Freyar backed away breathing hard, unable to comprehend what she had just seen. What was happening didn't make the slightest sense: five dragons working together? It was unthinkable! Dragons were known to be extremely reclusive, even cannibalistic! Never someone had heard of dragons cooperating!
Then Haku's gaze fell on her, and she felt a shiver run up and down her body. That was not a gaze of challenge, nor of victory: they were eyes empty and devoid of any empathy. They were the eyes of a creature who simply already knew he had won and he didn't even consider her worthy of interest. They were the eyes of someone who was aware that he had absolute power over his opponents and who didn't see them in any other way than pesky mosquitoes.
She had to act fast if she wanted to allow herself and the ambassador to survive. Mana quickly began to flow through her fingers and seep into her staff; the runes on its handle activated and glowed with a soft green light and she opened her mouth to cast a spell: "Sak..."
She couldn't even finish a single word: some kind of tentacle wrapped itself around her face and blocked her mouth, preventing her from reciting the spell. It was so sudden that in surprise she dropped her staff, which instantly stopped emitting green light and returned motionless to the ground. It took her a moment to realize that the tentacle was actually the tail of another dragon. She tried to bite it, but she only risked breaking her teeth because of the hard scales. She tried to reach some of her magical items hanging from her waist, but before she could, two more dragons grabbed her arms and pinned her. All this happened in less than three seconds.
"How many... how many are there!?" she thought in horror as her eyes darted across the forest, watching more dragons appear from every corner. Eight... nine... ten dragons? Even more!?
With a great effort, she managed to look behind her. Even the ambassador had been captured: another dragon was pinning her to the ground holding a paw above her head, preventing her from making any sound or even breathing. The fairy was wriggling desperately, but there was no way she could lift an animal with that size off her back.
Haku obviously had this planned as well. His knowledge of magic was terribly poor, and Sarpa couldn't provide much of it… but he had one other individual he could ask for advice: his mother.
Neytiri had become less and less attentive to her children as the weeks went by, but she still cared for them. Given the situation, Haku had decided that for once he could put aside the disgust he felt for his mother's conduct and have a conversation with her. In fact, Neytiri knew both newcomers and magic well, and therefore she could give him some information.
As always, it had been extremely indetailed and fragmented information, but Haku had been able to get enough. Thanks to his mother's stories, he had discovered that mages, regardless of what class they were (druids, wizards, shamans, etc.), had two major weaknesses. First, they needed to recite a spell to use their power. Second, they were weak in close combat.
The reason for their weakness in close combat was that mages were unable to use mana to strengthen their bodies, unlike warriors. For example, Sarpa, who being a hunter belonged to the category of warriors, was able to use mana to strengthen his muscles or the hardness of his weapon. The same was true for the two fairy guards or the ninjas. In contrast, mages had to direct the mana out of their bodies. They could create a shield with it, but it was always an external shield, not an internal one. Which meant that if a mage was caught or tied up they could never free themselves, while conversely a warrior would only have had to build up their physical strength until the rope broke.
As for the need to recite the spell aloud... Haku had no idea why that was necessary. Warriors didn't need to do this, so he didn't understand why it should be any different for mages: after all, they used the same force, which was the mana. However, since his mother had told him that mages were generally 'stronger' than warriors, Haku suspected that they must rely on more mana and therefore needed more concentration to control it, and that recite the spell could helped. This would also have explained why adult dragons could instead use magic without reciting spells: Haku had already had occasion to prove that dragons had much higher concentration retention abilities than their newcomer counterparts. Obviously, however, that was only a mere hypothesis devoid of any foundation; the reality was probably very different.
In any case, that wasn't important to him now. What mattered was that mages couldn't use their powers if they were unable to recite their spell. Therefore, by shutting Freyar's mouth, the dragons had prevented her from using any kind of attack. Now the powerful druid was nothing more than a little being weighing just fifty kilos in the paws of a group of monsters, each one weighing at least a ton.
