--- Atrog ---

They had traveled back in time. At least that was what the fey had claimed.

They could see the position of the sun on the other side of the translucent fog that separated them from the Material Plane. Either they were in the past, or it was the next day already and their journey had taken much longer than expected.

Rania assured them that it was the former.

According to everything Atrog knew about how time worked, this was impossible.

Denissa Mardok was the only chronomancer in the world, and even she claimed that time travel was limited to rewinding events. Traveling through time could cause an ontological paradox, and those were supposed to be impossible.

And yet, here they were.

Then again, the fey were well known for cheating and using tricks of perception to feign being more powerful than they actually were.

More importantly, now was not the time for existential questions. Now was the time for action.

He addressed the others: "*It looks like they are still setting up their defenses. We are so close to them, it's a wonder they can't sense us. We will have the element of surprise. Balron, do you sense any traps?*"

"*Not with divination spells, no. The barrier blocks them. But if I were them, I would set up traps here, here, and here.*" Balron said as he pointed out multiple locations.

"*In that case, here is what we should do...*"

As he began explaining his plan, he was a little annoyed that Rania seemed not to be paying attention.

---

The enemy's main fortification disappeared in a flash of light before they even knew what hit them.

They were prepared for an assault from the East, with plenty of advance warning.

They were not prepared for their Southern flank to be attacked by a war machine that would not have been out of place during the Great War.

Each shot of the Cataclyst cannon vaporized houses, and killed entire groups of soldiers.

Atrog was glad that their assault was going so well, but he did not enjoy it. These were people they were fighting, not monsters. He would not be surprised to learn that at least some of them were unaware that their superiors betrayed their country, or that they were aware but unable to leave.

It was a little like fighting bandits. Most of them made the decision to turn to banditry and did not deserve mercy, but some of them had no choice and killing them was simply an unfortunate necessity.

It was either him or them, after all.

None of team Nundru had even left the safety of the carriage. Their initial attack had taken out the enemy's most powerful weapon, and without it the remainder of their attacks were utterly ineffective against its shielding.

After several long minutes of intense combat, they finally ran out of targets.

"*The enemy is retreating underground. Time for phase two.*" He said.

Leaving the safety of their carriage was dangerous. There was a risk that the enemy was only feigning a retreat and would ambush them once they left.

But right now they still had the element of surprise. If they pressed hard and did not give them time to recover, the fighting would be a lot easier. He was not looking forward to a fight against prepared enemies entrenched in underground corridors.

Predictably, Balron had not been in favor of this plan. He would have preferred a more careful approach. But the old dwarf acknowledged that Atrog was the more experienced between them when it came to tactics, and did not argue.

Leadership was a burden to Atrog, but one that he could trust to nobody else.

As they exited the carriage, Dov started screaming. Her sonic assault had been invaluable during the assassination attempt, and there was no reason to abandon such a useful tactic. She was sharing her heat vision again, which was always a bit disorienting, but well worth it.

"*I knew we forgot something when we built Boomwagon the First. We should add some kind of weapon that can be used to besiege underground lairs.*" Galanys said as they quickly made their way inside the building.

"*Summoning elementals could work.*" Balron responded.

"*Brainstorm it later. Focus now!*" Atrog rebuked them.

As much as they had improved through their practice, between Galanys' curiosity, Balron's academic mindset, and Rania's general Rania-ness, his team still sometimes acted unprofessionally, and that could get people killed. Only Dov shared his own discipline and military mindset.

He was glad to see that Team Delta at least was acting more professionally. No idle chatter there. They stuck close to Rania, ready to defend her.

Through Dov's heat vision, they noticed two enemies standing behind the walls, ready to ambush them as soon as they opened the door. Balron telekinetically launched two large iron spikes at them through the walls, killing them instantly. Then Atrog threw a gas grenade through one of the holes left behind by the spikes, and kicked down the door.

Then the fight started in earnest, and Atrog let his training take over.

Team Nundru moved as one unit, and the enemy did not stand much chance. The Compass of Legends showed the way to their target, they had studied the layout of the facility, and their heat vision made it impossible for the enemy to ambush them. Whenever they encountered entrenched enemies, they threw a gas grenade at them first.

They fought their way through a large part of the facility before the enemy even had the chance to recover their defenses.

Then they ran into the first problem.

"*Take cover!*" Atrog told the others, even as he telepathically indicated the source of the danger to them.

The enemy was firing arrows with high accuracy, despite the smoke.

If they left their cover, they would be shot at. But if they waited too long, the enemy would have time to regroup.

"*Scenario 5. Hit them.*" He instructed Dov.

Since her transformation into an orc, she had become physically stronger, but her telepathy felt just a little slower than usual. It took her several seconds of concentration to do her thing. Too long to be useful in open combat, but good enough for a standoff like this.

She briefly switched off the telepathic connection to them all. There was a scream of pain from the archers. Then the telepathic connection came back.

