22^nd March, 1636, Far West Islands, 5:00 A.M.

A young dark elf jogged through the quiet, forested dirt paths under the dimly lit, clear sky illuminated by a sea of round stars scattered all around the sky. The sky was usually clear this time of the ear in this region despite being surrounded by the sea, so all one had to do to enjoy the night sky was to find a place clear of the thick vegetation otherwise covering the rest of the island chain, and the combination of the cool breeze and the beautiful view would make a perfect romantic spot, if it only weren’t for the fact that the island was in fact, a military base. This was the Far West island chain, called as such due to how far it was in the west, and how it had been commonly regarded as the ‘Edge of the World’. There wasn’t really much to do here, considering how this island chain was basically the backyard of Feplaria and there was not really much strategic purpose of these islands.

That was until an year ago, when something was detected to the West of the island chain. Now the island had become active, being prepared for staging military campaigns against whatever was in the West. Trying to ascertain its identity wasn’t an issue, after all they had simple rules: kill anyone that isn’t a dark elf, befriend anyone that is.

A few days ago, one of Feplaria’s ships, the Aster had set sail to the West, in order to deliver the Feplarian Queen’s judgement on the ‘filthy livestock’. It was a moment of celebration for everyone at the island chain, for it meant renewing their supply of sex slaves and loot, which was in constant demand considering that most captured slaves were completely broken by the time they reached their dark skinned owners and as such, usually died quite early. And with more and more loot coming in from the conquered regions, even the low status elves had become wealthy, and demand for slaves had skyrocketed.

So when the Aster set sail, most elves were concerned with getting their hands on a new supply of fresh, innocent human females and a whole lot of loot. No one was really concerned about the ship or its group itself. After all, they were just a bunch of rowdy but competent idiots. They would take their time doing a whole lot of ‘mischief’, and yet come back with cart loads of ‘gifts’ for everyone on the base. That was what really mattered to them.

The young elf ran, huffing loudly, his plain clothes drenched in sweat, carrying a bag, passing alongside several wooden outposts and watchtowers dimly lit by the soft light of the flame of a torch. Finally, he slowed down to a walk, then stopped entirely as his breath caught up with him.

He was standing at a crest on the path, covered thickly with foliage. Beyond the crest the path opened up to reveal a large area filled with buildings that were comparatively bigger and much more luxuriously built than in the rest of the island chain, besides of course the wywern base further north. This was the headquarters of the base, where the high ranking elves resided and worked.

The headquarters also had their own smaller wywern base that were to be used in emergencies, as well as main docks, since it was on the southern-most edge of the island. There was also a wywern carrier sitting in the docks that was set to sail a week later, with its wywerns sleeping in the headquarters’ wywern base.

The young elf walked through the comparatively neat and maintained and rather spacious lanes between the big stone buildings, dimly lit by large torches hanging from the walls, until he finally arrived at the door of a building guarded by a tall dark elf holding a spear.

“Hmmmm….? Oh, its you, Arel.” The guard spoke, a hint of drowsiness apparent in his voice. Clearly, keeping his eyes open for the entire night was proving hard for him.

“I came here on Sir Elred’s errands!” The young elf replied, upright and slightly nervous.

“Hmmmmm….? Ah, I see, I see. You may go.” The guard yawned as he stepped aside slowly. Arel slowly opened the door.

Stepping inside, he quickly moved ahead and pushed aside through two, large and spacious rooms before finding himself at the entrance of Sir Elred’s office.

“Sir Elred! It is me, Arel!” he knocked on the door, nervously. Dealing with high class Dark Elves was quite a dangerous task, since one wrong step could quite literally be the end. As such, it always made him nervous, regardless of how many times he did it.

“You may enter.” A voice spoke from within after a moment. Arel meekly pushed the doors open and stepped inside.

