Book 2: Chapter 72 (1/2)

“Tell me about the land,” Vur said and pointed at the northern end of the continent on the map. “This white part, who owns it?”

“That’s owned by the holy dragons,” E said after sending one of his armor sets to find a carrot. “Nothing can grow there; it’s a giant frozen chunk of ice. There’s rumors about strange birds that act like humans and are taller than dwarves. They trek across the ice for miles and hunt fish from the ocean.”

“Will they interfere in the war?” Vur asked.

Lulu’s voice called from outside the palace. “There’s no way Mom’s going to interfere in the war unless she can find a person to give a quest to. Oh, there was one person…, but he’s kind of lazy. And those birds you’re talking about are called penguins. They don’t fight things; they kind of huddle up in one place and try their best to not freeze to death.”

“Mm.” Vur nodded and pointed at a red region beside the snowy one. “What about here?”

“That’s Mt. Inesia,” E said. “We were just there. We have a few small towns bordering it, but there’s no threats to our safety. We own the eastern region of the continent while the humans own this portion of the west. Some of it is shared by fairies, namely that part.” He pointed at a section on the map covered with green and purple splotches. “The south is the territory of the elves and phoenixes; it’s possible the elves may join the war as the humans’ allies mainly because, well, we enslaved some of them before.”

“So no threats from the north,” Vur said. “What about east of us? Fishmen live on the coasts, right?”

“Yeah, but fishmen are fishmen. They’re unimportant,” E said. “If they spend too long out of water, their skin starts cracking and they bleed to death within a few days. There’s no way for them to own any reasonable portion of land.”

“That sounds like a life worse than the penguins,” Lulu said from outside.

“Then it’s just the west and the south we have to worry about?” Vur asked. “What are the elves like? How many people would you need to take out one of their villages?”

“Villages?” a dwarf with a red beard asked and raised an eyebrow. “Elves don’t have villages. They live in small colonies of ten elves at most. They’d be easy to plunder, but they get along really well with the phoenix matriarch. She’s about the only reason why we haven’t taken over the south.”

Vur rubbed his chin. “How closely do these elven colonies live to each other?”

“Pretty far apart,” the red-bearded dwarf said. “You’d expect them to work together seeing as they’re the same race, but they’re actually antagonistic to each other. Neighboring colonies will compete for resources and the weaker one is forced to move further away. Sometimes, the weakest colonies are completely forced out of the forest; that’s the best time to capture them.”

“Wait,” Vur said. “Then would they actually be a threat to us if we attack the humans since they don’t work together?”

“Yes, they will,” E said. “They might not get along with each other, but they hate us more. They’ll definitely band together if they find out any of our cities are vulnerable. Not only that, but they have a spiritual leader of sorts. There’s a tribe of elves who take care of the phoenix matriarchs offspring and eggs. Apparently their hair is even red due to the proximity to the eggs. If any of them declared war against us, all the elves will attack.” He coughed and scratched his head. “We, uh, stole a few phoenix eggs from them before a long time ago, so they’d definitely take the chance to strike at us.”

Vur stared at E. “Why do you think the humans declared war on you?”