Dov had established a connection with the enemy, and pushed a feeling of intense pain through the link. They had discovered that this even worked through walls, unlike most spells, which required line of sight to the target.

With the enemy briefly disoriented, Atrog was able to charge in and kill them without risk.

"*They are wearing goggles.*" Galanys commented as she inspected the fallen archers. "*That must be heat vision goggles from the Great War. And look at that. They are wearing some kind of device in their ears. That must be why they did not seem very affected by Dov's screaming.*"

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They were well prepared then, but they were using the obvious counters, and Balron had anticipated this during their planning sessions.

"*Switch to countermeasure two.*" Atrog instructed his team.

When they sensed the heat signatures of the next group of enemies, Atrog threw a smoke bomb into the room, but he did not charge in as before.

Instead, Dov turned her heat vision off while Galanys conjured a modified fireball. It was far hotter and more concentrated than an ordinary fireball. This also made it much too difficult to control to use it as an explosive. But that was not its purpose.

They all had to avert their eyes even though Dov no longer used her heat vision. As the fireball entered the doorway, they heard screams of pain from the soldiers within.

Galanys dismissed her fireball, Dov reactivated her heat vision, and then they charged in.

With their goggles amplifying the light, the enemy was blinded.

The only one who still posed a serious threat was an enemy mage. You did not need to see your enemy if your magic could just blow up an entire area.

Atrog expected Balron to block the attack using his shields, as he had done before. But to his surprise, that wasn't necessary. Norsh had switched to using throwing knives, and he managed to impale the enemy mage's hand mid-cast.

It was all going perfectly smoothly, until it suddenly wasn't.

The enemy was blinded, but there were enough of them that one of them got lucky.

An arrow headed straight for Rania while she was outside of Balron's effective shield range. There was no time for her to dodge!

Fortunately, Pymion battered the arrow aside with his shield. But a fraction of a second later, another arrow followed, and that one hit the dragonborn in the chest.

Seconds later, the last remaining enemy was dead. But Pymion was lying on the ground. He was clutching his chest, and his face was white as a sheet.

The arrow had pierced his heart.

Atrog was not sure if he was going to make it. His own healing as a paladin would not be potent enough for a wound to the heart.

"No! You can't die now!" Rania shouted at Pymion, with tears in her eyes. "You are too young to die! You can't save me and then die! Think of all the fun adventures you were still planning to go on! Think of your friends! It's not fair!"

"*Stop being such a baby. You have had worse.*" Lynn told the dying man.

Pymion looked at her in fear, but then gave her a nod.

She grabbed the arrow and ripped it out of Pymion's chest. The arrow was without its tip. Without hesitation, she plunged her hand into the open wound and pulled out the missing arrowhead.

Blood was everywhere. There was no way his own healing would be enough to save him now.

But Lynn just pressed her hands together and muttered a short incantation. There was a burst of light, and suddenly Pymion was completely healed.

He was still covered in blood, and his face was full of sweat. But he sat up immediately and gathered his weapons. There was no time to rest, yet.

"*Your bedside manner still needs work.*" He joked with the woman who had just saved his life. Dov was blanking out the worst of it, but even so Atrog could tell through the telepathic link that Pymion was in immense pain right now. He was simply very good at dealing with it.

"*Please remind me to avoid getting stabbed. I don't want to be healed like that.*" Galanys added.

"*And now you know why I do it like that!*" Lynn responded. "*Pain is an excellent teacher, and people get hurt a lot less if they know that the cure hurts worse than the injury.*"

Atrog was pretty sure that reasoning was quite flawed, but Lynn was a priestess of Duna. They tended to get pretty messed up in the head and he had stopped trying to talk them out of their insanities years ago. He was just glad that she was as skilled at healing as she had claimed.

They soon came upon a room from which they could loudly hear two people arguing.

"Don't go out there, Clyde! They will kill you!"

"They will kill us if we stay here, Mary! We have to help the security forces!"

A man exited the room. He had the looks of a research mage, not that of a combatant.

"On the ground!" Atrog shouted at him in the loudest voice he could muster. With a bit of luck, he would comply and they could avoid killing any civilians today.

But unfortunately, the man chose poorly.

He started casting a spell at Atrog. It was slow and sloppy. Mages were terrible at casting under pressure if they didn't train for it.

Rania shot her bow at the mage. The arrow lit up with magic mid flight as it headed directly for his head.

The mage's eyes widened in horror at his imminent death.

Then the arrow suddenly veered in midair and flew past the mage. It crashed against a door further down the hallway instead.

"*Huh, what happened? Is the arrow defective?*" Rania asked.

She had switched to her Arrows of Bad Guy Slaying some time ago, and so far they had worked perfectly fine against their enemies.

The door that had attracted the arrow opened, and a man walked out.

He was a human, almost as tall as Atrog, and with a vicious grin on his face. He was heavily armored, and carried a shield and a flail.

His armor bore the insignia of the Black Legion. The part of the army that was specifically meant as a deterrent to keep other countries following the rules of war. They were monsters by design, and would only be deployed against enemies that deserved it.

