family was more mixed. Pa was delighted, he’d always wished for a son to share his craft and time with. Ma took a bit longer to come around, but once we started forging my armor together we found common ground.”

“Gallagrin is the realm of transformations,” Marie said. “Couldn’t you simply magic yourself into a more accurate form?”

“I couldn’t wait until I gained a pact spirit to resolve the issue of my identity,” Undine said. “And, in truth, pact magic offers few options in that regards.”

“We were under the impression that bodily transformation was at the heart of Gallagrin’s magic,” Marie said.

“It is, but by necessity such transformations are temporary,” Undine said. “In any pact bond there is the mortal host and the spirit. During a transformation the two are fused more strongly together than at any other time. That is why it’s so important that a clear line be maintained between the two at other times.”

“So that the spirit doesn’t overwhelm its host?” Marie asked.

“So that they don’t overwhelm each other,” Undine said. “To retain our individuality, the core essence of who we are, we must maintain some separation from each other. If we merge for too long then the distinctness that defines each of us is lost. That’s what leads to Beserkers. The essence of the host and the spirit are blended together and neither has enough sense of self to exercise any restraint. Since most transformation take place on the battlefield that means the situations Berserkers finds themselves in are invariably violent and hostile, and so they react in kind.”

“So you cannot permanently transform yourself then?” Marie asked.

“Not via pact magic,” Undine said. “I am not quite as I would have been, thanks to some alchemical potions, and not quite as I would wish to be, but I am happy with who I am now, most days anyways.”

“You’ve lead an interesting life Guardian,” Marie said. “Perhaps we would have your courage if we’d be faced with such challenges.”

“You do not wish to be me, Your Majesty,” Undine said. “The world needs a Queen Marie Senkin and anyone else would be only a poor imitation.”

“A poor imitation would be appreciated at this hour,” Marie said. “Though we would not inflict this calling on anyone else, we suppose.”

“Calling Your Majesty?” Undine asked.

“Your Duke’s plan,” Marie said. “It calls for our best and strongest forces. It calls for us.”

Undine blinked and set down his fork.

“Our forces must succeed in this endeavor,” Marie said, drawing herself up in her chair and breathing in regal authority. “We will accompany them ourselves. We will follow the example of your Queen and bring the might of Senkin’s throne to bear against the forces the Council has assembled.”

Undine saw the courage that Marie thought she lacked. The Senkin Queen knew the terrible risk she was taking. She knew she would be the prime target for every Council soldier on the field. She knew she couldn’t couldn’t hide behind her troops but would have to march in front of them, blazing a path with the power she carried as she led them all into greater danger than anyone in their realm had ever faced, and yet she was going to go anyways.

“Though I am sworn to another, and though my loyalty and honor lies with Gallagrin, if you would have me, I would march at your side and defend you from all harm,” Undine said.

Marie Senkin nodded and allowed a small, willowy smile to grace her countenance.

“We would like that,” she said. “Though you are not sworn to us, we would feel our courage bolstered if you were by our side.”

“My course is chosen then,” Undine said. “Gallagrin fights against the Green Council and I fight by your side.”

Dae caught the enemy’s blade less than an inch away from her throat. As parries went, it wasn’t her finest work, but since her head remained attached to her shoulders she didn’t worry about her technique too much.

The Council Soldier who faced her was an elf, half a head taller than Dae was. He wore a strange form fitting armor that looked like it was grown around him from some dense variety of wood. Against an unarmed foe, the soldier would have been invincible. Against someone with an axe, he was decidedly weaker and against someone with a Pact Blade, the armor offered little, if any, protection.

Dae’s sword was still the normal blade she wore as part of her standard garb. It couldn’t penetrate the soldier’s armor except through the tedious process of hacking away at the wood directly. Ogma’s blade, however, was not so encumbered.

She skewered the soldier and when he reached for a frond at his belt to magic the wound away, she spun her blade in a small arc and then stepped over his headless corpse to press the battle onwards.

“Duke Zendli has fallen,” Duchess Harli said as she stepped up to fill the gap that Ogma’s charge left.

“Did you see where?” Dae asked, scanning the battlefield again after the distraction of a Council soldier breaking through their ranks.

