The Ironwood Forest offered much better concealment than the wastes north of it, but it exacted a different toll. Thorns the length of a man’s finger snagged Orion’s coat, sprouting from seemingly innocuous plants that proved to be carnivorous.
The path they were taking was not a well-traveled one, but they couldn’t risk being ambushed by the Mage Killers, not when they were so close to their goal. They suffered in silence, taking turns to handle the ever-increasing number of monsters they encountered.
Throughout the march, Orion had learned to push [Holographic Containment] beyond its limits and had earned a smattering of extra experience from his efforts.
Now almost twenty feet wide, the sensory field mapped the dense brush, feeding a continuous stream of data into his mind and allowing him to twist around the ever-reaching plants.
They were searching for the closest Alliance base, moving southeast through some of the darkest sections of the woods.
He was tired, and the constant need to adjust his course to avoid trees, mud pits, and monsters was doing him no favors.
"Tripwire," Orion whispered, raising a hand.
Esmeralda froze mid-step, her foot hovering an inch above a bed of dry needles. Orion alighted beside her, tracking a shimmering thread of blue mana strung between two ancient oaks.
He crouched, examining the trap. Its magic had a distinct, fluid structure, and he knew that if any of them touched it, it would release a surprising amount of liquid.
It was a water snare, intricately layered with triggers designed to release a focused blast capable of shattering bone and alerting anyone within a mile.
“This camp must be under Leviathan's Watch," Orion observed, keeping his voice low.
Not that they were the only ones to use water magic, but this was a bit too specialized to belong to a random mage.
“Strange that they were sent this far south. I would have thought they’d be busy enough fighting for their lives in the north,” Garrick muttered.
“That might be a good thing,” Orion replied. If the Watch’s men are here, their pressure campaign against the invasion is working.
“Might be,” their leader agreed, though they didn’t seem very hopeful. “I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with those sailors, and it’s never been particularly pleasant. Be on your guard.”
They carefully bypassed the trap before continuing on, and the deeper they went, the more similar the things they found were, though some were nature-based, indicating that the camp had at least a few druids as support.
That made sense. The Watchmen might be good fighters even on land, but they certainly weren’t used to fighting in forests.
It slowed them down significantly as they navigated the lined-up traps. Some were made of sharpened coral, while a perimeter of mist-wards was designed to freeze solid around an intruder.
At one point, Orion even missed an innocuous-looking plant that let out a startling shriek as they passed, drawing a whole pack of howling monkeys upon them.
Despite all their care, they had made enough noise by then that it was impossible for the base not to know of their arrival. When they breached the final thicket and found themselves standing on the edge of a wide, fortified clearing, they weren’t surprised to be stopped.
"Halt and declare yourselves!" a voice barked from the tree line.
Six Leviathan's Watch soldiers dropped from the lower branches of the surrounding pines, with tridents and harpoons leveled at Team Obsidian. Two druids in green cloaks observed from farther back, nature mana swirling around them as they waited for the signal to unleash a spell.
Garrick raised his empty hands, signaling the rest of the team to do the same. Orion kept his hands clear of his coat, keeping the Field around him as placid as possible.
He didn’t want to be struck down here, and while the guards were all tier-two and thus not very concerning, there were more powerful presences farther in.
“We are allies," Garrick rasped, his voice rough. "Team Obsidian. Returning from the northern wastes on a mission.”
The leader of the group, a tall woman with a harpoon strapped to her back, looked them over, and Orion knew what she saw.
Team Obsidian was a mess. Esmeralda’s dress was caked with white chalk and dried blood. Erethemor’s scales were cracked in places and pale in others. Jordan’s silver armor was dented and coated with soot. Orion’s coat was torn, still stained crimson around the collar despite his best efforts to clean it.
But while the guard’s eyes lingered on them all, they settled on Garrick’s face in recognition. "I know you. The adventurer. You were also assigned a Collegium mage and a Sentinel, and we were told to expect your return via the main road.”
That a mere guard knew their team composition was somewhat surprising to Orion, but then again, with so many factions working together, perhaps it was necessary to prevent anyone from slipping through the cracks.
The Iron State, after all, didn’t just employ machines. They had people, too, and had already proven capable of infiltrating Cyril.
"The roster is shorter now, and the passes are compromised," Garrick said, offering no further explanation. "We need to speak to your commanding officer. Now.”
The guard hesitated, her eyes flicking to the dark tree line behind them, then jerked her head toward the camp. “Move, but keep your hands away from your weapons and don’t make any sudden moves.”
Thus, they were let in.
Dozens of sturdy canvas tents clustered around a central command pavilion. Wooden palisades, reinforced with thick, overlapping scales of ironwood bark, formed a defensive ring. Soldiers moved with disciplined purpose. They wore dark blue leather and overlapping scale armor forged from deep-sea monsters, a sight Orion had rarely seen in Valderun. Harpoons and curved boarding cutlasses hung at their belts.
The soldiers of Leviathan’s Watch watched them pass with scrutinizing stares. These were men and women accustomed to fighting the Iron State on the freezing northern seas, and they seemed to recognize the thousand-yard stare of a unit pushed to the brink.
The guards escorted them to the large command pavilion at the center of the palisade. The tent flap was thrown open, revealing a sparse interior dominated by a broad wooden table covered with topographical maps of the border.
