Today had been a good morning. Whether it would remain a good day, Sathera had her doubts, but she was still hopeful. Not that there was any point in worrying about what she couldn't control. It was far better to spend one's time focusing on the good things in one's life.
Like the fact, she saw Kathren this morning. Sure, she was covered in grime and didn't look like she had a decent bath or meal in a week, but it was still Kathren.
With Kathren suddenly saying she had to go on a mission and then disappearing for weeks, Sathera had started worrying that something had happened.
At least Sathera now knew Kathren was still alive. It was more than she could say for Green, as no one saw him leave, let alone knew what happened to him.
Well, maybe not, no one. Centurion Michal might know something, but he wasn't saying anything. Which at least meant that he didn't desert or go missing.
Not that she thought Instructor Green was capable of such a thing. He had far too much honor and a sense of duty to be capable of such disgraceful behavior.
…Now that she thought about it, she had never heard of an elf deserting… There must be one somewhere. But Scout Green would never do such a thing. So where was he?
That one fact was what was making this day good instead of great.
What more could you ask for a mission than lounging around all morning in nature?
…Not being in command of the mission would be better. But there was no one else. Bellous was competent as a scout, but leadership wasn't meant for him.
And Jim was… well, he was Jim. Putting him in command of anything as large as a tent was asking for trouble. Seriously, he was put in charge of camp a couple weeks ago, and the team came back to one tent sitting in a new pit, one was in ribbons with three arrows sticking out of it, another was charred scraps, and the last was underneath an old tree that collapsed onto it.
Jim said that the camp was attacked by a half dozen of these short black creatures crawling out from under the tree and that he had to fight them off. He said that he managed to wound four and even kill one… but no one ever found any blood, tracks, or even weapons.
As for where the "creatures" went, apparently, they climbed back into the tree and nearly collapsed it on him when they destroyed the tunnel.
Needless to say, Jim was never put back in command of anything.
Joxin, on the other hand, while he had the ability to command, had yet to recover from losing Purious on the mission to the Northern Forest. It wasn't his fault, but when he told her he was done giving orders to people and getting them killed, Sathera found herself at a loss for words, and it put a damper on her mood for that whole day.
Someone had to give the orders, and it was better that someone competent was giving them than not. It would hurt Sathera to see someone she commanded killed, and she would do everything she could to prevent it, but she knew it wouldn't be enough. However, if she refused a leadership position because it would eventually make her feel horrible when someone under her command died while she had been trained from childhood to lead, that would be worse. Sathera always found that she could never watch something go wrong without at least trying to help.
As for Joxin eventually being able to bear the burden of command again, Sathera couldn't tell, but until he came up to her and told her so, she wouldn't push.
Which left her to take command of this group when the experienced scouts were off doing the real work.
So Sathera led her team out here when it felt more like night than morning, and they moved through the damp, tall grass surrounding most of Southtown, getting their cloaks wet until they got into position. Then, they lay on the ground, letting the cold seep into their bones over the following hours. While it was less than comfortable, it was also what Sathera and the others signed up for.
There was always something bad going on, and if you let every little thing get you down, you will never be happy. And that was not a way to live one's life.
Even if Sathera was one to let the little things get to her to the point she would voice a complaint, she wouldn't do it for this. Their mission was necessary, if not as important as the other scouts.
Some things were made clear from what Markus said and the orders they were given. The dark elves everyone was hearing rumors of were real, and they had infiltrated the city and were in control of a large portion of the slums.
That was a problem, so the legion was moving to clear them out.
To help with that, Sathera and the other scouts were here to watch for anybody escaping from smuggling tunnels. All fifty-eight scouts in the legion were currently spread out around the outer walls of South Town, with the cavalry further out than the scouts patrolling. If that wasn't enough, the 3rd Cohort was broken up and positioned between the scouts and cavalry at key points.
In short, it seemed like overkill to Sathera, but she was not the one making the calls. Not that she was criticizing anything, as it was always better to be safe than sorry.
Their — and Anooha’s teams on the east side of the gates — part in the plan was perching on a slight rise out in the plain slightly west from the middle gate of Southtown, keeping watch on a large field.
Relaxing in the grass while on a picnic and resting was one of her favorite things to do as a child. This was… less than enjoyable.
Sitting in the grass wasn't the bad part, though. It was flinching every time the grass rustled, thinking it was moving because someone was crawling through it. Sathera eventually calmed down, and then it became surprisingly easy to drift off and stare at nothing, even while part of the grass swayed. It was too easy to drift off, and she needed to constantly remind herself to keep focused.
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The only bright side was that her team was in one of the areas considered the least likely to have a tunnel exit. She was at least half a mile from the walls, but all that was an open grass field.
Not uncommon along this stretch of the river, but farther to the east of Southtown, it became rockier with some large outcroppings, and to the west, the land rose going down the Rush, becoming hilly.
Both of those locations had far more options to hide a secret entrance to a tunnel than an open plain. Sathera had told herself that dozens of times and even listed to Markus and those on her team say the same thing, but there was still a nagging suspicion in the back of her mind.
It was something that her father told her in the past, "If you are to hide something, do it right in front of them. People don't look past what they want to see." And isn't the best place to load goods an open field?
Sathera calmed her anxiety-ridden mind. She knew that her imagination was getting to her.
