Chapter 32

Deep inside the forest, inside a home carved into the great world tree itself, an old dark elf calmly walked with steady steps through his own house, as he was on his way to an important meeting. He passed by dozens of pieces of high quality furniture filled with intricate carvings, masterfully created paintings which adorned the walls of his home, sculptures which seemed to come alive the moment you passed them, and weapons that seemed to radiate power all lined the walls of the dark elf’s house.

The old dark elf made his way through these hallways filled with masterworks with an expression of indifference. He didn’t seem to be impressed or moved by any of these works of art. He walked through his home, only to have a change in expression as he arrived at a specific staircase.

There didn’t seem to be anything interesting about this staircase, as it lacked any of the impressive works of art that filled the other parts of the house, but the eyes of the old dark elf lit up as he looked at the stairs sculpted form the bark that the whole house was made from.

He formed a smile, as he quietly made his way up the stairs. He touched the wooden walls with great care, as if he was caressing his own child.

His lovingly gaze did not falter as he climbed the stairs which seemed to go on forever. It took several minutes to reach the top of them, but his expression did not change, as he lovingly gazed at the woodwork surrounding him, and caressed it like a child. The only thing that made his expression falter was a small door in front of him, the stairs ended with the doorway to a spacious room, filled with nothing but a bed, a desk, and a hole in the wall which granted its inhabitant an amazing view.

The room seemed to be close to a hundred metres form the ground, as the old man was granted a whole view of the glades surrounding the world tree, and the forest that stretched beyond them.

It was a magical view, as the old dark elf could see the kingdom the forest had allowed them to build. He could see the houses in the trees, he could see the extensive roadwork they had made on the ground floor, and he could see the beauty of the forest that accompanied almost everything in their society.

The old dark elf stared into the distance for several seconds, before he lightly shook his head.

He turned back to the door sitting next to the stairs, and sighed, for he knew that the decisions made behind that door would influence whether that beautiful view would change.

He walked over to the door, and before he could even make the motion to open the door, it opened for him. The old dark elf didn’t pay this any mind, as he casually strolled through the door, only to find that six individuals were already seated at the table in the adorning room.

He was met with complete silence as they all had mixed expressions on their faces.

However, two stares stood out from the six, as they divided their attention between each other and him. The two glares belonged to Lyrian Allister, and Kalia Elyvia. They had had a rivalry ever since the old dark elf had first met them, and he couldn’t imagine them as anything else, as they had almost always been bickering with each other because of their different points of view and their differing professions.

Lyrian hailed from a family known for its powerful mages and their master enchanters. He had been raised to think rationally, and to prepare for things ahead of time, as a mage would never rely on chance to ensure his survival. He valued creativeness and intelligence, as he would normally try to find the most advantageous position on the battle field, but as he tried to create different strategies, he would overthink. He would try to comprehend the other party’s movements and strategies, only to make it overly intricate, and eventually leading to his force making several unnecessary movements and counter assaults, only to find that the enemy had adapted a much simpler strategy. His advisors had taken to calling him ‘Major Overthinker’.

Kalia hailed from the famous and powerful Elyvia family, which were at the head of the most powerful and honourable knight order in the kingdom, the white stags. She had been raised to believe in her own moral code, and to always uphold her honour. If she was met with overwhelming odds, she was to charge in without hesitation and fight the threat head on, leading to a strategist which valued honour and valour above battle tactics, which could be very frustrating for her advisors, as she would rather meet an enemy on an even playing field, instead of using terrain to her advantage. She was known to lead the charge in most of the battles she participated in, and she was also known for fighting for the whole duration of it, fighting for whole days on end sometimes. However, her strategies would normally lack because of her pride and honour, causing her to have to rely on the prowess of her soldiers to win the battle, while it would have been much easier if she had used tactics.

The old dark elf had been greatly amused through the decades as he had heard countless times of their charades, and had the privilege of seeing them personally several times. He could only be awed by the difference the two forces operated in, as it was like night and day when they were fighting.

However, this divide in ideals and personalities caused them to bicker. They seemed to value bickering more than their honour at times, as they seemed to be holding a staring contest in the middle of such an important meeting.

He quickly organised his thoughts, and started with a solemn yet grateful tone.

