"Play it cool, mister merchant." Isaac's voice purred from behind the leader of the caravan. The caravan had just started moving again and the lead merchant had taken up his position in the second wagon in the caravan. The second wagon was objectively the safest place in a group of three, four, or five wagons, tied for safest place in a group of six, and only outshone by the third place wagon in a group of seven and onwards. The wagon in second place still had the ability to escape past the first wagon if something were to happen to it, yet it still had someone to trigger any ambushes for them.

The lead merchant jumped slightly in his seat but otherwise tried to act as if he hadn't just nearly soiled himself. "What should I do?" He asked under his breath, just barely loud enough for Isaac to hear over the wagon wheels scraping against the stone ground.

"Nothing, yet." Isaac told him. "As soon as everything starts, have all of the wagons pull back. Bunch up as tight as you reasonably can and have four of the guards form up in the rear. The other two should stand with their shields up in front of the front wagon's horses, just in case there is a stray arrow. Lenna and I will handle everything else."

"I can do that." The lead merchant replied with a nod that looked more to himself than to anyone he may have been talking to.

In their wagon train of six, Isaac and Lenna were supposed to be in the third wagon or split between the second and forth, and everyone had seen them enter the former. This meant that even if there was someone leaking information to the drow raiders, they wouldn't have accurate information, as Isaac and Lenna snuck into the lead wagon under the cover of Isaac's shadow-cloak.

It only took another hour until the lead wagon entered a cavern. The large open space was damp with moisture from the underground water vein that helped to water Ben's End and the mushrooms. Stalagmites and stalactites littered the cavern with a trail through them that had been leveled out at one point. Since that time, the newly forming stalagmites had just been trampled on time and time again. The floor was slick with damp sandy minerals which made it a perfect place to ambush a caravan. The horses had a much higher chance of slipping and falling if all hells broke loose which could only be a good thing for the raiders.

Now that they were so close, Isaac had a pretty good read on all of the enemies. Something that he had noticed, either with time or levels, his Polarity Sense had gotten more and more accurate. Now, even without seeing any of them, Isaac knew all of their levels and whether or not they were a mage.

"Two Seventeens, three sixteens, three fifteens, all non-mages." Isaac told Lenna so she would know what to expect as soon as combat began. "A fifteen mage, and a sixteen paladin."

"That's not a raiding party, that's a 'Square'." Lenna commented. She was right, of course, that it was the exact same composition that a squad that took part in the attack on Safeharbor had run. It was a tried and true method for breaking battlelines, not a group set up for raiding. Raiding groups would often be made up of a more random assortment of individuals, sometimes even being entirely of one type of combatant depending on which city they were from. This was a drow military operation disguised as a normal raid.

"Ready?" Isaac asked his mate as the second wagon started to enter the cavern.

A Fireball started to form directly above the lead horses with almost no warning. Isaac and Lenna had both felt the stirring of mana half of a second before it started and Isaac might've heard a quiet chant echo off of the hard walls of the cavern, but both tells could have easily been missed if Isaac hadn't been expecting them.

Isaac appeared in the air, in between the horses, with his hand already outstretched. He crushed the Fireball in his hand with enough mana to obliterate the forming spell before it could go off. He held himself in the air with the control over the shadows inside of his clothes alone. The lead wagon's driver immediately yanked back on the reins and the horses came to a stop. In the time it had taken for the horses to stop, the wagon had moved forwards to a point where Isaac was now standing on the bench next to the seated driver. Lenna vaulted over the wall of the wagon, it wasn't a closed top as there wasn't a need to keep rain or snow out of the wagon, and her heavy boots hit the ground with enough force and a loud enough clunk that it echoed through the cavern.

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Over the course of the next ten seconds, every wagon came to a stop and the cavern fell into an eerie silence. The raiders hadn't made another move after the Fireball had been snuffed out and Isaac wasn't ready to go on the offensive just yet. Lenna walked around the lead horses to stand right in front of them. "Surrender." Lenna spoke loudly and clearly enough that it echoed back at her almost mockingly.

