Chapter 674: The White Spire’s Leader

Moon glanced at the spire. Thankfully, there was still no movement, the horde at its base hadn’t noticed the slaughter, neither did the commander.

The distance, dead cold air, and silencing runes had kept the sounds of the fight from reaching them which was reassuring...for the moment.

Unfortunately, time wasn’t on their side. His next move depended heavily on the next few minutes and a minute of rest here could cost them the chance later.

"No, we need leave now, drink your potions, quickly. If you have to, two of you can ride on each Grizzler. We can’t risk being caught. If that commander comes out and finds us in this state, all the work we done so far will be for nothing."

The team wanted to protest. It showed in every exhausted face.

But they followed his instruction anyway. Stamina potions came out of storage rings, vials tipping back, and one by one, on shaking legs, they hauled themselves up out of the snow.

Those who could barely walk climbed onto the backs of Moon’s Arctic Grizzlers, two to a beast, and the controlled Grizzlers began carrying them away from the field of corpses.

Moon stayed behind a little longer to work.

He stored most of the corpses in his storage ring, the materials were too valuable to leave rotting, and most importantly to hide their presence.

’Fire, lightning and sword wounds would bait out the existence of a new enemy...’

He kept only five of the dead Grizzlers, and a few other races, whose wounds he was satisfied with, on the ground. Then he pulled out a Frost Stalker corpse he’d been carrying, chopped it up, and scattered the pieces around the bodies he left behind, salting the scene with the blood and flesh of the black spire’s beasts.

He took the Frost Stalker’s claws and used them to carve fresh wounds across the corpses, deep raking gashes designed to look like the work of Stalker attacks.

When he was done, the scene told a story. Frost Stalkers, beasts from the north, from the black spire, had come south and killed a large part of his army.

Moon knew it wasn’t a perfect plan.

Looked at closely, it was a weak manipulation tactic. A careful investigator would find loopholes, the corpse count off, and the incomplete remains of the attackers.

If the white spire’s commander had all the time in the world and no reason to jump to conclusions, the deception might not hold.

But that wasn’t the situation.

What made the trick strong wasn’t its craftsmanship. It was the context surrounding it.

The two spires stood at opposite ends of the wasteland, black and white, each with its own separate army of beasts.

That separation told Moon everything he needed to know to form this place. If the two commanders were allies, their hordes would mingle, share territory, or hunt together.

Instead they held rigidly apart, each bound to its own spire, which meant the two powerhouses ruling this gate weren’t friends. They were rivals at best. Enemies, most likely.

Animosity that already existed. Moon was only giving it a reason to ignite.

And the second, deeper part of the plan was the same thing that had let him bind beasts under both commanders’ noses.

His existence couldn’t be predicted. Neither commander knew a human fighter was moving through the wasteland, turning their hordes against each other, planting evidence, playing them both.

When the white spire’s commander found its Grizzlers slaughtered by northern Stalkers, it wouldn’t suspect a seven-person team hiding in the snow. It would suspect the only enemy it knew.

The one in the black spire to the north.

Moon finished arranging the scene, took one last look to make sure it read the way he wanted, and then activated Camouflage and slipped away after his team, leaving the frozen tableau behind for the white commander to find.

Ten minutes later, a powerful aura erupted from the white spire.

The gate at its base swung open, and another lesser elf stepped out. This one carried two blades strapped across its back rather than a bow, this was the white spire’s ruler.

The lesser elfstopped at the threshold of its domain and looked out across its army, and a frown formed itself across its face as it noticed the consdierably smaller horde.

Almost half lf its army had been wiped out, most notably the Arctic Grizzlers.

It released a shrill cry that spread across the white expanse, and the entire horde shivered as one, heads snapping toward their commander, the beasts responding to the call with instant, fearful obedience.

The elf spoke for several moments before its pale eyes swept the wasteland and settled on the north.

Toward the black spire that was not visible in the distance.

Its expression darkened.

Without another sound, it leapt from the spire’s base onto the back of a massive Arctic beast that dropped low to receive it, and the beast surged forward across the snow, carrying the commander towards north.

The commander arrived at the field of corpses.

It dismounted and moved through the carnage, its eyes taking in everything. Five Arctic Grizzlers dead in the reddened snow, their bodies torn open by raking claw wounds. And scattered among them, the butchered remains of ugly Frost Stalkers.

The elf crouched beside one of the fallen Grizzlers and studied the wounds. Its fingers traced the deep gashes carved into the dead beast’s hide, the claw marks that matched a Frost Stalker’s strike.

The story assembled itself in its mind exactly as Moon had intended.

The northern one had broken their treaty and waged a war against it. They had struck at its army, killing many.

The elf’s frown twisted into a colder one.

It rose to its full height, threw back its head to the sky, and released another shrill cry that was longer and louder than the first, carrying its rage snd fury.

The white commander’s hand drifted to the blades on its back.