I had to give it to the orcs, they were disciplined. While they were individually relaxed during their march, the scouts and other parts of their formation were serious and vigilant, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice, buying the troops the time to react to a potential threat. In addition, despite the relatively rough terrain, the speed they put out was quite fast, nothing truly special for individuals but for a small army, moving in a loose formation through a forest, I was impressed.

During the day, Lenore and I were discussing potential ways to accomplish the various objectives we could define, the my personal ones, the objectives of my group-members and finally, the objectives of the orcs. Some of them were slightly contradictory and needed to be weighted against each other and a path planned. The most obvious objectives were my own, I wanted to enjoy my time on Mundus and I wanted an advantage when the game went live, something that would allow me to reconnect with Sigmir. That idea, of being severed from Sigmir, made my mind recoil for a moment, the reminder of the inevitable distinctly unpleasant. I quickly shoved it to the back of my mind, as something to be dealt with at a later time, focusing on the more immediate objectives, the things that needed to happen in the short term to achieve my long-term goal.

In the short-term, keeping my party together and alive was important, as was gaining more power. The two objectives were a little contradictory, as gaining power always came with a risk but that was just the nature of the beast. We would have to continue to take risks, hopefully we wouldn’t bite off more than we could chew. If worse came to worse, I would have to sacrifice myself, giving the others time to escape. I just had to make sure Sigmir was aware that leaving me behind to save the rest was perfectly valid, as I would be able to return, especially if I regularly created Ice-Cottages, setting my respawn-point there.

The objectives of my party-members were a little less clear to me, I was reasonably certain that Sigmir simply wanted to be with me, without any true long-term goals. Ylva, on the other hand, was with us because of Lenore and the friendship she had struck up with us, even while she wanted to pay back the wolves that had decimated her pack. Lenore, similarly to me, wanted to learn, to sate her curiosity and to gain power. In that, she was quite simple and amused when I pointed it out. In many ways, we were motivated by the same things, maybe that was why we got along so well.

Adra and Rai, both of them had originally some long-term goals, Rai had wanted to gain fame, power and fortune, so he would be able to return to his village, with pride in his step and a straight back. That might have changed, especially when considering his blossoming relationship with Adra but I wasn’t sure. Adra, on the other hand, was looking for what she called her destiny, a tree to bond with for the rest of her existence. At the same time, she, like the rest of us, was after power, wanting to have as much as possible for the bonding, as it apparently would empower her tree, giving her major advantages down the road.

What Adra didn’t know, but I did, was that Kallista, the ancient Dryad living in the grove around Tegi, was under the impression that Adra was the reincarnation of her own partner, lost eons ago. I had no idea how much truth was there to that, if Adra’s memories would return at some point and how that would change her. It was something that neither Lenore nor I knew how to discuss with Adra, deciding to put it off, until we had more information or any hints that it was actually happening.

And finally, the orcish objectives, the least important to me. They wanted to hunt down the centaurs, rescue their people, recover the loot and make sure that the centaurs wouldn’t attack again. Helping them seemed to be the right thing to do, not because of any grandiose, righteous reasons, I didn’t really care, but because it would cement us as allies to the orcs, allowing us to gain more information, especially about our way forward. Maybe even something about local places of power, dungeons or similar things, or the orcish ways of magic. Those were all things I was personally interested in, while Ylva was after the same beings anyway. So, helping them was in our interest. We would just have to make sure that the risks involved weren’t incalculable high.

“The problem is, the centaur raid seems to be a trap, maybe simply for orcs in general, maybe for Dura Firebringer in particular. If the trap only has one layer, trying to draw them into attacking the Centaurs while leaving them open to an attack by the wolves, our presence might be enough to change things, especially after warning the orcs. But if the trap has another layer, maybe a few more powerful centaurs hidden amongst their number, just waiting for the orcs to engage we might be in trouble.” I explained my caution to Lenore.

“I can see what you mean. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be caught in a large group, our best chance is likely stealth. Both you and Rai should be able to conceal someone else, especially if the enemy doesn’t know that they have to search. Once they are aware of us, it would be a lot more difficult to hide again.” Lenore replied, an undercurrent of determination in her mind. She wanted to help the orcs a lot more than I did, or rather, she wanted to accomplish Ylva’s goal, while I felt caution was warranted. The centaurs weren’t some mindless zombies, happily running into their doom, they had their own tactics and stratagems.

“Which we might be able to use to our advantage, their intelligence, maybe even the tactics they want to use against the orcs.” Lenore suggested, reacting to my mostly unformed thoughts.

“In what way?” I asked, curious what she had in mind.

“From what we learned further north, centaurs still share some traits with horses, once their fight- or flight-instinct switches to flight, they will run for quite a distance before reassessing the situation, right? And, in addition, they feel the most secure when in a group, isolation seemed to make them incredibly nervous and easily spooked.” Lenore reasoned, causing me to agree.

“Now, wasn’t one of the traits you gained that your mind-magic would now carry a trace of the solitude you faced? It almost broke you and certainly changed you, how would a centaur react to the feeling in the dark of night? Large scale, low-powered mind-magic might be the way to go, maybe linking it with Darkness-Magic, maybe with Ice-Magic, a mist that takes away their sight, muffles smell and sound, driving up the isolation. That might break them before they can ever think about fighting, don’t you think?” Lenore explained and I felt fascinated by the idea.

I wasn’t too happy that I hadn’t managed to improve much on my mind magic, partially because of a lack of test-subjects but the centaurs might be a worthy target. I felt Lenore’s idea had quite a bit of merit, my mind starting to form individual parts of a spell like the one she had described. I felt her mind join mine, getting absorbed in a frenzy of creative tinkering, barely keeping aware of the world around us, just to keep from running into a tree. That would be a tad embarrassing.

It was late afternoon when the orcs surprisingly came to a halt, we had been quickly moving for the whole day, only stopping for a short time at noon, and there was still a lot of daylight left. But my confusion was quickly cleared when a small fire was prepared and I noticed the signs of spellcasting again, Shaman Firebringer using it to do something. What, I wasn’t able to discern but didn’t need to, the question was quickly answered when two of the bird-like spirit-golems returned, landing in the flames, causing them to flare.

Luckily, I didn’t have to stew in my curiosity for long, wanting to know what the shaman had learned, we were soon asked to join her, for a sharing of information.

Her staff, the same orcs Adra had briefed the day before, were assembled around the fire and, just from the serious look on Dura Firebringer’s face, I could see that the news she had was not too bright.

“It seems you were right. We are facing a force superior in numbers and similar in individual power. Normally, I would be able to cause devastation by attacking with an overwhelming first-strike but the distributed nature of the wolf-packs and the simple fact that it would incinerate the people we are supposed to save makes that difficult, if not impossible.” Dura explained, her face turning grim as she spoke.

“We will have to attack nonetheless, sacrificing both our people and the things stolen from us, unless you and your group can come up with a way around that.” she added, causing me to nod in understanding. While I wasn’t about to commit to anything, certainly not some sort of suicide-attack, my discussion with Lenore had given me some ideas. And, while I didn’t care about the implied guilt-trip, I felt that we might get a few valuable concessions out of helping. But that would all be irrelevant if the tactical situation wasn’t something we could make use of.