Far from the upper Hall of Roots and the open slopes painted black with tar, Dex Williams moved with a handpicked group of elites, known as the Shadow Killers, down into the lower, deeper reaches of Falus Forest. Here, there were no branches reaching toward the sky. The ground was composed entirely of the massive, protruding roots of the World Tree. These ancient wooden roots, each one thicker than a small house, twisted and coiled around one another like mythological serpents turned to stone, forming a complex network of narrow natural corridors, deep trenches, and dark shallow caves.
The air here was heavy, saturated with the smell of damp earth, rotting fungus, and ancient mana pulsing slowly beneath their feet. Moonlight could never penetrate this level at all, which reduced visibility to what the dark-accustomed eyes of the Dark Elf could provide, or the faint luminescence of fluorescent plants.
Dex stopped at the entrance of one of these long, narrow wooden passages, fully roofed by a web of smaller roots resembling the ribcage of a dead giant. He wiped beads of cold sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and turned toward the silent killers behind him.
"Look carefully at this terrain and etch it into your minds," said Dex, his voice carrying in a low murmur through the ancient wood, his blue eyes sweeping the darkness with precise calculations. "To you, these roots are the foundation of your sacred tree, or perhaps merely a natural obstacle that hinders your movement. But to me, these are not roots. These are perfect death corridors."
Dex approached the rough wooden wall of the passage and patted it as though greeting an old friend. "In guerrilla warfare, where humans slaughter one another in the most hideous ways imaginable, the most dangerous ground is never the open field. It is the narrow passage. In a narrow passage, individual skill disappears and the advantage of a long weapon vanishes. In a narrow passage, you cannot flee left or right, and you cannot fall back because those behind you are pushing you forward. In a narrow passage… flesh is minced."
Dex gestured toward a group of Dark Elf illusion-mages wearing grey robes that blended into the environment. "The Imperial Legion's commanders are not entirely stupid. When they realise the main entrance is a suicidal abattoir, their field officers will search for gaps in our defences to outflank the primary traps. They will look for shortcuts that lead to the heart of the village. Your role, illusion-mages, is to serve them precisely what they are looking for on a silver platter."
Dex ordered them to conceal the entrances to these suffocating corridors with consummate skill using shadow mana. "Do not create the illusion of a blocked wall, that will make them turn back. I want you to weave a visual illusion that makes these killing corridors appear to be safe escape routes we ourselves have used, or fragile, unguarded secret paths leading directly up to our platforms above. Place some false footprints, and perhaps a broken Elven sword lying on the ground as evidence of a panicked retreat. The arrogant Imperial commander will see this corridor and believe he has discovered the golden heel of Achilles. He will push his soldiers, specifically his heavy infantry, through these wooden pipes to crush us from within."
The moment the mages nodded to signal their understanding of the psychological trap, Dex reached into a small leather satchel hanging from his belt and withdrew a heavy cloth pouch. He opened it with extreme care and revealed its contents to the Shadow Killer commanders. The pouch was filled with strange seeds, each roughly the size of a walnut, distinguished by a sickly pale violet colour and a surface covered in microscopic fine thorns.
"Seeds of the Breath Choker plant," said Dex, holding a single seed between his fingertips with painstaking caution. "In their natural state and in open spaces, these plants are merely irritating, they release a dust that triggers allergic coughing and watering eyes in careless travellers. However, as with everything in this forest, manipulating the conditions changes the outcome entirely."
Dex pointed to the ceiling of the narrow passage, enclosed by roots on every side with no outlet for any airflow whatsoever. "Here below, inside these sealed tubes, we will plant these seeds at very high density in the upper wooden hollows and cover them with moss to make them appear part of the natural environment. When the passage swallows the army's vanguard, and the space fills with soldiers packed shoulder to shoulder inside their heavy steel armour, they will stumble over one another and their body heat will rise dramatically."
Dex smiled a terrifying smile. "At that point, we need only a single arrow, one arrow carrying a very light touch of my thermal mana, to strike one of the upper hollows. The sudden heat will trigger a cascading chemical reaction that detonates all the seed pouches simultaneously, flooding this sealed corridor with a heavy, viscous violet gas that does not disperse."
"They will asphyxiate to death, then?" asked the commander of the killer unit, studying the seeds with a new respect, imagining soldiers crumpling as they suffocated.
"Far worse than ordinary asphyxiation," replied Dex with glacial indifference, as though describing tomorrow's weather. "If they died in quiet suffocation, that would be a mercy they do not deserve. This gas, concentrated and thermally altered, when inhaled or when it makes contact with the mucous membranes of the eye, attacks the nervous system directly. It causes nightmarish visual and auditory hallucinations, accompanied by violent and involuntary muscular convulsions."
Dex stepped close to the commander and lowered his voice to paint the horrifying picture more vividly: "Imagine an Imperial soldier, sealed inside his iron helmet which has now become a gas furnace. His vision fails entirely, and suddenly he begins to see his comrades around him as demons trying to tear him apart. They will lose their minds completely. They will start screaming, swinging their swords blindly, attacking one another in this cramped darkness. The heavy armour they wear for protection will become their coffins. They will collapse to the ground, trampling their comrades, tearing out each other's throats as they flee from the choking and the phantom monsters. Chaos, my friend, kills with greater efficiency and less effort than a thousand sharpened swords."
Having finished with the root traps, Dex ascended once more to the central assembly point to enact the greatest transformation in the history of the Elf army. He stood before the remaining warriors and began to dismantle and dissolve the large combat formations they had trained in for centuries. There was no longer an Infantry Battalion or an Archer Legion. In their place, he divided them into microscopic units he named Sleeping Cells, or Ghost Cells.
"Forget sustained close engagement, and forget direct defensive lines," Dex announced in a cutting voice. "From this moment, your army is composed of independent cells. Three individuals per cell only: a sniper archer, an illusion-mage for cover, and a lightweight warrior equipped with two daggers. I want no direct military engagement lasting more than ten seconds. Your mission is clear and specific: the cell takes up a concealed position. The archer fires one arrow only, targeting a gap in a suit of armour or an officer's eye. The instant the arrow is released, the lightweight warrior shouts loudly or snaps a branch to reveal your position to the enemy, then you flee immediately, under the illusion-mage's cover, before they even blink."
The Elf warriors looked at him with bewilderment, and some with barely contained resentment, as though they had received a slap across the face. "We flee?" one of them asked with suppressed fury. "We, the Dark Elf, do not turn our backs in battle. This is cowardice that stains our honour!"
"No, you proud fool, this is called strategic provocation, not cowardice!" Dex corrected him with a sharp, decisive snap, his eyes blazing with a cold fury that forced the dissenter back a step. "I do not want you to face them to prove your bravery. I want you to make them chase phantoms in the dark!"
Dex explained the philosophy behind the tactic: "Imperial soldiers are tense, heavily armed, and primed to fight. When an arrow strikes them from nowhere and they hear a sound, their instinct will drive them into a blind pursuit for revenge. I want them to detach from their main formations. I want them chasing mirages through poisoned thickets, draining the detection mana of their sorcerers as those mages search for you in vain. Every time they pursue a cell and it vanishes, their frustration will multiply. I want the Imperial soldier to reach a psychological state in which he feels that the forest itself, its trees, its very soil, is slowly trying to devour him, and that every tree he passes conceals an inevitable death he can neither fight nor see."