A man stood over the table, using a compass to measure distances. He wore a dark naval coat over his scale armor, and his face was weather-beaten by years of salt wind and freezing spray. He looked up as the guards shoved Team Obsidian inside.
“Captain Corvus, sir,” the woman said, saluting sharply. "Found them slipping the outer mist-wards. They claim to be Team Obsidian.”
Captain Corvus set the compass down. His pale blue eyes swept over the battered group, coming to rest on the veteran adventurer.
"Garrick," Corvus said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "I remember you from the requisition orders two weeks ago. You went north to hit the Iron State laboratories, supposedly.”
“We got several,” Garrick confirmed, “even saw the biggest one in the area go down.”
Corvus leaned over the table, his gaze shifting to Orion, Jordan, Esmeralda, and Erethemor. He didn’t seem very impressed by the picture they made, but he didn’t dispute their words. "You are missing a few of your people, if I’m not mistaken. Where are they?”
"Dead," Jordan said flatly. They’d all agreed that sharing information about Verner’s betrayal with anyone they met wouldn’t be wise, so until they had the chance to speak with someone high up, they would only say he was dead.
None of this would have been necessary if they’d headed for the main base, where his mother was, but that would have taken them at least another day, perhaps even two, given their condition. They couldn’t wait that long.
The Captain’s expression hardened. "The Iron State has been pressuring our coastal forts for months. I know the cost of fighting them. But you are the strike team handpicked by the High Council. You mean to tell me your first mission ended in such abysmal failure?”
“We have achieved our objectives,” Garrick countered just as firmly.
For a moment, the tension in the air increased until even the guards seemed to prepare for things to come to blows, but Esmeralda interrupted before anyone could do something very stupid.
“Enough of this. We have important information to share, and you, dear Captain, are in no position to demand anything from us.”
Though her tone was light, the baleful crimson light in her eyes made it clear she would tolerate no more questions.
Corvus himself was no slouch. He was at the upper end of the third tier and had decent stats, showing he’d spent his whole life fighting and training, but even battered as they were, the surviving members of Team Obsidian were monsters.
Garrick seemed to agree with her statement, picking up as if he’d not been interrupted. “There are thousands of machines moving south," Garrick said. "Walkers. Centurions. Crawlers. Anything that survived the cave-in is marching south. As far as we have been able to observe, they have networked into a collective hive mind and are charting paths straight toward this forest.”
The Captain’s pale eyes narrowed, but he let the matter go for now. He looked at the map on his table, tracing a line from the northern wastes to their current position. "We have overlapping wards, and druid scouts are combing the woods for miles. If an army were marching on my base, I would know.”
"Your scouts are most likely already all dead," Orion said.
Corvus snapped his gaze back to Orion, a flash of genuine anger sparking in his eyes. "Watch your tongue, boy. My men report every twelve hours, and we are waiting for one right now.”
"Then you will see soon enough when no message comes,” Esmeralda countered smoothly. "We passed a forward camp ten miles north of here, and it was a slaughterhouse. Tents shredded. Comms crystals pulverized. Everyone in the clearing was cut in half. I doubt anyone survived.”
The tent fell silent. The guards shifted uncomfortably by the entrance, uneasy about the information but unsure whether to believe it, given the suspicious source.
“There is an even worse threat," Orion added, drawing the Captain’s gaze. “It’s a new kind of machine called Mage-Killers. They are shaped like bipedal silver hounds, move twice as fast as the constructs we’ve faced so far, and are armored in pure Silence-alloy. Your detection spells will not register them, and they are systematically blinding the border ahead of the main invasion force.”
Corvus stared at him for a long moment, then sighed. "Prepare the camp for a siege," he ordered the guard at the door. "Double the watch. Recall any patrols outside the palisade. Issue the boarding pikes.”
The guard saluted and sprinted from the tent, showing that despite their roughness, they could be efficient when needed.
Corvus turned back to Team Obsidian. “From what I remember, most of you are Tier Three. You look like hell, but you’ll be useful. Draw rations from the quartermaster and report to the northern barricade. I need everyone I can muster when those machines hit the trees.”
"No," Orion said.
Corvus froze. He looked at him as if the young mage had just spoken a dead language. "Excuse me?”
"We are not staying to defend this camp," Orion repeated.
The Captain’s face flushed a deep, angry red. He stepped around the wooden table, his hand resting on his cutlass’s hilt. "You bring news of an impending slaughter, tell me my forward scouts are dead, and now you want to walk away? We are the shield wall. If this camp falls, the machines will march straight into the heartlands and take our forces unaware!”
“Five people won't turn the tide against a thousand machines and a pack of magic-immune assassins. We are a strike team, Corvus, and we need to report back in,” Garrick cut in.
"You are soldiers of the Alliance!" Corvus barked, spittle flying from his lips. "You will stand your ground and fight for the Magocracy. I will not allow my men to die while you turn tail and run south.”
Orion shook his head. He understood why the man was angry, but they couldn’t afford to waste time. They needed to alert the right people as soon as possible. “It’s just not possible. We need access to your communication crystal, and then we’ll be gone.”
"Enough!" Corvus roared. "I will hear no more treason in this tent. Guards!"