Merdon was on edge as he sat in the thicket of trees just beyond the mansion that his kobold mate was infiltrating. They had scouts stationed on the tree line watching the house and the surrounding countryside for any movement. Not that such lookouts did much good in the deep dark of a moonless night. The best they could do was monitor the mansion for any unusual activity and watch for Shade's signal. In the meantime, the human knight was stuck sitting on a log in full armor. It was far from pleasant, but it made less noise than the pacing he would have rather been doing. He looked around at the other members of the group, the orcs restlessly rolling their shoulders, checking their weapons, conversing in hushed tones that carried through the whole copse on the silent night air. The kobolds nervously clacking their claws, the few among them, like Thickhide, that seemed to anticipate the upcoming battle, the ones that felt ready.

Then there was Verist. The witch was standing near the treeline, watching the mansion alongside Grot. Merdon hadn't seen the two move in quite some time. He couldn't guess whether they were nervous, ready, or paranoid. It was Shade that was supposed to signal them. If the manor was what they were looking for, the dark-scaled assassin would scramble up to the roof and light a torch. If anyone inside the place noticed the sudden light source from above it would be too late to stop their charge. They had enough rallied forces to tear through the walls if they had to, and with Sarel inside Merdon felt like he could take a whole wall all by himself. Grot would feel no different, he was sure of that. Still, the two were an odd couple to see standing close together even in the odd situation they found themselves in.

“You're certain?” Grot huffed, quiet enough to keep his voice from his own men.

Verist nodded. “We can't let them figure out what I've done if this is the location,” she replied just as soft. “While you assault them from the front, I'll check the areas Quickclaw and Shade have marked as interesting. With any luck, our assassin has a dossier on the king, something we can use to leverage the people of Avant against their king.”

“It's risky, even if you find something,” the chief-of-chiefs told her bluntly. “Turning loyalties isn't easy. Especially when it comes to orcs.”

“Yes, I'm well aware of the prejudices involved,” she said, brushing his concerns off like a gnat. “If we want this to succeed we have to have more than us, more than Merdon and myself helping the cause.”

Grot sighed and picked his helmet off to rub his head. “Okay, so you go in, look for these documents, and what?”

“I'll set the manor ablaze when I'm done,” she told the orc. “One of the kobolds will be looking for that to start. When it does, you just need to get our forces out of there and we can bar the door.”

“By the gods,” the dark-skinned orc sneered, disgusted. “You're talking about burning them alive.”

“I'm talking about a plan that involves minimal casualties, maximum morale destruction, sends a point, and doesn't gamble our survival,” she hissed, catching the orc off guard. “This means the Eyes are taken care of, no matter how many of them are in there. We don't have to rely on numbers or training.”

“I don't like it.”

Verist shook her head. “You don't have to like it, you just have to realize it's the best plan we have,” the witch told him forcefully. “You won't be fighting the humans like orcs this time. You'll be fighting them like humans. They won't expect that, which is why you'll win this time.”

“I'm not sure it's worth winning like that,” Grot snorted.

Before Verist could reply, a torchlight shone from the top of the manor, and both of them looked at it with intent. Grot turned and started shouting orders at the troops, orcs scrambled over and around each other while kobolds awkwardly gathered into position. Merdon joined Verist at the front of the group, though she was only watching them. He eyed her, questioning with his gaze if she was going to storm the place with them. The witch answered his silent question with a smirk before raising a hand, which she thrust towards the ground before disappearing. Not teleporting, but becoming invisible. It made the knight's hair stand on end to imagine how often she could have used that back in the tower. Nowhere was safe from her. He couldn't even make out the grass she had been standing on to see if it was still indented if there was any way to see where she was. It was too dark to make such an observation and his mind quickly focused back on the manor. Time was up.

Despite being such a large force, the group moved as silently as they could across the empty field towards the manor. There were no screams of charge, no battle cries, nothing except the clanking of armor and weapons against their sides as they rushed forward. The kobolds, even though they were weighed down by their new armor, overtook the head of their charge and did as they had been ordered. They fanned out, circled the mansion, and dove in through the windows. The silent night was broken by the sound of shattering glass and screaming maids as their advance troops moved to subdue the help. Grot and Merdon, along with the main force of orcs, went through the front and back doors. Their breach was hard and fast, but not fast enough a certain blue-scaled thief couldn't supply some intelligence when they kicked in the doors.

“The maids aren't what they seem!” Sarel shouted as she leaped off the banister to the front staircase, narrowly dodging a dagger as she did.

