Kathren let her snarky comment hang in the air, then decided to continue to needle the man. "What about this chamber do you think is incomplete? If I didn't know better, I would think the dark elf bitch pulled a fast one on you. Ohh, but you're a reaver, so that can't be possible."

"I wouldn't say she pulled one over on me," Redgenald said, bobbing his head from side to side to show uncertainty as he ignored most of what she said, "but I might have embellished how much I ripped from her mind."

"Look at that. The Reaper is a liar."

"Exaggerator at most. Scouring a mind moments before true death is more art than anything. I might have filled in some gaps from the information I extracted, but I got a clear image of the main points. Their overall plan, the path to the cavern, and the fact that the cavern wasn't finished, from the last report the dark elf received."

Kathren didn't say anything as she looked around the cavern, but the accusing silence between them said more than enough. If anything within this place was unconstructed, it wasn't the three ridiculously tall stone columns placed along the center of the chamber holding up the ceiling. The height of those stone pillars has to be somewhere in the mid-two hundred feet… No, gotta be more than that. Three hundred? Damn, those things are tall.

After a couple minutes of study, which was far easier than she feared it would be thanks to the clumps of what looked like glowing mushrooms growing all over, Kathren started to frown as she inspected the pillars over five hundred feet away from her position. The lower her eyes moved on the structures, the more something about them bothered her, but it probably wasn't that important.

As for the base of the pillars, she couldn't make much out, as they were at the bottom of a trench running the entire length of the cavern. From where she was located, which was roughly in the center of the room, the floor dropped every handful of feet in ringed stepped tiers until it reached the trench a few hundred feet below.

Moving her eyes to the far left following the trench, Kathren studied the source of the occasional shout and clattering of stone she had heard since arriving. The only way to describe what she was seeing being constructed was to use the word battlements. The thing was, everything about it looked weird.

While the lowest point in the chamber's floor was over two hundred feet lower — if you only counted the vertical distance — from their position, the construction wasn't anywhere near the trench. Not that it should be, as the overall shape of the chamber was a 'V,' the pillars being at the bottom, so why there would be a wall at the bottom of the trench didn't make much sense.

Not that it made sense for a wall to be inside a cavern at all, but at least the wall wasn't following the shape of the room either, so at least the goblins had that. What they decided to do was put the "base" of their fortifications inside a hollowed-out cavern on the wall that ran most of the distance across the room, about two-thirds up from the lowest point. Inside the alcove, the wall started at least twenty feet from the edge, standing over thirty feet and covering most of the distance to the alcove's roof.

The structure's existence and placement weren't the only weird things. The wall had two gates placed to either side close to the edges of the cubby, with one switchbacking ramp in the center of the cavity leading down into the trench. Even with her quick look, Kathren could easily see that the wall, while not complete, wasn't far off from being so, and with hundreds of figures clambering over it, the structure was being constructed at a visible rate.

Turning to the other side of the room, Kathren saw… another fifty-foot hollowed-out recess placed in the nearly same position up the wall. The only difference was that the wall had been razed at most a few feet from the ground, not concealing tents and a stone structure placed behind it.

"Well," Kathren said too neutrally, "I would guess that is what still needs to be constructed, though I fail to see how preventing it will help us stop the dark elves from destroying the First Ring Wall."

"Quite," The man said, his voice containing his frown though she could not see it. "We are going to have to adjust our plans. Fall back, we'll have to consult with the others."

Throwing one last look around the chamber, making sure she remembered all the important details, Kathren scooted back from the ledge until she was far enough into the tunnel not to be seen when she stood. Even then, she made sure to stalk forward, keeping as quiet as possible. Now was not the time to get sloppy.

Redgenald kept pace with her, though she could tell that most of his focus was back in the room, not on their quick journey down the passage. When they walked back into the bullseye lantern lights, the centurion's head snapped up, his bushy eyebrows quirking when he saw them. "Ahh, so something is wrong," He rumbled past his pipe. "To be honest, I'm surprised things have been going this well for this long. So spit it out, lad, give us the news."

Kathren had slipped to the side, letting Redgenald take the full brunt of their attention. This was his mess, so let him clean it up. "It appears my interpretation of the information I recovered was off." He finally said after he had gathered his thoughts.

Borment took a deep puff of his pipe and blew it out before his voice took on a hard edge, "This wasn't all for nothing, was it?"

"No," Reginald said, his hand slashing the air, "not at all. This is a chamber designed to cause a collapse, presumably under something important, such as a wall. My mistake came from interpreting how a portion of it still needed to be constructed. I was right in that the chamber is not fully constructed, but wrong in assuming it was the mechanism for collapse that still needed to be built. For some reason, the goblins are constructing fortresses on either side of the chamber, but that doesn't really matter. The point is we cannot delay or stop them from constructing the chamber."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Centurion Borment chewed on his pipe stem, and the legionary's faces behind him listening in darkened with a mixture of anger and regret. “…Can we take the chamber and hold it?"

"Not for long, if at all." Redgenald instantly replied, "The chamber's too big, and there are too many goblins and tunnels. We couldn't kill them all, and even if we were able to push back those in the chamber, more would come soon enough. It's just not a feasible option. Really, if I knew the size of the chamber, I wouldn't have suggested coming down here in the first place…"

"If we turn back now, we will most likely encounter some kind of force and be surrounded in the tunnel as we attempted fighting our way back into the manor, assuming you could lead us back. I doubt even the scout will be able to sneak her way through the tunnel network and report on what we discovered." The centurion muttered, ruminating on their options. "I guess we could huddle in this tunnel and hope we aren't found…" He said the last part a little louder and heard the grumbling of the men, who disliked the idea of hiding while their brothers and sisters fought above.

