The first to move was Leo, who practically collapsed onto one of the short wooden chairs. That seemed to break a dam because the others quickly moved to sit as well. Octavius turned to Bill.

"You have the most woodsmanship experience here,” he whispered to the hunter, “I need you to head up to the surface and try to cover the trapdoor as much as you can and still get in. No need to let the rest of the thralls know something is up if they don't know. Then, watch the trapdoor. If one of the thralls here was in a party with the thralls outside, they could be making their way here already. Remember don't think of it like you're waiting for the thralls. Think of just waiting for anyone to come in. We'll set up a watch rotation if they aren't here within half an hour."

Bill nodded and set off up the main hallway as Octavius sat in one of the wooden chairs facing the entrance and propped his spear up against his thigh. He considered the risk of the thralls having another wood mage, but decided the benefits of remaining inside outweighed the risks. After all, the wood mage was only able to control a few tendrils of wood at a time, not massive walls of it. Facing the thralls inside, where it was lit up brightly and with only one entrance was better than outside in the darkness.

“Hey, Caster,” He said, catching the younger man’s attention, “Thanks for the spell back there. How exactly do spells like that work?”

A smile spread across the young man’s features. “It’s really interesting actually,” he responded, scooting forward on his much too small seat, “Your mana is like a ball of energy in your chest, right?”

Octavius and a few of the others nodded. “Well,” he continued, “It’s entirely uncontrollable, but you can use it when you activate a skill. Or actually, the thrall’s enchanted rings used it too! I wonder how that works?”

Octavius blinked owlishly at the monologue that took less than three sentences to become entirely derailed.

The mage was muttering rapidly under his breath, “... but how is that possible? There can’t be something that can — wait! Yes! That could be it! Fantasy books all say there are magic runes, but if they existed, where would they come from? Could it be intent? But then why are spells mostly point and cast? And where would the runes be on such a small ring? The thralls don’t seem to have advanced…”

“Caster!” Octavius interrupted the stream of consciousness that was falling from the young man’s mouth. His muttering stopped and looked up sharply.

“Oh, sorry about that,” he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, “Where was I?”

This time it was Finn who cut in, “Dude, you literally just started talking.”

“Oh, um, yeah, so,” Caster cleared his throat, “Basically, mana is only usable through skills. The spellbook that Awan found is called Windblade. When you read it, it’s not like you can understand it right away. You have to study it. Like for the Windblade spell, I had to understand how the wind currents worked and how the mana didn’t actually create wind but harnessed it.”

Octavius looked at the excited young man, “But I was told there was a wisdom requirement? Is it just that wisdom lets you understand it better?”

“No, no! That’s what’s so fascinating about it!” the young man waved his hands wildly, “The wisdom stat doesn’t seem to make it easier to understand things. It just changes how much of the book you have to understand before you get the spell. With thirty wisdom, you can learn Windblade by understanding the basics of the spell. But if you were to study fluid mechanics for years and then try to learn the spell, you would need a much lower wisdom score!”

Octavius frowned; he’d been hoping that he could learn the spell without putting points into wisdom. Now, it didn’t seem as if that would work. He most certainly didn’t understand intricate fluid mechanics. When he went to college, he’d followed his mother’s wishes and gotten a degree in business.

Honestly, couldn’t I have studied physics or something? he lamented, Physicists are going to be some pretty powerful mages if that is how magic works.

“So besides wisdom, what do the other stats do in terms of magic?” Octavius asked.

“Yes! Well, intelligence is obviously your mana cap, and wisdom helps you learn spells easier and faster. Will, on the other hand, lets you cast spells faster. I’m also almost sure that they each affect the regeneration rate of your mana, but I can’t seem to derive much specifically,” Caster counted off each stat on his fingers as he explained until, in the end, he was holding up three fingers.

Octavius saw Toby move out of the corner of his eye and turned to face the youngest member of the group. He blinked, only to see the same exact thing when he opened his eyes. Toby had his hand raised high into the air. The large young man slowly lowered his hand, a blush spreading across his face as he saw the rest of the group stare at him with varying expressions of amusement and disbelief.

