Jarbal shook his head, “I don’t think so. The orcs and goblins do that, but the other races don’t have to, since they have orcs and goblins…” he trailed off.
Damn, I’d been hoping they did, if we staged a breakout maybe in the chaos it would be far easier to sneak in. Better that there wasn’t though, all those people would likely have died for their efforts. We had no easy way to help them escape the mountains.
“The mine seems like the best bet, we’ll be able to sleep or take out the guards, and still have time to get down to the vault before anyone notices. The main entrances sound too risky, even if we sleep the guards, we have to walk in uncloaked before we can cloak and find a tunnel, sounds like other gray dwarves in sight of the main entrances might see us. The mission would be over before it started. Unless someone objects?”
No one did.
“No time like the present.”
Jarbal looked dubious as we left the tent…
Chapter Twenty-Two
We were cloaked and circling the mountain’s base at about five hundred feet. There was no sign of orc or hobgoblin tribes, or anything other than animals in the surrounding valleys. They all must’ve been part of the horde that was gathering several miles back west. We were far into enemy territory, but for the most part it had been abandoned for the planned invasion.
The mine entrance itself was small, more of an oversized air vent than a true entrance. I supposed that made sense, since all the ore mined would be moved to the gray dwarven city underground, not outside below the sky. There was a small encampment of ten orcs, which were obviously the guards of the entrance.
Gwen said, “Do you think the grand enchantment is extended over the mine as well?”
I shrugged, “Maybe? My guess is no, it won’t be as protected as the city, but we’ll see. Let’s land on the other side of those rocks. We’ll cloak the party and walk through, if we feel a grand enchantment, we’ll take out the ten guards quietly. Cassie, you’ll block the entrance for sound first thing, we don’t want anyone inside hearing that. If there is no enchantment, we’ll sneak through and into the mine, and find a place we can uncloak so you can recover your mana.”
Gwen said, “They’re pretty low level, and there’re only ten of them. If there’s a grand enchantment let me try to sleep them first. That way when they’re relieved in who knows when, there won’t be an alarm.”
I nodded, “Sounds good, anyone else before we move?”
No one spoke.
“Take us down.”
Anlyth lowered the ship to the ground, and then popped the canopy. The cloak was released, we weren’t in line of sight with the guards, and we got out of the ship. We took a minute to organize in party order, it also allowed Gwen to regen her mana from cloaking the ship.
Lara cloaked all of us, we wouldn’t be able to see the other group otherwise, and we had no idea which way to go once we were past the entrance. Cloaking was a huge drain, especially with six, but we had a lot of mana nowadays and she could hold it for a minute or two.
Then we jogged around the boulder, and up the path toward the entrance. The life of the orcs came into my detection range a few seconds before the cave entrance. I couldn’t detect any spells at all, or grand enchantments, so we just kept going straight into the entrance in party order. We’d gone maybe twenty feet inside, and there were no other enemies around, so Lara dropped the cloak.
“If you detect life forms, cloak right away.”
I should have said that earlier, Lara had life, light, and darkness, so she could react much faster than my orders, and cloak us if she felt other life forms. That didn’t mean I was going to drop my own detect life spell though.
Lara nodded, all business. Her usual bashful shyness seemed to melt away, at least when we were in danger, she just had a determined look on her face.
We already had the other plans down, Dan and Gwen would be looking for traps of both varieties, and they were leading the way. We started to move into the mine, looking for a shaft down. This level seemed to be abandoned, which was odd because the lowest level should be the oldest and most played out. At least, until we arrived at one of the shafts and noticed it went both up and down. The mining must’ve been in the even higher levels.
Dan looked at Cassie and tapped his ear, I almost smiled, it was the same signal I used all the time with Lyre.
When Cassie nodded, he said, “I disarmed four traps on the way, just in case you’re curious. The shaft is very deep, the next level is thirty feet down.”
I nodded, “No guards in the down direction either, so that level must be abandoned. I feel a few orcs above us though. I suggest we cloak, and then go straight to the bottom of the mineshaft. Can you use a thin sheet of rock to lower us down?”
Dan nodded, but his eyes looked unsure, “I think so? I haven’t flown yet, but I understood all the concepts well enough when Anlyth showed it to me.”
“Good enough, when we get down to the bottom, we’ll take stock if there are no guards. If there are, we move to the tunnel on your signal after you check for traps. If there are traps, signal us and we’ll have to deal with any guards. In that scenario, don’t forget to give Cassie enough time to block sound.”
Some of the dirt and rocks moved and formed a thin platform, and we all got onto it. Gwen cloaked us all this time, right as the platform rose, moved over the shaft, and started to go down and a very fast rate. It was a little nerve wracking, because I couldn’t see the bottom and got a visual of slamming into it, but of course Dan would be able to feel the rock floor approaching once it got in range.
The bottom of the shaft opened up into a huge cavern which I wasn’t expecting at all. It was also hot, as there were piles of raw mined metals, a foundry of sorts, and piles of iron and steel ingots. Next to that was several forges to make steel weapons and armor. There were also orcs laboring all over the place, there had to be a hundred of them in the vast cavern, not to mention two guards by one of the exits. Even in the worst-case scenario I’d come up with, my plan to quietly take down a few guards quickly was a joke.
