Arthur was enjoying the gentle wind on his face as he gazed at the distance. He was on top of a big, five-meter-tall rock he had just climbed.

Looking down, he could see the last of their convoy passing by his rock and off ahead. The furthest foot soldiers looked like ants from where he was standing. It didn't help that they were naturally short.

Looking ahead, Arthur could make out intricate rock formations. There were solid rock walls surrounding the branching path, around three times as tall as a man, forming a natural maze-like structure. Behind it, Arthur could vaguely make out a forest.

As General Escers, the leader of their envoy, had explained, this rock formation was called the Ant Maze. It was a rock formation covering an area of around twenty square kilometres. Its maze-like structure was comprised of narrow, tall, winding stone walls, along with the wide paths between them.

While it was called a maze, it wasn't anything difficult to cross, as there were little to no intersections in most of the paths. And even if one did get lost, it wasn't too difficult to climb the walls and get a look at the area. Walking on the walls though wasn't recommended, both because of their narrowness and because it was easy to lose your footing on the uneven, slippery rocks.

The only real problem people faced was dead ends, and there were plenty of them. To combat that, the dwarves had signs in front of all the entrances to the Ant Maze, explaining whether the path was a dead end, the direction to pick in any of the intersections one came across, whether the path was short or long, whether it led to the other side of the maze or the same one, and any other useful information.

Not much was known about the Ant Maze’s origins. As one would expect of such a structure, legends abounded.

Some said it was a game designed by the gods for the mortals, others recounted how it used to be filled with terrifying beasts, while some extreme theories even claimed it to be a burial ground for an ancient creature. Strangely, what all legends agreed on was that there was some treasure hidden inside for the most successful of explorers to find.

The most popular theory though was that it was a natural rock formation, and no treasure had been found inside so far, although all of it had been explored.

The Ant Maze was around two kilometers wide and ten long, so people usually preferred crossing it rather than circling around it, barring the superstitious ones. Generally, this was not considered an obstacle to travelers, but rather a sight to enjoy. Arthur looked forward to visiting it.

They reached the Ant Maze at dawn and decided to make camp outside for the night and cross it in the morning. It shouldn't take more than an hour, even with the slow wagons they were pulling along.

Arthur tried to hold back his laughter as he watched the little men run around preparing camp. They were serious-looking and intimidating but Arthur, being tall even for a human, couldn't help but be amused at the difference in stature.

The humans were preparing their own tents inside the camp. There were almost a hundred dwarven soldiers surrounding them, making them feel as safe as they could possibly be. Most of the dwarves sported beards and a few, the commanders, wore small round iron caps with two horns on their heads.

Nigel had been given permission to not help in setting up tents and practice his flute skills outside the camp instead, and Miss Nan had gone with him to help. Arthur sighed tiredly. This was going to be a peaceful night.

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They woke up sometime after dawn, feeling rested. The camp was swiftly dissolved and they entered the Ant Maze.

The foot soldiers were walking in front. Behind them were the few wagons carrying the army officers, followed by the humans. More foot soldiers were bringing up the rear. While the Ant Maze wasn't considered an obstacle, it was an excellent place for an ambush. Preferring to be safe rather than fast, the dwarves last night had chosen to follow a slightly longer route in hopes of disorienting any possible enemies.

General Escers had sent Arthur in front, with the leading dwarves. He was walking next to Sil, the dwarven commander. Sil himself had foregone the comfort of the wagons and had opted to march at the front with the soldiers, and Arthur respected that about the man.

Due to the long-standing enmity between them, dwarves had no horses. Sil, though, was riding a male goat.

Suddenly, Sil motioned one other dwarf to come closer. "Go to the wagons and bring me the map of Ant Maze. Fast," he ordered.

"Is something wrong, colonel?" Arthur inquired, addressing the dwarf with his military rank.

"Perhaps. The scouts are late; they should be here by now," the dwarf replied worriedly. "I fear an ambush".

They had sent dwarves to scout all the way until the exit of the maze. The first ones, because the scouts were supposed to send someone back at regular intervals, had already come back but two more were supposed to have back a few minutes ago.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Ambush? We are a hundred men strong and we are inside your borders, who would possibly ambush us here?" Arthur asked surprised.

"Better safe than sorry," Sil answered as he grabbed the map from the returning dwarf's hands.

He opened it while walking and Arthur, who was by his side, could take a look at it too. It was filled with winding lines, making little sense whatsoever.

"We are approaching an open area," the colonel announced to his troops. "We'll be stopping there for a break."

Regularly, there were open areas like squares, sometimes even hundreds of meters across, and they were now growing close to a big one.

He then turned to Arthur. "Hopefully it's nothing, and the scouts are just a bit late."

Five minutes later, they reached the open area and stopped to rest. It was spacious enough that they could easily fit all the men inside, and keep some substantial distance from the walls too.

