“The ability to adapt and adjust to one’s opponents is what seperates a good mercenary from a dead one.” - Old mercenary saying.

In the early morning hours of the Firstday of the following week, where people typically slept the deepest, several winged silhouettes flew over the foreign invader encampment. Each of them carried several fragile sealed clay urns in their storage artifact, with their content an unpleasant surprise for the invaders sleeping below them.

After much discussion, Erycea and the other platoon leaders decided not to show off their entire hand to the enemy and instead limited their diversion to just a small part of their arsenal. The decision was made after they took into consideration that the Company would likely have to battle these enemies for a good part of the imminent future, so it was simply a poor choice to reveal some of their trump cards too early.

As such, the diversion would mostly be done by Egil’s people, who were skilled slingers capable of delivering their shots from a relatively safe distance, especially at night. Rather than the nastier options in their arsenal though, the goblins that day only carried sealed urns that were filled with a special mix of clingy natural oils mixed with a certain fluid concentrate extracted from certain glands of an infamous beast from the jungles they called home. A beast that had similar relatives everywhere in the continent, commonly called skunks or stink beasts.

Mixed with the oils, the extract formed a mixture that simply clinged to whatever it was splashed on. Worse yet, the stench from the concentrate would practically assimilate to the poor victim unless washed off within minutes, making them stink horribly for weeks on end. The mixture was by no means lethal – though there had been documented cases of unfortunate people getting facefuls of the mixture who ended up killing themselves as they tore their own face and throat apart – but it was most definitely a horrific disturbance to inflict upon one’s foe.

The overpowering scent would also neatly explain why Lili and Rózsa ran off, as wildcats had sensitive noses and any sane animal would escape from such a stench.

Even so, to spare their own compatriots from unnecessary suffering, Egil’s people targeted the side of the encampment that was a section away from where the twins were biding their time. It was close enough to create a plausible reason for their disappearance, but far enough that they shouldn’t be directly struck by the diversion itself.

Once all the goblins reached their assigned positions, they carefully loaded the sealed urns into the pouches of their slings, then as one, stood up and started to whirl around their slings over their heads. Such an action was naturally difficult to hide from the eyes of the sentries on the watch towers, but due to the darkness – and perhaps a little inattention – the sentries failed to notice them until after the goblins had loosed the first salvo.

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The sealed urns – each around the size of a child’s fist – they loosed sailed through the air to land well inside the enemy encampment in a loose pattern. Most struck the ground and broke apart, splashing its stinky contents all over the vicinity, while some landed on unfortunate and unsuspecting soldiers with predictable unpleasant results for the victims in question.

Before the camp could react, the goblins loosed a second salvo of urns, then a third, before they turned around and ran back towards the forest where the rest of their compatriots waited in ambush in case they were pursued. That turned out to be an unnecessary precaution, as the foreign invaders were too busy trying to make sense of what just happened to them to organize a pursuit team.

At the same time, the fliers above noticed the ruckus below and each brought out one of the sealed urns they were given. Their urns were somewhat larger and had a removable cap, and they carefully removed said cover with their talons while pointing the urn at a sideways angle. Once the cover was removed, a fine powder – almost as fine as ash – rained down on the invader encampment, the particles so fine that it was pretty much unnoticeable to the naked eye.

And it would remain unnoticeable too, at least until it landed on some bare skin. The powder was made from a mixture of dried and ground up poisonous plants and possessed a strong irritant effect on the human skin, causing itchiness and rashes to develop with the slightest touch. Again, it was nothing fatal in the quantities the fliers were dispersing discreetly from above, but it would most definitely irritate their foes once the effect started to become noticeable.

While all hell broke loose in the invader encampment, Lili and Rózsa fled towards the central part of the camp where the commander’s tent was, pretending to be yowling and in a panic as they rushed. With the chaos unfolding from the unexpected disturbance, nobody had the time to pay attention to what seemed like a pair of kittens running away from the mayhem, so they managed to get to their destination unbothered.

Once they were in the central part of the encampment, Lili put on a show of panicking and running every which way, while on the other hand Rózsa quietly snuck into the commander’s tent and swiped away every bit of loose paper she could find, keeping them in the storage artifact she hid. Once that was done, the two continued running further, past the central part of the encampment and out from the opposite side of where the distraction hit.

Their tiny figures practically vanished into the tall grass once they got outside the encampment, and even if someone noticed that they were gone, it would be a fool’s errand to attempt tracking them down. Even so, neither of the druid twins relaxed, and they rushed towards the forest, still in their wildcat forms, practically unnoticeable amongst the tall grass of the plains in the night.

Once they reached the forest, the two hid themselves and shifted back to their normal forms and put on some clothes, before they made their way towards the mercenary camp deeper in the forest. They reached the camp before Erycea and the rest returned from the aborted ambush, since the invaders failed to sent any pursuers.

Only then did Lili and Rózsa report their experiences within the enemy camp while at the same time unloading their bounty, the papers and maps from the enemy commander’s tent.