The pale-skinned woman that threw it chased after her all the way to the top of the stairs. Her face blanched as she saw Grot and a half dozen orcs, and she changed direction shortly after they started up the stairs after her.

Merdon took the opportunity to move to Sarel and make sure she was all right. “What's happening?” he asked, with as few words as possible.

“The maids are trained assassins as well,” the kobold told him. “Shade and I noticed they were patrolling the mansion rather than wandering around doing chores. They had a set routine and everything.”

The knight frowned inside his helmet. “Where are the Eyes?” he asked next. “Apart from these maids.”

“There's a hidden stairwell by a clock on the first floor,” Sarel informed him, standing up from her fall. She looked around, getting her bearings. “This way.”

As they rounded a few corners, one of the kobold knights shouted in pain. The pair turned to see one of the maids holding a bloody dagger and darting off. Sarel glanced around with just her eyes and swore under her breath. She'd gotten turned around, the maid was heading towards the clock, not them.

“We have to move!” she shouted at Merdon before sprinting after the fleeing woman. There was no time to investigate the bleeding kobold, but given the professions of who they were after, it wasn't a promising future for them. Sarel used it to fuel her body, stoking herself with rage and indignity. More humans than the one she was chasing would pay for what they had done, for what they had done for as long as she and every other kobold could remember.

The walls and floors of the mansion blended together, nothing stood out, nothing was remarkable, it was too easy to get turned around. And maybe that was what they wanted all along. By the time Sarel came around the correct corner, catching the wall with her claws and dragging herself around to avoid slamming into a wall, the maid they were chasing had moved the hands of the clock to the secret time and was watching the wall slide open. Thinking fast, Sarel pulled her knife out and launched it towards her target. Unfortunately, the maid was two steps down before the knife landed, catching her in the shoulder rather than the back. She screamed and tumbled down the stairs, which gave the thief an idea of just how far down they went before she took off after her. A knife in the shoulder wasn't going to kill her, but her yelling might alert the Eyes in the basement, and that could kill them.

While the orcs and kobolds dealt with the mansion's security, Verist was busying herself with the marked doors. The first floor was a complete bust, and she accepted that. After slipping past a flying thief on the staircase, the witch made her way to the second floor and continued her search on the doors that had claw marks. While Shade and Sarel hadn't looked too closely at the books and drawers in each room, Verist was quite keen on searching them. Her first stop was a meeting room that provided little information, other than a few maps that she memorized before moving on. Just in case they had to do with troop movements later. Assuming that their assault paid off. Carrying the maps wasn't part of her goal, she was after something much bigger, and she couldn't afford to break her invisibility until she found it.

Her feet made no noise on the wooden floors as she moved around the second floor of the mansion, which made her exceptionally effective at dealing with the few guards the orcs hadn't gotten around to. The men that had been stationed in the infirmary were wounded as they exited the room and headed towards the commotion downstairs. They were weak but determined. Until Verist gave them a reason to be more tired with a wave of her hand. Stepping over their sleeping bodies was easy enough. Sadly, the infirmary didn't have anything worth noting either. Just more confirmation that they had the right place when she found high-quality healing salves and what looked to be a medallion belonging to a high priest, a sign of power within the Avantian church. It took more than money to keep one of Ethral's powerful priests staying in one place. Like a royal order.

The second floor scoured, Verist moved to the third floor where she expected to find something worth taking home. Her first stop was a bedroom fit for a lord. With all the opportune hiding places she knew could be in there, Verist dispelled her magic and went to work tearing the place apart with her hands. She started with the bed, taking off the blankets and sheets, flipping the mattress and checking the pillows before pulling out a knife, taken from one of the sleeping men downstairs, and sliced them open. Ripped stitching and shredded cloth filled her ears as the knife carved through the fabrics and her hands reached into the soft innards of the bedding. The witch dug through the fluff and feathers but came up empty. With a huff, she tossed them to the side and looked around. The desk was next.

Drawers were yanked out, smashed against the desk itself to look for hidden compartments, wood splintering and clattering into pieces as she did each and every part individually before searching the body of the desk. It was a solid material, barely dinged by the drawers she'd thrown against it. Heavy enough she resorted to magic to dismantle it. The nails were yanked out safe but quick using her powers, and the desk fell into slabs of wood for her to dig through. No hidden compartments, no secret walls, or false bottoms. It would make great kindling for when she found what she was looking for though. Until then, she turned her attention to the books on the shelf.

