It was a major loss for the Arnoirians. For the first time in a long time, they lost a battle. It was a weird thing for them, being used to victory for so long made losing non-existent to them. The main Arnoirian army was also reduced, making their chances of another victory very low.

After a while, the brothers woke up. They went around their city and saw a huge crowd gathering in front of the palace. It was mainly soldiers that were demanding to see the king, and they wanted to know what he has to say about the loss that they experienced. It became a pandemonium. Soldiers and civilians screaming and shouting, pushing each other, and after some time, a fight broke out in front of the palace. Runedath then appeared. He smouldered with resentment, his hostile gaze was averted to the crowd, and everyone felt his fury coming out of him like lava. It suddenly became quiet and everyone calmed down.

" What is all this screaming that I am hearing?” he said as he clenched his fist and continued gazing at the crowd that was formed in front of his palace. The bystanders stood there, completely frozen in terror by Runedath. The king started to slowly walk towards them, and they slowly started to back away from him. He walked up to one of the soldiers and stared down at him.

'' Like I said, what is all this screaming that I hear?'' the soldier didn't say a word. He just stood still and was looking up at Runedath. Then some other soldier shouted from the crowd.

'' We want an explanation about the last battle. How did we fail?'' Runedath raised his head and started searching for the person that asked, but he couldn't find him. Then he turned to the side and started pacing and said.

'' There is no true answer that I can give you, brothers and sisters. We were not outnumbered nor out powered, we were not informed well. We did not know what kind of army Yargol has. Furthermore, we were careless and we rushed. Centuries worth of only winning has made us overconfident, thinking that we were only going to win, but the resent battle has showed us that that is not the case, unfortunately. But do not worry brothers and sisters, we now know what kind of army we are dealing with and what kind of tricks Yargol has up his sleeves. The next time that we arrive at the planet Nividin, we will come out as victors, not them. We learn from our mistakes, as we did for so long. We will be attacking planet Nividin very soon, so prepare yourselves, brothers and sisters, for another victory.''

The crowd was overjoyed by his words, and they started cheering his name as they always do. Runedath raised his arms and his head while having a grin on his face, he was happy that he could persuade so many people so easily, without having anyone question him at all. Runedath then went back into his palace, and the brothers saw this as a nice chance to spy on him. This time, though, it was going to be a bit difficult since there is no Arollan to remove the guards that were at the entrance of the throne room. Chronos was the one that went to spy on the king, to see what kind of info he could gather. As usual, the guards were at the door. He hid behind the wall and was thinking what he could do to get rid of them. Not coming up with anything brilliant, he decided to draw attention to himself so that one of the guards would come to him.

Chronos decided to make a noise, to attract the guards. He loudly clapped his arms, which echoed through the hallway.

'' What the hell was that?'' said one of the guards.

'' I don't know, we should probably check it.''

'' Alright, then you go.''

'' What? Why me? Why don't you go?'' asked the guard.

'' You are the one that said that you want to see what that was, not me, so you are going to see what it is.''

The other guard exhaled loudly.'' Fine, I will go.'' he slowly started to approach Chronoses direction.'' Who is there?'' he yelled, but no answer. As he reached to the corner of the wall, he got grabbed by Chronos and got hit in the head with his elbow. The guard started resisting and shouting, but eventually Chronos but him to sleep. The other guard heard the shouting and started coming to him. Chronos kicked him in the abdomen, and then in the neck, immediatelly putting him to sleep. He hid their bodies and called Anastasius and Orpheus. When they arrived, he conjured their clothes to be exactly the same as the guards, and they stood at the door. He slowly entered the room, and noticed the Runedath with another person, so he hid behind one of the pillars. At first, he could make out what they were talking about, but he could see that they were arguing.

'' So, did you find any planet for me, Runedath?''

'' Yes, I did but.'' before he could finish the guy interrupted him.

'' But? What do you mean by that? Do you have it or not?''

'' I do, I do, but we lost the battle on that planet.'' said Runedath.

'' Lost? How could you possibly lose to the Nividians? Their magic is far inferior to yours.''

'' Yargol, their leader, had a large army of giant rock golems and wood golems. He killed my commander and almost killed one of our most valuable soldiers. He was high in the sky, but Yargol created a giant tree that takes away the life force of anyone that touches it. If I wasn't fast enough, both my commander and Arollan would be dead.''

'' Who is Arollan?'' he asked.

'' He is basically our eyes in the sky. He has telepathy, so can relay information to us instantly. He informed us that the golems were arriving, as well as the large army. That is why his is one of our most valuable soldiers. Then my most skilled soldiers, the four brothers, quickly found the weakness of the golems and killed them all, but then Yargol released a powerful poison on the battlefield, thus making us retreat.'' said Runedath.

'' Were the casualties big?''

'' Yes. Now, if we want to attack again, we need to be very careful and have a strategy. We cannot just go in there and start killing like we used to. But that is no big deal, we can easily come up with the plan.''

'' Hope so. And be quick with your plan. I do not want to waste my time with you any longer, I need to consume this planet as fast as I can. There aren't many planets left.'' he said as he vanished.

