Catch them off guard, and strike where it hurts!
Eric declined Farodan's offer to accompany him. "Just stay in the fortress and enjoy the show," he said with a grin, hoisting his gear before slipping out through a hidden gap between two stone blocks in the wall.
No one—least of all the orcs—would ever imagine that while they were busy crafting ladders, the man inside the fortress would not only dare to leave... but would take the initiative to attack them head-on.
One man.
Against a hundred orcs.
In the thick-skulled mind of the orc chieftain, the possibilities were straightforward: either the defenders would sit and wait to be overrun once the ladders were ready, or they'd try to flee while the orcs were busy. Either way, it was a win. After all, they still had to storm the fortress eventually, and whether they killed the defenders inside or scared them off didn't matter.
Confident in that logic, the chieftain hadn't even bothered to post scouts. Why risk lives when the enemy had a crack-shot archer in the tower? Send too few, they'd get skewered. Send too many, and you'd be short on hands for ladder duty. It just wasn't worth it.
Of course, while most orcs were dumb as bricks and about as dangerous, every now and then a few managed to sprout both muscles and brain cells.
Unfortunately for this particular chieftain, today would be the day his luck ran out.
"Move it, maggots! I want those ladders ready before dawn! If I'm not sitting inside that fortress by sunrise, I'll feed you to the direwolves!"
From within the forest, the orc leader roared at the workers hammering together wooden ladders.
Nearby, a direwolf on patrol sniffed the air, its blood-red eyes flicking toward the treeline. It sensed something... but saw nothing.
The motion didn't go unnoticed.
"What is it?" the rider whispered, patting the beast's side. "You smell something?"
The direwolf huffed and padded forward, carrying its rider beyond the edge of the group. A few dozen meters out, they spotted something odd in a clearing—a stone pillar, perfectly square and rising straight into the sky. About a meter thick, like it had been placed there by some celestial architect.
The half-orc rider frowned and craned his neck, trying to make out what was at the top. There was definitely movement up there, but he couldn't quite tell what it was.
A bird? A crow?
He raised his torch higher, but the flickering light only revealed a vague shadow shifting at the peak.
He dismissed it at first. Probably just a squirrel or something.
Then the top of the pillar did something decidedly unnatural—it extended.
Straight out. Horizontally. Right in the direction of the ladder construction site.
The rider scratched his head.
"Wait… is that thing growing? Living rock?"
Eric wiped sweat from his forehead as he crouched at the edge of his latest platform, carefully placing another square block outward.
He accidentally glanced down.
Big mistake.
Seventy meters of sheer drop. His stomach flipped. Vertigo kicked in. Knees turned to jelly.
"Okay… don't look down," he muttered. "Just breathe."
But then, something caught his eye—just below the platform's edge, a tiny flicker of light.
A torch.
Eric squinted.
Crap. He'd been spotted.
Time to pick up the pace.
Forcing down his fear, he redoubled his efforts, extending the platform toward the orcs' construction zone while trying to stay low and out of sight.
But stealth had its limits.
When you're dangling a glowing red barrel of death eighty meters above someone's head, there's only so long before someone notices.
"Hey... what's that?" one of the orcs asked, squinting upward.
Several others followed his gaze, slack-jawed and blinking.
"I think I'm seeing things," one muttered. "Is that a person up there?"
"No way, must be a bird."
"Looks too big for a bird. Maybe it is a person?"
"Why are we arguing? Just shoot it and find out."
An orc archer pulled an arrow from his quiver and aimed at the sky. At seventy-plus meters, it was a long shot—but doable.
He never got the chance.
"Wait! Look! There's something glowing up there!"
"Oh shut it, the sky's full of glowing stars—"
"That's not a star—"
BOOM.
A red object trailing white sparks slammed into the earth right in their midst.
The explosion blew a crater several meters wide. A nearby tree exploded into splinters. The orcs at ground zero were reduced to limbs and vaporized gore.
Classic.
Eric grinned. That was just how he'd planned it.
You see, TNT doesn't mess around. A properly crafted charge dealt up to 65 points of damage—more than enough to obliterate the average orc with their sad little double-digit health bars.
Seventy-plus meters was the sweet spot. Just enough time for the fuse to burn down, so it detonated the instant it hit the ground. No time to dodge. No time to think.
Just boom.
"What in the Void was that?!"
The chieftain leapt up, grabbing his giant war mallet and storming toward the blast with a squad in tow.
But when they arrived at the scene, all they found was a crater—and several unrecognizable chunks of meat that used to be soldiers.
"What happened here?!"
He bellowed. No one answered.
Then one of the scouts, eyes sharp as ever, pointed up.
"LOOK! Up there!"
Dozens of orcs looked skyward just in time to see seven or eight glowing red bombs hurtling toward them like the wrath of an angry god.
The chieftain's survival instincts kicked in. He raised his mallet like a shield, then second-guessed himself and retreated several steps, pulling his warriors behind him.
Everyone else stood frozen, eyes wide, as the glowing barrels of death fell.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Each explosion tore new craters into the forest floor. Trees shattered. Soil erupted. Screams filled the air.
The orcs closest to the blast were instantly dismembered—some literally turned into red mist. Those further out were hurled skyward by the shockwave.
Many still had breath left in their lungs as they sailed through the air.
By the time they hit the ground, they didn't.
"AAAAAAGGGGHHH!"
The chieftain, though lucky enough to avoid the full brunt, was still blown off his feet and slammed into a tree. He lay there dazed, bloodied, gasping.
His massive warhammer clattered to the ground beside him, scorched and cracked.
Shaking, he forced himself to his feet and surveyed the field.
What had once been a raiding party was now a charred, gore-soaked wasteland. Severed limbs littered the clearing. Black blood pooled in craters. A few orcs, mangled but technically alive, crawled feebly across the ground. Not for long.
They'd been annihilated.
The chieftain's brain stuttered.
What just happened?
Where did that come from?
He hadn't even seen the attacker. Had no idea what had struck them.
Only now, did he piece together the one obvious detail:
The attack had come from above.
Panic and rage twisted his face. Who—what—could do that? Some kind of flying monster?
A dragon?
Then—rustling.
From the trees nearby, another group of direwolf riders burst out, startled by the noise.
They halted at the edge of the carnage, stunned.
"Ch-Chief?! We're here to help!"
Several orcs jumped down from their wolves, rushing to aid their wounded leader.
More riders followed, spreading out to form a perimeter, weapons drawn, eyes scanning for enemies.
It was clear—every last orc from the local squad had gathered here.
And that's when the chieftain realized what he had walked into.
His eyes widened in horror.
"No—!"
Too late.
Another dozen glowing red barrels fell from the sky.