Octavius stared unblinking into the large wooden box. The pale white bones reflected the gentle glow of his spear back up at him, and he frowned.

"What is it?" Leo whispered up at him.

"Bones," he responded softly, all the while not letting his eyes leave the bones, "A fuck ton of bones."

"Umm, what?" was the young marine's only reply.

"Just give me a second," Octavius whispered back, distracted by the bones. Something about how they looked felt familiar to him. He worried at his lower lip as he tried to remember, but whatever it was continued to elude him. His hand twitched forward, ready to reach into the hole that he'd made, but he stopped himself.

They might have some sort of effects, he realized, something like this is strange enough. There's no need for me to take chances.

His eyes settled on a fragment of bone that looked to be no more than three inches long. He used identify on it, and the familiar blue screen filled his vision.

Bone Shard (Common) - A shard of bone from a common ranked beast.

Ok, so there isn't anything that seems strange according to identify, but identify has failed me before, he reasoned. His mind went back to the illusion ring that he'd carried for the better part of two months without a clue that it would be noticed if he got too close to the Landing.

After a moment's hesitation, he reached into the box and scooped up the shard of bone. He was careful to be sure that his fingers didn't so much as brush one of the other pieces of bone as he pulled it from the box.

Leaning over his spear for light, he turned it over in his hands and studied it. It looked to be part of a femur, but he couldn't be sure. It was shaped like a small piece of celery and perfectly white. Running his thumb along one of its edges, he realized that it was rough.

The hell? How did they get it so perfectly clean without so much as weathering where it was broken. That seems almost like a fresh break.

"Hey, Leo," he called softly to the young man that was closest to him, "What do you make of this? Pass it around."

"Wha-" Leo's response was cut off as he reached out and caught the shard of bone that Octavius had tossed down. There was a long second of silence before the marine spoke slowly, "Well, identify says that it's a shard of bone, and I'm inclined to agree. There doesn't seem to be much special about it."

Octavius blinked owlishly at that. "It just says that it's a shard of bone," he asked.

"Yeah," the marine responded, clearly confused, "It says, and I quote, 'Bone Shard Common - A shard of bone.' Why?"

"What's the level of your identify?" Octavius asked instead of answering the question. A pause followed the question, and he assumed that Leo was checking his status page.

"It's level 12," he said.

Octavius quickly pulled up his own status screen.

Name

Octavius J. Asher

Race

Human (F)

Level

20 - 76926/130000

Class

Spearman

Titles

Forerunner, Titanslayer I, Skill Forger

Health

680/680

Stamina

757/760

Mana

514/520

Strength

48

Dexterity

50

Agility

45

Constitution

38

Vitality

34

Perception

32

Intelligence

26

Wisdom

30

Will

40

Free Points

0

Status Effects

None

Skills

Identify (Lvl 15)

Speech (MAX)

Instant Thrust (Lvl 5)

Whirlwind (Lvl 3)

Spear Fighting Affinity (Lvl 6)

Mana Manipulation (Lvl 2)

- Shadow Manipulation (Lvl 1)

- Harden Shadow (Lvl 2)

"Alright, my identify is level 15, and it said 'A shard of bone from a common ranked beast,'" he said softly, "Does anyone have an identify skill level that's higher than that?"

"I do," came a quiet whisper from Bill at the door, "But it's only at level 16."

"Good enough," Octavius said, "Raj, go swap places with Bill. Bill, let me know what it says for you."

The sound of shuffling feet and quiet footsteps was all that could be heard for a dozen seconds before Bill spoke up again, this time from much closer.

"Mine says the same as yours," the older man whispered, "''A shard of bone from a common ranked beast.'"

Octavius frowned. He'd been hoping for more, but it seemed that they'd need a higher level identify skill to find out more. Still, something prickled at the edge of his thoughts. Something about the perfectly white bones seemed oddly familiar, but he couldn't remember where from. Looking back into the box, he used identify on the only human skull in sight.

Human Skull (Common) - A skull from an (F) ranked human.

So it could be from literally anyone, he grumbled to himself. After another moment's thought, he swept all of the splinters of wood into the box and studied it once more. No one would be able to see that he had tampered with it unless they were ten feet tall or climbed on top of it. Satisfied, he hoped down.

He passed the hatchet back to Bill and studied the face of his teammates in the glow of his spear. Finn, Leo, Caster, and Jean were hunched in a circle, studying the fragment of bone. Bill and Marcus, on the other hand, looked at him expectantly. The team dynamics at that moment were clear to him.

