The entire town seemed different wearing one of the red cloaks. It felt odd getting friendly waves from the other red cloaked people. Everyone else gave him the cold shoulder at best. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the red cloaks were nearly half the population of the town, which meant while he wore the cloak he had more friends than enemies. The thought occurred to him that someone might recognize his face, but he didn’t think it likely. Last night his face had been illuminated by a lamp, and a bad one at that. If he kept his distance, no-one who was at the cave should readily identify him, given the cloak. And before, the only people he had gotten close to were the attendants at the library and that group of green cloaks. Still, stealth really wasn’t his strong suit, and for what he planned next, he needed a good bit of stealth.

There was quite the warren of tunnels around the sinkhole, and numerous monsters prowling around inside. While Ander was confident about being able to fight anything he found in the tunnels, his search the previous night had revealed just how extensive they were. If he got lost in there, it was as likely as not that he would be lost forever. And it would be pretty embarrassing if his third respawn came from starving to death in the tunnels. Not that that would really happen, he was good enough to be able to survive, but if anything that was worse. He would not spend however many years it would take to map out those tunnels sufficiently to escape. The maps from the library were not enough, which seemed like a major oversight on the part of the people organizing things down here. What Ander needed was the proprietary information held by the three factions.

His first target was obviously going to be the Crimson Stars faction. It was an easy choice given his most recent red cloak acquisition. The problem was the red cloak was simply not going to be enough. Ander didn’t know if they had much security beyond the red cloak, the man he had looted didn’t have a badge or anything. Moreover, he would be coming back to the town in not too long. He might be embarrassed to have lost his cloak, but he would have to face the music eventually. Then they would know Ander had one of their cloaks. Which meant that he had to do something now.

Ander wandered about for a bit, following greater and greater concentrations of red cloaks until he found what he assumed to be their headquarters. It was an imposing three story building near the edge of what Ander might consider the main campus of the training area. The entire place was swarming with red cloaks, and Ander’s palms started to sweat in anticipation. He didn’t want to give himself time to chicken out, so he set out across the square towards the Crimson Stars headquarters. Ander kept his head down and walked quickly through the crowd. When he reached the building, he diverted to the side, avoiding the two guards at the entrance.

They didn’t look to be paying much attention, but Ander wanted to see what he could find out from outside first. Ander crouched behind a pile of refuse halfway down the alley and closed his eyes to focus better on his wind sense. He could feel people around the back of the building. It looked like people employed at the headquarters itself were having a break. They were all lounging against piles of crates, and looked like they had no intention of moving. Satisfied, Ander turned his attention to several windows that lined the upper floors of the headquarters.

Carefully attenuating his wind sense, Ander extended it into several windows on the second floor. He found several offices, though they seemed to be of the group variety, and the office workers seemed to be chatting amiably about this thing or that. With effort, Ander was able to guide the sound to his ear, but found that while the gossip was somewhat interesting, none of it was truly important. It seemed that they were working through field reports from trips into the ruins of the spider elves. There were mentions of different things found in the ruins, but they were overshadowed by laughter about the stupid things the explorers did. All in all, Ander would love to search the room, but doing so would take hours that he wouldn’t get. Ander moved on, questing into the windows in the higher rooms. One room seemed to be a personal office, rather well appointed. Ander was startled when the door swung open and two men stepped inside.

“You say they fled?” The first man to talk was larger than his fellow, and wore a spear strapped to his back. By his voice, Ander recognized the man. It was Cormal.

“Yes. They reported that their fellow started to choke on nothing and then passed out. As they tried to help, one of them started to experience the same. They felt they had no choice other than to retreat. They were calling it some sort of black magic.” The other man had a strong build as well, and a sure and commanding voice. Despite this, Cormal was in another league entirely.

“But they left the man behind. Have we sent people out to retrieve him? I will not have one of our people left for the monsters, no matter how unlikely an attack is.”

“Yes, I dispatched a team five minutes ago.” Ander winced. That left him far less time than he had expected.

“Give those two men some sort of punishment. Don’t make it too harsh, but make sure they get the idea that comrades are not to be left behind except in the most dire of circumstances.” Cormal sighed. “You did say they were following Ander, correct?”

“Yes sir.” the other man said. Cormal just sighed.

“I really don’t need this right now. That man has already killed two of my men, I am sure of it. As much as I would like to get revenge for what he has done to my people, we have to stay focused. Please remind the men that Sir Argvald’s orders are to be followed to the letter, or I will personally deal with those that break it. The door must be opened, Ander is simply a diversion.”

“As you say.” The other man bowed and left the room, leaving Cormal to start shuffling through paperwork at his desk. Ander would love to go through the contents of that desk, but now he doubted he had time to go snooping around from the inside. There was one last window, and Ander grinned as he probed inside. The place was full of scrolls and papers tacked to the walls. A large table adorned the middle of the room similarly covered in large rolls of paper. Ander could tell there was writing on these papers, but the sensitivity of his wind sense was far too low to tell what was written. But Ander made a guess that this was the war room, and that those rolls of paper were maps. Ander checked the alleyway to see if anyone had approached, but found the alleyway still deserted. He had to be careful, especially with Cormal in the next room, but he should be able to get in and out without anyone the wiser.

