Octavius counted down with his fingers from three. As the first finger fell, he inhaled deeply. As the second fell, he rested his shoulder against the wooden door gently. Finally, the last finger fell, and he moved.

His legs exploded from their coiled bend and sent his body against the door. It swung easily inward, completely unhampered by any form of lock or latch. He moved quickly, following the door inside of the room and to the side, his eyes constantly scanning for any hint of a threat. The dim light from the corridor flooded the space and illuminated a distinct lack of life.

The room appeared to be another storage room. Large open-topped bins were lined up along the three equal-sized walls of the stone room. He couldn't see what was inside of the bins yet and made no attempt to find out. Instead, he moved to the side of the doorway and spun to see if there was a thrall hiding behind it.

Satisfied that they were alone, he turned to find the other three members of his group relaxing from their stances. Finn walked up to one of the bins and peered inside. Octavius moved to join him and blinked at the smell that hit him. He hadn't noticed while he was focused on finding any hidden thralls, but the entire room had a smoke-like smell. Just above the bin, the smell was multiplied a dozen times over, and it was clear why.

Inside each bin were piles upon piles of smoked meat. Octavius reached into the bin and pulled a thin sheet of red-brown meat. It was hard and dry; it reminded him far too much of the dried meat that he had subsided off of for the majority of the Emergence. Once he had completed his visual inspection of the meat, he used identify on it.

Dried Bear Meat (Common) - The meat of a common ranked bear. It has been smoked and dried to allow for preservation.

"How are we going to sabotage this?" Finn asked as he looked at the dozen bins that lined the walls. Octavius thought for a moment before he came up with an answer.

Any type of fire in here would draw far too much attention, he threw out the idea, but what if I can contaminate them? Some water, maybe? That would likely allow mold to start growing on them. But then the contaminated pieces will be identified and discarded too easily.

His thoughts went to the deadly powder that he had looted from the elite thralls. Pulling a vial from his belt, he used identify on it.

Saihi Powder (Rare) - A deadly water-soluble poison. A single pinch can kill an (F) rank creature with a constitution below fifty.

A grin slowly spread across his features as he carefully uncorked the vial. He tilted it over the bin of meat and carefully tapped out the equivalent to a pinch or two. The dust-like powder swirled in the air before settling on a couple of small pieces of meat. With a grin, he quickly moved to do the same to three more of the bins randomly.

Now, they would have to throw out the entire room full of preserved rations. They would only know that they were poisoned when one of them either died or fell ill. After that, they wouldn't be able to tell which pieces of meat were poisoned and which weren't. Their only chance would be to use identify, but they'd have to find a speck of the powder to use identify on, not just the pieces of meat.

The other three members of his group watched on as he quickly moved from box to box. They all already knew what the powder was, and thus they understood what he was doing. Jean and Finn wore matching almost feral grins as they followed him with their eyes. Bill, on the other hand, stood in the doorway and peered into the corridor beyond.

Once his work was complete, Octavius looked the room over one last time and stepped out into the corridor. The others silently fell in behind him, and they continued down the hall. Although he thought that the smoked meat was the same that he'd seen the lower-leveled thralls eating, Octavius couldn't be sure that it wasn't meant for human slaves. He didn't let the uncertainty bother him at all. They were hopefully going to help the slaves escape long before they would get around to another meal, after all.

Back in the dimly lit corridor, he heard the wooden door creak shut behind them as he moved silently along the wall. Two dozen or so feet ahead of them, Marcus walked out of a wooden door on his side of the hallway. The older marine nodded to Octavius and led his group forward.

Octavius might not have known what Marcus's group had found in the room, but he didn't need to. He trusted Marcus to cause as much trouble as the man could, and marines tended to be good at causing trouble of the variety they required at the moment.

Barely a sentence was exchanged between any member of either group over the next five minutes. They moved quickly and efficiently to clear seven more rooms. Three of them were on Octavius's side, and the other four were taken by Marcus and his group.

They had yet to find any slaves or even any thralls. Instead, they found piles of clothes that were far too small to fit a grown human, a dozen sets of the cheap leather armor that the lower level mages wore, and even a room filled only with lumber.

Octavius didn't know whether the wood was for wood shaping or for firewood but couldn't think of anything to do that would sabotage either of the two possible outcomes. The clothes and low-quality armor, on the other hand, received some nasty cuts, slices, and tears. He doubted that any of them would be useful without some serious repair work.

