There was a moment of silence before Torun made the call: "Alright, Luger, you and I will go in hard, and then Archdruid, you weigh in with the big picture analysis, okay?"
Ilarode nodded, signaling his agreement. Luger Stonehide grinned wide. "Heh, just wait till I drag out all their dirty laundry and tear them to pieces with my words!"
Danche was getting more and more uneasy as he listened, frowning a little. "Aren't you worried this might just blow up the negotiations?"
Luger shot him a side-eye. "You think we actually want a deal? Get real. Our ancestors' blood feud is still fresh, and the Liberl Port folks want to use our fighting strength to go up against the demons. If they're not bringing something big to the table, why would we agree?"
Danche could only lower his head and stay quiet. He felt a nagging guilt over breaking his word—and given that even his own faction was split into two camps, with no unified opinion, he honestly had no clue what the right call was.
He just tried to reason it out. In this kind of tense atmosphere, if they kept testing each other's patience, things could easily blow up, and this partnership could unravel before it even started.
Deadly cold and demon armies—this winter, every tribe faced the same fatal threat. At least from a rational point of view, Danche really wanted this alliance to work out.
"What do you think, Archdruid?" Torun suddenly turned and asked.
Ilarode smiled and nodded. "Do whatever you young folks decide. The alliance will be yours eventually anyway."
Torun nodded, making it official. "Then it's settled."
Danche frowned again and asked, "Shouldn't we tell Matriarch Willo about all this?"
Luger shook his head. "Nah, she'd never agree—she'd just go on about treating people honestly and all that. She's so soft-hearted, that's why the Liberl Port guys keep pushing her around. It's up to us to protect her."
Torun totally agreed. Both nodded, sharing a knowing look.
It didn't take long after they'd made up their minds for the tent flap to lift. Charles, Anno, Willo, and Nidalee strode in. Ilarode, Torun Highmountain, Luger Stonehide, and Chimera Danche rose to greet them, then everyone settled on either side of a massive square table.
With everyone seated, the whole scene looked just like a four-on-four duel.
As Ilarode scanned the four newcomers, his face betrayed mixed feelings, his gaze lingering on his daughter before flicking between Charles and Anno. With all his life experience, he couldn't help but feel like Charles and Anno were the real pair here, while his daughter simply trailed along at their side.
He couldn't wrap his head around what could have happened to his proud daughter for her to willingly follow that man.
Torun, meanwhile, was red-eyed, glaring back and forth between Charles and Nidalee, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles bulged. He hadn't been there for last night's events, but he'd heard all the stories. The thought of his fiancée ditching him for someone else, and the joke that would make of him among the other tribes, was torture.
Maybe outsiders wouldn't gossip much, but his scheming brothers—always eyeing his right to be heir—would definitely make use of it behind his back.
Fury, resentment—nothing he could do for now.
Next to him sat Luger Stonehide—the one expected to go on the verbal offensive—who, the instant he saw Charles, tensed and his expression changed.
He still remembered the soul-crushing Smite and the Eldritch Blast that nearly forced him back to his true form. Those attacks had left a real psychological scar, and now just seeing Charles triggered no small amount of anxiety.
Negotiations hadn't even started yet, but his nerves were already shot.
Danche wore the most complicated look of all. His eyes flicked across Charles and Anno's calm faces, then quickly slid away, shame and guilt keeping him from meeting their eyes.
He felt like he'd failed them both.
Charles looked around the group, a surge of emotions within him, though he kept his expression poker-straight. He nodded slightly to Ilarode and spoke up: "I'm Nigel Charles, this is Anno Amcastra—we're representing Blackstaff Tower, here to propose an alliance to fight the demons."
As he finished, he felt Anno squeeze his hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her gaze locked fiercely on Luger, eyes rimmed red.
No time to figure it out—right then, Ilarode spoke: "I'm Ilarode, representing the Mountain Purifiers. Welcome, everyone."
He took the time to introduce Torun, Luger, and Danche as well, even though everyone here basically already knew each other, before finally taking their seats.
"Archdruid, we came here in good faith," Anno said first. "Demons are the common enemy of all the material world. As soon as your alliance leadership reached out, we dropped everything to help."
"We hope that, facing a threat that could wipe us all out, everyone can put old grudges aside and stand united."
She finished, but immediately Torun shot back, clearly irritated: "Easy for you to say. What are your people actually bringing to the table?"
Anno pulled out five drafts—basically the dwarves' contract, trimmed down for this crowd—and passed them over to the four, plus one for Willo. "This is the Blackstaff Tower's initial proposal. The specifics are open for discussion—please, take a look."
Torun flipped through just a line or two and immediately started nitpicking. "Five thousand soldiers to fight demons? Are you just trying to bleed us dry?"
Willo looked up, gently coaxing, "There's more. Keep reading, Torun."
Anno frowned, holding back her anger. "Keep going. Blackstaff Tower is putting in double your numbers for this joint push. And from what I've seen, your alliance can definitely muster more than this. Contributing these troops shouldn't be a problem, right?"
She meant the Rockseeker's Outpost fight—if you counted all the kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, and everything in between, they'd easily hit ten thousand or more.
She was already making a huge concession, only asking for five thousand.
"That was a century ago. The alliance can't field that many now!" Torun said. "There's only half as many Mountain People these days as there used to be!"
He kept glancing at Luger, signaling him to join in so he didn't look like he was fighting alone.
Cornered by his own side, the massive werebear drew a deep breath, forced himself not to look at Charles, did his best to suppress that wave of terror, and managed to say, "So the folks from Liberl Port pitch in this little, and we're just supposed to forget generations of blood debt? That's wishful thinking!"
Willo hurried to calm things down. "I know everyone has their grudges, but those can be settled later. The urgent thing now is to stand together against the fiends!"
Luger ignored her and kept going, "You realize how many innocent hillfolk you killed? How many of our ancestors, women, kids died to your indiscriminate slaughter? How much of our wealth did you plunder?"
"And now you toss us scraps, hoping to buy our lives and send us to die against the demons? What, you think the Mountain People weren't born to real parents, that we're all fools?"
A surge of rage shot through Anno. She wanted to shout Luger down for his shameless hypocrisy—they were the ones who started the war, yet now they had the nerve to call Liberl Port unreliable? It was the world turned upside down!
But she grit her teeth, holding back for the sake of the bigger picture. She understood she had to stay calm—if they fell to infighting, the demons would run wild for who knows how long.
She was racking her brain for a way to defuse the tension, when suddenly Charles slammed the table, stood up, and snapped, "Ridiculous! You were the ones who attacked Rockseeker's Outpost and threw everything into chaos, and now you try to turn it back on us?!"
"Anno, Nidalee—let's head back to the dwarves' mining headquarters. The Griffon Knights are plenty strong, and the Second Captain has already agreed to back us up. No reason to waste time with these shortsighted fools!"