Night deepens around the orc camp, an almost tangible darkness that becomes the ally of twenty shadowy figures forming a ring. At Barandir's silent signal, a barely perceptible shifting shadow, the attack begins. The already moonless night thickens as twenty ghosts slip from the darkness.
The orc sentinels, drowsy and careless, fall without a sound. The first, a massive, hunched figure, collapses with an arrow deeply lodged in his throat, his gurgle stifled as blood fills his windpipe. The second never even sees the dagger that pierces the base of his skull, his last breath is a mere whisper swallowed by silence. Three more sentinels suffer the same fate, their heavy bodies caught before hitting the ground, avoiding any noise that might give them away.
These deaths are whispers in the night, commas in the deadly sentence the Rangers write across the camp.
Then the carefully orchestrated chaos erupts.
From the four cardinal points, the Rangers strike the camp's heart. This is not a noisy charge but a lethal incursion, rapid, brutal assaults creating the illusion of an army. Arrows whistle from invisible positions, finding their targets with unerring precision. Hooded figures appear like nightmarish visions, striking then vanishing before the orcs can respond.
The orcs, roused from restless sleep, awaken to a nightmare of silent blades and fleeting shadows. Their hoarse, discordant cries shatter the night's silence, a cacophony of fear and rage rising toward indifferent stars. Their yellow eyes, accustomed to piercing darkness, see only fragments of movement and flashes of steel, never long enough to identify their attackers.
"Golug! Golug!" one shouts, mistaking these deadly assailants for the elves they fear.
"Tark! Tark!" another corrects, recognizing the tactics of the men from the west.
Amid this whirlwind, beside Barandir, Zac embodies a force of a different nature. His mithril sword is a flash of twilight light, capturing and transforming the faint glow of campfires. Each movement flows with supernatural grace, as if his body no longer obeys the limits of ordinary beings.
An orc rushes at him, a misshapen mass raised high above its head. Zac does not block, it is as if he isn't there when the weapon falls. A measured, elegant sidestep, and his blade traces a precise line through the orc's chest. No brute force, no hatred, just surgical precision cutting flesh and bone as if they offered no resistance.
His deadly dance continues unbroken. Two orcs attack him simultaneously, their disordered movements dangerous in their fury. Zac rises and spins in a movement that seems to defy gravity, his cloak billowing like wings of shadow unfurled. His blade sings through the air, a pure note in the battle's dissonance, severing an arm here, a throat there.
"Ashûk! Uzkul!" guttural cries multiply, but Zac not only understands the Black Speech words, he senses the growing terror behind them. His presence offends these creatures born of corruption. The light from his eyes wounds them almost as much as his blade.
His dance is a perfectly executed melody of death, a legacy of his battles in the abyss. Yet where his past actions were fueled by survival, and sometimes hatred, each movement now shows terrifying efficiency tempered by detachment. He does not fight these creatures; he restores balance, note after note, life after life.
"Behind you!" Barandir's voice cuts through his concentration.