Octavius led the group into the forest in the direction that the thrall elite had gone. The golden morning sun sent rays of luminous light piercing through the vibrant green leaves above. He moved slowly and steadily, scanning the forest floor with every step. Although he still hadn’t reached the last place that he had sensed the thrall, picking up a trail would be incredibly helpful.

He idly ran a hand along the rough bark of a tree as he passed it. His boots crunched over the detritus that covered the forest floor in a thin veneer. Pausing, he held up a hand and called the group to a halt.

“Alright, this is the last place that I sensed it,” he said as he crouched down and studied the ground, “Can any of you pick up a trail?”

He guessed that the new entrance was along the cliff face, much like the first. However, the thrall had gone through the trees. Whether that was to avoid being spotted or because the entrance was elsewhere, he didn’t know.

The group spread out around the area. Bill came forward and crouched beside Octavius. Out of the corner of his eye, the soldier saw those with woodsmanship experience looking for clues as the others looked around uncertainly. It wasn’t as if Toby and Caster had been recruited to the team for their tracking skills.

Turning his eyes back to the ground, he scanned it like he would a grid. His eyes flicked back and forth as though he was reading a book. There were a dozen small signs that someone or something had been there, but nothing that could be directly attributed to the thrall.

The dirt had a small divot in it next to the root of a tree. It could be the remnants of a footprint, or it could be an old track left by an animal. The edges weren’t fresh and defined, and that would normally mark the track as old. However, there were a dozen ways that the thrall could’ve moved to leave that exact mark in the ground.

He idly worried at his lip as he dismissed the mark. Although it could be from the thrall, it wasn’t the start of a trail. A movement to his side suddenly drew his attention. Turning his head, he saw that Bill was no longer looking at the ground.

The old man had risen to peer into the bushes that dotted the forest floor every few feet. He reached out and gently pulled a small limb from the nearest bush toward him and studied it.

“Here,” the hunter said, drawing the other’s attention, “Right there, something knocked a leaf off this bush. I’d say sometime within the past twelve hours, or else that little bump would’ve healed over.”

Octavius ran his eyes along the thin brown twig and saw what the man was referring to. There was a small pale bump extending barely a millimeter from the branch. Now that it was pointed out to him, it was clear that the bump was where a leaf had once been attached to the branch. The leaf might have long since been carried away by the wind that weaved through the trees this close to the cliff, but the mark of its absence was clear.

“Alright,” he said slowly, “I see it, but that’s not exactly a trail.”

Bill shook his head and moved forward as a crouch another few feet in the direction that the thrall had been moving. He was silent for a long moment before speaking again.

“There,” he pointed at a leaf that was hanging from a branch as if on a thread, “Something bumped into this bush, and the wind still hasn’t carried the lead away. The thrall was good at stepping lightly, but this forest is dense enough that you can’t get through without leaving evidence.”

Octavius let a smile split his face as he followed the old hunter as he moved forward a half dozen paces again. Bill moved with a spryness that spat in the face of age as he moved from clue to clue.

The group followed the old hunter in silence for a hundred feet. He seemed to be able to follow the trail from only the slightest clues. Even with his SERE training and high perception stat, Octavius was still far behind Bill when it came to following the path that the thrall left hours before.

The man pointed out the various clues as he went. Although the thrall had been careful, it probably wasn’t as careful as it could’ve been. Octavius guessed that the thrall didn’t think any of them would even know where to start looking for a trail. The trail was marked by everything from scuffs in the dirt to disturbed branches.

After another hundred feet, Bill stopped and turned around. He began walking toward them, and the party parted in silence as the older man hurried back with a frown. Octavius felt a slight unease settle in his stomach. If Bill had made a wrong turn, then their own passage would have likely covered up the thrall’s trail beyond recognition.

The group was silent as the older man walked back to a fallen tree, all the while scanning the forest with his eyes. The team was perfectly silent, not wanting to disturb the hunter in his element.

After a moment, Bill crouched in front of the fallen tree. Octavius came up behind the man and examined the tree. It appeared to be relatively fresh. He guessed that it had only fallen a year or two ago by earth standards, but who knew how decay worked in the tutorial.

What he did know, however, was that the tree would have been the perfect place for the thrall to turn off its straight-line trail. If the thrall had leapt over it, something easily possible considering the levels of the elites he had seen, then it would have created a massive gap between the end of the old trail and where it landed.

Previously, Octavius had dismissed the fallen tree as such a turning off point. Bill had still been following a trail at the time. More importantly, however, it was on the opposite side of the cliff. If the thrall had turned off there, he doubted that the secret entrance used the cliff face at all.

As Bill examined the tree, Octavius backed up a few steps and leapt clean over it. He flew a half dozen feet into the air and had to duck to avoid the branches of nearby trees. Even then, his booted feet nearly scraped against the thin twigs that stretched up from the fallen tree. He landed heavily on the opposite side, bending his knees to absorb the impact.