Octavius coughed slightly, “Yeah, Toby?”

The young man who had a dozen pounds of muscle on Octavius seemed to want to find a place to hide. Turning to Caster, he spoke in his deceptively soft voice, “Um, well, couldn’t you just use a watch to time your regen speed, then do it again after adding one to each stat? To find how each one affects the regeneration rate, I mean.”

Caster nodded wildly. “Yes, that’s exactly what I thought!” the young man’s excitement only seemed to grow, “But that doesn’t work! Even without changing your stats, your regeneration rate changes slightly from one day to the next. I’m sure that there are other factors that go into it, but I don’t know what yet. Do you have any ideas?”

Toby looked mortified at being put on the spot, but Caster didn’t seem to notice. “Well, uh, not real...” the large warrior trailed off, “Actually, could it be based on the amount of mana left as well? I mean, when I’m almost entirely out of stamina, just regenerating one takes forever, but when it’s mostly full, it’s super fast.”

Octavius nodded along. He’d also tried to calculate the regeneration rate of the various statuses but hadn’t had any success.

Caster nodded as well. “Yeah, that could be part of it! I’ll have to do some experimenting. Speaking of experimenting,” the mage turned to Octavius, “Can I have one of the rings from the thralls we killed to study it?”

That reminded Octavius that they still needed to loot the thralls they’d killed. The entire group had been exhausted after the fight, if not physically, then mentally. Moving quietly through the forest on constant alert for hours, followed by a quick but brutal battle, was not something most normal humans could do.

Even after Caster’s impromptu lecture, most of the group seemed to be tired. That was doubly so for Leo, who looked mentally wiped out after his injury. “Sure,” Octavius said, “I’ll go loot the thralls now. Marcus, what’s down the other hallway?”

Marcus straightened slightly, “It’s just sleeping quarters, I think. There are four rooms, and each of them has a floor that is extremely soft. It’s plausible that ten thralls slept there, but it’s not like there are beds to count.”

Octavius nodded and stood. After he moved to the four dead thralls in the middle of the room, he crouched over them. They wore the thin leather and cloth that Octavius had begun to associate with the thrall mages. Each one of them had multiple craters over the sections of their exoskeleton that were hardened when the marines had opened fire on them. The true damage they’d accrued was around their joints. Every one of the thralls had gunshot wounds in either the neck or the side of the torso.

Trying to avoid becoming covered in the drying blood, Octavius looked at the softened fingers of each thrall and found nothing. Moving to their belts, he discovered a loop on each that held the rings. There, he also found the pouches that contained various potions that the thralls had taken from humans. The first three bags were decent in size, but the fourth had a hole in it that leaked a viscous blend of red and green liquid.

The hole wasn’t large enough to be the result of a bullet, but even shrapnel would be enough to shatter the thick glass vials. Opening the bag, he removed the two potions that were still intact. Both were mana potions, and he wiped them off on a clean section of the thrall’s clothes and placed them in one of the pouches. After he removed the thralls’ short knives, he stood and went into the right tunnel.

The tunnel continued for two dozen feet before splitting like a ‘Y.’ Within each subsequent hall were two rooms. The glowing balls of light were present in all of the rooms except one. Octavius stepped up to the empty doorway of the dark room and looked down. The corpse of a thrall was lying in a pool of its own blood just inside of the doorway.

Peering inside, he saw that the room was relatively small, and the ground was covered with furs and what looked to be pillows. Stepping over the thrall’s body, he lifted one of the pillows. It was simply constructed from two animal skins sewn together with some sort of soft stuffing filling the space between them. He grinned and put it under his arm, I’m definitely going to see if I can take one of these back with me. Turning back to the thrall, he looted the illusion ring from its finger and the potions from its belt. He looked around the other rooms quickly to see if there was anything unexpected, but there wasn't anything.

Returning to the entrance cavern, he set the pillow down on his chair before turning down the left tunnel that held the body of the “Wood Shaper.” He received a few curious and amused glances as he set down the pillow, but the rest of the team just continued their conversation about the Lord of Beasts.

