Olimpia

After the initial shock at the explosion of activity, the anxiety and stress of the last days reached a peak before all of her emotions seemed to bleed away from Sathera's mind, leaving it blank. Vacantly, Sathera spun in place, searching for the bringers of death, her boots scraping against the stone. As she completed a full rotation, a flicker of optimistic suspicion ignited within her mind.

Rocking forward, teetering on the tips of her toes, Sathera's head shifted from one side to the other as she continued to search for the goblin who spotted them, only to fall back on her heels after a few long moments as she still found nothing. Something is wrong here.

Half turning to face the others, Sathera signaled to them — as they nearly tumbled over each other in their haste to start moving — to stay in place. They looked at her with bewildered apprehension, as she had just told them moments ago to be ready to run when the alarm was raised, but her eyes darted around as if she would confirm her suspicion with a quick glance before she mouthed the words, 'Not us.'

Her statement was proven true as a minute slowly clawed by, and while the chaotic noise never stopped, nothing approached their position. As she poked her head around the side of the tent to look at the guards standing at the intersection, her heart skipped a beat. There were now eight guards standing in the corners facing the outer camp where there used to be half as many.

For a moment, she thought she had been wrong — again — and they were forming a perimeter around the scouts before closing it. But with a quick look around, she saw no one else. And the guards looked… like they had become statues.

They stood like posts buried in the ground, their right arms holding a spear parallel to their bodies just to the front and side of their feet, and their left arms held a small shield raised to put their forearms at their bottom ribs, covering most of their chests with the wood and steel. Seconds passed, and their heads and limbs never moved as if they were welded into place. It was such a dramatic shift from the lackadaisical lounging they had been doing a moment before that Sathera had to spend a few moments just taking it all in. They weren't looking for anything. In fact, Sathera knew what they were doing well. The goblins were standing in place, hoping with the whole of their shriveled little hearts that their superiors would pass by without noticing or commenting on them. There was no such thing as good attention from a superior as a grunt.

Then, a smile spread over Sathera's face, and she had to stifle a bubbling laugh of relief from bursting from her throat. Quickly dropping onto her heels, she pivoted, turning to offer Joxin her hand. He reached forward, grabbing hold of it while shifting to act as a bridge to connect to the other two as well. As soon as the network was established, Sathera began speaking into it, not even trying to hide the dry amusement in her mental voice, "They are preparing for an inspection."

The amusement was mirrored by the others after a beat, with Joxin's mind practically screaming that he hoped they would fail and be punished. It was a sentiment she was finding it hard to muster the emotions to be opposed to, a fact she felt a flicker of shame for. "This will work out great for us. While everyone in camp might be moving around, they won't pay much attention to a few more shadows flitting about when they are busy doing their assignments."

The other three agreed with her, having experienced what it was like when a high-ranking tribune suddenly came to camp. Everyone had to scramble to ensure all the equipment had the tiniest specks of rust scraped away and polished to perfection, along with all of their other equipment being oiled and polished. It didn't matter how well-maintained you kept your gear; you would be ordered to recheck it countless times during the lead up. The goblins didn't seem to be the most organized or forgiving of people either, which was a pity as forgiveness should not be rationed like a miser, but it should mean they were even more desperate not to be noticed.

Throwing one last look to the guards at the intersection and a glance down the other side of the divide, still seeing nothing in that direction, Sathera sucked in a breath and focused her mind. Rising to a half crouch, she glided forward, stepping into the gap.

A chill of anxiety ran over her body like she was stepping into a cold waterfall as she was exposed, but Sathera didn't let it affect her movements as she traversed the distance in seconds. As she stepped into the space between the far better tents, she stopped before turning to look at the guards again, seeing that they hadn't moved in the slightest.

Sathera didn't know if it was her skill or their overwhelming fear of being caught away from their posts as they inspected some movement to the side, and at the moment, she didn't care. The goblins were making this easy for them, which was a surprisingly nice change.

