Octavius stumbled forward into the dim cavern. He blinked heavily as he caught himself. The sight of the table that held the potions was barely visible behind the spots that covered his vision. His left foot pressed hard against the stone floor as he regained his balance. The cavern that was previously filled with deafening chanting was dominated by the silence.

Some part of his brain had managed to register the five separate messages that blinked at the corner of his vision. He didn’t even check the thralls’ bodies to be sure they were dead. His head pounded in time with his racing heartbeat. Just the act of keeping himself moving slowly forward was taking every last ounce of willpower he could squeeze from his tortured mind.

His stumbling walk into the silent cavern only took half a minute, but it felt to him like it lasted for hours upon hours. The blurry shape of the wooden table was recognizable through the haze of his thoughts and the spots that dotted his vision. There, his thoughts came sluggishly, the potion.

The fingers on his right hand shook violently as he lifted it into the air. He only noticed the tremors when he tried to grab one of the vials from where it was secured on the wooden rack.

The spots in his vision kept him from being able to differentiate the various types of potions. He instinctively reached for the only potion that he knew would cure his mana exhaustion, the potion that he had used identify on not five minutes earlier.

His trembling fingers threatened to knock the rack of potions onto the floor, and he forced himself to slow down. He reached for the potion and tried to grip it, only for it to quite literally slip through his fingers. Clenching his jaw, he forced his hand into a fist before attempting to grab the potion vial again.

On his second attempt, the potion was successfully lifted into the air. It shook slightly as he reached forward with his left hand and ripped off the cork that kept the potion contained. He forced himself to take a deep breath and steady himself before downing the potion. Spilling it would lead to another few seconds of unbearable pain.

The cool glass of the vial touched his lips, and he tilted his head back. The viscous liquid poured down his throat, and he groaned as relief flooded him. Never-ending energy flooded his core until it was completely full. The rush of power revitalized him, ripping away his pain as if it was never there at all.

Octavius was left gasping as his vision cleared. He placed his hands on his knees as his brain short-circuited slightly. The change from agonizing pain to nothing made his animalistic instincts scream that something was very wrong. He ignored them as he stood and read the messages that expanded to fill his vision.

You have slain Kridr - Thrall (F) (Lvl 25) and gained 3125 EXP (1/2)(25)(2)(1)(1.25)(100)

You have slain Dixzli - Thrall (F) (Lvl 25) and gained 3125 EXP (1/2)(25)(2)(1)(1.25)(100)

You have slain Grujz - Thrall (F) (Lvl 26) and gained 3250 EXP (1/2)(26)(2)(1)(1.25)(100)

You have slain Cedr - Thrall (F) (Lvl 21) and gained 1313 EXP (1/2)(21)(1)(1)(1.25)(100)

You have slain Hikzl - Thrall (F) (Lvl 22) and gained 1375 EXP (1/2)(21)(1)(1)(1.25)(100)

He nodded in satisfaction. The entire exchange could have gone horribly wrong, but it didn’t. Now, he had weapons and potions that would make his escape significantly easier. His eyes moved to the rack of potions on the table. While his stamina was still close to full, he needed a health potion to heal his leg.

He lifted a potion vial from the rack and placed it back. It was another mana potion. Quickly, he checked each potion. His distress quickly grew as he inspected vial after vial of mana potion. As he slammed the last potion back into the rack with a slightly excessive amount of force, he paused for a moment.

Breathing deeply, he reigned in his emotions. Even if there weren’t any health potions in the rack, it didn't mean that the thralls didn’t have any on them when they died.

Standing, he limped over to where the body of the thrall rogue that he’d killed with a shadow grenade had fallen. Blood poured from a massive gash in its throat and pooled on the stone floor below it.

Crouching, Octavius immediately reached for its belt. There was a small pouch hanging from its belt. Opening the pouch, his eyes fell on two vials of green liquid held in individually sewn pockets. They were stamina potions.

His frown deepened as he began to pat down the thrall. It wore the same eclectic mix of hides and cloth as the thrall he’d met before. He idly wished that the thralls wore looser clothes.

While the silver robe did offer some protection, it was too noticeable. He would have much preferred the simple protection offer by the thrall’s outfit. Unfortunately, the thrall’s clothes would not fit him like the silver robe did. Even if the hems of the silver robe swayed at his knees while he walked, it protected his vitals.

Finding nothing else on the thrall’s corpse, he removed its belt and looped it around his own waist. The knife that hung on his left side was closer to the size of a short sword than a normal knife, but that was a good thing in his book.

Moving quickly, he hobbled back toward the corpse that laid in the hallway. He stepped through the doorway and examined his handwork.

The thrall stared unblinking at the stone ceiling. Its own long knife protruded from its eye socket. Gravity kept most of the blood from pouring out of the wound, leaving only a few streaks of the alien’s lifeforce trailing down its face. It almost appeared to be crying blood.

