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  They surmounted in the hundreds, mighty and towering over him. They fluttered and flowed, blanketing the sky and forming an endless sea of dark horrors. Their threat was heavy and weighing down upon his soul, he knew that this would be a battle like no other he had ever faced; he knew that his future would be marred by many sleepless nights of unending ferocity and perseverance. He had been to battle many times before and shed much blood, but truly these battlegrounds were likely to become his personal purgatory, surely one mokoi could not accomplish the task before him. Doubting oneself is the first step to defeat, the man must dash these questions aside, even if they may be the ones that prevail of late. He firmly clenched onto his mighty weapon, gathering his strength and steeling his will. With a practiced pull, his weapon was unsheathed ready to thrust into his first opponent.

  The behemoth glaive easily sliced through the soft flesh of the young revolutionary. The immense heat permeating from the large glaive cauterized the wound as it birthed it denying any blood from dropping onto the field. A clean swipe to the side plainly dismembered the enemy in two letting them fall lifelessly to the ground.

  Even twenty years later the mokoi had to bury his emotions deep within himself as he stared at the empty eyes of the felled opponent. This was not what he had envisioned when he carried the mokoi khan back to its rightful position, he was promised that the mokoi would not have to fight each other anymore. They were supposed to wipe out the vile humans and take the bountiful Trammel for themselves. Instead, he was here, without a leader and fighting his own kind. Everything was thrown into complete disarray with the death of his khan.

  He was a broad and powerful mokoi; his skinless form revealed bulging muscle in impeccable detail, each fiber of centuries refined tissue pulsing and flexing in violent synchronicity. The heavy weight of his serpentine lower half crushed the feeble skeletons of the fallen soldiers he slithered over. The enemy would try to steer clear of him as much as they could, but few could escape the incredible reach of his terrifying glaive whose length was many times greater than most of the mokoi’ height. Add onto this that his own tremendous size allowed him to engage any enemy far before they could ever reach him, made him a machine of visceral devastation on the battlefield.

  Usually he would spend most of his time in the war tents strategizing and planning for future encounters but the expediency with which this theater needed to close was paramount to reclaiming the Abyss. It took hours of deliberation, but he and the other generals decided that he would join the front lines to ‘encourage’ the tides of battle.

  It did not take long for his presence to shatter his enemies’ morale, and the fight by this point had been more of eliminating as many opponents as possible as they attempted to retreat rather than any frontal conflict. It only took a few hours after his involvement for the field to empty and the battle to end with resounding results and plenty time to spare.

  Under any other circumstance these would be stupendous results and a joyous occasion for the entire war, but he couldn’t find himself as excited as his contemporaries. It was their own people that the soldiers were celebrating having killed, their own family, their own friends. He had much preferred the simpler days when they were invading the pathetic humans; now, everything was put on hold to deal with this disastrous surrogate revolutionary army problem, and a problem it was.

  He never understood what his khan saw in Arete. He never trusted her, and retrospectively, correctly doubted the genuineness of her loyalty. He chose to trust in his khan, he chose to not step in the way of the khan’s special little project, he stood by the side while Arete continued to receive resources and support, her poisonous tongue corrupting the mokoi army from within. Now, he was being punished for his passivity, the khan was dead, and she was tainting the throne along with that monstrous white witch.

  He looked down to the infertile land below him and gazed upon the soulless husks of his people lying dead, they were his enemy, but they were still his people. Due to the nature of his weapon, they appeared bloodless and he sincerely hoped that at least his swings were swift enough to have killed them before they felt anything.

  He noticed the face of one of the fallen bodies, a distinctly oblong face with an obviously identifiable birth mark covering the right side of her face. He was certain that he recognized that face. He searched through his aged memory for where he recognized her from, and then it hit him. Not too long ago she fought in the primary corps under his instruction. An eager recruit who excitedly jumped at the opportunity to join the second human-mokoi war as soon as she was of age to enlist. He remembered seeing her in passing once on the rain theater; he remembered her patriotism and passion towards the war. He could even vaguely remember some mention of her family’s failing farm which provided food for her village. She hated how richly the humans lived and merely wanted them to share their wealth with the mokoi. He remembered that she thought the war would end with a peace treaty in which humans and mokoi could live side by side in equality: that didn’t happen.

  The war paused while the mokoi fought against each other for scraps once again, Arete and the white witch would infect the susceptible minds of the young, including her, leading her to her death on this battlefield. A fruitless endeavor that would only lead to more bloodshed, or at least with his glaive involved: just death. He found himself pondering how Arete and the white witch managed to convert someone like her to their side, how they could twist her mind and shatter her purity. She once had such a wholesome dream as saving all the mokoi and that led her to rebelling against and slaughtering those same mokoi. The words from Arete’s mouth must have been a very sweet toxin to violate an innocent conscious so easily.

