Lordmage Daron Fulba leaned back in his seat and sighed. He was tired of these countless meetings.

He looked up at the steel ceiling, covered with various intricate sculptures in pure metal, the afternoon sun streaking in through the tall and narrow window catching the various levels of the tiered seating in the assembly chamber.

The walls were a brilliant blue color that pairs well with the polished steel structures and patterns on the walls, around the windows and on the floors. All around him, there were dozens other lordmages, all aku’andan in origin, This was after all, Bolak’s Great Hall, one of the meeting halls at the Aku’anda Magick Institute, the only place in Aku’anda where one could learn magic up to the highest levels possible.

Aku’anda had a formal Monarchy, a vestige from the old empire, the real executive decisions that governed aku’anda were made in meetings like this, meetings composed entirely of Scholars of the lordmage level. Most of them were old or middle aged men, because the younger lordmages always thought they were “too cool” to attend such meetings, who could blame them? These meetings were the most boring things imaginable.

Daron had already lost focus in the entire meeting and was already daydreaming about his wife, as he loved to do in boring meetings… when Lord Defon, The Speaker of the House introduced the next case.

“There was an attack on Pirun City last night. Captain Rodo escaped with the queen.” He said. A noise erupted in the hall, and Lord Defon tried to calm everyone down. Daron snapped into proper consciousness and asked Lord Fugap, who was next to him, what had just happened, he was told and was shocked.

“What do you mean Pirun City was attacked?” A wizard on the other end of the auditorium asked loudly? “We have communication with Pirun, we would have heard this on the waves”

“The attackers blocked the reach of the waves before they even attacked.” Lord Defon said. “The entire City is locked down, only Captain Rodo and the Pirunese Queen managed to escape.”

There was a silence of disbelief across the entire hall. Every lordmage was on the edge of their seat

“...Captain Rodo arrived only a few minutes ago. He is very exhausted, he has been running for hundreds of miles to get here.”

“What…” a Lord started, trailing off.

“My lords there has never been an attack like this on any Gan Kingdom for literally centuries.” Lord Defon started. “We thought we had overcome warfare, we had become too powerful, too evenly matched across all the five kingdoms… Yesternight’s event shows otherwise.”

“Do we have any details?” Lord Daron asked, a deep frown had formed on his face. He had only just chastised his son this morning, as he always did, over his choice to study warfare magic, saying it was obsolete.

“Captain Rodo claims the entire city was taken with only a dozen invaders. Only 5 took over the entire city, 7 made it to the Pirun Royal Level.”

Cries of “What??” erupted across the hall

“You can’t expect us to believe that” A Lord laughed “Pirun’s three are extremely powerful and their magic dampener is state of the art!”

“Pirun’s three were murdered in seconds by an invader who could use field magic inside a magic dampener” Lord Defon said “I have all of this information on a knowledge spell Rodo shared with me. I will have it written down and shared with all of you. This is an unprecedented event.”

There was a deafening silence in the hall after Lord Defon had paused, So he spoke again. “I will dismiss this meeting, read Captain Rodo’s report, then we will meet here again at six. May we see mercy.” He walked out briskly, leaving the stunned mages glued to their seats.

Aku’anda was by far, the most powerful Gan Kingdom, it would have been easy for Aku’anda to conquer Pirun themselves, but it would have required at least 50 Aku’andan Warfare mages and it would have taken much longer than a night, Lord Daron, along with all the other lords that were now rising up slowly, lost in their own thoughts, desperately searched for any of the possible ways a group of 12 people would have captured a city, surely they had found a new type of magic…

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“This is dreadful news,” Fugap said to Daron. “I spent much of my early research fearing that something like this could happen. I was finally starting to believe that it couldn’t.”

“Do you think this is Navon?” Daron replied? “Sunganians maybe?”

“Daron be serious, none of the Gan Kingdoms could’ve done this.” Fugap replied “Someone has found new magic. We are doomed.”

Lord Daron’s ride home was extremely gloomy. His driver propelled his floating coach along the cobblestone streets of the Yemaye district using magic spells, the streets were lined up with flowering plants and vines that grew up street light poles right in front of stone and metal buildings that grew about 3 storeys tall on average.