As soon as he was on the ground, he looked down. His landing had left two heavy boot prints in the detritus. He might have been able to jump high and land safely, but he couldn’t ignore the acceleration that such an action generated.

His eyes immediately looked along the length of the fallen tree. If the thralls had crossed over the tree on their way to the camp, they would’ve left marks on the other side where they landed. They might be smaller and lighter than humans, Octavius especially, but they still would’ve left a mark on the soft detritus that surrounded the tree.

A small smile made its way onto his lips as he saw two pairs of round divots in the ground. They almost looked like the heels of a humanoid creature. Even if the thralls hadn’t left on this path, they had followed it to return.

“I found some footprints over here!” he called across to his party.

“Alright,” came the reply from what sounded like Marcus, “We’ll find a way around the tree. A lot of us can’t make a jump like that, and I definitely can’t carry someone over. Give us a minute or two.”

Octavius acknowledged the response with a brief, “Ok,” and began to search the area for clues. He hoped that they might have given up on a good deal of their stealth after the sharp turn, but it seemed for naught.

He tried to look for more of the clues that Bill had found. Moving slowly and carefully as to avoid disturbing any trail that the thralls left, he moved forward until he found the nearest bush. He focused on it, tracing every small branch and leaf for any one of the signs that the old hunter had pointed out, but found nothing.

It was only after a full minute that he found a thin twig that was forcefully bent recently. By then, the sound of his party forcing their way through the underbrush was loud over the distant howling wind.

“I think I found the way they were going,” he called out to them with a glance over his shoulder.

A presence quickly approached him, and Bill settled beside him. The old hunter looked where Octavius was pointing and nodded.

“Yep,” he affirmed, “I’d say that’s part of the trail.”

With that, the older man began to move forward, and the group began to follow him comfortably.

“Almost lost the trail there,” Marcus said quietly, and Octavius nodded in agreement. They had found it again, but things could’ve ended poorly for their chances of finding the second entrance.

After merely two dozen paces, the group came to a slightly elevated mound, and Bill stopped. This time, the old hunter wasn’t looking at the ground or a bush but at the trunk of a large tree. Octavius came up behind him, and the group studied the tree.

It barely took the soldier a moment to notice a relatively fresh cut in the trunk.

“Huh,” Bill commented, “That almost looks like—”

“A position marker,” Marcus finished for him, “I’d guess that means that the entrance is somewhere around here.”

The group looked around as if expecting the entrance to be an obvious doorway.

“Well,” Caster commented, “We know they have wood shapers and stone shapers. If it’s hidden, it’ll probably be in either stone or wood.”

Octavius agreed with the younger mage. “Alright, spread out,” he ordered, “Try to find anything that might be a secret door or entrance.”

The group spread out and began to look for anything suspicious. Now that they didn’t have to worry about disturbing Bill, conversation broke out between them as they searched.

“There were only two sets of footprints back there,” Leo said, “That makes three that were part of the attack. Why’d you think that is?”

“Dunno,” Finn said with his trademark grin, “Maybe that’s all they could scrape up that weren’t afraid of attacking the Captain.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Leo responded with a sly smirk, “Last time they messed with the Captain, he ended up unconscious in a river.”

“Hey!” Octavius called out goodnaturedly, “I’ll have you know that I did a lot worse to them.”

“That’s true,” Finn nodded, “Maybe they just didn’t want to go near more fucking soup. Breakfast? Soup. Lunch? Soup. Dinner? Fucking soup. I honestly don’t care that Ekon can’t fight worth a damn; I’d take on every elite they have down there for him to show up with some of his actually edible food.”

That brought a chorus of agreements from the party as they searched. The conversation continued in the same joking manner, and Octavius grinned despite himself. In his experience, soldiers tended to have the darkest humor. Some of the jokes he’d heard told would’ve gotten him expelled from some of the boarding schools he’d been forced to go to. Conversations like this were so much more enjoyable, and he was happy that the people under him hadn’t become accustomed to the darkness that he and many others had.

He continued to search for the entrance, only sporadically joining the conversation. With every step, he would sweep the dirt aside with his boots in an attempt to find a hidden door of either wood or stone. There weren’t any trees in the area that could’ve been hollowed out and still have been large enough to go inside of.

After fifteen minutes, the conversation petered out slowly as the group began to devote all their focus on finding the entrance. Bill even walked the entire perimeter of the mound, looking for hints that they weren’t yet at the end of the trail. He hadn’t found anything, and the group’s mood began to fall.

Is it just completely buried? Octavius wondered, But then how would they cover it back up without anyone noticing?

The mound was quite close to the human camp, but when he thought about it, he realized that any sounds wouldn’t have been audible over the roar of the wind. But then how can we find it if it is? He wondered, And why isn’t there any disturbed dirt?

After a long moment, he decided that the entrance couldn’t have been buried under dirt. The question then was, where was it?

“Damnit!” Leo cursed, breaking the aggravated silence that had settled over the group, “We’re sure it’s below us; we just can’t fucking find it!”

