Aida, Jend, and their squad had quietly made it well to the back of Lothar's army. From their hidden position, Jend climbed a small rise in the forest to get a view of the area. He counted twenty enemy orcs, a dozen or so trolls, and a few scattered fiends acting as watchmen. Jend could see what he thought was the command tent, with messengers streaming in and out.

  Jend ducked back to where Garaxas, Aida and the others of the squad were waiting. Aida was cleaning her claws after having snuck up on one of the guard fiends earlier. Her fur was slightly singed, but she was otherwise unharmed and in good spirits.

  Jend told them the locations of the guards he'd spotted. "It is more than I thought there would be, but I still think we can do it. This is the best chance we are going to get. Most of Lothar's army is rushing to where our brigades attacked, so we need to strike now."

  Jend spent a minute telling his force exactly where to hit, and with what. Then they silently headed over the rise.

  Jend saw Aida attack first, as the two trolls nearest to their position suddenly fell asleep. Then, the largest group of the enemy orcs yelled out as they felt tree roots grabbing their legs, pulling them down and reaching for their arms.

  Jend looked on, almost in awe of the elf woman, as he watched the roots hold her enemies as she ran forward to strike their throats with her bear-claws.

  Now there is a proper woman, thought Jend, as Aida decapitated a troll.

  Not to be outdone, Jend struck next, with three bolts of lightning flying from his hands, each hitting a fiend in the path between them and the command tent. Two of the fiends were ripped almost in half, while the third was blown back and hit a tree hard, but survived.

  The orc assassins equally did not want to be topped by the elf-bear, so made themselves known as two more trolls dropped, almost silently. Garaxas, Histel and the rest of the squad rushed forward along the path attacking the remaining orcs and troll guards just outside the command tent.

  Adane was at Jend’s right, and the two advanced, with Adane ripping out the throat of an enemy that rushed Jend. Now in range, Jend focused and called down a strike upon the command tent. Three flaming spheres came from the sky, leaving only a large pit where the tent had been.

  “Ah, Jend, you little boy. You really thought I’d be there.” Lothar and two exceptionally large trolls walked out from behind the supply wagons. Lothar raised his hands as his eyes pulsed black, and he pointed toward Jend. A black tentacle shot from his hand.

  The tentacle penetrated Jend’s glowing red shield with ease. He saw Aida raise her paw to try to raise her own shield around Jend, but she was late and too far.

  We got so close, thought Jend, as he watched the tentacle shoot towards his heart.

  He braced for impact, but it didn’t come, as the black strand suddenly pulled back. Lothar had been hit from behind by a massive wolf, standing taller than Lothar himself. The wolf bit down hard on Lothar’s arm, which was now entirely in the wolf’s jaws.

  Four other equally giant wolves were with her, two wolves attacking each of the trolls. Three seconds later, the troll on the right had his head bitten clean off. After another two seconds, the troll on the left had been ripped to shreds.

  But with his other arm, Lothar directed another at the wolf, and it hit. The blackness spread across the beast, and the wolf disintegrated into dust.

  A full battle had now broken out around where the command tent had been. Garaxas along with the orcs warriors and assassins had killed another two trolls and a few of the enemy orcs that had escaped the grasping roots. Histel and his buggebears were ambushing enemy warriors as they ran to aid Lothar. Aida had clawed a fiend to death, and was currently bashing another against the ground, even as she continued commanding the roots to hold many of the enemy warriors.

  - - - -

  Up in the Place of the Family, The Goddess Doaris, Death Incarnate stood up to go.

  "Sorry, I must take my leave. We have a special place for Big Ears reserved in one of the deepest pits of a particularly unpleasant hell. I will see that it is properly prepared. And perhaps I will do it up a bit more…. before I escort him there." She departed, unnoticed by the other gods, who were engrossed in watching the battle below.

  - - - -

  Jend sent five glowing red magic bolts at Lothar, but Lothar had seen their approach and strengthened his shimmering gray force shield, against which the bolts impacted harmlessly. Aida threw the remains of a fiend at Lothar and rushed at him.

  Lothar struck out at Aida with a black bolt. The air around Aida flared green, but she was pushed back, hitting one of the supply wagons. Lothar’s magic force coiled like smoke around Aida for a moment, and the ends of her fur darkened as her shield faded. She contracted, and a bright light flashed. In place of the bear, Aida was back in her elven form, and Lothar’s dark force dissipated. She stood tall and prepared to cast.

  Jend had started back to try to protect Aida, then stopped and turned to Lothar when Aida reappeared uninjured. The attack on the elven woman provoked a primal rage in Jend, one that focused in the electrical energy swirling around his wrists. An energy he let loose, lightning streaming out of his hands. The bolts blasted past Lothar’s shimmering gray shield, and hit Lothar directly on the chest and arms. Lothar was scorched and blown back. Jend raised his hands for another strike, but didn’t get to make it, as a troll that had just batted Adane away struck Jend from behind.

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  Fire flowed out of Lothar’s hands and struck Jend in the chest, igniting his armor and cloak. Lothar raised his hands again and concentrated and the black tentacles appeared again. Lothar first used them to strike and disintegrate a buggebear that had gotten close, and then the tentacles reached out toward Jend.

  Garaxas and the assassin at his side had just dispatched an enemy human warrior and saw the tentacle reaching out to Jend. They both rushed Lothar, and the assassin jumped in front of the tentacle, stopping it as it spread across her and she turned to dust. Garaxas ran straight at Lothar, and before Lothar could motion to bring the tentacle to bear on him, Garaxas reached the dark wizard and ran his sword through Lothar’s heart.

  Lothar paused, still standing, and looked down at the sword in his chest. He had looked to Jend to be a human in his 40’s, dark hair and pale skin. Within a few seconds of being impaled, Lothar's body contorted, growing smaller, twisting into a feline form. He fell to the ground, but by the time he hit the ground he was dust.