It was just that this was her first time in command of a real mission. After the events in the Northern Forest, she had been around senior scouts nearly constantly. They might not have exactly been in 'command,' but they were always there to offer their support if needed.
Fifty-eight scouts might sound like a lot to station in a half-ring about three miles long as lookouts, but it wasn't. You could place two people standing ten feet apart, and someone could slip by unnoticed in the gap between them.
Sure, a lot of things went into that happening, mostly involving darkness and incompetence, but the point still stood. And that was ignoring that a single person standing in front of a tunnel with potential infiltrators from another nation inside it couldn't do much more than report them and then be cut down.
So they had to spread out in groups, widening the gaps between their positions.
It all made sense and looked like a good plan.
"Calm down, Sath," Jim said, his tone slow and languid like he was about to fall asleep. "We won't see anyone."
"You don't know that Jim. We are covering a large area, giving lots of places for someone to pop up," Sathera said, her voice filled with a mild reprimand before her tone shifted to annoyance. "And what did I say about shortening my name?"
"You need to let it go, Jim. It's never going to work." Joxin added.
"But Jox," Jim whined, "how could you—
"Nope." Joxin called, cutting Jim off, "Stop calling me that."
Jim mumbled something that she couldn't hear, but her mood was lighter than before. Sathera knew what Jim was doing and found it mildly amusing.
The main reason people thought Jim's name was stupid was because of how short it was. Like his parents didn't care about him enough to put in any effort to name him. So he was going around trying to shorten everyone's names. Joxin's name was pretty short already, and he seemed extra sensitive about cutting Jim down whenever he tried to bring up a nickname.
Back to the point, Joxin was right. Out of all the land around South Town, what are the odds that one of the tunnels would be around them? Unless they made so many exits that they are everywhere…
Sathera felt the ground rumble, and her heart dropped out of her chest. A series of booms sounded all around, but she didn't look to see, as she already had a good idea of what they were. Because she was watching four dust clouds explode in the field on her side of the rise.
Today isn't going to be a great day, Sathera thought, a hint of despair filling her. Not even if Green suddenly appears. No day filled with death could ever be called a great day.
On rare occasions, you can go so far as to call the day of a battle a good day if the majority of the dead were the enemy, but the winds of fate were hardly so kind as to spread those days around with abandon. And her mood only grew worse the next moment.
Jim, Joxin, and Bellous had reached out to her simultaneously, and she struggled to accept their tendrils for a second. It was a combination of shock at the appearance of all those tunnels and the pressure of sudden action being demanded of her.
Sucking in a deep breath, she snapped into focus and swept out a single tendril hooking all of the tethers together. Not that she needed them. They all sent the same thing.
In all, there were thirteen openings positioned a hundred feet from their hill, with figures in dark cloaks pouring out of every tunnel. There were quickly more than she could easily count, reaching into the dozens.
A cold hand gripped her heat and squeezed the next second. The scurrying figures weren't making a run for it. No, they were setting up earthworks.
And this wasn't the ground being turned asunder with the bludgeoned tip of a widened tendril. The earth was flowing like water into a circle around the rise. It was a feat that only someone on the level of a Knight Terra could manage.
It wasn't stone walls, but already, the earthen mound around them had reached three feet and was only growing in width and height every second. Just seconds into their construction, Sathera doubted that horsemen could break this defense and that legionaries wouldn't waste their lives in this pointless position anytime soon. We're trapped.
Wrinkling her brows in confusion, Sathera stared at the walls forming around them. Sathera could see the tall grass spraying into the air and falling to the other sides of the forming wall. Why is ther—
Like a series of chimes all going off at once, Sathera felt the signs of contact from the scouts. All of the scouts. It was so many pulses that they mingled together into a single overlapping mass.
A brief instant of concern passed through her as she was unable to tell where the pulses came from. Then she felt hysterical laughter bubbling at the back of her throat. If they have this many tunnels in a bad spot, how many tunnels are in the other areas?
Even if she sent out a pulse to signal contact, no help would be coming. Not quickly enough or in significant enough numbers to matter. It was one of the downsides of being placed in a location no one expected to be attacked.
If they wanted to live, they would have to save themselves, and Sathera could feel the time to do that was running out with every frantic beat of her heart.
Think! Think! She mentally commanded herself in the hope something would come to her. They just keep coming out of their tunnels. There has to be at least a couple hundred by now. How do they have so many people?
Sathera felt a frantic smile come over her face as she sent a message down the mental links. "Crawl to me. When you get here, we are going to rush into the tunnels. If they have enough room to hold that many people, they have room for us to disappear."
She could feel the skepticism from the others but could also feel they didn't have another idea for what to do. With the walls approaching seven feet, they were running out of options, so they started moving.
Narrowing her eyes, Sathera studied the construction of the walls. Something was off. She could see a steady flow of grass flying over the top of the wall, but that wasn't uncommon.
Grass couldn't be compressed like earth and would leave a weakness in a wall. It didn't matter much with temporary walls, but if you wanted earthworks to last, putting in the extra effort of removing the grass was worth it.
After you pulled earth from the immediate area of the wall, there wasn't any more… grass… too… pull…
Her eyes snapped to the barren earth, spreading toward her position. It was already feet below where the grass grew, and at the bottom of it were black hol— "We have to move!" Sathera mentally shouted, clawing forward on all fours, trying to get her feet under while keeping her speed, but it was already too late.
The ground fell out from under the scouts, and they fell into darkness.