My first destination was the barracks. Once I had safely landed at the peak of the tent, I held onto the center pole and quietly waited to see if anyone had noticed my arrival. However, being considered a tiny creature came in handy. Once I saw that no one was looking, I quickly made a small incision on top of the tent and started dropping in some of the spiders. After that, I flew to the next tent and repeated the process, although I dropped scorpions into the next tent.

Pretty soon, I ran out of venomous bugs to release and sighed, proud of myself for not eating my vermin army. After giving myself a pat on the back, I flew toward the supply wagons. While some of the wagons had been unloaded, most of the supplies were still on the wagons. I wasn’t sure if it was laziness or a precaution in case they needed to move quickly. Either way, I was going to take advantage of the situation.

With only a few guards present, dropping poison on the supplies wouldn’t be too difficult. I wasn’t even going to try to open the water barrels or bags of food. However, I could place poisonous powder on top of those items. A cleric might cast the Purify Food and Drink spell, but that was aimed at the food and water. I was targeting the outside so that those people that touched the bags of food or barrels of water would be affected. Hopefully, that would confuse the clerics.

I also repeated this with the horses’ hay and water troughs. That proved to be much easier. Although I hated doing that to an animal, I did it anyway. I did make one allowance for the horses though. The poisonous powder I used on their food wouldn’t kill them, It would just make them too sick to work for a day or two.

After that, I looked at my remaining spell points, I realized that I was burning through them very quickly since I had to keep on recasting the Invisibility spell again and again whenever I made a stop. Unlike the Improved Invisibility or Greater Invisibility spells, each time I interacted with something, such as opening a bag, cutting a hole, or anything else like that, I lost the protection of invisibility. Fortunately, I was skilled in stealth. Despite feeling that it was necessary, I wasn’t happy with how. However, unlike other spellcasters, I was fortunate that I was able to extract magic from magic items and expand my pool of magic points.

Luckily, I thought ahead and had the bag of caltrops open before casting the Invisibility spell again. I flew around and allowed the caltrops to fall near entrances of tents and places where a lot of people were walking. While the caltrops wouldn’t seriously injure anyone, they would put the person out of commission until the wound healed. That meant that there was one less soldier to fight or a cleric would have to waste a spell or potion to cure the injured soldier. Either way, it was a win for me.

By this time, I had started hearing the results of some of my actions. Occasional screams of pain or fear echoed through the encampment. A few screams of disgust were also thrown in, although I wasn’t sure why. Although I was mostly being a nuisance, I was certain that I was annoying the soldiers. They had to start watching what they were doing after the first few people got stung or bitten by the venomous bugs or accidentally stepped on a caltrop. None of these directly screamed out “enemy presence.” After all, the scorpions and spiders could be natural, and the caltrops could have been dropped by one of the soldiers.

By this time, it was getting dark. Not wanting to attack immediately, I waited. Another reason I waited was because I had summoned Alsvartr to join me. I also wanted the soldiers to have a long enough time for at least some of them to start sleeping. While I was waiting, I took a moment to prepare the Zone of Death spell using Shape Spell. Once I was done, I waited a while longer, just in case. Considering that the commander of the soldiers was probably busy making decisions, I knew that he wouldn’t go to sleep immediately.

In fact, I kept watching until people stopped visiting his tent. What was kind of strange was the fact that he never left his tent. I did hear him order the guards stationed outside his tent to run an occasional errand or two, there was always at least one person on guard. Of course, there could be more inside the tent. If it was me, I would have one or two trusted soldiers as backup in case anything unexpected happened.

Finally, no one had visited his tent in over an hour and Alsvartr had used her powers to quietly join me. She had brought several bats with her, which I hadn’t even asked her to do. However, I was quite pleased with her forethought. While the bats wouldn’t be a huge help, they could certainly distract the guards and the commander. I was tempted to move to a spot on top of his tent, but I was afraid a magical alarm might go off if I got that close, so I stayed where I was instead.

While we were waiting, Alsvartr summoned a few shadow creatures using her powers. They quietly moved down the tent and started lurking unseen in the shadows. I knew I was being wildly ambitious to try assassinating the commander of the soldiers, but I wanted to give it a try. After all, I had the help of several strong spells and a powerful familiar. Even if I failed, I could always fly away.

