The soft thumps and swishes of parted grass marked Jake’s slow, method pacing as he created a path through the plains. His hazel eyes gazed into the distant unnatural fog that blanketed the early morning landscape, its cold fingers leaving trails of goosebumps across his skin and raising the hair at the back of his neck.

Jake glanced over at the Blood Elf woman who stood silently on a rise a few meters away, sickly green light leaking out of the edges of her closed eyes. Her pale blond hair was pulled back into a single braid that travelled down to the small of her back, and her revealing blood red dress fluttered in the small breeze that was able to weave its way through the fog.

Perching on her sun-tanned shoulder, her Fel-Imp Bizyal, a small humanoid creature that resembled the slim frame, digitigrade legs and elongated face of the Elves with twin horns erupting from its skull above its pure emerald eyes, constantly whispered into its master’s ear, causing both the Warlock and her demon to cackle occasionally. A serpentine tongue occasionally darted out between its razor teeth, tasting the air while small emerald flames danced across its body. As Jake made another pass, Bizyal flicked its large bat-like ears in either greeting or irritation, the rings piercing its brown flesh striking against each other with a metallic tinkling.

“Anything?” Jake redirected his meandering path towards Amelia, and stopped next to his mental counterpart, his gaze searching for signs of movement through the thick fog.

Amelia sighed while keeping her eyes closed. “Yes, actually. Since you last asked thirty minutes ago, both those beast people and the goblin looking guys met up and settled their differences within an hour.” She waved a hand through the unnatural fog surrounding them. “This isn’t fog. It’s just smoke from all of the marijuana that the two races have been smoking to cement their ever lasting peace.”

The Imp smirked at Jake, and joined into the conversation. “It’s too bad that you didn’t come by sooner, mortal.” Sighing, the demon stared wistfully into the sky. “It’s such a shame, too. I’m certain that they would have been far more accommodating of our circumstances if you had been here.”

The two fell into silence for a moment, before Jake turned back to Amelia. “I take that as a no, then.”

A small and thin hand slapped into Jake’s nose, causing him to stumble back with a curse.

“Oh, sorry. This whole magic thing requires me to move my hands around a lot, you know.” Amelia said unapologetically, occasionally throwing out her hands in large, majestic swathes through the air as she conducted her imaginary magical orchestra.

“Bitch.” Jake muttered under his breath, rubbing his slightly throbbing nose.

Bizyal barked a short laugh and smirked at the human. "You’re just upset that the Boss thoroughly thrashed you in the last time you had a duel.”

“Now, Biz.” Amelia scratched the nape of the demon’s neck, her eyes remained closed as a small smile grew on her face. “We both know he has a problem with being second best at anything.” Lowering her voice to a stage whisper, she tilted her head towards Bizyal’s large ears. “I’m afraid the inferiority complex has only grown stronger since we showed up.”

Jake shot a glare at Amelia. “You know I can send you back, right?”

“You won’t.” She responded immediately. “Who else would be able to get all of our jokes and references?”

Jake grunted, turning his gaze back to the fog. “Yeah, yeah.” Sighing, he turned and started walking away, calling over his shoulder. “Let me know if anything happens.”

Amelia raised her hand and twiddled her fingers at Jake, and the demon perched on her shoulder flicked its ears in farewell. “Trust me, if I see anything going on, you’ll know. I’m as stir crazy as you are right now.” Relaxing her hand, the Blood Elf’s attention went back to the demonic eye she was controlling as it hovered over the Beast-Kin city, out of sight, and continued her vigil for the first sight of the battle to come.

Jake walked back towards the party’s redesigned campsite, his mind wandering. It had been around a month and a half since he had first brought over his other half, and the unsettling fog that had been present for the last few days that blanketed the entirety of the plains between the Beast-Kin city and the Elven forest without relent was a sure signal that something was going to happen, and soon.

While the party was waiting, they had made regular forays both into the woods and the plains surrounding them, to either hunt or just to relieve stress by fighting the many monsters and beasts that were inside of the environments. And if the group had ended up annihilating either of the two race’s scouting parties while on their wanderings, that had just served to fuel the flames of war between the two peoples.

Jake, like the rest of his party, had grown in strength, but had begun to stagnate after gaining twelve levels a few days prior. The monsters and beasts in the surrounding area didn’t offer enough of a challenge to him to grant any experience, and if they did, it was far too low to offer anything more than a single percentage for each group or pack. Jake had made the decision to throw all of his gained attribute points into Intelligence, giving himself some wiggle room when it came to spells, and if need, enough mana for another Binding.

As Jake followed the mental thread connecting him to his other companions through the fog, he subconsciously began to sift through his Inventory, muttering to himself occasionally. He had been running low on the Elvish spears lately, since he used most of them to stage the corpses of any Beast-Kin that they had stumbled across, making it seem as if an Elf raiding party had laid waste to the unsuspecting animal people. If this fog was not the precursor to something big, then the party would have to venture back into the woods to gather some more.