Following the longer of the two hallways, he quickly came to the incomplete cavern. He approached the body of the thrall and looked it over. It’s once pristine grey robe was scorched and torn from where Leo’s bullets had impacted its hardened exoskeleton, and blood poured from its eye.

Octavius knelt, carefully avoiding the pool of blood, and started to pat down the thrall. It had no rings or obvious armor, but what surprised Octavius was its lack of a belt. All it had on it was the now destroyed robe. Hopeful, he used identify on it. Damn, he thought, slightly vexed by its lack of any remarkable traits, I know this isn’t a game, but I still expected some loot from the strongest thrall yet.

Standing back up, he returned to the main cavern.

“... and that’s why the Lord of Beasts will obviously be a kangaroo,” Finn was explaining with a wide smile, only to be hit in the head with Octavius’s pillow.

All eyes turned to Jean, who was tied with Bill for the quietest member of the group. “What?” she shrugged, “He was being ridiculous.”

Finn wagged a finger at her, “Ah! That’s what you’re saying now, but when I’m right, I expect an apology!”

Octavius eyed his team and frowned slightly. He had a slight problem now. These people had helped him to clear the immediate area of thralls with significant risk to their lives. It was only right that they got some of the loot. The problem was that he didn’t know how many of the remaining thralls had rings. If they all did, that was enough for everyone, but if only two did, then he’d either have to give up his spare ring or someone would have to make do with the knives and potions.

He shook his head; it was likely that all of the remaining thralls were mages. After all, they were scouting the area around the Sanctuary. Even if some weren’t, he’d deal with it when he got there.

Stepping back towards the group, the conversation died down. He tossed a ring each to Caster, Jean, Toby, Leo, and Marcus. They all took time to examine the rings, Caster holding his directly to his eye before looking curiously at Octavius. Octavius retrieved his pillow from the floor and sat.

“The wood shaper down there didn’t have a thing on it,” he answered the unspoken question.

The four members of the group that knew what the wood shaper was immediately adopted a put-out expression.

“That’s just not right!” Finn complained.

That led to the rest of the group quickly asking what the wood shaper was, and Finn starting a ridiculous explanation of their fight with it. Octavius swore he heard Finn say that he was attacked by three dozen wooden tentacles, and quickly tuned out the conversation.

Octavius once more settled into his seat. He would’ve liked to set the group up invisible outside of the outpost, ready to ambush the thralls when they returned. The problem was that they didn’t know how long it would take for the thralls to arrive. So, they settled in to wait for them.

Octavius sat on the wooden floor with his legs crossed. He had just returned from his watch at the trapdoor. They had established a watch schedule that would cycle through the group in teams of two that would wait just out of sight of the ladder. If the thralls returned, they would hear it and run down the corridor to alert the others so they could be ready to ambush the thralls when they entered the main room.

The team’s schedule had hour-long rotations. Octavius and Raj and went last in the rotation, with Leo not going at all to allow him to sleep off the trauma from his injury. That meant the whole cycle was four hours long, and Octavius had taken the opportunity to sleep. If the Lord of Beasts arrived the next day, he wanted to be in his optimal state.

The long wait just cemented something about the thralls inside of Octavius's mind. These scouts were rather pathetic. They didn't stay in parties, like the Sanctuary's defenders. They lacked skill in combat and tactics as well. It was like they were scholars that someone threw into the wild and told them to be scouts. That didn't explain their builds though. After all, if they weren't scouts, why did they put pretty much every point into intelligence? And where did they get the rings? Something wasn't adding up.

After their uneventful watch, Octavius and Raj were relieved by Marcus and Bill. Once he returned to the cavern, Octavius decided to practice his mana manipulation skill. He’d heard from Caster that manipulating mana outside of a spell was impossible, but he knew that the younger man was wrong.

He breathed deeply and concentrated. In his mind’s eye, the swirling ball of energy appeared. He focused on it and willed a tendril of mana away from it. The tendril didn’t do anything specifically, but he just focused on moving it around. It was a difficult task but was made easier by the mana manipulation skill.

