Micky looked around his new office. And for a moment his shoulders relaxed. Then they tensed up as he remembered why he was here. He was here because the oldest, highest seniority centurion should have taken charge temporarily. Instead, he, the lowest senoitrty officer had been shunted into command. The reason was obvious the moment he was in that meeting. He was the sacrifice. It didn’t seem like news to the old fogeys either. So they had probably already discussed this and he was going to be stuck with it one way or another. But it wasn’t all bad. He had at most a week to hold things together. At best he could turn things over within the day. Hmm, considering that he was not supposed to be the ‘man in charge’ that might not be a good thing though.

But for some reason, he felt like a weight of expectation was off his shoulders. He was in charge now, the expectations were his and no one else's. Welp, better get cracking. He needed to see what kind of mess he had. In his opinion, if the rest of the centurions hadn’t arrived, they probably weren’t. The enemy was only a day at most behind the main army, possibly two. This meant Micky had to come up with something that wouldn’t kill them in… a very short amount of time.

So Micky looked at the secret map. It was something only the commander was allowed access to and those he trusted. No, actually, first he had to promote Prin into his old position. Quickly sending that off, ahh delegation, then he had to look at the map.

Going over the reports he could see that the enemy was flooding through. Which was strange. Technically they were the ones being invaded. Yet they were more than happy to cause devastation to the Aene landscape. This helped nobody. Worse, the monster forest would reclaim all the area that had been destroyed soon which helped nobody from the races kingdoms. Micky had started to see the political climate from a different perspective and realized that the monsters were much more organized than he was led to believe as a commoner.

So then, why were they attacking. It wasn’t even raiding, it was indiscriminate attacks. Micky went over the reports again. See here, this one stated that an entire butcher’s shop was found. And here there were children marching. This didn’t make sense. None of this made any sense. Micky stared hard at all the reports he had. None of them made any sense whatsoever.

Micky then moved to the long range scrying. It was honestly pretty useless. Anyone that was anyone would have already used something to stop LRS. Even Micky had some blocking equipment when he was a kid, and the whole village did as well. Of course, that was civilian grade equipment, but it stopped your random bandit from seeing that a random kid was not at home and outside of their parent’s sight.

“Can you get me an overhead of the battlefield?” Micky asked.

“I could but it would help, sir. They’re on the move, so they're going to have their black ops anti scry equipment up.” Said the mage at the scrying table. They were just an apprentice, the scry pool did all the work they just needed to supply it with mana. Mostly, this was used for strategic spellcraft to launch spells without LOS. It was all but useless outside of combat. That didn’t mean that it didn’t actually have range though.

“No, not this battlefield, I want the engagement with the empire on the other side of their kingdom.” Said Micky.

“I can do that sir. But, It won’t be a very clear scry. It will be a long ways up and you won’t be able to see much.” Said the mage.

“That’s all I really need. I just want to know the situation over there.” Said Micky.

“Well that I can get you, hold on.” Said the mage. He manipulated the scry pool to look over the battlefield. It was massive, armies in the trillions clashing with each other. And these were just the armies a small nation could scrape together. A nation that called itself an empire would have armies 1000 times that on standing orders, let alone war time.

The sry pool moved out and out, and all around, blinking and warping while the mage had their eyes closed. “And here it is…?” Said the mage. But there wasn’t anything there. Or well there was, but it wasn’t what they were looking for. It was just a bunch of barely filled villages. They looked like they had seen a lot of damage and destruction but people were moving back in. But the problem was, they were looking for the front lines.

“I’m sorry sir, hold on. I just need to focus...” And so the mage scrolled through. What should have been the front lines, weren’t. Eventually though they did find the front lines. “There we are sir, the edge of their kingdom.” Said the mage. Micky looked at it. He took a moment.

“And where is this exactly?” Asked Micky.

The mage looked over the pool. Scrying was never an exact spellcast. However, that didn’t mean that they weren’t trying their hardest to make it as exact as possible. “About one quarter of the way.. Oh… the enemies line has moved a quarter of the way into their kingdom.” said the young mage. Micky tuned them out.

So the enemy was losing, badly. They were sending over people like a retreating tide. They had fucked up their diplomacy with acts of terror. “Fuuuuck!” Said Micky with a drawn out voice. Why hadn’t he seen it before? They were losing too badly. The empire was going to take them out. All the Aene kingdom had to do was wait them out. Then when they were weakened the Aene kingdom could swoop in and take up the land. They could never dedicate enough troops to protect them from Aene, not with the empire already destroying them.

As for the terrorist attacks? They were getting to antsy over diplomacy. It wasn’t happening fast enough. Probably were dancing around the issue and asking for an ‘alliance’. In this way they could then send their royal family and civilains here with the protection of Aene, while also getting Aene’s armies to help strike back at the empire. But it wasn’t fast enough. In addition, Aene would ask for an exorbitant price, if they were even going to entertain the idea. After all, why would Aene get into a fight that was already underway?

So instead, they struck so that Aene would be weakened. Aene would then not be able to make a strong counter offensive and take their lands for themselves. Maybe they had hoped the empire would face battle fatigue and would stop their assault eventually. Unfortunately for them, the empire couldn’t care less. They also didn’t have as strong of a presence of the adventurer’s guild or merchant’s guild, most likely. So they couldn’t leverage those against the empire. After all, these monsters wrapped around the continent. They might be an empire, but the merchants guild could choke their bellies and the adventurer’s guild probably had some clout with their armies.

So they struck. And then they kept striking. They weren’t fighting Aene on pitched battle, because they couldn’t care less. It was a lost cause, the empire was going to take the land. That meant that all these people were retreating. It also made sense why they were so willing to become slaves. Even nobles, who would never demean themselves with such a status on their records were willingly becoming slaves of Aene. This was also why they were roughing up the villages and towns along the corridor. It hit so many birds it wasn’t worth counting. First, it was a camouflage. Now they could slip in undetected. Second, it closed up the corridor so that the empire couldn’t invade. Third, it freed up room for their own citizens. They could simply recolonize in one of many assured attempts to retake the land from the wilderness.

It was so blatantly obvious now. Had Micky thought of it then, so many things could have been done differently. In a way, he saw Aene’s involvement was inevitable. They were never going to leave Aene alone. In this way it makes the incursions a response to Aene’s own skirmish, which was inevitable in and of itself. Micky sighed, well now it looks like he knew what he was going to do. But first he would have to talk to ‘The Bitch’...