Chapter 144: I Couldn’t Hunt the Matriarch… So I Made Her Hunt Me

Raven wasn’t going back into the tunnels.

That was the first decision.

The second was that any plan requiring him to do the same thing again was a bad plan.

Vent Six was still surrounded by municipal workers when they returned to central Kharad. Several streets remained closed, two buildings had been reinforced with emergency supports, and part of the market was still covered in dust.

The bells continued to tremble occasionally, but their pattern had changed since the Matriarch released that deep pressure signal.

The colony was no longer moving erratically.

It was concentrating.

Maelor spread a map across a table inside a municipal office that now had a fresh crack running from the floor to one of the windows.

"Here." He marked several galleries with charcoal. "If the Matriarch is gathering the adults, the colony’s core must have shifted toward this area."

Raven leaned over the map.

"What’s above it?"

"Nothing useful."

"That sounds useful."

Maelor looked at him.

"An abandoned quarry, two old ventilation shafts, and a section of hillside nobody has mined in years because the stone is too fractured."

Raven followed the lines.

The natural galleries formed an irregular funnel beneath the quarry. Several abandoned pressure chambers connected to newer tunnels, while an old mining network extended west.

It wasn’t a cage.

But it could become a direction.

Valeria leaned against the table.

"Yesterday, you wanted to go inside and find her. Now you want to force her out."

"Going inside means fighting the entire colony on its own ground."

"And bringing her out means convincing her to leave her young."

"Exactly."

Maelor slowly shook his head.

"She won’t do that because we bang on a few rocks."

Raven pointed toward the lower routes.

"I don’t want her to think we’re banging on rocks."

The guide narrowed his eyes.

"Then what do you want her to think?"

"That another colony is entering hers."

Silence followed.

Roland had just walked in carrying a cup of something hot.

He stopped halfway across the room.

"That sounds like an idea I should be worried about."

Raven looked at him.

"Probably."

"I appreciate the consistency."

Maelor returned his attention to the map.

"There isn’t another colony nearby."

"She doesn’t need to know that."

"Burrowers aren’t stupid."

"I never said they were."

Raven took three small stones and placed them over different conduits.

"They react to vibration, pressure changes, and movement inside their network. Keller Ridge already proved they can be pushed with explosions. They did it badly because they were only trying to frighten them and didn’t understand the entire system."

"And you do?"

"Enough not to repeat their exact mistake."

Valeria smiled.

"Reassuring."

Raven ignored the tone.

"I don’t need the whole colony to come out. I need a credible threat on one side, pressure from another, and an apparently safe route leading toward the quarry."

Maelor studied the old chambers again.

This time with genuine interest.

"The ventilation conduits could do that."

"Explain."

"If we activate an old chamber, the pressure wave can travel through three galleries without anyone entering the core. But it has to be precise. Too much force and we recreate yesterday."

"Then we don’t use large charges."

Maelor pointed toward another section.

"There’s a dry chamber here. Abandoned, but it still holds pressure. If we open this conduit and block the other one, we can make it resemble a discharge coming from the west."

Sila, who had been listening from a nearby chair while Deren’s injured shoulder was being treated elsewhere, added, "Vent Seven connects to the northern gallery. We could release air from above."

Raven looked at her.

"Controllable?"

"If the old valves still work."

"And if they don’t?"

"Then Maelor can stop complaining about your plan because we’ll have a new problem."

Maelor exhaled through his nose.

"I liked her more before she started spending time with you."

Raven pointed toward the quarry.

"I need the Matriarch to believe the western side is compromised and something else is pressing from the north. If we also close the smaller passages behind her, she should move the young toward the protected section of the colony."

Valeria understood.

"And she puts herself between the threat and them."

"That’s what I’m counting on."

"So we aren’t trying to separate her from the young ourselves."

"No."

Raven moved the largest stone toward the quarry entrance.

"We make her decide to come out first."

Roland set his cup on the table.

"And if she chooses another direction?"

Raven looked at the available routes.

"Then we learn quickly."

"That phrase continues to be incredibly unhelpful."

"It wasn’t designed to reassure you."

Kharad had far more underground infrastructure than Raven would have preferred to understand.

They spent nearly three hours preparing the terrain without approaching the colony’s core. They used abandoned chambers Maelor had known since before several local mines were closed, old ventilation shafts, mining supports, small alchemical charges recovered from municipal storage, and an absurd amount of rope.

None of it looked like hunting.

That was exactly what Raven wanted.

In Velis, he had studied the Stormhorn because he needed to control movement across open terrain.

Here, there was no open terrain until they created it.

The chosen quarry lay almost a kilometer from northern Kharad. It formed a broad, irregular depression surrounded by weathered stone walls and abandoned terraces. Broken beams, loose rock, and old extraction scars covered the floor.

There were three obvious ways out.

Raven made two of them worse.

He didn’t block them completely. A creature accustomed to tunnels would notice that too easily.

Instead, one route received a line of small buried charges capable of causing partial collapses when needed. The other was layered with loose stone, mineral oil, and old supports that could fail under a strong pressure discharge.

The third remained clear.