A cursory glance told her something was wrong. She had seen these books strewn about the manor already. Their titles and spines as familiar to her as the workbooks of a school student. She'd seen them everywhere without picking one up herself. Verist peeled one off the shelf and flipped through it. Nothing was out of the ordinary at a glance. Another, and the next book, until she'd combed through them all without success. Humming, the witch checked the shelf much the same way she had the desk, taking it apart with her magic and leaving the wood on the floor when she failed to find her target. The dresser and closet were much the same as the shelf and desk. If there were files to be found, and she was confident after meeting Rebeun that there was a paper trail of the king's orders, they weren't in the bedroom.

Verist didn't bother with her spell as she left the bedroom. The noise from the first floor had settled down entirely; it was as quiet inside the house as it had been outside. She moved with haste towards the next marked door and stepped into a lavish study. A grin came over her face as she saw the walls lined with books, the much heavier, fancier looking desk. This was where the assassin spent his time, not the bedroom. She cracked her knuckles and went to work tearing the place apart in the same ways she had the bedroom before it.

The desk was ripped apart by her magic, the documents inside she examined closely but found unsatisfactory. Verist turned her attention to the bookshelves, skimming the spines and titles again. She frowned at the repetition. Every book on the shelves was the same as what she'd seen in the master bedroom and other places in the manor. Curious, she picked a few titles off the shelf and skimmed them. They were the same. For whatever reason, the mansion had dozens of the same twenty or so books, even inside the same room. That was when it occurred to her.

With her magic, Verist pulled every copy of a single title from the shelves and skimmed them as fast as she could. It was time-consuming, minutes went by as she scanned over dozens of copies of the same book before discarding them and moving to the next set. On and on until she found it. One book was not like the others. Correspondence between the Eyes and the king of Avant wrapped in the cover of a philosophy book. Though the book didn't contain every single letter they had ever exchanged the witch felt it was more than enough with what she was reading. Plots against the elves, strategies for throttling support for Rastar's ventures in the nation, and plenty of assassinations at least planned within their own borders. The nobility of Avant would riot. It was time to cover her tracks.

With a wave of her arm, the pile of books in the room caught alight, and she calmly moved back to the bedroom to start the remains of the bed and desk in there to burning before making her way to the front door. As she stepped onto the first-floor landing she looked around. There was a nervous, scared, looking kobold in armor that looked at her with surprise. “It's time,” she told him as she stepped outside. Hopefully, he knew what that meant. If he didn't, the smoke coming down from the upstairs would certainly clue him in sooner or later. It was time to tell the others to leave, to let the Eyes' base take care of their enemies for them.

Sarel neatly slid her knife across the throat of the maid who had come to an abrupt halt halfway down the staircase into the hidden basement of the mansion. After retrieving her dagger she stood and looked at how much further down it went. A long was, she figured, after tapping on the wall. The echo traveled until it stopped, which usually meant a long passage ahead. She twirled her weapons for a moment, just until she heard the clanging of armor behind her. Feeling safe that the cavalry was marching down after her, the thief proceeded down the steps at a casual pace. If she went too fast, she might encounter something she couldn't handle alone, and there were no drawbacks to being too slow. What problems could there be having a whole regiment of armored allies backing her up? She would just play the forward scout and see what laid at the bottom of the stairs before they caught up.

The heavy footfalls of armored troops got quite loud as she reached the bottom steps. Cautious, the blue-scaled kobold poked her head out of the doorway and looked around. They were in an arena, a full-on stadium minus the seating. She looked up with a hint of awe in her eyes as she saw the cavernous ceiling went up a very long way, supported by pillars in the space before her. There was no way it was natural, and not handmade either. Geomancers had touched this space, it was the only explanation she had. And the stone it was made of was familiar too, the blackened walls of Ardmach. It was no wonder Verist had trouble looking into the mansion, and it made the decision to leave Red and Skyeyes on watch outside the manor, to catch any Eyes that fled, a good choice. Ahead of the entryway was the field, and on it were over a hundred assassins in training, each one practicing with a different weapon in hand. Sarel slid closer, taking cover behind a wall to get a better look without being spotted.

Moving between each of the recruits was the man that broke her arm, the one that made her claws itch for revenge, to feel his blood between her digits. She held herself back and kept looking at the ones training. They were outnumbered slightly, but each orc was worth three humans according to old legends. How many orcs the assassins' leader was worth had yet to be seen, however. He'd killed a room full of them back in the stronghold, but that was with the element of surprise on his side. If there were more waiting in the wings, however...