They continued down the gently sloping corridor until Octavius heard distinct voices somewhere ahead of them. His pace slowed as they continued forward, the others slowing as well to match him. Concentrating, he tried to make out what the voices were saying and, more importantly, what they sounded like.

The voices seemed to have a strange inflection to them as if whoever was speaking was whispering. It only took him another moment to come to the conclusion that the voices were from humans rather than thralls. The natural way the English sounded proved that even if he couldn't make out exactly what they were saying. Even translated by the system, thralls sounded deeper when they spoke, and most of their voices had a gravelly quality.

Octavius knew that Bill likely could already hear what the voices were saying but also knew that the risk of stopping for the older man to tell him what they said was far from worth it. The fact that Bill hadn't stopped the group on his own led Octavius to believe that the man wasn't alarmed by what was being said.

As they crossed another hundred feet, they walked past three more silent doors without entering them. Marcus, who was slightly behind Octavius on the opposite side of the corridor, followed Octavius's lead and ignored the doors that he passed.

After a dozen more steps, Octavius was finally able to make out every other word the voices said. That quickly resolved into being able to entirely listen in on the conversation. One of the voices seemed tired and worn out. It was definitely feminine and from an adult. The other voice sounded like a young girl and only spoke between quiet sobs.

"He'll be fine," the woman's voice said over and over, "You'll see. He'll be alright."

"But... but..." the little girl choked out between sobs, "He said he'd be right back!"

Octavius felt his heart clench at that. He didn't know the context behind the conversation but could guess. He'd be willing to bet that someone important to the young girl had been one of the slaves executed during the thralls' repeating deadline. Fighting the urge to increase his speed toward the voices, he reminded himself that they had made the correct choice in not launching a rescue operation the previous day. It just wouldn't have been a success.

Moving along the bend in the corridor, he spotted two sentries flanking a wooden door that was different from the others Octavius's group had passed. Each wore the familiar eclectic mix of leather and cloth that the low-level mages tended to wear. They were visible and clearly reoccupied by something as they leaned against the wall.

Octavius considered his options for a moment as he stopped where he stood. He was the only one that the thralls could see from their position, and they hadn't seen him yet. The massive radius of the corridor's curve would prevent him from sneaking up on them. He was still over fifty feet of open ground away from the thralls.

It seemed as though the older of the two girls was trying to remain as quiet as possible, and the thralls just ignored them. With a final look at their positions, he stepped back into the cover that the curve provided. Silently, he waved Caster over to him.

The young mage approached and looked at him inquisitively. "Thralls," Octavius whispered, knowing that the voices of the humans down the hall would prevent the sentries from hearing him, "Two of them, standing guard in the hallway. If I get close, I can take them. I need you to fire a wind blade at them to prevent them from throwing mana bullets at me or going invisible as I close on them."

The mage nodded and schooled his expression into a determined scowl. Octavius led the younger mage around the curve until they were barely able to see the side of the closer thrall. He nodded at Caster, and the mage extended his hands. The air began to swirl and slowly condense in front of them until a wind blade hovered there.

Octavius grinned; the spell was even better for sneak attacks than his shadow spells. He would have to actually learn it as soon as he could. With a deep breath, he nodded to the mage and exploded into the corridor.

The thralls didn't notice him for three long seconds before the sound of his footsteps caught their attention over the human voices behind them. The moment that they turned to face Octavius, a nearly invisible blade of wind flew past him and slammed into the closer thrall. It sliced neatly through its light armor but dissipated against the hardened exoskeleton of its chest.

Even so, the impact sent the thrall mage stumbling backward into its companion. Octavius took advantage of the time they took to untangle themselves from each other to increase his speed and barrel into them.

His spear took the closer of the two thrall mages in the eye, and he slammed into its still standing corpse. The operator, dead thrall, and very much upset thrall mage were all sent sprawling on the stone floor.

In an instant, Octavius was upon the thrall mage. It brought its four-fingered hands up to grab his face, but he batted them aside with an arm. Lifting the long dagger that he had drawn from his waist, he brought it down on one of the thrall's wide blade eyes, and it went limp.

Standing, he wiped the bloodied blade on the thrall's own clothes before sheathing it on his waist. Moving quickly over to the first thrall, he pulled his spear from where it was lodged in its eye and looked around.

