"What's the situation?" Sathera asked as she crawled out of the hole in the wall and moved to join Joxin and Jim by the stone outcrop. Joxin heard her movements, but he didn't look away from his scouring of the camp across the chamber.
"We have a well-established camp on the far side of this chamber that doesn't seem to be alert," Joxin responded. "Looks to be a stairwell in their center. I haven't spotted many guards in or around the camp, but there should be close to three dozen, half of them stationed around the stairs. But I have no idea how many are in the tents or buildings, and few have entered or exited them."
"Between here and there?"
"I haven't seen anything moving in the shadows, for whatever that's worth. The little bastards could be anywhere," Joxin said, his voice dripping with disgusted annoyance. "You thinking of making a rush for the stairs? Or we could find another tunnel connected to this cavern, should be one somewhere, and see where it goes." Joxin suggested their only real possible options but didn't put much enthusiasm into his voice for the second one.
"Not much of a choice there," Sathera sighed. "None of us remember the way back, and even if we did, that route is packed with our pursuers, which won't go well for us. We haven't found another viable exit from those caverns either. Now that we are out of them, the longer we stay in one place, the more likely we will be found and killed. It's just a matter of time."
Joxin nodded in agreement and didn't say a word. They had many similar conversations while they were down in the deeper caverns. The only difference this time was that they appeared to have an exit placed within arms reach. It was a significant difference, but rushing into making any choice shouldn't be rushed, as that would only make it more likely to get themselves all killed.
Not that Joxin was against rushing for the stairs, as while it was surrounded by troops, it was relatively undefended. At least compared to the fewer but far more vigilant goblins guarding the exit to the cavern down below. There was much to be said about the element of surprise.
"Should we wait until we know their patrol routes and sleep schedules?" Joxin prompted, getting to the heart of the matter.
Indecision played over Sathera's face, and she opened her mouth several times without saying anything. Joxin momentarily took his eyes away from the camp to look at the young woman and saw guilt filling her eyes, paralyzing her.
Turning away from her and returning to his task, he said softly, "We don't blame you for us being down here. We won't blame you if we end up dying down here. We all wanted to fight the thralls, and none of us could have known how it would end up."
Then Jim shifted, releasing a small grunt of pain into the brittle silence. While the bleeding had been stopped, his arm had become infected despite their best efforts, not surprising given a mouth had caused the wound. If you add in the climb they all just made, he was looking more warn than usual, yet he dredged up the energy to open his stupid mouth and say, "I'm kind of blaming you right now, to be honest."
Joxin snorted in annoyance as he said, "You're just in pain and mad that your arms are torn up with a chunk missing. Need I remind you that you are the one who made the choice to leave some of your gear behind? And if you believe strongly enough, you never know, the chunk out of your arm might actually grow back.."
"I'm just saying…" Jim muttered as he went back to staring off into space, mostly talking to himself now. "She could have noticed my lack of equipment and told me to go get it."
Sathera didn't say anything as the two of them were talking, but she did let out a snort of amusement as Joxin brought up Jim's arm. Finally, she said in a small voice, "I made the wrong choice. And look where we are now."
"Maybe." Joxin acknowledged, "But we don't know what was down the other passages. There could have been a dozen intersecting passages, and we could have ended up at a dead end, waiting to be overwhelmed. We could have made all the right turns and still ended up surrounded and cut down in the center of one of their bases. Or we could have already made it back and reported on our mission with all the information we discovered. We don't know what could have been. In the future, you can look back and learn from your mistakes. But right now, all of us are still alive, and that's all that matters. We are alive, we have a chance to get out, and someone needs to make a decision. Because I know doing nothing will get us killed. It will just take longer."
Joxin could feel Jim and Sathera staring at him with wide eyes at the end of his little speech, neither of them saying anything for long seconds. It can't be that much of a surprise, he mentally grumbled. It wasn't like she didn't already know everything I said. It's just that sometimes someone else needs to come along and point out the obvious to get things moving.
