Near the end of the evening, Ottar, the expedition leader, announced the watch schedules and informed everyone that it was mandatory to be sober during that time. I suspected this particular policy had been the result of one too many mistakes during past caravans.
The healers were split between the shifts, Vel was paired with Sebastian for the first shift while I was with Amelia for the last. There wasn't the space for me to build a web, the clearing was entirely devoid of trees and I didn't want to test the wagons against my full weight dangling from them. Instead, I used earth magic to mold the ground into a suitable bed and filled it with a blanket of webs and some pillows from my storage item.
I gave Vel a good night kiss, since our shift didn't align or overlap and went to sleep. Amelia was the one to wake me up when I found her struggling in my arms while one of the scouts sniggered in the background. She had tried to shake me awake but, in my sleep, I had grabbed her like I would have with Vel.
"Do you always drag random people into your bed?" The prickly healer asked.
"Sorry about that," I said, "usually, only Vel steps in my web."
"Well, whatever," she said brusquely but I could still see a faint blush on her face, "let's get this over with."
"With the amount of wards around, I doubt anything will come too close," the scout said. "Monsters follow their instincts, that much magic and people around, very few will dare to approach."
And she was correct, the night was quiet. A few curious juveniles were spotted near the edges of the forest but they scampered away at the first sign of movement from the caravan. This was mostly a concern for the scouts, however. Amelia and I stayed at the center of the formation to provide support in case of an actual attack.
Alan cannot see danger close-by, Great Mistress, my familiar informed me.
You can circle around and come back, I sent over our telepathic link. Let's keep an eye on the close surroundings for now.
After a few minutes, Alan swooped back and landed on my extended arm with a soft caw. I started to gently caress his feathers as he preened under the attention. It was nice to have him by my side more often even if Vel tended to spoil him a bit much at meal times.
After a few minutes of scratches from the Great Mistress, Alan jumped off my arm and trotted over to Amelia who had been watching us. She had tried to be discreet but Alan and I weren't fooled. He cawed at her a few times and bumped his head on her thigh and hands.
"Is he …" Amelia seemed unsure of what to ask. "What kind of familiar is he?"
"Spirit Familiar," I explained.
"Aren't you a Druid?" She asked, surprised. "I thought spirit guardians were from Shaman? At least that's what my instructor told me."
"Shaman and Druid classes have a lot of overlap. It's easier for the former to go down the spirit path but there are multiple ways to gain that specific skill. Alan used to be my Shadow Familiar before I acquired the class specialization that upgraded the skill to its spirit variant."
"Hmmm," Amelia mused as she ran her hand along Alan's back. "Is it true that there is a potion in the Dark Elf villages to get the class you want?" I raised an eyebrow at that question.
"There is a coming of age ceremony where elves gain their first class," I said, keeping things vague, "and it does involve a potion but it does not allow one to choose their class. Even if I could brew the potion, I'm not sure it would work on humans."
"Oh," Amelia looked down.
The discussion moved away from the topic but Amelia wasn't the most open person in the world. She didn't talk about her past before her life as an adventurer, which had started four years ago, and I suspected she was trying her best to leave her old life behind. For my part, I simply forgot to mention which village Vel and I hailed from.
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In the end, the night was uneventful and the caravan resumed it's slow advance at the first lights of the crystals.
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The first notable event happened half-way to the next stop, a group of Taratects approached the caravan and poked at the defenses. By itself, this event wouldn't have been exceptional, the large spiders were notoriously aggressive among the denizens of the jungle. However, it happened with several other types of monsters that were not. Black Scissor Beetles were lone and opportunist hunters, it wouldn't have surprised anyone if one tried to nibble a lone scout on patrol, but five of them trying to approach the caravan during a period of an hour was not normal behavior.
Something fishy was going on. It wasn't out of the ordinary for monsters to attack, it was expected even, but the apparent regularity was suspicious. After three days, the caravan had been poked by five different species of insectile monsters, multiple times per day. Each time there was at least two hours between the attacks but never more than six.
Then, one of the merchants accused one of the adventurers of theft because some merchandise had disappeared from their wagon. Several more reports of missing merchandise started to surface as other members of the caravan performed their own inventory.
The monster attacks were a distraction for something else.
At the same time, it wasn't one that could easily be ignored, the caravan escort needed to safeguard the merchants and their wares from the dangers of the jungle.
On the fourth day, a large group of centipedes targeted the second segment of the caravan and some members of group three had to move to reinforce them. At the same time, group four was distracted by some persistent Acid Roaches.
Then, I felt something through my sphere, the same strange shimmer in the air that Jack and his band had felt like when they had concealed themselves. I looked around, Sarah had moved back along the convoy to cover more carts and Jane had gone to help with group two. This only left Vel and I to cover at least four wagons, we were the weak point in the defense at the moment. She looked at me and I used telepathy to send a quick message.
There's at least one concealed rogue around, probably one of the thieves, after the grain cart.
Vel gave a quick nod and moved to the other side of the line. She cast a shadow spell that made her harder to perceive and started to creep towards the likely position of the thieves. For my part, I moved next to the grain cart as if to bridge the gap in the caravan's defenses. I felt the distortions in the air shift slightly but, since my head was turned towards the jungle, the thieves likely assumed that I was not searching for them. Vel reached the end of the grain cart on her side soon after.
The constant noise of hooves around the carts from the beast that pulled them made it easy to conceal minute sounds. I watched as a crate of merchandise disappeared inside a storage item, the owner of the grain cart should have spotted it easily, but they were paying attention to the battle close by, not the cart in front of them.
Without waiting for the thieves to retreat, I flared Mystic Essence and crossed the last few meters in a blur, several spells already on the tips of my fingers. The first was a detection spell that released a wave of magic which stuck to the three thieves, making them glow a bright orange.
"Fuck!" I heard one of them say.
With my targets in view, I released my next spells. I used Spell Synthesis to fuse Sleep and Calm together with runic enhancements to allow multiple targets to be chosen. One of them managed to resist the spell altogether and jumped towards me with a pair of daggers but her two companions lost the contest of wills. One tumbled to the ground and was caught by Vel's vines before he could be trampled by the horses while the other gained a vacant look, an indication that the Calm component had hit.
I summoned my Ravri Glaive and parried both daggers headed for my chest.
The look of surprise on the rogue's face told me she hadn't expected a mage to pull out a knife. She was quick to recover and tried to gain some distance but dozens of catalysts appeared around us and a web formed between them right behind her.
She had landed right into my trap.
"What the," both of her arms were stuck to the webs from the elbow up.
I didn't waste time, the catalysts moved and closed the web around her while I created more thread to solidly bind her in place. I didn't know what kind of escape artist skills a rogue like her had and I didn't want to take any risks. She struggled and tried to cut herself free but I overpowered a sleep spell and finally battered through her mental resistance. On her side, Vel had secured her two prisoners with thick cocoons of vines that left only their heads visible.
The whole battle had lasted thirty seconds at most and Sarah had already called in reinforcements with a signal arrow.
"What happened," she asked as jogged next to me, "thieves?"
"Yes, three of them," I answered, "Vel has the other two."
"Think the monster attacks are linked?"
"More than likely," I nodded, "they probably have a tamer to lead the packs."
"What a mess," she sighed.