Octavius had much more patience than the young marine, but the lack of any progress was getting to him as well. The humans quite honestly had horrible odds stacked against them. In a direct confrontation with the thralls underground, they would be crushed. In a pitched battle on the surface, they would be crushed.

One on one, the rank and file humans could only hold their own against the low-level mages. They all understood that a siege would never have defeated the thralls, but he had hoped that it would buy them more time.

The humans were racing against the clock; they just had to keep the thralls confined for the single month left before the tutorial ended. With every day that passed, the humans grew stronger and more skilled. They all knew that at the rate of their growth, in a mere two weeks, they could grow strong enough to contend with the thralls in a pitched battle. It would be costly, but so many had already sacrificed their lives to protect the thousands of civilians within the borders of the Sanctuary, what were a hundred more.

Octavius paused and took a deep breath. He needed to be clear-headed and calm. They had expected many thralls to be outside of the Landing when they attacked, and they had even expected there to be other entrances and exits. This exit was just like what they had expected: small, unassuming, and only able to provide enough space for a handful of thralls to traverse. Anything larger would have just been a liability.

Things could be so much worse, he said to himself as he exhaled slowly. With his eyes closed, he began to circulate a strand of mana through his body like he did to practice his mana manipulation. Over the past few weeks, he had begun to use the meditation-like practice to calm himself every night. Just using the mana gave him an idea.

Is there something that my shadow sense can do to help? He wondered. It would likely be slow, as using it to find out anything more than general shapes narrowed his field of focus, but it could be possible. His eyes flicked up to the canopy above. The long early morning shadows had made way for a gentle glow that pierced through the foliage above. Using any shadow spells would require a lot more mana, even in the relative shade that the tree’s provided.

We’re getting nowhere, he decided, If I only use a maximum of a third of my mana, I should be able to deal with any unforeseen circumstances.

Slowly, he walked over to the dense shadow cast by the trunk of a tree and mentally reached out to it. As he poured mana and his understanding into it, he became aware of its boundaries. He turned to the side and saw a ray of sunlight spearing into the ground, completely unhampered by the leaves above. He’d have to be careful to avoid moving any shadow he controlled into a spot like that.

Idly, his eyes fell on the tiny specks of dust that floated lazily in the sunlight. A frown tugged at his lips as he suddenly studied them more intently before his eyes fell on the dirt below.

The dirt has space between the particles, he reasoned with sudden excitement, and in that space, there are shadows!

He didn’t know if it was possible, but he reached into the ground with his mana. Instead of trying to connect to the dirt or stone there, he saturated the shadows. It took more mana than he would have expected. It was as if something was resisting him.

Slowly a small patch of dirt became clear to his senses. It was nothing but fuzz, and he wasn’t able to interpret the flood of information whatsoever. He held a hand to his head as he shook it from side to side. There was no way he could use that to find an underground stone tunnel.

As soon as he stopped concentrating on the sensory static that was funneled into his mind, it suddenly became clear. The effect was like looking at a screen door versus looking through a screen door. A grin spread across his features. It had worked.

If the dirt works, why not stone and trees? He pictured the kind of omnipotence that would come with that and picked up a rock. No light reached the inside of the rock because it was blocked by its surface. That technically made it a shadow, right?

He poured mana and knowledge of shadows into the stone and felt it begin to work. Licking his lips, he concentrated. His senses extended, only to find that they couldn’t pierce the surface of the rock. It was similar to the resistance he felt with the dirt, only a thousand times stronger.

He grunted softly. So no rocks, he reasoned, but what about wood? Wood is much less dense than stone.

Laying a hand against the tree, he tried to sense it through shadow. This time, however, his mana was entirely expelled from the tree. It wasn’t the resistance he felt before. Instead, this was a strong repelling force.

Damn, he cursed to himself before cheering up, Well, at least I can sense through dirt, even if it does take a lot of mana.

He began to spread his area of control within the dirt. There was only a dull regularity that was only broken up by thin lines and pockets of emptiness. Those must be rocks and tree roots, he recognized.

He poured more and more mana into the spell and slowly was able to sense five feet into the ground directly below and around him. Walking forward, he dragged the shadows with him. They didn’t disturb the dirt whatsoever, but it still was slow and took an enormous amount of willpower.

Not even thinking about how strange he looked walking around with his eyes closed, he tried to find some sort of large obstruction that could be a passageway. After a few minutes, he found it.

It was a perfectly cylindrical tube stretching deep into the soil. He guessed that it was made of stone but couldn’t be sure. What he was sure of was that it speared directly into the base of the second largest tree in the area. The tree was definitely not large enough to house even the smallest thrall and remain standing, but maybe they could reinforce the wood or something.

“Guys! Over here!” he called them over as he opened his eyes and dispelled his control over the shadows, “I think I found it!”

Leo let out a whoop as he jogged over, and the pall that had settled over the group’s mood lifted in an instant.