Four Days before Siege: The Mouth's Bead

"We first thought, 'hey, it would be better if we just rain arrows at them,' right? But then we heard they're using fire Barrier spells and shit, so I'm all like, 'Oh shit, arrows won't work then! Our damn thing will just melt and burn and shit!' But then, I thought, right? I thought, 'hey, if they're using a fire spell, maybe we can force them to activate that so they could activate a few bombs we would plant on the ground that would then activate their fucking death,' right? It's epic, I tell ya!"

'Why does he keep saying "right"?'

'Agreed.'

Garland continued as I spoke with Dominion in my head., "The basic gist of the first part of the plan is to pew-pew-pew arrows at them, and then the giants would go 'graaagghhh, what the fuck, the birds are throwing sticks at us!' So they would be forced to activate their fire barrier, and that spell would hopefully be hot enough to light up the explosives we planted. Luckily, we already tested this. Remember that time you fought Bismarck? That was super fucking cool, by the way." Garland waited for me to answer his question, but he was only met with silence, so he cleared his throat and continued after seeing my severed arm. "Right, so, my boss told me that you threw a Tier-1 spell at the ground, and then Corbel spread the fire, and then BAM! The bombs actually exploded! So, I'm fairly sure we could execute about a few thousand of them at the first stretch of the ravine alone. This is just a one-time party trick, though, so it would only work for the first wave, right?"

"You keep saying 'right?' even though I have no idea what you're saying," I whispered as I looked at the map. Indeed, the mouth of the ravine is relatively narrower than the rest. There's a bracket written in red ink above accompanied by the words "approx. half a km."

"B-beg your pardon, sir?"

"Nah, it's okay; continue, Garland."

At this point, Times was not even mad anymore. He was just covering his face with his wing as a few heavy breaths escaped his lips. Garland also noticed the shameful energy behind him as he slowly tensed up.

"Relax," I said, placing my hand over Garland's shoulder. "I'm not gonna be mad at you."

His eyes then slowly moved towards Times, who's now glaring at him as if he's about to murder the poor Garland. The general beside me then yelped. "But someone will, right?"

"Yeah," I chuckled. "Someone will." I shook my head with a bemused smile. "Continue the plan."

"R-right…" Garland loosened himself a bit after shaking his wings with eyes closed, which made me shake my head in perplexity as a grin swiftly crept up on my face. "Okay, so you see here in the map," He leaned forward and pointed at the area that came after the narrowest part of the ravine. "This part looks like a whacky-looking-ass small M, right?" He then bit his lip and scrunched up his eyebrows a bit before continuing with a nervous sigh. "This is where the ravine gets a little less claustrophobic since the ravine starts opening up a little bit here. We don't particularly have a plan for this part because that area in itself is already hell: it's VERY steep, jagged, and uneven. The survivor of the first wave, if any at all, would have a hard time climbing up this part; we've approximated that the damn part would take somewhere around five to eight hours to finish. And the next waves would have a hard time too, but not as much as the first wave. We would occasionally release boulders and arrows at them every few minutes to drain their strength even further! This could also be the perfect time to ransack and destroy their supplies. There are just countless possibilities in here, I tell ya! I'm pretty sure you're already seeing how horrible this idea is for the giants, right?" Garland hissed, realizing again that he had made his strange habit again.

"It's okay. I don't mind it. Keep going." I assured Garland while looking at the map with knitted brows.

The general noticed the seriousness on my face and immediately showed a much more determined expression as well.

"So, like, once they're done with these whole M-shaped climb shenanigans, they would be met with the first outer tower in the middle of this large open space. This is the first open space they would ever encounter during their travels. I believe it's called uhh… excuse me, sir?" Garland then leaned forward to read the name written on the map. "Right, yeah! It's called The Mouth's Bead; this is where we plan to initiate our first confrontation with them. We had evacuated the families living in that tower or anyone near the ravine, for that matter. There are about three two other open spaces like this that they would encounter. Fun fact, sir, that's actually why some people call Auld Mountain Pass 'the Necklace' because those three circular open spaces make the ravine look like a necklace with three beads! Ain't that just whackin' fun!? Anyway, we think that maybe the survivors of the first attack would camp —"

"Stop." I raised my hand to halt Garland's explanation. Garland just looked at me with a nervous expression, and the rest of the generals standing idly at the foot of the stairway all looked at me too with alarmed faces.

'Hey, Dominion.'

'I can harvest corpses, right?'

'I see. Thanks.'

"Sorry about that." I cleared my throat, and the generals all heaved a relieved sigh. It seemed like they all knew that I was talking to Dominion.

"Not at all, sir," Garland said with a nervous chuckle while scratching the back of his head. "Do you wish me to continue my explanation?"

"Nah, but… Tell me, Garland, how many giants can we fit in the Mouth's Bead?"

"Hmm… Probably not a lot, sir, but if they cram themselves hard enough and use the tower in there, they might be able to fit about 10,000 or so, give or take, but that means there would absolutely be no space left for any of them; the rest would just have to camp on the steep M-shaped path. If they don't camp here, they'll have to walk through the night and endure the unforgiving two-day travel in the Necklace without resting, which is also a possibility. But we would certainly punish them for that poor decision. Not only are the kapres partially blind in the fog, but the darkness would also make it impossible for them to see any incoming soldiers. If they do camp, they might have a better chance of seeing us coming; we could still easily battle them, but these giants are crafty folks. They will find a way to camp here. I propose to raze hell here so whatever remains of them would have no strength or morale. Either way, they will lose this."

"Do we have more of those explosives?"

"Unfortunately not, sir. We've already used most of them at the entrance. We really, really think it's best to use the explosives earlier on the climb so our enemies would hesitate before using their fire Barrier spell next time. But we're doing our best to mine for more sulfur and charcoal to make more explosives; it's just proving to be challenging to do so without destroying the mountains, and we don't have enough time and men to make more batches. Right now, we already have a hard time finding men to make our arrows. It's pretty much impossible to find miners."

I paused for a few seconds before smiling. "This battle will end here."

"Beg your pardon, sir?"

I looked straight into Garland's eyes, making him flinch. "Here. In Mouth's Bead. I have a plan."

Times stepped forward and spoke, "May we please know your plan, my Lord Praeceptor?"

"We'll trap them."

And the war council went on until the orange tint of the sun touched the skies.