Six months

The company gave a somber funeral for Gordon. Most recognized that tensions were running high and he had overstepped, many still mourned for the man he was not the man he became. None of them could say for certain that this experience hadn’t changed them in some way. It was still a dreary morning. A mourning morning.

When his pyre had burned out and the vigil was over, what usable armor he had left was split among those it fit. The next few days were quiet. Lonely. Everyone seemed to be trying to keep their distance, afraid of each other and the pain getting close could cause. When they would inevitably die, or be forced to kill each other. That change hadn’t seemed as significant at first, but the longer they had to grapple with it, the more it wormed into them.

The dragon wasn’t the only threat. Every level someone gained made them a stronger ally, but in the face of Dieva’s overwhelming might, they could be turned into an opponent just as easily. It shook the foundational trust they had built until that point. There was no way to recover that once lost.

A few days later Akke approached Daniel with an idea.

“The crew needs their morale back, ssomething to rally behind and get the commons causse together” The lizardfolk explained.

“What did you have in mind?” Daniel asked, sensing there was more to the proposal.

“If we’s find the dragon’s lair, raids its hoard, everyone wins. The crew gets a morale boost, each individual gets a lump of gold or a magic items. Dragon hoard is stuff of legend, enough to buy a country. Or level it.” The dual-wielder ranted, a glimmer of greed in her eye.

She did make a good point though. While not necessarily a ‘safe’ venture, a raid on Dieva’s hoard could be the deciding factor of their resistance. Recent events had proven their current efforts as a slow-decaying holding pattern. No progress was being made, they were simply delaying the inevitable. After losing half their numbers it would take nothing short of a miracle for any of them to survive and make it home.

A miracle they didn’t have time to wait on.

The remaining dozen or so fighters held a meeting to deliberate a plan, and hours of shouting could be boiled down into two main points. First, they didn’t know where the lair was. Second, after they found it any plan they made would be useless if the dragon showed up while they were there.

So the first and only step they could take was the find the damn thing. Easier said than done. Over the course of their months trapped in the hell jungle, Daniel had a pretty clear idea about the borders of Dragon territory. Burnt trees, clawed stumps, shattered stones, and the occasional massive corpse would often denote the borders, and with literally hundreds of square kilometers to scour through there was no real promise they’d find anything at all.

Until their only surviving caster came up with a plan. “Caster” is a bit of a stretch though. The grizzled old human man was classed as a spellsword, imbuing items with temporary enchantments to fuel his fighting style well beyond his own physical stats.

That imbuing skill was priceless right now though, and the crux of their main plan. Feznan, the spellsword, would wait at base camp and whenever someone came to him he enchanted their weapons with his highest-tier skill to carry a basic magic detection spell. The low power draw meant they could function for days off the initial cast. From there, the mercs would travel in a slowly expanding spiral out from the camp, each one covering a different tract of land and hopefully staying equidistant from each other.

The spiral would cover the maximum amount of land while hopefully still providing a relatively straight shot back to camp in the case of an emergency. Once the spiral got too big, they’d need to move camp and search through a different area. The hope was Fez could get his skills fully recharged between each merc making a trip back to him, and spending any downtime mapping what they reported to him.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best they could do with less than a single squad.

They were not truly prepared for how long it would take.

The back half of month four and the majority of months five and six were spent combing through endless swaths of the jungle in an ever-expanding network. A couple of mercs gave up and went back to hunting. Daniel and Akke started taking round-the-clock shifts, and Fez had mapped nearly 70% of the area. They had nothing to show for it.

No hit of a cave, no magical illusions, no sudden traps. Nothing. It was as if the dragon didn’t have a lair at all. Daniel only ever found it due to sheer luck and coincidence.

The opening of the cave faced straight up, layered in so many illusion and obfuscation enchants that not even the detection charm noticed it. Until Daniel took a step on the illusory ground and fell several feet through the jungle floor. His strength and vitality stats kept any of his bones from breaking under the impact, but he definitely sprained something as he clattered to the stone ledge below.

The pain seared through him, locking him in the cave for the time being as he could barely stand let alone climb out. Not that the idea even occurred to him much. Glancing around in the darkness, as his system-enhanced senses slowly adapted to the dim conditions around him had Daniel entirely focused on one thing.

Vindication.

He’d found it at last, and it was exactly like Akke described.

Mounds of glittering gems and stolen treasures, ornate weapons embedded in the very stone of the cave, ceremonial chests, and urns filled with unknown power. It would take days to sort through it all, and that was assuming Daniel managed to escape and alert the others.

He had to get back up the cliff face before Dieva returned. Daniel’s leg screamed in protest as he lifted himself back to his feet. He almost fell even further, but forced the butt of his spear into the ground and propped himself up on it. The pain in his leg was already subsiding slightly, but it still protested under the weight of the warrior.

Crouching low, Daniel activated every skill he had to boost stats, then pushed off with his spear using the full strength of his body. His muscles screamed, the injured leg loudest of all, but the force of the leap took him well past the forty-foot cliff he needed to clear to escape. The landing would be the hardest part.

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Daniel didn’t have a lot of training in proper form to take a fall, but with high physical stats, you often learn such things in the moment. The downside to being able to leap fifty-some-odd feet in the air, is the resulting fall from height. Still, with the ground rapidly approaching Daniel bent his knees, grit his teeth, and let the momentum roll him forward. He impacted far less forcefully than he initially worried, but tumbled several feet through the underbrush all the same, scraping and scratching on thorns the entire way.

Once he came to a stop, he lifted himself back to his feet and winced along with the fresh wave of pain, to start limping back towards camp.

Daniel swept back into camp near sunset, finding Akke and Fez in a tense discussion that came to an end the moment they saw him. Akke rushed over, brushing past a few of the less-motivated fighters milling about the camp.