Seven men and women stood up from behind stalagmites and arrayed themselves in a crescent in front of Lenna and the lead wagon. The mage was still nowhere to be seen, but Isaac could feel their presence in the back of the cavern flanked by two of the level fifteen standard soldiers. "If you surrender, no one has to die." The paladin raider spoke calmly and deliberately.

"If you surrender, then I won't have to kill you." Lenna replied calmly.

"Your mage is strong, maybe even stronger than you, but together you are no match for us." The paladin raider said while looking down his nose at Lenna.

"You might not recognize this armor, because it has changed a bit since it's been in my possession, but your blades cannot harm me." Lenna explained. "And you should know that there is only one Dark Mage in the entirety of the Innerworld, who is strong enough to leave no magical trace and yet still crush a Fireball with his hands."

The paladin raider seemed to take a moment to truly look at Isaac who was still standing on top of the lead wagon's driver's bench. "You're lying. This is just a caravan. There is no reason for the Patriarch Slayer to be protecting it." The paladin replied but the wave of uneasiness that rolled through the raiders ranks was clearly visible.

Isaac appeared directly behind the paladin. "You are… incorrect." Isaac's Lord of Darkness voice rolled like gravel. The paladin froze as he felt a surge of power that made his knees weak from two feet behind him. "There are two reasons why I would be out here." Isaac began as the other six who had come out to meet them all backed away a step from both Isaac and Lenna. "I owe Safeharbor enough that I am willing to waste a few weeks protecting their little caravans, but more than that, I am looking for someone."

"L-Looking for who?" The paladin's voice wavered as he felt as if a giant had both of its hands resting on his shoulders. The weight of Isaac's shadows were pressing down on him with enough force that he had to use his aura just to stay on his feet.

"There was a caravan, protected by a wood elf, a goliath, and a few humans and half-breeds. It was hit exactly four weeks ago. I want to know who launched the raid, and who took part in it." Isaac explained.

"H-how would I know?" The paladin replied.

"Then you are useless to me." Isaac replied and the paladin instantly felt like he was about to be obliterated from both sides. As Isaac had said his final words, Lenna had taken a step towards the paladin and her entire body was covered in armor of burning embers and hardened shadows that was then covered with black and orange flames interposed over each other.

"I-I can-" The paladin's voice cut off as he dove forwards, toward Lenna. His own aura blazed to its maximum power as he poured as much of his mana into strength as he possibly could in order to meet Lenna's casually closing cancellation to his contract of continuing to coexist in or on Primatia. At the same time, a Reality Bind was attempting to lock Isaac down from the mage in the back and a pair of crossbow bolts came flying his way. The six other knights who had backed off immediately went on the offensive as soon as they saw their commander launch into action.

"Suffocate." Isaac ordered all six of the normal knights simultaneously. All of the shadows inside of the knights' helmets got dense enough to prevent air from passing through them and clung to the knights' noses and mouths. Their varying degrees of panic all hit at slightly staggered intervals but the one thing that they all had in common was that they knew that they were going to die. Two of the knights immediately switched direction from Lenna to him but one of them slipped on the slimy and wet ground and went down in a heap. The other lowered his sword and raised his shield as he charged at Isaac.

The Reality Bind that had been cast on Isaac did nothing. His protection items made it impossible for such a low level spell to get a lock on him without some serious upcasting but that didn't stop the spell from trying. It tried to create an Isaac shaped form of reality magic to hold him in place but Isaac's raw power output was just too high for a spell that hadn't worked right from the very start. He easily dodged one of the incoming crossbow bolts while his hand smacked the other out of the air.

Isaac felt for how much of his power he still had access to while the knights were suffocating and it wasn't bad. He created and sharpened his Truth right before the knight got to him. With one quick parry, his fight with the only standing knight began in earnest. The knight slashed, cut, stabbed, and then tried to shield-bash Isaac but the dark mage just parried, parried, dodged, and then teleported out of the way. Isaac kicked the knight in the head as hard as he could, while still being in mid air from his teleport, and then teleported back down to stand casually on the ground. He took the momentary lull to see how Lenna's fight had started as his only standing opponent crashed to the ground with at least a mild concussion while being actively suffocated to death.

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