Chapter 24 – Hidden Passage

From their hidden position, they thoroughly observed the fortress, hoping to get some idea of how they could get inside.

When Mirrsoss returned from her second reconnaissance flight, her moth wings were still a little damp from the clouds she had hidden in to avoid detection. She landed fairly silently between them. Her compound eyes glimmered in the pale light.

“The main gates are heavily guarded,” she reported breathlessly. “At least forty to fifty goblins at each entrance, and they change regularly. There seems to be something like barracks or guard rooms at each gate, so there are probably many more in there. I found a few smaller side entrances on the north and east sides, but unfortunately, those are guarded too. Twenty, maybe twenty-five goblins per entrance.”

“And the tower? Any idea how we could get in there?” asked Shaelith.

“It doesn’t seem to have any access from the outside, at least none that I could see. It seems like you have to get behind the walls before you can even approach the tower. There’s a weird construction directly on the top, covered in runes.” Mirrsoss’ antennae twitched nervously. “Oh, and there are many more prisoners on the walls than I thought from a distance, there must be hundreds of them.”

“Vyriz, is he one of them? Is he hanging up there?” Shaelith grabbed Mirrsoss by the arm.

Mirrsoss placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know what he looks like, but I couldn’t get close enough to recognize anyone. Still, I don’t think the warlock would hang one of his most valuable prisoners up there.”

“You’re right, of course.” Shaelith took a deep breath. Panicking now wouldn’t help anyone.

Grimbart had taken out a dwarven spyglass, a complicated device made of brass and cut crystal, through which he studied the fortress in detail, readjusting the focus several times.

“The construction of this fortress is very interesting,” he grumbled after a while. “Much of it was put up quickly, but the foundation is old. Very old stone. And the basic structure definitely did not come from the goblins. They could never build something like this in a million years. The tower and the ramparts are at least a thousand years old, maybe older.”

“And how exactly does that help us?” asked Benderast.

“The world was more exciting a thousand years ago, Benderast, and old structures often hold old secrets.” Grimbart lowered his spyglass. “You sometimes find forgotten entrances that were bricked up ages ago. But I can’t see anything concrete from here.”

Thaelon had laid flat on the ground at the very edge of the ridge and was watching the paths and routes of the patrols. His amber eyes followed every movement down in the valley.

“The guards are good,” he finally said, and it sounded like a compliment that physically hurt him. “Too good for normal goblins. They keep formation, they communicate, their routes overlap, no one chats, no one dawdles, and I haven’t even seen anyone who needed to relieve themselves. Either the warlock has managed to train them extremely strictly, or he controls them somehow directly.”

“Did you see any gaps we could slip through?”

“None big enough for five people.” He turned his head toward her. “I might be able to sneak through on my own. Maybe. But definitely not with all of you in tow.”

So our options are suicide, turning around and going home, or waiting.

What could they do? Attempt a frontal assault? Five people against an army of thousands of goblins, plus the warlock? Even Ben wouldn’t be that crazy.

Sneak up on them? Thaelon had just ruled that out. Too many eyes and too little cover.

Wait for the big offensive? No idea when that would come, and they had no good way to find out quickly and reliably.

Create a diversion? Maybe, but with what? Actually, they were supposed to be the diversion.

So should they wait for the assassin teams and try to create an opening for them? But wouldn’t they have basically the same problems getting in as they did? And would they even notice the assassins’ arrival?

We really only have shitty options to choose from.

Benderast had been silent the whole time, which was unusual in itself. He stood a little apart and stared into the distance with that slightly absent look that Shaelith had come to interpret as “he’s looking at his invisible UI.” Hopefully she didn’t look just as stupid when she looked at her trait list.

“Hey,” he said suddenly. “There’s something.”

“What?”

“My quest marker.” He pointed east, past the main fortress. “It’s not just pointing at the fortress in general. It’s pointing at something specific. Over there.”

All heads turned in the indicated direction.

“I only see a hill,” Grimbart said skeptically.

“Yes, but when I focus really hard and stare at it…” Benderast narrowed his eyes. “Then some text appears. It says ‘Hidden Passage’.”

Shaelith felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

That’s too easy. Far too easy, suspiciously easy! It must be a trap.

“A hidden passage,” Thaelon repeated slowly. “How convenient.”

“Hmm, well, to be honest, to me it screams ambush,” Grimbart agreed.

Mirrsoss’ wings fluttered excitedly. “But what if it’s real? I mean, Benderast’s system has always led us in the right direction so far! That’s how we found Shaelith!”

I really don’t like this.

“We should at least take a look,” Benderast suggested.

They circled the valley in a wide arc, staying under cover of the tree line. It took them almost an hour to reach the hill Benderast’s marker had pointed to.

Grimbart immediately knelt in the dirt and started digging, his chronosteel arm plowing through the soil like a small bucket wheel excavator.

“There’s something there,” he muttered after a few minutes. “Old stonework.” He brushed more dirt aside. “Same construction as the fortress’s foundation. This was built at the same time. There seems to be a tunnel system underground.”

A hidden stone slab appeared, with faded symbols on it that Shaelith did not recognize.

“This is definitely an entrance,” said Grimbart.

“I can’t see any tracks,” added Thaelon, who had already searched the area. “No one else has been here recently. No footprints from guards or anyone else, and I didn’t see any patrol routes nearby either.”