Inside was a dimly lit office of an aristocrat, its luxury loudly proclaiming the occupant’s status. Right ahead was a large desk covered with papers and books and other sophisticated looking things. Arel didn’t have any idea what they were or why, for he was a poor, illiterate boy, who had somehow managed to enter the Navy as a low level worker due to his father’s acquaintances.

Standing in front of the desk was a man, a Dark Elf clad in  luxurious purple and white clothes. He had short cut hair compared to most Dark Elves who had hair reaching their shoulders and sometimes even their waist. This man was Captain Elred Lorawynn, a senior ranking officer in the Feplarian Navy.   

“Well, well, my dear Arel, aren’t you late?” Sir Elred spoke, his voice hiding his emotions and real intentions, making Arel even more nervous.
“I-I was running as fast as I could sir! I-I-I d-didn’t s-slack at all like others!” He stuttered.

Elred simply smirked. In reality, he was just playing with the young boy. He wasn’t a real retard as aristocrats who rarely participated in military campaigns. His long experience had shed off a lot of his superiority complex that was inherent to most aristocrats. Yet time and again he did tease the young ones like this. After all, a little bit of harmless fun wouldn’t be bad, would it?

“Did you bring it?” Elred changed the subject, quickly changing to a business like, commanding tone.

“Y-yes sir! Here it is!” Arel quickly handed over the bag he was carrying to Elred.

Elred carefully opened the bag and peeked into it. Seemingly satisfied, he turned to Arel with a smile.

“Good job, Arel. As a reward I will allow you into that building again tonight.”

Arel gulped audibly, out of excitement and nervousness.

“T-thank you s-sir!” he anxiously blabbered while bowing.

“You may go now, I have other matters to attend to.” Saying this, Elred turned away. Arel quickly scampered out of the room, remembering to carefully close the door.

Finding himself out of the building, he thought about the first time he entered that building, a large, warehouse-like building with several floors on the outskirts of the island. He had once done an important errand for the noble, and as a result, he and some other workers were allowed to enter the building the room as a reward previously.

The building was used for storing all the sex slaves that were brought for use by the Dark Elves. Every captured female was tied up and thrown in that building, where she would be used whenever some Dark Elf felt bored. Usually access to the building was restricted to only the high level officials, but the high command was wise enough to allow workers to enjoy the facility as reward for doing something. It ensured the army was loyal and morale was high always, even in peace times.

Arel remembered the first time he went there. His first partner was a human woman, probably around the age of 20. She had no strength left in her soul and had lifeless, hollow eyes. Arel remembered his first time with a sex slave, the pleasure he experienced and the texture of her skin as he held her body. For the young boy, it was an experience he could never forget.

As he trotted on, excited about visiting that building again, he looked up at the night sky. The night sky was slowly taking on a very faint hue of red, barely visible to the naked eye. Against the backdrop of this background, stars of all shapes and sizes twinkled brightly. Sometimes, he would even spot a shooting star. And often a bunch of shooting stars blinking steadily in red and green…….

Arel stopped. This was one odd shooting star. Looking closer, he saw there were faint, white lines tracing the path behind the glowing lights. It was barely visible, only made possible because of the illumination of the stars and the faint red colour. It looked like as if it was made of ice or…..smoke?

This was one weird shooting star. As far as he knew, he had never heard of blinking shooting stars, much less stars that left a trail behind them. Looking closely, he realised the strange stars were much, much closer than the other stars, and the trails appeared to disappear after some time.

Arel found it odd, but dismissed it. It was probably something that nothing to do with him. Right now he had to enjoy his sweet rewards. He took a step forward and lifted his foot.

Suddenly, Arel was knocked of his feet, and was sent rolling forward on the ground. His ears were ringing, his mind in complete shock.

Arel weakly managed to pull his body up, to face whatever was behind him. His body was full of bruises and small cuts from the fall. He looked at the scene, his mind still not having been completely recovered.

