Baccharum detached from the Grotesques and landed upon a spindly branch which widened as it drew close to the Great Oak. It had been quite a few years since he hopped across Akzhem’s canopy, but the reflexes branded into his muscles carried him along the branch with a level of ease that surprised even himself.

He picked out the rustling of critters hiding in the leaves from those with more purpose - quiet paces along the forest’s ceiling, vaulting and repositioning to remain directly above their foes. Quietly, he unsheathed his daggers and leaped between the branching footholds, lessons once long lost to him resurfacing as the training endured in his youth began to re-emerge.

He knew the foundational rule of battling assassins; whoever got the drop on the other was guaranteed a swift victory. The trick, he had been taught, was to move sloppily at first to draw attention. Then, as the enemy approached, repositioned quickly and with finesse to confound their predictions.

With intent, he balanced his weight imperfectly upon the branch, causing an inaudible but telling crack to reveal his position. Instantly, there was a reaction - pure silence - from the overgrowth, followed by feverish and unprofessional scrambling as the Elves looming over the battle realised they were being stalked. It would be a matter of seconds before he was surrounded on every flank with knives prepared to slice his neck at the drop of a pin.

He ascended. The gracefulness of his footfalls were such that not even the nesting sparrows perched upon the branches took note of his passing. The Elves would have to assume he was remaining still, frozen in fear thanks to his misstep, unbeknownst to the fact that they were playing right into the palm of his hand.

When he was high enough, he stopped, remaining statuesque on a thin branch that, by all accounts, should have been snapping under his weight. It was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead within the monstrous canopy, and so sound was the only sense one could rely on in a pinch. The difference between Baccharum’s abilities and those of his enemies opened a rift between them that couldn’t be mended with perseverance.

He followed the sounds of cracking branches until they were right below him before allowing one foot to slip cleanly from his perch. As he fell, the moment of opportunity where he and the Elves intersected was less than a fifth of a second. His strikes were made on pure instinct, not quite as perfect as he hoped, but satisfactory given his long absence from the world of assassination.

To kill an Elf instantly, a stab is made just below the head where the flesh is at its weakest, slipping past a gap in the upper vertebrae to sever the brainstem. Given the most opportune circumstances, it was a strike one could hope to complete perhaps once every hundred attempts. Performing the same attack on multiple opponents from different angles while plummeting through the air - blindfolded all the while - would have been considered impossible.

And yet, as Baccharum’s silhouette descended past the three Elves balancing themselves upon those branches, all three of them fell limp in an instant. At the last moment, he extended a hand to catch a vine dangling below the canopy, swerving his body to the right as three corpses passed him by.

“Hm.” He resisted the urge to smile, “Seems like I’ve still got it.”

All that remained was to begin the long, tiresome journey back to the ground.

His vantage over the field, at least, provided a wonderful insight into the state of the ongoing battle. Lieze’s Manticore was caught in a thicket of Rootborne, lashing out at the behemoths of bark hulking their gnarled fists while Briarknights eliminated anything too fast for the Manticore to deal with, reducing the Rootborne’s wicked, grinning faces to splinters with their maces and hammers.

Stalkers tore the Fae limb from limb. Grotesques picked out targets from the chaos and descended like Kingfishers into the fray, twisting heads from shoulders with their gaping jaws. Volleys of magic guided by Lüngen from the distant rearguard suffused the enemy’s reserves with fire and lightning, the former of which took to the Rootbornes’ flesh like matches to a candle. Soon, a healthy inferno was developing among their ranks, trapping the battle’s participants in a haze of smoke.

“How many more of these damnable Rootborne do we have to kill!?” Lieze’s voice struggled to maintain its pitch as she was hoisted over the Manticore’s spine, “...Hm?”

A nearby Fae, having drawn too close for comfort, quickly felt the Manticore’s wrath. But as its paw cleaved clean through the sprite, its body shimmered and vaporised, transmuting into harmless gusts of air.

“...A phantom? No - a decoy?” Lieze blinked, “But how?”

The Manticore’s rampage across the sea of Rootborne proved quickly that it wasn’t an isolated anomaly. Every so often, an enemy would disappear upon death as if it had never existed to begin with.

“Transmutation magic!” She exclaimed, “Just like Drayya’s spellcraft! This must be the Head Shaman’s doing… he’s obscuring the true strength of his army by inserting decoys into its ranks!”

Entire swathes of the Rootborne were mere illusions, and there was no way of telling the genuine articles apart from the facsimiles. Lieze’s thralls were wasting valuable time swatting at thin air and defending against assaults that would never arrive. No amount of scrutiny could determine the enemy’s true size, and as a result, attempting to fight strategically was a pointless endeavour.

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“Damn it… they’ll end up wearing us down if we can’t dispel those illusions.” Lieze bit her thumb, “We need something that can cover a wide area…”

The sight of embers hovering in the air gave her an idea. The long grass of the meadow caught fire easily, creating impassable walls of flame. Lieze ordered the Manticore to retreat, and it responded with a ferocious beat of its wings. She felt the skin on her face sag as the beast took flight, diving behind the procession of Rot Behemoths protecting the Order’s necromancers to where Lüngen oversaw the Dark Casters.

