Run Like Hell

by Elliott Kay

  War Cloud pulled DigDig down again. With no one to put up resistance and with plenty of axes and hammers lying around, the larger companions quickly set to work at the doors. In less than a minute, they chopped and smashed through the upper half of the doors, clearing them down to the barricade. As DigDig described, they found mostly large pieces of broken masonry behind the doors. With a little more muscle work, they cleared enough of a path to allow everyone to climb into the chamber.

  Light and a closer look confirmed everything DigDig described. The room bore little damage compared to the other offices. The space was wider than most, too, with shelves, chests, and an assortment of chairs. A wide, rounded marble counter dominated the center of the chamber. Only a handful of skeletons littered the floor, most of them dwarves.

  Weapons amid the remains told the story of their defense. “Looks like we were both right, Shady Tooth,” said Yargol. “Spears, a crossbow…and magic.” He knelt at one ancient corpse, its bones covered in the withered remnants of a robe. The body lay face-down covering a metal staff with jagged shapes jutting from the top.

  “You think that was a dwarf wizard?” asked Scars.

  “They aren’t common, but they exist. A community as large as this one surely had a few. The braiding on the robes suggests this was a noblewoman. Common fashion back then.”

  “So that’s a magic staff?” asked Shady Tooth.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s stopping you from taking it?”

  “Safety first,” Yargol chuckled. He stepped back to toss one of the old spears against the staff in a test for traps. When nothing out of the ordinary happened, he waved his fingers in a strange motion, causing the staff to float up into the air on its own. “If its owner knew she faced her end, she may have left it warded against goblin hands, or perhaps any hands at all. Yet I see no such enchantments. It doesn’t react to motion or magic.

  “The runes on the staff speak of air and wind,” he went on. “That may explain the dead out in the hall, and why no one ever came through after them. She may have rendered the corridor uninhabitable.”

  “How so?” asked Scars.

  “I can think of a few ways. They would be beyond my skill, even with this staff. I doubt I could wield its full power without considerable practice and study. But this staff is a treasure.”

  “Didn’t you say you sensed no magic in here?” wondered Shady Tooth.

  Yargol blinked in surprise at her question. “Yes. Yes, I did. I should have. Strange.” He stood to look around the room. “Something in here conceals magical energies. I only noticed the staff once I was on top of it. But the effect encompasses the room…something else must be here.” After another wary look, Yargol grasped the floating staff in his hands. “No wards, no traps. Or did some enchantment fade over time? Curious.”

  “I think I figured out where they got all the rocks for the barricade,” said War Cloud. He stood at the curved counter in the center of the room, looking over its edge. “Come take a look at this.”

  The open center of the counter spanned at least twelve feet. At first glance, Scars expected to find dead clerks on the other side along with their records and wares, thinking the counter served as a sort of merchant’s stall. Instead, he found an open pit. Most of the stone floor behind the counter was simply gone. The bedrock beneath the remaining edges of the floor sank in a crater.

  Dwarf skeletons littered the bottom. Picks and shovels lay amid the bones. Scars counted four skulls, though most of his attention was still caught up in his surprise. “They tried to dig their way out through solid stone?”

  “No way,” said Teryn.

  “And yet they made it that far,” said Shady Tooth.

  “They couldn’t win the fight,” said War Cloud. “They had a solid barricade, but they couldn’t hide in here forever. This was the miner’s guild, right? They used what they knew.”

  “Can’t dig this fast in a fight,” DigDig objected. “Not through stone floor. Not through rock. Not even ogres are that strong.” He hopped over the counter, dropping to his hands and knees at the edge of the pit to peer inside. The hole narrowed toward the bottom. “Ten feet deep. Maybe more or less. Had to have done all this with magic, right?”

  “It’s possible. That wizard seemed to be of considerable power,” said Yargol.

  “But not powerful enough to hold off the goblins?” asked Shady Tooth.

  “Everyone has their limits.”

  “Taking a look,” DigDig announced. He cast his glowstone into the pit before slipping over the side. The goblin climbed down only a few feet before feeling sure enough of himself to drop the rest of the way. He immediately looked down at his feet, stamping them curiously.

  “Smooth down here. Solid.” He crouched to wipe away dirt and dust from the floor by his boots. Surprised by his discovery, he wiped away more. “This is metal. Flat. Smooth. Feels like iron.”

  “Under the rock?” Teryn wondered. “Why—how is that even possible?”

  “Think they tried to dig around it, but never came to the edge,” said DigDig. He pushed aside bones and clothing in his search. Mining tools and old armor clanked around against the bottom surface and one another. Pulling his glowstone closer, DigDig leaned in and blew hard on the floor. “Runes. Shallow and thin runes.”

  “Magic?” Scars asked, looking to Yargol.

  “Possibly. I’ll have to take a closer look,” said the magician. “Someone had a rope, yes?”

  DigDig stood with his hands on his hips, frowning at the rest of the pit. “Four dwarves can’t move this much rock that fast. Even with nice tools.” He nudged one of the picks with his foot, then reached for a dust-covered shovel laying atop the smooth iron floor.