Merdon was the first one down the stairs, followed shortly by Grot, Shade, and the whole line of orcs they'd brought with them. He moved over to Sarel and glanced at the men in training as well. The same calculations came to his mind as he looked back at Grot. The orc chief was not so analytical. They had a job to do, their enemies were before them, surprise was their ally this time, and orcs didn't really do organized very well. He charged out onto the field with his warriors slinging their weapons off their backs, out of sheathes and loosing battle cries into the cavern. The collective look on the assassins' faces brought untold pleasure to the chief-of-chiefs. They had surprised a group that had named themselves after omnipotence. Avant could be caught off guard and broken.

They didn't stay that way, of course. Some of them drew real weapons and met the orcs head-on, others ducked into side rooms to retrieve better gear, while someone raised an alarm. A loud bell sounded, its deep intonation reverberating through the cavern and calling out dozens more over time. Each one was better armed, but there was a certain lacking characteristic. None of them were knights, none of them came with heavy armor and few had shields. The ones that did were clearly not trainees, and Grot made note of them as he waded into the carnage. Not that a lack of equipment mattered for these opponents. The heavy swings of the orcs were evaded and countered, their smaller force was kited until it was spread thin and eventually broken into smaller groups. What started as two large forces meeting head-on quickly devolved into smaller skirmishes dotting the training field.

Merdon and Sarel had one target in particular they were searching for and made no effort to hide that. They drifted from fight to fight, pushing their way through the various encounters without overstaying. Sarel would land on someone from behind and stab their back a few times before flying off to another opponent or back to Merdon's side, while the knight would disable or impale his foes as he moved. Halfway through the field, a group surrounded the two and cut them off from their intended target. Merdon gripped his sword tightly and moved into the first man who was holding a short sword. His blade gave the knight an advantage, and that doubled when he smacked his shield and caused it to vibrate and pull strikes towards it. The ones to his side were confused when their blows were deflected without Merdon even trying, and the man he was riposting felt genuine fear as his skills fell short and he met his end at the tip of a longsword.

Sarel used Merdon's shield as well, taking it as a distraction to cut their foes down to size. Humans tended to function less well when the back of their heels were slit, their legs collapsed, and they were on the ground howling in pain and agony. It was when their enemies laid lower than a kobold's height that she pushed her daggers into their chest, across their throats, and gave them the only mercy she felt they deserved for all the things they had done in the name of their corrupt nation. Something about fighting these humans beside Merdon made her feel complete.

Winded, but not wounded, the pair pressed on towards the greatest threat in the room. The leader of the assassins, Rebeun, was still standing near the back of his trainees, but now he stood with two dead orcs in front of him, and the corpse of one of the half-trained kobolds under his boot. Sarel seethed with anger at the sight. He had let them run through his men or turn, unwittingly, into him before fighting them. Tactically it was sound, but it wasn't like she and Merdon. They were well known to their enemy, no one stood in their way that didn't know who they were, and while the orcs were surely aware, that kobold hadn't seen anything other than another assassin-in-training. It was irrational, she knew that, but he wasn't standing on an orc's body. He had chosen the kobold for a reason. It sent a message. One she intended to put on its head.

While Merdon and Sarel charged through the battlefield, cutting a bloody path through the Eyes in their way, Grot and Shade were busy keeping things together. Grot was shouting at his men, forcing them to group up, leading by example by tucking his large ax away and grappling with an assassin using his bare hands. Their weapons were large and excellent for fighting the armored guards that were scattered through the enemy forces. For the fast-moving killers, however, they needed a quicker approach. Orcs were more than proficient with their hands, thankfully, and the chief-of-chiefs found that once his hands were locked around his enemy they had a very hard time getting him off them. Wrestling them to the ground and beating them into unconsciousness was enough, assuming no one else jumped on his back while he was doing it. In the times where he felt unsafe completely subduing them, Grot was happy with throwing the assassins around the room like dolls. Things weren't going as well for everyone on his side of the battle though.

Next to them the kobolds, with Shade and Thickhide as their leaders, were having a hard time keeping up with the faster-moving humans. Their armor weighed them down enough to be a detriment against these specific foes. Shade, with no such drawback, plunged headfirst into each and every encounter. Her blades were a fearsome opponent to every light or unarmored human she faced. Not a minute went by that they weren't coated in a fresh supply of blood from one target or another. Thickhide was just doing what he could to keep his little troop together. A few had been separated from the pack and easily dealt with. Morale was nonexistent for those remaining, their training worthless as they panicked beneath the blows of the well-prepared killers. If not for the orcs posing a greater threat, Shade thought they may have lost the whole group they'd taken into battle. There would be no telling where the kobolds would want to be after that. Certainly not fighting alongside them, potentially backing out of the war altogether. It was on them, she and Thickhide, to keep these ones alive, to ultimately stress the importance of more training to them.

