To say that everyone was shocked was an understatement. At first nobody moved, that ended when the queen fell on her knees onto the ground, falling back and not saying a word. Lilly stood over her, blood dripping of the weapon as her hand started to shake.

  Chaos erupted right now with Demmie moving first. He ran towards her, pushing her to the ground as he pinned her hand with the weapon down onto the ground.

  The human generals all drew their weapons, grabbing swords as they aimed it to both Demmie and Lilly as they were struggling on the ground.

  Emma didn’t even know what was happening and quickly backed off, going away from the table to watch. She didn’t make it far though as she quickly got grabbed by a couple of elves, forcing her hands onto her back.

  Zoala, Barta and Wout wanted to go help as well, Barta grabbing a heavy battleaxe and standing between the human generals and the fighting pair on the ground with both Zoala and Wout joining him.

  All around the camp had been both human groups and forest people. Now that this was happening, the Forest Gruge having overly superior numbers would all draw their weapons and quickly prevent any attempt made by the Human Gruge at control. Here and there small scuffles would happen but no mayor injuries were made for now.

  Berk got up, looking around and seeing that the situation was mostly under control. “Amazing… We haven’t even gotten to fight the enemy and we’re already attacking our allies.” He walked to Lilly who was now lying down still and pinned down by Demmie.”

  “So, tell me what this was all about.” He knelt down to feel for the queen’s pulse with non to be found.

  “I’ve suspected the queen of treason for a while now.” Said Lilly, barely able to look at Berk as she once more tried to get free but without success.

  This information wasn’t too surprising to Berk. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the skeletons tried to make deals with both us and the humans to then it us up against each other. Maybe that’s why they wanted a military alliance with us. So when they convinced the humans to attack, they would have n excuse to march through our lands. Do you have proof though?”

  “No physical proof but I do have other things. When we were send out for making a diplomatic deal with your father, almost nobody knew about it. At first I didn’t think of it but there aren’t many people that the attackers could’ve gotten the information from.”

  In order to let her talk a bit better, Demmie let go of her a bit while stil making sure she couldn’t attack anyone else.

  “When I asked about our father and why he had such a small army with him to come and help us, mother said she forced him to go with a small army because she needed the army elsewhere, never stating for what. And now I think she was trying to find a reason to back out of fighting the skeletons but couldn’t find anything so she used the bunnies as something ridiculous even though Emma and I told her exactly how things went.”

  While all of these reasons sounded pretty good, there was still another problem with it all and Berk knew it. “But you have no physical proof to back this up. What if you’re wrong and you killed your mother for nothing?”

  Emma stayed silent for a bit as she thought about it. She had thought about trying to figure out more before trying anything but she had to prevent the already small army from losing even more men. “Then I will bear the consequences. I only want to win this war and take revenge on those responsible for my father’s death.

  “Hmmm…” Berk looked up at Demmie and gave him a quick nod.

  Demmie let go of her but he did still grab the dagger, standing up and making sure Emma couldn’t get it.

  She got up, rubbing her shoulders as she was still a bit careful seeing the predicament she found herself in. “As queen of the Human Gruge, I request first of all for my sister to be released.”

  “Can be done.” He turned to the elves restraining Emma and gave them a nod as well.

  Emma was released but she stayed were she was, a bit scared of her own sister after what she had done and with such ease.

  “Okay, that’s a start.” She turned to now her generals as they weren’t sure on what to do. They were outnumbered and wouldn’t survive a fight. Lilly walked to them but stayed next to Zoala, trusting her with her life after what they’ve been through. “Do you accept me as your new queen?”

  The generals had just watched their former queen be killed so this was a rather hard pill to swallow. The general that had gotten the powers of strength had heard what had happened to his predecessor and he wanted to show the princess that he was loyal to the cause. “I accept you my queen.” He knelt down and bow his head, causing the other two to follow and bow as well.

  “Good, stand up. You…” She pointed to the general with flight power. “Go back to our capitol and gather more troops and bring them here as soon as possible.”

  He nodded and bow his head once more before starting to hover and then flying. He was as fast as a horse but it wasn’t as physically exhausting.

  She then looked at looked at Berk. “I ask kindly for your people to release mine.” After which her focus went back to her general. “Repurpose everyone as woodcutters, we need to make this a safe place.”

  Berk gave her a nod as he then looked at his people, giving them a sign to let them go while the generals bow their head once again. “Yes your highness.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Lilly would then take a deep breath, kneeling down and looking at the queen. Blood had stained her clothes but that didn’t stop her from opening up her royal cloak and such to look for any possible information.

  As she was busy with the corpse, Emma would start to tear up seeing her mother like this. She had hated her for forcing her to marry Jackson but that didn’t mean she wanted her dead. Anger started to brew inside of her as well, looking at Lilly as she pulled a piece of paper from their mother. “You do realize that you had no proof for what you accusing her off right?”

  Her sister was reading the paper and nodded slowly, mumbling to herself as she then shower Emma the paper and what it said. “Good thing she had this with her then.”

  Emma snatched it out of her hand and started to read it quickly. It appeared to be an official document that revealed a hidden alliance between the humans and the skeletons. At first she didn’t want to believe it but then she hugged her sister tightly. “I’m sorry to have doubted you.”

  Lilly chuckled, pulling herself away as she handed the paper to berk who was rather interested in what was happening here right now.

  He took the paper and started to read through it as he walked back to his chair. After having finished it, he looked up at the remaining people here, he would lean back and sigh. “Right… with the Human Gruge probably not getting the reinforcements in time, we’ll have to think about how we’re going to win a losing war. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say we even stand a chance at this army.”

