Tales of Valand: The War of Darkness (Chapter 12)

The word was going up the streets of the city!
"The dwarves from the Dwarvendom are coming!" someone cried, as he ran by Drenwulf. Drenwulf, feeling very important with a sword strapped to his side, followed the elf to the city walls. The walls were made of living trees, enchanted to entwine together, forming a formidable wall of branches and tree trunks. A cloud of dust was coming, and Drenwulf could see the sun glinting off the armor and weapons as the dwarves approached. They wore cloaks of metal, seemingly too heavy for them to carry because of their small stature, but an elf had explained to Drenwulf that dwarves, though small, were incredibly strong. Besides this, they each carried a great war hammer and various other weapons strapped to their sides. The dwarves obviously were not comfortable as they were bright into the city. They naturally did not like forests, preferring to be underground, where most of their work was done. They were miners and builders by trade, but in war, they were nearly unstoppable, but it was rare that they would go to war. Though they had a quick temper, they did not interact very much with other nations except through trade. A few days later, the men came, these were some of the first of his kind that Drenwulf had seen that were not slaves, gaunt and worked to death. These were the knights and heroes of the Kingdom of Ronor, a kingdom double the size of the Elvendoma and the Dwarvendom put together! It was they who had fought dragons before, they some said dragons were divine, created by Va, thus they must be, while the elven lore said that they were created by something else. Some of the elves had expressed concern whether the men would fight against the dragon, but they had come none the less. King Ronor II, the son of the great Ronor who led his people out of Wilderland and had been blessed with a life nearing 500 years, rode a proud white stallion. All of his knights wore shining armor, and many colorful banners and flags snapped from pole on the breeze. They came with trumpets into the city square, where King Ronor II offered his life to King Galor, the lord of the elves. the dwarves jeered that the men were not used to hardship and war, but turned away when King Ronor laid a stern eye on them. It had been a few hundred years since the humans had seen conflict, but they had not forgotten the ways of the blade.