  - - - -

  The battle did not last much longer. The orcs and goblins that had served Lothar lost any urge to fight, and either surrendered or ran off. The giants and trolls saw their allies fleeing and did the same. The fiends disappeared back to the hell they’d come from a few moments after Lothar’s death. The zombies fell where they stood, now inanimate corpses. The ghouls fled west.

  Lothar's son Dretter was never found. Colonel Wuglat, with Rennyn at his side, caught up with what they thought were Dretter's guards, and opened fire. The guards surrendered, but Dretter was not among them. Rennyn reported that she only saw two cats streaking away into the forest.

  Aida first healed Jend of his burns, and then she and Jend worked to protect and organize their forces in the mayhem of Lothar’s collapsing army. She and the others of The Circle turned to healing their wounded, and the wounded of those that had surrendered to them. As dawn broke, Aida found herself exhausted, and fell into a sleep that lasted three days. She awoke in a bed in the keep, with Jend at her bedside.

  In three months, as summer came, the army of Pelsa had expanded and had taken all except the most northern and most mountainous holdouts. In six months, Jend and Aida made peace with the other great wizard of the area, and in his Tower of the Northern Lights, the wizard Cradel pledged allegiance to Jend's rule. As winter came, they declared complete victory in the northern lands and began to plan both what would be their kingdom, and their wedding. The Kingdom of Pelsa was proclaimed in 1566 on the Equinox, in a ceremony just after Aida and Jend’s wedding. She placed the crown on his head, and he placed the crown on hers.

  With the combination of millennia of elven scholarship, the perseverance, strength and hard work of the orcs, the inventiveness and craftsmanship of the goblins and buggebears, and the knowledge and perspectives brought by all the many citizens of the new nation, the society flourished and grew secure.

  The Circle helped choose and then encourage the crops to grow, aided by goblin irrigation systems. The elves taught the orcs the ways of crafting strong glass, and glass houses, heated by thermal springs, were built near the growing towns.

  Their safety assured, with a future for their children, and the expansion of education from just a few of the leaders to most of the people, the whole society began to change.

  After three years of peace, music and dance returned. There were even traveling bands of musicians, first made up of members of a single tribe, making visits to perform to neighboring tribes. In a short while, the groups began to mix, bringing new musical forms that were different to the old songs of any of the old tribes, but somehow represented the new kingdom as a whole. Tone poetry was a particularly big hit, although the older generations didn't approve of the baggy chainmail fashion that went with it.

  It was also in the third year that scholars standardized the language, and thus literature written in High Goblin bloomed. What is considered the Great Goblin Novel of the age was written, The Guardian of the Ring. It is the story of the brave and selfless goblin who protects a magic ring that could be used by an evil wizard to control the world. The ring is stolen by a short human and his fellows, who have the bright idea of taking the ring directly toward that very same evil wizard. The humans said they wanted to drop it in a volcano there to destroy it. Sure they did. But the brave goblin gets there in time, and manages to grab back the ring and properly destroy it, even it is cost him his life.

  Generation of goblin children have since been raised to emulate the values of the Guardian of the Ring, and it is required reading in middle-school.

  The book's sales were helped by the growing educational system. When the book first came out, the goblin children thought that humans couldn't possibly be so dense as to take the ring directly into the land of the evil wizard, and sales suffered as the whole story didn't seem very realistic. However, after the goblins had a couple of years in school studying human history, they realized that, yes, humans could really make decisions like that, and indeed there were a shockingly large number of documented historical examples of even worse judgment. Sales of the Guardian of the Ring increased dramatically, and it remains to this day in the Pelsa Gazette's bestseller list.

  The new kingdom started to attract immigrants from the south. A few small groups of dwarves moved to the land, the lure of the mineral wealth overriding their distrust of orcs and goblins. Some humans came, fleeing their serfdom in the human kingdoms. Further elves joined; some of the more adventurous elves from Dhu'Nemos who found the set old ways of their homeland stifling found in Pelsa a land and peoples open to new ideas.

  After five years, the visual arts returned. Where before the architecture of the villages, caves, and citadels had been purely functional, and what visual art there was had been mostly the glorification of war and the tribe's struggle for survival, there was now a renaissance. A generation of orc, goblin, buggebear, elf, dwarf, and tree artists began to create a series of new schools of art, based in their historical tribal patterns, but now mixed and updated for a prospering and growing society.

  The most popular school of art was a style combining the symmetric, technical style of the dwarves with the color sensibilities of the elves and the simple, sharp edges and tribal insignias of the orcs. It came to be called “Orc Deco,” and was used in many of the public art works and buildings of Pelsa.

  Tree architects were particularly influential in the designs of the homes of the new citizens of Pelsa. They worked with goblin and buggebear craftsmen to produce buildings in a literally organic style, with much of the frame of the building being organic and living. They were very popular with young families, as the house grew with the families, adding another room every couple of years. Even the elves felt that the architecture of Pelsa now rivaled the southern elven lands of Dhu'Nemos for beauty.

  The keep became a castle, and Lagar’s Haven became a town, almost a city. The flower that Jend had presented to Aida lived, and it moved from its small pot to the large castle garden. The flower watched as Aida and Jend’s children were born, then crawled and then skipped through the garden. Later these two children sat long in the garden beside the flowers, deep in study as they sought to master the magical forces they would use to keep the kingdom safe.

  Princess Wyndy's Human Friends ready to begin posting in a couple of months. I will change the status back to "ongoing" when the next book begins.

  . King Jend and Queen Aida make appearances.

  Amazon.com: King Jend's Loyal Creatures eBook : Comstock, C.: Kindle Store)