Chronos was stunned by what he heard, and he tried to leave the throne room, but Runedath was turned towards the door. The only way out is to make a distraction again. He looked around the room to see what he can knock over to hopefully distract the king.

As he looked around, he noticed a glass full of water that was near the device that the king used to find planets. Carefully, with his magic, he slowly started to move the glass. He wanted to make the glass fall into the device to destroy it, but he realized that that would be a bad idea, so he pushed it to the side. The fall echoed through the room, taking Runedaths attention. When he saw the glass being broken, he got very angry and stood up to pick it up. Chronos saw this as a good chance to escape, and so he did. As he was closing the door, he slipped and closed the door loudly, which Runedath noticed. With a confused look, he went over to the door and when he opened it he saw two guards laying down on the floor. When he saw, he started yelling at them for not doing their job and started telling them how he was going to kill them if this happened again. The three brothers watched from the corner and started laughing at the guards.

'' So anything new?'' asked Orpheus.

'' Yes. The mysterious guy that Perseus talked about appeared again. They argued when I entered the room, but I didn't hear what they were arguing about, unfortunately. The king explained what happened at the planet Nividin. The guy wasn't happy when he heard that and was also confused how we managed to lose against them, considering that we have superior magic and power. He then went into full detail about what happened, and he mentioned Arollan and us. He only asked about Arollan and why Runedath saved him, but he didn't ask anything about us.''

'' What did Runedath say about us?''

'' Nothing really, he just said that we were the most skilled on the battlefield and that we found out the weakness of the golems, allowing us to kill them easily.''

'' Hm, interesting.'' said Anastasius.

Following the next few days, Runedath decided to go for another battle, with a smaller army. Many were against it, but his word was absolute. He informed the brothers about what they must do, which is to quickly find Yargol and kill him. That was their only mission. Arollan came to the battle as well. Before they even went to the planet Nividin, Runedaths alchemist created an antidote for everyone fairly quickly, by researching the corpses that died from the poison. The highest dose of the antidote received Runedath, Arollan and the brothers. The rest were given a fair amount, but nothing compared to them. As they entered the atmosphere, they immediately noticed that it was filled with poison. They descended to the ground and started mercilessly killing everyone. After some time, the reached Yargol. He had twice the army of golems and regular soldiers. He created torns, poisonous plants and flowers, roots, vines etc. The entire battlefield was covered in nature. It was Yargols domain after all. He noticed that the poison has no effect on them and was a bit frustrated.

Then the battle began. Golems, easily killing everyone with their rocks and wooden spikes. Fire mages tried to destroy the wooden golems, but to no avail. The four brothers went into action. Slowly, the golems started to disappear. Anastasius during a battle with one of the golems got caught by the roots of the wooden golems, binding him in place. He started panicking a bit, but Perseus came and saved him. They then teamed up on him and easily killed him. Perseus was mainly a diversion for the golem, while Anastasius was the one that was climbing him, avoiding all the torns and the spikes as well as the poisonous plants and flowers on him. On this golem the glowing stone was on his nape. Anastasius stabbed him the neck and pushed himself up in the air. Perseus with his brute strength grabbed both of his arms and pulled him towards him, making his nape vulnerable. Anastasius raised his weapons and stabbed the glowing stone, ending the life of the wooden golem. From Rundaths view, it looked like they were dancing on the battlefield, because of their trust in each other, which pleased him.

All that was left was Yargol himself. The brothers slowly started to approach him, with their weapons slowly turned towards him. From the fear, Yargol slowly started to back away, but Runedath himslef came down from the sky to deal with him.

'' Well, well ,well, what do we have here? said Runedath with and evil looking grin on his face.

'' Please, spare me. I have done nothing wrong. None of us have. This has to be some sort of mistake. Please.''

'' Mistake? You dare say that the Ethereal Council has mistaken in their judgement? Very bold of some that is as weak as you.'' Runedath appeared in front of him and crushed his head with his mace. The only one that didn't look was Anastasius, because of both anger and saddness. When the Arnoirians saw Yargols corpse, the felt joy again. They were laughing, smiling, cheering. It was as if all of them became a king. Looking at their faces, the brothers realized that they were all the same as the king and that there is no salvation for them.

'' Alright brothers and sisters. As I promised I gave you another victory. Let us go back and celebrate this victorius battle.''

Arollan contacted the mages that use spatial magic to open the portal. The portal then appeared and all of the started to return. When it was the brothes turn Runedath stopped them.

'' Not you. You stay here.''

Afterwards, they noticed the mysterious guy that the king was talking to walking towards them. As he was slowly walking, Runedath kneeled before him. The brothers were shocked to see this since they never imagined their king to kneel before someone. He looked up at them and said:

'' Kneel!'' in a loud voice. All of them quickly kneeled. When the mysterious guy appeared in front of them, the king stood up and said.

'' Here are the four brothers that I talked about. My most loyal and skillfull servants.''

'' Hm, they look like some interesting fellows I must say.'' he said as he chuckled.

End of chapter 4