With a swipe of his hand, Jake closed out of the menu and finished his walk to the rest of his companions. Around three weeks prior, he and Amelia had gotten bored with their attempts at power leveling and fighting each other, and had seen if they could use their magic on a more constructive task. It had taken the duo around two weeks, lots of swearing and the occasional fight, but they had been able to construct a ramshackle attempt at a log cabin along the edges of the woods, using air magic to cut the logs into shape and shadow magic as a crane to move the logs around. It wasn’t pretty, more akin to a pile of sticks in the appearance of a cube, but the two were proud of their work, so the rest of the party just accepted it, as it was marginally better than sleeping outside.

Jake smiled as he approached the cabin, and patted the logs affectionately when he entered through the open hole that served as a door. A small fire hissed and crackled merrily in the corner, the smoke drifting up and through a hole in the ceiling of the box-like cabin, and crude furniture were scattered around haphazardly in the open space. The rest of his party barely noticed Jake’s entrance, with Quelaag only giving a distracted nod in his direction.

The two sisters were sitting around a somewhat wobbly table, playing a game of checkers that Jake had been able to make in a few days of bored labor, and Quelana was thoroughly thrashing her sister in the game. After Jake had explained the game to them, the two sisters had taken to the battle of wits quickly, and had been playing almost religiously. Quelaag tucked an errant strand of raven hair behind an ear, her gaze never leaving the board while she fingered a single charred piece to symbolize the different players. Quelana, on the other hand, was smirking at her sister as she shuffled a growing pile of captured tokens.

In his normal spot in front of the fire, Mizutsune’s massive flank rose and fell in a constant rhythm, the recently evolved [Penta-Tailed Frost-Bound Fox] resting contently next to the flames. Mizutsune was now the size of a horse, and his massive frame towered over the rest of the party at just above two meters. While his new size was impressive enough, his once soft and luxurious silver coat had been enhanced with jagged plates of crystalline ice along his hackles and spine, and the fox could move these at will and shred any opponent that attempted to latch onto the fox’s back.

Jake grunted in greeting, and meandered over to the corner of the cabin designated as his ‘workshop’, a simple table and chair covered in anything that the human thought was interesting. Brushing aside a pile of glittering gemstones that seemed to emit their own inner light he had found in the Elven forest city, Jake pulled a leather-bound tome towards him and began to leaf through the yellowing pages. The book was a journal of an Elven mage in her beginning steps towards becoming an enchantress, and Jake had been perusing it in an attempt to glean any information to learn the process himself. But, there was a problem that he couldn’t find a way around.

His [Agent of Change] title automatically translated all forms of speech, both written and verbal, and replaced it to English automatically for him. The only problem was, it translated the runes as well. When he read through the journal, he was able to easily piece together the means to write runes onto an item to enchant it, but the runes themselves looked exactly like their English meanings whenever he read through the parts of the journal dedicated to rune crafting.

After thirty minutes of banging his head against the proverbial wall of being able to read too much, Jake gently closed the journal with a defeated sigh. Quelaag groaned from behind him, and Jake leaned back to see her clutching onto her head in defeat as Quelana calmly took her last piece and won the game, a small smirk evident on her pale face.

“Would you care to play next, Jake?” Quelana asked sweetly, batting her long eyelashes at him underneath her snow-white hair.

Snorting, Jake shook his head. “No thanks. I learned my lesson the last three games, and I can swallow my pride enough to admit that you’re better than me. At checkers, nothing else.” Sighing again, Jake leaned back into the chair and stretched his arms above his head. “If only we had a deck of cards…” He mumbled to himself, and began to search through his inventory to search for anything that could be used to while away the time.

Quelana huffed in a pout, and began to put away the board and pieces. Quelaag pulled herself together after a few more moments of sulking and began to help her sister, the sisters talking quietly to each other.

As the duo were placing the last piece back onto its place on the board, both Jake and Mizutsune perked up and turned their heads to the door. Noticing this, Quelaag and Quelana turned in time to notice an out of breath Amelia burst into the cabin, getting the single sentence that the entire party was waiting for out in a rush.

“I think it’s starting.”

___________________________________________________________________

Lieutenant Danne of the 3rd Airborne Cavalry Detachment, more commonly known as the Raining Death, were on patrol above the city of Trentshire when the first wave of the Elven hordes crashed against the city’s walls. He and his Flight had just assumed the watch from the 5th, and had been conducting their first rove above Trentshire when they noticed the wall of fog rolling towards the city through the plains.