“Stesk! I thought you had perished. Why were you gone so long?” Daniel was questioned immediately, his friend trapping him in a forceful hug.

“I just took a fall” He groaned, unable to overcome the dual-wielders strength stat while still leaning on his own spear.

“I’m fine. I’m fine” Daniel reassured them both. “I found a section of jungle where the floor just fell away, there was a cave hidden under an illusion Fez’s skill didn’t even detect. A cave full of dragon treasure” he explained through a smirk.

“Come. We must tell the others” Akke smiled, helping her friend back into the camp.

The next several hours were spent detailing and confirming everything Daniel had seen. He described, redescribed, and answered questions until well after sunset, chewing medicinal herbs for his leg the entire time. When the group finally set about watch rotation and rest for the night, they’d come to a solitary agreement.

They would take the hoard or die trying. It was their only hope of success. Gone were the illusions of overcoming the dragon with numbers, gone was the hope of rescue. They were pinned in a trap, desperate and willing to do whatever it takes. The raid would come as soon as Daniel’s leg had recovered, best to have everyone at full strength.

He tried multiple times to convince them early that he was back to peak form, but a quick spar with Akke proved him wrong every time. Ultimately, it took Daniel the better part of a week to recover fully, but once he did, everything went into motion for their final plan.

The remaining mercenaries split into several groups of three, with Akke and Daniel working as a final group of two. They each went in a different direction away from camp, but with paths planned in such a way to hopefully assure they all arrived at the cave at the same time.

And arrive they did. Thankfully, this time everyone was on the lookout for sudden drops, and a few tossed pebbles in the estimated location of the cave alerted them to the illusion before anyone else injured themselves. Several thick vines were then tied off to nearby trees, and the group began rappelling down into the cave.

Not that they needed to repel too far, just a few feet and the drop became perfectly comfortable for most physical classes. It was more than they hoped for. Akke struck several torches alight and passed them around in a hurry, the flickering flames reflecting off hundreds of glimmering treasures.

Everyone stood ready for a fight, but when there was no sign of an infuriated dragon, the tension left the fighters immediately. This is what they planned for. Half the group was dedicated to searching through the various piles, crates, crevices, and containers, and the other half was overwatch and sorting anything brought to them.

It wasn’t as perfectly methodical as one might hope, but these were sellswords, not bankers.

A small mound of weapons, armor, and glistening trinkets started to form near the tunnel to the surface. All the while Daniel couldn’t shake this feeling of dread that seemed to drip down the back of his neck. He was about to voice his concerns to Akke when Fez strode up to him with a beaming smile.

“Stesk, my friend, as the only spear wielder in the group it makes sense that you should have this without contest” The older human explained with a hand outstretched. He held a shining spear in his hand, lighter than steel and polished like silver, it was covered from end to end in spiraled flame engravings.

“I spoke with the others, no one thinks it should count as your share either. We’re calling it a finders fee” The spellsword said with a laugh, thrusting the weapon into Daniel’s hands before he could protest.

Daniel started to thank the old fool when he was suddenly interrupted by a loud crash from the other side of the cave. A pile of treasure had collapsed on the young half-elf trying to sort through it. The weight of the stuff shouldn’t have been an issue, but the poor boy was skewered by no less than five enchanted daggers in the avalanche. He was dead by the time they found him.

Daniel’s feeling of dread only grew colder.

“Oh my, what a horrible accident” a familiar voice whispered in the darkness, barely audible to Daniel’s enhanced senses.

“DRAGON! The dragon’s here. Fez, sweep for invisibility!”

It was already too late. Panic erupted from the company, many of them drawing newly stolen weaponry and dashing for the exit. Dieva had played them, the whole thing was a trap.

Fez stepped across a pile of coins, only for a gilded iron maiden to burst from the ground, piercing his body and sealing him in the enchanted prison. The group's only hope of finding the invisible dragon trapped alongside him, assuming he still lived.

“I’m nothing if not sporting” Dieva proclaimed, dismissing her illusions just in time to appear before two archers and consume them both in living fire. Blown out as easily as a candle.

With a flick of her draconic wrist, weapons, trinkets, and even coins and gems whirled through the air as makeshift missiles, striking and biting wherever they could. Everyone sustained injury as they struggled towards the entrance to the cave, the exit marking a false hope of escape. None wanted to admit they were already dead should the dragon decide it.

“Stesk. You go, get the others out. I’ll buy you as much time as I can” Akke hissed, drawing two curved swords from her pack, each one dripping with green light.

“Draka! I challenge you to a duel of clan honor. Upon the will of the Scaled Emperor.” Akke screamed to the dragon, citing ancient religious codes hopefully still shared among their people. Those were the last words she spoke. Dieva smirked in response.

“I accept. I will stand on my own, however, and recognize the honor of clan Krisk in your sacrifice.” Seemingly satisfied, Akke activated every skill she thought she had time for, and charged the beast.

Daniel did not have time to delay and watch their fight though, he rushed to the few remaining mercs, all of them injured, and began helping others up the cliff. At times pushing them up the vines when their strength seemed to be failing.

As he was helping the others lift up and out, he glanced over his shoulder just in time to watch a deep orange spell fly free from Dieva’s claws and impact the tunnel ceiling. A mighty earthquake followed, and a rampant heat, Daniel was blown halfway up the vine before he even started climbing, the lair collapsing in on itself behind him.

Burying his friends along with their draconic tormentor. No time to mourn though. Dieva would be back, and Daniel had to lead the others back to camp before they got ambushed.

That night, none would sleep well. Least of all Daniel, who would find himself haunted by strange dreams.

5 mercenaries remaining