Nidra’s trail was sparse.

The wily ex-assassin was far more skilled at passing without a trace than the adventurers had been when they’d kidnapped the bakers, which made tracking her a challenge. But it was not an indomitable one. She had crossed the river, which made him lose her briefly, but another bloody handprint on the far side of the water showed him the trail again.

The handprint also confirmed an important detail.

This trail was on purpose.

Nidra didn’t have to leave this handprint. The river’s waters could have cleaned her hands so that she could leave no trace at all. She had either kept her hand out of the water or she had bloodied it again to leave this mark.

So emboldened, Hirrus hunted more fervently for the trail.

The passage of a dozen people moving at speed was hard to mask, even in the city. Especially not when they wanted to be followed. Where there was no kicked trash or scuffed stone, there were drips of blood. A handprint here, a footprint there, a mark along the wall where someone with a sheathed weapon had been forced by the fast-moving crowd to scrape against the surface in a narrow alley.

How far could they have gone? He was glad they had gotten away from the fight, but there was no sign of adventurers giving chase, so it seemed an unnecessary precaution to-

There was a gentle sensation of tension against his ankle. As he moved his foot, he felt it tense, and then give.

A tripwire.

There was a scraping sound from above, and Hirrus looked up to see a giant stone block dropping down atop him. He wasn’t sure where it had come from, but he suddenly had the idea that neither he, nor Nidra, were as smart as they thought they were.

Hirrus had incorrectly assumed that the trail she’d left behind had been for him to follow.

And she had incorrectly assumed that adventurers would be smart enough to pick up such a sparse trail and pursue her.

She had been trying to lead them into a trap with a trail they could never follow.

In the fraction of a second it took the stone block to fall, Hirrus quickly activated Carchian Verve, enhancing his BUR. Thus empowered, he was able to catch the stone without it crushing him, though the impact drove him to his knees.

But the block was nearly as wide as the corridor. While he had avoided damage, he was now stuck holding the stone on his shoulders, as he could not shrug it off to the sides, and he couldn’t get the leverage to angle it far enough forward or back to drop it without hurting himself.

“Hm,” he grunted, unsure of how to proceed.

He could attempt to destroy it with Arcana, but he would need to use X’ruhn’s Balance to empower Civilization Buster to do the job, and trading away his BUR at the moment seemed unwise.

“Hirrus?”

Hirrus looked up to see Nidra. She was kneeling down at the front of the stone, peering through the gap there.

“How did you get here before the adventurers?” she asked. She stood after a moment, speaking to someone Hirrus couldn’t see. “Run around to the other side and help him with the stone. If they find us like this, it could be the end of us.”

“They’re not coming,” Hirrus grunted. “They didn’t find your trail.”

“How?” she demanded, kneeling down again. “I left plenty of signs.”

“For me, you did,” Hirrus said, shifting the weight of the block on his shoulders. It ground against the wall on his left with a soft crunching sound. “But have you ever tried to give directions to an adventurer? You have to put a pin in their map that will lead them straight to it. They can’t be bothered to follow street signs. How did you think a drop of blood would carry them a hundred yards to the next?”

Nidra grumbled inaudibly, but whoever she had sent around had reached the back of the stone block. Together with Nidra, they were able to take enough of the weight off of the stone that Hirrus was able to scoot himself backwards and get out from under it before the three of them let it fall to the ground.

“Thank you,” Hirrus said.

“Don’t mention it,” the other person said. It was Moirna, and she gave him a friendly pat on the back. “Anything for a friend!”

Nidra clambered over the stone deftly, dropping down beside them.

“I’m waiting for you to ask what happened,” Nidra said, her expression grim.

“I know what happened,” he said, dusting his hands off on his hips. “Battle Orders. They found you.”

She nodded, and the frustration and fury radiating off of her was even enough to make Moirna’s cheerful disposition fall a little.

“They wanted to demoralize me,” Hirrus continued when Nidra didn’t speak. “They knew that they couldn’t stop me directly, so they thought they could break my spirit.”

“What did they say?” Moirna asked, though she flinched when Nidra turned to look at her.

“Nothing,” Hirrus said. “They were gone when I arrived. But they painted the words ‘game over’ on the wall in blood. Even though this is no game, and so long as I live, it’s not over.”

“I should have trusted my instincts,” Nidra said at last. “Someone was snooping around the warehouse. Not even an adventurer. Just a merchant. I ignored him. I thought he was just nosing around because of Sarit buying up the materials for the mattresses. Investigating a potential rival.” She shook her head with a low growl. “I should have known it was more than that.”

“Where are the others?” Hirrus asked.

Nidra turned and gestured for him to follow. Leaving the alleyway the direction Hirrus had come from, they backtracked up the trail Nidra had left for about six blocks before entering an older building that looked like it had been abandoned for at least a decade.

When she opened the door, the dozen remaining Awakened were waiting there with weapons drawn. Their eyes were wide and every one of them looked haunted.

When they saw it was Nidra, the fear subsided.

When they saw Hirrus with her, they actually seemed to relax.

“You’re all here?” she asked them. “Who is watching the other entrances?”

Kamar started to speak - a look of poised distaste on his lined face - but Ten was faster. The kid scrambled to their feet and dashed out of the room towards the rear of the building. After Ten’s example, a few of the others darted away as well, moving to ensure the building was secure.

“This is all we have left,” Nidra said bitterly, turning back towards Hirrus.

“Where is this place?” Hirrus asked. The house looked like Dahlia’s. A simple home made mostly of wood. Small and cozy, but there would be several bedrooms upstairs for a growing family. “This building, I mean.”

“I grew up here,” Nidra said. “This is where I lived before I joined the Royal Guard.”

Unless he very much misjudged her age, this house had been abandoned since she was old enough to walk. There was more to her story than she wanted to tell. But now wasn’t the time for such a discussion. Not in such a dire situation.

“I should have been paying better attention,” Nidra cursed. “A moment’s lapse and now… We can’t continue. Not with so few.”

“I fear I may have led them to the warehouse,” Hirrus admitted. “The man who led the attack. I recognized him. He sent his underlings to distract me to cover Cerberus’s escape. I didn’t consider that their plan might have been more complex than it appeared.”

“No,” Nidra said firmly. “It was the merchant. He was there with them. It was he who knocked at the door, asking after the straw we’d procured. That got the door open and let them attack us unexpectedly.”

Hirrus grimaced. It seemed possible a combination of the two had been what had given Battle Orders the information they needed to strike at them.

But, again, this wasn’t the time for such talk.

“We can’t let this stop us,” Hirrus warned. “This isn’t over.”

“How?” she asked, gesturing around.

Where he followed her gesture, he saw the sparse survivors. Even though he was here now, it seemed that the attack had broken their spirits. None of them dared to meet his eye, as if fearing to volunteer to be added to this discussion.

Hirrus took a deep breath. He knew what needed to be done.

“Gather everyone together,” he said to Nidra, gesturing towards the rear of the building, where Ten had gone off to check the perimeter. “I only want to say this once, and all of them deserve to hear it.”