“Oh!” The old man raised an arm to his face as gales swept up by the Manticore’s wings buffeted his wrinkled features, “Dear oh dear… I barely saw you coming, Lieze.”

“Lüngen! Have the Dark Casters focus on protecting our front line with fire spells!” She yelled, “I want a row of flames surrounding the army!”

“Fire, you say?” He paused, “Are you planning on cooking us alive? We won’t have anywhere to run if we surround ourselves.”

“We’re fighting illusions!” She said, “We need to separate the real from the fake, otherwise our thralls won’t be able to tell the difference!”

“Illusions…” Lüngen repeated, “Very well. Just make sure to give the others ample warning. They’ll need to inch back if they don’t fancy suffering a few burns for their trouble.”

-But a wall of fire wouldn’t be enough to dissuade the Rootborne. Dismounting from the Manticore, Lieze stole past a hooded Deathguard lingering near the back of the army and reached out to steal the torch he was holding. Her subconscious desires were transmitted to the thralls under her command, and soon, a Stalker had sprinted obediently to her side.

“Roland!” She yelled, “Get over here!”

Lüngen had already altered the Dark Casters’ trajectory so that their volleys of flame landed squarely in front of the Rot Behemoths. Most of the Deathguards were retreating to avoid being caught in the spreading flames - Roland included. He sprinted over at the mention of his name, lamplight reflecting the lustre of blood staining his fingers, “You called?”

She extended her arm, “The pack you keep your ingredients in. Give it to me.”

He knew better than to question her strange demands, handing over his supplies without so much as a word of protest. Lieze scrounged through the hastily-twined cuts of prime beef and bottled spices, wrapping her hand around the neck of a bottle containing a thickened, yellowish liquid.

“...My oil?” Roland’s expression straightened out, “That’s premium quality stuff right there, you know? Golden truffle oil, extracted from twenty years’ worth of rare spores from deep in the Dwarven Mountains. It’s said that only five bottles are filled every- uh…”

Lieze uncorked the pristine product and doused the Stalker from snout to hooves, the pleasant, ever-so-slightly stringent aroma was confounded by the stench of rotting flesh. When Roland was allowed his bottle back, there was barely enough left to cook with.

She took a step back and tossed the torch. Upon contact, the Stalker burst into flames, remarkably unaffected despite the agony coursing through its blood.

“Now go.” She nodded towards the enemy, “Run circles around those abominations.”

And like that, it was gone, speeding like an arrow through the gaps between thralls on its way to the front line. Lieze’s theory was remarkably simple - if the decoy Rootborne vanished upon receiving any harm, even a light singe from the fire would expose them as fakes. The Stalker would wreathe the battlefield in flames, not quite fearsome enough to kill the Rootborne outright, but certainly enough to distinguish reality from delusion.

“That should make things more manageable.” She said, “It’s a good thing you brought that oil along, Roland.”

“You could have used the vegetable oil instead!” He leaned forward to swipe the bottle and cradled it close to his chest, “I was looking forward to trying this out! We’ve only got a few days of travel left before the world ends, and I wanted to make something delicious for my last meal!”

“Pine over your oil when we aren’t being attacked!” Lieze took it back just as quickly, “Reinforce our defensive line with as many thralls as you can muster! The Rootborne will charge right through those flames!”

More affected than he ought to have been over a bottle of oil, Roland stomped off to vent his frustrations on the advancing tide of Fae. Lieze sent the Manticore off to wreak havoc on its own while she returned to Lüngen and the Dark Casters. From her vantage upon a knoll in the landscape, she observed the ribbons of flame trailing behind the Stalker she’d lit on fire, bolting like a rogue star through the impenetrable night.

A stray ember was all it took to reveal the illusions. Operating on simple commands, they didn’t attempt to avoid the fire, quietly erasing a sizable portion of the attacking Rootborne and revealing the true measure of Lieze’s enemies. There couldn’t have been more than a few hundred in total - not nearly enough to pose a serious threat.

“Hm? They’re… disappearing?” Marché watched as the tangled Fae disintegrated before his eyes, “What’s all that about?”

“Who cares!? They’ve been decimated!” Drayya sprinted past, globules of blood hovering around her body, “Push them back! Mind the fire!”

More than a few thralls were caught up in the flames, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice to expose just how many of the Rootborne were decoys. Soon enough, the crisp winds of the forest were laced with smoke, somehow lowering visibility even further. Stalkers clashed with bark-laden limbs in the darkness, their primal feuds illuminated by flickers of light from surrounding flames. No matter how plentiful the Rootborne were, the Order’s thralls would always outnumber them. Such was the consequence of allowing necromancers the freedom of building up their armies uncontested.

When all was said and done, Lieze couldn’t quite bring herself to celebrate - the choking plumes of smoke had her doubled over with fits of coughing. Lüngen and the others weren’t faring much better, more interested in moving on than taking pride in their victory.

“Let’s…” Lieze panted, “Let’s move swiftly on before this inferno chokes the life out of us…”