There was a large fire behind him. The main buildings of the headquarters and the main dockyard had been behind him. Now, they were all hidden by a very bright, very large, orange curtain of fire and smoke. In the distance, he could see the masts of docked ships burning, their rigging catching fire and getting consumed by the fire. Some of the masts had tipped over, and his mind could barely make out the shape of what was probably once a deck of a ship.

It was like a forest fire he had once seen, except that it didn’t happen instantaneously. This was not good. They were probably under attack. And as a young Dark Elf loyal to the Queen, he had to act fast. These people were the ones who fed him and gave him a life, so naturally he had to stand up to do his part when needed.

Arel mustered all his strength to stand up with his still shaking knees. Who had attacked them and how was something Arel didn’t know, and understood he didn’t have the capacity to know or understand either. Yet he had to do something still. He had no idea what to do, so the least he could do was reach the nearest high ranking officer he could find.

Arel started sprinting, now wobbling from the shock which had still not faded from his body. He had to reach Sir Elred. Sure, the fire was something that filled the onlooker with wonder as to how it was accomplished in such a short time and to this magnitude, but he didn’t have the time for any of that right now. His only priority was reaching Sir Elred.

However, he never reached Sir Elred. Another bomb hit a building on his left, this time knocking Arel unconscious.

 

22^nd March, 2036, Above the Far West islands, 5:25 A.M.

“Sierra-1, good effect on target.”

“Sierra-2, copy that, coming around for second run.”

Comms cracked to life in the dark cockpits of the F/A 18 “Shershaah” of the INAS 300 “White Tiger” squadron, illuminated by the dim glow of the buttons and the displays. The Shershaahs were the domestically produced, licensed version of the US F/A 18 Hornets, meant to replace the ageing MiG-29s as a stopgap measure until the TEDBF “Kumbhir” (Sanskrit for ‘shark’) and the French Rafale M were acquired. Even after they entered service however, the Navy had continued using the Shershaahs.

One of the Shershaahs lined up for another bombing run, switching to his last remaining dumb bombs. Both the Navy and the Air force had been hesitant on using guided munitions until supply lines for their production had been resumed, hence the pilots had been training for using dumb unguided bombs for striking ground targets thoroughly. This had continued despite the fact that DRDO and OFB had managed to successfully start the production of the sophisticated components of the munitions indigenously very early on after the transfer.

On his HUD, the pilot of the Shershaah saw a large compound with an open field in the middle. In the darkness, he could see large, dark shapes moving around in the field.

Wywerns. They had been woken above by the commotion and were milling about in confusion, unable to comprehend the unusual situation.

“Sierra-2, we’ve got movement in the compound further West. Possibly UBS-Gamma. Over”

The pilot spoke on the radio as he continued lining for the bombing run.

The Indians had learned that in this world, there were large animals capable of flight and were domesticated by almost every army for military usage. These were called wywerns and were more or less the equivalent of fighter aircraft. With these new and poorly understood curiosities, they felt a need to establish a different set of protocols when dealing with them, since they had no idea what they were capable of. Hence, the Indian Government came up with a naming convention: Unidentified Biological Specimen (UBS). UBS- Alpha was for elves, Beta for wywerns and everything else that flew; Zero was for anything new and undiscovered.

“Sierra-5 here, Sierra-2 do you need support? Just give the word.”

A male voice full of vigour opened up on the comms.

“Sierra-2, negative, we can handle this one. Out.”

The pilot of Sierra-2 spoke, his eyes locked on his target as the CCIP on his HUD approached the field rapidly. His gut told him that the wywerns weren’t an immediate threat, that he could nail this if he did it right.

There was movement. One of the wywerns was looking at the Shershaah. For a brief moment, it locked eyes with Sierra-2’s pilot and his plane, unsure what to make of the unknown object and its human operator.

At the same time, the CCIP overlapped with the wywern’s silhouette.

“Sierra-2, pickle, pickle!” The pilot shouted over the radio as he released all his payload of Mk84 unguided bombs and pulled hard on the stick. He felt the G forces tug on his body as the Shershaah pulled up and away from the scene.