“Thank you all for coming here. Today marks the end of the two-year period I had given everyone to come up with a plan to drive back the invasion from the wasteland, or at least contain it. Now, I would like to hear everyone’s thoughts on this. So, let’s start with mister Allister and misses Elyvia, as they seem to be the most enthusiastic about presenting their means of stopping the invasion.”

While he said ‘enthusiastic’, the old dark elf thought he was underplaying their emotions a bit, as he could almost see the sparks flying from Lyrian’s eyes, and he swore that there was a fire burning in Kalia’s right eye.

Complementing her internal arson, Kalia shot up from her chair like it was on fire, and said with a cool yet solemn voice: “My proposal is to fight the enemies one on one. We can challenge the orc leaders to duels, and have them serve us if they lose. The orcs can start fighting the goblins and the other monsters that would come from the wastelands. We would only need to station a small yet elite force of duellers, and another slightly larger force to act as a garrison in case there is an attack on the forest.”

She beamed with pride as she told her proposal, as she had seen it as impeccable. However, while she thought it was impeccable, the other members had differing opinions.

She could hear a snicker from her right, before she heard a melodic tone say: “What makes you think that the orcs will do any better than they are now? They have been fighting the goblins and the monsters from the wastelands for as long as they have lived there, so what makes you think they will have more success now. Even if they will be able to with extensive resource management and leadership, what makes you think they will senselessly throw away their lives just because their new leader ordered it?”

The old druid sitting next to Kalia formed a snide expression on his face. He waited several moments for his argument to sink in with the other members, and to see Kalia’s expression contort, before he continued with the same melodic tone.

“The druids have tried many times to contact the orcs or any create of the wastelands for that matter, but it would always turn out in a show of strength. Even when the druid succeeded in conquering an orc tribe, there would be a constant stream of challengers, as they always thought themselves stronger than the dark elf that governed them. Now, how will that go when you force the tribe to fight like they’re lowly slaves? We would have to reign over them with fear and fear alone, there would be a large stream of challengers constantly coming at the dueller, and there would be a larger chance for them to rebel. Also, I doubt it would be very in line with your knightly honour to reduce any sentient creature to a lowly slave, or am I mistaken?”

The retort was met with mumbles of agreement, and a deadly glare from Kalia. She had seen her plan as perfect, only to have it deconstructed with one snide comment from the man sitting next to her.

She sat back down, as she knew that her plan had been thwarted. She knew that the only sensible thing to do now was give in, as she would only embarrass herself more if she kept on pushing her own argument.

She glared at the other members of the table, and as her gaze finally landed on Lyrian, he smirked at her. He showed the smuggest expression he could conjure up, before he stood up, and announced his plan with a confident tone.

“If I can have your attention please.

I would like to present my own plan, as it does not help trying to reduce the state of the orcs to slaves. Instead, I would like to call upon the forest for help, as the great world tree would be able to lend us the aid of the forest critters, and it might even be able to lend us some of its guardians. Gaining a regiment of ents or even tree kin would greatly aid us in our struggle. I do not desire to use them as a singular force, instead I wish to use them as a complementary force to an army made from the smaller villages. We have only used soldiers and citizens from the larger cities, so it would only be fair and quite effective to mobilize the manpower from the smaller villages in the kingdom.”

Lyrian finished his speech with a confident one, and a satisfied expression. He looked around the table expecting to see the approval of the other members on their faces, only to glance upon pokerfaced expressions. His demeanour did not diminish, as he knew that his plan was reasonable. He knew that there was a lot of unused manpower in the kingdom, and he knew that the forest would move to protect itself, so it would very likely accept their request.

As he was about to ask the other six members on their thoughts, he could not utter a word, as someone else had already spoken.

A stout yet muscular figure sitting opposite of him on Kalia’s left objected to him. He spoke his words with a deep and booming voice which only served to accent his muscular and tanned physique, the dark elf had a full beard, its greyish colour reminded Lyrian more of the dwarven elders than one of their own dark elves. He did have more similarities with the dwarfs besides his facial hair, as he was the head of the Fabor family. The family was known for the weapons and armours they were able to craft, as they were the top notch in the dark elf kingdom, and could even rival some of the blacksmiths from the Arch dwarfs. Their mastery of the craft was unparalleled in the dark elf kingdom, they always struck the iron while it was hot, both literally and figuratively.

True to his nature, he took the opportunity to thoroughly bash Lyrian’s proposal.

