Lux Aurea, Two Days Later.

The entire city was under tight security. The grand hall was empty as the other guests were to remain in their quarters.

"Why did you call an emergency session of the Council of Xadia?" King Aavizandum spoke. He hoped for their sake this was not some ploy to get him and his mate to come and see their new playthings. The dragon guard were standing next to their monarchs. All of the elves except Vaeril seemed to be dressed for some grand celebration, though Vaeril wanted to be elsewhere as he hated these kinds of meetings especially since he was kidnapped and dragged here by the golden knight herself.

"Humans have crossed the veil." Queen Khessa cut to the point with a cold and neutral tone.
Avizandum was staring at her, unable to utter a response. Then he turned to Zubeia to confirm if his ears heard it correctly. The others present started murmuring amongst themselves.

Queen Khessa asked for silence, "My scouts encountered them during a routine patrol, the lone survivor made it back, he will now tell you what he has already reported to me." She then had the person brought in who he began to detail what he witnessed, barely able to hold his nerves as the gazes directed towards him made him feel like a cornered rat.

"How?!" a Skywign elf stood up.

"What does it matter how they crossed over, what matters is what we are going to do about it." An earthblood elf interjected.

"We attack them of course," A tidebound elf stated bluntly.

"for what reason?" A Moonshadow elf asked

"They attacked us or do you want me to tell you the names of my men who died!" A general for the Sunfire elves countered.

"Because you attacked them first." The Moonshadow king countered back. "If they attack us it will be cause you struck first."

As Vaeril knew it would happen, the meeting quickly devolved into a self sustaining back and forth of insults that lead to nowhere. Two hours had passed and Vaeril was growing frustrated thinking "Damn these fools, does no one even care what objectives these humans are trying to accomplish here?"

Janai was holding in her anger as her hand was gripped the hilt of her blade, her sister was waiting for everyone to calm down before saying anything. She looked to see the Dragon Guard and Startouched elves keeping their silence, no doubt not wanting to be entangled in this mess and she couldn't blame them as she held similar feelings. She turned to see Vaeril's face scrunched up in frustration she felt like he was about to murder half the people in the room, something she felt inclined to aid him if he decided to do. "Come on, Vaeril I didn't argue with my sister and Avizandum for hours and forcefully dragged you here just so you can make angry faces." She hoped he would say something.

"They were banished from Xadia long ago, they have no right to return here" The earthblood elf added

"Yet we had the right to banish the all innocent with the guilty?" A startouched elf finally spoke up. "But please keep arguing amongst yourselves like pitiful children while they are preparing to do whatever it is they came here to do."

"If we don't launch a massive retaliation against the other side then they will view it as a sign of weakness and become emboldened."

"Retaliation, retaliation against who exactly?" Vaeril had had enough of this nonsense, he no longer cared if he was someone who had no business being here.

An earth blood elf stood up and pointed accusingly at Vaeril "What can a mere paper pusher like you offer in this meeting?"

Vaeril merely offered a cold glare at him, which silenced the entire room as everyone felt their blood run cold for some reason. They all wondered if this man was merely a scholar while emitting that kind of pressure. The star touched elves whose long lives had allowed them to live through nearly every war that had occurred over the millennia knew full well what Vaeril would be capable of if he ever chose to walk down the that path.

"Just what kind of being have you convinced me to allow into this meeting?" Khessa turned to her sister, sweat trickled down her forehead.

Janai smiled at her "The kind I want to recruit." She definitely would find a way to recruit him now.

"I am indeed a paper pusher, a paper pusher who seems to be the only person smart enough to ask what their objectives even are or any other crucial information,"

"Do those even matter?" the earthblood elf struggled to speak, his anger from before replaced by fear.

"Humans operate under multiple nations, so do you know if this the will of all of humanity or just one nation?" Vaeril asked

the startouched elves looked at him with fascination, and one added to his statement, "If it's just one nation, then attacking all of humanity would just unite them all against us."

"Does anyone here know what objectives the humans are trying to accomplish here? do they seek to gain territory? do they seek to harvest Xadian life to wage war against another human nation? do they seek something else entirely?" Vaeril spent a good half hour making his case, with the startouched elf's unanimously taking his side while anyone who objected was easily shot down with a sentence or two.

"The tidebound is correct, so our only course of action is to drive them back to the other side and place garrisons along the veil to prevent this incident from happening again, furthermore any human that surrenders will not be killed." Avizandum knew prolonging this meeting would be pointless. He noticed the startouched elves weren't objecting to his idea.

"would that be enough?" Queen Khessa was not sure if the other side would merely give up that easily.

A startouched elf countered "With this, the other human nations would see it as us defending our borders and have no reason to become involved unless we decide to cross over."

"First send out scouts to gather intelligence while we ready our forces" Avizandum added before turning to Vaeril. "You impress me, I'm appointing you to oversee our strategy."

"Why me?" Vaeril was confused, he certainly knew military history but that hardly made him fit for commanding an army.

Zubeia turned to him offering a gentle smile, "Lady Janai had spent hours arguing with Queen Khessa and Avizandum to allow you to be present, a normal person you would've just kept their head down." She then turned to the others "I'm certain those with experience WILL lend you their knowledge" no one dared to argue with her.