And with the druid immobilized and the other four guards dead, there was no one to protect the ambassador. "Haku, I got her. She was trying to use this" Darbi, the dragon who was holding that fairy face down, said throwing something at his brother.
"Good work, Darbi" Haku replied taking the object and looking at it carefully. It was a small sphere with strange carvings on it. They were probably runes, but he couldn't decipher them. "What is this supposed to be?" he murmured curiously, but then he shook his head and put aside his insatiable hunger for knowledge. "It doesn't matter now. Bring her up, I want to ask her a couple of questions"
Darbi nodded and lifted the fairy's head, almost breaking her back from the recoil. The ambassador coughed up bits of dirt that had become stuck in her mouth and breathed deeply. Evidently she must have nearly suffocated, because the color of her face had passed from plain pink to plum purple. When the air finally entered her lungs again and her breathing returned to normal, the fairy finally opened her eyes and stared in terror at Haku, trembling slightly.
The dragon approached her, staring at her intensely until he was almost mirrored in her pupils. "Between all of you insects, you spoke the least" he growled softly. "I expected an ambassador to be more talkative, but you're the only one who still hasn't told me her name. Would you like to do it? Please?"
The fairy's trembling became more intense and Haku could clearly hear her swallowing. "My... My name is Dharia" she answered in a thin voice.
"Dharia, mh? Very good. Now that we have made the introductions..." Haku's eyes narrowed: "... speak: do the fairies intend to send other ambassadors? Or are you the only one?"
"I'll tell you if you let us go!" Dharia responded with terror in her voice.
Haku let out a snort, then his paw lifted and his claws tore away half the skin of the fairy's face. Dharia screamed in pain as she clawed at where her right eye used to be, and that now there was just an empty socket dripping with blood. However, Haku didn't give her the time to despair: he grabbed her by the neck and brought her face less than five centimeters away from hus snout. "You're in no position to negotiate, little dragonfly" he hissed. "Speak, and I will then evaluate what to do based on your answers. And be aware that I will notice if you lie. My nose is much more powerful than yours and it can clearly smell lies"
It was actually false: although Haku's sense of smell was far above that of other living creatures, or at least the intelligent ones, it still wasn't powerful enough to understand when a person was telling the truth or not. Maybe when he was an adult he would have been able to do it, but now it was definitely not part of his abilities. However, the important thing was that the fairy believed it.
Dharia was now weeping in pain and fear. Even though as an ambassador she had prepared herself to be threatened by the enemy, she certainly hadn't expected to find a dragon, let alone one so ruthless and with so many allies. "No... no, they only sent me" she admitted, unable to tell a lie after what Haku had told her.
"So there's no one else, huh? Very good" Haku said with satisfaction in his voice. "In that case, we have already achieved our goal. Now we don't need you anymore"
"P-Please, let us go! We won't tell anyone!" Dharia yelled. "I will reward you! I will give you what you want!"
But Haku laughed. "I appreciate your offer, I really do, but I need your head if I'm going to get this little war started. Since you're the only ambassador, I have no one else I can take it from. What a shame" he said, and with a single movement of his tail he cut cleanly the neck of the fairy. Dharia's head hung around her neck for a few moments, and then it rolled on the ground as if it were a ball.
Freyar felt like throwing up after seeing this, but at that moment she was more worried about what the dragon had said than about the ambassador's fate. "He wants to start the war... is it possible that...!?". The pieces quickly fell into place in her mind. "This bastard... is he behind it all? Why!?"
"Strip the corpses of everything they possess, but leave their clothes on them" Haku ordered, then he looked at the druid. "As for her, cut off her legs, wings and arms. She won't need them anymore. Just give her a healing potion so she doesn't bleed to death"
"WHAT!?" Freyar screamed in her head, an instant before a searing pain shot up her shoulders. Her eyes watered and her mind screamed in horror at the thought that the dragons were literally chewing through her, and they were very careful not to touch any vital organs. She endured that agony for almost a minute, then she couldn't take it anymore and she passed out from the pain.
