Torrens had been itching to get this fight under way for days. Too long had he been kept in the Dungeon, fed by the measly warmth of chopped wood fires while all around him taunted an entire forest which he was not allowed to burn. As a consequence his power at the moment was rather weak, but fortunately he did not expect significant resistance in this battle. As they waited for the order, Torrens had been hopping around, pacing continuously, never staying put for more than a second. While a casual observer might interpret this as impatience, it was nothing of the sort. Instead, if he stayed in contact with a single point of the ground for even a few moments the grass and undergrowth would go up in flames and their cover would be ruined. Even for those fleeting footsteps the grass was turned brown and dry wherever he went. It had been an interesting time trying to get past the woods surrounding their Dungeon without inadvertently burning them to the ground, a task which would have been nearly impossible if he wasn't on such a low level of strength.
Then came the order to strike. He stopped hopping around, no longer caring about the small grass fire starting by his feet and was about to charge in when the kobold let out a piercing whistle and attempted to organise the group. Torrens let out a dejected sigh as he was reminded once more that they weren't to burn everything to the ground. It would have been so easy to gain strength by burning down the crops and forests and basking in the fires. However, there was hope yet, for there was a blacksmith in the town, and that meant a forge- a reliable and common source of searingly hot fire.
"I shall go Secure the blacksmith," Torrens declared to Twitch, and then dashed into town without even giving the steed Octavius has summoned a thought. Only once in all his time serving Dungeon Keepers had he been given a steed which he could ride, and that steed was a creature of living stone with every part of its body covered in enchanted armour which was impervious to his ferocious heat. This horse would have done nothing useful other than burning if Torrens had decided to ride it, not that he knew how to ride a horse anyway.
Once he had passed the fields, managing to avoid starting a blaze, his pace slackened to a brisk walk. Around him were the villagers, keeping their distance from the being of heat while fleeing from the other attacking forces, but Torrens paid no attention to such small fry. The others were dealing with the villagers in their own ways, stealing souls and sowing chaos, yet Torrens would gain pitifully little energy himself should he choose to burn individual villagers. As he walked, he casually lobbed a fireball through the open window of a house he was passing, but he did not stay to feast on that one small house fire, for he had his goal fixed in mind.
In his past times raiding, the blacksmith had often been his initial target if he was in need of more power. This made the following a trivial task. The blacksmith, having been alerted by the attack, had barred the door. If Torrens had more energy, he could have walked into the wooden door and had it disintegrate before him. However, he lacked the power to do that efficiently, so he had to be more creative. Up he climbed, on to the roof of that stone building, and immediately spotted the wide, smoking chimney of the furnace. He took a moment to observe his surroundings. The village was in a small state of panic. Octavius was rallying villagers in the town's center. A church was burning. A small orc army was marching into the village with Shukra demanding surrender from the village. All was going well. Satisfied with the progress outside, he jumped down the chimney and into the furnace below.
When Torrens landed, the blacksmith got an awful fright, for his own live forge was the last place he had expected the attackers to come from. He turned to flee, but a fire bolt zipped past in front of him, narrowly missing his chest, and cracked a stone brick in the wall it struck. "You will stay here," Torrens ordered, "The Master would probably prefer to have your skills than to see you die, although if you do not comply I'll kill you without a second thought. Understand?" The blacksmith nodded fearfully. "Good. Now, pump this furnace up to maximum. I want the hottest fires you can get." The blacksmith complied, shoveling more coal into the furnace where Torrens stood, or crouched more accurately, and then pumping the bellows.
From when he first landed in the flames Torrens had already felt vitality filling him, the hot fires of the forge deeply satisfying. However, once the bellows started pumping, the fires grew much more fierce and Torrens began to feast. As he feasted, breathing deeply of the flames around him, the coals burned ever hotter and more ferociously to keep up with the demand. Air rushed in through the opening of the furnace to feed the flames. No soot or ash was produced, since the flames burned all fuel so completely that any soot oxidised to carbon dioxide. And ever hotter the flames grew, until the very masonry started to soften under the extreme temperatures. Only then did Torrens slacken his consumption, for he realised that the blacksmith had been forced to take shelter in order to protect himself from the temperatures. Allowing the flames to cool to less unbearable temperatures, Torrens barked, "Keep shoveling! This coal is almost spent." And so Torrens continued to feed, bolstering his energy from the combustion of the coals. While keeping the blacksmith and its equipment secure under his watch, of course.
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