Octavius discarded the thought and crouched over the corpse. He pulled the pouch of potions and the long blade’s sheath from its belt. After affixing the sheath to his own belt, he peered into the pouch. A curse escaped him as he saw the distinct green of a stamina potion filling the only vial that it contained.

The pouch was tied to his belt with quick movements as he began to hurry. He didn’t know how long it would take for the thralls to notice that he was missing or that the Suppressor had been deactivated. Now that his chances of immediately healing his leg were gone, he would need to focus more on stealth than combat if he wanted to escape.

He retrieved the thrall’s knife from its eye and thought for a moment. Having a backup weapon would be extremely useful, but even its few pounds of weight could mean the difference between life and death. Reluctantly, he set the knife and its sheath on the cold stone ground.

He rushed back into the cavern as quickly as his injured leg could safely carry him. The first thing he did once inside was to approach the thralls that surrounded the Suppressor.

They laid collapsed on the floor where they fell. Their once pure white robes had been stained with blood. The familiar metallic scent of death and conflict filled his nostrils, but he ignored it.

He was relatively confident that these thralls didn’t have any potions or weapons on their bodies, but they could have other things. Kneeling carefully to avoid straining his injured calf, he patted down the closest of the three. He was surprised by the lack of anything. Not only weren’t there any weapons or potions, but there also weren’t any rings either.

What the hell? He wondered, Why do the lower level thralls have illusion rings but not these guys. I can understand why that Lord Artificer didn’t have one. It seemed like the type of asshole that thought too highly of itself to get involved with that sort of thing. But these? I’m pretty sure they’re just normal mages.

Putting aside his confusion, he used identify on the thrall’s robe.

White Robe (Common) - A robe of soft white fabric.

A bark of aggrieved laughter escaped him at that. He nearly killed himself to take these thrall out, and they didn’t even have health potions. Well, the mana potions and weapons will be helpful anyway, he reasoned.

Before he stood to leave the cavern, he inspected where the Suppressor once stood. He didn’t know if it was held in the air by mana or by the thrall’s physical strength, but that didn’t matter anymore. It had fallen a few feet to the stone ground and shattered like a paper-thin Christmas ornament.

Thin flakes of it spread across a multiple foot circle. He picked up the largest piece that he could find and turned it over in his hand. The outside was polished to a mirror sheen. The inside, however, was covered with detailed patterns. They were similar to the Dwarvish knotted script and to the pattern that had once filled the silver robe.

Even so, these patterns actually looked to be more complicated than the dwarvish patterns that adorned both his leather armor and spear. The only distinguishing feature of these patterns was their style. Octavius couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but the pattern on the inside of the Suppressor seemed to lack the swooping grace of the dwarvish carvings.

Filing away those thoughts for later, he used Identify on the fragment.

Fragment of a Mental Suppressor (Uncommon) - This was once a piece of the epic ranked item Mental Suppressor. After its destruction, it broke into many delicate fragments. This is one of those fragments.

He wondered if he should take the fragment with him. It was probably made of some type of valuable material, and he could study how the woven patterns worked. Maybe he could learn from it and perhaps improve his spells. And all of that was ignoring the fact that taking the largest piece of it would all but destroy any chance the thralls had of repairing it. He doubted that they could, judging by the condition that it was in, but that was no reason to risk it.

He ended up slipping the thin piece into one of the pockets on his pants and folded the flap closed, trapping it inside. The chances of it not being pulverized were slim, but at least the thralls wouldn’t have it.

Standing, he hurried over to the table that held the mana potions. Positioning himself facing the cavern’s only entrance, he filled the pouches on his belt as quickly as he could. Each pouch had eight separate pockets for potions. When both were filled, there were still over a dozen vials in the wooden rack.

He could probably have fit them into the small bags on his belt, but they wouldn’t be secured. If he were to, the sound of clinking glass would give away his position with every footstep. Instead of just leaving them for the thrall, he upended the table.

The glass vials sparkled for a moment as they tumbled through the air before crashing into hard ground. Blue liquid exploded everywhere as empty vials tumbled out from below the table to mix with the full ones. The sound of shattering glass echoed through the chamber, but many of the sturdy vials survived.

Moving quickly, he stomped on each of the intact vials until the thick liquid they contain spilled across the stone floor.

With his work complete, he hurried from the cavern. The thralls’ chant had echoed all the way down to the hallway that led to his cell. He would be surprised if its abrupt stop did not garner any attention.

Only a minute had passed from the moment that he had first attacked the thralls and when he hurried from the cavern. As he limped down the hallway toward the large corridor, he was constantly scanning the area in front of him for the telltale glimmer of a thrall’s illusion ring.