Waving to Joxin, Sathera signaled him to come across. She watched him take his first steps across the dividing gap before she turned and walked along the tent to its far side. Sathera couldn't help but notice that it was a whole step and a half longer than the tents in the outer area.

Coming to the tent's edge, Sathera was struck again with the difference between this section of tents and the last. Instead of iron or steel, the poles and pegs that were buried in stone and kept the tent from collapsing were made of wood… Like that was common under the earth. And then there was the handful of goblins checking each of the tents on this row, compared to the empty indifference a stone's throw away.

As she watched, waiting for her squad of scouts to form up, she noticed that two warrior goblins were acting as vigilant sentinels for the other shadow and stone goblins, taking in their every single action. It looked like, rather than protecting the others, they were acting as a guarantee of the standards the other goblins were working at as they serviced the tents one last time.

The longer Sathera watched them work, the more the scene seemed to wail with desperation. It's not like the goblins were altering anything; they were just rechecking everything that had already been done. The miserable creatures skittered around the tents, ensuring the tent pegs and poles were solidly placed in the ground, and all the guiding lines were tight. They then moved to the front to tie back the cloth flaps and move inside for a few seconds before moving to the next tent.

The only impressive aspect was the efficiency with which they moved from one tent to the next. It was clear that they had done this thousands of times before, and they could even do it in their sleep. And yet, even with their evident practice and them doing something seemingly routine, each and every one of them was wholly focused on their job. It was strange, but it offered the scouts another advantage Sathera was happy to take.

Less than a minute later, Sathera felt a soft tap on her back. Half turning, she motioned to them to watch to the right, and then she slipped forward when the goblin's backs were turned. It was that simple, and the others quickly repeated her actions, allowing them to move on to the next row of tents. Where another group of goblins were also making a last-minute check, but they were no more challenging to skirt than the first.

In such a way, the scouts traveled through dozens of near-identical lines of tents. The only real difference was that the deeper they went into the camp, the more elaborate the tents became. The edges of the tents became embroidered with flowing, looping designs, and the stakes and tent poles became carved, making them look like rock formations.

A couple of times, they had close calls as they appeared too close to a group of service goblins to slip by safely, and they had to backtrack a row before jumping up or down the line of tents to gain space. It wasn't often, but it took time for them to skirt around the problem. Time Sathera wasn't sure they had, but she was forcing herself to remain optimistic… as long as the negative thoughts weren't seeping their way into her mind, tainting the world. The worst moment of the infiltration was when they were forced to enter a random tent — where they learned the goblins entering the tent were checking on a small cot, but that didn't really matter to Bellous and Jim, who had a bet about it. They had to wait in there for minutes for the group to pass with their hearts jumped to lodge themselves in the scout's chest, but other than those small instances, the infiltration could be a breeze.

If anything, it was a little too easy.

Sathera kept feeling that it was wrong and that she was missing something. And countless times, she questioned whether she had made the right decision, but she kept reminding herself that it was far too late. Like it was her mantra, she mentally repeated, 'Everything is going to work out.'

Maybe if she said it enough, she would start to believe it. However, she had to admit that despite everything that had happened to them, the situations they had been thrust into had been working out generally fine. But if you want things to remain that way, you must focus on the present! Sathera shouted in her mind, trying to focus her thoughts on the latest group of goblins.

After spending most of an hour getting to the last line of tents, which was a short skip from the stone buildings in the innermost area of the camp, the drums' booming became so loud that it was like the heartbeat of the earth. No one in the camp could miss it, and the movements of those working on checking on the camp's readiness were becoming more frantic by the moment if the shouts were any indication. If it wasn't clear before, Sathera was positive now that the goblins were not looking forward to the drum's, and the ones beating on it, arrival.

With all the havoc throughout the outpost, the center stone section of the camp looked unsurprisingly deserted. After a few minutes of careful — but ultimately unneeded — inspection of the backs and sides of the bare stone buildings, the scouts walked over to one, entering its shadows.