The room was a chaotic mess of shouting, clanging metal, slicing flesh, fear, anger, distress, all melting into a singularity of what war was. Grot yelled for his men to push on and break the enemy, Thickhide was trying to raise the morale of his kobolds enough to get them to back away from the middle of the battle, while Merdon and Sarel acted on their own to come face to face with the enemy leader. Rebeun watched everything with manic glee. Chaos suited him like brimstone suited a demon.

“Isn't it glorious?” he asked Merdon as the knight came close. “All this is just a glimpse of what's to come.”

Merdon gave him no response but a readied stance. He had no words for someone like this. Nothing except a forceful banging of his shield as both taunt and activation method for its magic. The assassin leader frowned and conjured his pair of knives before leaping over the knight and slashing at his back. As he landed, Merdon pulling away and turning around, Sarel roared and sliced at their target. He dodged her swings with inhuman agility. His weapons of choice did more than give him tactical advantages, they enhanced his physical abilities as well. Even with a greater range and a sleeker weapon than the orcs', Merdon couldn't land a blow on the assassin. Rebeun seemed to float under or backward from every strike the knight and thief made against him.

His retaliations were staggering and sudden, deflecting Merdon's blade before stepping behind or sliding under him and trying to slice into the open parts of his plate. If Merdon were less experienced, like the kobold that had faced him already, he would have died. He knew how to move and in what way to make such gaps smaller or harder to reach while moving out of the way, and what gaps he couldn't close Sarel was there to defend. The blue-scaled kobold found herself moving along her mate's body as they fought, jumping onto and off his shoulders, using his legs to spin after the assassin, whatever hold she could use to chase and deny their enemy his strikes.

When Merdon was turning to face Rebeun, Sarel was left alone to face him, and the assassin was faster than she was, despite her improvements. Her blades couldn't reach him, though his found a hard time catching her as well. If the fight continued like that, Merdon realized, they would never finish him. They would have to wait for Verist to bring the whole mansion down, and it wasn't exactly safe to say the cavern would collapse on them to finish the job. At the very least, they had to put their leader down, there and then. Merdon grit his teeth and looked the leader of the Eyes dead on.

“So you can dodge us all day, but you can't kill us,” he told the assassin, whether it was true or not. “But even if you did, what does that prove? Your supernatural speed can best a knight? It's not your skill, not your power. It's nothing more than something you've stolen.”

That seemed to hit a nerve as the assassin hurled his blades at both of them, causing Sarel to hop back and roll. “What do you know of thievery?” Rebeun shouted back. “I am owed everything by this accursed empire!”

“Fighting from the shadows?” the knight taunted. “Even when I was tired and under-equipped in the forest you couldn't beat me in a straight-on fight. You pushed me, but you couldn't finish me, or else you would have.”

“You had help,” Rebeun seethed, glaring at Sarel.

The kobold laughed. “So now I am worth mentioning?” she asked sarcastically. “I thought kobolds were so far beneath you. Do I sway battles that much?”

“Show me what you can do,” Merdon challenged the assassin. “One on one, sword versus sword.”

Rebeun's scowl began to reverse, turning back into a grin. “Yes, sword and shield against sword and shield. The weapons of a knight, of royalty.” His daggers vanished and were replaced by his ethereal looking longsword and kite shield, which nearly matched Merdon's. Although it was very notable that Merdon's shield was different now. The difference between an orcish shield and a human's.

Sarel glanced at Merdon, but the knight signaled her away. She frowned but focused on watching his back. He'd said one on one and it seemed he meant it truly. The two humans, stances taken, circled each other slowly. Merdon pondered what enhancement this combination gave his enemy. Perhaps the durability to keep blocking, or maybe the stamina to sustain a fight for longer and wear his opponent down. Whatever the case, he couldn't fall here. Now that Rebeun was baited into Merdon's element he could be outclassed.

Merdon swung first, his sword catching into Rebeun's shield just as Rebeun's blade caught against Merdon's moments later. Both of them withdrew and lashed again. They were probing each other, looking for an opening. In the middle of all the chaos they stood in a dance of thrusts, parries, shields bashing, pushing, each step timed to avoid giving the other an advantage. For all of his training, all of his skill, Merdon had only managed to avoid needing Sarel to step in and save him. He avoided the doubts that would cloud his mind while he focused on Rebeun's blade, watching for every twist of the wrist that signaled an incoming attack. He tried to pull his shield to the limit of its reach, to drive the assassin into an open stance, but Merdon's counters were always met with perfect defense. A stalemate.

