"It seems that the humans are losing hope. Today they are sloppier than usual, spreading their forces too much to be effective." Sukhet the Banshee said on his communication amulet.
"Agreed. This way they'll accomplish nothing but being swept away as soon as our main force wakes up." Angorn the Lamia replied.
As time went by, the conceit disappeared from their voices, replaced by genuine worry. The humans were just pretending to attack the twin fortresses, using that time to set up something.
The undead generals' problem was that they had no way to stop them. The humans were employing just enough manpower to force them on the defensive, but nothing more.
If the undead deactivated the dimensional arrays sealing the cities to move their troops, they would also open themselves to an invasion. The same would happen if they sent part of their main force outside.
The few elite undead able to stay awake despite the sunlight would be slaughtered simply due to the enemy's numerical advantage. Undead grew more powerful with age, so even though they could increase their numbers quickly, the loss of a single elder was more severe than losing a thousand newborns.
To make matters worse, undead capable of moving during the day were rare, and those who had developed their skills to the point of not being too severely hampered by sunlight were even rarer.
The humans worked relentlessly, completely surrounding the twin fortresses from all sides, building some sort of device too far away for any kind of spell to reach them.
When night came, the Empire's army had completely retreated behind their border without even trying to hold the land reconquered by day. The generals had already reported everything to Veeza, who easily understood what was going on.
"It's just as you suspect. The humans have laid a trap that's as obvious as it is ingenious." She said. Veeza had left plenty of surveillance devices near all the nerve centers of her just founded empire.
She was younger than her generals, but compared to them, her knowledge of the mystical arts was boundless.
While most undead had spent half their existence asleep and the other half searching for a meal or in pursuit of personal glory, she had devoted the last few centuries to the study of magic, without taking a single hour of rest.
"My surveillance devices allowed me to spy on the human's workings. They have built several long-distance Warping arrays." Veeza's finger pointed at the four corners around each fortress.
They were far away enough to not be affected by the city's arrays but close enough to allow the reinforcements troops to coordinate with the Empire's army and perform a multi pincered attack on Dograth.
"If we ignore the Gates and fight as usual, the armies coming out of the dimensional tunnels will conquer the city and our army will end up slaughtered. If we try to attack the arrays, instead, we'll offer our back to the enemy and split our forces too much for them to be effective."
"Have we lost months' worth of war in a single day?" Angorn the Lamia asked. The old general clenched his fist in disbelief.
"Of course not." Veeza sneered. "This is a good trap, but there's a reason why no one uses this strategy anymore. First, to succeed the Empress has to mobilize at least two army's worth of troops, which means leaving her own castles unprotected.
"Second, such Gates can turn the tides of the battle both ways. If we manage to conquer and keep even just one of them active, we'll have a way to attack the Empire from the inside.
"At that point, all we have to do is to destroy their food supply and poison their water. The humans have chosen to try and gamble everything on this battle, but there's no reason for us to do the same.
"We'll fall for their trap, but only because we can exploit it to deal our enemies a much bigger blow than that they'll inflict upon us."
Veeza decided to play it safe. After all, time was on the undead's side. The longer the war lasted, the more elite troops she would manage to raise while the human's resources would start to dwindle.
She had captured the Empire's most fertile lands first to make sure that the longer days of Spring would mean nothing if the Empire's army had not enough food to sustain its soldiers for prolonged fights.
Veeza used her communication amulet to order an all-out attack on all battlefronts so that she could discover from where the Empress had diverted her troops.
'If I can exploit the sudden lack of manpower in a few key areas, then this war will last less than I planned.' She grinned. Milea wasn't the only one that could count on fresh reserve troops.
The twin fortresses of Dograth were currently being flooded by all the battalions Veeza could spare. The city arrays protected those inside the castle walls from the effects of the enemy's and kept the Gates open.
It would allow Veeza to mobilize her troops wherever she needed to or to make them retreat to safety in case things went south. The Lich had faced Milea too many times to underestimate the Empress again.
Despite her youth, Milea had proven to be a fine strategist and a mage even more powerful than Veeza herself.
'Gods below, how can someone so young have such powerful magic? My first act as a ruler will be to send killers to take out people like Balkor, Manohar, and Verhen. They are too dangerous to be left alive.' Veeza thought.
Her losing streak against Milea had reminded her of how dangerous it was to let the competition flourish. It was a mistake that she wouldn't allow the undead to make again in the future.
Veeza used a powerful Life Sensing array to check on the human's movements. Their army was still hiding behind their trenches, there wasn't a single soul near Dograth, and the devices surrounding the fortresses were still inactive.
On one hand, it made Veeza happy, giving her all the time she needed to enact her countermeasures. On the other hand, it worried her. If Milea had chosen to attack as soon as the Gates were ready, she would have flooded the battlefield and gained the initiative.
'Sure, the advantage wouldn't last long thanks to the city Gates granting us a constant flow of reinforcements. To make matters worse for the humans, we only need to hole up behind the walls to render their offensive pointless.
'For some reason, Milea wants our respective armies to fight in the open. I must be careful and not move until I understand what her endgame is.' Veeza thought.
A few hours passed, yet nothing happened. The Lich was worried, unable to start her attack until she had enough troops to deal with the multi pincered attack. Veeza's worst fear became true when the human device on the other side of Dograth opened.
What scared the Lich was that the human troops weren't moving toward the fortress, but rushed past the natural bottleneck as if they had a dragon on their back.
"Damn! I misread the situation. The external Gates aren't means of attack. The humans are using them to get behind our lines and attack where our defenses are at their weakest." Veeza yelled orders in her amulet, alerting all the troops in the nearby area.