Days later at the border.

General Cornelius had been laughing unusually often these past few days.

"Is this really funny." Henry asked

"It is, I can't wait to see their faces when we unveil our little surprise gahahahahaha!"

"I still can't understand what you're thinking, why move all our flight mages and dual purpose guns to the back, not only that you've ordered all construction of the trenches to cease along with removing all the barbed wire, just what in this world are you even scheming?!"

"You will figure it out my young apprentice, its not that difficult"

"Since when have I ever been able to figure out what goes on in that head of yours?" Henry rebuked him.

Then a man entered and saluted "Sir, another group of skywing elves just flew by"

"eehehehe they can look as many times as they want ahahahahaha!"

The soldier turned to Henry in confusion

"Don't bother, I gave up trying to figure him out days ago" Henry sighed in exasperation, "Whats the status of the radar tower?"

"Sir, due to the lack of equipment our engineering had to jury rig a solution so its only good for a radius of 8.4 km"

"It should be fine, send a message back to Lord Belmont to see if he can help speed things along ehehahahaha" The general was unable to not laugh at anything at this point. "Are the tanks in position?"

"yes sir, the light and medium tanks have been moved to our southern flanks. All our heavy tanks and self-propelled weapons have been moved closer to the trenches. "

"And the mines?"

"They've been buried as per your orders"

"Excellent, gahahahahahaha! Now all we have to do is wait and see if the enemy will dance to our tune. ahahahaha..." then he began to cough violently.

"I knew this would happen" Henry sighed and went to get a medic.

Lux Aurea, One Week Later.

Everyone had gathered for the second meeting, Janai had spent the entire week dragging Vaeril everywhere when he'd much rather be in the archives burying himself in books.

"We have 46,000 regular infantry, 8000 archers, 18000 additional infantry equipped with crossbows, 4,000 ground cavalry, 2000, air cavalry, 4,000 mages, and 60 dragons"

Vaeril had spent days going over the military records and maps of the region along with what intelligence their scouts had brought in but he had no idea what he was dealing with.

Janai had agreed that she would explain his strategy to everyone, then pointed to an area on the map "Their position is surrounded by these lines they dug themselves, according to the reports, humans were seen walking through them, there are also strange buildings built right behind those lines."

"yes but why?" A skywing elf asked

Vaeril answered for her, "My guess is that they will be used by spear-men to take cover from archers and break up any cavalry charges. Their troops all seem to be carrying some kind of iron staves with them, but they seem to wear no armor for some reason, perhaps they use a type of padded armor instead."

Janai pointed to another area marked, "Next is this iron tower they have built, then there are the reports of long iron pipes attached to strange structures which are being placed in certain areas, those are marked by stars. I have no idea what purpose they might serve." Vaeril was curious about them and hoped they could take some prisoners because he wanted to ask them about everything on the other side.

He and Janai kept going over details before Avizandum asked
"So what is our strategy?"

she took a deep breath "First we use the bulk of our forces which is designated 'group A' to draw their attention. Our forces will march slowly towards them making them think we have come to offer them a chance to withdraw, once they lower their guard we charge at them till their mages start firing off spells towards us. The tidebound mages will create a massive ice barrier and the earrhtblood elves will create stone pillars to support it, we will use star magic to make the ice see-through to ensure commanders can't get blindsided while behind."

She turned to see if anyone had any objections before continuing, 'group B' will consist of earthblood elves tunneling underground towards to those trenches and neutralize them."

"The area in the south appears to be unfinished and there are more trees there's, Group C which is made up of infantry, crossbowmen, and archers, moon mages will cast illusions to hide them and move through the trees. 'Group D' will be similar but made up entirely of cavalry" Both are to flank them from the southern part but wait till the ice barrier is erected before launching an attack. 'Group D' will reveal themselves first and charge once they are close enough, only when the enemy engages them will 'group C' will attack."

She turned to face everyone "Is everyone able to follow so far?" They all nodded or kept silent.

"Finally 'group E' will be made up entirely of dragons and airborne units. they will stay above the clouds and dive towards the enemy only after the ice wall is erected, the dragons will dive first followed by everyone else. the dragons will use their fire breath then the airborne units will enter the fray, once their lines are thrown into chaos then we will bring down the ice barrier and charge the enemy to overwhelm them."

She took a few deep breaths "That concludes our strategy, if you want further clarifications on anything then ask Vaeril"
The tidebound scholar seemed almost insulted by her last sentence though Janai put up an innocent look in defense, He found himself swamped by people before he could even protest.

Khessa walked to her sister "Did he really come up with this strategy?"

"Indeed he did, he simply said he based his plans on historical records he'd read." Janai was jovial.

"So what do you need to recruit him" Khessa knew accepting a non-Sunfire elf will be a political headache and hoped they wouldn't need to offer something outlandish.

"the archives, he is passionate about books so having plenty of those is enough"

"You mean I just need to allocate the budget to find more books for the archives?" this made no sense to her, normally she'd expect demands of wealth or status or something grand, this was trivially easy to grant.

"You'll probably need to hire an architect from the archipelago just to make sure his stay here will be as comfortable as possible" Janai then wondered about that iron tower, Vaeril kept saying that it had to have some kind of significance, but she couldn't think of anything.