Octavius’s eyes seemed to become unfocused as his mind ran through possible plan after possible plan. Suddenly, he was snapped back to awareness by a light touch on his elbow. Looking to the side, he saw Finn staring at him with a serious expression.

‘What is it?’ the young man mouthed to him.

‘They’re nearly done,’ he mouthed back and gestured back up the tunnel. The tunnel itself was wide, maybe twenty feet across when it was thickest at the top. That came to an end a hundred feet from where the stone shapers worked, where the tunnel decreased in size to ten feet across.

That must be when they started hurrying, he realized, but that means that they’ve cleared out a hundred feet of tunnel in a day.

He shuddered at the thought. Even assuming that his estimations were wildly off, there was no way that the tunnel wouldn’t be completed within a day.

As soon as they rounded the next bend, he held up his hand for Finn to stop. Moving closer to the younger man, he positioned his mouth a few inches from Finn’s ear.

“The tunnel is rather close to directly below the main entrance,” he explained, “By my guess, it could be completed any time from now to a day from now, but it is nearly completed.”

The ever-present grin on the young man’s face was nowhere to be seen at that moment. Instead, he seemed to flinch as if struck by a physical blow.

“Damn,” he whispered, “Is that why all the thralls are in the big room up there? They’re getting ready to attack us?”

Octavius merely shook his head, “I don’t know, but it would be dangerous to not assume the worst.”

Finn swallowed sharply before hardening his expression. “Alright then, captain,” he said, “What are we going to do?”

The operator nodded in appreciation of the younger man’s ability to remain calm as he responded, “Right now, we need to warn Robert and the others. If we can get into position first, we might be able to trap them inside. The fifty new mages we freed could probably hold a small opening like that alone. We just can’t let them surprise us. After that, I’d say that we should send for the rest of the guards at the Sanctuary. Leaving the civilians largely undefended from beasts won’t matter if we’re wiped out here, and the thralls are free to attack. Though, that’s not my decision to make.”

Nodding, Finn opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted by a loud boom that echoed down the tunnel. A second boom followed the first, which was itself quickly followed by a third. Octavius didn’t know what the sound was, but it definitely came from the massive room above them.

Breaking into a low jog, he untied his spear from his back. As he ran, he connected the two halves with a flash of concentration. The two humans turned sharply around the final bend in the tunnel and slowed down as the total darkness engulfed them.

What was making the sound quickly became clear when the hundred of thrall all lifted their right legs as one and stomped. The sound echoed through the dome-shaped cavern, and they lifted their legs again. This time, however, they were interrupted.

“I WILL HAVE SILENCE,” a powerful voice boomed over the crowd, and the legs lowered carefully to the ground.

Octavius stood to his full height and craned his neck to see above the heads of the short grey aliens. In the middle of the circle, Kzedr’s intimidating form stood tall. In front of him, the two Nightstalkers knelt with heads bowed.

"You disobeyed me for the last time!" the level 39 thrall boomed, "Why would you do such a thing?!"

The kneeling thrall's reply was laced with so much anger and scorn that Octavius could practically taste it. "Because you're a fool!'" it snapped.

The sound of Kzedr's deep breaths was loud in the sudden silence that seemed to follow the proclamation. Suddenly, a loud crack echoed through the chamber as it struck the kneeling Nightstalker on the side of the head.

"I AM EMPEROR!!!!" came the deafening reply, "Under me, we rebuild our once great people! IT IS YOUR PETTY FOOLISHNESS THAT MIGHT COST US THAT!"

"What would you have preferred?" the kneeling thrall demanded, refusing to be cowed, "Would you have us leave Lmiszk's death unanswered?"

"LMISZK DEFIED ORDERS, HE DESERVES WHAT HE GOT!" Kzedr shouted in rage, "Now! Where are the others you sent out? You said that Lkaj and Dizkrak were part of this foolish attack as well?"

The thrall leader's demand was met with a defiant silence. It seemed to stretch on for a full minute. While the thralls were undeniably distracted, Octavius grabbed Finn's hand and lifted it toward the edge of the platform above. He felt two taps on his arm, confirming the young man's understanding.

Moving out of Finn's way, he heard a soft rustling behind him as the young man scrambled up onto the platform. As it fell into silence once more, he knew that the young man had successfully reached the top undetected. As he waited for Finn to get out of the way, he heard Kzedr speak up once more.