The mage glanced back at the door. When he noticed the man approach, he subconsciously took a step away from him, and towards Atrog.

Rania fired an arrow at the soldier. He raised his shield and easily blocked it. But instead of falling to the ground, the arrow started glowing. Then it pushed the man back against the wall, as if his armor was weightless. It started glowing brighter and brighter.

Then it exploded.

When his sight and hearing came back, Atrog noticed that nothing remained of the soldier except for a small pile of ash.

"*Nope. Looks like the arrows are working fine, after all.*" Rania said. "*They get stronger the more of a Bad Guy someone is. Oh. Does that mean the mage isn't a Bad Guy? Uh. Should I apologize for shooting him?*"

"*We will knock him out, but you did the right thing by defending us.*" Atrog responded.

"We have been sent by the Interim Council to bring your superiors to justice. They have been condemned as traitors to Oruk." He told the two mages.

They looked shocked to hear that.

"My teammate will knock you out with biomancy. So you will survive this, even if we can't trust you. What can you tell us about the resistance further in?"

"Nothing! We just work here. We didn't know this was illegal, sir! We just thought this was secret because it's worth a lot of money. We have no idea what's happening outside our labs. Please don't hurt us!"

"*They sound genuine. I can sense no deception from them.*" Dov said. At such short notice and with her current weakened telepathy, this was not a very reliable guess, but it matched his own intuition.

"*I agree. Let's not waste any time here and give the enemy a chance to regroup. Knock them out.*"

Dov briefly explained to the two mages what she was going to do, then used biomancy to render them unconscious. By the time they woke up again, this would all be over. One way or another.

"*Rania, most of the soldiers here probably think that they are fighting to defend people they care about. Cilia could have convinced them of anything. That Black Legion soldier was the exception. Will your arrows work like that against other evil people, too?*" He asked Rania as Dov knocked out the two researchers.

"*I think so. They hurt more the more of a Bad Guy someone is. This one must have been very bad.*"

"*I agree. I have worked with the Black Legion before. Many of them are honorable, just extremely ruthless. They believe that the ends justify the means. But this guy was clearly the exception. The researcher looked more afraid of him than of us."

They moved on.

They encountered no more enemies until they reached a door labeled ‘Overseer Office’. This place contained the controls for the whole facility. If Cilia was not in there and ready to stop them, they could simply press a few buttons and ruin everything she was doing here.

But it looked like they would have no such luck. While Dov's heat vision could not penetrate the enchantments of this high-security room, the Compass of Legends was pointing straight at the door.

They took up positions and approached carefully. He sensed nervous thoughts from everyone through the telepathic link.

Everyone except Rania, that was. She was giddy with excitement instead.

As Atrog neared the large door, it suddenly swung open on its own.

It revealed a huge circular room full of documents and instruments whose purpose he could only guess at. A large gaping hole in the ground dominated the middle of the room.

Behind it, directly on the other side of the room, stood a chair. A man was seated on it, facing away from them.

Balron immediately launched a storm of telekinetic projectiles at it. Why give the enemy time to plan, after all?

But all of the projectiles impacted a shield before they could reach their target.

The chair turned around slowly.

Seated on it was a man in heavy armor. It looked like the armor on the propaganda posters used during the Great War. The kind that had allowed the forces of Oruk to fight off numerically superior armies for decades. Armor like this could no longer be produced, and was difficult to repair. This was no mere piece of metal, but the result of decades of engineering by one of the mightiest nations in history. Only the strongest of adventurers could afford it.

The armor covered the man completely, except for his head, which was unprotected. He was holding the helmet in his hands, instead of wearing it like a sensible person.

"*That's him! That's the mage we fought in Greenwatch.*" Dov said.

"I have been expecting you. You are early." The man said. Somehow, the simple words were spoken with such weight that Atrog felt hesitant to attack.

He was confused. This was not how he had expected a showdown with a powerful mage to go. Who in their right mind would speak, instead of attacking? Why would he wait for them here, instead of fighting alongside his forces?

Suddenly, music began playing from some of the instruments in the room. He recognized it from the final fight sequence of a famous theater play.

"*That's so cool! I love it!*" Rania said.

The man stood up from his chair, and his cloak billowed dramatically in the still air.

"*Did he just use magic to make his cape float?*" Balron asked incredulously.

Rania squeed.

He felt a feeling of alarm from Dov. "Oh no. I know what is going on here. Cilia Ulein is a master playwright and author. He knows how much attention Tonos is paying to us! He is doing this on purpose!"

"Take care of the shaman. It should be a good test of your abilities." The man said dramatically, to nobody in particular.

A rift in space opened in the air next to him, and a masked woman stepped out alongside two earth elementals. She wore the same type of armor as the man.

"As you command." She responded, and began circling the room together with her summons.

The man raised the helmet in his hands and put it on with deliberate slowness.

"Now then." He said as the helmet snapped shut around his head and his eyes began glowing red.

"Show me what you have learned."