by Eric Ugland
“We had to go back down the tunnel,” Skeld said. “No way we could make it far enough up the incline in time.”
“We started after you,” Ragnar said, “but—“
“You had to give up when it started closing on you,” I interrupted.
“And we had to collect some of your weapons.”
Ragnar held up the Eternal Xiphos of Sharpness while Skeld held out Eona’s bow.
“Yeah, uh, I dropped those, didn’t I?” I asked, feeling rather embarrassed at tossing aside such mythic weapons without a second thought.
Ragnar nodded, and took the initiative to put both weapons inside my bag.
“It’s an interesting defense mechanism,” I said. “Makes it real hard for anything to track the fucker without an entire crew mining.”
“And this stuff is remarkably resilient,” Skeld said. He swung his spear at the former foam, present rock, and there was a bright spark. Not a mark on the rock.
“Figured you’d make it out eventually,” Ragnar said, leaning against the wall.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Did you check on the farmers?”
“Farmers?” Ragnar asked, furry eyebrows arching up.
“I heard screaming, on the other side of the worm. I think he was attacking one of the farming towns outside Osterstadt.”
“We didn’t hear anything,” Ragnar said. “So we didn’t know to check.”
“Let’s go then,” I said, doing my best to scrape the mud from my face. I wanted to look at least a little presentable, but I knew I appeared kinda monstrous. Blood, guts, gore, mudpoopslimestuff. A look that said, I kill monsters, but save people. I hoped.
Still, despite my macabre appearance, I wanted to make sure whomever the banded worm had been attacking were fine. It took a little climbing to get around the worm’s chase tunnel so we could hike up the incline, which was then a vaudeville routine of two otters falling down, grabbing my legs and pulling me down, but eventually the three of us came to the end of the tunnel, pulling ourselves up through a hole.
It was not sky above us, but a ceiling, with chandeliers and lanterns swinging from the ceiling. There were walls, and a floor.
It was definitely a room that had been either constructed or carved from the mountain. It didn’t seem like the walls were made of bricks so much as they were solid stone which had been made to look like bricks.
One wall was taken up by a massive relief of an ornate dragon. Unlike the wyrms I’d fought, it looked majestic as fuck. It seemed like a creature destined to lord over the lands, made for ruling over the skies. The artist had done a tremendous job — it seemed almost real. You know, except for the fact that it was the same color as the surrounding rock and barely three dimensional. A small fountain had been in front of the relief, but the worm’s eruption from the floor had done some serious damage to it, and now water leaked everywhere.
The dimensions to everything were just a bit off, at least as far as I could tell. Smaller than it needed to be for humans. Not like, Lilliputian or anything — I was still standing up straight and my head wasn’t scraping the ceiling. But the stairs leading out of the room seemed a little short, and the treads a bit shallow. I’d probably have to duck to get through the doors.
Stretching up on my tiptoes, I got one of the lanterns off the ceiling, and brought it down to the hole. I wanted a better look at where I’d found myself.
We saw the carnage the worm left behind. Nearly countless bodies torn asunder, as well as carved stone that had been eaten or broken through. I moved slowly, doing my best to avoid stepping on any remains.
“These aren’t human,” I said as I pushed an arm out of my way with my toe. An arm that was decidedly covered in scales, not skin.
“Definitely not,” Ragnar said, spear out, back to back with Skeld.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway beyond the stairs and the exit.
“Definitely not,” Skeld said.
I had my shield up and the big-ass sword of weight out. It was definitely a less-than-ideal fighting set up, especially if I was fighting in close quarters with allies, but big shield and oversized sword was a fantastic sort of look for things like intimidation or small penises. We kept the hole at our backs, and readied to see whose home we’d stumbled into.
The footsteps grew louder, like a hundred feet pounded down the hall. There was a brief pause, which I attributed to the leader of the footsteps getting his, or her, troops ready for battle. A loud cry echoed down the hall towards us. Suddenly a mass of short creatures with large shields and poorly-made spears swarmed out of the door and down the stairs.
I lowered myself to receive the charge on my own shield, but the onslaught stopped short. The little scaly soldiers slid and bumbled around like kindergartners doing Swan Lake. There was a lot of falling down, some shouts of surprise, and at least one shield bouncing along the stone floor until it disappeared into the tunnel behind us.
It was impossible to count all the creatures in front of us because they were moving so chaotically, but I estimated it to be around a hundred. Probably more. None of them were taller than Ragnar, the shorter of the Lutra. They had big heads with large mouths, wiry muscled bodies, clawed fingers, and long tails. Reptilian, but almost more dinosaur-like.
Finally, the troops in the back realized the troops in the front had stopped, and all the shoving ceased. There was a moment of relative stillness, and then a head popped around the doorway in front of us.
It said something quickly, and I learned a new language.
Smashing! You’ve learned a new language, Northern Kobold.
“Kobolds?” I asked.
