The answer to the first question was: After lunch on the third day after they arrived in order to move all of their nightly rest stops four hours closer to Ben's End. The answer to the second question was: Yes, there was no way that they were going to reach Safeharbor unmolested.

"Incoming." Isaac spoke just barely loud enough for the wagon driver, who also happened to be the lead merchant, to hear. Lenna was obviously right next to him so Isaac could have whispered it if she was the only one that he had wanted to warn.

"How many?" Lenna asked for both herself and the lead merchant.

"Twenty eight." Isaac said with a frown. "That seems excessive."

"Not if they realized who we are." She pointed out. "With so many of them, I wonder if they will set any conventional or magical traps for us?"

"I'll search ahead and find out." Isaac told her but didn't make a move to stand. He simply closed his eyes and searched the shadows. It was disorienting to feel his body sway while all of his perception was cast down the tunnel but there was nothing that he could do about it. "Shamesh still hasn't been able to go on an escort quest." Isaac commented while he continued to search their path ahead for anything out of the ordinary.

"No?" Lenna began. "I wonder why?"

"Part of it has been that he hasn't made himself easily available." Isaac explained. "He has been spending a lot of time with Edward and Alexander recently. Apparently they are still worried about whatever I felt on our trip out. He has been on standby with them, just in case whatever it is decides to show itself. The rest is probably just the way he looks."

Lenna hummed in agreement. She would have just nodded but she knew that he would have only been able to guess at her reaction in that case. A guess that probably would have been right, but a guess nonetheless. "I do not blame the humans for being afraid of him. Most mortals judge by preconceptions first, appearances second, words third, and actions fourth."

"He looks like a lich so he must be evil. His eyes are literally death made manifest, which all mortals instinctively fear and judge as evil, so he must be evil. He hardly speaks unless spoken to, doubly so for those he does not know, which makes him seem unfriendly. His only actions have been a show of power and a few 'friendly spars' after the fact, which is a swim upstream after everything else." Isaac elaborated for her. "Yes. I agree, but it would be nice if he could get some solo experience."

"Do you plan on making it a regular occurrence?" Lenna questioned him.

Isaac shrugged. "Hold on." He told her to put a marker in their conversation while he dealt with a few minor problems. "Smother them." He whispered and the shadows obeyed. He had found a pair of ogres wandering down the tunnel in their direction and didn't feel like dealing with them directly. "Not really." Isaac said to pick up their conversation where it had been before he changed the topic: "Do the drow use ogres as military assets?"

"Sometimes." Lenna confirmed. "But rarely directly. Ogres have a tendency to get lost in the Innerworld. Some conveniently placed chunks of meat and they can easily be led towards human settlements."

Isaac nodded in understanding. "The ogres are there to give us a false sense of security. Most adventurers would expect many of the smaller local monsters to have been dealt with by the ogres already. Their ambush is set up in just a way to capitalize on that impression, or it would have been, if the ogres hadn't died a mile before they got to the caravan."

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"Where the ambush is set up, do you see any traps?" Lenna wondered.

"I'm not there yet." Isaac informed her. "Just give me a few more minutes."

"Alright." Lenna replied. "Have you felt that strange presence again since that one time?"

"No." Isaac told her. "And I don't know if that is a good thing or not. I haven't even felt anything vague on the edges of my senses."

Lenna hummed in thought. "I see." She said. "Maybe it really was just a passing threat that happened to get closer to the surface than it normally would have."

"Maybe…" Isaac didn't sound or feel very convinced. A few minutes later, Isaac's perception reached the ambush point. "Damn." He swore under his breath. "I can't tell anything." He let out a soft and low growl of annoyance. "It is too far away for me to get a clear picture and the terrain is too rough for anything to specifically stand out."

"What about strange mana currents?" Lenna wondered.

"If there is a shift in the natural currents, that isn't from me, it is too small for me to notice at this distance." He informed her. "Right now, all I can do is confirm that there are no other threats between us and the twenty eight of them."

"Is it just three squads?" Lenna wondered.

Isaac shook his head. "No, it is only one conventional squad. I think there are either twelve or fifteen assassins and the other six to three are scouts and rangers or just rangers respectively." He answered with all of the information that he could glean from the intuitive knowledge of his Polarity Sense and experience.

"Level range?" Lenna asked.

"Mid teens to extremely high teens if not twenty." Isaac replied as best that he could. "Some of them are too close to each other for me to tell accurately at this distance."

Lenna nodded even though Isaac still couldn't see her. "Better than I had feared but worse than I had hoped." She commented. "So, what is the plan? Scouts, rangers, and assassins are going to be far more aware of the shadow of your bloodlust that tends to escape when you are attacking."

"Isn't that the question for the ages?" Isaac grumbled. "If it was just us, I would probably just end up setting off the trap." It was at that moment that Isaac had a grand idea. 'Shamesh, see if Edward and Alexander would like to go five versus twenty eight with you, me, and Lenna.'

'As you say, my master.' Shamesh sent back.

"I just sent Shamesh to see if Edward and Alexander would like to join us." Isaac kept his wife in the loop. "With a little luck, we will still be able to walk right into the trap and crush it in classic V'Nova fashion."

Lenna rolled her eyes. "Just tell me what you need me to do."

Isaac had been forced to tell the lead merchant to halt the caravan while they waited for Shamesh. Luckily, the wagons had only been stopped for a handful of minutes before Shamesh came back with a message for Isaac from Alexander. 'Trigger the beacon whenever you are ready for us.' Shamesh passed on.

"Trigger the beacon." Isaac told Lenna. He was still keeping an eye on the ambush point, which was now close enough for him to get accurate information on, and he could tell that they were getting antsy. "They are wondering if we are aware of their presence." Isaac's brows furrowed in concentration while Lenna simultaneously triggered the beacon to send Alexander their location. She had set the beacon in the open space between the rear of their wagon and the horses pulling the wagon behind them. "The wizard is mentally communicating with someone. I can feel the mana wobble as the information is transmitted."

A pulse of mana washed out in a wave and quickly became much more subtle as it carried its signal out towards Alexander. "That was not subtle." Lenna commented.

"They are aware." Isaac said with a frown. "Some of them are scattering, I am going after them."

"Isaac, wa-" Lenna's voice died as Isaac vanished. "Shit." She swore. A moment later, a ripple of mana brought forth Edward, Alexander, and Shamesh all ready to go.

"Hurry, while they are distracted!" Shamesh ordered the group. "My master has them in disarray. This is our chance."

While Lenna was swearing, and then the three reinforcements got their bearings and Shamesh barked his orders, Isaac was already hilt deep in the back of one of the fleeing rangers. He knew that a ranger's sixth sense for danger was not as enhanced as a scouts' because rangers were gifted with magic. That was why he went after them first. Rangers' magic was also something that Isaac did not completely understand and that meant that he was all too eager to remove any unknown variables, much to the rangers' detriment, well, the first two's anyway. The third one was proving to be a bit of a handful. He also just happened to be one of the two drow to be at level twenty.

The first ranger hadn't even realized that he was dead until his head was cleaved from his shoulders, the second had tried to turn and dodge the incoming attack but Isaac's sword easily slipped past his guard and found its way in through the ranger's armpit the entire way to his heart. The third had met him blow for blow with a hatchet and hunting knife of all things. If the weapons hadn't been made of adamantine and enchanted with durability enhancements, Isaac would have just cleaved through them, but as it stood, the ranger's weapons were more durable than Reality Shields and were sharp enough to cut stone. One thing was for certain, this ambush was chalking up to be a bit more entertaining than the last one.

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