All around them dozens of isolated melee’s raged, each with thousands of Council forces contesting against a scant handful of Gallagrin’s nobles.

Dae’s group was the largest of the Gallagrin squads, numbering eight in total. In part that was because they were the vanguard, the squad that had rushed in the furthest and the fastest. They’d flown ahead of the rest of the Gallagrin forces in order to disrupt the Council’s communications and prevent their forces from joining together. Thanks to the unexpected attack the Council was unable to bring their full weight to bear in any specific area of the battle whose front was less a line than an amorphous blob.

The other reason Dae had chosen to surround herself with twice as many nobles as the rest of the groups had was because of Kirios, her Pact Spirit. Her hope that a battle of historic significance would be enough to coax him into transforming with her had proven to be an empty one. While the other nobles strode and leapt and flew into battle arrayed in magic the likes of which the world had rarely ever seen gathered in one place, Dae entered the fray as nothing more than herself.

“Zenli was with the group on the rise,” Duchess Harli said, pointing to the cliffs to the east of them. “He got pushed off and fell into that horde of Marsh Trolls.”

Marsh Trolls were a race unique to the Green Council’s domain. With a legendary capacity to regenerate damage, and claws that were mystically hardened to the point where they could shred steel armor like it was the thinnest paper, even some Gallagrin fairy tales featured them as terrors to be avoided.

“We’re moving east then,” Dae shouted. “Zenli found some Troll Ichor, let’s go folks before he bottles it all up!”

Troll blood retained some of the amazing healing capacities and was a frequently sought after ingredient for healing potions. It wasn’t greed to get their hands on such a valuable substance that convinced the nobles around Dae to pivot from their own battles and rush to render aid to one of their fallen brethren, but the lure certainly put some extra pep in their stride.

“Do we know Zenli even needs to be rescued?” Ogma asked, resuming her place at Dae’s side as they raced across the battlefield.

A small troop of Council forces, no more than a hundred or so, rallied in front of them, a rank of spears ready and archers behind them. The Gallagrin nobles didn’t even slow when they met them. Arrows shattered against Pact Armor chests and the spears were reduced to kindling as the nobles overran and the left the Council troops in the dust behind them.

Dae used her fellow nobles as both sword and shield, trailing a few feet in their wake to allow them to break the enemy’s ranks and create a clear path for her to run though.

Unlike many who bore a Pact Spirit, Dae had never given up on her training regime. Occasionally she’d been too hungover to perform it, but even that was becoming a thing of the past. Her fellow Pact bearers would tease her on occasion but without that commitment, it would have been impossible for Dae to keep up with her squad. As she vaulted over a pile of bodies the nobles had left in their wake and the burning in her lungs reached barely tolerable levels, she had to reflect on whether working to make something impossible merely agonizingly difficult instead was really such a brilliant overall plan.

“This assault succeeds or fails on our being untouchable,” Dae said, fighting for her breath as they ran. If she’d been transformed, the furious speed they were running would have taken nothing from her. As it was, she was slowing them down and was still barely able to speak. “If one of us is slain, the rest are going to become much more tentative. And that will lose us the fight.”

“Even if it’s someone you’d just as soon see dead?” Ogma asked.

“Yes,” Dae said between breaths. “Definitely then. This isn’t a trap to kill off the Queen’s opponents.”

“If Zenli gets a chance it could become a trap to kill you off,” Duchess Harli said. Her armor bore the pattern of stags flying through a forest. If unrestrained, she could have reached Zenli and been back already, but Dae refused to let the members of the vanguard range freely.

The noble’s had grumbled about that, but once they were crushed in the press of battle each become silently grateful to have their companions around them. They might be able to face odds of a thousand to one and win, but then again they might not and the unknown was always easier to face with an ally by your side.

“I’ll have to make sure we keep feeding him Council forces then,” Dae said.

“It seems like there’s plenty to go around,” Ogma said, spitting a goblin on her sword as he angled down towards them on a glider  that was filled with some form of combustible material.

Dae rolled away from the exploding glider, while Ogma let the fiery sap run over her, the heat providing a pleasant warming of her armor’s surface.

