Chapter 678: Choices…

"Quickly hide back in the den, something is coming!" Moon instructed his team, his voice filled wirh a sense of urgency.

The team moved without question, slipping back through the low entrance into the ice shelter, weapons ready but bodies hidden. Moon activated Camouflage and dropped low against the snow outside, his presence blending in.

The shape in the distance began to reveal itself.

Within moments the single figure became two. Two became four. And within seconds an entire army spread across the horizon, beasts moving in loose formation across the white wasteland, marching with purpose toward the black spire.

In the middle of it, Moon spotted the Lesser Elf, both blades ready in hands, riding at the heart of its army.

That’s the southern commander.

The white spire’s ruler had followed the plan he set in motion.

The commander had gathered its horde and marched it north, straight toward the black spire, to answer what it believed was an act of war from its rival.

The army moved with purpose under the elf’s command, and it was heading directly for the black spire, away from the igloo where Moon and his team hid.

Moon stayed motionless in the snow, watching the white horde stream past toward the north, toward its enemy.

Moon watched the white commander halt its advance a few hundred meters from the black spire.

Rather than charging or issuing a challenge, the lesser elf went quiet, and its horde went quiet with it, the entire army slowing to a silent creep toward the black spire’s territory.

A sneak attack.

The swordsman commander was trying to catch its rival off guard. It knew the ambush wouldn’t hold long, a horde this size couldn’t stay hidden for more than moments, but it wanted those moments.

It wanted the first strike, the chance to bleed the northern horde the way it believed its own forces had been bled. Vengeance for losing half its army, delivered the same way it thought the loss had come, through deception and a blade in the dark.

The white beasts spread into a loose attacking line as they closed, moving low, silent, the elf gliding among them with its twin blades ready.

Moon called out his team softly, "It’s safe. Come out. You’ll want to see this."

The team emerged from the igloo one by one, keeping low, and gathered at the entrance beside Moon.

Their eyes went wide as they took in the scene, the white horde creeping toward the black spire, the swordsman commander leading a silent attack on its rival’s doorstep.

"It worked," Nina breathed. "You actually pulled it off."

Moon said nothing, his eyes fixed on the spire.

The attack began, the southern commander’s army striking the northern’s horde.

The battle errupted, roars and shrill screams rushed through the air.

The southern commander itself struck the beasts, killing a few in the process.

A few minutes had barely passed since the attack began and the results were satisfactory to the southern Lesser Elf.

More than twenty beasts of the northern’ horde had been killed, mostly by him. But to his surprise, the northern’ horde was a lot lower than he expected.

Then the black spire lit up.

Its dark fractures flared with cold light, the gate at its base split open, and the northern commander stepped out, the bow-wielding lesser elf, and it took one look at the white horde attacking its territory and threw back its head.

A war cry tore out of it furiously, rolling across the wasteland.

Not willing to be outdone, the bladed lesser elf abandoned all pretense and screamed its own battle cry back.

The two armies crashed toward each other once more across the snow.

The two commanders met in the center of the chaos.

The white blademaster drove forward, trying to close the distance, its twin blades flashing as it hunted for the range where its steel could reach the archer’s flesh. The northern commander gave ground with fluid grace, its bow singing, loosing arrow after arrow to keep the swordsman at bay, fighting to hold the gap that made it deadly.

One wanted to close the gap whilst the other wanted to widen it. The whole duel became a war over distance, each of them straining to force the fight onto their own terms.

And both of them were dangerous.

The swordsman’s blades shredded the arrows out of the air, its speed carrying it through gaps that would have killed anyone else, forcing the archer into tight retreats.

The archer’s arrows came laced with ice, detonating where they struck, each one threatening to end the fight if it landed clean, driving the swordsman to twist and weave to survive.

They traded blows that put the other in real danger, wounds opening on both sides, neither able to secure the kill.

Then the northern commander screamed something at the swordsman in their flowing foreign tongue, and it gestured, one hand sweeping across the battlefield, toward the corpses of their subordinates.

The white swordsman screamed back, and both got into what appeared to be an argument.

The northern swordsman hesitated.

It didn’t lower its blades, but it stopped pressing forward, and it answered, the two of them exchanging words across the narrow space between them while their armies tore each other apart in the snow behind them.

The archer gestured again showing the frustration of someone trying to explain that it had never done the thing it was being blamed for.

The swordsman’s aggression slowly died down. But it stayed vigilant, blades still ready, unwilling to fully trust whatever its rival was telling it.

At their vintage point, Nina’s eyes narrowed.

she muttered, "Is the archer telling it what really happened? Are they figuring it out?"

Moon watched the two commanders, his expression unreadable, his mind already racing ahead to what he’d do if the lie unraveled here, in front of both hordes, with the two intelligences that ruled this gate suddenly comparing notes.