“You understand, sir, that this is highly unusual,” the gate guard said.

“Listen to me, guard, I don’t care how unusual it is,” Koyl replied, voice dripping with malice and condescension. “My company has paid good money for this license that is supposed to allow us to operate without obstruction. Do you even understand how much money has been spent on this single operation? Do you want to have to deal with our client, who I cannot name but whose status you can probably ascertain, when we are forced to explain to them why the criminal group we are hunting managed to escape us?”

“Your company did not file the appropriate advance notice with us,” the guard retorted. That’s probably because the license is fake, I thought.

“Oh yes, we should have just spent three days filing the appropriate paperwork with you while our nomadic target changed locations again, how silly of me,” Koyl replied sarcastically with a scoff. “You know what? Okay, we’ll leave. However, you are legally required to tell me both your name and the name of your commander if I request it, and I will be giving both of those names to our very wealthy and powerful client. Now, your name first, then bring your commander here.”

“There’s no need to-” the guard began.

“No, no, bring your commander here,” Koyl insisted. “I want to let them know exactly which one of their subordinates is about to cause the biggest political doymzmehpy of this year and make the baroness shove her gloved hand so far up your department’s-”

“Sir,” the guard said, loudly. “I will overlook the abnormalities this time, but I will be reporting this incident to my commander. You should expect to be stopped and detained upon re-entry while the details of your trip are recorded and confirmed.”

“You just try it,” Koyl sneered, shoving the guard out of the way. As we walked out of the gate, Vaozey suppressed a snort.

“Very good impression,” she muttered, just loud enough for us to hear.

“Coming from you, that means a lot,” Koyl grunted back.

The noypeyyoyjh was a day and a half’s hike from Awrehrehzha, directly northeast of the city. There was a path that we could have taken to get there, but it was patrolled by Rehvites and frequently traveled in addition to being longer than a direct route, so we ended up cutting our way through the brush in our suits of armor. Vaozey and I weren’t overly bothered by the extra weight, but by the end of the day, Koyl was so exhausted that he almost passed out, drawing into question exactly how useful he would be in the upcoming battle.

The next day, around mid-afternoon, we finally set eyes on our target. The noypeyyoyjh sat in a bit of a valley, surrounded on three sides by low hills and thin forest, which helped to explain the excessive height of the fortifications. Just like the map had indicated, there were three rings of walls with dividing walls breaking up the interior into sections, but the cartographical representation didn’t really do justice to the precision of the construction, nor did it include many of the smaller details that were visible with the naked eye like the reflecting mirrors for nighttime illumination or the few large mounted ballistae that dotted the outer wall.

Most striking of all was the noypeyyoyjh itself, a dark shard of shaped nothingness that looked as strange through human eyes as it had when displayed to me through a direct video feed so long ago. Whatever material the object was made out of reflected no light and allowed no accumulation of dust, just as Vaozey had said. Were it not for the surrounding architecture and its consistent position, I might have mistaken it for some flaw in my vision, a blank spot where my retina was failing to transmit any data, perfectly shaped to appear pyramid-like. Just how am I supposed to fix that? I wondered.

“At least let me catch my breath,” Koyl heaved. “Gods, do you two ever get tired?”

“Quit complaining, we’re nearly there,” Vaozey said. “Never seen the thing in person before, but it looks just like the books said it would.”

“Yeah,” Koyl gasped. “Weird to look at, like staring into the night sky, but on the ground.”

“Koyl,” I began.

“No,” Koyl replied firmly. “I walked all the way out here, you are not leaving me behind. I’m just a bit out of breath. Don’t you dare even try it.”

“That isn’t what I was going to say,” I grunted. “Koyl, you’re the least dangerous out of the three of us in a fight with an opponent who uses force magic. You also have the least stamina. For that reason, you’re going to be taking the majority of the grenades.”

“What?” Koyl blurted.

“What?” Vaozey snapped at the same time.

“Vaozey, give Koyl three of your grenades,” I said, unhooking three of my own grenades from the leather bandolier in my backpack and handing them to him. Begrudgingly, she did as I asked, and Koyl began stuffing explosives into his backpack, still looking confused.

“You don’t want me to fight,” Koyl sighed.

“You will likely die in any direct confrontation, even with armor on,” I nodded. “So instead, once we get in, you will be providing long-distance support. Some of those guards have crossbows, which is good because we want to use their gear to increase confusion.” As I spoke, I began pulling out the dark shawls I had prepared and put one over my armor. “Put these on,” I instructed.