“This is your limit,” Rebeun told him. “You can only hope to match me with my weakest skill set. My other weapons were taken from masters of their craft.”

It took intense focus to ignore that taunt, to find the one opening he could while the assassin was busy talking. Merdon's sword came down, brushing across Rebeun's shield, and caught his thigh. The wound was small, but the damage to his pride had to be immeasurable.

“You should have looked harder,” Merdon grunted, slamming into his opponent and aiming to push him off guard.

Things were not that easy, unfortunately, as Rebeun called his daggers out to backflip, using Merdon's force to create distance, before resuming his previous weapons. “Perhaps I'll use your soul when we're done,” he taunted back.

That was when all hell broke loose.

A kobold came down the stairs screaming, “Fire” at the top of his lungs. Grot, knowing what that meant, roared for his men to subdue their enemies and push backward, to regroup and prepare to retreat. Rebeun looked at the shouting kobold in confusion for a moment before understanding that something had happened up top. Something the invaders had planned.

“Don't let any of them escape!” Grot shouted, but mostly in Merdon's direction. “We have to keep them here even if we die doing it.”

Rebeun smirked and shouted at his own force, “You heard the orc! Keep them here even if it kills us.” Worst case, they would all be buried together. His men weren't fond of that order. Several of them began to rush for a way out, most of which were trying to escape up the staircase the kobold was standing on.

Thickhide's group, who had fallen back earlier, were now grouping on the stairs. “Keep them back,” he shouted at his own group. “As long as we stay on the stairs they can't get up.” They were forced into a choke point where the armor of the kobolds actually held weight. It wasn't anything the orcs couldn't have done themselves, but it was something more than before.

Most importantly, it riled up Rebeun who, in a rage, dispersed his weapons in exchange for a massive two-handed sword. One that he began swinging towards Merdon like it had the weight of a stick, while it landed with the force of a horse. The knight held his shield firmly, eventually in both hands as he blocked the blows from the large weapon. Each swing came faster and faster as Rebeun become utterly focused on one thing in the room.

“You won't take this from me,” he cawed. “I'll kill you, and then those damned lizards, and then that bastard on the throne! I'll show him who the real threat it, who should have been there all along.”

Merdon couldn't focus on the ravings of a madman while he blocked and tried to think of a way out of there before the mansion above was no longer an escape route. He wasn't the only one thinking about fleeing, luckily. Sarel moved behind Rebeun when his insane yowling began and she took great pleasure in landing on his back and driving both of her blades into either side of his neck in the middle of his speech. The leader of the Eyes gurgled and clutched at his throat, his large blade dissipating as the kobold on his back ripped both of her daggers forward, completely opening his throat and spraying blood on Merdon's raised shield. He fell to his knees, holding his hands over his gaping wound before dropping sideways on the floor and gasping his last. Merdon lowered his shield and watched as their mission was accomplished, as the leader of the Eyes of Ethral died before him.

It took a lot of work to fight their way through the gathered assassins-in-training to reach the doorway that led up into the mansion. There was no door at the bottom of the stairs they could close either, and so the climb up was faced with dozens of men pushing, shoving, and climbing over each other to try and get ahead, or at least keep up, with the fleeing orcs and kobolds. At one point, an orc in the back snagged on man and threw him into the others, causing a domino effect that knocked many of them down and created just enough breathing room for them to reach the surface. The door to the underground was closed as they entered the first floor of the mansion, and with some genius remodeling, Grot pulled a few loose support beams down in front of the door to make sure it didn't matter if they opened it. His hands were burned, but it was hardly an issue.

“Let's move,” he shouted at the others, hurrying them out of the building. In the rush, the orcs with their long legs made it outside first, with Shade being the first kobold out of the building by riding on Grot's back.

The armored kobolds, battered, bruised, and heavy in many ways, were less fortunate. Merdon stopped at the front door and watched them come running. Some were still fast and spry, making it out before the others, while the stragglers were more wounded and almost confused. The mansion was on fire, smoke filled the air as parts of the building came falling down on top of itself. It was hard to tell how long ago Verist had set the place on fire, or if she had just used a very potent spell to light it all at once. Whatever the case was, they had to move faster. Thickhide stopped between the kobolds and Merdon and helped his little impromptu squad reach the exit as quickly as he could. One kobold fell over from his beating, prompting Thickhide to help him up and pass him to another kobold before looking back to make sure they had gotten everyone. At least the ones that lived.

