Chapter 209

The Queen of Frost sat on her throne holding the sheepskin scroll, paper was still in short supply unless made by magic, and very few could use the simple spell for it since there had been no real need before. 'They spent so much time fighting each other that practical things for a civilization just didn't matter… Now here I am changing all that, I shouldn't be annoyed but…' She scratched at her now more ample bone horns, 'I am.'

Her pale frost blue skin caught the light of the day and she contemplated it for a moment when she looked away from the scroll's contents. The blood of Olasird'arc had truly marvelous and widespread effects on her body aside from healing what should have been fatal wounds.

Neia was anything but displeased with the result. Stronger, faster, able to compete with monsters that were unthinkable for anything less than Remedios herself, the hybrid form the Queen of Frost now had was an absolute joy. She scratched her back, 'But damn it itches a lot… I wonder if I'm growing wings too…' That was a pleasant prospect at least.

She refocused on the scroll, the prospect of an alliance with the South was more than a little tempting. 'I need more knowledge to build a proper Kingdom… The Dark Dwarves are helpful, but they are very few and passage through Dark Elf plains is both time consuming and expensive. I still can't believe I managed to get the Demihumans to even consider something important beyond personal strength.' She snorted at that, the power of unity had been on full display from the first time she incorporated a non-orcish tribe into her forces and managed to start bringing the smaller groups into line.

One by one and two by two the others fell accordingly, some by hook, some by crook, others by blade or dragon's breath… but now united, they were still learning to work together.

Being of somewhat minor noble stock, Neia knew better than most people that the past invasions of her homeland by Demihumans had all failed for one simple reason.

'No discipline. None. Every tribe for itself.' She recalled the lesson she learned that they hadn't truly intended to teach her, and as she looked at the scroll she knew the unvarnished truth. 'If I do invade again, I will do what nobody else has done before. Barring something unforeseen, I will win. Demalbion has discipline, they are now coming closer to being like a fist, not just twitching fingers acting according to their own will.'

A pang struck Neia's heart, for years of loyal service, they'd still turned on her at the drop of a hat and tried to kill her. Yet it was her home. That was her Kingdom. She still felt an ache in her heart for the people she would drive before her if her army went west.

The scroll she held contained the list of units, numbers, and mustered supplies. One suggestion for augmenting their supplies had been very straight forward. "We could simply eat humans."

Neia recalled shooting that one down immediately. "If we do that, after we win, we will have every human nation, maybe even the elves, bearing down on us from as far east as Baharuth. The humans would never allow a new empire like the Beastmen to rise in the west. And with the Kingdom of Nazarick making waves in the east, I don't like the idea of potentially antagonizing them too. No. We will capture humans, but we want legitimacy, to exist, to grow strong, and more enemies is not what we need to get there."

It settled the matter for most of them, it was simply too sensible, underestimating an unknown threat is how most of them ended up hammered into unity under her in the first place. A mistake nobody wanted to repeat with unknown powers and a united human crusade that they could bring down on themselves.

'I wonder what would have happened,' Neia thought as she contemplated the numbers she was preparing to bring to bear, 'if they had invaded while united under someone with a far more brutal outlook than mine? There is an unpleasant thought if ever there was one.'

She rolled up the scroll and set it aside, then took the next one. By now as she reckoned it, Astraka should be delivering her warning to the Queen, and when he went south, the Queen of Frost had no doubt his rebellion would begin in earnest whether the demihumans joined him or not.

'Foolishness.' Neia cursed, for all the bard songs of war and its glories, Neia knew the truth. War was work, hard work, dirty work, ugly work. More than once she held her arrow over the prone body of a demihuman whose spirit she sensed remained unbroken. One that she knew would kill her if she let him up, and released, leaving only shock in its eyes before it died beneath her. Others, the fear and panic, the wailing of children who fled a loss in war, only to find themselves hunted again by Neia's own shadowy and seemingly insatiable bloodlust… as far as they could tell.

'Now I'm on the other side, what a world this is.' She rolled her ice blue eyes at that and unrolled another skin to read the contents, new officers and noncoms were selected based on various performance evaluations. Personal power took a secondary position to leadership and command capability, but as a concession to culture, Neia made one clear exception.

The status of 'Champion of Demalbion' would be accorded to tournament victors and top performers, with those who achieved that state, regardless of their race, all put into one single unit directly under her royal command. 'Duels are for display. War is for winning.' Her private thoughts of that line still not revealed in full, it concentrated the bulk of Demihuman combat power directly under her control.

They served as her bodyguards at the slowly rising palace, and would serve as the tip of her spear when it came time to take the wall.

That thought hit her like lightning out of a clear sky. 'I'm already thinking they'll force me to go to war… aren't I?' She was. She knew she was. The fanaticism and fearfulness of the Holy Roble Kingdom would leave her with no other choice.

'I'm the most powerful woman in the Abelion Hills, I have a Kingdom and all the tribes are under my command. My dearest friend is a dragon, he's like a brother to me. And despite all of that… despite leaving everything behind, even my parents… I still find myself without a choice, instead being subject to other people's stupid decisions.' Neia balled up a fist and slammed it down on the armrest of her throne.

A few guards glanced her way from where they stood at the still incomplete walls, the sharp teeth she now had were bared in a snarl, but she waved their looks away and dropped the scroll to take up another from the pile on the little round table beside her throne. 'There's still so much to do…' She thought, and forced herself to focus again.