Bill and Marcus were both experienced with loss. Even if they felt it just as powerfully as the younger members of the group, they, like Octavius himself, knew how to put it aside for the moment. The four studying the shard of bone, however, were taking the loss of Toby hard. At the moment, they were trying to distract themselves in whatever way they could. He needed to get the mission going, or else they would only grow more and more ineffective.

"Anything stand out to you all?" he asked softly. The others looked up from the shard of bone and at him.

"Well," Finn said slowly, "It's clean. Like, really clean. I'm pretty sure that you would have to use modern chemicals or something to do whatever they did to this bone. Or magic, I suppose."

Octavius nodded. "That's exactly what I was thinking," he agreed, "Do you have any ideas why they have so much of the stuff?"

The younger man shrugged in the dim light that was provided by Octavius's spear. "Nope," he said, and Octavius turned his attention to Caster, who looked to be deep in thought.

"Maybe a potion reagent of some sort?" the young mage wondered aloud, "Or maybe they're sustenance for the thralls. I've got no idea what nutrients would be necessary for them to grow their exoskeletons."

He reached out and handed Octavius the shard of bone as his eyes tracked to something unseen on the ceiling. As the mage was lost in thought, Octavius placed the small bone into a pouch on his belt. He didn't know if it would prove useful, but it cost him essentially nothing to keep something so small.

Turning away from the boxes, he quietly approached the prone form of Raj. "See anything yet?" he asked, and Raj turned to look at him over his shoulder.

"No," the man said, shaking his head slightly, "Not so much as a mouse."

Octavius nodded and studied the box that once blocked the secret passageway that led to the surface. Anyone that happened by would immediately notice that someone had been there. The question was: would a fast escape route be worth the risk of discovery?

After a long moment, he decided that it was. He wasn't sure why there was a secret passageway behind a box in a storage room, but it was clearly meant to be hidden. Its position behind something that was presumably either valuable or important led him to believe that it was supposed to be hidden from at least some of the thralls as well.

At that thought, his mind went back to what he knew of the thrall's societal structure. He knew for a fact that the tunnel was used by the elite thralls, and both stone shapers and wood shapers participated in its construction. To him, that meant that it could be hidden from three separate groups.

The first, but also least likely group, was the human slaves. The human slaves definitely didn't have access to even close to the entire underground complex. Dominic had specifically told him that. If the thralls wanted to hide something from the humans, why not just put it somewhere that they weren't allowed to go. Then the thralls wouldn't need to hide the entrance behind a massive box.

The second idea he had was that the rogues and high-level mages were hiding something from the low-level mages. However, he also doubted that option. In his experience, specifically his first experience with a thrall at all, the low-level mages were absurdly loyal to whatever the thralls' cause was.

His final idea, and the one that he was leaning towards, was that the thrall elites were hiding it from the other thralls. That wouldn't account for the shapers that made the tunnels, but there were many ways that something such as that could've been achieved. Beyond that, there seemed to be some friction, or at least differences in belief, between the elites and the non-elites.

If it ends up being the third option, I wonder if we can reason with them? he wondered, If they join us, we could almost definitely crush the other thralls. Of course, that'd be predicated on the fact that they weren't responsible for Toby's death and that they don't mind that I killed one of theirs.

Shaking the nascent thought from his head, he considered their options. Judging on where the tunnel was compared to the entrance of the Landing, they were in the part of the underground complex that he had yet to see. According to Dominic, this section of the Landing housed the slaves, along with much of the complex's storage capacity.

Worrying at his lower lip, he turned to Marcus. Although the man hadn't been a special operator back on Earth, he did have the most experience besides for Octavius himself. That led Octavius to naturally treat Marcus much like the team's senior NCO.

"I'm thinking that we're in the middle of their storage area. If I'm right, then this is where they store all of their food and supplies, along with their slaves," he said softly, "I'm thinking that we need to cause as much damage as possible without being noticed. It's far too quiet for the others to have started their distraction thus far, and they might not even be able to. What do you think?"

At the mention of the slaves, Marcus's eyes blazed with a righteous fury before turning cold and calculating. "If the slaves are here and it's so quiet, this might be our best chance to get them out," he whispered, "While some of us do that, the others can quietly destroy as much of their supplies as possible until the distraction starts. If it doesn't, after a while, we can head out through the tunnel and see what happened to the camp. Either way, we'll have freed the slaves."

