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The story so far: Aalok has regained his former identity, King Atrelegis, after recovering the Darklyte Armor. Verdemis has confronted him and started a fight. The demons attacked the vampire army because they think Malagen has the Darklyte Armor. The hero party has met up with the elves who have decided to join the war.
We pick up right where we left off in this one. Verdemis and Aalok clash. Aalok clearly does not want to fight his old comrade. Verdemis expresses his wish to regain his own life. He is older than Aalok and would go back to his existence too. He just knows it is not possible. He sort of tries to get Aalok to agree, but Aalok has sort of regained his previous life so they fight more. Aalok definitely still has some of the rage and ferocity of a vampire.
In the end Verdemis would not let up and Aalok manages to fight him back off a cliff, though he does catch him! He tries to save Verdemis but Verdemis does not want to be saved. He lets go and uses his own chain ball thing to kill himself as he falls. Guess he did not want to splat after a long fall! 😆
This is the end of Verdemis. Sadly.
Rather than try to move the entire elf force through the woods, a small scouting party was sent. This included our heroes as well as some elves. Jerell in particular "knows these woods like the back of his hand." He says as he falls for a trap. Before things get too out of hand however, it is revealed that the ambush is a Myrish Patrol. To make it more interesting we get our first glimpse of another important character. Greyson. Jerell's brother.
They explain they are both tracking a band of demons. Greyson suggests they speak with General Aldus. Since they have a lot of knowledge about the demons, vampires, and Darklyte Armor.
Meanwhile, the Datarans are thick in battle with the demons. Tessan suggests, though the demons are fighting well, Shrogram is powerful enough to defeat them all on his own. Malagen is clearly getting frustrated with all that has happened lately and snaps a bit toward Tessan, reminding him that he himself does have more power than that even.
Then suddenly Malagen orders Shrogram back from the frontlines. He feels Aalok's presence. Presumably from his fight with Verdemis and the armor's power.
The heroes are taken to the General and discuss what they know. The General is happy to know the elves have joined them and the knowledge of the Darklyte Armor will be helpful as well. Before they can start planning a strategy around this new information they are interrupted. It is Aalok and Elessa. He introduces himself as King Atrelegis of Myridorn and makes clear his intention of making war on Malagen the Black. Delcares the others "Join him, or get out of his way."
The fight with Aalok and Verdemis was pretty good. Action packed but a bit heartfelt as expected from fighting brothers. Sadly, Verdemis was eliminated because in the end he was still a vampire and inherently evil. Aalok is still a vampire as well but has the Darklyte Armor holding that part of him back.
While the war is still raging, it seems now that it is going to come down to dual between Malagen and Aalok to decide the fate of the Eastern Kingdoms. I expect many more battles and casualties of course, but this is the focus of the story, so will probably be what decides the war.
There are still of course questions hanging in the air! Will the Myrish forces accept King Atrelegis or reject him since he is still a vampire? Elessa being there should help. But will the elf Queen and her finally make up and be friendly or are they still at odds? Will Zeph get any kind of closure for losing Delezar? G'Dar seems extremely protective of Zeph now, that is some strange twist of fate, a Dran now acting as protector of a boy whose village was wiped out by the Dran.
There are two more issues of volume 1. This series, I believe, comes to a proper conclusion as well. So no cliffhangers. Most stuff should wrap up over the next couple books. Getting pretty exciting!
To Be Continued!
If I happen to miss a day or two here and there... it may be because I've started playing Splinterlands! The game seems kind of shallow and weak at first but if you give it a shot, it actually gets pretty deep. I've spent hours upon hours the last week reading through cards and rules. It is quite fun.
I also mentioned using some 'tribal tags' in the last issue's review. To see if I'd gain more attention, maybe get some people over there into our comic community. Well... as of yet... it did not help any haha. Issue #9 only has one like so far, the lowest of all the reviews I've done. Maybe I'll try one more time, but it is starting to look like including relevant tags only might be better after all. Though I often do kind of run out of ideas for tags before I hit 10 so maybe having general tribe tags isn't bad still. I also think I misspelled one last time haha. Woops.