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My plan was to cast the Zone of Death spell on the tent. The commander would wake up as soon as he received the necrotic damage from the spell. He would need a moment to stand up and look around for any possible source of threat. When he didn’t immediately see anyone attacking him, he would most likely conclude he was within an area of attack spell. Because of this, he would then run out of the tent. The guards would also be in range of the spell, so they would probably either react by looking for the spellcaster or run inside to protect their commander.

Either way, at some point, the commander would emerge. I wanted to be ready to use my twilight breath on him as soon as he emerged from the tent. I knew he wouldn’t stay in the tent long enough for the spell to take him out. I also doubted he would take the time to cut an exit in the tent. That meant he would come out of the tent through the entrance. I might even be able to get both guards as well, especially if they ran inside to check on the commander.

Deciding I might as well do it now instead of waiting any longer, I ate the last mushroom in one of my pouches and cast the Zone of Death spell on the commander’s tent. The Zone of Death didn’t have any flashy effects that would alert people nearby. Because of this, I hoped that it wouldn’t attract too much attention. This idea was demolished by the two guards who started shouting at the top of their lungs that they were under attack. Despite this, I was still happy since they ran into the tent and the Zone of Death instead of out of the spell. I had expected them to yell anyway since Alsvartr couldn’t cast the Silence spell while still maintaining the shadow creature summons.

I barely resisted the impulse to clap my hands when I heard the commander yelling at the men a few seconds later, followed immediately by a notification that I had received experience for killing two creatures. The commander came running out a second or two later, frantically looking around for who might be attacking him. Just like most of his soldiers, few of them ever bothered to look up for danger. That was when Alsvartr’s summoned shadow creatures attacked the commander.

Although I was tempted to cast the Sleep spell on him, I was worried it might not affect him and would be a waste. I also thought about continuing with my intention to attack him with my twilight breath. However, I changed my mind almost immediately since the attack would also affect the summoned shadow creatures. Another reason was because there was a limit on the number of times I could use my twilight breath attack.

While I could tell that I had caused a lot of damage to the commander, I could also tell that he had a lot of fight left in him. He looked like he was getting over a bad sickness that had lasted for several days. Unfortunately, I doubted my twilight breath would be enough to finish him off. Because of this, I decided to attack him using the Eldritch Bolt cantrip.

Fortunately, the Eldritch Bolt cantrip actually inflicted a large amount of damage. While it wasn’t as much as the twilight dragon breath attack, it was still a significant amount of damage. This was in addition to the damage the summoned shadow creatures and bats were inflicting on the commander. It also helped that he didn’t have time to put on his armor. Alsvartr also added to the damage by casting the Sonic Blast cantrip.

The commander lasted only a few seconds before all our attacks were able to finish him off. I was really surprised by how quickly he succumbed to the joint attacks. Either we were massively overpowered, or the commander was much weaker than I expected. I immediately sent Alsvartr a mental command to start having her summoned shadow creatures cause as much pandemonium as possible while still remaining safe.

While she was doing that, I flew through the tent opening and rummaged through the commander’s belongings looking for anything valuable. To make it easier, I also cast the Detect Magic spell. I was mostly looking for documents and magic items. Hopefully, the documents would give me more information about the attackers and their plans. As for the magic items, that was a given. I needed my spoils of war.

I didn’t bother to see what was written on the documents and just shoved them into the empty mushroom bag. If anything of the items had an aura, I assumed they were magical and also stuffed them into the bag with the papers. I did this as quickly as I could since I was worried someone might rush into the tent. After rummaging through the tent for less than a minute, I cast the Invisibility spell on myself and flew out the tent entrance once more.

I hadn’t realized just how much pressure I was feeling until I flew into the darkness. Even though I knew I was within bow reach, the relief I was feeling was palatable. My heart was still thudding powerfully against my chest. For some reason, it felt more real than my previous battles.

The first time I fought was against the scouting party. It felt almost like a dream and was over almost as soon as it started. The second time was more of me laying a trap which the enemy walked into. Then all I had to do was finish off the injured survivors. As for the bats, while they were difficult fights, those two battles were against animals. Those fights just didn’t affect me as much as fighting humans.

However, something was different about this fight. The rest of the fights weren’t personal. This time I had sought out a single powerful individual who I wanted to assassinate. After a moment though, I dismissed those distracting thoughts and concentrated on what I needed to do. With this thought in mind, I flew in circles above the encampment and tried to decide what I could do to inflict the most harm on the invading army of soldiers.