B2 Chapter 208: Infiltration, finale

They pushed on, Ianmus hanging just behind them as they moved from shadowed stretch to

shadowed stretch. Passing beyond where they had already cleared, each long-stride was hard earned. Each of the roughly hewn openings in the tunnel wall—sometimes common enough to come every fifty strides—had to be checked thoroughly.

They were diligent, sweeping the rooms without fail.

Shifting in width regularly, the cave made for a tense journey. The boggarts—capable of quarrying they may have been—were crude workers. Where the cave had widened naturally beyond their requirements, they’d left it be, only taking the effort to crack their way through bedrock when it narrowed to the point of being unusable.

It left them plenty of space to tuck themselves into nooks and crannies, but by the same metric it overwhelmed his Toolkit and Glass Mind with spots of potential ambush. Enhanced he may have been, but the constant grind of heightened awareness abraded his nerves like coarse sand.

Looming out of the constant gloom, Kaius saw the cave split in two. Both passages were natural, the boggarts having done little more than smash through particularly notable extrusions of stone.

He narrowed his eyes—both of the passages were better lit, a notable change from the nigh constant darkness they had travelled through, moving between considerable stretches of shadow and darkness.

It wasn’t quite so bad that they would be constantly exposed without any cover, but it was still notably more revealing.

There were other changes. While the passage that peeled off to the right seemed to still have openings carved into its walls—even if they were fewer in number—the path that continued ahead had nothing of the sort. An unbroken passage, boring straight ahead as it dipped gently downwards, obscuring its final destination.

He slowed his approach, Ianmus and Porkchop padding forwards to join him at his sides. A decision point, with both likely leading to more boggarts judging by the lights.

“What do you think?” Kaius muttered, asking for their opinion. “I’m tempted to take the passage with the rooms, even if just so we have more places to hide in all that light.”

Porkchop sniffed deeply, raising his nose in the air, before he shook his head noncommittally. “Whole place reeks of them, otherwise I’d suggest whichever smelled like it had fewer boggarts. Less chance of being discovered.”

Ianmus tilted his head, eyes flicking between the paths. “I’d say the straight path probably leads somewhere more important—to the bugbears, perhaps? We’ve seen little of them so far.”

Kaius nodded—a decent enough reasoning. “All the more reason to hang the right. May as well deal with as much of the chaff as we can before tackling the more challenging brutes.”

With their decision made, they set off for their chosen path.

Creeping down the cave, the added light was disconcerting. They were still dim sources that left plenty of shadows for them to lurk in, but every brush with the illumination felt like being stripped bare.

Peering through the side rooms as they passed, Kaius found that they were roomier. The ceilings had been carved taller, and while they found a complete absence of sleeping boggarts, they found evidence of other, more interesting things.

Storehouses.

Most of the early ones seemed to be stacked with fuel. Roughly hewn chunks of wood, haphazardly piled, and crude earthen pots filled with thickened fat. Judging by the myriad scents and shades of the tallow, the boggarts definitely weren’t farming anything. It seemed that before scarcity had set in, they’d been processing their kills.

Further in they found stacked hides, crude tools, and even workshops—the evidence of labour to make their wares.

Kaius found himself beset by a voyeuristic curiosity that grew with intensity with every room. It was an interesting glimpse into their lives, one he doubted many researchers or enthusiasts of the natural world would get to see—considering the danger and scarcity of boggart plagues that grew to this size.

It was smothered quickly when they found a storehouse of raided goods. Sticking close to the shadows, Kaius poked his head through the opening to the room. Carved out of the rock like the others, it held a haphazard array of simple iron and steel tools. Picks, shovels, hoes—even simple iron stakes—lay in haphazard piles.

Each and every one was in some level of disrepair. Scuffed, dented, and dusted with rust, it was obvious that the boggarts were poor caretakers of their ill gotten gains.

And ill gotten they must have been. When he’d first seen the drawings of people in some of the boggarts bedchambers, he’d hoped it had been isolated incidents. Sole travellers running afoul of bad luck.

He’d been wrong. It seemed at least one settlement in the hills had fallen prey to the plague.

That wasn’t all—he doubted they’d only taken digging tools.

Gritting his teeth, Kaius waved Ianmus forward.

Approaching quickly, Ianmus looked into the room—wincing when he saw the contents.

“Do you think…?” Ianmus whispered, voice hushed.

“That some of them are going to have better weapons than stone and wood? Yeah.” Kaius nodded.

Porkchop came forward, looking for himself. “More dangerous, yes, but we shouldn’t be too worried. I doubt they have anything high-quality, and I’ll eat my left foot if any of them are some type of Weaponmaster.”

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Kaius bit his cheek, tearing his eyes away from the room. He didn’t like it, but Porkchop was right—it was just disconcerting to know that what looked to be a whole hamlet had been lost. Hopefully he was wrong.

Maybe a raiding party had simply stumbled across a ghost town—the inhabitants having long since fled the dangers of the wilds.

He shook his head, putting the matter to the back of his mind.

They continued.

After a few more minutes of slow furtive walking, they came across another room. A pair of them, really. They were on opposite sides of the cave, a bare sixty strides separating them.

The first was another store of hides—though this one was only partially full, the leathers stacked up halfway to the side of a singular wall.

Taking only a cursory look, they moved to the next.

Kaius’s eyes widened as his sight pierced the gloom—finding something he hadn’t expected.

Food.