Torrens had been lying in wait patiently when he saw in the sky over the rim of his ditch rising smoke lit by fires from below against the night sky. He scrambled up to see that a fire had already broken out in the town. Getting to his feet, he cursed and said "How dare they start burning things without me!" Torrens waited for no further signal. The battle had started. Either the signal had gone out long ago and missed him, or someone had jumped the gun and shattered the carefully arranged plan. And looking around at the distinct lack of chaos outside the village, it must have been the latter. Wasting no more time, Torrens burst into the farmhouse he had been assigned and chucked a fireball into the center of the main room. The fire burst and spread across the floor, filling the room with fire instantly, including one man who was sleeping in that room. Burning alive, he woke up instantly, although he failed to stay conscious for long enough to leave the room. It was not long before the screams and crying of a woman and three children could be heard from adjoining rooms, as the mother evidently was evidently trying to gather the children and get them to safety. She at last came into the main room, to discover her husband immolated and a red demonic human figure standing in the middle of the fires. One step towards the woman was all that it took to make her flee. Grinning devilishly, Torrens followed the family outside. He needed to direct them to the town, to raise a new alarm or something. Considering that they were surrounded by flammable farmlands and orchards, this would be a trivial task. Torrens lobbed a fireball ahead of them, which erupted on impact with the ground and set the surrounding trees on fire, redirecting them. He ran ahead and released from his arm a long tongue of flame, turning a field of corn into a wall of fire, redirecting them again. Satisfied with their direction this time, he let them be and approached Shukra, who, with his army of 50 orcs behind him, was not hard to find. "Shukra! Someone's got excited and jumped the gun on our plan," he called out, "If we want to have any hope of drawing any useful attention, we're going to have to advance on the town, now. I'll open the way for you." Torrens turned towards the town and sprinted up to it, heading through the field he had set alight earlier in order to soak up some of its thermal energy. As he approached the gate, two guardsmen were still watching out, and had seen him coming from ages away so their crossbows were ready. When he came within range, they aimed and fired. Torrens strafed one bolt, but the other struck him in the abdomen. However, rather than piercing, as it would for a form of flesh, it simply bent and bounced off, accompanied by a bright flash of heat from the point of impact. While they were hastily reloading, Torrens pointed out his fingers at one guard like a gun and unleashed a bolt of fire, which struck the guard just below the neck yet above his chestplate, delivering a mortal wound and throwing him backwards. Torrens was about to do the same as the other when he remembered the purpose behind his charge, so he changed at the last moment from a high-velocity fire bolt aimed at the guard to a slower fireball aimed at where the guard was standing. Sensibly, the guard jumped from his post to avoid the flames and fled into the town to search for reinforcements. With the opposition removed, Torrens approached the wooden gates and palisade. While he could have burned straight through it, that would have been somewhat slow and would only leave a hole large enough for him to get through. So, instead, he climbed over the palisade. While the wood burned and turned to ash almost instantly at his touch, he climbed fast enough to get over the top and inside. Once there, he burned the mechanisms holding the gates shut and with a push the gate swung open. Already, the gate and the adjacent palisades were on fire, but since they were thick it would take a few hours for them to burn through completely, although it should take less than that for the bindings to collapse and fall apart. With the way open for Shukra's orcs, Torrens went into the town to search out the defenders and join the fray, or maybe even draw some of the defenders away from his allies.