“Ah fuck,” Ragnar said. “There goes the neighborhood.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The kobolds picked themselves up, and after their leader barked out a few harsh words, they did their best to get back in formation. But most had lost either their spear or shield. Some both. And those who’d lost a weapon or a shield were scurrying about trying to pick a new one up, which invariably devolved into two of the kobolds fighting over the same shield because one shield was better than the other. The few remaining kobolds who were in formation stood there fidgeting and looking at each other and their leader and very occasionally shooting glances my way. It was a bizarre sight to see.
Finally, the head kobold guy shouted another set of curses from the hallway, and the kobolds stood at their version of attention.
“Are they attacking?” the head guy called out in Kobold.
“They are watching us,” another kobold called out.
Head guy peered around the corner at us, saw that we had put our weapons down, if not away, and he stepped into the room. He puffed out his chest and stomped down the stairs, while the other kobolds moved aside so he could get through. The guy strode forth like he was the king of the world, stopping right in front of us with a snazzy little stomp, clacking his shiny boots together. An effect somewhat ruined when he had to crane his head painfully high to look at my face.
“You dare invade—” he started in rough Common.
I held up a hand. “We can do this in your language if you prefer,” I said in Northern Kobold.
The head kobold dude stopped, his mouth hanging open. He blinked a few times. It was like his programming shorted out. His mouth closed, then opened, then closed again.
“You speak our language?” he asked, almost reverentially.
“I do,” I said.
“Where is the Banded Worm? Did you scare it off?”
“Killed it,” I replied.
“You have brought an army with you then?”
“Just me and them,” I said, pointing to the two Lutra on my left.
“You dare lie to a member of the Golden Circle?” he shouted.
I thought about arguing, trying to explain what I’d done, but I was feeling a bit tired. It’d been a long night already. So instead, I reached into my bag and grabbed the worm’s head. I had to work a bit to to get it out, and so
when it came free I had a little force going. My grip slipped, and I ended up dropping it on the floor. The head landed with a loud, wet squelch.
The kobold leader just stared at the head. He blubbered out the start to a few words, then wound up shaking his head. He took a few steps back from the worm remnants. A quick series of gestures passed between the leader-dude and one of his underlings, and the underling stepped forward as the leader type walked out of the room.
“Please accept the apologies of the Golden One,” the underling said. “He was unaware of your power and station.”
“No problem,” I said. “Just doing the right thing as, uh, neighbors.”
“Neighbors?” The underling asked.
“Yeah, we live at the, well, it’s not really the other end of this tunnel. The worm bypassed our home on the way here. We were tracking it from there, trying to make sure it didn’t come back to hit us. Got here behind it, and well, I’m just sorry we didn’t get here sooner.”
“Why?” The underling asked.
“Why what?”
“Why are you apologizing for not being here sooner?”
“Aren’t, uh, seems like there are some, uh, bodies here. Some of your people must’ve died or gotten hurt?”
The underling looked over the bits and remains of the worm’s victims. “I do not believe any people died in the attack, visitor.”
“Okay, well, I guess I can retract my apology.”
“Do you hail from the Empire?”
“We do,” I said. “We’re from a new town. Coggeshall.”
“You are the ones we have seen in the valley?”
“I guess. I’m not sure we’ve seen you, but—”
“We have many eyes about the valley,” the underling said.
We’d reached something of a crossroads. Were these kobolds mad about us being in the valley? Did they resent the space we’d taken? There hadn’t been any interactions yet, violent or otherwise, so it was a little hard to guess which tact to take in dealing with them.
“Do you claim the valley?” I asked.
The underling looked around, very pointedly avoiding my question.
We stood there in awkward silence. I wasn’t sure what to ask, and the underling wasn’t about to start talking. I took the chance to grab the worm head and shove it back into my bag, and as I did so, I heard the pitter patter of little lizard boots running down the corridor. Which stopped before they came into view. Then the leader dude strolled back in, trying to look like he’d been chilling. He did his best to avoid breathing heavily.
“If you would, honored traveler,” the leader dude said with the slightest of bows, “Her Highness deigns to speak with you.”
I glanced at Ragnar, who shrugged.
“Your attendants may wait here,” leader dude said, “lest you think we might follow the tunnel back to your home.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling pretty confident I’d be able to handle whatever the little lizard dudes might throw my way. But, in Lutra, I said, “Don’t fight. Run.”
Skeld nodded his assent, and I followed the leader dude.
Sure enough, I had to duck under the door, but the hallway on the other side was just tall enough for me. The top of my helm scraped along the ceiling, so I took it off and carried it under my arm. The place was carved out of the rock. But unlike the precision of the dwarves, there was a bit of a more haphazard approach to the construction work in the kobold home. The floor was mostly flat, but the ceiling was almost an afterthought. The walls came out from the floor at intermittent angles, and I never found a straight door, or even a properly hung door, the whole time I was there. There wasn’t much made out of wood or metal, at least as far as I could tell. Everything was stone. To be fair, it was impressive that the kobolds had fabricated so much out of stone. Hinges, doorknobs, all the various engineered bits and bobs required for semi-modern medieval living.
We moved through empty tunnels. There were definitely other kobolds about, but they’d either been ordered to stay out of sight, or they were just afraid, and so opted to stay out of sight on their own. I could hear other kobolds, and I felt them through my tremor sense, but I just didn’t see them.