“Sierra-1 here, good effect on the target. You really didn’t hold back, huh?”

Sierra-2’s pilot turned around to look at his target as his aircraft climbed. The field had been hidden by a large, dark cloud of dust and smoke, hiding pretty much everything beneath. It was clear, however, that the bomb’s recipients had been put back into deep sleep, one that they wouldn’t be waking up from.

“Sir you good?” Sierra-2’s weapon stations officer (WSO) voiced his concern to the pilot through comms.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just need a good cup of chai, and with extra adrak.”, The pilot spoke jovially as he turned his plane east, towards the INS Vishal carrier strike group positioned in the area.

“Sierra-1 is Winchester. Over.”

“Sierra-2, Winchester. See you boys home.”

As the two strike aircraft turned home, another transmission came, this time from the strike aircraft further north.

“Sierra-3 to all, tally multiple UBS-Beta type entities taking off from the airstrip! Over!”

“Sierra-4 to all, tally two bandits, Beta types. They just took off! Over!”

Response was immediate. The two Shershaahs circling above the southern part of the island turned north quickly, pushing afterburners to the max, flying high above ground, away from the reach of anything that could prove to be unpleasant.

“Sierra-7 to Sierra-3, we’re here, we see the bandits, standby. Over.”

“Sierra-8 to Sierra-4, we’ve got a visual! Engaging!”

New transmissions blared into the ears of the pilots as the fighters escorting the two strike aircraft lined up and locked on the wywerns.

“Oh man, guess we’ll only be in the audience seat today.” Sierra-5’s pilot chuckled.

“Kinda sad there aren’t any hot women in this show, huh?” Sierra-6’s pilot replied, answered by multiple laughs on the radio.

They were now quite close to the combat zone, where they could physically see the wywerns. On their DASH IV’s visor, the wywerns appeared as tiny dots floating just above the treeline, marked by the HUD by a target box. Further to their left, they could see the friendly Shershaahs, even smaller, fast moving dots in the vast, dark horizon, their lights glowing bright red and green.

“3,2,1…. Fox-2, Fox-2!”

“Sierra-8, Fox-2!, Breaking right!”

The two pilots watched as small, bright streaks of light broke out from the planes and sped towards the helpless wywerns, unable to comprehend this new threat and flying around in panic.

The missiles, domestically manufactured  AIM 9Xs , screamed towards their target at Mach 2, before exploding. The explosion created a small fireball, which died down to a puff of black smoke. Something was seen falling towards the ground behind the curtain of smoke.

“Sierra-7, splashed one!

“Sierra-8, splashed one Beta type!”

The two pilots announced loudly on the radio as their aircraft once again pitched up and returned to circling the area from above, as the strike aircraft did their job.

Once again, bombs were released, and the elves’ small, dirt airstrip was lit up in flames, scarred with deep, dark craters and mangled, burnt flesh and debris.

“Sierra-3 is Winchester, over.”

“Sierra-4, Winchester. Over.”

Suddenly, a new voice spoke up on the comms.

“Overlord to all, we have multiple UBS-Beta types in the air, BRAA, 0-7-2, 10 miles at Angels 1, Bullseye. ”

The pilot of Sierra-3 turned his head to look at his WSO, who simply shrugged.

“Welp, guess we too might get to see some action.”

This island wasn’t the only place witnessing such combat. The entirety of the Far West island chain was under attack by Indian Navy Shershaahs and Kumbhirs as well as Rafale Ms, blowing up specifically identified targets such as docks and clearly distinguishable infrastructure such as garrisons and administrative buildings. Planes were taking off in the dark sky between dawn and night from a massive carrier strike group centered around INS Vishal, stationed a considerable distance away from the island chain.

