Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«I don’t know exactly,» the matriarch said. «The attackers consisted of a mage controlling two war trolls, but the base is guaranteed to have more forces than that.»

«War trolls!?» Taiven blanched. «Hell, that is way more than we signed up for!»

«The guy is definitely not paying us enough to confront a couple of war trolls with mage support,» Mumble said quietly.

«Maybe check it out anyway?» Zorian tried. «Like, from distance? I may be able to tell how many forces there are in the place.»

«Yeah,» Taiven said after considering things for a few moments. «Yeah, we should check it out at least. No offense to the matriarch here, but a bunch of guys running around the sewers with tamed war trolls sounds a bit… implausible. Maybe she saw something else.»

«I suppose it’s possible,» the matriarch allowed. «I haven’t actually seen trolls before, and wasn’t personally present when the incident occurred, but they sounded very much like the trolls humans speak of.»

«Right,» Taiven nodded. «Where did you say this base was again?»

The base wasn’t actually in the city sewers. That part of the Dungeon was somewhat patrolled and monitored, and it would have been impossible to hide a large mass of soldiers there for an appreciable length of time. For that matter, the aranea didn’t actually live in the sewers either, although they considered them part of their territory. Instead, both the aranean home base and the various invader outposts were situated in what was known to Cyoria authorities as the ‘intermediary layer’.

It was not particularly rare for mages to descend into the intermediary layer, but it was not a common occurrence either. The intermediary layer was too dangerous for a casual stroll by an unarmed civilian, but mostly devoid of anything valuable that would attract dungeon delvers and other adventurers. The city hired mercenaries to sweep through the place every few years and get rid of any obvious threats that had set up residence, and they usually also picked the place clean of anything valuable, leaving a great expanse of little value. For those who wanted to challenge themselves against the denizens of the Underworld and search the place for riches, there was the Hole and its direct access to deeper levels that hadn’t been picked clean over the decades. Most of the visitors from the city consisted of an occasional thrill-seeking student and an occasional patrol to keep an eye on things.

The invaders chose the timing of their invasion well. The city was so focused on the summer festival and its associated problems that it didn’t pay attention to what was happening in the dungeon at all. This would normally not be such a problem, as very few problems could spring out of nothing in a couple of measly months — especially with little to no indication that something big was happening — but now…

«Holy shit,» Taiven whispered, peering from behind their cover to look at the camp again. «They’ve got a freaking army there!»

«Get down, you idiot,» Grunt growled at her, pulling her down behind the rock they were using as cover. «Do you want them to see you? If they notice us, we’re dead. There must be at least a hundred trolls down there and at least 20 handlers.»

«Sorry,» Taiven said. «It’s just… so unreal.»

Zorian had to agree. He was expecting it, and he was still surprised at the scale of what they were seeing. Then again, this was why the matriarch had chosen this particular base out of the 12 or so she knew of. The others were smaller and much better hidden, but this particular base was situated in a large open cavern and had enough artificial illumination that a human observer could see the whole camp easily from a sufficiently high vantage… like the one they were using, for example. In fact, the vantage point they were using was pretty much perfect for observing the camp.

‘Hmm, I wonder…’

He silently ran his fingers against the walls of the tunnel that brought them here. It was bumpy but smooth. Far too smooth to be natural. The rock they were hiding behind was the same.

‘Apparently this was even more of a set up than I thought it was,’ Zorian thought. ‘I bet one of the aranean mages made this tunnel specifically so we could find it. It would explain why no one seemed to be paying any attention to this particular entrance, even though the other two are both guarded — they don’t even know it exists. ‘

Well, whatever — time to do his part in this charade. He pulled out a mirror from his backpack and silently cast a scrying spell on it. The base had a divination ward, of course, but it was based on the idea of stopping people from realizing that the base was there to begin with. Since Zorian knew that the camp existed and where it was, and was in fact right next to it, the entire ward was pretty much useless against him.

After 5 minutes of watching the camp through the mirror, Taiven decided she had seen enough and motioned him to cancel the spell.

«Let’s go,» she said. «I want to get out of here before our luck runs out.»