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  He hunched his body downwards and swiped a hand over her eyelid to close them. The action seemed to sour the celebratory mood of some of the soldiers around him, but he ignored their concerned glances, he had a lot more work ahead of him after all.

  There were still many more extractions that needed to be organized for the mokoi still left abandoned in Trammel. He also had to be quick to capitalize on this astounding victory if they wanted to reclaim the Abyss. He definitely could not forget to increase the search efforts for princess Vow since they would need her if they wanted the full support of the nobles and legitimize their claim to the throne. It was obvious to any humble citizen that they were the original mokoi army and true representatives of the throne but those dirty noble rats would do anything so long as it was profitable even if meant backing those disgusting traitors. The work ahead of him was truly endless, he wasn’t sure at this point if he would ever live to see the mokoi peacefully living on Trammel. Besides from the pleurothallidinae.

  The pleurothallidinae didn’t count though, they were nearly as bad as the revolutionaries. As soon as they got a taste of the wonderous bounty of Trammel they instantly abandoned their homeland and adamantly refused to help at any point during the war. Even now when their homeland was at a point of an existential crisis, the pleurothallidinae remained neutral. If he ever got a chance to meet that pompous sun-bathing obsessed, war averse, duck admiring, human curious, blood gourmet in person he would personally execute him on the spot. Sadly, he probably wouldn’t get such a cathartic opportunity for an irritatingly long time if ever.

  Before he could even entertain such an idea, he first had to conclude this civil war with the surrogate revolutionary army. A task which for now would continue off the battlefield and in the war room. Thankfully he didn’t have to avert his eyes as he retraced his path off the battlefield since his wandering mind blinded his concentration for him. In fact, he was in front of the war room right now. He would have accidentally walked right passed it in his distracted meandering if one of the guards had not called out to him as he went by.

  He walked into the tent to be immediately greeted by a congregation of excitable small mokoi. It was clear that the other generals would only ever provide in the cerebral department to a battle. One of the particularly small mokoi, a short bulbous toad about the size of a thumb was the first to speak. “Ah general Zeal, it would appear that news travels faster than you do. A stupendous job as usual.”

  A resounding chorus of agreement swept through the room as many nodded and hummed in approval. General Zeal did not join in this celebration either and the other generals quickly quieted down as they saw his displeased expression.

  Zeal handed over his glaive to a lengthy servant by his side who quickly ran off to have the tool cleaned. He approached the round table at the center of the room and stared at the map placed on it. He stared at the map for a while noticing the dramatic changes that were made while he was gone.

  Perhaps it was due to his toxic partnership with Arete from when she was in the army, but he wondered if they had purposefully sent him out into battle so that they could change the plans without him. He tried to hide the disdain in his voice but had clearly failed. “Why are we sending troops to claim the vernal nest? We will need our full force to claim the supply routes to the Abyss bridge.”

  A rotund mokoi at the back of the room did not take too well to Zeal’s confrontational tone and replied to him with equal spite. “We received an update from the thirteenth scouting squad, it would seem that the surrogates were planning on forming an alliance with the nest and flanking our forces from behind.”

  Zeal ignored the bitterness from his contemporary, he was too distracted by the news itself. “But we formed a treaty. We agreed that using the nest was a war crime, they’re just children.”

  “They are criminals general Zeal. Do you really think that they would hesitate for a second to break that treaty once it benefits them?”

  Zeal glared at the generals before him. “If we were to respond to the surrogates by stooping to their level then why not just join them. We will not be claiming the nest-“

  “But the-“

  Zeal threw a hand up in front of the speaking mokoi which shut its mouth with a slight quiver. Zeal continued to speak. “We will not be claiming the nest. But we can’t let the surrogates claim it either. We can send some troops to intercept the surrogates before they arrive. The vernal bacillus will not be involved in any aspect of this war.”

  “The nest is an impeccable fortress, it would be much easier to defend from within.”

  Zeal glared at the fat general. “The vernal bacillus will not be involved in any aspect of this war.”

  The short toad was about to intervene before the two generals exploded in a shouting match, but they were interrupted by the chime of a bell. All the generals except for Zeal retreated away from the sound while guards started pouring into the room with weapons drawn. In front of Zeal there was what seemed to be a small pink rhombus that grew out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards Zeal holding a glowing parchment: It read.

You have been invited to The Tournament You are the Commander