The bombing, despite how it appeared, was not really devastating, or at least not how one would expect such an action to be. Lack of proper intelligence sources and relying only on satellite images and aerial reconnaissance meant Indian forces were in the dark as to what was on the ground. As such, only those structures had been targeted that had been positively identified as important. Meaning quite a big portion of military infrastructure still remained intact, and a large number of dark elves being forcefully woken up from their sleep to the grim reality around them.

Operation Vishwadwar had begun. And unfortunately for the dark elves, the return of the Indian aircraft to their carriers wouldn’t be the end of their pain, if they managed to live long enough to comprehend them, that is.

 

[-------Line Break-------]

 

Toross opened his eyes slowly, his vision blurry, his mind in a haze. Things looked like in a dream. He was unable to feel a thing, think about anything, just lay there and watch the blurry sky turning slightly crimson.

His eyes slowly regained focus, his mind recovering slowly from the shock, now slowly resuming the train of thoughts familiar to every man. The first question his mind brought up: where was he?

Toross tried to feel the rest of his body. His muscles felt numb, and surrounding that numbness, all around his body, was a burning sensation that he had been unable to feel up till now.

‘Oh right,’ Toross remembered. He was mounted on his wywern, on his way to investigate something. What was that something, Toross couldn’t remember properly. It took a while before his mind pulled up that something from the depths of his head.

Ah right, he was supposed to head south. He had been woken up abruptly by what he could only describe as a sound of a lightning strike, one that had struck rather uncomfortably close. He remembered running out and looking towards the south, to see smoke rising above the trees.

Everyone had been woken up and was running around. Many had no idea what had happened and were obviously panicking, their relaxation and inexperience in combat clearly visible. The more experienced ones were already on their feet, grabbing weapons and trying to organize the others into small groups to head out south. The wywern knights, mages and archers had already boarded their mounts, ready to take to the air.

Just then, his ears picked up a noise. Besides the earth-shaking sound, there was also a lower pitched, much louder sound in the air directly above him. It sounded like thunderclouds during rain. Except that the sky was clear. There were no clouds at all.

Toross had no idea what it was. He wasn’t a very experienced wywern knight, but he had had his fair share of action. He had served in many wars that the Dark Elves fought, travelling around the 3^rd World Region, yet he had never seen or heard something like this. His mind couldn’t comprehend anything. Was this an attack by humans? No, humans didn’t have the balls or the capability to do something like this. Rather, no human country had the ability to pose any real threat to the Dark Elves. For humans to attack the Dark Elves was like expecting a small beehive to attack and win against an entire army of armed men, such was the belief that had been established in the last few years.

For a brief moment, he had remembered about the Arc Mage Onas. His skill and power as a sorcerer were known throughout the entirety of the world as far as he knew, being able to perform feats far beyond the capacity of any normal person. He had once demonstrated one of his spells, a powerful magic that created a massive explosion, one that sent tremors as far as the next town and shook everyone nearby to the core. Maybe it was a mage like the Arc Mage? Or maybe it was the Arc Mage himself? Yet it didn’t make any sense. If there was anyone with that level of power among the humans capable of attacking the Dark Elves, he would have shown up long ago. What reason would such a person have to hide his identity? And the possibility of the Arc Mage himself attacking the island chain was obviously zero. The Arc Mage had just departed from the Far West for the royal capital a few weeks ago, probably to discuss about something important with the Queen. His departure was rather sudden, but nothing that would arouse suspicion.

So what was it that caused all the tumult in the south? Toross fumbled around with these questions in his mind as he jumped on his wywern, fully loaded with his armour and his sword, his armour sporting purple and white, the colours on his country’s proud flag.

As he rose above the treeline with another wywern knight flying alongside him, he saw it. At first it wasn’t much, just a bunch of bright, red and green stars in the sky. Or atleast that was what they looked like. He quickly realized that the stars were pulsating and moving unnaturally fast, too fast for any celestial body he had learned about. The set of stars moved closer, and Toross had the opportunity to look at their true form for the first time as moonlight and the starlight illuminated their form.