The Gallagrin noble’s had descended on the Council’s forces while they were still focused on creating a wide range of defensible positions. Without those, supplying troops within a foreign realm was going to be difficult to impossible, but the cost of setting the positions up had been that the Council’s army was scattered and distracted when Gallagrin’s attack fell on them.

“They probably thought they were bringing enough troops,” Dae said.

The army that marched into Gallagrin was an impressive one. Dae estimated she could see at least ten thousand troops and she knew that their forces held a backline and two flanking wings which were obscured from her vantage point.

Thanks to the Miner’s Guild, Dae was reasonably sure she knew where each of her enemy’s forces were deployed though and thanks to the speed Pact Armor provided, all of them were embroiled in battle.

From the Green Council’s view the strategy had to look like madness. Sending small squads against entire regiments of the Council’s forces. Even worse, engaging every unit of the Council’s forces at once meant that there was no backing out for Gallagrin’s fighters. With three to four Pact fighters in a squad, there was no one who could form a defensive line if the squad was injured and pinned down.

Of course if the noble’s needed to retreat, Pact Armor offered many options for quitting the battlefield faster than the Council’s forces could follow. That was something the Council might have known, but since that level of transformation wasn’t commonly available to Pact Soldiers, it wasn’t the kind of thing any sane tactical planner on the Council’s side would have given serious consideration to.

Dae smiled at the thought. The Council expected her to bring a force to bear against their invasion, but no one in all of the realms could have expected this. Under no other circumstances could she had coerced Gallagrin’s nobility to fight personally in such a small army. It would never be an option again either.

Unleashing the power of the collective nobility would be a tactic which the other realms would watch for in the future. As it was, there was still a chance that someone would react fast enough to cause trouble in the provinces which were bereft of leadership and protection, but with inter-realm conflicts in an uncertain area, Dae was willing to bet that no one would tempt fate by trying such a bold move against Gallagrin, at least until it was clear that Dae hadn’t left behind any traps to cover the absence of the various nobles.

“They have him pinned!” Duchess Harli called.

“Take them apart!” Dae ordered and held back to watch for the Council units that were repositioning to aid the Marsh Trolls. “Ogma, we’ve got another squad of Poison Archers west-southwest from here. They seem to have noticed us.”

“That’s a shame for them,” Ogma said. “Can you hold out for thirty?”

In another battle that might have referred to thirty minutes, or thirty hours, or thirty days. Given the exposure of the Poison Archer’s position and Ogma’s speed though, Dae knew she meant thirty seconds.

“Go,” Dae said. “We’ll be here.”

The Marsh Trolls were a more resilient foe than the archers. Duke Zenli was holding them off but on his own he wasn’t able to exploit the openings he could create. The arrival of Dae’s squad helped change the balance of the fight. Together the Gallagrin nobles were able to slice the Troll ranks apart fast enough to allow Zenli to reposition and join up with them. The balance of force slipped back in the Council’s favor though more Trolls threw themselves from the cliffs to join the battle, pinning the nobles and Dae between a wall of stone on one side and a wall of regenerating flesh on the other.

“I never thought I’d be wishing for a dragon to show up on the battlefield,” Dae said.

“I’ve always hated those stinking lizards,” Duchess Harli said. “But I agree. A nice spot of fire would be welcome.”

Dae parried a blow for Harli, severing the fingers from a Troll’s claws. She was surprised at the force of her own blow, and surprised as the cutting power of a sword that should have long since been blunted into little more than a metal bat. The wounds she inflicted made for a bloody mess, but, unfortunately, they didn’t inconvenience the Troll much since its fingers grew back instantly.

Or almost instantly. Duchess Harli use the opportunity to stab the Troll and drive it back into its nearest companion, the force of her blow blasting a hole through both creature’s chests.

The creatures roared in unison, but refused to die like any reasonable mortal thing would. The one Harli pinned smacked her so hard in response that she flew sideways head over heads, and skidded to a stop several dozen yards to Dae’s left.

Dae stepped forward and, on instinct, threw her off-hand knife into the Troll’s. It reared back and clutched at the hilt but Dae was able to land a palm strike on end of knife, driving it forward to sever the creature’s spine.

Paralyzed it dropped to the ground, taking Dae’s knife with it. She let it stay there. The only method she had for preventing the creature’s return to instant healing was to leave the knife in place so that the spinal cord couldn’t regrow through it.

