The Sultanate’s elites were on the hunt and tracked the hydra’s heads to where they had emerged. One of the soldiers saw the glimmer of the monster’s eyes in the dark before it pulled away, deeper into the cavernous and twisting depths that stretched out beneath the town. Seemingly forgetting the fact that their ears were blocked to cancel out the perception-altering effects of the serpentine, multi-headed beast, a few of the more veteran survivors yelled aloud, only realizing that they could not be heard after their words sounded dull in their head due to the blockages in their ears.

“There! There it is, men!”

“Hah! Look at the beast run! Cowering in a cave, like the scared animal it is! This fear is what you get for being such a monster, after all!”

“Typical animal. A dangerous predator when none can see you, yet the moment we can you run like the cowardly snakes you are!”

Of course, one of the men had an issue with this display and tried to voice his opinion, but he too could not be heard.

“What are you guys saying? I can’t hear you! No one can!”

The sight of mouths moving but no sound accompanying it was enough to give the men, all 170 of them, cause for pause. How were they to communicate if they could not speak? While needing to speak over the din of a normal battle would be superfluous, this was no normal fight. This was not to say that at any point in their years of service that they had ever fought in a war or massive battle, but at the very least they were trying to make good decisions, which is more than could be said for some of the other foes Darksol had to deal with.

The question of how to communicate remained, at least until a voice cut through the deafening silence.

“I had hoped to never have to use one of these, but I suppose the Scholars back at home will have to fiddle with used toys.”

The fact that this one voice could be heard, and that it came from inside their own heads, was enough to get all but one of the soldiers to look around in confusion. They eventually had all of their eyes fall on one man who had done something that the rest of them had considered suicidal once the truth of their predicament was made clear and had gone off to ‘dig up buried treasure’.

He was wearing a necklace that somehow looked both ornate and mundane, and he was dragging a massive sack around with himself.

“There’s no time to explain.” He said. “put these on.”

He opened the bag and inside were over 500 of the same necklace. They all begrudgingly wore the blasphemous jewelry, and one by one they became able to communicate with each other without the use of their ears. No one had thought that this one person would contribute much, especially how every day he had been trapped here with the rest he had been wasting time playing games in the town fairgrounds. As it turned out, having a seemingly useless prodigy-level talent for the game of horseshoes was something that no one knew would save them time and trouble.

With their minds able to talk to each other and their worries about communication alleviated, the 170 men remaining from one of the many 300 Chosen formations that the Sultanate had at its disposal made their way into the caves. It would be a long hike with minimal lighting, but it was a journey that they would have to make.

…

Zero Noir watched with growing aggravation as the lucky bastards somehow managed to evade most of the dangers of the cave system that he had set up in advance. He had honestly hoped that they would have to navigate the whole thing with no audio contact with each other, but his choice to add repeatable mini-games to the town had come back to bite him. He now could not allow any of them to escape with their lives. Given the fact that they were reaching the final room and were about to face the False Hydra with overwhelming numbers, this Dungeon Master was going to have to either face them himself or create a ‘rocks fall, everyone dies’ moment.

As he was forced to behold the False Hydra’s health slowly be chipped away, he thought about turning all of the NPC dolls in the town hostile to add to the danger, but he decided against that. He was still on the fence as to what he should do when the psionically transmitted words of a handful of the soldiers set him off and made up his mind for him.

You, dear reader, don’t need to know the exact wording of what was mentally said, but needless to say, you don’t call someone with as fragile an ego as him without there being serious repercussions. The numbers of the soldiers fell as what should have been the predator became the prey, and as the False Hydra gave one last dying breath before the 80 or so men that remained alive in its presence, Zero Noir began to set the stage for a curb-stomping like no other.

He may have trapped them in a death-game, forced them to forget their fellows, and made them face an existential nightmare, but he would be damned if he let people call his work terrible. Also, there was the fact that he did not want Alexis or, god forbid, Kain to find out he failed to wipe out the invaders when he himself spirited them away.

With all the preparations in place, the False Hydra dead, and the soldier celebrating, the Giant Trash Can used his authority to transport all of the enemies to what would be their final destination.

…

A bright flash of light blinded all of the triumphant survivors for a moment before they felt a slight falling sensation. Their feet hit the ground, or what seemed to be the ground, and as their eyes adjusted to the new normal, they could see that they were on some kind of large, floating platform surrounded by what seemed to be the night sky. As they all began to take stock of what was going on, a kind of odd, aggressive music began to play, and a shadow flew over them.

The music increased in intensity and volume, until at last a massive figure, seemingly a giant metal grim reaper, floated up from the bottomless void that surrounded the platform. The figure cackled like a man possessed, and the last fight they would ever take part in began to an extended and altered rendition of one of the most epic battle theme for a certain Dragon-Turtle’s Inside Story.