After some time though unknown how much exactly to Dak, he woke up and was stationary in his sleeping bag while trying to fall asleep again, but had trouble doing so. He decided to open his eyes, even though he knew that only wake him up even more and be even harder for him to fall asleep after that, he was getting uneasy from lying still. As he opened his eyes he instinctively looked to find the person on watch duty and he saw Truelip laying against a tree with her eyes closed.

Seeing that he felt pretty frustrated considering their safety falls on her, but the fire was still really hot so she must have fallen asleep recently. He tried whispering to call out to her, without waking up the rest with the hopes she might’ve just dozed off.

“Truelip…”

“Yes?” she replied instantly with a vibrant voice.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on guard duty…?” he continued whispering.

“I am.”

“Then why aren’t you on guard…”

“I have magic sense. I don’t need to have my eyes open to see around me.”

He felt kind of dumb for not thinking of it in the first place. Almost all mages have some sort of magic sense and even though she isn’t exactly a mage she can still cast at least basic spells. He was annoyed with himself because as leader, it’s his job to protect his party members which include taking into account all the different abilities they’re enemies having. He instantly started thinking how if he had stumbled upon another jack-of-all-trades sleeping he would have probably been at fault if it had turned out to be a trap. Turning away his thought for a moment from that since he realised he had just gone quiet. He tried to think of something to talk about.

“How long have you been on watch?”

“About 4 hours.”

He was shocked to hear that since they all had agreed for everyone to watch for an hour and a half.

“But don’t you feel tired… Didn’t we agree to switch?”

“Don’t worry, I can live solely on magic. I don’t need sleep.”

Hearing that he felt kind of bad for letting her stay alone all this time, but if she wanted to do then he’d feel bad about telling her what to do too.

“If you think you can hold out okay, but do wake me up when you think you can’t hold out anymore…”

“Like I said I can hold out the entire night, but I will wake you up on or two hours before that since it’s still a good idea to have a normal rest.”

“Okay…”

And with that, he thought the conversation ended and was about to go back to sleep but Truelip continued to stare at him and it made him feel uneasy.

“Is something wrong…?”

“Quickly wake up the others, we’re being surrounded. Though saying that with a calm voice will probably take you longer to realise the urgency it also has the same effect on the enemies.” As she finished saying that she jumped up towards the fire.

Hearing that he did indeed take a moment to realise the meaning behind her words, but the moment he did he also jumped up to wake up the others. As in on queue he heard in all directions around them people start running. Apparently, it did as well work on them. He ran towards the closest person, Lana, and tugged on her shoulder to wake her up.

“Quick, everyone wake up!” he yelled out.

Thankfully from the yelling and the action everyone else, of course, woke up but took a moment to realise their situation. Dak didn’t wait for them to do so and the moment he knew they were all awake, because being the only other one up and awake he had turned around as it was his job to defend them from the side opposite of the one Truelip went.

Was that her intent?

Not having the time to think about that he saw an orc running towards him with an axe and shield in hand.

As that was happening a few arrows piercing through the air could be heard. One landed in the fire, instantly putting it out somehow, while the other two which were aimed at Truelip and Dak were instantly deflected in the dark as Truelip hold out her hand in a swinging motion and conjured a glaive, a sword on top of a spear, made out of ice.

While the moon was out and was illuminating a bit of what was happening it was still dark and none in their party had night vision, with the exception of Vyria and Truelip’s magic sense. That said as the orc was just charging at him when the light went out he could barely see him attacking, but thankfully he managed to block the attack with his bastard sword since he prepared for its counter while he could still see and the orc didn’t take advantage of the darkness to change up the attack he was gonna do.

The others had jumped up as soon as they realised they were under attack and Vyria instantly cast her [Wilf Fire] spell as fast as she can talk to bring sigh back to everyone with Dalia quietly preparing a light spell, without audibly speaking or visibly moving her mouth to cast at any moment. As the light spread they could clearly see the orcs now. They were completely surrounded. The orcs themselves weren’t like the ones they could see in the city. Those looked more human, but these had huge tusks, some reaching their others, others reaching above their head, coming from their lower jaw and were greatly larger than them, but their backs were so big they looked like they were slightly hunched at all times. They looked more like a mix between trolls and orcs. One of them, a bit larger neared from behind the others as they made room for him.

“Ah what a pleasant surprise for you to able to catch our surprise attack. But I don’t think you’ll get far now. Why don’t you just accept your fates and make it easy on everyone here.” He spoke with a grizzly and calm voice, sounding more intelligent than he looked.

“I thought your camp was supposed to be further West. What happened, you remembered there was a corpse you had forgotten to take?” Truelip asked with a mocking tone and a slightly serious expression. The others from the party tensed up as they heard the way she spoke to them.

“No, no, no. We always make sure to take back everything of value. But we happened to hear on a scream through the quiet night so obviously, we had to check what it was no matter how away it is.”

Hearing that, everyone who could see Stela, saw her ears dropping slightly down as she started blushing.