While that seemed to be a viable tactic against a single enemy however, it proved insufficient for the situation at hand where they were faced with more Trolls than Dae could carry knives to disable. In fact, before she could even unsheath a second knife, another Troll knocked her to the ground, bloodying her lips and bruising her arm and side. Before it could finish her off however, Duchess Harli was back, a spinning swirl of blades and fire that unravelled the Troll standing above Dae.

Dae kicked herself back and away from the blazing remains as they dropped onto her.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Another goblin tried to dive unto me,” Harli said. “Looks like their glider bombs work just fine on Trolls.”

“I’ll have to get one of those for myself,” Duke Zenli said, joining them as he spun around a troll. Dae couldn’t see his face, since it was hidden under his pact helmet, but the formerly sour and bitter man sounded surprisingly cheerful. Despite the poor turn he’d taken in being pushed off a cliff and surrounded by unbeatable enemies, the rush of battle seemed to agree with the Duke.

“Your family is good with alchemicals isn’t it?” Dae asked, recalling one of the pillars of the Zenli wealth.

“We have a few prodigies in our ranks,” Zenli said.

“Including yourself as I recall,” Dae said. Zenli had lost faith in Alari, but he was still a son of Gallagrin and on the battlefield that was enough to unite them in fine spirits.

“I’ve dabbled a bit,” Zenli said, a hint of pride in his voice.

“If the goblin fire is interesting to you, collect as much as you want,” Dae said. “We can wait before pressing forward again.”

“Really?” Zenli asked. “There’s still a lot of ground to reclaim.”

“Take your time and collect your samples so they won’t spoil,” Dae said. “We’ll watch your back.”

“Why are you doing this?” Zenli asked.

“We’re not just here to defeat them,” Dae said. “We’re going to make them regret ever coming into our realm. If there’s anything we can take from them, take it. If there’s anything we can learn from them, learn it. I intend to fight this battle once, and only once. When it’s done, I want the world to look at what happened here and never desire to come within a hundred miles of our realm bearing any hostile intent.”

Zenli shook his head and sighed.

“If only our queen had your heart,” he said.

“Who do you think gave me those exact orders?” Dae asked. “She’s merciful to our people, but she’s far from weak. Believe in her again, just like she believes in you.”

Dae marched at the head of the strangest column of troops which Gallagrin had ever assembled. She walked with a smile on her face but the song in her heart held notes of apprehension

“There are nobles who will never forgive you for this,” Ogma Daili said, keeping pace with Dae easily as they trekked along the high road that lead to Gallagrin’s northern province of Moon’s Reach.

“They can join the ranks of the ones who’ll never forgive me for beheading Telli and the Paxmer bastard,” Dae said. “The important thing is that they fight for us.”

“Oh, they’ll do that,” Ogma said. “For as much as they hate you, there’s a lot to be won in hating the Green Council more. Even the ones who are allied with the Council serve to gain from this expedition.”

“It’s the wonderful thing about our nobles,” Dae said. “Offer them just a little chance to plunder a neighboring realm and you only have to demote a handful of them for the others to see the error of their life choices.”

The road to Moon’s Reach was broad and well maintained, thanks in no small part to the policies Alari had enforced over the years of her reign. That the road they had complained about maintaining made their trip easier was something the marching nobles refused to acknowledge. They were enjoying their grumble-fest far too much to allow rational thought into their arguments.

“I understand why you didn’t allow the sky carriages to bring us closer to a defensible position, but why restrict my scouts from using them as well?” Ogma asked.

“For the same reason,” Dae said. “The Council has penetrated our border, but they’re not used to fighting on our terrain. They’re trying to dig in and establish supply lines. We don’t want to give them any more idea that we’re coming for them than we have to.”

“Don’t we need to know where they are though?” Ogma asked. “You’ve got my scouts ranging forward of us, but not far enough to give a complete picture of the Council’s deployments.”

“That’s because I already know how they’ve laid their forces out,,” Dae said. “Your scouts are preceeding us with unlimited kill orders to blind our enemy. I want their vision of us to darken slowly. It’ll be nightfall by the time we make it to Moon’s Reach and by morning it’s going to be ours again. Between then and now I think it’s important that we create a few new nightmares for the Council forces to bring home with them.”

