Forty Nine
The Troll Band, the Wetlands
"Warchief, we are nearing the edge of The Wetlands," a troll runner informed, before falling back to formation.
"Send a goblin forward!" the bored Warchief Groll ordered from atop his snarling hell-steed. "We need to scout ahead." He was more concerned with getting lost rather than the scraggly pathetic beasts.
Groll glanced at the tribal marks on his arms, each granted for an honorable kill by his fellow War Mauls, back when he still had a tribe.
Now the defeated warrior was ordering around slimy goblin, undisciplined warriors and lifeless bone soldiers.
A goblin scout dashed to the front of the lines; his loose, ill-fitting iron armor clanked as he ran.
Their marching trail through the Wetlands left a widened path of destruction, plants were crushed, and trees hacked down. They had torn through; even nearby animals were slaughtered needlessly.
Even the massive, deadly man-eating plants were diced and burned, proving ineffective against Groll's soldiers.
Mercy meant nothing to The Demonic Legion, it was a burden of the weak.
The wildlife of the Wetlands sighed in relief as the army neared the end of their lands. The chirping and other noises of the swamp were hushed and quiet as the interlopers marched onwards. The serpents and tapir kept out of sight from the war party.
An unnatural wind swept over the untouched lush trees and crocodile-filled waters. Parrots in the trees were cautiously quiet, even as a jaguar skulked in a nearby tree.
A single black raven sailed through the humid fog of the canopy and landed on Groll's shoulder.
"What is it, messenger?" he inquired as the raven looked at him. The raven shifted on his shoulder and bent over to whisper in his ear.
As was often the case his orders were changed without notice, it was like the Demon Lords enjoyed making him run around after them.
Great. He thought dejectedly. "We head to Ferus Town! Immediately!" he was sick of this humid muck hole anyway.
"Pick up the pace!" he bellowed as he turned his hell horse around to the West.
His skeletal soldiers, The Culled automatically turned and upped their speed, obeying without question.
Word spread through the ranks and the exhausted warriors struggled to move faster. One goblin had collapsed in the mucky trail, ignored by the marching legion until he reached Warchief Groll's sights.
Groll eyeballed him sternly. "Get to your feet, peon!" he demanded.
The goblin struggled to breathe; sweat ran down his green-tinted body. Struggling to elevate himself he collapsed once more.
Warchief Groll nodded to the nearest troll soldier.
Without hesitation the troll smashed the helpless goblin's skull open with a swing of a heavy cudgel.
The march didn't even react as they left the broken body to rot in the dank, humid trail.
All of a sudden, a sharpened projectile sailed through the air, impaling itself into one of the goblins, it collapsed with a yelp. The troops automatically assumed a defensive formation, raising their painted wooden shields. Nervous chatter ensued as they waited.
"Who dares?" demanded Warchief Groll from atop his steed. His own mighty stone Warhammer at the ready.
A large leshy stepped forward- a hulking figure as tall as a tree with skin like bark and a beard of moss.
The troops stood still in fear as many more leshy stepped forward, camouflaged perfectly to their environment. The band was surrounded.
Behind them trotted horse-hoofed dryads, with mossy skin and curved horns.
"High Lord Mathias, demands that you leave this place immediately without resistance!" the first leshy boomed in an echoing voice.
"Get out of here," one scrappy dryad added, with a childlike voice, undercutting the authority of the intimidating leshy.
The Troll Band goblins smirked, many never encountering these creatures before and dangerously underestimating them.
"We are here on command from Lord Mammon, you're in our way!" The Warchief issued the order for the goblin archers to launch their fire arrows.
Trolls and The Culled preened their weapons to hack and slash.
Groll himself dismounted, eager for a decent battle. "Charge, peons!" he ordered.
The Troll Band misfit minions bolted towards their foes with bloodthirsty intention.
The stray goblin bandits that wandered into their territory in the past were untrained and easily dispensed with.
The Wetland's guardians were unaccustomed to dealing with organized and well-trained trolls and goblins.
The Dryads galloped forward, their wooden spears extended.
The first clash between the dryads and Troll Band resulted in massive amounts of death either side.
The dryads danced around their foes stabbing at them with spears. While the Troll Band swung their blades wildly.
Most spear strikes rattled harmlessly off their armored foes. The strikes proved useless to The Culled, who were bloodless creatures of necromancy.
The Culled didn't even react to the dryads' strikes, mercilessly cleaving through them if they got too close.
The grounds shook as the leshy stomped into the skirmish, outright flattening some unfortunate foes under their immense feet.
The far away leshy extended long vines from their hands, impaling many of the swordsmen who rushed them and flinging their lifeless bodies away.
The goblin archers ignited their arrows and released a volley into the fray.
The leshy who were struck erupted in flame but continued on with their attack.
Groll let out a mighty battle cry as he crushed a dryad under his hammer and swept the legs out from under a nearby leshy.
"Timber!" Groll cried out. His goblins leapt out of the way then swarmed the fallen foe once it was on the ground, hacking it into splinters.
Some of the more magically-inclined dryads called sharp roots to impale the approaching foes.
Others appeared to be conjuring poisonous vapors, or wasplike clouds of stinging insects to attack The Culled. They relented when their attacks proved useless against the lifeless skeletal fiends.
Seeing their numbers shrinking, the dryads retreated into the wilds. Unfortunately, their leshy comrades proved too bulky and slow to retreat.
Many were set aflame with oil, while others were hacksawed by trolls.
Eventually the inflamed leshy collapsed into heaps of charcoal and the rest were hacked down.
"It looks like we have firewood now, boys!" Warchief Groll smirked as he withdrew his hammer from the skull of a nearby slain dryad.
"Hack down the trees, before we leave, we'll torch this dump!" He laughed manically, so pleased to finally experience the glory of battle once again.
The Troll Band cheered and got to work leveling the wilds around them, not out of need, just spite.