Everything had been going smoothly until the supply issue had reared its ugly head. Provisions and equipment had stopped reaching the front lines, and a battalion had been sent to investigate. What was important was that the appropriate response was prepared—the problem might have been bandits, but it might also have been a rival military force.
The insurgents readied a battalion that, it must be said, was entirely overkill for the task of simply checking on supplies. At the front of the battalion was an armor-clad bearkin reviewing his map. He looked left, then right, then down at his map, then tilted his head.
“Huh? Something’s not right.”
The bearkin’s superior officer, realizing something was amiss, rode his horse from farther back to address the issue.
“What’s going on? Report, soldier.”
“S-Sir. The road on this map... It’s not here,” the soldier replied. “The road is supposed to split in two, at which point we follow the path to the right, but— Look, sir. The road we’re supposed to take is, well, it’s just forest. The road to the left appears to be there, but... It just doesn’t make any sense.”
The soldier scratched his head.
“A ways back there was supposed to be a big boulder—a landmark,” he continued, “but it wasn’t there. I had a feeling something was off, but because we only needed to follow the road, I didn’t think we could possibly have been on the wrong track. I just figured that the boulder had been taken for the stonemasons or something like that, but now that the crossroads is just...gone, I don’t know.”
“Boulders don’t just disappear, soldier, and neither do roads. Either your map is wrong, or you read it wrong. Hey! You! We’ve other scouts reviewing the maps, don’t we? Call for them, now! You’re going to compare your maps and come to a conclusion. Let me know if we push on or head back. In the meantime, we’ll have to take a break and wait.”
The superior office turned back to address those behind him.
“Halt the march!” he shouted as he rode back towards the other soldiers. “Send word through the lines! We’re halting the march! Take a break!”
Beyond the soldiers comparing their maps and scratching their heads, standing on the road the insurgent forces should have been marching along, were a number of onikin, crafting the illusion of a forest with their magic.
Concealment spells weren’t exclusive to making things invisible. They were also helpful for creating illusions. It was this second benefit that allowed them to hide not just their yurts from potential threats but all traces of them on the grasslands. Without the ability to cast illusions, the onikin concealment magic would have been useless—hiding their yurts only would have left a very suspicious open space where everything stood.
When the onikin cast their concealment magic to hide their village, they also cast the illusion of the grassy plains around it. It was this that kept them hidden from danger. The concealment spells allowed it to look like nothing more than a snowy landscape in the winter as well and to make their village look much bigger than it actually was.
Because concealment magic drew from the scenery around it, it reacted naturally to the elements. Illusory tree branches wavered in the breeze alongside real ones, illusory yurts were pelted with rain much like the genuine yurts nearby. All of this made concealment magic extremely convincing.
The onikin drew from the nearby trees to create their forest here as well. Their illusory trees shared the exact same branches, patterns, and scratches of those nearby. It would have been a strange sight upon closer inspection, but the soldiers noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Their way forward had vanished, but not a single soldier thought anything odd about the scenery. Rather, they turned their focus inwards, assuming they had made a wrong turn somewhere or read their maps wrong.
The soldiers went over their maps over and over, yet no matter how much they reviewed and discussed, any answers eluded them. Their confusion was reaching a breaking point.
“But there was only one road to follow up until now...” muttered one.
“Yeah, but just based on the topography and how long it took us to get here, we should be staring right at the crossroads. You’ve all got the same maps as me. You can see it, no?”
“Then where’s the crossroads? We can’t walk a path that isn’t there! What are we waiting around for? Let’s push on!”
“I agree. What other choice do we have? To go back? And if so, how far? Imagine all the time we’ll be wasting!”
“And we still haven’t seen the landmark, right? The big rock? If we haven’t seen that, then of course we haven’t seen the crossroads yet.”
The whole point of having a number of soldiers carry maps was to ensure that any potential mistakes could be nipped in the bud and no wrong paths were taken. After much discussion and deliberation, all the soldiers were in agreement: They would march on.
All the while, the onikin had looked on nervously, unable to completely fight off the sneaking feeling that their ruse would fall through. But now, when they heard the soldiers come to their conclusion, they couldn’t help but grin.
Word was sent back to the battalion’s superior officer, who commanded his troops to march onwards. The battalion pushed on and encountered no landmark rock. By taking the road to the left, they instead arrived at a deserted village. At that point they had no choice but to admit that they should have retraced their steps. All of them believed that they’d totally missed the crossroads.
Still, others felt they’d come too far to turn back. The battalion’s superior officer did not berate his soldiers for their bad decision, though he did penalize them for it.
“Then we’ve no choice but to camp out here for the night,” said the superior officer. “As for you navigators—if we can even call you that—you’re to handle whatever odd jobs there are around camp while the others eat, and you’re on first watch tonight. You are not to eat or sleep until you are relieved.”
By this point, the battalion was already low on food, and what was left had gone cold. They’d gone without sleep for long enough already, but still the soldiers were relieved to have escaped harsher punishments and obediently nodded their heads. However, every soldier placed on first watch that evening disappeared.
The onikin had stolen into camp under the cover of magic, waited for the right moment, and then attacked. They had rendered the soldiers on guard unconscious, bound and gagged them, and then carried them away. Those on the second watch assumed that the first would have noticed any intruders, and thus believed that those soldiers had deserted their posts.
Desertion of a military post was punishable by death, but it was not entirely uncommon, and the soldiers on second watch did not report those who went missing.
For one thing, they did not want the deserters or their families to bear them grudges, and they did not want to make a scene. They knew that to report the missing soldiers would only wake everyone and draw their ire, so the soldiers on second watch went on with their job as if nothing had happened.
As a result, however, the soldiers on second watch were also bound, gagged, and dragged away by the onikin, along with those who woke to relieve themselves, and even a few who were fast asleep. Nobody was any the wiser until the third watch, at which point the camp exploded with panic. Guards were gone, soldiers were missing, and almost half of the battalion’s supplies had vanished.
Had somebody attacked? Had a portion of the battalion planned a group desertion? The battalion shrugged off the first possibility—after all, who would attack a battalion of such size? They thus assumed desertion and had no choice but to accept what had happened and pack up camp immediately.
It was still dark, but the battalion set off back the way it had come. They did not have time to drag their feet—time was not on their side. It was clear that unless they procured more supplies, the battalion would starve and morale would plummet. They either needed to find the path they were looking for or return to the front lines.
However, the darkness only plunged them deeper into confusion, and they quickly found themselves lost in the mountains. They walked around in circles in search of the road back, but come dawn they were still walking, and when they finally thought they were on track, they found themselves at the same deserted village where they had set up camp the day before.
In the middle of the village, the battalion found a group of soldiers tied up with rope—the very ones they had all assumed deserters. The battalion’s commanding officer, in all his shock, found himself unable to stay on his feet. For a time, he could not even find the energy to speak.