Far in the distance, floating buildings,connected by vast bridges could be seen. Aku’anda had far more floating buildings than Pirun did and much of them did not house royalty, they instead housed wealthy and influential people such as entertainers, entrepreneurs and old business families, like the Biudro family that owned almost half of the paper log farms Aku’anda, or the Jarey family that got extremely wealthy off selling intricately etched wooden cooking spoons.

There were no floating buildings in Yemaye District, it was full of broke students and teachers that had come from all around Aku’anda, even outside the city itself, to learn magic of all sorts. Warfare magic, Masonry, Wavy magic, Motion magic, heat transfer, and so on.

The driver pulled up in front of an intricate wrought iron gate draped in flowery vines, with a garden on the other end. Lord Daron stepped out and headed in while the driver sped away. His wife was in the garden waiting for him. They were both in their 40s but besides some graying hair and slight wrinkles, they looked like they’d just found each other. She grabbed on to him with a wide grin on her face, he smiled tight lipped and she immediately knew something was wrong, she stepped back with a frown on her face.

“Darling what happened?” She asked.

He looked at her with sadness in his eyes. “Pirun was invaded and taken over.”

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Over the next few days the news of Pirun’s rapid defeat spread around like wildfire. Most of Pirun’s Warfare mages were not in the City when it was attacked, in fact only three of them were. Aku’anda immediately issued a summon to all of them and reestablished them in Aku'anda.

There were several meetings, many of which involved arguments on whether Aku’anda was to try invading Pirun to take it back. The meetings stalled and more and more representatives were invited from the other Gan Kingdoms.

The Sungans wanted to invade immediately, they were a warlike kingdom, being the closest to the “savages” of the north. They even still had a large standing army, something that made the other Gans look down on them. Navon and Seyrule wanted to wait to see what would happen, And Aku’anda wanted to send a peace envoy.

Aku’anda’s Lordmages won, after two weeks of back and forth meetings across multiple Gan cities a peace envoy was finally sent to Pirun to try to even understand why it had been invaded and to find out if the new rulers could be reasoned with.

Lord Daron accompanied the peace envoy. He wanted to see for himself what had happened at Pirun. There were about 30 people in total, some of them were military wizards, others high priests and ministers at the king’s court, there were about 5 Lordmages in the envoy. Pirun was only a few days by Hovercaravan and everyone packed accordingly.

The trip to Pirun was relatively uneventful, there were no roadblocks, no bandits, not that any would dare to attack such a powerful group. They eventually reached Pirun and walked up to the gates, requesting an entry. They were surprised when the gates were immediately opened and they were ushered in.

Lord Daron looked around, Pirun looked no different from how it was the last time he came there, he glanced at Lord Kardo who was sitting beside him, the latter frowned.

“Nothing seems to have changed.” He muttered. The caravan was now going through a big market where people were moving back and forth, engaging in trade.

Lord Daron stopped the hovercoach they were on and summoned a young man selling cabbages on the street, the man grabbed two cabbages and ran to them.

“My lords, fresh cabbages, the most delicious from the fields of Kelakaiji just near here!”

“How much?” Lord Daron inquired, recieving both cabbages.

“Only 500 pika my lord.” he asked, Lord Daron Grunted, Pika was Pirunese currency, None of which he currently had.

“I only have Jowons, Aku’andan money.”

“Oh my lord, that works. It’s only 200 Jowons here my lord. I can take Jowons.”

“Okay good.” Lord Daron said and paid. Then lowering his voice, he asked “was Pirun not just invaded?”

“Yes my lord” the man replied in a similarly low voice. “The Queen was banished and we have a new king. Otherwise nothing much has changed.”

The Hovercoach resumed its journey as Lord Daron blinked multiple times at Lord Kardo.

“A hostile takeover?” Lord Kardo exclaimed, laughing. “That is ballsy, oh my!”

“Yes,” Lord Daron said absentmindedly.”That’s very ballsy indeed.”