They were strange, to his eyes at least. Their shape resembled nothing he had ever seen in his life, especially things that were supposed to fly. They were long, with a pointed front, and had what looked like large, metallic shields sticking out of their bodies. Toross quickly realized, however, that the shields were much longer, and looked somewhat like the fins of a fish, probably even wings. Yet they stayed unmoving, completely still relative to the object, unlike any winged object he had seen before. The object’s body resembled somewhat a spear, with its pointed tip and its blunt and rather wide behind.

The ‘flying spear’, as his mind recognised it as, was unusual in every way possible. Its skin was made of a material he had never seen before, clearly inorganic and dead. Near the tip of its snout, if it could be called that, was a bubble. A transparent bubble. Toross could have sworn he saw a human figure inside the bubble and some light, but there was no way to confirm that.

The objects screamed had screamed by him and his fellow knight, scaring their mounts and leaving behind a massive shockwave in their wake. Toross had felt his jaw drop to the floor in shock. These living, flying spears and the speed they flew at was simply unbelievable for the Dark Elf. There was no way he could possibly hope to catch up to these unique beasts no matter how fast his wywern went. It was simply beyond his imagination to even be able to fly fast enough to follow them.

Just then, he saw. Something happened. There was a small flash underneath one of the flying spears. He saw smoke, and something else. Something moving extremely fast.

He suddenly felt a chill down his spine. It was coming, and it was coming to him, travelling at an extremely fast speed and leaving behind a thin trail of smoke. It was FAST, faster than anything he had seen, even faster than the flying spears that launched it. His Dark Elf eyes that had been enhanced with magic to easily see even the fastest of the arrows, could no longer even track this ‘something’.  He only knew it was there because of the smoke trail it left behind.

Toross had turned towards his fellow knight. He had probably not seen the dangerous thing heading towards the duo, as he had been simply staring blankly at the flying spears. Toross shouted to him, straining his lungs and putting magic in his voice to carry out his words far enough to reach him.

But they never did. Before Toross could speak finish, he was hit. An explosion. Everything went blank for him. Toross was knocked out, thrown backwards, sent tumbling to the ground.

And now, here he was, still recovering from the shock, clearly injured. Toross summoned all his strength to pull his body up, slowly and painfully, until he was upright. Now he could see the damage he had suffered.

His armour was charred, burned and battered. The original purple and white was no longer visible, instead replaced by dark grey and black. Burnt patches of purple and white here and there and the shattered logo of the Feplarian Army were the only indicator that this was once a proud Dark Elves’ armour. His left shoulder plate was gone, and he could feel a stinging pain in his left shoulder. His lower body wasn’t any different. The armour plates had been badly hit, battered and bent out of shape.

Toross sat there, silently, taking in the reality of his own condition. Never before in battle had he seen such damage, no matter how brutal it was or whether there was some novel form of sorcery used. This kind of damage was again, just like the flying spears from before, beyond his imagination, something he didn’t even know was possible. Invardly, he thanked all the poor metal workers who had worked hard to create this armour. After all, despite how damaged the armour was, he was still alive and breathing, albeit bleeding. It could have been worse.

Toross moved his hand around, attempting to find some sort of support in order to stand up. His hand eventually caught something, something wet, slippery and slightly warm. He turned his head back, to look at the thing.

It was his wywern, the one he had been assigned to ever since he was posted on this island. The once mighty and proud wywern was now a charred, blackened and battered lump of meat. Large chunks of meat had been blown off from the body, exposing dark, red craters of flesh on the hardened skin. Wywern skins were supposed to be impenetrable and absolutely hard, to the point where no weapon could pierce them no matter how hard it was or how sharp it was. The only thing that could kill a wywern was another wywern. And yet here it was, stripped of all its glory and beauty and life, turned into a brutally mutilated lump of meat.