As soon as the fairy fell unconscious, the dragons knocked her to the ground and tied her mouth with a cloth, so they didn't have to hold a tail between her jaws forever. Then they finished ripping her limbs off completely and they poured one of Ethan's stolen healing potions on the stumps. Haku had done some experiments with them and had learned that if drunk those potions could regenerate the whole part of the body that was missing, but that if they were simply poured on the wound they limited themselves to healing it without regenerating the lost part. Sure, this varied based on the quality of the potions, but that's basically how they worked.
"Hey, you idiot! You can stop playing dead now" Haku growled, shaking Sarpa hard, who was still passed out in the same spot where he had previously thrown him. This continued until the poor ogre opened his eyes and vomited on the ground.
Haku threw him a healing potion: "Here, it will fix the wounds I inflicted on you. Hurry up and heal yourself, I have a task for you"
Sarpa greedily drank the potion and the gashes on his back healed up within minutes. "What do you want me to do?" he asked, not even considering complaining about the treatment he had undergone.
"Go get some spears from your companions, then skewer these bodies and the ambassador's head on them, and plant them in a place where the fairies will find them for sure" Haku replied.
Sarpa understood what the dragon wanted to do. Once the faeries found the mangled bodies impaled on the ogres' spears, any hope for peace would have vanished. With the ogres already ready for war and the faeries convinced that negotiation would have been impossible following such a massacre, conflict would have been inevitable. And so that damned dragon would have had the war that he wanted. The ogre looked at the only surviving fairy, reduced to a stump with no arms or legs; he couldn't help feeling a little sorry for her. "What are you going to do with her?"
"She'll tell me the secrets of all these strange objects" Haku replied as he gazed at the fairy's weapons and utensils. "I assume you don't know how to use them, do you?"
"No, I don't know anything about magic, and fairy magic is a mystery to us ogres anyway" Sarpa answered sincerely.
Haku nodded. He had expected that answer. "As I imagined. I'll find a way to get this druid to be… cooperative"
Sarpa gulped. That dragon was really cruel. He was a monster, no, he was a devil. He hoped the gods had reserved the cruelest possible punishment for him.
Haku didn't care what Sarpa was thinking: he was too busy gazing at his loot. It was a pity he hadn't been able to taste the fairy flesh, but he needed the bodies to start the war. Not bad: he still had a large amount of precious objects, potions, weapons and strange magical tools at his disposal which unfortunately he still had no idea how to use. But as he said, he would have been sure to make the druid cooperative. He wouldn't have asked his siblings to spare her life if she hadn't been of some use to him. And she would have been, oh yes, she really would have been.
The dragons quickly took their loot, and then they left. Sarpa did as he was told and secretly went deeper into the fairyland, and hung the bodies there on spears. When the fairies found them, about half a day later, the outcome was exactly what Haku had hoped for. "My queen, we have found something on our border. The ambassador and her escort... they are all dead. They have cut off their heads and impaled their bodies on pikes"
Queen Tytania gulped at the messenger's words. That was by no means an act of absolute cruelty. And she wasn't the only one who felt uneasy: several of the councilors in the hall muttered in disgust and fear as they heard the news.
However, there were also some who were pleased with it. Though horrified by the action of the ogres and the death of the ambassador, general Fridya knew she now had a better chance of making her voice heard. "My queen, we can't wait any longer. Sending another delegate would only mean losing more lives. It is clear that the ogres don't want peace. At this point, the only choice is to attack!"
This time her thought was shared by all. Even those who had previously aligned themselves with the pacifist faction could not deny the impossibility of a non-violent solution in such a context. The ogres had flatly refused any chance to speak: now they could only use their weapons.
Tytania closed her eyes in heartbreak, but an instant later she reopened them full of determination. "Prepare the army. We march against the ogres in three days"