So either the goblins don’t know about it… or the warlock deliberately left it that way to lure them in.

“Still, I can’t help but think this smells like a trap,” Shaelith said aloud.

“But the stonework is real,” Grimbart objected. “This isn’t a hastily built structure. This passageway has been here for centuries, maybe longer.”

“Which doesn’t mean the warlock doesn’t know about it.”

Silence.

Shaelith thought it through. The warlock had challenged them personally and used Vyriz as bait. Now there was a perfectly suitable “hidden” entrance that conveniently also appeared directly on Benderast’s magical radar?

But it was at least theoretically possible that the warlock simply hadn’t found this entrance yet, and would it be smart to ignore this stroke of luck out of excessive caution?

“So,” asked Grimbart, “are we using the passage or not?”

That is the question.

“It’s obviously suspicious,” said Thaelon. “I don’t feel comfortable with it.”

“But we have no other choice,” Mirrsoss countered. “We can’t get through the main gates, we can’t sneak through, and we don’t know when or if reinforcements will arrive.”

“Vyriz doesn’t have forever.” Shaelith voiced the thought that kept circling in her head, which she couldn’t shake. “Every day we wait is another day the warlock could cut off another finger or who knows what else. Or do something worse.”

Please don’t let him be dead. The intensity of the thought frightened her.

Benderast nodded seriously. “And if we suspect it’s a trap, at least we can prepare for it. The warlock has set some kind of trap for us anyway, and it’s better to move into a trap when we’re ready than to be caught off guard somewhere else.”

That’s… actually a halfway reasonable point. Who are you, and what did you do with the real Ben?

Was there anything they hadn’t thought of yet that they could try? What if they sent someone back to break through to the allied army and report what they were planning? But who could they spare, and who would find the journey easiest? Mirrsoss would be the most likely candidate, but would it be fair to send her alone through enemy territory in search of an army she had no idea where to find?

What if one of them explored the passage alone? Then that one person would trigger any traps alone. It was a terrible idea.

Sometimes there are no good options, Shaelith. Only less bad ones.

“We’re going in,” Shaelith decided, and no one objected. “Thaelon, you go first, you have the lightest step and the best eyes, but we’ll be right behind you, and I’ll activate my shield glyph as soon as anything seems wrong. I suggest we put me in the middle, between Grimbart and Benderast. And you could stay at the back, Mirrsoss, you have the best chance of getting out of here quickly if anything goes wrong. I’ll keep my strongest glyphs active, of course.”

“That’s exactly how we’ll do it! You heard her, folks!” Benderast exclaimed enthusiastically as Shaelith pulled out a vial of mycelial ink and quickly traced glyphs, painting a few additional ones on her forearms. Protection. Kinesis. Illusion. Emotional Glamour. A few drastic emergency options. Everything else she could think of.

“Everyone ready?” Benderast asked.

Nods all around.

Thaelon found the mechanism that opened the stone slab, and it slid silently to the side.

The passageway was narrow, but high enough that even Benderast could walk upright. The air smelled stale and it was extremely dusty, everything was covered in a thick layer of dirt.

That’s good… maybe this really is a forgotten passageway.

Thaelon cautiously led the way, followed by the others in the agreed formation.

“This is dwarven-made… or maybe not dwarven-made, but at least dwarven-influenced,” Grimbart muttered as he scanned the walls and carefully tapped them with his metal hand. “The construction, I mean. The way those joints are sealed could have been done exactly like this by an old artisan from the Crucible. Whoever built this had close contact with my people or at least knew our techniques very well.”

The passage led downward, then leveled out and opened into a smaller hall. Only Shaelith’s faintly glowing glyphs pierced the darkness.

Thaelon stopped abruptly.

“What is it?” whispered Grimbart.

The Sylvyn did not answer. He simply stood there, rooted to the spot.

Shaelith pushed past the others, and then she saw it too.

Corpses.

They were looking into a small underground hall, perhaps ten by ten feet, and several corpses lay on the floor.

Shaeravyn corpses.

Shaelith counted them. Five. Six. Seven. All wearing light, dark mycelium armor, all armed with long black needle daggers and presumably were covered in glyphs beneath their clothing.

The bodies looked fresh and could be no more than a few days old.

Shaelith knelt beside the nearest body and examined the hair messages. House Rynalazel rules supreme. Elite units, the best assassins their arch-enemies had to offer.

And someone had killed them like cattle.

How did they get here? Did they use our exact route and come all the way here? But we found no traces of them.

She examined the wounds. All clean cuts, almost all on the neck, and no signs of resistance. Someone had surprised them and systematically slaughtered them.

“The warlock must have known about this entrance,” she said quietly.

“Shit,” whispered Grimbart.

Benderast’s face had turned pale. “So it is a trap after all?”

“I don’t know. If so, then we’re right in the middle of it now.”

“What now?” asked Mirrsoss, her voice trembling. “Should we turn back?”

“I’m going on,” she said.

“Are you sure?” asked Thaelon with trembling voice.

“No.” She looked him straight in the eye. “But turning back won’t get us anywhere. And somewhere in here, someone I care for is hanging in chains, being tortured, and I won’t let him die.”

Thaelon nodded slowly and Grimbart squared his shoulders.

Benderast drew his sword. “I’ll follow you, princess.”

Shaelith took a deep breath, and together they stepped over the bodies on the floor and continued on their way.