Dan motioned us forward, and we ran toward that exit. We were about fifty feet away, when I felt the strong as hell enchantment around the entrance. Shit. We either killed them all and hoped to keep it quiet, which would last until their relief came, or more ore was delivered, or we could chance it and hope the grand enchantment didn’t include finding beings under cloak.
Hope as always, was a shitty plan.
“Lara, take over when Gwen signals.”
Fortunately, cloaking was even better at hiding sounds, and inside the cloak we could all still hear each other.
“The way I see it, we have two choices. Hope the enchantment doesn’t see cloaked people and run through, or we could put the two guards to sleep, break cloak, and run through the door hoping no one is looking this way. The first scenario is better, but if that fails no one in the room is likely to miss the bright flash of light that dispels us.”
Cassie grinned, “Won’t they notice the two sleeping guards?”
I shook my head, “Doubtful, Gwen can control how long it lasts, so if she sets the duration for five seconds that’s just long enough for us to de-cloak, get through the archway, and re-cloak on the other side, without it being long enough that anyone would notice.”
Gwen nodded, and Lara spun up a cloak to relieve her.
Gwen said, “He’s right.”
I shrugged, “It’s a risk, but in my mind it’s a known and acceptable risk, rather than a total gamble of complete safety verses completely blowing the mission.”
Cassie nodded, “I can skew the odds further, and deaden sounds from our party. As long as no one is looking this way, we should be safe.”
I added, “It’s kind of dark in this corner too, and the foundry and forges are bright enough in the cavern that they probably aren’t using night vision. Even if they do catch a quick glimpse, they might dismiss it. Especially if they call out, and the guards te
ll them they didn’t see anything.”
Dan said, “You seem pretty set on that option…”
I shrugged, “I am, but this isn’t a battle decision, so I’ll go with the majority. Everyone gets a vote in this party, unless it’s during battle.”
I’d already told him that, and that during battle any of us can call a retreat if they notice things are about to go very bad, maybe he wasn’t used to that?
We all voted, and we went ahead with the plan. It worked surprisingly well, and I was wondering when Murphy’s law would kick in. Things so far had been if not easy, at least accommodating. When we crossed the threshold and gained the other side of the enchantment, Gwen took over the cloak, and we moved on quickly as Dan scanned the ground for traps, and we all felt for enchantments.
The tunnel started to curve sharply almost right away, and she dropped the cloak when we were out of sight. It also went down at an angle, assumedly spiraling down toward the city. The enchantment Jarbal had given to me was a lighter red in color, and it glowed brighter. I could also feel my destination somewhere below.
Cassie said, “It feels wrong leaving them alive.”
I smiled, “Maybe we could kill them on the way out.”
Cassie grinned, “I knew I’d like this party.”
Gwen laughed.
We continued to spiral down for quite a while, until we came to an exit to an even larger cavern that dwarfed the vast one at the bottom of the mine. It was at least a mile in diameter, and it housed an entire city. We didn’t feel any gray dwarves in range, but we could see some of them in the distance and took cover.
“Which way?” Steve asked.
I frowned, “See that big building in the middle, where the city’s leader probably lives?”
Steve sighed, “Seriously?”
I nodded, “I can feel it, it’s around there, and a little lower. I’d guess the vault is below the castle, or whatever that behemoth of a building would be called.”
Gwen breathed out, “That makes sense, unfortunately, of course the vault is buried beneath the ruler’s home, in the heart of their city.”
There were more gray dwarves than I’d expected throughout the city, as far as the ones we could see. Most of them were female, but there were guards as well. I didn’t see any children, maybe they were kept inside? Probably, I didn’t imagine growing up in an evil race would be safe at all for kids to play on the street.
Nothing else for it, go big or go home. I just hoped if they had any master level gray dwarves, they were with the invasion force. Still, I was hoping for more small tunnels, it was a half mile to the center of the city, and all in the open with one big room.
“Let’s cloak and head that way, Lara and Gwen switch off when you get low. Dan, I don’t expect their city to have traps, but check anyway. Let’s circle that building and look around, then we’ll discuss what to do. Hopefully there isn’t another grand enchantment, but there probably is.”
We didn’t race, just in case there were traps. We moved at a brisk walk toward the center of the city. It was ugly, the houses blocky and uniform, without beauty of any kind. Boring square architecture, but in the end it was a city, with different districts. The entrance we just came in led into one of the housing districts. I imagined the market district would be at the tunnel entrances, the mine after all, was just an extension of the city.
There were a lot of gray dwarven females, and all of them were armed with at least a knife, many of them had maces or axes hanging from their belts. The soldiers, there weren’t as many as I’d feared, they’d really stripped the city for the war effort.
Still, I had no doubts our only choices were to run if we were caught out, there were too many to fight. Thousands really. We could probably kill a lot of them, but in the end, we’d be back at the temple to Gaia in the clouds. Worse, once we were inside the palace, if we were caught out there we’d be forced to fight our way out.