There were a lot of them — we passed by rooms where I could feel hundreds of feet. It started to freak me out. I did my best to keep my breathing calm as I counted heartbeats through the walls. The number just kept rising. There didn’t seem to be a good chance of me dying, but I figured the kobolds could overwhelm Skeld and Ragnar without too much trouble. Still, it would be a literal bloodbath if I had to cut my way free.
Finally, though, we came to a small hallway with a large door at the end. The leader-dude had me stop in front of the door. Then he scurried away.
I stood there like an idiot, just waiting for something to happen. There were some decorations carved around the door, but nothing that matched the artistry from the room where the worm had breached. It was like these carvings had been done by kindergartners, and the relief had been carved by Michelangelo.
They were largely carvings of kobolds fighting other creatures. Lots of goblins, plus some larger creatures. Also plenty of dragons, big snakes, and what I assumed were alligator people. No humans though. Or really any mammals. I wondered if kobolds were cold-blooded. It was warm enough in their home. Comfortable enough for me, for sure. But then again, I was warm-blooded. I doubted I’d notice as much.
The door swung inward, pulled open by the leader-dude. He bowed low, gesturing with his arm that I was to enter.
I gave him a nod and walked into a grand hall. High ceilings and tall columns leading to a dais. On the platform was a large pile of gold. On top of the pile of gold was a chair. I think it was supposed to be a throne, but it wasn’t quite impressive enough to register as such right away. And it wasn’t even a well-made chair.
The proportions of this room weren’t at all in keeping with the corridors we’d walked through, nor were the construction techniques. Whomever had built the throne room cared far more about craftsmanship than whomever’d made the corridors. The columns were all the exact same size, and went up straight, with beveled edges and intricate carvings. The dais holding the throne, however, was out of place. It had been constructed later, and out of a different stone. And the dais’ lackadaisical approach to right angles and straight lines had me believing it was constructed by the dudes who did the tunnels. The more recent stuff. Which made me assume kobolds.
The leader-dude had me stand directly in front of the dais, in line with the throne and the kobold who sat on it. She was certainly larger than any of the kobolds I’d so far seen, and with more vibrant coloring.
Leader-dude bowed so low his nose brushed across the ground.
“Traveler,” he said, still facing the ground, “I have the immense honor to present unto you her great and merciful highness, Duchess of the South Mountain, Mistress of the Southern Mountain Mines, Kin of Dragons, Immortal Beloved, Scion of Fire, Member of the Platinum Band, Defender of the Mountain, and Member of the Order of Dragons. You may be impressed.”
“Hey!” I said, making sure my biggest smile was plastered across my face, “you’re a duchess? I’m a duke! Montana Coggeshall, Imperial Duke of Coggeshall. Nice to meet you!”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Duchess made it clear in her reaction that this was not the sort of greeting she’d expected. Nor desired. She leaned back from me, and blinked a few times as if to make sure this was actually happening. Then, when I didn’t disappear or turn into something more palatable, she cleared her throat genteelly, and sighed.
“Your grasp of The Language is impressive for a traveler,” she said.
“Thank you?” I replied.
“It is rare to find one not of the Chosen who has undertaken the challenge of learning an exalted tongue such as The Language.”
“I figured it was worth knowing if it was held in such high esteem.”
She gave the slightest smile. I started to catch on how much they
liked flattery.
“I fear, however, you lack a grasp on the Fine Culture,” she said.
“It is possible,” I replied. “This is the first introduction I have had to, uh, your culture.”
“Allowances will be made for this traveler.”
“Thank you, your grace,” I said. “Your kindness is noted.”
She nodded once.
“Take him hence,” she said suddenly. “Have him speak to The Traveler.”
“Yes, your grace,” the leader-dude said.
Right before I turned to follow the little leader-dude guy, I noticed something interesting about the stack of gold under the throne. Sure, there were a number of gold coins making up the stack, but the vast majority of it was just carved rock underneath the gold. It was made to look like a massive pile, but in reality, it was a slight covering of gold coins carefully placed over plain rock. Interesting.
The little leader guy led me from the throne room, taking care to shut the door after we went through it. He didn’t go through the whole rigamarole of going around through the other entrance only to let me in this time, which was nice because that move was mostly just a pain in the ass.
We went through the same poorly constructed corridors as before, still devoid of visible kobold life, until we got to an unassuming door that I would be hard pressed to pick out again, even with Labyrinthian Recall.
The little leader dude knocked, and we waited.
The door swung open, and a wizened old kobold face peeked out. There were actually white hairs on the old guy, and whatever color his scales once had been had faded so much he was little more than mottled grey. The old guy was visibly shocked at seeing me, and shook his head a little.
“Oh,” he said, “manners. Yes, please, enter.”
I smiled. He spoke perfect Common, with only the slightest trace of an accent.
“Thank you,” I said, and stooped to duck under the low doorway.
The room was tiny. A bed took up one side of it, and a tiny desk with an equally small chair were shoved into the remaining space. There was no way I’d fit in the chair, mainly because I barely fit in the room.