Even though the thralls hadn't had time to so much as a shout, the sound of their brief battle had traveled through the wooden door and to the ears of its inhabitants. The voice of the woman had vanished, and the only evidence that the room was inhabited at all was the shaky breathing of the young girl.

Turning to look down the tunnel, he found the rest of his party slowing into a walk as they closed the final few feet until they all stood in front of the door. The door itself was definitely not a normal door. While its construction was mostly identical to the doors that they had seen thus far, there were two large planks of wood sitting in mounts on the top and bottom of the door.

The bars solidly locked the door in place beyond even a level ten human would be able to get through from the other side. From the outside of the room, however, entering was easy. Octavius bent over and lifted the lower bar from its bracket, then reaching up and doing the same to the one on the top. The door seemed the swing open of its own accord, and the team was met with the frightened stares of two dozen people huddled together in groups of two and three.

The operator's eyes immediately fell on the terrified little girl. The lines of tears that coated her flushed cheeks sparked in the dim glow of the room. She appeared to be maybe nine years old and was curled up in the lap of a twenty-year-old woman. Her clothes were the mix of dark-colored cloth and leather that the low-level thralls all wore, as were the clothes of the other humans in the room.

Something about her seemed familiar, and he used identify on her.

Kaylee - Human (F) (Lvl 9)

He felt a weight lift from his heart as he realized who she was. She was Kaylee, Dominic's daughter. He immediately wanted to walk over and tell her that her dad was safe, but then he realized that he didn't know if he was. There had obviously been some type of attack at the camp that had left Toby dead, even if Jabir's stats label hit as not even really exerting himself.

Instead, he addressed the entire room. "Who is your leader?" he asked in an authoritative voice. There were a few long seconds of silence before they all began to turn to face a man that appeared to be in his mid to late twenties.

The young man looked at all the expectant faces and shrugged before getting to his feet. "Well," he said softly, "I guess I am. Name's Eitan."

Octavius nodded to the tanned man and scanned the faces of the huddle people that filled the room. "I'm Octavius," he said more to the room as a whole than to Eitan, "We're going to get you all out of here."

He saw the moment that a tentative hope sparked on the faces that filled his vision, and he felt a slight pride fill him. The leader of the group of captives, however, eyed Octavius with distrust.

"How are you going to do that?" he asked. Octavius grinned at the man before answering.

"We're part of the group besieging the thralls up above. They attacked our camp last night, and we followed them back to a secret entrance that led down here," he said, "As long as we aren't spotted, we can definitely get you all safely out of here."

Eitan's face seemed to contort slightly in confusion. "What?" he asked, "The other entrance isn't finished yet. Even if it was further along than I thought, how did you sneak through it?"

Now it was Octavius's turn to be confused. "It was a small, unguarded tunnel," he clarified, "Not exactly another real entrance. Do you mean that there's another tunnel entrance that they're working on?"

The younger man's eyes widened, and hope sparkled there for the first time. "Really? You can get us out?" he asked, but Octavius was now staring intently at him.

"There's another large entrance?" he asked sternly, and the man's face fell slightly, and he nodded.

"Yeah, they only told us about it today. Wanted to stop us from trying to escape through it, I guess."

Octavius cursed softly, and he felt the members of his part tense behind him. "Where is this entrance?" he inquired sharply, "How big is it? Where does it exit?"

The young man seemed to grow concerned by the intense questioning and shook his head. "I haven't been there," he said, "Mikey, you have. Answer the man's questions."

A younger man who appeared to be in his late teens looked up from the floor and spoke softly. "It's opposite to the entrance hall," he said, "It's pretty big. Just about as far across as the main hallway. They've been working on it for a month, I think, but have really ramped up since yesterday. I don't know exactly where it's going to go out, but it leads down a few hundred feet."

Octavius cursed under his breath. If the thralls were able to exit onto the plains below, they could scatter and then regroup later on. The moment the humans lost track of them, they were as good as dead already.

"Ok!" he said louder, "Marcus! Take your team and secure the rooms that we passed without checking. Don't worry about sabotage; just make sure that they're unoccupied. Finn, Jean, and Raj start leading these people back to the exit. Get them out as quickly and quietly as possible. Eitan, who here has the most knowledge of the Landing and the thralls?"