The Lady Serena had returned a month prior, with the grave news of the Elven-kind’s betrayal. Since then, Trentshire had been transformed. No longer was it the flourishing city of commerce that it had been. Now, most of the civilians had been evacuated, and more soldiers had been transferred in from the smaller settlements and towns deeper into the Beast-Kin territory. Trebuchets and ballista had been swiftly built and now dotted the walls towards the south, surrounded by their engineers and guards. Hundreds of Beast-Kin soldiers patrolled the city and surrounding plains, and the different Flights of [Night-Wings] dotted the skyline. But, through all of these defenses, the Elves had almost reached their walls unmolested.

The Eagle-Kin Lieutenant brought his Flight to a halt above the Southern gate, and watched the approaching fog for a few moments. As it was nearing the outer limits of the city’s siege weaponry range, Lieutenant Danne spun through the air and turned back to his flight, his large brown wings beating rhythmically. Gesturing towards one of his Flight, a Rabbit-Kin riding on one of the younger [Night-Wings], he began to give orders in his screeching voice.

“Corporal, take Turic and Longjaw and head back to Trentshire. If you pass any of the other parties, let them know that we’re going to be scouting this fog. Be careful, it could be a diversion.” The three designated members slammed their fists to their chests in salutes, and wheeled their mounts around and headed down to the city. Danne turned to the rest of his flight, receiving nods from the five remaining Beast-Kin and a single shrieking caw from one of their mounts, before the Lieutenant snapped his wings closed, hugging them around his body tightly, and began to plummet towards the ground, his Flight following seconds later.

As the Flight began to reach terminal velocity, Lieutenant Danne snapped open his wings a few scant meters above the ground and reared backwards, his large brown wings catching onto the currents of air and sending him shooting above the plains towards the unnatural bank of fog. The occasional beat of a pair of wings behind him let the Lieutenant know that his Flight was on his tail feathers, falling into the standard V-formation with him at the head.

Within minutes, the 3rd Detachment circled above the bank of fog, watching for any movements within its inky depths, the rising sun casting their shadows to play across the shifting surface. Danne’s sharp eyes could not pierce the shifting fog, and a slight chill crept up his spine and ruffled his feathers. The Lieutenant turned his head slightly, his eyes never breaking their unwavering gaze from the white expanse, and called over his shoulder and beating wings to the members of his Flight.

“Sergeant, is there anything that you can do to clear away this fog? I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Sir,” Sergeant Forst, a Deer-Kin Air mage, the only mage of the Detachment, responded slowly while thinking. “I believe so. We will need to move closer, though, sir. It seems to be really thick, and I don’t know if I can get rid of enough from this height.”

Danne clucked and nodded. “Alright Sergeant. With the next pass, we’ll move into a dive. When you get close enough, bore a hole directly below me. Got it?”

“Sir, yes sir.”

The Flight took a long circuit of the fog bank, before the Lieutenant raised a hand and closed his wings with a snap. The rushing wind kicked up into a roar as the Flight plummeted towards the unnatural white blanket covering the plains. Twenty meters above the bank, Lieutenant Danne almost was knocked out of the air as a massive gust rocketed from behind him and slammed into the bank, boring a hole through the fog in a wide circle underneath the Flight. Before the Lieutenant could berate the errant Sergeant, a flash of movement along the edges of the cleared ground caught his attention. Even with the Eagle-Kin’s sharp eyes, all he noticed was a single leg darting back into the fog. A leg with blue skin, a crooked knee, and it seemed to balance on the ball of its foot.

“Elves!” Danne screeched as he pulled out of the dive as quickly as possible, his large wings beating frantically as he tried to gain altitude. “We’re under attack! Head to th-“ His sentence was cut off as multiple spears, too many to count, burst from the fog and hurtled towards the Flight. Many missed, flying through the air, the dawn light glinting off the metal, but there were too many. Lieutenant Danne screamed as three spears found their homes in his body, one slamming into each of his legs below the knee, and the third going clean through his left wing, shattering the fragile bones and cutting through the muscle of the only thing keeping him aloft.

Danne spiraled out of control, his flight taking him past the wall of fog and towards the city to crash onto the plains. As he spun through the air, he noticed glimpses of the rest of his Flight being butchered back at the drop zone. He watched a [Night-Wing], skewered by spears, plummet into the rolling fog with its rider screaming at the top of his lungs. He spun around again, and saw a Leopard-Kin tumble out of her saddle, a spear buried within her chest and her armor split like wet paper.

And then Lieutenant Danne, the strongest member of all of the Airborne Cavalry Detachments, slammed into the plains with bone-shattering force, the agonizing pain fled to the overpowering presence of the void, and he knew no more.

______________________________________________________________________

On the walls of Trentshire, the collection of Beast-Kin manning the defensive battlements exploded into activity as they saw the scouting party being knocked out of the sky.