“You know what I don’t get?” Vaozey asked. “Why are you two even wearing armor if we’re supposed to be sneaking in? It just defeats the whole point, doesn’t it? I assumed that we would be doing a frontal assault, but when you explained the plan last night-”

“Stealth is not all or nothing,” I said, cutting her off. “We will be attempting to avoid detection for as long as possible, then using force once we are detected. Every fight we avoid is a fight we don’t have to expend resources on.”

“And this is how your people fight?” Vaozey asked. Images of the noypeyyoyjh site being struck with a missile filled my mind for a moment, and I exhaled, deciding not to say the first thing that came to mind.

“If all we had was this kind of gear, yes,” I replied.

“So we’re waiting until nightfall?” Koyl assumed.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Not too long after dusk, enough that this camouflage will be effective. I would have prepared something more useful for daytime, but honestly, I doubt it would be much more useful than this.”

“So can I sleep?” Koyl asked.

“If you can,” I replied, handing him a dark hood. “Put that on too, the tree back there looks good for sleeping.”

“You think I can climb a tree in this?” Koyl laughed, gesturing to his helm with an armored hand.

“Come on rich boy,” Vaozey taunted. “I was climbing walls in armor at sixteen, you can climb a tree I’m sure.”

“Do we really have to be dripping with this stuff?” Vaozey gagged as I dumped another bag of repellent over her. Koyl, who had just received the same treatment a few minutes earlier, was still shaking the excess off of himself in an attempt to dry out a bit.

“It’s imperative that the ants don’t notice us on approach,” I said, my voice slightly muffled by the material in front of my mouth. I felt a bit of a headache forming but pushed it into the back of my awareness.

“Then why do we have that raw meat?” Vaozey asked.

“You’ll see,” I replied, tossing the bag to the ground. With a groan, she lifted her faceplate and spat out some oil, then quickly shut it again to keep any more of the liquid from getting inside her armor. “Do you have the magic boosters?” I asked.

“Yeah, five vials,” Vaozey replied. Glancing at Koyl, I saw him nod as well. My own vials had been dumped into the mask I was wearing under my helmet, which we had tested earlier in the day with water. Apparently, air exposure did degrade the booster, but not as quickly as I had initially expected according to Koyl. I wasn’t entirely sure as to why, but the exact mechanism didn’t matter anyway.

“Alright, let’s get walking,” I said. “Keep an eye out, and tell me if you see ants before I do.”

I expected the ants to have spread further from the wall than they apparently did, because we only started seeing them when we got to the clearing around it, which extended to around seventy meters away. All along the last few trees before there was nothing but grass, ants were crawling up and down, going about their business. From where we were standing, I could see two guards on the closest part of the nearby wall, but neither looked alert.

“I don’t like this at all,” Koyl said quietly. Glancing back, I could see that he was watching the ants from the way his helmet was angled towards them. “They can see us, can’t they? Doesn’t that mean they’ll tell the Rehvites we’re here?”

“They can’t really see us, exactly,” I explained. “Like I told you a few days ago, the ‘repellent’ is more like camouflage. Their eyes aren’t very good for long distances, and long distance for them is anything beyond the length of your hand or so. For most detection, they use smell, and this stuff makes us smell like nothing to them. However, I’m guessing that if we walk across this clearing we’ll step on a few of them and alert the nest, so we’re going to try something else first. Give me the satchel with the meat.”

Koyl removed a satchel from under his dark shawl and handed it to me. Inside, there was a second layer of leather wrapping, then inside of that was a large cube of fresh deer meat. Well, not fresh anymore, I thought, tossing the now-useless coverings on the ground as I quickly worked some magic with my left hand. Letters appeared, branded onto its surface, and pleasantly odorous smoke billowed out into the night.

“Peace offering, please speak with us,” Vaozey read aloud. I’m surprised she can see it in this darkness, I thought.

“I’m going to write the same thing on the ground,” I said, kneeling down and clearing away the grass in front of me before placing the meat down.

“You really think they’re going to talk to us?” Koyl asked.

“I have a hunch that they will,” I replied. “They don’t think like humans do, I find it unlikely that they will be as loyal to the Rehvite cause as a human would be. I’m guessing their relationship is more transactional, and thus we might be able to bribe them or talk them into letting us through.” As I explained, the ants from the trees began to smell the smoke, then the meat, and slowly worked their way down to the ground and over to my offering.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Vaozey shrugged, watching the ants cover the food and begin to pick it apart. I had made sure that none of the repellent we were using got into the meat so that, unlike last time, there would be no confusion about what they were detecting and interacting with. It only took about two minutes for the ants to completely disassemble and destroy the cube of meat, carrying it off to wherever they deemed fit for storage. I was worried that they hadn’t read my message, but then another wave of ants came out and began to form words, just like they had in the chasm. I was forced to make a little bit of light with magic to read it, but we were still far enough from the wall that it was unlikely the guards saw it.

[Stoneman offering appreciated, speak,] the ants wrote.

“I guess it wasn’t just that one colony that was almost illiterate,” Vaozey muttered.

“No, look closer,” I said. “The words are a lot clearer with this one, They’ve even separated the characters. It just doesn’t have all the intonation markers, but that’s almost a non-issue.” Meanwhile, Koyl was silent, and I could easily picture a shocked expression behind his face covering.

[We need to enter this site,] I wrote. [You are a guard, correct?]

[I live inside Rehv nest, protect Rehv nest, monitor Rehv nest exterior,] the ants replied. Seeing the ants refer to themselves with a singular pronoun was strange.

“That was almost coherent,” Vaozey commented.

“They speak to humans much more often, it makes sense that they would have a better grasp of how written language works,” I replied.

“They think this is a nest?” Koyl asked, but I just let the question hang.

[What about the other nest?] I asked. [We were told there were two ant nests inside the Rehv nest.]

[Both nest mine,] the ants replied.

“Two nests for the same colony,” I said. “Possibly a two-queen situation.”

“So we can’t just kill them,” Vaozey grumbled.

“I wasn’t necessarily planning to, but no,” I confirmed. [Why do you live inside the Rehv nest?] I asked the ants. As they digested the question, the drones on the trees began making a low hissing noise, churning and moving more rapidly than before.

“What are they doing?” Koyl asked nervously.

“Thinking,” I replied. Slowly, the ants returned, forming new words.

[Rehv nest human create ant nest for me, protect nest from other ant, give food,] they explained.

[Are you a Rehvite?] I asked.

[Not understand,] the ants replied.

[Do you worship the god Rehv?] I asked.

[What is god?] the ants asked, using an intonation marker.

“They could be lying,” Vaozey suggested.

“I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head. “Lying socially is something that not many animals can do. Even if these ants are comparably intelligent to humans as a colony, they don’t appear to be as social between colonies as humans are between individuals. Not to mention, the colony we dealt with previously never intentionally lied to us even though it likely would have been to its benefit.”

“You’re assuming a lot there,” Vaozey said. “It could have easily been deliberately lying about the exit and only decided to help because it knew we could kill it.”

“Possible, but I don’t find it likely,” I replied. [Humans worship gods, Rehv nest humans worship the god Rehv,] I explained. Again, the ants had to think.

[God is ----?] the ants asked, creating a triangular figure whose meaning was very clear.

[Not exactly,] I replied. [You do not worship Rehv?]

[No,] the ants confirmed.

[You only serve the Rehv nest humans because they protect you and feed you?] I asked.

[Exchange service Rehv nest human,] the ants agreed.

[Have you told the Rehv nest humans that we are here?] I asked, feeling my stomach tighten.

[No,] the nest replied. [No hostile intent, no alert.]

[Would you like to make a mutually beneficial deal with us?] I asked.

[Deal?] the ants prompted.

“Okay, get ready to run if this goes badly,” I said. [We are not Rehv nest humans,] I explained. [Rehv nest humans have been attacking our nest, and we are here to attack them. We want you to agree to not attack us and allow us to enter the Rehv nest.] Almost immediately after reading the words, the ants began hissing, and several of the white mold-tender ants emerged from the nearby trees. [We mean you no harm, we do not want war with your nest,] I added hastily, grabbing some ants to show them the words before things could deteriorate further.

“I told you this wouldn’t work,” Vaozey snapped, backing up a few steps.

“Just wait,” I ordered. “I expected a strong reaction, but these aren’t animals, and they aren’t necessarily loyal either.” Still-hissing ants, their abdomens shaking with apparent rage, spelled out vibrating words in front of me.

[Rehv nest ally, you enemy, cease approach or die,] they ordered.

[Rehv nest is weak without you,] I wrote back. [Rehv nest humans are using you because they lack the strength to protect themselves. They are also keeping you weak and contained in their nests so that you cannot harm them.]

“What the seyt are you saying?” Vaozey hissed, barely audible over the ants.

“Just watch,” I replied.

[Rehv nest human ally,] the ants repeated.

[Our offer is this: You do not fight us, you allow us inside, and you may claim all of the dead from the resulting battle as well as keep the entire Rehv nest and its resources for yourself,] I wrote. [We do not desire the Rehv nest territory, we simply wish for the humans inside to die.] Again, the ants hissed forcefully, with so much volume that the branches of the nearby trees began to vibrate along with them. I really hope those guards don’t notice us, I thought.

[Why offer?] the ants demanded, still vibrating with anger. [What nest do stonemen belong?] Vaozey, reading the words, stepped up and wrote [Roydlow nest] on the ground.

“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Koyl asked.

“We’re deep in the shit anyway,” Vaozey growled. “Might as well announce our patron honorably.”

[Why offer?] the ants repeated, in thicker letters this time.

[The god Roydlow is an enemy of the god Rehv,] I wrote, concocting a story on the spot. [Humans do not always fight for food or territory, in this case we fight because our gods are opposed.] In response, the ants drew a strange character I had never seen before, multiple spirals clashing with each other, then dissolving into nothing. “I think they just called us crazy,” I said.

[Roydlow nest stonemen kill all Rehv nest human?] the ants asked.

[Yes,] I lied.

[Too few Roydlow nest stonemen,] the ants argued.

[Rehv nest humans are weak,] I countered. [If we die, you may claim our corpses instead. Tell the Rehv humans that you could not see us because we were stonemen.]

[I can see you,] the ants stated in an eerily grammatically correct sentence, sections of the churning masses on the tree stopping for a moment.

[Rehv nest humans do not know that,] I explained. [If you tell them you could not see us, they will believe you.] The ants didn’t seem to know how to reply and were lost in thought for almost two minutes while we waited in silence. They did seem to calm down as they processed the words, however, which was encouraging.

“Is it working?” Koyl asked.

“Considering we haven’t been doused in acid yet, it might be,” Vaozey replied.

[Roydlow nest stonemen become willing food if defeated?] the ants asked.

[Yes,] I wrote back immediately.

[Deal acceptable,] the ants wrote, and they began to disperse from the trees. [Avoid unnecessary harm to nest, or deal will terminate.]

“Gods, it actually worked,” Koyl huffed, almost laughing aloud in relief.

“Gods indeed,” Vaozey muttered. “Let’s go before they change their minds.”

Approaching the wall was easy once the ants agreed to not interfere with us. Evidently, the Rehvites weren’t expecting to be attacked with no warning, so the guards on the battlements were quite relaxed. Vaozey and Koyl couldn’t climb the wall without a rope, but I knew that creative use of force magic would allow me to ascend it so that I could drop one down for them. Affixing my chest and belly to the stones, I began to slowly push myself up, keeping an eye on my magic reserves as I did so. Because of the way I was distributing my magic, the drain wasn’t as high as it was during other attempts at using force magic to climb, but I still elected to take a small sip of the magic booster from my stolen mask just to top up my levels when I neared the top. The metallic taste of blood mixed with the sweetness of the additives almost made me gag, but the desire to remain undetected kept me quiet.

The nearest guard to me when I finally got to the battlements was about twenty meters away and looking inward and the foot traffic of the first interior ring. I debated just leaving him alone and tying the rope for Vaozey and Koyl, but it was too risky, so instead I drew my knife. Using a bit of force magic to soften my footsteps, a technique I had thought about but never had a reason to test before now, I snuck up behind the guard, then slipped my blade under his occipital bone, through his brainstem, and into his skull, knocking him out silently. To avoid making too much of a mess, I cooked his frontal lobe, then seared the wound on the back of his neck shut to keep most of the blood inside.

The next closest guard is… forty meters away, I noted, seeing a barely-illuminated figure crossing one of the many bridges between rings some distance away as I withdrew the rope from my backpack and tied it to the mounting hook. There was no need to keep the backpack anymore, so I simply left it on the ground as I tossed the rope down to Koyl and Vaozey, the latter of which began ascending first with the former not too far behind. It took them both about three minutes in total to climb the wall, after which I tossed the rope and hook over the side.

“Koyl, take his crossbow and anything useful, toss the body over the side, then stay about fifteen paces behind us,” I ordered. “Vaozey, stay low and follow me. We’re taking a left to avoid the guard over there on the bridge. Do not attack unless they spot us, got it?”

“Yeah yeah,” Vaozey muttered.

“We’ve passed the biggest failure point now,” I said. “Just stick to the basic plan and we’ll be done by morning.”