Far away at the main entrance to the camp where the gate in the wooden wall was located, four guards stood watch.

The gate wasn't much and was just a reinforced section of the crude wooden wall that pulled aside slightly to allow people to pass by.

Two guards stood at the front along with a group of them inside the barracks that was located just a little inside the gates.

The two on the outside were leaning tiredly on their spears with their breath misting in the cold night air. Two more were perched above them on a small and hastily built wooden platform with their eyes scanning the dark plains beyond the flickering torchlight that illuminated the entrance.

Suddenly one of the guards on the platform tilted his head.

"Did you hear that?" he asked.

The guard beside him shifted his weight, looking over at him.

"Hear what?"

"I don't know. It sounded like… a thump, I guess. From over there," the first guard said as he nodded vaguely to their right and deeper into the darkness along the wall line.

The second guard strained his ears in order to listen intently. The only sound that fell on his ears was of the sigh of the cold wind and the distant crackle of campfires from within the outpost.

"Maybe," he said with a tone of uncertainty. "Could've just been the wind though."

The first guard squinted as he into the pitch black darkness beyond the reach of the torchlight. The darkness out there was absolute like a solid wall of black that swallowed everything.

You couldn't see a thing more than twenty feet from the wall.

It felt like staring into a deep and empty void. The moon today wasn't particularly bright either so if you weren't carrying a torchlight or lantern with you then being engulfed into the darkness was a certainty.

He watched the absolute darkness for another moment before changing his mind as he shrugged.

"Yeah, probably just the wind," he muttered and gave up on that thought. "Nothing could be happening out there in that dark anyway."

He turned away from the edge of the platform and walked back a few steps before he sat down tiredly on a roughly chopped log, letting out a loud yawn as he stared blankly ahead.

***

Allen slipped through the narrow gap first while at the same time pushing aside a loose piece of splintered wood. Luna soon followed close behind him.

They were inside and here the air here felt a little different.

It could very well be just in their minds but here it felt thicker and carrying along with it the smells of woodsmoke and unwashed bodies and cooked food.

Was it because of all the smoke filling the air coming from toward the camps? Probably. They didn't have a way to know for certain.

Other than that it was quieter than Allen had expected with just the low crackling of distant fires.

"Okay," Allen whispered before crouching low behind the fallen logs. "Now what do we do now? We don't really have a detailed map of the insides of the camp."

He looked at Luna. "Do you know the layout at all?"

She shook her head, with her silver hair pale in the dim light filtering over the wall.

"No. This is the first time I've infiltrated inside their camp. I only know the general direction of the command tent from scout reports. Then even that is not really certain since it was information we got from the few scouts we'd sent in the beginning of this battle.

"They very well may have changed its location," she explained.

They could see the flickering orange glow of several campfires deeper within the outpost. They were maybe hundred or two hundred meters away from the source of the campfires.

It was clear where all the camps were located and they could just barge right in if they wanted to, but going there without being certain of the position of their enemy would be suicide.

This was an assassination mission, after all. Not an all out annihilation where they had to kill everyone on sight.

They had to be delicate about this one.

Ah well I more or less saw this coming. It was inevitable kinda, Allen thought to himself.

However, because he knew this was gonna happen he had already prepared for it.

Ascend the drone to three hundred meters. Then move forward and begin scanning the camp layout. Try to prioritize finding command tent location if you can.

For that last bit he didn't have much confidence.

After all, the drone he had currently was limited in capability and he didn't even have the image of the command tent or anything like that which the system could use to match the real time footage with and identify the correct camp.

[Acknowledged. Ascending to designated altitude and continuing reconnaissance.]

High above in the completely invisible in the night sky the tiny Black Hornet drone climbed silently with its rotors barely making a whisper.

It then began to move forward with its advanced cameras already mapping the enemy camps below in ghostly green detail.

"We'll wait here for a minute," Allen whispered to Luna. "Let me scout ahead."

Luna nodded with her hand resting on her sword hilt and her eyes scanning the immediate darkness around them. However, Allen stayed crouched beside her with his body still and his eyes focused on the translucent screen only he could see.

For Luna, he was basically staring out endlessly into the darkness.

After a few moments of silence Luna glanced at him with a hint of confusion on her face.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"As I've said, I'm trying to scout the area ahead to see what we have to deal with," he replied.

"I heard that but…why are you still sitting here then? I mean, don't you need to…you know, go out there while being sneaky to see the surroundings?" she questioned, her eyes gazing onto Allen's face.

"Uh, well…"

I have a wireless recon drone from the 21st century, that's why.

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