Three Weeks.

Three. FUCKING. Weeks.

That was how long it took the elves to break through the last trench line, and not because they were doing generic dumbass stuff during that time. Unlike some people, they actually valued the lives of their soldiers (except for the ‘high’ elves) and after the debacle that was the first and second trench line, the higher-ups decided that taking things slowly and carefully was the best option. However, this did have the effect of pushing their timetable entirely out of whack, meaning they were now horrifically behind schedule.

And, to add insult to injury, it was only after taking an entire three weeks to push through those trenches with minimal casualties that they realized that they had forgotten about a very important tool that they had at their disposal. Can you, dear reader, remember what their potential ace-in-the-hole was? Here are a few hints, in case you need it…

It was a mass of big things. Things made of all-natural materials. Things that were intelligent. Things that were even older than the elven race itself.

Did you figure it out yet?

Well, if you remembered that the Elven Tribes had access to giant walking tree-people and tall shrub-people, then you should consider yourself proud to have better memory than an elf! What made it all the more embarrassing and humiliating for those arrogant knife-eared militant hippies was the fact that they lived alongside those plant-people for their entire lives. What further drove that irony deeper was that the tree-men had been ferrying heavier cargo to the front the entire time, being within eyesight and earshot the entire time, yet had gone utterly ignored at best, forgotten at worst.

Perhaps it was more a show of how omnipresent the oversized walking tinderboxes were that nobody questioned that they were there and helping, even when they actually were not. It was quite possible that all of the elves just assumed that the tree-men were fighting somewhere, just not around the immediate area, but that would have been an entirely different matter had it been true. And, as has been stated, it wasn’t.

So, to recap.

In the opening moments of the conflict, an entire Tribe had been sacrificed to destroy the first two lines of defense. The attack on the third line was too costly for the Elves’ tastes, so they decided to go slow and steady while wasting as few lives as possible. After taking three weeks to break through all the lines, the Elves realized that they had a massively potent sledgehammer just laying around that they could have used to break through the barriers, and yet they had wasted precious weeks and many lives engaging in such idiocy.

Was it any surprise that the man observing all of this through a few eyes in the sky was now nearly tearing his hair out in frustration at his opponents’ utter ignorant foolishness?

…

A tree-man groaned as it walked towards the distant place before it. Alongside it stood others of its kind, some smaller, some larger, but all of them equally dangerous. As he marched with his kin, nature itself marched alongside him. Large birds circled overhead, sending the giant bats of the hated foe scurrying away to safety. Around the legs of the planetoids, large felines, canines, reptiles, insects, and arachnids marched forward, a tide of fauna coming to fight alongside the flora.

As the leading tree-man marched forward, he felt a disturbance in the soil before him. It was a disturbance that was not just in one place, but it was scattered across the land nearby, not in any meaningful pattern that could be discerned, but there were… objects embedded in the ground. Some were buried a few inches beneath the soil, others were just barely covered by a layer of dirt, and a few were embedded in such a way that one would almost think that they were jars buried up to their lip in the ground.

None of that mattered, though. What harm could these small things possibly cause? He would show the sinister presence that haunted this place that no mere object planted like a… plant… could stop the march of the children of nature. He would bring his mighty foot down upon one of these objects and send his roots deep. It would show that these toys would not stop the reclamation of this world and that their darkness could not last forev-!

Suddenly, the leading tree-man felt his body shake as a massive peel of thunder echoed out through the air. Strange.. there was not a cloud in the sky. It took him much too long to realize that the noise came from beneath his foot. Or rather, it had come from beneath where his foot used to be. As he looked down at the shredded bark and core wood where his foot and lowest portion of his leg used to be, the shock wore of and the pain hit him like a bullet train packed with countless bags of concrete mix.

And it was this pain that caused him to emit a deep howl of primal anger, pain, and surprise. His fellow planetoids understood the meaning of this roar, and they wisely stopped their march. The animals around them, on the other hand, misinterpreted this pained cry as a signal to charge forwards regardless of any costs. And, as you might expect, this had exactly the consequence that was almost destined to happen.

Within the first few seconds, numerous critters exploded or were horrifically maimed. Feet were turned to scattered shreds of meat and bone, legs were blown off, bodies were penetrated (stop it!) by hundreds of tiny steel ball bearings and other metal fragments. And yet, despite all that was happening, the fauna kept up its foolish charge. Distance was being closed, meter by meter, and the first line of defenders was within sight!

None of the critters ended up making it there, however. The minefield was simply too vast, and their refusal to stop was what brought their end. A single misunderstood yell caused over five thousand dead within a few minutes, and many more followed shortly thereafter as shock and blood loss took the lives of those still out amidst the field. And even if a whole lane was clear of smaller mines, there were still mines left that had yet to be triggered, and among them were mines designed solely for the bigger, slower, heavier planetoids.

Needless to say, the war that the elves had thought would be a mere cakewalk was turning out to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions.