Mirror

The days blurred for Naha as they waited. Their hiding place was deep in the forest where the enemy rarely went. Though, there wasn’t much to do other than sit quietly and contemplate. Their plan couldn’t be expanded on until something changed in the city and they got a chance to actually see what they were facing. So, they waited. They had a rotating watch on the city, not from anywhere close like when they made their first round of reconnaissance, but further away. Just close enough to see any big movements in or out of the city.

Then something finally changed. One of the wardens returned from his shift with the news.

“They are gathering forces,” Warden Jen, a ravzor, said. “I’ve seen both the monsters and taken marching out of the city. No traitors that I have seen.”

Bera turned to look at the rest of them. “That might mean that they are leaving the traitors and the salves with a minimal taken presence. This might be our chance.”

“Do you think that they’ve detected the army? Isn’t it a bit too early?” Okim asked.

Bera shook her head. “I can’t contact Eratemus,” she showed Naha a small orb that she held in her hand, a Far-link orb. “It’s not a cause for concern I don’t think. We anticipated it. A lot of communication powers don’t work when near the enemy, some of their monsters have a way of disrupting such powers. So, we can’t know how their plans changed. They could’ve marched early, and this is right on schedule.”

“This is our best chance then,” Zach said.

“Unless this isn’t a response to the army and they return in a couple of days,” Warden Jen cautioned.

“Regardless, it is our best opportunity,” Okim said, then turned to look at Naha.

“I agree,” Naha said. “I should go and scout out the city.”

Zach looked at her, and then nodded. “Be safe.”

Naha approached the city, getting as close as she possibly could without risking being spotted. The monsters and the taken army had left, emptying the city, and leaving only slaves, the traitors, and a couple of the taken which were in charge. At least, that is what their scouting had revealed. They couldn’t know the exact numbers, of course, but they had an idea of what waited for them inside.

She pulled out the Mirror of Reality and then pointed it at the city from a distance, making sure that the entirety of the city was in the reflection. Then, she activated it. There was a shift, and then a pulling. A moment later she was no longer in the real world, but a mirror image of it. Color was muted, and the clouds in the sky were frozen. She glanced behind her and saw nothing, just a wall of gray. Only what was in the reflection had been created. She started walking toward the city, heading to one of the main roads. Carts and the burden beasts were frozen in time, just like everything else was. She studied the carts and wagons closer, looking at what they were carrying. Ore, wood, as they had already known. They had inspected the wagons closely before, when she stealthily approached the mines in their initial surveillance.

She continued to the city. Looking at the people around her, she saw mostly dour faces of the enslaved, though their supervisors weren’t looking much better. The gates were open, guards wearing chain armor over gambesons. She took a few minutes to look around, she couldn’t move anything in this world, but some doors of the gate-guardhouse were open, and she walked through them, memorizing everything. Where their common room was, where they stored their weapons when they slept, where their kitchen was, and their numbers. She counted the beds, and then the people that were currently on duty. Seven beds, with five guarding the gate, others could be on assignments somewhere else, or perhaps they weren’t on duty and just went into the city. After she finished with that gate, she climbed the stairs to the wall, then walked the length of it to the next gate, where she did the same thing. Where the doors were closed, she looked through the windows which were covered by wooden planks that had gaps through which she could look in.

She noticed that some of the traitors had slightly different uniforms, and from their surveillance she knew that it marked the level of access that they had. She looked for one type of uniform that they had noted had access to all three sections of the city. Once she found a ravzor man wearing a black and yellow uniform with three marks over his chest, she noted his location. Looked around to try and figure out what his job at the guardhouse was. It seemed that he was simply overseeing the other guards. He was a good target for her, so she stored everything she learned about him from looking around for later use.

Once she was done with each gate, she started exploring the first city district. Houses were abandoned, the people that had once lived there had either left before the monsters arrived, others had probably died in the attack, and the rest turned into slaves. The taken were holding the slaves in six building blocks, probably because it was easier to feed them and have them that way, instead of having all of them go into the empty houses. She saw the rows of beds which were barely more than blankets and flat pillows on the ground. There were slaves sleeping, there weren’t enough beds for all of them, so they were probably sleeping in shifts. While one group worked the mines, the other rested. It was going to be a challenge getting most of them with Vitor’s concoctions, their best bet would be after the big group returned to the city and the night crew went out, which was near midnight. There were no materials coming in for a short period of a few hours. They would still need to send a team to the woodcutting and the mining camps to take care of the slaves and supervisors there. She couldn’t help but feel… anger at the sights. Once she wouldn’t have, she had been apathetic for most of her life in the Infinite Realm, but she had changed. This was not something that she could just stand by and let happen. Beyond even just this instance, and the taken. Ridding the world of such evil was a worthy goal, as well as a good way to redeem her past.

Protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves.

She turned away from the sleeping chambers and walked around the blocks, noting entrance points and how many guards there were around, which was surprisingly not that many. She assumed that since the slaves were incapable of refusing the orders, they weren’t that needed. There were taken around though, the black beneath their skin made them easy to spot, also, they wore different uniforms. The traitors all wore the same thing, black and yellow, while the taken wore things that they probably wore before they were taken, their equipment wasn’t uniform. Still, each of the slave blocks had a few dozen traitors around as well. They couldn’t know which one held the control for the collars, so they would need to take them all prisoner. There was still a chance that they would release them when asked, if the taken were no longer part of the equation.

Though, Bera said that they shouldn’t risk it. The taken could’ve forced the slavemasters to make some… specific orders to the slaves which could result in death if they attempted it. Zach still wanted all of them taken prisoner. Naha left the slave blocks and walked around the rest of the first city district, the half ring surrounded by walls. There was a lot of empty space, especially now that the monsters and the other taken had left, which was perfect for infiltrating the city.

Next, she walked to the second district, the second ring of the city. This was where they stored most of the materials they had been pilfering from the territory. She saw traitors and taken organizing it, crafters working in makeshift facilities. Creating weapons, gear, everything that a normal faction would need. This was also where she encountered the first problem.

One of the big buildings, a former barrack, had a lot of taken inside. But one office at the end was… blurred. She couldn’t even enter the room, though the doors were open. She could kind of see someone inside, wearing black, but nothing more than that.

She had known that there would be some powers that interfered with her item, and they had expected this. Still, their physical observation from outside the city had told them that this was where the taken commanders usually stayed. They knew that two of them were often inside. They had hoped to get some information, that she would be able to read anything that they had in the open, but it looked like they weren’t that lucky. She checked the other guardhouses in the second ring and found that all of them had the same effects. Not always in a room though, sometimes she saw a sphere of fuzzy imagery in the middle of a hallway, which told her another thing. It was the taken themselves that caused the effect. Which probably meant that these people had some anti-divination powers or items, perhaps even before they became taken. In order to be able to beat her mirror, they would have to be fairly powerful. Which meant that these were most likely the taken commanders themselves.

It was unfortunate that she couldn’t get any information from these places, but this at least told her the likely location of her most important targets. So far, she had found six of them. She walked around for a few more hours, devising the best routes in and out. She would need to make a quick run through the city, kill them all within as short of a period of time as possible.

They were still talking about the best way to do that, and she did have some ideas.

Finally, she moved to the last section of the city.

There were more taken here, less traitors. A few monsters were laying in between buildings, but far less than there used to be. There wasn’t much to see, so she made her way to the fort. The moment she reached the door, she found an obstacle. The doors were open, a taken was entering, but there was nothing inside. Just a black wall that blocked everything from sight. Naha climbed walls and looked through windows, only to see the same thing.

Something or someone inside was very powerful, this wasn’t like the distortion of the image she encountered before. This was a complete block of her mirror; nothing had been reflected inside the fort.

It was an obstacle, but she still spent the time walking around the fort looking for ways in. She marked the guards around it and memorized everything about the inner city.

Afterward, she spent another half a day going through the entire city again. Making sure that she hadn’t missed anything. Only once she was sure did she return to the area where she entered and left the mirrored world.

It was time for their assault on the city to start.