Thanos and I crawled up to the camp of the Sona troupe, both under my cloaking seal.
There were about twenty poison masters patrolling the tents, all at strategic points. None of them were powerful enough to see through my cloaking seal, though.
I ran a quick scan of the surroundings and realized that Thanos' information was correct. Besides the Valek, only the guest mage constituted any notice. The rest were all mediocre folk I could deal with only with a thought.
"So what do we do?" Thanos asked me.
"Is there any more people like you in this camp?"
"There's Aranya, the Zalek's daughter. I don't think we should kill her. She's only a child,"
"The Zalek is taking his child to the battlefield?!" actually, what I was flabbergasted about was that the Zalek even had a child.
"No. He's taking her to her mother's family at the next town. Apparently, her mother's dead. The Zalek probably drained her essence and killed her."
"Why doesn't he kill the child too?" I was disgusted.
"I don't know. His choice."
"So what do we do with the child when we're done here?"
"What else? Take her to where she's supposed to be. I know the place. The Zalek's been talking about it for days,"
That settled, I closed my eyes and took down the sentries. The nearest one fell to the floor after a strangled grunt. Thanos looked at me in awe.
"You're really powerful! If you were a poison master, you'd be an honourable Fhakir!"
Whatever. I wasn't interested in becoming one.
"You go into the tents and get rid of everybody else. You're covered with my cloaking seal. They won't sense you,"
He nodded and took off.
I approached the center tent. I intended to take the child called Aranya away to safety before the bloody battle started. Though I hoped it would be as quiet as it had been so far.
I had been envisaging a two year old child, but the little thing curled up in a sleeping bag looked like a six or seven year old. I groaned, but decided. Grabbing both the sleeping bag and the child, I fled the tent.
"Aaah--! Father--, someone is carrying me awayyyy!!" she cried as she was startled awake.
I was already out of the tent but I heard the Zalek's angry cursing.
"Who's there? Show yourself!"
"In a minute!" I replied almost with a laugh, activating my levitation seal and flying out of the camp to a safe place where I put Aranya and cast complex seals on the surroundings to keep her there. Then I flew back to the camp.
My cloaking seal on Thanos' had elapsed. He was surrounded by several poison masters who, though they were easy for him to handle when he was invisible; were now extremely difficult for him.
I extinguished the life force of the couple of them with a flick. I also dropped my cloak.