Toross stared at the dead wywern silently. He knew instinctively the wywern had died trying to protect him. After all, it wasn’t really such an uncommon thing. Wywerns and their riders often formed deep bonds far deeper than even the bonds with their own family, so wywerns trying to protect their riders from mortal danger was not unheard of. Still, Toross had some difficulty accepting the fact. He wasn’t accustomed to losing wywerns in combat, despite how much he had fought. His wywerns had always saved him from danger whenever he got too reckless or was about to make a mistake.

Toross turned his head away, towards his surroundings. All around him were pieces of burnt flesh, charred bodies, and a lot of debris. There was his fellow knight, who had taken off with him. Or atleast was supposed to be. He saw a dark, red bundle of mangled flesh, completely undistinguishable from what it used to be. There were some pieces here and there that were identifiable, and Toross could vaguely make out the silhouette of a human forearm sticking out from the large lump of meat. There were also large chunks of what he could identify as pieces of a wywern’s skin.

Toross heaved up, slowly and painfully. He looked around the area. He and the other wywern knight had fallen in an opening not too far from the island’s wywern base. In the distance between the trees and branches, he could see the silhouette of the bases’ wall.

Toross began walking towards it. Each step was painful and heavy, and his body still hadn’t recovered from the shock. His body was covered in wounds, and often he would see drops of blood running down his helmet and trickling to the ground.

As Toross got closer to the wall, he could get a clearer view of the wall. The upper part of the wall looked as it had been chewed on by a large animal, and a large chunk of the wall was missing. The area surrounding that part was completely burnt and carbonized, and strewn all around the inner and outer regions of the wall were rocks of varying sizes in large numbers.

It seemed the wall too wasn’t spared from the wrath of the flying spears. Toross continued walking along the length of the wall until he found a place where he could cross the wall. He carefully stepped over the rocks on the completely destroyed section of wall, and finally entered the wywern base.

What he saw surprised him, and not in a pleasant way. There corpses scattered all around the inside of the base, of wywerns and elves. Every corpse had been battered the same way as his unfortunate companion. The ground was charred, and the small dirt running path was covered in large number of big and deep craters, with some still giving out smoke. There was debris laying across the path; pieces of wood, metal, fragments of metal armour, clothing, dismembered body parts. Even the tree surrounding the base were not spared, with many having burnt and broken branches, and some having been completely snapped from the middle and tipped over. Some had been completely carbonized, and some were still burning. There also corpses on top of the trees, probably belonging to wywerns riders and having been probably hit when they were flying. Many were just simply stuck among the branches, and some had been impaled by them. Toross could make out the shape of a  human hand among other things stuck on the trees.

It looked like even the wywern base hadn’t been spared. Toross stood their silently, taking in the scene around him. Then he smiled.

He hadn’t gone insane yet, he was simply smiling. He realized how amusing it truly was. After all, this was a base of the proud and undefeatable Dark Elves, the chosen ones who were supposed to rule the world and rid it of humans. They were supposed to be the rightful rulers of the world, the ones to conquer everything and everyone. And yet, all their might and pride was being mocked by these unknown creatures, who swooped in one day from nowhere and showed them just how foolish they truly were, and how their ignorance would one day wipe them out.

Toross looked around him. The devastation and destruction he was standing in the midst of right now was at a level which exceeded the average elf’s mind. Even the stories and descriptions of hell that he was told were many times mild compared to this. And yet here he was, standing in the midst of it, in real life, witnessing it all. Toross couldn’t help but think that maybe the real hell was the one that would be coming to greet him and all the Dark Elves soon.

Suddenly, his knees gave in, and now he was on all fours. He had lost a lot of blood, and more was trickling out and forming a small puddle under his body. He felt his body tremble, and realized that he was laughing. He was laughing loudly, and he had no control over it. Maybe, he thought to himself, he had really gone insane after all.

His body gave in, and he could no longer even support himself on his knees. He collapsed completely, alongside a dead wywern, laughing maniacally. His eyes closed, and his vision blurred, and soon he was on the ground, unconscious, as a bunch of Dark Elves ran towards him, shouting.