The Korvani Fallacy

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

— Carl Sagan

———

Two days.

The assessment loomed just two days away, and the words on the page might as well have been written in ancient Draconic for all the sense they made. His finger traced the worn grain of the wooden table, following the pale lines that reminded him of the borderland maps his father used to spread across their kitchen table.

Focus. The command echoed in his mind, spoken in his father's gruff voice. A distracted mind gets you killed, boy.

But the letters kept swimming together. Goblin behavioral patterns, warren navigation techniques, emergency protocols—all of it felt like academic theory when what he needed was practical knowledge. The kind that kept you breathing when claws came out of the dark.

Rhys pressed his palms against his temples, the leather-wrapped grip of his father's spear leaning against his chair a constant reminder of what was at stake. Every copper piece of his stipend had already been sent home for Elara's medicine. There was no room for failure, no safety net if he couldn't prove himself worthy of staying at the academy.

The scrape of chairs against stone broke through his spiraling thoughts. Two students from House Onyx settled at a table three spaces away, their voices low but carrying in the library's hush. Rhys recognized them vaguely—Marcus Vellum, the disgraced scribe's son who took obsessive notes in every class, and a sharp-featured girl whose name escaped him but whose cutting remarks in Professor De Clare's sessions had earned her a reputation.

Marcus spread several books across the table, his movements quick and nervous. "The flanking maneuver is clearly superior. Look at this diagram—"

"You're reading it wrong." The girl's voice carried the kind of dismissive edge that Rhys had heard from nobles his entire life. "That formation works in open terrain, not underground."

"But the textbook specifically recommends—"

"The textbook assumes you have room to maneuver. Which you don't. In a mine corridor." She leaned forward, her dark hair falling across her face as she jabbed at the page. "Use that tactic against goblin swarms in tight spaces and you're begging for a pincer ambush."

Rhys's head snapped up. The phrase hit him like a crossbow bolt between the ribs. Pincer ambush in narrow mine corridors. His hand moved instinctively to the warren schematics tucked between his textbook pages—the same maps every team had been given to study their assigned sections.

"That's ridiculous," Marcus protested, his voice rising slightly before he caught himself and glanced around the library. "The Korvani Campaign proved—"

"The Korvani Campaign was fought in natural caves with multiple exit routes. These are mining tunnels. Artificial. Designed for efficiency, not combat." The girl's tone suggested she was explaining something obvious to a particularly slow child. "You try to flank in those narrow passages and the goblins will just collapse both ends. Trap you in the middle while they come at you from above and below."

"Above and below?" Marcus's quill scratched frantically as he took notes. "But the structural integrity reports don't mention—"

"Of course they don't. The reports assume normal usage patterns. But goblins don't follow our engineering assumptions." She pulled out her own copy of the warren maps, spreading them beside the tactical manual. "Look at these support beam spacings. See how they're clustered around the main passages? That's not for load distribution—that's because the original miners knew the rock was unstable there."

Rhys found himself leaning forward, straining to catch every word. The conversation felt too specific, too relevant to be coincidence. His borderland instincts, honed by years of watching for goblin raids, screamed that this was important.

"So what would you recommend?" Marcus asked, his pen poised above his notebook.

"Defensive positioning. Find a chokepoint, establish overlapping fields of fire, and let them come to you. Don't get clever with formations—clever gets you killed in the dark." The girl's finger traced paths on the map. "Especially in sections like the Collapsed Mine. All those unstable passages, questionable structural integrity... One wrong move and you're not dealing with goblins anymore. You're dealing with a cave-in."

The words hit Rhys like ice water. The Collapsed Mine—that was Team 7's assigned section. His team's section. The area they'd been studying for the past week, memorizing every tunnel and junction.

"The Fool's Gambit," the girl continued, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "That's what the textbook calls it. Trying to use complex maneuvers in unstable terrain. It's not just tactically unsound—it's suicidal."

"Shh!" The librarian's stern voice cut through their discussion like a blade. "This is a place of study, not debate."

Marcus and the girl exchanged glances before hastily gathering their materials. The girl shot one last look at the warren maps, shaking her head as if disappointed by what she saw there.

"Some people never learn," she muttered, just loud enough for Rhys to hear as they passed his table. "They see a challenge and think they can outsmart it with textbook tactics. Never considering that maybe, just maybe, the challenge is designed to kill them."

Their footsteps faded, leaving Rhys alone with the sudden, overwhelming silence. He stared at the space where they'd been sitting, his mind racing through everything he'd just heard. The specific references to the Collapsed Mine, the warnings about structural instability, the emphasis on defensive positioning over aggressive tactics.

It could be coincidence. Students discussed assessment strategies all the time, especially this close to the actual event. But Rhys had learned long ago that in matters of life and death, coincidence was usually just another word for "something you should have paid attention to."

He stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the stone floor. The warren maps crinkled as he gathered them, his hands steadier now that he had a purpose. Three shelves away, nestled between treatises on military engineering and siege warfare, sat a thick volume bound in brown leather.

A Tactician's Guide to Warfare.

Rhys pulled the book from the shelf, its weight solid and reassuring in his hands. The binding showed signs of frequent use—cracked spine, worn corners, pages that fell open to well-studied sections. He flipped through the chapters, scanning headings until he found what he was looking for.

Chapter 7: Common Tactical Errors in Underground Combat.