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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seasong" data-source="post: 494714" data-attributes="member: 5137">The First Battle of Eastpass, pt IIISpread along either side of the eastern valley, what looked several hundred orcs camped in groups of 10-50. Tucked under shading trees or just laying flat on their backs in the morning sun, they more than doubled the number of defenders.Greppa finally crawled up on watcher's rock, careful of his recently sealed wounds, and got a better look.The orcs, sprawled about the slope of the mountain until they were hidden by the forest beyond, had completely blocked off the Eastpass trail north, and with it, any trade or help from that direction. Most were resting, although a few here and there wrestled while others formed circles around the competitors and jostled each other a bit. The spears... the spears were everywhere. Greppa hadn't suspected there could be so many insects of that size, and yet here were some 6-7 hundred orcs, each carrying a small collection of them.He was glad he'd kept the two spearheads. They were rather neat, in a way.Merideth and Athan, meanwhile, busied themselves with the wounded. Or rather, Merideth did, while Athan, unscratched, tried to make himself useful. It wasn't easy to be a hero, he was coming to see.-----The day passed slowly, the humans watching the orcs, the orcs watching the humans. But the orcs did not attack, merely continued to laze about.Captain Agina was not fooled, and told everyone to rest in shifts until nightfall. Then everyone was to be awake.In the deepest part of the night, the orcs finally attacked. As Agina had surmised, they intended to take full advantage of their uncanny nightvision. Eastpass quickly filled with dark shapes, wildly stabbed spears, quiet grunts of pain. A few humans held torches aloft as much as they could, but the torches always attracted thrown spears.And the orcs were no slouches at throwing.Greppa continued trying to hit the orcs with his spells, but began to feel useless. Captain Agina was beginning to think so, too, he knew.Merideth continued to vaccilate between exhaustion and casting the best healing spells she knew.And Athan, frustrated by his inability to connect with the enemy in the dark, was soon switched to longspear, where it was more difficult for him to wear himself out.It was a long battle for everyone.And then, the orcs retreated. They'd caused only a little damage, and no one had died. Of course, no orcs had died, either. And the defenders were tired, while only the majority of the orcs were still fresh, having ignored the shadowed battle.-----With morning, however, reinforcements finally arrived, with another two hundred youths with spears... and Hurath, Greppa's former master, flew in.Greppa couldn't help but grin - he'd always known that Hurath could fly (it was one of the spells he'd carefully copied in the dead of the night, although unable to fully understand yet), but he'd never seen it.When Captain Agina began discussing finer tactics with him, however, and mentioned Greppa's lesser shadow killer (wondering, perhaps, if there was something better he could be doing with his spell casting), his stomach knotted.That was another of the spells he'd carefully copied in the dead of the night.Hurath gave him a hurt look, and Greppa quietly tried to disappear among the other soldiers while they continued to talk. And he was almost glad when the soldiers on watcher's rock yelled ORCS!-----This fight ended somewhat quickly. Hurath flew up to watcher's rock, grabbing Greppa along the way, and coldly surveyed the orcs sprinting up the mountain toward the pass.Then he smiled, drew a full circle (Greppa did not recognize it immediately), and spoke powerful words: "bothfalli mu taran!"A streak of fire shot down upon the orcs, and then expanded in mere moments to encompass an entire warband, sucking air from their lungs and burning their flesh horribly. The orcs screamed, and started to run away as a second fireball bore down on them and snuffed what remained of their lives.Hurath looked a bit winded, but began casting again, this time directing the fiery death towards a second warband, further down slope.That was enough for the orcs, and they began retreating en masse.Hurath swiftly flew down to Captain Agina, and requested fifty of her soldiers to assist him in chasing the orcs a bit east... enough to clear the road north. He received them, and the fifty of them began jogging down the mountain to keep the orcs on the run.Hurath, and the soldiers who went with him, never returned.to be continued...probably tomorrow morning <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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