It wasn’t really a castle, palace, or even a keep. There were no walls separating it from the rest of the city, and it was more a large sprawling three story mansion of stone. The main entrance was two huge doors, with four highly armored and intimidating gray dwarf warriors guarding the door. That entrance was out. There was also a side entrance, by a waste pit that stunk of rotten food. I assumed it was a kitchen and servant entrance. There were only two guards there, but they too were highly armored and intimidating. Their royal guards were probably among the most powerful, journeymen if not experts. I could assess them, but I was afraid they’d feel it, so I didn’t.
Around the back was a third entrance, with some other buildings that looked like barracks. A guard entrance? That one had two guards as well. The one piece of good news was there was no grand enchantment present.
“Kitchen entrance? We can wait until someone comes out and slip in the door.”
Cassie said, “Actually, I was thinking a window on the second floor. It means having to traverse one more floor while cloaked, but it sounds safer than trying to use the doors.”
Lara said, “I second that.”
Gwen said, “Third.”
Steve said, “Looks like we’re outvoted.”
Lara gave him a look, and he snickered.
Dan said, “It’s a good plan, not that my vote was needed.”
Cassie smirked.
“Alright, I’ll try not to fall off the wall.”
Steve asked, “Can’t we float up?”
I shrugged, “They can cover a spell and something we’re standing on in a cloak, but trying to cast it while already cloaked will break the cloak.”
Gwen nodded, “What he said. The only exception is another cloak, when Lara takes over she cloaks my cloak, even as it fails.”
We moved over to the walls, and Dan and Gwen started up the wall toward an open window. I watched Gwen very carefully, not checking her out, but how she was climbing and placing her hands and feet. I followed suit, not really overly worried. A twenty-foot fall wouldn’t kill me.
We wound up in a bedroom of sorts. It was large, and had its own tub, but it was obvious crude. The evil races had no appreciation for décor or beauty.
We moved to the door.
“No one on the other side.”
Dan nodded at my comment, and he opened it up so we could all slip out. I felt a lot of gray dwarves below us, but none on this level. Not too big a surprise, it must be the middle of their day, and none of them had a reason to be in the bed chambers. If there were servants, they either hadn’t started cleaning yet, or they were already finished.
Once again, I felt inordinately lucky, despite our cloaking ability and good planning I kept expecting the other shoe to drop. Of course, the pessimist in me said it wouldn’t happen until the worst possible time. Because… that was just the kind of luck I had.
We moved down to the end of the hall, and we took the stairs down to the first floor. We were all moving quietly, and no one said a word despite the cloak making that unnecessary, as we moved cautiously past a group of gray dwarves. Their language was ugly and dissonant, and they seemed to be in some kind of argument.
We passed several rooms that were full of gray dwarves as we searched for the stairs down. It made me remember the dark elves sneaking around in the castle in the southern kingdom, who not incidentally, were caught and killed.
We found an alcove that led to stairs down, but there were also two gray dwarves standing in our way. It was obviously their post, and they wouldn’t be moving out of the way anytime soon. Cloak worked well, but if we bumped into anyone we’d be discovered, there was no hiding stupid after all. It wasn’t surprising either, of course there were guards in front of the entrance to the dungeons and vaults. We just hadn’t expected them to be physically blocking the entrance, instead of off to the sides against the wall.
Steve quipped, “Well damn, guess we have to go home now.”
A nervous chuckle escaped my lips.
The hallway we were in was not in the main part of
the castle, I only felt a few of them on the edge of my range, but that didn’t mean killing the guards and hoping for the best was a good idea.
I sighed, “Alright, we’ll have to hope none of the others notice, or have detect life going, and these two are susceptible to darkness.”
It was a problem, as soon as she cast the spell it would break our cloak, if any of the gray dwarves had detect life going they’d feel humans and rouse the guards. Even if they were just journeyman, they’d feel the spells and know something was going on, if not the race of who was casting. There was a chance they’d ignore it, and not jump to conclusions, but I really didn’t like it.
No one objected, and Gwen created a ball of darkness, which exploded outward at the guards and killed our cloak. The two guards seemed to sag, as they fell asleep on their feet.
Gwen said, “Ten seconds,” and slid by them, brushing up against both.
We all followed quickly and then re-cloaked on the other side, then waited nervously as the guards woke up. I was happy it worked, it even made some sense. We had hit the jackpot in the gem mine, but gems were normally far rarer. I doubted we’d be lucky enough to stumble into hundreds of master or grandmaster gems for instance, our Expert level upgrade was probably our last one for a long while.
Point was, it didn’t seem common at all to have eighty percent resistance against all spheres, and it seemed to be an advantage we had simply because we’d had the ship and the guts to raid that mine.
It also seemed there was no call to arms, or an alarm. They must not have been detecting life, maybe none of them had the life sphere. As far as the magic, I’d bet spells were cast all the time in the city, and it was just background noise of sorts. Of course, all that meant when things finally did go wrong it would probably go very wrong.
We moved down the stairs to the next level which opened up into a corridor, thankfully without more guards.
“Little more down, directly below us. I bet there’s more stairs down at the other end and the lower corridor backtracks.”
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