“How do you know where to find them though?” Ogma asked. “Scrying spells?”

“I wish that was an option, but the Council’s spellcraft is significantly better than ours,” Dae said. “Even with the advantage of casting into our realm, we haven’t been able to pierce their veils.”

“How do we know my scouts aren’t walking into a trap then?” Ogma asked.

“They are,” Dae said. “But by now they’ll have connected with the Miner’s Guild, so any traps ahead of them will be easily avoidable.”

“The Miner’s Guild?” Ogma asked.

“If we fly above Moon’s Reach in sky carriages, the Council will spot us, and possibly bring us down, their air forces are formidable too,” Dae said. “But the Old Roads and the Deep Fortresses are something they can’t see or spy on. From down below though, the Miner’s can hear everything that’s going on above them.”

“How did you get the Dwarves to work with you? They’re very protective of their Under Cities I thought?” Ogma asked.

“The guild employs more than just Dwarves”, Dae said. “And I owe them a huge debt for the work they did in helping us assault Paxmer. They like to keep investments of that sort afloat, and if our realm is conquered my debt to them will die along with me. Also, I promised them the mineral rights to their cities and holdings.”

Ogma stopped marching and blinked.

“You did what?”

“It turns out that Queen Alari wasn’t kidding when she gave me the ability to speak in her voice,” Dae said, her gaze fixed ahead while a smile spread across her lips.

“The nobles are going to assassinate you,” Ogma said. “You’ve stolen away their wealth.”

“Some of it,” Dae said. “The reality though is that the Under Clans already own most of mines that produce any real value. The rest are lying unused due to competing claims over their ownership. Those claims are now resolved. That should work out well for the nobles too. They’ll no longer be taxed on assets that aren’t productive and while the Under Clans have gained the rights to pull up precious gems and enchantable ore, they’ll also all be trading in the Royal Market to sell to the businesses who specialize in refining and crafting with their materials.”

“So the noble’s lose money on the resources, but gain it back on the worked goods, the Under Clans lose money on the price of their materials but make it up in volume of sales, and the crown loses money on taxes on the mines but makes it up on taxes on the sale of goods?” Ogma asked.

“And everyone makes slightly more money because the overall system is slightly more efficient. Kemoral thought of the idea,” Dae said. “He’s talented with logistics like that.”

“They’re still going to assassinate you,” Ogma said. “Just for proving them to be needlessly stubborn for centuries now.”

“They’re welcome to try,” Dae said. “The Queen didn’t want me to kill her subjects, but if they chose to commit suicide on my blade, I can’t help but feel it would be the realm’s advantage.”

“This upcoming battle will be a prime chance for anyone who has that in mind,” Ogma said.

“The thought has occurred to me,” Dae said.

“So you’ll stay back at the command tent then?” Ogma asked.

“That would be the safe and smart move,” Dae nodded and picked at her teeth. The mountain air was refreshing but what was to come was going to be messy.

“Safe and smart, so there’s no chance it’s what you’re going to do, is there?” Ogma asked, causing Dae’s smile to broaden even further.

Ogma was fun to work with. The Master Scout seemed had grasped the essentials of Dae’s character shortly after they first met. More importantly, despite being lower rank, Ogma was willing to challenge Dae’s choices, something the Queen’s Knight knew she needed since she didn’t even try to think clearly in some cases.

“I’m going to lead the first charge,” Dae said.

“Please make sure to tell me when that will be so that I can bind you up in our strongest ropes,” Ogma said. “I know that will technically count as assaulting a superior officer, but I believe Queen Alari will not only forgive me but also pin a medal on my chest.”

Dae snickered. Ogma wasn’t wrong. Alari would be furious with Dae for risking herself in battle needlessly, especially given the fact that Dae couldn’t transform freely.

“Our queen left me behind to coordinate the realm’s defense and see that the noble’s came together,” Dae said. “If any of them want to kill me, I at least want them wading through a horde of Council troops to make the attempt. Also, I think the safest place for me to be is surrounded by the nobles who I know are still fully committed to Alari’s reign. By fighting at their side, I can honor the sacrifices they’ve made and show that we are willing to support them, with blood, if need be.”

