Michael had one question in his mind for the past week. Who is this Ash Blake? He hadn't gotten a satisfactory answer from anyone yet. The old man had no idea who he was either. The elf Ronin seemed to think Ash Blake was Derek's second and the human ambassador in the elven kingdom and he was supposed to negotiate with him on how to deal with the elves. Derek was off to the south god knows where, and hadn't replied to any of his letters. Maybe this Ash Blake was a prodigy from the academy, but no one at the academy had heard of him either. He had a lot of things to do, dealing with Urks, Goblins, and Elves all at the same time.
His priority was to secure the valley, he had searched and raided all the Urk settlements he had found in the forests around the valley, and now he had set up camp in the north Tower to monitor the situation in the elven kingdom closely. He needed Derek here for this, it was a diplomatic hell he had to deal with right now, the king and the nobles had ordered him to make sure to take the most advantage of any situation that developed, and the old man had instructed him to make sure no matter what he did, innocent people must not suffer, no matter where they are from. But to march in the elven kingdom to help an elven city seemed too big a step to be taken lightly. He needed more information about what was happening in the elven kingdom, and for that, he would have to talk to this Ash Blake, after reaching the Tower when he had asked around about Ash, he found out that he was an eighteen-year-old kid who had just come with Derek and had been staying at the tower for only a few days when all this happened.
"Sir, the elf has made contact with the other end, he has requested your presence," a cadet came and informed him. Finally, it was time to get some answers.
The mirror was indeed an amazing artifact, when it had finally started working the cloudy white surface had turned clear like water and the next moment a room appeared on the other end, it was like the mirror had turned into a window. Ash recognized the room as Derek's office immediately then the familiar faces that appeared first of Ronin the elf and the guards at the tower which Derek had appointed for Ronin and some other unfamiliar faces, one of which was staring at Ash intently as though he was trying to remember him from somewhere really hard but to no avail.
"Ronin, how are you?" Aria spoke as soon as Ronin's face appeared.
"I am fine, first tell me what's happening there?" he asked impatiently. Aria told them the whole story and they listened aptly.
"It's getting very complicated and then this secret tunnel that Maya found yesterday, General Gurg has already started playing games," said Aria.
"That was expected, but I wasn't expecting them to send Gurg, which means that they are not confident to win fairly in other cities, they are planning to use this goblin attack to get an advantage over the other houses," said Ronin.
"But what do we do, we can't deal with both Goblins and Gurg at once, and both are equally dangerous?" asked Farin.
Ronin in the mirror turned towards another man in the room, the man was tall, had very shining and royal-looking armor on, and his presence filled the room, this had to be some big shot commander from the capital, thought Ash.
They couldn't hear what they were talking but Ash saw the man glancing at him a couple of times. Rorin turned back towards them.
"As you know I was sent here to make a deal with the humans, the response has been positive till now, there is a large force here present at the border, but they need to talk to Ash first, so let them talk alone," said Ronin. All eyes turned on Ash as they started leaving the room, Maya and Aria gave him a meaningful looks, they were hoping he would remain in their favor.
After all of them had left Ash moved closer to the mirror, there was only the man left in the other room too.
"So you are Ash Blake, how old are you? You look even younger than eighteen," said the man, Ash didn't know what to say.
"When did Derek choose you as his student?" he asked.
"A couple of weeks ago," answered Ash.
"and he sent you to the elven kingdom as an ambassador and went to south himself, I wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't seeing you myself, Derek has done a lot of reckless things but this by far is the worst," he said.
"Derek didn't know that all of this would happen, Rorin didn't tell him either what message he was carrying," said Ash.
"Forget it, there's no point in talking about that for now, we need to deal with the matter at hand, I suppose whatever they were talking about was true, you aren't just locked in a room somewhere are you?" he asked.
"Yes, it's all true, I mean I was myself attacked by the goblins, and they haven't locked me anywhere, I can go anywhere I want in the city so far," said Ash.
"Yeah well they are under war so they won't have time to worry about you for now," he said.
"Umm, you didn't tell me your name?" he asked hesitantly.
"I am Michael, a commander and the same rank as Derek, we were actually at the academy in the same year, now tell me do you have any thoughts on how we should go about this?" asked Michael.
"Well, I am gathering since you are here, we do want the right side to win, and I guess by sending this Gurg, they are going to either try to hold the people here hostage who are primarily from the other houses, and deplete the forces here as well in the process," said Ash.
"Yes, but how are we supposed to help, the general will arrive there soon and after that, he will be in control pretty much," said Michael.