Injury

The letters

The next day Techno stands up before sunrise. He makes himself a quick tea. Then he runs to get his sword and cape. He quickly braids his hair, puts on his boots, grabs the doorknob and throws the door open. Feeling the morning breeze in his face, he starts walking towards the camp that you can see in the distance. When he finally arrives, he can feel the beginning of a headache. Nobody is outside, of course everyone is still asleep.

"Morning Soldiers!"

There is a bit of movement in some of the tents.

"I thought I taught you all better than this. Everyone wake up! We've got training to do!"

The first soldiers come outside to look who is shouting. Most of them have a tired expression on their faces, but when they realise that they are standing in front of the general, they stand up straight with their chin held up high. One of the soldiers steps a few steps closer to Techno and asks.

"What do you mean with training, sir?"

"I'll explain everything in a sec." Answers Technoblade flat.

A few more people exit their tents. Soon the entire army is standing in the middle of the camp. Techno starts counting them, realising that these people clearly aren't the same amount as from the last time he saw them. It was a while ago that he last saw them, but that more than half of the army disappeared is a bit much.

"Where is the rest of you guys?"

A tall lanky man steps closer. He has black hair but really pale skin and a hint of purple on his lips. He also has two different eye colours. One red greyish, the other green greyish. The guy didn't seem older than 20. Technoblade recognises the strange man from seeing him a few times outside his cottage, but Technoblade wasn't able to identify the strange man.

"Most of the Army left a while ago, sir, wanting to be back with their family or friends. The rest of us either don't have anyone or anything to return to, or want to continue serving this Empire. We have made this small camp our village and homes, it's because we don't know how to act around so many people and stress in the city."

"Ah... I see. Well, guess we need to train like this for a while."

After telling the soldiers everything Techno knows himself, the soldiers follow their general to a field. The walk is only a couple minutes from the camp. The rest of the day consists of preparing a plan and positions that would hopefully make the resistance against the attack more effective. Technoblade knows that the next few days would be going over the plans and posts a couple of times, until they could start the actual training.

Techno returns to his cottage in the late evening. He is exhausted but also knows that the voices aren't going to let him rest this night. He takes the most comfortable seat in the house and drags it to his desk. He sits down and lets out a long sigh. Then the tired man takes out a black long feather, dips it in some ink and starts writing on an old piece of paper. He tries to concentrate on the letters instead of the extremely loud voices in his head. They are shouting out all of the small details that were wrong during the planning. Suddenly, the normally calm general snaps.

"Can you guys stop yelling, just for a second?! I am trying to write to Phil about the exact same things you guys are screaming about! Shouting the entire time, while I am trying to concentrate isn't going to help the process!"

The voices finally calm down a little bit. There are only a few hundred left, saying things like: chill out, one of us, Techno support or sorry.

Once Techno finally finishes writing, he takes the letter, folds it nicely and walks to the front door. He opens it then steps outside and feels the cold temperature of the night running through his veins. Technoblade walks in the direction of the castle.

The emperor is standing on his balcony, he sees the general give a piece of paper to the guards of the palace's entrance. Philza leaves his office that night, for the first time in the while, hoping to receive the letter before his sons do. He walks down the hallway, on his way to the portal. But then a door flies open. A young boy walks out the doorway. The boy has short golden locks and mesmerizing blue eyes. He seems around thirteen years old. He's wearing the same long sleeve shirt with puffy shoulders, like the last guy that interrupted the emperor while working. The boy is also wearing a necklace with an emerald pendant attached to it.

"Oh, hello mate!", says Philza

"You finally decided to leave your work room! Are you going to spar with us now? That's the reason you left, right? Fighting against Will is way to boring."

"Erm... yeah, sure. But I'll need to work on something real quick, ok? We can spar tonight. Maybe."

Philza makes a loop around the young boy, who seems to be the second prince. The busy emperor knows that he probably wouldn't have time to spar like the good old days. He ignores the guilt in his stomach and continues his walk to the entrance hall.

The boy behind the rushing old man, turns around and enters his room again. It is a big area. There is a bed in one of the corners and some book shelves opposite of it. The room has a big window, that you are able to open and close to go onto a small balcony, opposite the door. It has a beautiful view over the city, even better than the one in the emperors work room. There is a person sitting on the windowsill with a guitar in his hands, playing some soft tunes. The man is looking outside, until he hears the door shut.

"He's busy, isn't he?", says the man with a disappointed tone in his voice.

The boy with the blue eyes just nods and sits down on an armchair next to the balcony.

"What do you think he's up to, Will?"

"I saw a letter on his desk yesterday. He's definitely hiding something." Says the taller man.

"Obviously... Did you see anything on that letter?"

"I was only able to catch one sentence. It said something about that there aren't enough guards in the far south. I don't know for what though."

"Do you think we should confront him about that?"

"I think we shouldn't bring up the theme. But if it somehow is being talked about, we could do it."

"Seems good to me."

While that conversation was happening, the emperor has already arrived at the gate. The guards are surprised to see the ruler walking around the castle, but they didn't ask any questions, silently handing the letter to their leader. Philza grabs it and walks back to his room, planning to stay there for another while. Once he enters his room, he closes the door behind him and starts reading the letter. The first part of the letter seems to be written in a hurry, because of the smudged ink and the misspellings.

Hello Phil,

I just stated the traning and planing with the solders. I have a few probles. The army is wey smaler than it was a fiew years back. One solier told me that the rest of them left a wile back because they waned to be with ther relativs. We only have a round fourhundret left. thats probably the beggist problem we have. The second provlem is that the soldirs need a lot of training and I probably won't be able to train all of them by myself. That's probably most of it now. How long will we have, do you think, until it'll happen?

-Technoblade

Philza lets the letter fall on his desk. He buries his face in his hands. Elbows are resting on his armrests. There is a knock on the window. Phil looks at the biggest window in the room and sees a black crow sitting on the windowsill. The stressed emperor opens the window and lets the bird fly in and rest on his shoulder. Philza goes back to his chair and wants to sit down, when he sees a note, attached to the crow's claws. He jumps up, which makes the bird jump as well. Phil pets the crows back as an apology and unties the note from the claw. The note seems to be written with panic and in a hurry. Whoever wrote this was very scared, panicked or weak, because the letter had only one sentence written on it:  They are here.