"NOW THE HUMANS WILL KNOW THAT WE CAN GET OUT FROM HERE!" its voice thundered in the confined space, "THEY MIGHT EVEN DECIDE TO ATTACK US FIRST! THEY HAVE HUNDREDS OF MORE MELEE FIGHTERS THAN US! EVEN IF THEY WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO DEFEAT US, THEY COULD WIPE OUT A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF THE CLAN!"

The Nightstalker glared up at the self-proclaimed emperor. "They would have to be idiots to not assume that we already had other ways out!" came the heated reply, "You should have just listened to Lmiszk and attacked them! They wouldn't have been able to keep us boxed in! And the house thralls that sacrifice their lives for the clan would be honored as heroes!"

Octavius decided that he'd heard enough. The thralls gave up a bit too much information. He felt himself smirk, Always assume that you're being overheard unless you're completely sure you aren't.

The thralls are wary of an attack and seem to be massing for an assault, he reasoned, I bet that Robert could come up with some way to turn that on them.

After a few long seconds, he decided that enough time had passed for Finn to get out of the way. Gripping his spear in his right hand, he leapt a few feet into the air. The fingers of his left hand curled around the sharp edge of the elevated platform, and he hauled himself up with an ease that contrasted sharply with his large build.

He concentrated intently on not letting his metal spear knock into the stone as he lifted himself with a single hand. As soon as he was close enough to the ledge, he swung his leg around and hooked it onto the platform. With a thrust of his hips, he rolled onto the stone platform.

He was still facing the middle of the cavernous room, so he lifted his head ever so slightly for a better view. With his higher vantage point, he was able to see how the room was arranged. It was empty besides for the thralls. What surprised him most was the distinct lack of Nightstalkers. The only ones present were kneeling before Kzedr.

Besides that, there was a gray-robed body lying unmoving on the stone ground beside Kzedr and the Nightstalkers. It was clearly a shaper of some sort. In the absence of the ability to use identify on it when it was living, he assumed that it was a wood shaper. After all, it seemed as though the stone shapers would be the most valuable personnel that the thralls had access to. With a quick thought, he used identify on the two kneeling Nightstalkers.

Xelq - Thrall (F) (Lvl 31) (Rogue*)

Kiljd - Thrall (F) (Lvl 29) (Rogue*)

Quickly lowering his head, he slowly maneuvered himself on his stomach so that he was facing the massive doorway. As he low-crawled behind Finn, he was careful not to let his spear so much as brush against the stone of the floor or the wall.

Even as he crawled, however, his mind began to piece together what the thrall leader's words had begun to make clear. Two Nightstalkers and a single shaper, he realized, That's the same as the group that we killed while they exited through the secret entrance. Kzedr also mentioned two names as having gone missing.

Events began to come together to form a picture that stoked the flames of rage in his heart. The Nightstalkers and Kzedr disagreed about how to deal with us, he realized, That means that the attack last night was against Kzedr's orders. Then when I killed the Nightstalker, a group of them snuck out to strike back at us. Hell, Kzedr might not have even known that the tunnel existed, judging by where it was hidden. Of course, that means that there's another secret entrance that we didn't know about. Beyond that, a hit and run attack would be in line with Toby being dead and Jabir being perfectly fine.

He etched the names of the two kneeling Nightstalkers into his mind. The chances that they were the ones that had killed Toby were far from zero. With a clenched jaw, he vowed to gut the two of them if he had the chance.

Just being reminded of his subordinate's death caused the grief and rage to resurface. It felt almost like a physical pressure in his gut, but he forced it down once more. Not only did he have the mission to focus on, he now had somewhere specific to direct that pure and righteous anger.

Putting his head down, he dragged himself through the hall that separated the corridor and the cavernous room that held thralls by the hundred. Even crossing the ten feet in such a dangerous position was slow and dangerous.

Suddenly, the dim light from the massive open doorway was blocked. Lifting his head up, he tensed as his eyes locked onto the cloth-clad legs of someone. He followed them up until his gaze locked onto the uncomprehending expression of the thrall rogue as it stood in front of Finn.

The young man was in the process of pushing himself to his hands and knees. As Octavius watched, the thrall seemed to finally process what it was seeing and opened its mouth to shout.

"Wh-" the thrall's loud shout was almost immediately cut off when Finn slammed into its midsection with his shoulder. The young man's weight and momentum carried the thrall back, and the back of its head smacked into the stone ground with a deafening crack.

Throwing himself to his feet, Octavius charged past Finn, who was climbing up the thralls body toward its head. Lifting his spear, he thrust it straight down into the thrall's eye socket and twisted. The thrall spasmed once and went still.