Octavius studied the slightly older man's features as he realized that the man hadn't seen the atrocities of war. At least not like Octavius had. To the marine, the memory of the slaves burning alive, desperate to get through the flames that blocked the main tunnel, would probably never be forgotten.

Even during the height of the War on Terror, it would have been rare for a normal infantry marine to see the worst of the enemy. Octavius would remember the screams of the slaves as they burned alive, but the sight wouldn't haunt him. Not like so many others had.

In a flash, he was back in the desert on his first deployment with the 75th Ranger Regiment. He remembered the bright smile of the young Middle Eastern boy who would come by every day to play with the American soldiers. He remembered the spike driven into the ground, rivulets of crimson blood dripping down its length as the carrion birds circled overhead.

That sight had haunted his dreams for years, but now it was just one memory among dozens. The image had become his motivation, to become faster, stronger, and smarter so that he could take down the fuckers like that before they were allowed to hurt anyone else.

"Cap, you alright?" Marcus asked, snapping Octavius from the distasteful memories. The operator nodded sharply and exhaled before speaking.

"Alright, it's a plan," he said, "We'll need to move quickly. I'm not sure where the slaves are being held, so we'll have to go room by room."

The marine nodded, an eagerness in his eyes, and Octavius smiled in return. No matter how jaded he was, the intense determination and hope that Marcus radiated got his blood pumping. Waving his hands, he got the entire group to huddle up next to Raj.

"So we're going to clear room to room looking for things that we can sabotage and slaves. There are eight of us, so I want teams of four on each side of the corridor," he ordered, "When you get to a door, stack up with two people on either side. Remember what I taught you all — Speed, Surprise, Violence of Action."

Nods filled his vision, along with even a few smiles. It seemed as though the possibility of helping the slaves was taking their minds off of Toby. He grinned; if they were able to pull it off, freeing the slaves would hit nearly half a dozen birds with only a single stone. They would obviously be saving innocents, so that was one. Beyond that, they'd be depriving the thralls of valuable manpower, helping his team regain their spirits, probably get more information about the thrall's base, and hopefully, allow Octavius to fulfill his promise to Dominic.

"Alright," he said softly, "Jean, Finn, Bill, you're with me on the left wall. Leo, Caster, and Raj, you three will be with Marcus on the right. Marcus, you good with that?"

The older marine nodded, and they all began to draw their weapons. Octavius took the moment to remove a vial of clear liquid from his belt. He wasn't sure how the thralls were able to imbue the assassin's blades with the substance, but he figured that covering his spear's blade with the evolved valerian extract couldn't hurt. He had a large amount of the substance already from the first elite he had dealt with, and using half a vial wasn't much.

He was careful to let as little of the viscous liquid as possible drip onto the floor as he applied it to the edges of his blade. Once he was done, he looked up to find the rest of the party ready to go. Weapons were drawn, and armor straps triple checked.

Octavius gave one last prayer that his team would remember the combat movement techniques that he'd taught then that afternoon that seemed so long ago. After counting down three fingers on his left hand, he thrust the door open gently enough that it wouldn't slam against the wall.

Extinguishing the light from his spear, he stepped smoothly through the doorway and into the dim corridor. His footsteps were nearly silent as he raced across the hall. With each step, his heel impacted the ground softly, and the rest of his foot rolled to follow it. He quickly scanned both directions and found no movement whatsoever.

Without another moment's thought, he moved to the far wall and walked quickly along it to the right. The soft footfalls of the rest of his team were close behind him as he moved. He knew that the direction that he was headed led away from the Landing's main entrance, but he decided that it would be good to clear a section of the complex that he could be nearly sure would remain clear first. Clearing to the entrance hall would be far too dangerous without the promised distraction.

The first door that they came to was on his side of the hall, and he quickly stopped to the closer side of it. Jean moved swiftly around him and mirrored his position on the other side of the door, and Finn moved to stand directly behind her. The group moved with a natural efficiency and grace that normally would only have come after thousands of hours of repetitions, not only a handful. Octavius wasn't sure how much of that was their superhuman stats and how much was their natural talent, and he didn't much care at the moment.

Octavius felt the gentle squeeze on his shoulder that indicated that Bill was ready, and he lifted his hand with three fingers on it. Jean and Finn nodded silently, and he began to count down. His breathing steadied as his fingers fell one by one until only the final one remained, then he exploded into movement.