Sage was carrying what looked to be a large tree trunk on his shoulder when he finally caught up to King. Their evacuation point was the spot outside of town where they’d left the Vulture Geckos. Sage did a quick headcount and found they were a few short. He looked over at one of the humans among the group and learned one of the groups hadn’t returned yet. Fearing the worst, Sage ordered them all to mount up and leave the area.

He left behind his Twin Soul to scout and strapped Black Saber to a Vulture Gecko. The whole group quickly left the area and Sage ordered them to meet up with Whitestaff before she reached Orange Sky City. The power the Yi Yang Group had even in these smaller cities could not be underestimated. They had no way of knowing whether or not the resistance they’d just met was unusual, or something that every one of the local city headquarters could muster.

I think the Jade Horde will have to refrain from any other opportunistic actions in the future. First the mine, and now the Yi Yang Group’s downfall. They both seemed like golden opportunities, but they were more like traps that I barely escaped.

As if to reinforce his fears, the missing squad showed up at the evacuation zone. They had on large cloaks, but it wasn’t enough to hide the wide brimmed helmets they were all wearing. The Twin Soul watched them search the area for a while, before a few more black cloaked people showed up and used some sort of magical device for a while. They pointed the device into the sky and then spoke to each other for a bit. Sage was still worried about others in the Yi Yang Group having the means to detect the Twin Soul so he kept it well away from them. After a few more minutes they all left the area, taking the Hoplites with them.

The Twin Soul followed along behind them. The group went into a secluded cave and a formation sprang up to block the entrance. The Twin Soul probed through the ground and found a similar barrier protecting it from every direction. After waiting outside for a few hours, the people in black cloaks left the cave. The Twin Soul followed after them, while Sage and King swooped in to investigate the cave they just left.

The formation had been deactivated before the black cloaks had left, but Sage was careful to do a thorough search nonetheless. The cave seemed natural enough, but there was a hidden door on one of the walls. The disturbed dirt and bat guano made it easy to pick out. Past the door was a room of carved stone. There was a large formation just inside the doorway, but beyond that the room was, in short, disgusting. A simple description would be to call it a torture room, while a long one would point out dried bloodstains, dozens of gruesome looking implements, and very uncomfortable looking furniture. From the sight of the fresh blood on the floor, it was likely the squad of Hoplites had met their end here. Following the bloodtrail, they found a sort of ‘chute’. One that led to a much larger and deeper cave. One filled with bones, large animal droppings, and the remains of the Hoplite squad. King went to check it out while Sage used Hindsight to confirm what had happened.

He saw the group enter, with the Hoplites seeming completely willing. They sat down on dark iron chairs and one of them helped the others chain themselves down. The last one was chained up by the black cloaks. Then the ones in black cloaks reached up and made a few hand signs before touching a spot on a helmet and deactivating it. Sage watched closely to ensure he could replicate the action. Once the helmets were removed, the black cloaks stored them.

The Hoplites were no longer willing and docile. They all had blank looks on their faces and drool coming from their mouths. One of the black cloaks used some sort of technique and a thick pink gas rushed out of their mouths and noses and into a bottle the person held out. The put a stopper into the bottle, then took out another. This time, the gas seemed to help them and the drooling Hoplites woke up from their stupor.

“Aaaaah!”

They awoke with terrified and pained screams. Eyes bulging and flailing around in their attempts to flee for their lives. Only when they realized they could finally move and speak again did they understand their predicament.

“Please, just kill me. I don’t want to be like that ever again.”

“Shh. You won’t be puppets anymore as long as you tell us everything you know.”

The Hoplites, those bugs in half-human form, instilled with ancestral memories of discipline and loyalty; spilled their guts. They begged to tell the black cloaks all that they knew. The reaction scared Sage, enough for him to worry about Black Saber. He’d need to very carefully awaken the man, because it seemed the Yi Yang Groups methods were far too effective.

Thankfully, Sage had put in place safeguards upon the Hoplites. They grew up in small villages and trained to join the Jade Horde. They spent the first month of their lives as a large larvae, a time which they didn’t remember. They would undergo their metamorphosis into a beetle, which started their ‘coming of age ceremony’ at which point they would get their partial human seals. When their transformation ended, they didn’t look like beetles, instead they would look like 5 year old children. Over the course of the next 11 months they would train and grow into their late teens, finally ready to head to the battlefield. The black cloaks only gained the location of a few Hoplite villages and some information about their culture. Thankfully, their time as larvae and their ‘coming of age’ ceremonies were not part of their memories, so there were no secrets to spill.

The black cloaks didn’t seem satisfied and repeated the whole process of questioning after a quick round of torture. The Hoplites almost seemed thankful at being tortured rather than having to experience whatever it was they had faced earlier. They gave all the same answers and when they finally expired one of them even said, “Thank you.”

They took all the gear from the Hoplites and then left after tossing their bodies down the chute. King returned at that point and told Sage that it looked to be the den of some disgusting Demonic Beast. The cave led to a ravine a few miles away. King had found tracks, and compared it with the stench in the cave to guess it was some sort of cross between a hyena and a mole or badger. As they assumed, just a convenient way to get rid of corpses.

They performed a final inspection to make sure there wasn’t anything valuable before knocking the whole hill down. Sage copied down the array formations before destroying them and then they buried the whole place to make sure that nobody used the terrible place again. At the very least the Yi Yang Group should have to spend time making another one.

Meanwhile, the Twin Soul followed the black cloaks back to the local headquarters and stopped outside. He wasn’t wanting to have it destroyed again, but it confirmed the identity of the black cloaks. Sage called it back and left with King to join up with Whitestaff at Orange Sky City.

Whitestaff is not going to be happy for coming all this way for nothing.