As Thickhide turned around to leave, the second floor partially gave way and came thundering down. The kobold ducked and covered his head, not sure what he was hoping for if it actually fell on top of him. Alarmed, Merdon sprinted over and tried to wave away some of the smoke that was pouring from the upstairs. Thickhide wasn't buried, but he did start screaming in agony very suddenly. Merdon grabbed him by the arm and pulled only to find him stuck and to make the screaming louder. Sarel, not leaving before Merdon, came running over as well. It took her all of two seconds to find the problem.

“His tail is stuck,” she shouted at her verakt over the fire that was growing. “There's a damned support beam on his tail.”

Merdon forced himself through the smoke, coughing, trying to get a look. “I can't move that,” he told Sarel. And they didn't have time to go hunting for someone else to do the heavy lifting.

“We can't leave him,” the blue thief stated as if Merdon didn't know.

The knight frowned. He didn't like this.

Grot looked back at the burning mansion with a grin on his face as Red and Skyeyes walked up with Verist at their side. “We did it,” he said softly at first, before erupting with jubilation. “We actually did it!” The dark-skinned orc pulled his weapon out and held it in the air while letting out a victorious whoop, which lead the other orcs to do the same. Red took a step back in surprise and looked around. While the orcs may have been celebratory, the kobolds were less so.

The newly formed troop of armored kobolds were missing a third of their number, even counting the stragglers that were just reaching the trees and looked worse for wear. Skyeyes went to treat them as an obvious feeling permeated Red's head. She didn't see Merdon or Sarel, for that matter. After double-checking the copse for them, she walked back over to Grot and tapped his side.

“Where's Merdon?” she asked in a flat tone, countering the chief-of-chief's celebration.

Grot opened his mouth to say what he thought, but a cursory glance of the glade told him the same thing. Cursing, he stepped out of the treeline again and moved towards the house before stopping. “They're coming,” he said to Red as he squinted into the distance. “They've got a kobold with them. Merdon's carrying them.”

Red frowned and looked out. Sure enough, Merdon was moving away from the burning building with a kobold in his arms. It wasn't Sarel, they could see her at his side. Which filled the mage with some dread. “Thickhide,” she muttered.

“No,” Grot shook his head. “The green thing was fine when we got up the stairs. What could have happened? The Eyes were buried if not dead.”

Their question was answered when Merdon reached the clearing with the sobbing green-scaled kobold in his arms. Everyone stopped, totally silent, and looked as the human set him down next to Skyeyes. The priest abandoned his current work of bruises and cuts to see what had happened. He sucked air through his teeth at the sight of it. Thickhide's tail was gone, cut off at the base, and serious burns were going up his back. Merdon explained things in a hushed tone, leaving Skyeyes to patch Thickhide up as best he could. Verist was nearby, hand over her mouth and eyes wide. Red couldn't even look at the burns on the green-scaled kobold's back. It reminded her of too much.

Merdon stood up and looked at Grot. “This was a costly victory,” he said somberly.

“No cost was too high to shut down their assassins,” Grot disagreed. “With this, even if we had all died, the war would stand a fighting chance.”

While the orcs nodded in eager agreement, the kobolds looked at it differently. They had never lost companions like that before. To see them slain in front of them, not even an attempt at capture. It was new, terrifying, unnerving. Even though it took a while, Grot eventually caught on to their dropping mood and decided to make a statement. He found a log to stand on, raising himself up even more, and addressed the gathered troops. The orcs would have cheered at anything he said after their victory, the first of many they hoped, but the kobolds and even the two humans would be harder to impress.

“This was a decisive victory,” he bellowed. “We dealt a blow to the Avantian empire they couldn't have seen coming in a hundred years. In a single night, we plucked the Eyes from their home and have left the humans even more blind than they were before.” The chief-of-chiefs paused for the cheers that came from his men. Sentiments that weren't echoed by the lizards next to them as they watched the white-scaled priest healing Thickhide. So, he pressed on. “War has always been about sacrifice. Nothing in this world comes free, especially not freedom from oppressors. It's paid for in blood and lives, not coin or jewels. It's a sad fact, but one we must face with dauntless determination. A fearless focus that no matter the cost, no matter how steep, we will come out ahead in the end and our enemies will pay ten times what we do. A promise I plan on keeping to you all.”