“We tried that once already youngling, and it failed miserably. With less people working in the villages, our food produce goes down, and the war effort will come to a grinding halt because of a shortage of supplies. Besides that, the people from the villages are not as trained as the soldiers we train here, and they are not nearly as cohesive or organized like our soldiers, or even our citizens! They aren’t used to actively working in such a large organisation, making it very hard to deploy or even train them. Now, I do think that it is a good idea to ask the world tree for a complementary force if it is necessary, and I did like the suggestion from misses Elyvia using the power structure of orc society to work against them. So, I would like some suggestions that might combine the two plus sides of their story, I assume I’m not the only one?”

His analysation was met with agreed mumbling, as the other three members showed their agreement.

While Fabor was met with agreement from three different members, the old one sitting at the end of the table chuckled, as his plan didn’t require the aid of the world tree, and it did not require to take control of the orcs, it only required them to be used as resources.

He waited for the other four members to propose their plans.

The different families had varying plans, but they had a few things in common, as they were all quite lacklustre, and they all seemed to focus on their own strong points. The Valars family wanted to hire foreign mercenaries or hire the adventurers’ guild from the neighbouring countries to lighten the numbers of the incoming hordes. However, hiring mercenaries and the adventurers’ guild is very expensive, especially if they had to supply their troops on their own, making the financial cost only plausible to the empire wide enterprise the Valars family owns. The other members quickly discarded the plan, as they would not spend every penny they had on foreign mercenaries.

The Fabor family wanted to streamline the infrastructure of the country to allow for better movement of resources, but they didn’t have a real plan to push back the invaders, as they had analysed the situation, and found that the dark elf kingdom simply didn’t have enough manpower. The only thing they could come up with is a scorched earth tactic, simply retreating as much as they could and not give the enemy any resources in return. This causes the enemy to deplete their resources over time, as it would be very hard to gain anything from scorched land. However, they knew that it would not work with orcs, and as such, Kalaster Fabor simply stated that they did not have a real plan in place.

The representative of the council of the sprouting tree sitting to the right of Kalia represented a plan that came as a surprise, but not unexpected from a gathering of druids. They wanted to keep the fight out of the forest, and they wanted to drive them back into the wastelands. They had an upmost priority in making sure that the forest remains unscathed, and proposed to use a large amount of manpower to drive back. However, they did not know where this manpower would originate from, nor did they know how they were going to supply, arm, and train this force. They simply didn’t want the forest to be hurt.

This was met with disagreement, as it was clear that the druids didn’t have any plan in place, only a desire to protect the forest.

Lastly, the Vesarius family presented their plan. They had quite a decent plan, as they wanted to station a defence force along the eastern border, and reduce the threat of the orc and goblin tribes by causing infighting. They would remove the current leaders, and have the new ones would fight amongst themselves.

It was quite a good plan, but it was still met with disagreement, as it didn’t factor in the larger creatures that roamed the wastelands, and it would only work up till a certain threshold, after which the tribes of orcs and goblins would swarm the eastern border of the forest.

So, as the final plan had been dissected and criticised for its flaws, all attention turned towards the old one, as they had not heard him utter a single word since the beginning of the meeting. They looked at him with apprehensive yet anticipating gazes, as they had all heard his proposal from two years ago, they all had done their research, and they all had their own judgement on the case.

The room was shrouded in silence as the tension in the air kept growing, only to be cut in half by the solemn yet amused tone of the old one.

“I wanted to thank you for all of your ideas. I have some changes to make to my own plan, as I like the plans the Vesarius, and the Fabor family had. They are good plans, and while on their own they are flawed, they can easily be incorporated into another.

Now, I would like to present my own plan. You already knew about my plan from two years ago, and it hasn’t changed much. I would like to create a chain of fortresses along the nearby mountain chain. However, I have altered the plan, as I propose to centre the dark mages in one region, instead of using them along the mountain chain. The dark mages will occupy the region on the south side of the mountain chain, where they will enjoy the least amount of protection from the mountains, and where they will be bordered by a swamp on almost all sides but north.

They will be bordering the living swamp, and they will have their own fortress, or fortresses there if they mean to make more. I do support this idea, and I hope you do to, as the dark mages will be our best bet to drive back the invasion from the wastelands with the least amount of casualties. They will be a great use to the war effort, as they will occupy the area with the most heavy and frequent combat, and they will only be in one area, not allowing them to commit any crimes but against each other.