Including the passage they had come from, there were three passages leading in and out of the open area, positioned in different directions. The scouts still hadn't come back and, by this point, even the foot soldiers were starting to sense something was wrong. While they were resting, Sil had arranged the soldiers in a loose formation with the humans near the centre. They had to protect them, after all.

Sil was getting anxious. Even if some accident had happened to the scouts that were late, enough time had passed that another of them should have come. Yet, there was no scout in sight. The colonel was now almost sure something was going on.

"Send some men to scout half a kilometer ahead, and then some more to scout one kilometer. Send them in groups of five, so they can cover each other and retreat if need be," he ordered one of his lieutenants. The dwarf did as he was told and soon ten men were sent ahead. They were even told to hurry. Sil and the rest of the commanders waited with bated breath. Logically, they shouldn't take more than a few minutes to come back.

Ten minutes later, Sil finally sounded the alarm. The ten men still hadn’t returned and, by this point, he was sure that something was after them.

"Looks like you were right after all, colonel," Arthur commented.

"Be on your guard, young man," Sil replied as his battle-hardened attitude started to show. He sent a dwarf to climb the walls and look around. As they didn't have much to do, the soldiers were looking at him. As soon as the man stood on top of the wall though, three stones whizzed through the air around him. A fourth one hit him right in the forehead with enough force to crack his skull. Even if that didn't kill him, the fall did.

The dwarves immediately started shouting, but they were experienced soldiers and quickly organized themselves in a circular formation around the wagons. Shield bearers were in the front, and right behind them were dwarves with spears.

Dwarves didn't often use spears, as their small and bulky shapes would put them at a disadvantage against spear users of other races, but they carried around some especially for situations like these. In the middle of the formation were ten dwarves with crossbows and one with a bow. The rest of the dwarves were carrying axes, clubs, and heavy swords, weapons that the dwarves traditionally preferred.

The archers were organized in a loose circle to minimize their danger of being taken out; they were crucial after all. The humans were also armed and placed inside the circle of archers, along with Sil. The rest of the dwarven officers had taken place near the edges of the circle.

However, despite making their formation, the dwarves faced no further attacks. Everything around them was eerily quiet as they waited with bated breaths for an attack that never came.

"They are playing with our nerves," Sil gritted his teeth. Their enemies were successful, as the dwarves were beginning to panic. Being trapped in a maze with completely unknown enemies surrounding you was more than enough to drastically decrease the morale of the soldiers.

Sil took a deep breath as the soldiers' anxiety continued to mount. "WHO GOES THERE?" he shouted. No reply came his way.

"WE ARE AN ARMORED UNIT SENT HERE BY THE KING," he continued. "WHO DARES BLOCK OUR WAY?" Still no reply from the unseen enemy, but at least his proud shouting helped raise the soliders' morale.

"Hmph", he sneered. Now they were stuck. Sil wasn't about to send more soldiers outside their area to be killed, climbing the walls clearly wasn't an option either, and he didn't want to advance out of the open area. Here, they had the advantage of being far from the walls and being able to utilize their probably superior numbers. Sil highly doubted their enemies numbered more than a hundred.

In fact, he would have assumed they were random thugs and robbers if only the ten soldiers he sent hadn't been so quietly and quickly disposed of.

"Colonel," the human General interrupted the dwarf's thought process, "can we try something?"

"What?" the dwarf looked suspiciously at the human general.

Escers smiled toothily. "Sahtar!" he said, and everybody turned to look at the dark-skinned man. Sahtar nodded and calmly unfolded the carpet he was always carrying around before putting it on the ground. He then proceeded to sit on it cross-legged.

"What?" Sil exclaimed in surprise.

"Just watch", the General told him.

As everybody around him was staring in confusion, ever so slightly, Sahtar's carpet trembled. Then, slowly at the beginning but then increasingly quickly, the carpet rose vertically with Sahtar still on top of it, until it was higher than even Arthur's head.

Gasps of surprise sounded as the carpet made a circle around their formation, grabbing the attention of the soldiers on the outside who had been watching for signs of the enemy, before flying high in the air. While the carpet's speed was not too fast, it was not slow either, and soon it had increased its height past that of the walls and kept going. Stones could be seen flying towards from all around the open area, causing Sil to grimace as he confirmed they were surrounded, but none of them came even close the flying carpet. From up there, the patterns on the carpet as it flew against the sun were mesmerizing.

"How is he doing that?" Arthur and Nigel exclaimed in surprise, only to receive a grin from the general. From their whole group, only he had seen Sahtar and his carpet in action before. As everybody was still staring wide-eyed, forgetting to even be on guard for the enemy, Sahtar made two circles up above before flying back down to them.

He came to hover right above where he took off, before his carpet started to gradually lower, finally landing.

"So?" Sil was the first to ask. "What did you see?"

Sahtar rolled his carpet before raising his eyes to look at the dwarf. "Trouble," he replied. "Lots of it. And it's green."