Frantic conversation buzzed the chamber. Council Members were contemplating through the conduits. The Sovereigns on their floating screens conferred among themselves, their voices too low to carry but their expressions telling everything.
Doubt. Fear. The slow, dawning realization that everything they had believed about the truce was a carefully constructed lie.
Then King Romsgard Goldstone spoke, and the room fell silent.
"My fellow Sovereigns." His voice was heavy, weighed down by the gravity of what he was about to say. His eyes swept across the chamber, taking in the Council Members, the dead Demon Scouts on the marble floor, and finally the six figures standing at the center of the compass rose.
"The proof is here, and it is difficult to contend with. We have been played for fools by the Demons. A truce that could have led to a possible outer-world relationship and an end to the war has instead become the very reason this war will multiply by a thousand fold."
