I took the first watch again, and when Shave relieved me, I wanted nothing more than to sleep. I had to be ready tomorrow morning. Ticks was right—we couldn’t lose anyone else on what was supposed to be a routine escort mission. If there was anything I could do about it, I had to.

  As it was right now, I might not have been able to make massive, sweeping changes to the world. But I could affect me and my circumstances, and I could affect what happened around me. I didn’t have to let my companions die. That meant I’d need to have a full awareness of what was going on.

  It didn’t exactly work out that way. The anticipation kept me awake longer than I wanted, and I woke up a few times throughout the night. But in the morning, the cold breeze was more than enough to wake me up and get my senses back about me.

  Once everyone was ready, we gathered our equipment and returned to the Labyrinth entrance.

  “Lights,” Shave commanded.

  Elf and Romance led the way. They reached into their kit bags and retrieved a yellow canister each. It was made of glass and about the same size as a roll of nickels. With a shake, they awakened a cloud of fireflies within each canister. Romance hooked it onto the front of his shield, and Elf attached his to a hook on the side of his helmet.

  They illuminated the way ahead. I glanced at Shave and said, “I didn’t get one of those.”

  “Lieutenant Finger didn’t trust you with glass.” Shave shrugged. “He said you’d fall on it and break it, and since we’re short on buglights, he didn’t want to waste one on you. Now lad, you wanted to be here, so keep up.”

  We descended down a stairway. The floor was made of rough, weathered marble, which had seen probably centuries of moss growth. It was a miracle it wasn’t worse. The spiderwebs, however, was what had me the most nervous. They made curtains at the edge of the walls, hanging from the ceiling and covering anything that wasn’t a direct route through the center of the hall.

  It was wide enough to fit a wagon through, though, and that meant we could walk side-by-side. I took a position beside Ticks in the second row.

  “Labyrinths have two components,” Shave said. It was probably mostly for my benefit. “Hallways and rooms. The orcs almost always make their raid camps in the rooms. They stay for a few weeks before they empty them out and retreat with their spoils.”

  “We can’t take an entire camp of orcs on our own,” Ticks replied. “Not in a direct confrontation.”

  “No,” Shave replied. “I’d bet a different battalion or a mercenary squad is already preparing a mission to clear this place out. But by then, it will be too late for the prisoners—and we’re just here for them. We’ll sneak into the camp, get in, and get out before anyone notices. Just like when we nabbed a turkey from Sir Buthwin’s pen at Homecamp.”

  “It’s not nearly the same thing,” Ticks replied. “And we’ve got the newbie with us.”

  “He saved your ass, remember,” Romance replied.

  “After I saved his.”

  I was silent through the whole affair, and moments later, Shave whispered, “Be quiet. Orcs were here recently.”

  Shreds of moss and strands of spider silk littered the floor. The orcs would’ve cleaved through the hall on their way in and out.

  Finally, we arrived at a room at the end of the hall. It had a high ceiling with a dome, and pilasters lined the edges. There was an inactive fountain in the center with algae-filled water in its basin.

  “Each room normally has a monster in it,” Shave replied. “But this close to the surface, good luck finding anything. If the orcs don’t clear them out, then the non-Dupe adventurer squads that scour the land, mapping out Labyrinth entrances, most certainly do. You won’t find much.”

  “How deep would you have to go?” I asked.

  “At least five or six rooms. Of course, Labyrinths attract monsters and beasts to enter them, so they’ll refill naturally over time, but adventurers love clearing them out. As much as they can.” Shave sighed. “The point is, any monsters we encounter down here will be too strong to handle, ‘cause the weak ones are already gone.”

  “Except the orcs,” Romance said, as if trying to reassure himself. “We can handle those.”

  This room had numerous adjoining hallways, all leading to other rooms. One had a stairway that led downward.

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  “Show us the way, Shave,” Elf said. “Or we’re going to be going in circles.”

  Shave pulled off his helmet then triggered his perception skill, then pointed to the left and said, “That way. Down that hall. I’m counting nearly thirty Iron-tier orcs and one Steel…creature with them.”

  “Call it, sarge,” Ticks said.

  “They’ve got guards in this hallway. But there’s a back route which isn’t guarded.”

  “Just like the fucking turkey…” Romance groaned.

  “It’s unguarded for a reason, right?” I asked.

  Shave motioned to the branch of the hallway straight ahead. “We take that hall, pass through a few rooms, and we’ll hit one with a monster of some kind in it. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s a Steel-tier as well.”

  “We’ll have to sneak past it,” Elf said. “But it’s our best shot.”