Octavius cursed at the silence that followed the thrall's shout was broken by the sound of feet on stone as a thrall moved to see what had caused the disturbance. Pulling his spear from the thrall's corpse, he dismissed the blue notification at the edge of his vision at the same time that he grabbed the back of Finn's collar and dragged the young man to his feet.

"Run!" he ordered in a harsh whisper, "Tell the others what we learned! Tell them about the tunnel! I'll buy you time!"

"What? No!" the young warrior protested, "I'll hold them off! You're -"

Octavius shoved his subordinate forward. "That's a fucking order!" he snarled, "Now go!"

Finn looked into his unblinking green eyes and nodded sharply before breaking into a sprint. Octavius turned to face what appeared to be an endless hoard of approaching thralls and reached out to the shadows that surrounded him. Falling into a defensive posture, he waited.

While it was true that they could’ve both made a run for it, he didn’t like their chances of getting away. He guessed that it was more likely to happen than not, but even so much as a ten percent risk of them both falling wasn’t worth it. After all, the information they had would likely be vital to the survival of humanity within the tutorial. The way he saw it, the only way that he could virtually guarantee that it got to the right people was if he bought Finn time to get out.

He told himself that he had a good chance of escaping afterward. After all, he had a good deal of mana left and hadn't used any potions that day. Even so, deep down, he knew that his chances of leaving out of the Landing a free and breathing man were slim at best.

In truth, he didn't even consider letting the young man take his place. His mind went to when he blearily regained consciousness on the riverbed the day before. He remembered how absolutely helpless he had been and how it was Finn that convinced the others to leave the Sanctuary and save him.

His memories continued to cycle through the defining moments of his life. In one scene, he sat with his grandfather in a vast expanse of forest. In the next, he was looking down from a high rise apartment on lanes of flashing lights, his tiny hands pressed against the cold glass as plumes of acrid black smoke rose from the upper portion of a massive skyscraper. Damn, he thought with a flash of dark humor, I'm not even hurt yet, and my life's already flashing before my eyes.

In the next scene, he was sitting on the lap of a stern-faced woman whose eyes were strikingly similar to his own. She held a worn photograph of a grinning man in desert camouflage fatigues in one hand and a plaque in the other. The plaque held a golden cross with an eagle in front of it. Below that, it was engraved with a single paragraph. He still remembered every word it said.

"The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Sergeant Micheal C. Asher, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy as a member of Operational Detachment Alpha 595 (ODA-595), 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), from 5 October 1990 to 6 October 1990 during combat operations against an armed enemy of the United States, as a Weapons Sergeant for a Joint Task Force in support of Operation DESERT STORM."

Fucking hell, he smiled grimly as he came to a realization, I never thought I'd go out in the same way as my dad. I wonder if I'm eligible for my own medal for this? Thralls are an enemy of all humanity; does that count as an enemy of the United States?

The memories continued. From the day that he'd been commissioned as an officer, to the black night of Castle's death. Even the fresh wound of Toby's death wasn't able to drown out the pain of that particular memory.

He pulled himself from the stream of memories as the first thrall entered his line of sight as it barrelled up the stairs. It was one of the low-leveled mages, and it opened its mouth to shout something as it stared at him with wide eyes. Octavius tuned out whatever it said as he inhaled deeply, falling into the icy tranquility that made him such a deadly combatant.

He felt the tension leave his shoulders as he smiled. As long as he held breath, his death was far from guaranteed. After all, he just had to slow the thralls down for a minute at most. After that, he guessed that Finn, along with all of the freed captives, would've reached the surface. Once they were all safe, he could make his own retreat up the secret tunnel where the thralls could only get at him one at a time.

The thrall mage didn't reach for the ring that he knew was secured to its belt like Octavius expected. Instead, it lifted its hands in a familiar motion. More thralls piled into the tunnel that separated the corridor from the room they hailed from. In this, their hierarchical organization worked against them, as the weakest among all the thralls were the first to reach him.

Octavius quickly grabbed a blue-colored mana potion from his belt and emptied it into his mouth. As he threw it to the side, the sound of glass shattering against the stone was drowned out by the shouts of the hundreds of thralls before him. He held the viscous liquid in his mouth and clenched his jaw.

Blue energy began to condense between the thrall's four-fingered hands as it cast mana bullet. He watched with something akin to humor as more and more mages halted in line with the first and began their own spells. In doing so, however, they were blocking the actual melee fighters among their ranks from reaching him.

The first thrall completed its spell, and Octavius grinned. The shadows of the dimly lit hallway were finally saturated with his mana, and everything suddenly went dark.