Pov Sapphire:
My name is Sapphire, I am the leader of a village in the mountain range, in the past, my village was made up of 90% women of the Lamia race, just like me, apart from my race that only has women, there were also some men of other races who agreed to live in our village.
Our village was small, but we lived peacefully with the only type of conflict we had been with the Arachne race, just like my race theirs is composed only of women, our two races also have similar cultures and characteristics being good in combat, possessing Affinity with poisons and being united as a family.
But we always ended up in conflict, every year we had dozens of conflicts with the Arachne, but we were already used to that, there were always wounded on both sides, but fortunately, there were always few deaths over the years, I even felt that this type of conflict was good for the two races to get stronger with this rivalry.
But one day something unexpected happened, the mountain range is divided into the three most numerous and strong races which are the Ogres, the Orcs, and the Ghouls.
One day these three races who owned dozens of villages throughout the mountain range started a three-sided war, this war was unlike any conflict that had ever been in the past, it was a wildest and most brutal war.
At that time I, as the leader of my village, decided to prevent any conflict from happening, I didn't want to draw the attention of these three races and have my race involved in this war, other races with few numbers in the mountain range seem to have thought the same, they also tried to keep quiet during this period of war.
This war lasted a long time, it lasted longer than any that had happened before, I felt that there was something wrong, but I wasn't close to the other races to know any information, so I kept away, until one day a group of Ogres arrived. to our village.
I welcomed them and helped them, just by seeing them I realized that they weren't here to do anything bad they were injured and lugging a lot of luggage, there was a Fairy of the fire element with them, one of them explained to me that they were members of an Ogre village that wanted flee the war, so the Fairy who is hired by one of them brought them here.
Our village has a Guardian, she is a Dryad whose body is a tree from the Forest of Blood, this Dryad has been here for over a thousand years and we Lamias see her as a friend and Guardian, she is stronger than anyone else in the village including me, but because she has taken root in this place she can't get away from here, as a Dryad she is very close to the Spirits and Fairies, so many of them pass through our village or live close to us, so it didn't surprise me to know that a Fairy has brought people looking for a new place to live to this village, this has happened a few times over the years.
But as time passed I noticed that more and more groups of people came to this village, I also noticed that they were in large groups most of the time, as everyone arrived peacefully I received them well even with people of my moth being against it.
With each group of people that arrived, I discovered more information about each of the three warring races and about the strange events of the war itself, listening to so many things I realized that this was a war without reason, it made me realize that something was very wrong.
It was when a large group of hundreds of Ghouls arrived guided by a Fairy of the Shadows that I received the information that the bodies of those who died in the war were disappearing, in addition to putting together the information of the people of the three races we discovered that the aggressiveness of those who stayed close to their leaders was getting bigger, all three races also said that their leaders started to change after going to investigate some event in the underground caverns around the same time a few years ago.
We realized that there was more to this brutal war than what could be seen from the outside, but even so, we decided not to interfere, we were waiting for the moment when the three races would be very weak and in few numbers because of this war so we could attack one by one and end that.
But suddenly we noticed a miasma that started to spread little by little through the mountain range, soon some Spirits reported that a Necromancer had come out of the caves and gathered all three races in one place along with an army of undead that we discovered more late be the dead in this senseless war.
It was at this moment that we realized that for the last few years this Necromancer has been conspiring to do this, now he has finished building a great fortress and has a strong army on his side.
We tried to join several other villages together with ours, but not all of them wanted to do that, soon my little village had become the largest in the mountain range, we brought all these races together thanks to a common enemy, the Necromancer by the name of Farus.
We tried to fight head-on at first as our numbers were similar but soon found we were underestimating Farus, he never fought directly, he always waited for the moment when everyone was most tired to turn all the bodies of those who died during the battle into Dead -living by increasing your army.
Fighting him was useless, so we hid in the village and created powerful barriers and a grand illusion to be able to hide from him long enough to think of a solution.
That's when we realized that the Spirits and Fairies from all over the mountain range were leaving because of the miasma, the only ones who stayed were the ones who had contracts with someone and so they managed to protect themselves from the miasma.
Within days Fairies and Spirits were reporting news of villages that refused to join us being attacked and destroyed, also news of Farus' troops scouring the mountain range.
In our moment of despair the Village Keeper said she felt something coming from the direction of the Forest of Blood, she said she felt that whatever it was might help us, so I sent one of our best mages Jana, and she hired Fairy Dora to investigate.
As both have the rare element of shadow, they should be able to hide and investigate without drawing the attention of Farus or the adventurers outside the mountain range.
As time passed, we didn't hear from Jana or Dora, I already thought that they could have been found and killed, I started to think about how to get out of this situation, I even started to consider separating the village into several small villages and getting out of mountain range, that would be dangerous, but it was the only way out I could think of.
Doing so would expose everyone to environments that we don't know and the danger of being attacked by adventurers on the way or in the place where we try to build new villages, not to mention that as we would be divided we would no longer be able to protect ourselves from large groups of enemies, we would have to to be lucky to find a safe and quiet place for at least one village to settle down.
The worst would be having to abandon our Guardian, she is a great friend of my race, she also helped to defend us by raising some of these barriers, thinking about abandoning her in the low hope of saving a part of these people hurts my heart, but as a leader, I have to think about what's best for the people of this village, no matter how much I don't like it.
Nobody wanted to do this, but desperate moments call for desperate measures.
It was when this plan was being considered that the Guardian appeared once more, she came to warn us that a Fairy Queen had passed through the village to warn that the Ghoul and Fairy we had sent would soon return with reinforcements.
This news filled me with happiness, the flame of hope that was almost going out inside me started to burn again, so I started to make preparations, I asked the Fairies and Spirits to go collect information all over the mountain range, I needed accurate information before anything else.
One of these Fairies came back in two days with a worried face, she seemed to have discovered something but didn't want to say, after some insistence the Fairy spoke, what I heard made me faint with sadness and fury.
When I got up I realized I was leaning against the Guardian's tree, I felt more comfortable and the Guardian comforted me knowing what had happened.
The news I got was that my oldest daughter who had been missing for months and who I thought was lost forever had been found, but she was commanding an army of Undead from Faros while attacking one of the last remaining villages, I heard the Fairy say that she killed everyone while screaming wanting to face strong enemies.
My oldest daughter has always been one of our best warriors, she was second only to me in strength, one of the things I admired about her was her quest to be the strongest, but it seems like I was underestimating what she would be willing to do for that, All this in order to be the strongest.
I had heard that there was a Lamia vom Farus, but I didn't know it was her.
I already knew that Farus made the races that served him enter the Dungeons day and night to force them to grow stronger and evolve, but that course of action had a high mortality margin.
Farus didn't care how many died, he forced those inside the dungeons to bring the dead to him, then he used the bodies of those who died inside the dungeon to create more undead, Farus managed to strengthen himself whether people survived or died. into their macabre training plans.
Knowing that my daughter was probably going through this kind of training made me fear for her life, but what really filled my heart with sadness was knowing that my daughter is willingly on the side of the enemy.