"Not a fan of that idea," Redgenald said, "If I have to act alone, I will."

"Don't get your robes in a twist, lad," the grizzled man said, waving his pipe at Redgenald. "I'm just laying out the options. And the boys don't like the last one any better than you." A short grunt of agreement filled the tunnel as those close enough to hear made their agreement known. "If we can't go back or say here, that only leaves one direction. The question is when. We could wait until they are about to trigger the collapse, then stop them."

Redgenald's face shifted as he contemplated the proposal, but he shook his head after a moment and said, "No, that won't work. At best, we would stall them for an hour or two before being cut down. From what I can see, there is only one option."

"Which is?"

"We charge out there and collapse the cavern now before they are ready." Silence crashed down on the tunnel, and Kathren thought she could pick up the faint echoing sound of the goblins in the chamber shouting at each other.

Which sounded like a good idea right about now. "Are you fucking crazy!?" Kathren snapped, unable to keep quiet, "Wait, what am I saying? Of course you are! Who do I think I'm talking to? Rational people aren't Reavers!" Taking a deep breath, Kathren forced herself to become as calm as possible and decided to try to talk to him on his level. So, like she was talking to a particularly challenging child who was simple, she said, "How is destroying a large section of our walls helping the legion?"

"If we can't stop it, triggering it before the enemy is in position is the next best thing. At least then, the legion will know of the danger and have some time to prepare. It would also most likely cause the dark elves to launch their attack early, but in the same vain, it will save lives as fewer legionaries are on the walls when they fall." Redgenald calmly said as he ignored her condescending tone while he answered the question. "It is the best of our bad options."

Kathren had to admit it made sense to her, but she kept the scowl on her face as she glared at the halfwit before her. Because only a halfwit would think up such a plan in the first place. She didn't even glance to the side when the centurion said, "So, we have to collapse a ceiling supporting a wall on top of us? Seems like a good way to die."

"It probably is." Redgenald agreed. "But I might have a way for at least some of us to live. The odds would be better if we could sneak up on the pillars and break them one after another once we are in position. However, I will admit that everything really depends on whether all of the pillars need to collapse before the chamber roof falls. If that is the case, we should have the time to rush for the lightly defended recess on the right for shelter." Then he shrugged as if saying it was out of his hands, "In the end, how many of us survive depends entirely on how they constructed it to collapse and how the attack on the alcove goes."

"So it's not a complete suicide mission? But maybe that's the wishful thinking of an old legion grunt… Eh, but doesn't matter. There's always a lot of 'ifs' in battle, but a chance was all we needed to hear, isn't that right, lads?" A rumble of determination from the men followed his proclamation. None of them were even pretending to not be listening to the conversation at this point.

There was a lot you couldn't control as a legionary, which could mean the difference between life and death. Having the threat of death looming overhead was nothing new, though this time, it was getting a little literal. But any legionary worth the name would stake their survival against their ability to kill what stood before them. "So," Borment rumbled, a savage smile coming onto his face, "how are we doing this?"

"It's not going to be that easy," Kathren said, speaking up, causing everyone to look at her. Flicking her wrist dismissively at Redgenald, she continued, "He's wrong in assuming we can sneak up. There are guards around the bases of the columns. They're well hidden, but I spotted four around one and two at the others. As soon as we start fighting the guards or they start screaming, the goblins from both sides will collapse on us. And there is the option of retreading back into this tunnel."

Taking in the information, Redgeanld slowly said, "No, we can't effectively retreat while being pursued back here. There's no real path, and clambering up all the steps would take too long. Every level would be like a bottleneck. I guess it's an option, but it will mean the deaths of most of us, assuming we all don't get crushed halfway." As he finished tearing apart her suggestion, Kathren did nothing.

She expected it, as it really was a stupid option. The tunnel mouth was located both higher up and a longer distance up the side of the cave than the hollows. Assuming they could outrun a room collapsing was something she would expect Redgenald to think up, but she needed to add to her list of things the Bastard missed. When no one said anything else, he continued, "As for the attack, we'll split up. One group will move to secure our escape path, and the other will go to the opposite side of the chamber and start breaking the columns one at a time as they fall back. A third team will move to handle the goblins caught between the other two before joining the second team."

Borment nodded in agreement, "Makes sense and is simple. Both signs of a decent plan. How are we going to divide the teams?"

Redgenald didn't even hesitate before saying, "Centurion Borment will lead the assault to the right against the less fortified cubby with about two-thirds of the men. Kathren and Drogaith, my Knight, will take a few of the more stealthy men to sweep up the stragglers while I hold the rear guard position with the rest of the men."

For the first time, Borment's face became serious instead of his relaxed expression as he looked Redgenald up and down. "You'll be leading my lads on a controlled retreat? Sure you can handle it?"

Redgenald didn't waver as he stared the old man in the eye as he spoke, "I am more than capable, as there isn't much to it. Your task is the important one. If you can't take the hollow, we need to know and adjust our plans as soon as possible. Now, any more questions?" He looked around, and no one spoke up. There was nothing else to say.

Kathren noticed his eyes settle on her, but she turned away to face Borment, intending to ask him who his stealthiest men were. There was no time to deal with the arrogant bastard.