Also, to put your concerns to rest. I have already spoken with some individual dark mages which I personally know, they are the elite in the dark mage community, and I talked to them about the conditions if they were to accept the deal. Conditions concerning raising the dead, not affecting or occupying the forest in any situation if they accept, and generally implementing some of our basic laws. They all accepted without hesitation. I asked them this individually, and they all had the same reaction, complete acceptance. Not one of them showed any kind of hesitation at the implementation of rules, as they only saw it as natural that a society would have rules.”

Complete silence reigned for several moments, before it was broken by the riot that the other six members caused. They all had different thoughts, but the one that was most vocal about them was Kalia Elyvia, as she said with a loud and condescending tone: “With all respect sir, but you still want to ask the dark mages for help?! Why would the proud and beautiful kingdom of Eleanor accept the help, not to mention request it, from those vile magicians?! We should look for any other solution, as asking those vile magicians for help is an insult to the very kingdom we live in!”

The room continued to become more and more rowdy, as the supporters of the idea voiced their counterarguments, and as the situation was about to escalate, the old one spoke for a third time.

He spoke with a solemn tone that radiated power, his expression seemed to radiate a mix of power and bloodlust as even the surrounding branches woven into the walls of the world tree seemed to flinch from his gaze.

The room became silent as they felt his gaze fall upon them. They flinched from the words that originated from his mouth, as they felt a wave of energy wash over them.

“What do you know, young miss? Have you ever stood in the shoes of a dark mage, have you ever been looked at like you are an abomination just because you had to use your power to survive? Did you ever have to cultivate power just to make sure that your neighbours wouldn’t kill you, have you been driven away from your home because of something you can’t influence, have you ever been rejected by whole nations just because you’re trying your absolute best to survive? No, you haven’t. You have been given a large amount of training, power, and capital from birth. You have never had to hunt to survive, you never were thrown out of your home because of your nature, so don’t you dare call the brave men and women who call themselves dark mages vile creatures. They live through the hell people like you have created every single day, so don’t you dare mock them.

You don’t know anything child, so don’t pretend that your morals dictate the world. You sound like a sun elf.”

He finished his speech with a sneering tone, as the last wave of energy was solely directed towards Kalia, causing her to fall back into her chair.

The five other members slowly sat down as the room was shrouded in silence. All of them had been completely taken aback by the old one’s anger. Kalia had a troubled expression on her face, as she did not like being talked to with such a condescending tone, but she did not voice her discomfort, as she knew that he was both right, and more powerful than her by several leagues.

The only thing that resounded through the chamber for several moments were the rhythmic sounds of breathing coming from the six other members, until the old one spoke again.

“Now, to make it clear, these meetings were supposed to make a base for the plan we will put into use to divert the invasions. There will be changes to it, but we need to decide on what we use as a basis, so let’s hold a vote. We will hold a vote by saying the plans one by one, and the one with the most votes will be chosen.

We will do it counter clockwise with Iridil Valars at the beginning, and Avaris Scofia at the end.”

One by one the plans were voted upon, and the results were expected, yet they received unsatisfied reactions. The Valars, Allister, and Elyvia family had all casts their votes upon their own plan, despite the flaws that had been so painfully exposed to the rest of the members.

The council of the sprouting sapling, the Fabor family, and the Vesarius family all supported the old one’s plan, as theirs was either incorporated in it, or their interests were best represented there. It had surprised the old dark elf a bit to see the druids support the plan, but he was quickly reassured by Avaris Scofia that the druids top priority was the forest, and that his plan would serve to protect it better than any other that was proposed.

While the vote wasn’t unanimous, it had won with a landslide victory.

The decision had been made, and the dice had been cast. The fate of the future was as uncertain as the roll of a dice, as using dark mages as a means to drive back the invasions of orcs, goblins, and other horrible creatures, would either lead the forest to ruin, or greatness.

It is unknown on what side the dice shall fall, but in the moment that it kept rolling, in the twilight of the world, one little boy was getting ready for nightfall, as he would bind a life to his own by creating a bond of both loyalty and magic that could hardly be broken. A bond which such a dice couldn’t influence, as it had not been created by chance.

A grim and dark future awaited, and fighting alone was not an option.