TALES OF A WITCHER - Season 10 Episode 24

“What’s the meaning of these things?” Roland asked in a deep voice while looking at the animal skins on the table. His face was expressionless.

The demons had launched a surprise attack on the city wall and had left behind a provocative message. However, now was not the time for him to react to this provocation. Furious as he was, he still tried his best to keep control of himself.

The officials nervously glanced at each other, but none of them dared to answer the king’s question.

No one wanted to further irritate the enraged king by vocalizing the meaning of the self-explanatory pictures.

Undoubtedly, the big wolf was Lorgar.

The other pictures depicted common people who were down on their knees, a witch who was tied up, a city wall that was on fire, and the ruins of a city littered with corpses respectively.

They looked like quick, crude drawings, but they were still easy to understand.

This series of pictures was a threatening ultimatum.

The demons wanted Neverwinter to hand the Wolf Girl over to them, and they asked the common people to lay down their weapons and surrender. Otherwise, they would totally annihilate the defenders and burn down the city.

Roland glanced around and exhaled deeply, trying to calm himself down. He found that the officials had lost a lot of their fighting spirit, and some of them even looked terrified. Fortunately, none of them tried to advise him to give the witch to the demons.

“Your Majesty, this isn’t just a threatening letter from the demons. It’s a trap!” In the middle of this stressful atmosphere, a beam of light suddenly appeared and expanded next to a wall and then Pasha’s voice rang in his head. “Sylvie has told me what happened. Never believe anything the demons say. It’s another one of their old tricks.”

She sounded anxious as if she was worried that the king might make a hasty decision.

Roland immediately comprehended the implications of her statement.

“Did something similar happen to you before?”

“To be exact, it happened to a lord of the common people,” Pasha said seriously. “During the first Battle of Divine Will, the demons used this trick to create a divide between the common people and the witches. That was how they nibbled the Land of Dawn away step by step.”

The ancient witch continued to explain the “trap”.

“During the first Battle of Divine Will, the demons not only acted aggressively on the battleground but also plotted against the withes. They often lured a lord of a city to hand over the witches to them in exchange for postponing the attack on that city. Back then, the common people and the witches lived together peacefully. Though the witches were only a minority, they did not have to hide their abilities. As a result, they could be recognized easily.”

“Hoping to survive the war, the cities where the witches were in a weak position usually chose to make a deal with the demons. As a result, many witches who had just returned from the battlefield were caught or executed by people of their own cities. In such a situation, the estrangement between the witches and the common people was gradually aggravated, and then, after a complete betrayal, the witches broke irretrievably with the common people.”

“In the middle of the first Battle of Divine Will, two major cities located in the central part of the Land of Dawn built two coalition forces to fight against the demons. One of the coalition forces was controlled by the witches, and the other one was led by and consisted of the common people. During a fierce battle, the common people’s army surrendered to the demons all of a sudden. The witches’ army withdrew but was besieged by their former ally. The common people even used weapons made of God’s Stones of Retaliation to fight them.” “The witches were exhausted and had lost more than half of their warriors during the previous battle against the demons. They resisted strongly but still lost. After that, the leaders of the witches were beheaded in public, and the common people sent some of the remaining witches to the demons while enslaving the rest of them.”

“The Union named this incident the ‘Red Betrayal’. We consider it a profound lesson for us. From that day on, the witches and the common people have grown apart.”

“The cities that surrendered to the demons did not survive as long as they had hoped. Forcing the common people to betray the witches was just the first step of the demons’ plans. If the demons’ outposts were close enough to the cities, they would never hesitate to conquer them. The Lord who initiated the ‘Red Betrayal’ was no exception. He followed the demons’ orders and helped them in building mist storage towers and outposts. He even provided them with intelligence services. However, in the end, he couldn’t enjoy his old age in peace. It’s said that he was imprisoned in his castle by the demons and was starved to death. There were also some rumors that said that he was killed by a group of vengeful witches when he fled his domain after finding out that the demons planned to eliminate all of humanity. After the first Battle of Divine Will, human beings lost the Land of Dawn and most of our domains became uninhabitable. Since then, the sight of the Red Mist on the horizon had become a lingering nightmare.”

“The Witch Union rose from the ashes of this defeat and became the ruler of the Fertile Plains for next few hundred years.”

At the end of the story, Roland heard a shocking rumor from Pasha.

“There was also hearsay among the witches in the upper levels of the Union, according to which the demons learned this trick from the human beings themselves.”

“What did you say?” Roland asked and then quickly realized that Parsha only told the rumor to him.

All the officials in the hall looked startled, wondering why the king raised such a question.

“It was rumored that long before the beginning of the first Battle of Divine Will, back when the demons were no different from beasts, some person got in contact with them and taught them knowledge,” Parsha said in a low voice. “A few people believed that this explained why the Senior Demons looked like human beings, but the Three Chiefs thought it was absolute nonsense and forbade the people from talking about it. As a result, only the witches in the upper level of the Union still remember this rumor.”

Roland held his breath and tried to talk to the ancient witch through his mind, “Do you believe it?”

“I’m not sure.” To his surprise, Pasha was uncertain about the rumor. “If it’s true, then it means that we have to be extremely careful when communicating with the demons.”

After a moment of thought, Roland asked Parsha about a specific detail of the rumor. “Was the person in the story a witch or a common person?”

Parsha sighed lightly. “Some people said it was a witch and some said it was a common person.”

“What an unreliable rumor,” Roland thought.

He agreed with the Three Chiefs of the Union on their decision to stop the rumor. After all, no matter how the demons came about to become the enemy of all of humanity, they still had to guide their followers to defeat them. He changed the subject. “If a lord remained unmoved by the demons’ offer, what would they do?”

“They’d keep harassing him, or even send an army to the city to besiege it until the lord surrendered,” Pasha said. “This old trick had proven to be very effective in conquering small towns and cities.”

“Do you mean to say that the demons will come back again?” Roland sneered. “Barov.”

“Yes!” The City Hall Director stood up immediately.

“Soothe the subjects first, and then we’ll hold a memorial ceremony for the soldiers who died in combat. It’s the best way to raise the spirits of the mourning people.” Roland stressed each word with due strength. “As for the demons, I’ll let them know that things are different now. This isn’t the first Battle of Divine Will anymore.”