Ch. 8
Jeremiah stands on a podium, looking out at the small handful of soldiers gathered under the hot sun in Romatopia.
"This is all we have, Travis."
The emperor approaches the podium, an unsatisfied look obvious on his face.
"Soldiers of Huntsgrove, you have fought bravely. The town, however, has fallen. Does anyone have any idea how we got here?"
All the men shake their heads, but one adds "thank god we did."
Jeremiah checks that he counted right, then waves his arm to dismiss the troops.
"We have twenty-three pikemen, seven knights, thirteen archers, and fourteen crossbowmen." He tells Travis. The emperor nods, and beckons his general to follow him into the small town hall. They push open the doors, and walk to the offices. Several villagers in the hall voice their complaints about the army occupation, but the two military men ignore them.
Travis opens the door to Jeremiah's office and sits in a run-down wooden chair. Jeremiah takes a seat in a taller chair, and makes room on his desk to set his sword.
"Jeremiah, I think we should move our forces to Bartow."
"Bartow! But Bartow is in ruins!"
Jeremiah stops to think for a minute, then looks angry.
"You just want to move there because it's your town! I have power too, Travis!"
"Look Jeremiah, I only want Huntsgrove back. I don't want to take over any of Matt's territory."
"So be it. I will see to it that Huntsgrove is ours again, but we'll need to build our strength again."
Travis leaves the office, and begins to walk around the town. It's smaller than Huntsgrove, but with larger houses. Many small bridges cross smaller creeks, making it a rough road for cavalry.
"Which we have none of." Travis mutters to himself.
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Jonathan screams for his brother, who glances easily over his shoulder at the papers. The two brothers glare on, flabbergasted, at the results shown in the packet.
"It was a class twelve healing spell, used four times." Jonathan explains.
"That's no spell," his brother know says, "that's... You know what? I don't know what it is."
"Well, whatever it is we need to stop it."
"Where was it used?" Sean asks.
"CLAville, Lewis's mansion."
"Perfect."
The two grab torches from a rack, and shove them on the ground. They warp away in a flash of light, and the graph on the monitor jumps.
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Matt stands with Jay in a small room, with a map laid out in front of them. On the paper, the cow empire stretches from north to south, and the horizontal Huntsgrove empire meets the top of Matt's. Jay points out a cluster where Cowmansion2, Bartow, Megastar Manor and Swagzville meet in a finely drawn boundary line.
"We should attack there." Jay says promptly.
"You realize Swagzville is neutral?" Matt replies.
"Yeah, yeah. We wouldn't attack it. But we could take Bartow from Cowmansion2, or better yet from Megastar Manor."
"Good luck getting Josh to allow us a base there." Matt scoffs.