With their arrival, if anything, Sathera felt… unsatisfied with how everything played out. The nagging feeling in the back of her mind, taunting her every moment over the last hour, was being suffocated into nonexistence. Everything but an overwhelming sense of contempt at the insult to her professional pride was being blotted out within her mind.

The goblin guards were little more than signposts meant to remain rooted in place and do nothing, as it wasn't like they were offering directions to the nonexistent people either. Those preparing the camp were so… the only word was terrified. That was the only way to describe their single-minded focus on every single minor detail of every single tent.

From all the times Sathera saw them performing their tasks, none of them deviated a single step, performing the exact same actions over and over again. Performing the same actions was kind of the point of having a procedure, a process she was familiar with as the legion had many of them. But the only time you had to follow every single little step of a procedure was within basic training. At any other point, it was usually either a waste of time, pointless, or sometimes even hazardous to follow.

There were procedures and regulations on how to equip your gear, even going so far as to specify that your scabbard had to be parallel with your straight left leg, regardless of how that made it harder to draw the weapon for a fight. There were rules on how to polish boots, even how you were supposed to do the soles of them. There was even a procedure detailing how a legionary was supposed to eat a meal step by step so the entire century could start and finish the meal at the same time.

That last one actually had some practical applications, as you had to be within a union to do it right, and it taught the trainees how to act as a single unit while remaining in a less-than-dangerous situation. But the point was that as soon as someone wasn't staring over your shoulder to point out every single little deviation from the script, everybody started to drift away from it. Some things just weren't needed or practical in life.

None of the goblins ever did, though. They were so focused on their tasks that Sathera's mental image of them running through a camp with a growing hoard of pursuers all around, even having to quickly cut down those blocking their path before the others caught up, was shattered before it could ever begin. Sathera was half convinced she could have skipped through the camp while singing and not been noticed.

After days of everything going against them, the sudden shift to the opposite was disconcerting. And what they had left to do wasn't any more challenging than traversing the camp.

All they had to do was sprint across the eighty-foot courtyard, cut down the nine goblins guarding the stairs, and start climbing. Perhaps they could find a way to shatter the stairs behind them. Maybe no one else in the camp would notice — which wouldn't be surprising — and they wouldn't even have to perform a fighting retreat or rush up the stairs, slipping away to find out what was above them.

Odds were, if Sathera stuck to her original plan, they would get through this and have a real chance of getting out of these caves alive. Sathera would be able to fulfill her wish to be kissed by the sun and to laugh into the wind as it ran its fingers through her hair. And yet, her eyes kept moving away from the stairwell, completely ignoring that beautiful structure as it spiraled around the fifteen-foot wide pillar of stone, climbing the entire hundred feet into the air to the ceiling above. She tried to keep her eyes locked on the exit, but every time she turned her eyes to the staircase, the traitorous things moved of their own accord across the stone pillar to its opposite side, to where a tunnel bored down into the floor.

Some kind of crystal appeared to have grown through the stone and continued sending out veins across the pillar, nearly reaching the stairwell. While the main clump kept a steady glow, the twisting fingers all across the bottom of the structure pulsed with a green light every couple of seconds.

Sathera's concerns kept her mind occupied before, but now that they were gone, she realized what she should have suspected long before this. Now that the light was washing over her skin, she felt… isolated. Sathera could feel her mind being pressured by an external force, and for the first time in what might have been her entire life, she felt truly alone. Even with Jim, Joxin, and Bellous standing around her, inches from her skin, she had never felt so isolated.

What was worse was that the longer she stayed within the green light's direct reach, the more her head throbbed and the stronger the feeling of isolation became. She didn't need to conduct a test. She wouldn't waste the psy and willpower to extend a tendril out of her body. She could already tell.

Whatever the source of the green glow was, it was causing and maintaining the unnatural pressure on castings, something that would cripple the legion. And there it was, feet from here, lightly guarded. Any information they could report paled in comparison to destroying it.

"We have to destroy whatever is down there," Joxin whispered, speaking aloud what was crossing all of their minds.