“Why lead from the vanguard though?” Ogma asked. “That’s the most dangerous unit to be part of.”

“Which is why I need to be there,” Dae said. “Aside from the training they received in their youth, and the skills and knowledge carried by their pact spirits, many of these people have never fought before. I need them to see that I am asking no more of them than I am willing to give myself. We’ve lost too much of Gallagrin’s spirit over the last decade. It’s time we show that we remember how strong we can be together.”

“We are a rather small army though, are we not?” Ogma asked.

“We number over a hundred,” Dae said.

“By last count, the Green Council’s forces numbered in the tens of thousands,” Ogma said. “Including creatures the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

“It’s a shame the numbers are so unbalanced,” Dae said. “They really should have brought more troops.”

“More? You think we can win?” Ogma asked. “I thought this was a delaying tactic until Senkin’s forces could rally and draw the Council back to fight on that front.”

“If anything it’s the reverse,” Dae said. “We’re going to drive so hard into the Green Council’s army that the assault on Senkin should weaken. If we’re successful, the Green Council will feel compelled to deploy their strongest units and seek out as much additional magic as they can muster in order to deal with us.”

“I say again though, there’s only barely more than a hundred nobles in this army,” Ogma said. “We didn’t even let them bring their personal troops.”

“There wasn’t room in the sky carriages,” Dae said. “And they weren’t needed. The Council’s forces are so numerous because they’re all regular troops, even if they are from little seen races like the Insect Warriors.”

“Tens of thousands of regular forces are still quite formidable,” Ogma said.

“Agreed, but consider the true might of the people behind us,” Dae said. “Even the ones who aren’t fighters, still carry a Noble’s Pact Spirit. Our Pact Soldiers, the ones with the weakest spirits, who can only manifest a single piece of armor or weapon, are worth a dozen regular troops, and our Pact Warriors are worth a dozen Pact Soldiers each. A Knight, at least one who takes the job seriously, is worth two dozen Pact Warriors and the Noble a Knight is sworn to holds more power than three dozen of their knights.”

“That approaches a very large number,” Ogma said.

“In simpler terms, with Gallagrin’s nobles united, we alone could demolish an invading army that numbered in the millions,” Dae said.

“You make it sound as though our victory is assured,” Ogma said.

“It’s not,” Dae said. “We have the advantage in power and familiarity with the terrain, but the Council could turn that back against us, or bait us into situations where the extreme concentration of our force would be a detriment.”

“What would you have me do then?” Ogma asked.

“Stay in the background and coordinate communications,” Dae said.

“I can manage that as easily from the front lines as I can from the back,” Ogma said.

“You’re not wrong about the vanguard being a dangerous position,” Dae said. “And unlike our merry band of nobles, you’ve done nothing to warrant placing your life in that level of peril.”

“Do I look like I come from another realm?” Ogma asked, offense heavy in her voice.

“No, with eyes like that you’re as Gallagrin as they come,” Dae said.

“Do I look like a coward of some stripe?” Ogma asked.

Dae chuckled, seeing where the conversation was going.

“You’re bravery is apparent too,” she said. “And there is, of course, room for you in the vanguard if you wish to run with us.”

“Good,” Ogma said. “Because we all know that’s who’ll have the first chance at the really good plunder.”

“Oh my Sleeping Gods!” Dae said, wry amusement in her tone. “The Gallagrin spirit is alive and strong and I’ve found it’s wellspring! That’s the most Gallagrin thing I’ve ever heard someone say.”

“Some things run deeper than even blood,” Ogma said.

“Yes, we’re all going to have a bit of fun with this,” Dae said as they crested the last hill before the Moon’s Reach valley.

Waiting below them were thousands of the Green Council’s forces, foreign troops who had no idea of the kind of hell that was going to be unleashed on them.

Dae called to Kirios, asking if he was ready for them to transform again, only to receive the same sensation she had the last several times she’d asked. If the need was great enough, he would be there for her, but more time was required.

The assault on the Green Council was going to be a battle that would be remembered through the ages, for good or for ill. Dae could only hope that Kirios would find that to be a great enough need.