“Sound the alarm!” Taurn, a towering Bull-Kin, bellowed from his perch atop the battlements, and he took his own advice and raised a horn to his lips. The Bull-Kin let loose three long blasts through the horn, pausing for a moment, then repeating the call to arms. Within moments, the other guard stations ringing the city accompanied the alarms with their own horns, and the baritone sound echoed through the city and to the surrounding planes, and occasionally repeated every few minutes.

One of Taurn’s subordinates ran up and took the horn from the Bull-Kin, keeping the alarm going as Taurn swept his gaze along the rolling bank of fog, watching for any movement. There was none, surprisingly. Even the fog, which had steadily been approaching the city, had stopped it’s advance and merely remained at the edges of the Beast-Kin’s siege equipment’s range, an impenetrable wall of white mist.

Glancing upwards, Taurn saw the first few Detachments of [Night Wings] and aviary Beast-Kin rising into the air above the city, moving into position above the walls to help defend their people. Snorting to himself, the Bull-Kin turned his attention back to the unnatural fog bank.

“Ready!” Bellowing out another order, Taurn’s herald held a single blast on his horn for a few second, before releasing two short blasts. The call was repeated along the wall, and Beast-Kin engineers ran around the trebuchets dotting the walls, lugging large boulders of stone into the nets underneath the towering wooden constructs. A few of the engineers cranked onto gears and pulleys, raising the counterweight into a firing position.

As each of the five trebuchets became ready to launch their payload, their respective heralds let out a single long blast from their horns, and Taurn’s herald turned towards the Bull-Kin. “All stations report ready to fire, sir.”

“Very well.” Taurn, his gaze never leaving the wall of fog, spoke barely above a whisper. The city descended into silence, the only sounds were the creaking of wood and the flapping of the [Night Wings] far above, the defenders hardly daring to breath as they watched and waited.

Minutes passed, and nothing happened. The defenders began to shift in place, testing and retesting their weaponry, fidgeting with nervous tension. A few of the Beast-Kin began to mutter to themselves, before quickly being silenced by their commanders.

The rustling of wings and a quiet thump drew Taurn’s attention behind him, and the Bull-Kin saw one of the [Night-Wings] land onto the wall, its rider nimbly jumping from the large raven’s back and walking over to him. Nodding his head in greeting, Taurn turned his attention back to the unnatural fog, speaking over his shoulder to the male Wolf-Kin rider.

“Lieutenant.”

“Captain.” The Lieutenant walked over to Taurn’s side, and lowered his voice to not be overheard. “What has happened?”

Twin jets of steam burst from the Bull-Kin’s nostrils as he sighed. “The 3rd were on watch, and went to scout out that.” He waved a calloused hand at the unmoving wall of fog, then lowered his hand to his side. “On their second pass, for some reason they broke into a dive. From what I could see, their mage tried to break through the fog. I do not know if they succeeded or not, but the 3rd was knocked out of the sky shortly after. I called the alarm immediately, but we can’t bloody well see anything to aim for.”

The Lieutenant snarled quietly, pulling his lips back to reveal his sharp canines. “Hells. Bloody hells.” The Wolf-Kin’s gaze travelled the line of fog, and he snarled again. “It’s just out of range, too. I don’t want to send any more Detachments, either. They’d suffer the same fate.”

Taurn gave a rumbling grunt in agreement, before his eyes locked onto something emerging from the fog. “There.”

Even from a distance, the blue-skinned and humped figure of an Elf was easily distinguishable, a break in the white expanse that drew the eye. The Elf slowly moved forward, taking it’s time as it advanced towards the city.

Another broke through the fog, and another, and another. A rising tide of blue was bleeding through the fog, expanding and deepening as an uncountable number of Elves slowly moved towards the city like a slowly moving wave breaking across the surf.

Taurn could almost smell the fear among his subordinates, a cloying smell that caused his nose to itch. But the hammering in his heart and the panic settling into his bones let the Bull-Kin know that they were not alone in their fears. The Wolf-Kin Lieutenant said nothing, and simply turned back around and mounted onto his [Night-Wing], taking to the skies and moving back to his Detachment.

Straightening his spine, Captain Taurn turned to his herald, and gently placed his hand on the shoulder of the terrified Beast-Kin. “We will be fine, youngling. Just let the others know to fire on my signal.” The herald stared at him with fear-filled eyes, nodding slowly.

The Bull-Kin smiled gently, and turned his attention to the approaching horde. “Come on, you thrice cursed bastards. Just a little farther.”

And as if the Elven horde had heard his whispers, a resounding shriek blasted forth from the sea of blue flesh, racing across the plains and slamming into the city of Trentshire. Glass shattered, and some of the troops fell to their knees in pain, small rivulets of blood flowing out of their ears. And with their battle cry, the Elven hordes broke into a loping sprint, tearing through the plains towards the Beast-Kin.