Before now, there was no real point in bringing up or discussing Sathera's fault in their circumstances. What was done was done, and bringing it up when it looked like they would all be killed when the goblins finally got around to it wouldn't help anyone. In fact, it would only increase their odds of death as resentment within their team formed. And they all knew that when they were running or fighting through the caverns, they had no other options. What did a right or left turn matter when you had no idea where either went and were more concerned about what was sneaking up behind you?
But with an actual, tangible hope for life before them, all of the doubts plaguing Sathera had burst forth. And now was not the time for her insecurities. She needed to make a choice and accept what may come. The sooner she made a decision, the better, as seconds could be the difference.
"What's going on up here?" Bellous asked as he crawled out of the tunnel, looking at all of them in turn. "The air feels weird."
"I would think so," Jim said, amusement filling his voice, "Joxin chewed Sathera out, trying to sound smart, and told her to 'get her shit together.'"
"I did not say that." Joxin snapped back.
"Paraphrasing here. Why would I want to remember all of what you said?"
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"Because it would make you sound smart."
"I used the word 'paraphrasing,' didn't I? How much smarter do you want me to be? Not everyone can have a stick up their ass all the time." Jim joked back, a smile audible in his voice.
"We have to go now," Sathera said, cutting off their banter. Her tone had more than a touch of uncertainty, but she was gaining more surety as she spoke, "Someone will stumble upon us before long, even if the noise of us breaking into this crevice didn't draw attention. No, we can not stay here, and the sooner we start making our way over to the camp, the better. And most of all, we need to report what we have discovered."
"Understood," Joxin said, no opinion coloring his voice. She had made a decision, and while you could spend hours debating the pros and cons, in the end, he didn't care. One way or another, he wanted out of these caves.
Joxin accepted that death could claim him at any moment long ago when he was still a plain legionary, and he still decided to sign up for another tour to become a scout. Instead of worrying about it, he would rather just walk the path laid out in front of him and see where it takes him while enjoying the ride.
Pushing away from the rock, Joxin tilted his head to the side and said, "I spotted an easy path Jim should be able to climb down over here."
As he silently moved through the cavern, he caught the slightest scrape of cloth over stone behind him before the only thing he could hear was the drip of water and the distant murmuring of life from the camp. Going purely by the noise, he would have guessed there was no one following along behind him.
Just as it should be for scouts moving through hostile territory.
Climbing down from the ledge they were on, Joxin and the others started moving across the long chamber like they were just one more flickering shadow. And the shadows were thick on this side of the cavern, as while there were a few patches of mushrooms, they were few and far between, meaning most of the light came from the large glowstone in the center of the goblin camp. Making it only harder was that with how close they were to the enemy and trying to sneak up on them, they couldn't use the suntorch, Joxin even warning them to turn it off before they came out of the fissure.
The cave floor was covered in dips and rises, making every step have to be taken with care so as not to twist one's ankle or send a loose stone skittering over the floor. Some of the depressions in the stone were even filled with water from small streams, making moving without any noise even harder in the dim light.
As they began moving along the half-mile-long oval cavern, Joxin noticed features he had glossed over and ignored earlier. Kind of important ones, like a strip of flat ground running down the cavern's center before turning sharply to the right wall and a tunnel mouth hidden from his previous vantage point.
He noticed the gaps in the stone pillars, but he just assumed the… the stal— whatever Sathera called the cone rocks, just happened to form that way. Like how there just happened to be a big… stupidly massive cave complex under the Triad. Which, according to Sathera, was simple.
As she put it, back in the day when the Republic was still trying to expand while holding off waves of beastkin numbering in the hundreds of thousands every few years, they could not afford to spend time moving around large amounts of hyper-condensed stone to build forts. For any construction they attempted, they needed a local source to pull from.