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A quick leap took him to the side of the adjacent building about ten feet up,, and then he went another ten in the air leaping back to the headquarters. There he stood atop the moulding on one of the second story windows, a constant current of air pressing him against the side of the building. Carefully he climbed up and through his target window.

The entire room was full of maps. On the table, in cabinets, on the walls. He could tell not all were up to date, and that they had the habit of pinning new maps over the top of old ones below. But he could still make use of this. The whole table went into the inventory first, then the cabinets, and then the maps on the walls. In only about five seconds, the entire room was empty, and Ander was at the window again. This time, he jumped to the adjacent roof, and sped off from there.

. . .

Cormal kneaded his brow as he looked through the paperwork. That stupid door. They had worked for weeks to try to get it open, but nothing worked. He knew that there were incredibly valuable things inside, the placement and the quality of the door all spoke to that.

Cormal sat back and stared at the paperwork for a minute. He had to come up with some other idea. Maybe there was a key somewhere in the ruins? He really hoped that his idiot predecessor hadn’t sold it off as a cheap artifact for some collector, but if the man had found it, that is what he would have done. Cormal knew his faction was better off than it had been. Back when it was the Scarlet Knights, it had almost collapsed entirely thanks to the idiot who used to run things. Now that Cormal was running things, they were the best of the factions, and they were about to break the Azure Blades for good. But Cormal needed what was in that vault.

Idly Cormal looked out the window. Oddly enough, he could see one of his faction members in their red cloaks jumping across rooftops in the distance. Children, all of them. They had no clue what it meant to be down here, what that meant for the rest of their lives. He had tried to tell them, but they didn’t listen. He only had a few months left before he would be forced to climb the Wall to his next life, and he would leave behind a united Pit.

Cormal stood and walked to the second door in his office, the one that led straight into the war room. He knew something was wrong the moment he turned the handle. There was the fresh scent of a breeze in the room, the room that always smelled old and musty. Horror grew in him as the door opened to reveal a room adorned only with a few pins in the walls, and nothing else.

“Sir! Sir!” Edrik, his right hand man who he was speaking to not minutes before, was flying up the stairs. “We found the man, but his cloak was completely gone! We have to up security!” He slid to a stop behind Cormal and stared dumbfounded at the empty room.

“Edrik, I want every member of the Crimson Stars out there looking for Ander. Before he was a nuisance, now he is a threat.” Edrik stared at Cormal’s back.

“Weren’t the plans in there? The ones for the door?”

“Yes. somehow he took them all.”

. . .

Ander flinched mid air as he heard sirens start to blare. They were the old hand cranked variety, but they were loud enough to wake half the town. It seemed they had noticed Ander’s little theft. He needed to find a place to hole up and go through what he had found. Ander took off the cloak, deciding to go without for the time being. He figured that either of his cloaks were too conspicuous at the moment. It was rare to go without, given the cool temperature the pit was constantly at, but he still preferred that option. Ander ran as fast as he could, darting down alleys and back streets as much as he could to confuse potential pursuers. But it was not long before he got to one of the sets of city gates, and realized that the hardest part was before him.

The large field that surrounded the town on all sides was maintained and kept free of any major obstruction to the view between the town and the caverns. It was kept that way to allow the town to more easily defend against monster waves. It was mostly obsolete now as far as Ander understood, ever since the pacification was over and the factions were established there were rarely single monsters entering the killing fields. They still kept it clear, and that was a problem. No doubt Cormal was on his way, and he wouldn’t be thrown off by Ander simply not wearing a cloak. But there was nothing for it. He simply had to go for it, and hope he made it to the caverns before Cormal arrived.

Ander started to run, blasting his controlled wind against his back as hard as he could manage to get every ounce of extra speed he could. Still, he had never been a runner, though he had gotten decent at it while in his training with the organization. He didn’t have any of the technique that even hobbyist runners had, and he knew it was slowing him down. His level 6 running was helping a bit, but he knew it wasn’t enough.

“ANDER!!!!” Ander was right in the middle of the killing field when the shout came. He glanced back for just a moment, and was horrified to see what looked like hundreds of crimson stars floating in the air above the town wall. The air between Ander and the town was torn apart as hundreds of flaming javelins screamed through the space, hurtling towards Ander at a speed he could not outpace. To Ander, it sounded like hell coming to swallow him whole.

His wind sense was all that saved him. It lagged behind as he ran, this controlled volume of air unable to keep up with his pace. As the first javelins passed into his volume, Ander was able to tell where he had to dodge to keep them from striking him. But there were too many javelins, and each one disrupted Ander’s controlled air. Before long, One javelin passed too close to one of his arms, searing it to the bone, and another pierced straight through his left thigh. Ander nearly passed out from the pain, but somehow managed to keep his feet and keep running. He was slower now, using the wind to support his body as he hopped with his one good leg, but it was enough. By the time Cormal realized his skill had failed to kill Ander, he was already within the concealing safety of the caves.

Ander ran for hours inside the caves, barely keeping ahead of Cormal’s pursuit. But eventually he lost him, and was able to slump down against a cave wall and rest.