Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Before they could even get the boats moving, there were more trucks on the horizon, preparing to plead their case to the residents of the Fae Forest and try to get shelter within the safety of Forest Grove.

From a distance, it almost looked like they were being invaded, with nearly a hundred incoming military trucks on their way, but Wolfe could see the animal ears that marked them as residents of the Frozen Wastes and not invaders.

Then, the trucks that were already here, started to move, and he realized that not everyone had gotten on the boats, one person per vehicle had stayed behind to help move the equipment out of the way so that the next group could join them.

"Thanks for that. Put them anywhere off to the side, and we will find parking later." Wolfe called out over the noise of the trucks.

"No need for that. We're headed out right away. One of the incoming trucks should have a fuel tanker, so once we're filled up, we will be on our way to recover the next group of villages near the front. If they don't need it, we will wait somewhere safe until someone does." The driver explained.

"You're a brave man. Good work getting your people to safety." Wolfe congratulated him, while the driver put the truck back in gear and moved to their chosen staging area.

The new batch parked in orderly rows, ten trucks wide and up to ten deep. The drivers and village leaders were shuffling everyone out of the trucks and up toward the front, bringing the injured first for the witches to heal.

They had just received a box of potion vials a few days ago, but Wolfe knew those would be long gone, used to stabilize the members with life-threatening injuries. Nearly all of them had some sort of wounds in this group, so they hadn't made a clean getaway from the battle. Finding out exactly what happened was the next thing on Wolfe's list.

If there were trucks going back, they needed to know and be prepared for what they might face, and ready to evacuate the other villagers if things got too out of hand.

No matter who won the fight, it wasn't going to be safe in that region for a while, and there were far too many cursed amulets around to be certain that they wouldn't be overrun by monsters.

"If there is anyone who has already been healed, please come this way, I would like to talk to you for a moment before we get started." Wolfe requested, raising his voice over the noise of the crowd, once all the trucks were shut off.

A few of the younger women came over in his direction carrying children, and Wolfe smiled. It was good to see that the villagers had their priorities in order. The last ones to fight were the new mothers, everyone else had done all that they could to keep the next generation safe.

Many of the other kids appeared to be uninjured as well, but their parents were keeping them close, knowing that Wolfe likely wanted the opinion of an adult, not a terrified eight-year-old.

"Thank you for your time. I have some food and water here, feel free to grab something while we talk. What I need to know is how things were going when you left." Wolfe informed them.

"Not good. They were in a full-blown war when the last of our trucks pulled out.

The overseas force had brought in their own tanks to deal with the Grand Dutchies, not at the same spot as their witch force, and they were digging trenches. Some of them were right on top of villages, and we're not sure that those ones managed to get away safely. They were talking about digging further out and making a run for it, but there hasn't been any more news on that." The young woman explained.

"Alright, we will speak with the scouts to get the position. How was the monster situation on the way here?" Wolfe asked.

"It was bad. They're everywhere, especially in that section where the Witches attacked the day before we left. There are many wandering monsters left over from those battles, and they attack anything. We even saw some of them charging the overseas army at one point, but I think that their witches have a spell to deal with that.

The rest of the way, we ran into them every few hours, just one or two each time, and the fighters took care of them for us. We've got a lot of monster meat in the trucks, since we had more vehicles than people toward the end, when the new army groups started showing up everywhere, and we stopped looking for survivors in the villages nearby.

But once we got a few hours from here, things started to get more green and the monsters disappeared. Or if we saw them, they didn't immediately attack, so we let them be. Everyone expected that we would need as much ammunition as we could get between now and whenever this ends, so they didn't want to waste it on monsters that weren't hostile." She explained.

Wolfe looked to the others for confirmation, and they nodded in agreement.

"They found a few of those Talismans as well, and shot them so that they wouldn't make any more crazy monsters, but who knows how many more of them there are out in the hills." One of the women added.

"That's enough to get us started. You can head back to the main group, they're mostly healed now, and they'll be loading the boats. If you brought any deserters from the Witch armies, send them my way, and I will get them ready to travel." Wolfe replied.

It looked like they had sent them all in advance, so that the general citizenry didn't see if Wolfe decided to do something drastic to them, but there were a few heavily wounded ones that were left with this group, and were sent over for processing.

Wolfe gestured for them to gather around him, then cleared his throat and began the same speech as last time.

"Welcome to the Fae Forest. We have a few rules and requirements here, for everyone's safety."