This means that even with its excellent positioning between Cross and Basetown, it wasn't enough to place a fort here without natural resources to start and finish building it quickly. Apparently, a spur of the Steps used to extend out to where the Triad now stands and formed something of a large stone plateau overlooking the rivers.
The legions of the past used the abundant stone source to create the Triad and formed a plate underneath it to prevent anything from burrowing under its walls — which didn't seem to work out well from Joxin's point of view. With a large amount of solid stone next to a river, the water leaked into the ground and rocks, wearing them away and slowly forming these caverns, according to her. Whether Sathera was correct or not, Joxin doubted the builders of the Triad cared enough to take more than a casual look into the extent of the structure underneath their fortress. Otherwise, they would have tried more to seal it off or take advantage of it.
Or it could be that they did know, but it was too much of a task to undertake at the time, and before they could come back to it, the knowledge of the caves was forgotten. Forgotten to everyone but their enemies, as these caves were filled with goblins.
Anyway, given Joxin's new point of view, it was unmistakable that there was a road leading to this camp from somewhere lower in the earth. Which seemed like a big deal and a future problem.
It might be interesting to follow the road and see where it leads, and they should definitely report it, but Joxin really couldn't care less about it at that moment. Angling to the left, away from the road, in case anything happened to be moving along it that he missed, he moved parallel to it while skirting the cavern's wall.
Common knowledge put it that having a wall taking up one of your sides made it easier to track everything around you… But that was a damn lie. As they had all learned in this hell hole, having you back to a wall only gave the goblins a false sense of security to play with, as they had another angle from which to launch a surprise attack. Given no one knew they were around… it should be fine. Yeah, it's gonna be fine! Joxin thought, trying and failing to reassure himself.
As they entered a section of the chamber that was darker than the rest as a thick patch of cone rocks moved between them and the ethereal green light, Joxin extended a tendril out of each foot.
He formed them into a dome. Every time his foot came down, the dome hit the ground a few inches before his foot, as gentle as a feather hitting the ground. When he was sure nothing would move, he pressed it tight to the ground and solidified the shell, preventing the sound of his footfall from escaping.
It wasn't perfect. If it hit a surface or water hard enough, it would still make a sound even if his foot didn't, but that was where you needed the basic skills of a scout. What did it matter how skilled you were with casting techniques if you were unable to move your body correctly?
When you get really skilled, Joxin heard you could reshape the shell as it was coming down to slide around anything it was about to come into contact with and even test the surface your feet were about to touch, but that was beyond him. Joxin just wanted to prevent any sound of a rock he accidentally kicked.
And it was a good thing he did, as his feet did make contact with precariously positioned stones. Not that they didn't fail in the darkness, as Joxin and the others also splashed into puddles several times, leading to long seconds where their hearts pounded in their ears, and they released internal screams of frustration while trying to calm their hearts as to listen past its thundering beats.
All in all, they made good time when crossing the chamber, though the stress of being noticed before they were ready to make a break for the stairwell might have taken a few years off of Joxin's life. But now they were gathered together, no more than a stone's throw from the outer rings of tents, looking at their target.
"Wait here a few seconds," Sathera ordered, "Look for any nearby patrols. We will move one at a time to a new position and hide in the thick shadows, scouting out the area before moving to the next spot. And we will need to form a…" She trailed off, a frown of confusion making its way onto her face.
"What's wrong?" Joxin asked, suddenly looking around for danger.
"I tried to make a mental link." Sathera said, "But my psy was blown away like a hand full of dust in a strong wind."
"It's been like that since we basically came down here. It just eats up too much psy to maintain." Joxin countered, not really paying attention.
"Not like this. I couldn't even reach you with a telepathic tendril before it dissipated."
Joxin opened his mouth to speak, but Jim cut in, "You guys hear something?"
Stopping and listening, Joxin was about to say he heard nothing, but he said nothing as he noticed a faint, steady thudding from behind them. The thudding of large, deep drums.