  “Tomorrow we attack them before they can get everyone out of the pass. Perhaps it will make the other lose the will to fight. If we’re lucky we get to kill the current king and someone else takes over. Due to the valley being without cover, they’ll know we’ll be coming at them and fighting during the night is insane. Everyone prepare for the classic attack.”

  That evening another feast was made with everyone being able to enjoy it. Instead of Maria being where the queen would’ve been, now was Lilly there. She probably was one of the if not the youngest queen to every rule the humans and the generals didn’t seem to be too happy with it. That didn’t matter though as they didn’t really have a choice.

  As they were eating, they could be seen how Zoala walked past having a bunch of animals behind her consisting out of a couple of bears and a bunch of wolves. She told them to sit at the edge of the open area where other people eventually would come to feed them as well. Lucas was very interested in this and looked at her as she did all of this, talking to her when she sat down.

  “I’m interested in the way you communicate with them. You said you can talk to animals but how do they talk back to you? I mean… how intelligent are they?”

  Zoala hadn’t really thought too much about it. She grabbed a little book out of the back that she always carried with her, starting to look through it as she spoke. “To me they seemed to have the mind of a ten year old. That means don’t ask for their opinions and give them basic tasks.”

  She eventually ended up at a page and put the book down on the table, looking at it. “Here it says that my power should be able to increase their intelligence by a bit in order to be able to talk to them even though only I can understand them.”

  Lucas motioned that he wanted to take the book, waiting and hoping that she would give it to him. “Why do you need a book to tell you that?”

  While he wanted the book, she just put it away, shaking her head. “This is not for public eyes. Due to my powers being so diverse, someone far before me decided to start writing things down in order to let the next person know everything. There are some copies of this book in case it every gets stolen or destroyed. Whenever I write something into it which is basically never, I have to make a copy withing two days to not forget. Nobody stops me if I don’t but that’s the idea behind it. Later then someone else will copy it in the other copies.”

  He gave her a short nod before looking around, grabbing a piece of chicken and put it on his plate. “I was just interested as I have a friend who works with wolves. I wanted to get some insight.”

  “She smiled at him as she continued to eat as well. “No need to explain yourself. If Berk trusts you then I should too. I know what you did and see no reason to suspect you of being a traitor.

  With the evening getting further, and with people starting to leave the table, Demmie found himself able to join them in their talks, having some interesting questions of his own.

  “So… The Bunnies are a Gruge on their own as it appeared to be. If that’s so then why are there no zombie bunnies or skeleton bunnies? Shouldn’t they exist as well?”

  As it was a solid question, she wouldn’t really know how to answer it. “You’re not wrong but I’m not sure it’s that easy. Not every creature that dies gets a zombie or skeleton counterpart. I understand that you don’t know it since you’re not from around here.” She grabbed her drink and got up from the table. “Let’s walk, I need some movement.” As she got up, so did the wolves and the bears, getting up and following here. “I rather keep them around so they can’t cause poblems.

  Lucas and Demmie grabbed their own drink and then followed her. The sun was setting and darkness was now all around. A light breeze was blowing through the trees but were mostly stopped due to them being in a dense forest. They walked outside of the main clearing, walking around through the army people who were also celebrating.

  Zoala didn’t seem to be going somewhere specific, just walking before looking at her companions. As I said, not every creature gets a skeleton counterpart. You have the Magic Gruge, the Stalter Gruge and the Arachnid Gruge.”

  “About those. What can you tell us about the Arachnids and the Stalters. I’ve heard about them but don’t know anything of them.” Said Demmie, as he took a sip of his drink, looking at some people fencing with each other as they walked by.

  “Arachnids are basically centaurs but instead of having a horse body, they have the body of a spider. They’re very strong man to man and even General Bart would find it a challenge if he would face more than one at a time.”

  “The Stalters on the other hand are creature made of stone. They have around five types of state that they could be in. The more evil they are the stronger they get. The more kind they are the weaker. If they’re too kind then they’ll eventually even turn full statues and die. A species evolved to hate.”

  Demmie looked at Lucas to see his reaction but to his surprise, Lucas seemed unfazed by this as he just continued to walk. So much so that Demmie continued with his questions to her. “Before Berk mentioned Elf Centaur Elites. What are those?”

  “Oh Pan… Okay, Elf Centaur Elites are elves and centaurs trained to work together in difficult situations. They both can shoot arrows and are experts in sword battle. Imagine how scary that would be to have a big unit of.”

  He would nod as he could imagine it. “Then why aren’t more people trained to do it?”

  Zoala stopped walking as she looked at Demmie being a bit surprised. She pushed her hair out of her face and took a deep breath. “Because we’re unprepared and aren’t a war focused Gruge. Berk’s dad was a bit on the optimistic side. The reason we have such a big army is because everyone here has to know how to hunt but actually doing combat?”

  Lucas saw Berk sitting together with Wout and Barta at a campfire. He started to walk to it, not saying anything to the others. While he didn’t say anything to them, they still saw and followed him.

  Once they got to the campfire, Wout looked up to see who came. As soon as he saw Lucas and Demmie, he would huff and shake his head.

  Before Demmie sat down, he asked Zoala one last question. “Why no satyr archers?”

  She gave him a smile as she would sit down, putting her hands on her lap. “Because we can use a bit of fluit magic. Meaning using the magic needs us to be close to the enemy, so we train in sword combat.