Again, the orcs were loud and proud, but the kobolds only looked sickened. Merdon couldn't blame them, but some of what Grot had said was true. This was the cost of war. An unsettling reality they needed to face, but more importantly than making Avant pay for their effort, they needed to realize what they were fighting for. Freedom wasn't cheap but it was a damn sight better than the slavery the kobolds suffered every day. That wasn't how the gathered kobolds in the grove felt. One of them stood from the pack, stepping in front of the orcs that were hollering in celebration.

“We don't want this,” the armored one said, taking his helmet off and dropping it to the grass. “We can't fight like this. We'll be killed.”

Grot frowned. “This was only your first battle,” he reminded the kobold. “It was a mistake to bring you here, I can admit that. You need more training, but once you have that-.”

“That won't stop us from dying,” he replied, afraid. “Even some of your own orcs were killed in there. There's no safety here. We would rather live in a cage than face that horror again.”

Grot was speechless at that statement. A being as independent and powerful as he couldn't imagine being content with enslavement for the sake of survival. Merdon could though, in a way. He had seen kobolds being treated terribly in Ardmach, and many of these ones hadn't. He had also seen ones that lived in the city, browbeaten but free enough, a dream that didn't come at the cost of blood and lives. It was the false promise that Avant gave them that restrained these rebellions in the first place.

His hands cold and a sharp pain in his chest, Merdon stepped up onto the log next to Grot and addressed the troops himself. He set his jaw, held onto his courage as best he could and spoke loud and clear.

“The cost is high, like Grot said, but it's worth it,” the knight told them, his eyes glazing past the orcs and focusing on the kobolds that hid in the shadows of the superior fighters. “What hope Avant offers you is a mere shadow of the truth. Kobolds that escape slavery are constantly at risk of being dragged into it. The papers the humans offer are just that, paper. Easily burned or discarded when they need new bodies to sell. What kobolds you see in shackles working the fields or serving a lord at a mansion like the one we raided today are the few. Many more live in abusive environments, taking beatings just as bad as what you received this very night, but without armor, without weapons, without the hope of fighting back.”

The kobold at the front shifted nervously in place. That didn't sound good either.

“Life is up to chance, everything is,” Merdon continued. “You could die in the next battle, or you could be enslaved and find out what it's like to be beaten every day for the rest of your life. Just as well you could survive and find a brighter future free of chains, and equally, you might find yourself chained to a human that gives you a shred of respect and feel it's not so bad. But something happened here tonight, something important.” He looked to the side at the burning manor, the blaze still lighting up the night sky for miles around. “Avant won't forgive that,” he told them.

Thickhide, his tail stump no longer bleeding, stood up and pushed past the orcs, causing a stir as he moved through them. His legs were unstable and he fell trying to reach the log that Merdon and Grot were speaking from, but he pulled himself up with it to speak his own piece.

“Merdon is right,” he coughed, leaning on the knight's leg for stability in place of his tail. “We cannot give up now. If we do, the humans won't take it easy on any of us.” Thickhide looked at Merdon for a moment and then found his own confidence in his words. “We attacked the humans in force,” he explained softly. “They won't forgive that if we stop now. They'll do worse to us than any of us have seen.”

“There's no guarantee we succeed,” Merdon told them outright. “But we've already started down that path. Turning back won't change anything, it will only get worse, but pushing ahead, fighting harder, could change everything. You just have to take the risk.”

The kobolds didn't cheer, they weren't going to clap for that, but the one in the lead looked down at his helmet for a while before picking it back up and putting it on. The others nodded silently in solidarity. They were afraid of going back and continuing on, but now they were aware that going back wouldn't help them. There was nothing to go back to if they failed or quit. Merdon sighed softly and climbed off the log to slip into the shade of the trees again, to be as invisible as possible after his speech.

Grot followed him while Verist prepared to take them back to the orc lands with her spell, just as soon as Skyeyes was done with the healing. The dark-skinned orc crossed his arms at the human knight and stood silent for a long time. At least, long enough to make Merdon nervous.

“You said you didn't want to lead any army,” Grot accused.

Merdon let out a short, anxious chuckle. “I don't.”

“You must after that,” he insisted. “Because those kobolds aren't going to look to me for a pep talk anymore. Leaders don't just give orders, Merdon, they inspire. And if you didn't just convince every one of those weakly seasoned kobold warriors to stick around, they must be deaf.”

The knight's pallor was hidden by the moonless night that surrounded them. “What do you mean?” he asked as if there was any doubt about that.

“You just kobold whispered a whole group of soldiers, and you'd best believe they'll be spreading that 'no way back' talk to the others. I give it a month and they're all listening to you instead.”