After dinner, I decided that I wanted to escape the tense atmosphere, despite having some misgivings about leaving the others alone. The only reason I was willing to do so was that the orcs seemed to have focused their ire on me, reinforcing the idea that a Traveller, maybe Harms, had spread the rumour that Dura Firebringer had killed the people taken by the centaurs. Or rather, that I had done so on her orders, making me a murderer in their eyes but Gera had stressed that I was an honoured guest, removing the option to confront me outright. If they even had the guts to do so, something I doubted after a quick, concealed Inspect that revealed them to have no one above level fifty.

Part of me would have welcomed an attack by such weaklings, giving me the option to prove my magnanimity by binding them with ice but refrain from killing them. I was quite certain that I had the power to do so and it would look good. For a second, I considered provoking them into an attack but that would be pointless. Fun, but pointless.

Instead, I took Sigmir to the side after we were done eating and told her I wanted to look around a bit, mainly from the air, making sure we had a way out, if the valley got attacked again. It had happened once, it might happen again. But an outsider looking around their defenses and potential escape-routes could easily be regarded as a spy, abusing their hospitality to scout them out. It might even be enough of a breach of their hospitality-customs to see them revoked, getting us kicked out. On the other hand, a bird, even a large one, had a good chance to escape notice, being seen as nothing more than a bird, even if there was a mind inside, or two, in the case of Lenore, carrying me in my Hallow.

And even if we were noticed, simply claiming that Lenore had needed to stretch her wings for a while should be enough to assuage any misgivings they had, especially if they didn’t realise she had been carrying me with her.

While I would have loved to simply open a window and simply fly out of our room, the orc-architecture hadn’t yet added hinges to their windows, making them simple glass-panes set into a frame in the wall. The only way to open them was with either tools, care and quite a bit of time or a rock. A rock would do in an emergency but for now, I decided to go with the sneaky solution, and, after giving Sigmir a quick kiss, made my way soundlessly downstairs. It was a curious conundrum, try to actively sneak, purposefully moving in a way that made me difficult to notice, or even use Darkness-Magic to improve my chances to get out unseen, making me look a tad suspicious if I actually was spotted or casually moving, simply in a way that didn’t make a lot of noise, but would look natural if I was detected.

I went with the causal movement, moving slowly and gently placing my feet, trying to make as little noise as possible. There had been lessons in that, too, in the small book I had received from Mrs. Wu but I had only skimmed them. Luckily, the stairs were constructed for large nad heavy orc-bodies, allowing me to get downstairs without making any obvious noise, after stopping for a second to make sure I wasn’t running into anyone in the entrance-hall.

Hearing nothing, I quickly made my way down and out of the door, letting my eyes roam around the road in front of the guest-house. Again, I had to try striking a balance between avoiding notice and acting suspicious, so I simply turned and started walking up-hill, trying my best to act as if I had any idea where I was going. There were orcs around and I, despite my petite physique, stood out like a sore thumb or it might be because of my physique. Even from a distance, it was obvious that I was no orc and that was before noticing my pale, blue skin and delicate features.

After just a bit of walking, I noticed a relatively narrow path between houses and turned into it, before looking over my shoulder, to make sure nobody was actively seeing me. I couldn’t be sure, not in such an unfamiliar environment but I thought that nobody was actively observing me.

Coordinating with Lenore, we triggered the shift in and out of our respective Hallows, still trying to make the transition as smooth and swift as possible. It was an ongoing project but one we were advancing quite often and by now, the transition felt quite fluid. It was difficult to assess from the outside, without an outside observer or making a video of it, but it undoubtedly worked. Where seconds before, I had stood as a humanoid, was now just a bird, already flapping her wings to start gaining height.

Lenore didn’t even need to follow the length of the narrow path to end, instead, with a smidgen of wind-magic, she soared up, above the roofs of the buildings on either side. Together, we looked at the settlement, I hesitated to call it a city but it was too large and fortified to be called a town, from above. In some ways, I had to give it to the orcs, the wall that defended their village was impressive, at least on a mundane scale.

But, compared to what I had seen on Mundus before, the orcish defenses had looked weak from the ground and the aerial view only reinforced my opinion. Sure, the wall made a mass-attack up the valley difficult and unlikely to succeed but an attack by a small, powerful group? Or even a weak but excessively sneaky group, intent on causing havoc and weakening the orcs. There seemed to be a dozen ways the sides of the valley could be scaled. With a little nudge from me, Lenore started to increase our altitude, allowing me to look at the ridge above the settlement.

There, I felt a bit of relief, at least they hadn’t completely neglected that strategic position, even if their defenses looked a little insufficient. If anyone took the ridge, even just one of them, and wanted to destroy the settlement, the settlement would be in trouble. Simply due to lacking the high-ground and the awesome effect of stones rolling down-hill. Just normal-sized rocks would cause massive damage after going down-hill for some five-hundred meters, to say nothing of the effects I could imagine with Earth-Magic.

Even just my own Ice-Magic would be able to cause havoc, if I managed to get water into rock-cracks and froze it there. It would be a wholly natural but devastating effect, as even magical means to freeze ice didn’t get around the simple physics. At least in this case, if I tried to increase the density of my Ice, I could do so, getting into the realms of Hard Ice but that was a whole different thing. Simple freezing water would expand, exerting quite a bit of force in the process.

And in such an important position, the orcs had just a simple tower, lightly fortified with a few guards looking out into the mountains. Lenore didn’t want to get too close to the tower and turned, simply letting the wind hold her above the valley and studying the settlement. Neither of us felt quite content to rely on the orcs to keep us safe, and, with my full consent, she angled down a little, circling the valley as she lost altitude.

It gave us a lot of time, simply looking at the slope leading upwards and mapping out paths to escape, if something truly bad happened. At times, we also looked at the valley, speculating which building was which, our knowledge of orcish architecture too limited to let us do more than make wild guesses based on position in the valley and size, but it was fun. Similarly, we studied the wall and how it was fortified near the sides of the valley, the most obvious weakness, in my opinion. Due to the geography, the orcs had built their wall right up to the slope and fortified some distance up-hill but they hadn’t been willing or able to continue their wall up the whole slope, to the ridge. Instead, they had built a tower near the wall, manned, or was that orced, it and called it a day. Again, good against an army off relatively weak foes, wholly inadequate when attacked by a sneaky or powerful foe. Let alone a sneaky and powerful foe, but then, that was one of the worst combinations anyway.

We were just about finished with our flight, when Lenore, with her peculiar vision, noticed something odd. A concentration of Fire Astral Power, shrouding a small part on the back-slope of the valley, almost like a cloud. For a moment, the two of us considered simply turning away but then, we knew the orcs had some contact with powerful fire-spirits. It was too small, far too small, to be any sort of truly powerful entity but both, Lenore and I, were curious. And so, Lenore turned, flapping her wings to carry us towards the strange cloud.