Laff's point of view:

"Sir! King! Uhm... I'm so sorry!" My assistant came running into the dining room. Nobody was eating inside, we were sort of just chilling.

"It's not a problem Julio, what did you need?"

"Uh, yeah, the uhm.... OH! The Kingdom of Willow sent you a message!"

What could the kingdom of Willow possibly need from me?

Julio ran up to me and gave me an envelope. I opened it up and read the letter.

Hello King Laff,

We are sorry to inform you that you are no longer of use to us.

Our alliance will no longer be a thing, for we have found a better opportunity.

The Kingdom of Pika is much better for us, sorry once again.

-The Kingdom of Willow

I slammed the letter on the table.

"Fantastic! Just what we needed right now!"

"Shall I leave sir?" Julio asked.

"No, it's fine."

"What seems to be bothering you?"

"Julio you already know we're losing allies. We're losing a lot of allies. It didn't really matter before because the kingdoms all had such a small population, but we just lost our biggest help. We lost our biggest ally. The Kingdom of Willow shall fight alongside Pika, we are no use to them."

"That's definitely going to be a problem..."

"Yeah, it really is. Even if we got every single human in our kingdom to fight against Pika, Willow, Diom, Oron, all of them... It wouldn't be enough. By this rate our kingdom will be done for by the year 2024."

"Can we simply pay them to be our allies once more?"

That was one stupid question.

"Julio, we barely have enough to keep our kingdom fed. What makes you think we can magically come up with enough money to convince Willow to be our ally once more? We've just got to accept that our rivals will win this."

"You're really going to give up this easily?"

"What more can I possibly do? With Willow joining their side we've lost over half our warriors. We now have 14,000, Pika has 32,000. There's simply nothing we can do to win this war."

"But we can't simply give up! The kingdom's depending on us, we can't let them down!"

"Julio, do you remember why this war was started in the first place?"

"Not really.."

I wasn't there... But I remember the stories my father always told me.

"Pika had to be so greedy... They wanted all of the land to themselves. We couldn't just let that happen, we fought back. Eventually we split from Pika and we're now our own kingdom. Sometimes I question just why my family was chosen for royalty..? My father fought his own best friend on the battle field.... and was unfortunately killed in the process... His best friend had his own best friend's blood on his hands...."

It's hard to talk about, even worse to remember. It's hard to remember a time when we weren't at war.... Well, I've spent my whole life in this war only hoping one day it'll all be ok...

"I'm very sorry for your loss, your majesty."

"It wasn't your fault...."

"..."

"I must not spend all day remembering, we still have work to do if we want to win this war."

Julio smiled and left the room.

Knowing what my father's sacrificed for our people... I can't possibly let it all go to waste. I feel motivated to continue what I was born to do.