Valeria watched the preparations from an elevated platform.

"You keep building corridors even when there aren’t any walls."

Raven tightened a rope around an improvised pulley.

"Walls are optional. Decisions aren’t."

She studied him.

"That sounds like something you were taught."

"Not exactly. Black Hound worked in buildings, cities, and places where the enemy believed they had multiple routes available. Most people don’t really choose between ten options. They choose between the two or three that look good."

"So you make only one look good."

"Yes."

Valeria looked across the quarry.

"And then punish the choice."

Raven glanced up.

"You’re learning."

"Don’t look so pleased. I’m beginning to understand why you were unbearable even before you had a system."

Raven almost smiled.

"That was personal."

"I’m improving."

Roland had another assignment.

One Raven didn’t want to handle personally.

"Keller Ridge still has people inside the town," Joren said as they reviewed the confiscated records. "Some disappeared after the warehouse explosion, but not all of them."

Raven brushed dust from a small alchemical charge.

"They’ll try to leave."

"Probably."

"With documents."

Joren frowned.

"You want us to arrest them now?"

Raven considered it.

He could.

It would be cleaner.

It would also consume manpower immediately before the operation against the colony and potentially warn anyone who didn’t yet realize their scheme had been exposed.

"No."

Valeria looked at him.

"No?"

"If they still believe the town is going to collapse, they’ll try to escape when we start moving the colony. That’s when they’ll take whatever actually matters to them."

Roland understood first.

"Money and records."

"Exactly."

"So you want me following them."

"I want you to capture them if you can. If you have to choose between a man and the documents, take the documents."

Roland raised an eyebrow.

"And if I have to choose between helping here and chasing them?"

Raven looked toward the quarry.

That was the part that came less naturally.

Not deciding what needed to be done.

Trusting someone else to do it without him.

Black Hound had operated that way because there had never been another option. Every member had their own sector, door, angle, and responsibility.

After the betrayal, delegation had stopped feeling efficient.

It had started feeling like surrendering part of the control.

Raven knew that.

He also knew trying to control everything personally was the kind of mistake that got entire teams killed.

"You handle Keller Ridge," he said.

Roland waited a moment.

"Even if the hunt starts?"

"Especially then."

"And if you need help?"

Raven looked at Valeria.

"I won’t be alone."

She said nothing, but something in her expression shifted.

Roland picked up his bow.

"Fine. Then I hope the big monster is friendlier than the little ones."

"It won’t be."

"I appreciate that you’re still working on those social skills."

Raven let him leave.

Valeria waited until they were alone.

"That cost you something."

"What?"

"Letting him handle it."

Raven adjusted another rope.

"It was the logical decision."

"I didn’t say it wasn’t."

"Then I don’t see the problem."

Valeria stepped slightly closer.

"I didn’t say there was one either."

Raven looked at her.

She smiled.

"I’m just learning how to recognize you."

That was considerably more annoying than an argument.

Raven went back to work.

The first detonation came in mid-afternoon.

Small.

Controlled.

It went off inside an abandoned chamber to the west.

BOOM.

The wave didn’t reach the quarry as sound.

It arrived through the ground.

Raven had one hand against a metal rod driven into the stone and felt the pulse travel beneath him.

Maelor watched one of the portable bells.

Nothing happened at first.

Five seconds passed.

Then ten.

Finally, the metal trembled.

Tin.

A pause.

Tin.

Sila smiled without humor.

"They felt it."

Raven looked at the map.

"Second signal."

This one wasn’t an explosion.

They opened an old valve connected to a pressurized conduit, sending air roaring through the underground network.

The bell reacted again.

Louder.

CLANG.

Valeria stood beside Raven.

"How do we know they’re interpreting this as another colony and not as a particularly annoying group of humans?"

"We don’t."

"Excellent."

"Maelor said they use similar pressure discharges to defend routes."

"That wasn’t my favorite part of his explanation."

Raven looked toward the ground.

Predation caught the first signatures changing position.

[Blastback Burrower Signatures Shifting: 6... 11... 18.]

They weren’t coming upward.

Not yet.

The colony was reorganizing.

Good.

Raven raised one hand.

"Third."

Maelor hesitated.

"If we trigger the next one too soon—"

"I know."

They waited.

Thirty seconds passed, then a minute.

The signatures continued shifting west.

Raven needed them concentrated in that direction, but not so heavily that the entire colony committed.

Just enough for the Matriarch to interpret the area as a threat.

Then they opened the second chamber.

WHUMP.

The pressure pulse traveled through the network from another angle.

The reaction was immediate.

More signatures began shifting through the tunnels, and then something far larger changed position among them.

FORGE reacted.

[High-Capacity Pressure Chamber Moving.]

Raven looked toward the quarry.

"We have her."

Maelor didn’t look pleased.

"She’s still underground."

"But she moved."

"Toward us."

"That was the plan."

"I still think that part deserves more concern."

Valeria flexed her fingers, preparing her Blood Magic.

"I agree with Maelor."

Raven looked at her.

"That worries me."

She bumped him lightly with one shoulder.

"Focus."

The colony responded faster than they expected.