He had previously tried to will the mana to exit his body in an attempt to create a spell, but the mana dissipated harmlessly into the air. Even if I can’t learn the Windblade spell, I still should read the spellbook. Maybe it can give me some insight into creating a spell.

His concentration shattered when the sound of quiet footsteps ran into the room. Eyes snapping open, he saw Bill enter the small cavern of wood. “They’re here,” the man whispered, and the team leapt to their feet.

Octavius moved quickly to shake the three sleeping members of his team awake, and the group lined up on either side of the door. Marcus quickly ran past them and joined the line on the right side of the door.

They waited for only a minute before the quiet footfalls of the thrall mages reached their ears. Bill perked up first, his high perception giving him an edge on the others, and nodded to Octavius.

The thralls stepped through the doorway, looking confused and annoyed. Octavius knew that once they entered the circular room, the bodies of the dead thralls would be visible where they had been dragged to against the wall.

At that moment, he had to make a decision that he’d been pondering over for the past few hours. He very much wanted to take one of the thralls prisoner, but the risks of bringing a captured sentient back to Sanctuary were large. The group didn’t have a way to both secure it and keep it quiet, so it would be all too easy for it to attract a group of beasts and possibly wipe them out.

No, Octavius decided, The risk is too great, and we already have one prisoner.

The moment the third and final thrall stepped into the room, Octavius thrust forward with his spear, catching the soft exoskeleton of its neck and exiting the other side. The thrall didn’t even have a chance to react before it was dead.

Your party has slain Korzk - Thrall (F) (Lvl 23) and you have gained 4313 EXP (1/2)(23)(3)(1)(1.25)(100)(1.00)

The other thralls, which had frozen at the sight of their dead companions, spun at the sound that the dead thrall made when it hit the floor. The alien blackness of their wide eyes seemed to grow as their faces shifted to an uncomprehending expression as they were faced with nine humans bearing down on them.

Before they had time to react, the melee fighters of the team were upon them. Jean copied Octavius’s attack and took the first thrall in the neck, while Toby brought down his brass hammer on the back of the second thrall’s head. The blow didn’t hurt it, but the force behind it made the thrall stumble forward directly into Finn’s long knife. The knife disappeared up to the handle as it pierced the thrall’s eye, and it collapsed to the floor.

Your party has slain Jemk- Thrall (F) (Lvl 22) and you have gained 0 EXP (1/2)(22)(2)(1)(1.25)(100)(0.00)

Your party has slain Zralc - Thrall (F) (Lvl 19) and you have gained 0 EXP (1/2)(19)(2)(1)(1.25)(100)(0.00)

The group stood in silence for a moment at the anticlimactic ending to the thralls. The silence seemed as if it would stretch on for minutes before it was shattered by Finn jumping into the air. “Fuckin’ gottem! Didn’t even have a chance against us!” he shouted.

Octavius smiled along, but internally he knew that they were lucky. The mission could’ve easily gone wrong, but it didn’t. That fact alone was worthy of celebration.

“Ok,” he said, “Now that we got them all, we should head back to Sanctuary if we want to be there by dawn.”

Crouching, he retrieved the three rings from the thralls’ belts, along with their potions. He distributed the rings and potions to the remaining members of the party, glad that they had enough rings to go around.

The group moved to start leaving with wide smiles. Even Jean cracked a small grin, which left the ever stoic Bill as the only one with a neutral expression. They stopped their walk towards the exit when Octavius moved back into the room. He ignored their incredulous expressions as he scooped up the pillow, tied it to the back of his belt, and led the way down the tunnel to the surface.

While they hadn’t eliminated the thralls as a threat, they had hopefully disrupted their plans for the Sanctuary. Octavius hoped that Robert had a plan to take advantage of the time between the end of the Emergence later that day and whenever the main base of the thralls realized that this group was missing. Or maybe Robert accidentally washed the reminder of the thralls’ existence off his hand and hadn’t thought of them since.