Chapter One: Would You Rather Fight a Duck?

There are certain questions in life that deserve serious consideration.

Would you rather have unlimited money or unlimited time? Would you rather know how you die or when? Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses?

Winterbane was about to discover that the last question was less hypothetical than anyone would have liked.

Their opponent for the upcoming State vs State battle was the Frostfang Dominion, a state so outrageously powerful that looking at some of its players’ statistics felt less like checking an opponent and more like accidentally opening the financial records of a small country.

Frostfang had monsters. Absolute units. Players whose power could make an ordinary account reconsider its life choices. If this were a contest of individual strength, Winterbane would have had every reason to start writing its will.

Unfortunately for Frostfang, Winterbane had a rather inconvenient habit of showing up in large numbers.

And not just large numbers. Winterbane numbers.

Five alliances. Hundreds of players. A collection of personalities that should probably have required a waiver before being assembled in one state. They had the firepower of a much larger organization, the coordination of a moderately successful circus, and the collective determination of people who had been told they couldn’t do something.

Which, as everyone knew, was a terrible thing to tell Winterbane.

For an entire month, the state had been saving. Resources were tucked away, speedups were protected, and upgrades were postponed. Every shiny opportunity to spend had been met with the same reminder: not yet.

Prep Week was finally here, and the rules were simple. Each day had its own initiative. Certain resources counted on certain days. Spend the wrong items at the wrong time and all that careful saving would amount to little more than an expensive lesson in disappointment.

Winterbane had been instructed to use its resources strategically.

This was a bold decision.

Day One passed with only the usual amount of confusion, enthusiasm, and people asking questions that had already been answered somewhere in the state announcements. There were points to be earned, resources to be spent, and enough activity to suggest that the population had finally been released from some sort of financial prison.

By Day Two, the scoreboard had begun to tell an interesting story.

Winterbane was winning.

Actually winning.

Not winning in the way someone says they’re winning an argument after running out of facts. Not winning in the way a person insists they’re winning at poker while quietly calculating how much they owe everyone.

Winning.

Against the Frostfang Dominion.

The news spread across the alliances, and the mood shifted almost immediately. People who had been casually checking the scoreboard were now checking it with the intensity of a parent watching a toddler approach an open staircase.

The Frostfangs were still individually stronger. Nobody was disputing that. Their biggest players were enormous, and their overall strength was nothing to sneeze at.

But Winterbane had numbers.

A lot of numbers.

Which raised an important strategic question.

Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses?

Because that was beginning to look like the situation.

Frostfang was the horse-sized duck. Massive. Dangerous. Probably capable of ending your entire afternoon with one well-placed slap of its enormous, feathered wing.

Winterbane was the hundred duck-sized horses.

Small. Numerous. Difficult to contain. Entirely too excited about the prospect of charging into something.

And unlike the horses, Winterbane had a group chat.

Carly, meanwhile, was already thinking several steps ahead.

While the rest of the state enjoyed the unexpected lead, she was mentally arranging the upcoming Castle battle. Winning Prep Week meant Winterbane would travel to Frostfang territory and attack their Castle, competing for the title of Supreme President. Losing meant the battle would take place at home, defending Winterbane’s own Castle without the opportunity to claim the title.

There was a considerable difference between the two.

Carly wanted the first option.

She also wanted everyone alive, coordinated, and pointed in approximately the same direction.

That second part was proving to be the more ambitious goal.

Winterbane had five alliances to coordinate, each with its own leadership and its own collection of people who were perfectly capable of turning a simple instruction into a state-wide discussion.

Carly began considering how to organize the attack. Who would take the lead? Who would reinforce? Which players would be best suited to particular roles? How could they use their numerical advantage without allowing Frostfang’s strongest players to simply flatten the smaller accounts?

It was a serious problem requiring serious thought.

Unfortunately, serious thought was not always Winterbane’s preferred method of operation.

Across the state, people were already enjoying the idea of taking Frostfang’s Castle. The fact that the opponent was stronger seemed to have been interpreted as an exciting detail rather than a warning.

Winterbane did not necessarily need to be stronger.

It needed to be annoying in a coordinated fashion.

And there was no shortage of experience in that particular discipline.

Carly knew that getting everyone to work together would be the deciding factor. Five alliances had to function as one state. Friendly competition was fine. Bragging rights were fine. Teasing one another about scores was practically a civic responsibility.

But when battle came, they would need to move together.

She was going to have to make that happen.

Somewhere in the middle of all this excitement, one small detail was beginning to look a little unusual.

Joey was still saving.

This was not normally how Joey operated during a scoring event. He was usually among the top spenders, and his name was generally somewhere near the top of the conversation whenever resources were being unleashed.

Yet his stockpile remained remarkably healthy.

While everyone else was spending, Joey seemed to have developed a sudden appreciation for restraint.

It was almost admirable.

Almost suspicious.

Perhaps he was saving for a later initiative. Perhaps he had decided to be responsible. Perhaps he had finally looked at his inventory and realized that he owned enough resources to build a small civilization.

Whatever the reason, he wasn’t spending much.

And if anyone happened to notice, Joey seemed perfectly content to let them wonder.

Back in the larger state-wide picture, Winterbane was becoming increasingly confident.

The Frostfang Dominion might have the biggest players, but Winterbane had something that was considerably harder to measure: a whole lot of people who knew one another, trusted one another, and were willing to show up when it counted.

They were scrappy. They were stubborn. They were occasionally impossible.

But they were theirs.

And Carly was beginning to see a path through the enormous frozen beast standing in front of them.

The end of Day Two found Winterbane ahead on the scoreboard, the Frostfang Dominion still looming ominously in the distance, and several hundred players suddenly convinced that they were about to become the most dangerous collection of duck-sized horses in the history of the game.

Carly was planning a Castle assault.

Winterbane was celebrating.

Frostfang was probably wondering what the hell was happening.

And Joey was still saving.

Nobody seemed particularly concerned about that yet.

After all, there were much bigger things to worry about.

Like whether a horse-sized duck could hold a Castle.