“Though we had to be very careful and slow in case it was a trap, who’d knew we’d stumble on such a prize! Did you kids not know of the scary monsters in these parts? It’s a bad idea to be camping so far away from villages. Or were you having some fun instead?” he says the last bit laughing heavily with the ones around him scoffing.

Everyone in the party was on guard. They were outnumbered, all opponents looked stronger and they also knew that there were archers who they couldn’t see either, as they were hiding amongst the trees in the darkness. What came next made them go pale.

“You guys are so annoying… can’t you just… surrender or something? It’s really late and I don’t feel like dealing with you.” Truelip said nonchalantly.

The orcs reaction was first to stare dumbfounded before he started laughing.

“Hahaha, wit you were seri-“

Before he could finish she through the glaive at him. He was expecting something like that, but just as he started reacting the glaive already pierced his shoulder, sending him flying backwards until the glaive also hit a tree. He was a few inches above the ground as writhed in the pain grabbing his shoulder to try and ease the pain somehow.

Taking it as their queue, Vyria launched the flaming ball she was holding at one of the orcs closest to her, while Dalia cast a [Blinding Light] spell which allowed the fireball to hit its target without problem instantly setting his armor on fire. Dak and Lana simultaneously charged three orcs also trying to take advantage of the opportunity while Stela jumped at a tree, and then jumped again a second time to get on a branch as an arrow hit the spot where her foot landed from the initial jump.

Truelip also charged, but she ignored all enemies and went for her glaive, pulling it out effortlessly without hesitation as she reached it, a massive waterfall of blood spilling out as she did that, the orc leader left suffering on the ground. She then swung it around her, the blade piercing another orc, while the other end hit one that was closer to her, making him stumble, before also slashing him with the edge. She took this brief moment to look at how the others were dealing.

Because they were all on one side of the campfire and she charged the other, she had to deal with most of the orcs which was her plan. Dak managed to block some attack with his shield, as Lana was taking advantage of that to wound them, Stela was sniping at the archers so they don’t interfere, Vyria was setting the nearby tree and along with them the orcs on fire while Dalia kept casting support spells, like one to help avoid projectiles, one to increase accuracy, to replenish stamina, to heal when someone got hurt, etcetera.

Being more confident in her teammates, Truelip turned her gaze back to her surroundings. While she only spared a glance, there was already three orcs charging her from all sides. She turned to face two of them. The one on the left was preparing a strike from the left, while the other from above. She had also noted that the one, now behind her was also preparing a strike from above. She charged the one who was about to strike her left, pushing her glaive forward and extending her arm, taking advantage of her reach as she pierced the orcs hand holding the blade before he was even in range to swing.

She wasted no time and instantly pulled back the blade, as the orc beside him tried to hit her arm with the downward strike, though he had to switch to only using his right hand, as she was no longer straight ahead of him and didn’t have time to turn his entire body, thus weakening and slowing the strike, giving her plenty of time to pull back. As she did though, while the orc missed her arm, the glaive was still traveling and the polearm was now, under his armpit.

Of course, it passed through only slowing down once, when it passed through the orc before it continued to go back towards the orc she had gotten more distance from, using the swinging motion and sudden movement to also strike him before he could react. Three bodies fall on the floor, but another one already caught up to her, striking towards her from above with yet another downward strike. She jumped up, doing a backflip with her legs, instead of going down, hitting the orcs face and pushing him backwards to hit another one, as she then jumped again, this time with a front flip, the extra force, making both orcs fall down. As she landed he intern did a downward strike slashing at another orc that was too cautious to attack her, going straight through him, although not leaving too deep of a wound.

All the other rocs who were surrounding her just stayed back. They saw that trying to use only numbers to take her down is pointless since she said herself she has magic sense, so she has no blind spots. They need to use group strategy instead. Even knowing that though, no one dared to attack first. She just stood there and stared back with a merciless gaze. When there weren’t flashes of white and red coming from behind her, they noticed that her red eyes glowed slightly in the dark.

She only let them a moment of peace before she decided to attack herself, seeing as they weren’t doing so. She simply charged on and slashed at him, before moving to the next on the right who was still swinging before he fell on the ground too. She continued, then thrusting her blade again, piercing one. Pulling it back again, as she looked back, hitting someone with the shaft in the stomach, followed by spinning her body and glaive around her, allowing her to effectively spin it twice since both were doing so. That last strike making sure everyone around her goes down for good.

There were no more standing bodies around her. She looked at her teammates. They were holding on but hadn’t managed to get one down yet, as their weapons were too weak to pierce them. Only Vyria’s fires were capable of getting them down, given they burned for long enough to lose motivation to keep trying to attack her. While the flame probably couldn’t go past their tough skin, the mental effects of the constant pain did them in.

Truelip charged the remaining orcs and took them down with two successive strikes, seeing as they were nicely lined up in a line on the edge of the clearing. Everyone from her party seeing that just took a sigh from exhaustion, Vyria and Dalia falling to the ground sitting, unable to move and Stela, laying her back against the tree of the branch she was on wiping the sweat from her head. They had somehow managed to pull through or so were their thoughts.