  “What about our way out?” I asked. “Can we just sneak the prisoners through?”

  “We’ll assess it when we can see what we’re working with,” Shave said. “Until then, form up, and we take the back route.”

  We returned to our earlier formation and took the hallway leading straight ahead. I was hoping we’d go faster, but I couldn’t blame the others for being cautious. Even with the buglights, it was hard to tell where we were going.

  When we reached the third room, we almost fell into a trap. It was almost exactly the same as the first room, but the floor fell away around the fountain as we approached, sending marble bricks tumbling into the depths. They landed with a loud clatter, sending echoes through the halls of the Labyrinth. Ticks grabbed the back of Elf’s hauberk, keeping him from falling in.

  “How has nothing triggered that trap before?” I breathed.

  “The Labyrinth Keepers reset it,” Romance explained with a soft voice.

  “...Keepers?”

  “Look.” He held his shield over the gap, which fell nearly a hundred feet down into the earth. His buglight illuminated a perfectly straight line of ants. Or they looked vaguely like ants. They were pale blue and had ten legs, and they delved deep into the pit. Slowly, the creatures ate away at the bricks, dissolving them and carrying the material back up to the top, where they packed it back in like they were re-moulding the Labyrinth out of clay.

  “So that’s why it’s so clean,” I replied. “I mean, comparatively, this place should be completely buried over and decrepit now, right?”

  “Enough doddling,” Ticks said. “With the sergeant.”

  We retook our positions and continued down the next hall, following Shave’s instructions and directions. But slowly, a pressure much like I’d felt from the sappers built in the hallway ahead. It wasn’t as dense as the sappers’ had been, but it was enough to keep me on my toes. That must’ve meant the monster was directly ahead.

  We stopped in a doorway, staying deathly silent without needing to be told to, and gazed into the room ahead. It was a large chamber with two rows of pillars running through the center and a few ancient murals on the walls. The Labyrinth Keepers must not have been artists, because the murals were incredibly faint and hadn’t been preserved like the rest of the underground structure.

  Our foe lay at the very center of the hall. It was a massive mole the size of a horse—no, slightly larger—with a star-shaped nose. Instead of tiny tendrils, though, its nose had ten-foot long tentacles slithering out in every direction.

  At the moment, its head rested on its side, and it slept with its pinprick eyes tightly shut. But I wasn’t sure how long that would last or how much time we would have. Surely, it would smell or hear us.

  And those claws…it had talons the length of my arm with sharp tips. I didn’t want to know what it could do to me.

  Elf and Romance steeled themselves, then led the way. Moles had horrible eyesight, so there was no need to snuff their buglights, but we all breathed as softly as we could. We skirted the edge of the room, crossing behind a wall of pillars, until we were about halfway.

  Elf’s kit bag was coming loose. One of the buckles had been bent out of shape in the battle on the boardwalk, and it was threatening to slip off his back.

  I watched it carefully as we walked. As the buckle grew looser and looser. We just had to make it across the room. I wanted to warn Elf, but even a tap on his shoulder would make his chainmail clink, and it’d be too loud.

  We were three quarters of the way across the room when the buckle finally popped open. I lunged forward, grabbing the falling kit bag before it hit the ground. Shave pressed a hand to my back to stop my chainmail from rattling and Ticks wrenched my spear up so its back end wouldn’t clatter on the ground. Together, we stayed nearly silent.

  For a moment, my heart swelled with relief, until the front flap of Elf’s kit bag flopped open. Nothing fell out, but even I could smell the rations. Maybe it was because I’d skipped lung and was hungry, but if I could smell it, then so could the mole.

  Shave pointed to the door on the opposite side of the room. We sped up, even if it meant a few more clinks. The mole’s tentacle nose began to sway, and its eyelids fluttered open. It let out a deep rumble, like the loudest purr I’d ever heard.

  When we reached the opposite doorway and adjacent hall, I pressed my back against the wall, only to find a pair of open wooden doors behind me. “Shut them!” I hissed. “Lock the mole in!”

  We heaved, creaking the doors shut and sealing the mole in. They were old and thin, and I had no doubt that the mole could push them down if it wanted, but at least we were out of sight. Hopefully, it would just go back to sleep after losing us.

  Sure enough, the mole didn’t even try to bash the door. It just ran past.

  Now, we just had to get to the orc camp. It was close. Torchlight seeped out of the hallway, coming from in front of us. We continued forward, moving softly, until we reached a corner.

  Shave signalled for us to stop, and we did, pressing our backs up against the wall, and letting Romance lean around the corner.

  “Regroup,” he said. “The camp’s just up ahead.”