While Prince Enric was negotiating aid in the Thunder Hills, Zarius and his troops were committing raids on the Green Grove villages and planned to attack Grimfell, the capital of Green Grove.
"We found it, my lord!" one of the soldiers called out to Zarius.
"Great, what are you waiting for? Bring it here! I'll lead the attack on Grimfell."
Near Glowpeak, now rebuilt and renamed to Fortress of Fear, a small temple of devotees of the Saints, archivists, is located by the river named Till. Their work is to guard antiques and things with an emotional value for the Empire.
These, however, had a far more important fate, for they had guarded one of the mythical and powerful artefacts. This artefact was a deltoid-shaped green gem.
The units of the Dark Ones set up a camp in front of the temple, and a group of soldiers went to the temple.
"What do you seek in this sacred ground?" asked the chief monk, all monks were wearing white hoods with gilded ornaments.
"In the name of prince Zarius, we came for an artefact! We know it's here. Give it to us and we'll let you go!" one of the Dark Ones said.
"I'm afraid that's not possible, do you have some other wishes?" the chief monk replied calmly.
"Don't make fun of us, old man, or you'll pay dearly!" the Dark One draw a weapon while the other soldiers repeated his step.
"Your choice is not wise, creature of darkness. Go away, or the anger of the Saints will burn you alive."
“We are not afraid of your Saints, fool! Kill them!" the soldier called, and all the Dark Ones threw themselves at the monks.
The monks drew some kind of telescopic staffs from under their cloaks and started to fight the Dark Ones.
"Get back!" a heavily battered soldier retreated. The Dark Ones could not hurt even one monk. "Archers!" he called, and a regiment of Dark One's bowmen came into the temple, shooting at the monks, the monks touched something on their staffs and a blade emerged of both staff's sides, by which they reflected the arrows.
"Retreat! Let the bastards starve!" the soldier called, and the Dark Ones retreated to the camp.
Meanwhile, Prince Zarius looked down the hill at the ongoing attack on Grimfell. Surprisingly, the city has no walls, and Zarius's soldiers ran into the defence in the city centre.
"Did you come for this, you monsters of darkness?" Green Grove's king shouted from the balcony of a large building in the centre of the city and uncovered something under the sail. It was a large organ cannon, now from all the balconies, of all the streets people armed with rifles and similar cannons cut off the Dark Ones' way back.
"Fire them up!" shouted the king of Green Grove from behind the cannon and the whole city began firing into the confused legion of the Dark Ones. Prince Zarius watched in disbelief, as his entire legion was massacred to the last Dark One, and retreated with others back to the Fortress of Fear. Here he heard about the disgraceful defeat of his soldiers at the temple.
"You miserable wretches! You can't beat even a bunch of old men?!"
"My lord, they are better trained than we are..."
"Oh... Looks like we're not going to get further that easily. Send for more soldiers, we need to start training and change our tactics," Zarius ordered. "Prepare my horse, it's time to find some allies..."
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