Lucas let out a loud sigh as he would lean back against the tree. Seeing what just had happened, he felt sick and didn’t think that he would be able to sleep the entire night. In order to have something to do, he would grab a piece of jerky and started to bite on it. He gave Emma and Lilly a piece as well.

Emma would not accept the jerky as she held up her hand, causing both Lilly and Lucas to stop moving. Hooves could be heard as someone appeared from where the hunters just had ran to. At first a centaur came to mind but it was the minotaur, running down the path to the other side.

Luckily for them, he didn’t see the dead elf in the middle of the night, continuing on his path. Not knowing what he was doing or where he was going, they decided to stay quiet from now on in case they were accidentally heard.

That morning, Lucas would yawn. He and the others had been falling asleep slowly, trying their best to stay awake and every once in a while giving each other a little push to wake them up again, their eyes closing and shooting open when they were about to fall.

Now that it was morning, they could start to move once again. But when looking at the ground, Lucas noticed something weird. The body was gone. “What? Where is that elf?”

“Who?” Asked Emma as she rubbed her eyes. She too was tired to really take note of what Lucas was talking about.

Lilly would notice it as she looked at Lucas and then the ground. “Ah… Yes the elf. There’s this Gruge for zombies. Basically, when you die you…”

Lucas would hold up his hand as he nodded and yawned. “Yeah yeah… I know what zombies are. I’ve met someone stuck into a tree. Nice bloke when he isn’t growling constantly… which is always so… Not really so nice… The only thing that I’m not so sure about is why he just walked away? Doesn’t he hate us? Like doesn’t he want to kill us? Or are they also mindless in this reality?”

Emma got on the ground first, helping Lilly with her leg to get down as well. As Lilly was getting help, she would give him more information.

“Zombies are pretty mindless yeah. They have a leader who’s special ability is having a sound mind which isn’t so impressive. This also means that the zombies are the only faction not being ruled by royalty but by the choice of Pan as he choses who gets the mind when the zombie dies that has it. Secondly, you never said that you knew zombies.”

“Yeah well… you never told me zombie were a thing here.” He had wanted to said more but Emma pushed a bow in his face.

“Here.” Said Emma, holding out Lucases bow, having a second one in her other hand. “You can have yours back, the elf had a much better one.”

Lucas took the bow, feeling a bit hurt by what she said but knowing that she was correct. “Yeah well…” He walked to his bag that he had thrown away as he wanted to know more about the minotaur.

“Okay, last night one of you let it shine out that you know more than me about what’s happening here, so tell me, why is it bad that you saw him right now.”

As Emma was too busy looking around for some arrows the zombie might have dropped, Lilly decided to continue to educate him. “As I probably said before, each Gruge has three creatures with special powers. Each Gruge puts them in leading positions in their army to utilize the ability. What you saw was a minotaur, the only one of their species as one of the special powers is getting turned permanently into a minotaur.”

Hearing this, Lucas didn’t seem to be so impressed. “Doesn’t sound like a nice power if you ask me.”

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“Well… nice or not, it’s his special power. It makes him stronger, able to run longer, something like a bear. It’s able to take quite some hits.”

“Anyway, what you’re saying is that because you saw the minotaur, you think that the Forest Gurge is after you. Can’t he be corrupted?”

That question was indeed a good question as neither Emma or Lilly answered it. That was enough for Lucas to see at least a bit of hope.

“Okay so… What are the powers of the Forest Gruge and the Zombie Gruge?”

Lilly looked around, seeing everyone being ready to go, she would lean against a tree to rest her foot for a bit, not sure if it was smart to talk about it right now but doing it anyway as she wasn’t going to complain about getting more rest. She yawned before talking again.

“Euh… Forest Gruge… So I told you about the minotaur. The other generals of the gruge are the bow master who never runs out of arrows as long as he has a quiver and is automatically the best shooter in all the lands…”

Lucas already put a hand up to silence her, not able to keep his question on the backburner. “So what if everyone suddenly sucks at using a bow? Does he then get worse as well seeing as the best shooter suck as well?”

This stunned both the girls, looking at each other before looking back at him. Lilly being dumbfounded shook her head.

“I… I don’t know. Anyway… euh… You also have some kind of magic caster, able to make runestones for others to use. These runestones are filled with magic which is tied to the run on the stone. Only the general can make these runestones.”

“Then you also have the Zombie Gurge. Like I said before, they aren’t run by royalty but are run by a singular entity. He is then made the zombie king as he’s also the only creature that gets powers in the Zombie Gurge. Therefor he’s also the only leader to have these special powers since actual royalty can’t get these powers for as far as is known. Never in our history has any royalty ever gotten powers.”

“Anyway, the powers of the zombie king are that he can control all the zombies mentally. He can summon a hammer that scales with his size as he can also grow to the size of a giant. I’ve never seen him before but imagine a giant rotting corpse with perhaps some organs hanging out but now as a giant.”

Lucas just nodded as he took in all the information, thinking what he could do with this. “But there are more gruges so more powers. Next time we rest you can tell me all about it. For now the minotaur of death is after us and we should get moving.”

He walked to the road, slowly climbing up the small hill leading up to the road. When reaching the top, the girls were almost there. He would tilt his head, looking at the path going to the left to the Human Gruge before suddenly going back down to the sisters, pushing them down. “Get down, stay silent.”

Neither of them knew what was going on and got down like he told him, following his lead and slowly crawling to the top where they looked to the left. A group of horses could be seen coming down the road on the left. This time it actually were horses with humans, seeing creatures that weren’t from the Forest Gruge. The horses in the front were holding banners high in the air, showing their allegiance and clan.

Since Lucas never had any history lessons about these clans, he had to look at the sisters, Lilly on his left and Emma on the right. “Who are that?”

Emma’s eyes got big, seeing the banners. “The white banner with the blue bear is the clan from the north, close allies of our clan. And the yellow banner with the red lion is our clan.” Right as she was about to jump up to run to them, Lucas held her down.

“What are you doing? If they managed to corrupt the Minotaur, who says that they aren’t traitors either? Perhaps they’re trying to get you to expose yourself?”

As the people appearing were a fair distance away, they didn’t see Emma standing up to run to them. Right behind the first two horses now appeared a man, not wearing any armor, only wearing clothes. He seemed to be quite big for a man, having a big sword on his back. He was riding on a big black horse, able to support the weight of the man.

Behind him, more and more horses started to show, having a group of around twenty well armored knights. The one’s on the left behind the lion banner mostly opting for longswords with the knights from the north wielding big battle axes. In the middle of them all seemed to be someone important, having a crown.

Lilly this time was the one to jump up, wanting to run to the man. “That’s dad!” She almost yelled this, causing Emma to also jump up. Lucas wasn’t having any of it, grabbing both their hands and pulling them back down, having to grunt as he did it. “Something is wrong. Stay.”

Both of the girls looked angry at him, trying to pull their arms away from him. Their movements didn’t go unnoticed, one of the banner wielders pointing right at them. Before they could speed up to check who they were or what was going on, a horn could be heard coming from right beside the knights.

Lilly and Emma finally decided to not move, heading Lucas his words and waiting, seeing a multitude of creatures emerge far away from the out of the bushes to run at the knights. From here it was difficult to see who was attacking.