When he reached the final curve before the corridor, he nodded in satisfaction. He had yet to encounter another thrall, and that bolstered his spirits significantly. Carefully, he inched his head around the bend until he could see into the long, brightly lit corridor.

He didn’t see any movement and was about to step out into the hallway when two thralls entered his line of sight. They appeared to be relaxed as they strolled toward him. He considered bending the shadows around him to conceal him better but decided against it. The thrall didn’t seem to be paying much attention to their surroundings, and if they chose the fork that he was in, it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Nidrak - Thrall (F) (Lvl 27) (Rogue*)

Jiskag - Thrall (F) (Lvl 28) (Rogue*)

The two were the highest level rogues that he had seen besides Kzedr. He hoped that he wouldn’t have to fight them. At the very least, engaging in CQC with them would exacerbate his leg injury, and he didn’t have the time it would take him to create a shadow grenade.

His hand clenched around the long knife as the thralls grew closer and closer. A sigh of relief escaped him as they turned down the left fork and disappeared from his sight. He hurried down the hallway until he reached the start of the corridor.

Slowly, he peered into the left fork. When he saw that there weren’t any thralls that could see him, he turned and rushed up the corridor. He pushed himself to move slightly faster than was ideal. Pain shot up his leg with each and every step, but he pushed himself onward.

He knew that he was in one of the most dangerous areas that he could be. The corridor was a massive chokepoint in his escape attempt. He needed to move down it to escape, but there was nowhere to hide. Any thrall that so much as peeked into the corridor would see him, and there was nothing he could do about it. The only part of his escape that would likely contain a similar level of risk would be at the exit itself, but he needed to get there for it to even be a problem.

The sound of his uneven footsteps was clear in his ears as he passed the wooden door that led to the cell he had been trapped in. Much of his stealth was traded for speed as he grit his teeth and broke out into a hobbled run up the incline.

He passed a handful of other doors along the corridor. Most were closed, but a few were open. Through one of the doors that was left ajar, he heard the distant sound of some type of merriment. It was punctuated by the deep, grating laughter of thralls, and he hurried past the door.

Psiz had told him that the exit was after two rights and a left. The two rights seemed to be correct, but the first left in the corridor would almost definitely not lead to an exit. It was a thin hallway that sloped downward into darkness. The door was unlocked and was either brand new or was rarely used.

He had followed the slope downward until it opened up into a small natural cave. A pool of water bubbled along the far wall, and Octavius realized that it was their water supply. At first, he hoped that he might be able to swim his way to freedom, but whatever fed the pool was deep and dark. He decided that a leap of faith like that would only turn out poorly and walked back up to the corridor.

Once back in the corridor, he noticed that it had begun to curve to his left even as its incline leveled out. His pained rush was suddenly halted by the sound of voices coming toward him from down the corridor. Scanning the walls, he ducked into the nearest doorway, closing quietly behind him.

Looking around, he found himself in a barracks of some sort. It was reminiscent of the sleeping quarters that his team had found in the thralls’ outpost near the Sanctuary. Piles of furs and pillows were strewn across the stone floor.

In the darkness, he heard a single set of soft, even breathing from the floor in front of him. He froze in place. The voices of the group of thralls passed through the corridor on the other side of the door. He waited for a full minute before he slowly cracked open the door. The corridor was clear, so he stepped out of the sleeping quarters and gently closed the door behind him, careful not to wake the sleeping thrall inside.

He moved quickly down the corridor once more. While he half-limped half-ran, he made sure to stay on the right side of the corridor. That way, he could see further around the bend and just move to the left to give himself another few seconds to react to any approaching threats.

His sense of direction was definitely slightly off after being underground for so long, but he guessed that he had spiraled upward and was now facing the opposite direction. He was impressed and slightly intimidated by the size of the underground complex. It was large enough to contain hundreds of people—or hundreds of thralls.

Even with its size, he had only needed to avoid two more groups of thralls. Over the course of his trek, his leg had begun to pulse with pain even as his health bar ticked steadily upward.

A muffled din of noise became noticeable as the ground leveled out. In front of him, the corridor began to slope downward once more. To the left was a massive set of doors that were as far across as the corridor itself.

It was incredibly likely that those doors led to the complex’s main entrance. Unfortunately for Octavius, it sounded as if a party was being celebrated beyond the doorway.

He carefully crept forward until he could see inside through a gap between the ajar doors. Inside were more thralls than he had ever seen before; there were at least a hundred of them. They sat, ate, and drank around long stone tables.

Inching closer, he saw a large, natural-looking cave extending out from the far wall a hundred feet away. As he watched with growing worry, three thrall came down the cave with wide smiles. They worked together to carry the carcass of a massive boar the size of a man. Cheers erupted across the hall at the hunters’ return.

Well, he thought dryly, at least I can guess where the exit is.