  Rope in hand, preparing to descend, Yargol suddenly stood bolt upright. He looked around the room again, particularly at the fallen wizard’s staff, and then down into the pit.

  “What is it?” asked Shady Tooth.

  “That dampening effect. It’s gone. I can sense the magic of the staff now.”

  “Can you use it?”

  “Not without time and study. I can bind it to myself easily enough to begin that process, but I don’t dare invoke its powers without preparation.” Yargol’s eyes narrowed. He turned back to the pit. “DigDig. That shovel…”

  “It’s nice, huh?” The goblin brushed off the handle and flicked the head with his fingertip. A low note rang out from the metal. “Sturdy. Balanced. This is a good shovel.”

  “It’s enchanted,” said Yargol. “It may be more powerful than this staff.”

  The goblin’s eyes widened. He glanced back to Yargol, then stared at the shovel. It was only a bit larger than his last, though better constructed, with a full handle grip at the end of its shaft and metal bracing running its full length. The edge of the shovelhead was sharp despite obvious use.

  DigDig raised the shovel to chest height and stabbed at the wall of the pit. The shovelhead broke through the stone with a crack, sinking almost to its full length. Its wielder overcame his awe just long enough to jerk the handle upward, prying loose a piece of bedrock bigger than his own torso. He had to hop backward to avoid the stone as it landed at his feet.

  “What the hell?” breathed Shady Tooth.

  “Are they all like that?” War Cloud asked, looking to Yargol. “Are all the tools enchanted?”

  “No. Only that shovel,” said Yargol, his voice trailing off as he watched and pondered.

  “Didn’t even have to strain,” said DigDig. He jabbed the shovel into another side of the pit, repeating the moment at the expense of another piece of solid rock. This time, he didn’t pull it loose, but the jagged cut in the stone went just as deep. “Easy as shoveling topsoil!”

  “Okay, I’ve seen magic tools and magic weapons, but this is something else,” said Teryn. “That thing cuts through solid stone? And this masonry? What else? What won’t it cut? And how could the dwarves leave it behind?” Then she groaned. “Oh gods, what if we just found
some lost legendary dwarven artifact?”

  “Mine now,” said DigDig.

  “No, seriously,” she warned. “This is a holy city, isn’t it? Or was? That thing could belong to some line of dwarven kings.”

  “Fuck ‘em,” DigDig shrugged. “If they wanted it, they should’ve come for it.”

  “I think we ran into some of the dwarves who tried on the upper levels,” said War Cloud.

  “No one is saying we should leave it here,” said Scars. “Only that we should be aware of what it may mean. You should be careful how and where you use its magic.”

  DigDig put the shovel against the iron floor, scraping it under the dirt and chipped rock piled at the bottom. “Huh. Nope. Feels normal now.”

  “And that dampening effect is back,” said Yargol. His mouth twitched when DigDig raised the shovel. “Now it’s gone again. The floor and shovel are interacting.”

  “You think they’re related?” asked Teryn.

  “It seems unlikely. There’s clearly an interaction, though. Help me down, please.” With War Cloud securing one end of the rope, Yargol lowered himself a short distance before he felt comfortable with the drop. He was soon on his hands and knees to examine the runes on the floor as closely as he could.

  “These are warding runes. Warding, and then concealment for the wards,” he added.

  “Warding against what?”

  “Anything that might breach…” His head tilted as he read. “This is locked. Closed. I don’t think this is the ceiling of a basement below us. I think it’s the top of a vault.” Yargol pointed to one spot and then another. The runes were too small and faint for those above to see, but he explained anyway. “This is marked as the top of the warded space. Consistency of material would make for a stronger enchantment, so I doubt there are windows or the like below. It’s likely all carefully worked from the same source metal. There must be a door, but it’s not at the top, so there likely is a basement level beneath us to house the vault.

  “The warding enchantment is powerful, but it’s also concealed—probably so it wouldn’t draw attention from those sensitive to magic. That’s why it hid the magic attached to the shovel while the two were touching. It’s also why I didn’t see the magic of the staff until I was so close. But nothing in the markings includes any hints to what the vault contains.”

  “Shovel won’t go through, either,” said DigDig. He tapped at the iron with the shovelhead to make his point. “Why dig down here if this stops them?”

  “Because they might not have known it was down here,” said Shady Tooth. “They went to the trouble of hiding all the magic on the vault, right? What’s the point of that if everyone knows it’s there in the first place?”

  “What would be worth hiding in such a powerful vault, though?” asked Teryn.

  “Here’s a more important question,” Scars countered: “Do we care?”

  Five faces looked back at him in surprise. “Wait, what? Why wouldn’t we?” asked Shady Tooth.

  “We’re here to get away from those adventurers,” Scars explained. “They’re bound to find their way down here. This is exactly the sort of mystery bullshit that gets a pack of adventurers hung up for hours. It’s like a puzzle made out of magic. They’ll be convinced it hides something priceless and wonderful.”

  “Yeah, ‘cause it probably does!” said DigDig.

  “And it’s probably big and heavy and it would only weigh us down,” said Scars. “We know this place had a tax collector. What if the vault is full of gold? How much do we carry, and how much do we leave behind? If it’s something magical, would the wards on the vault be the only defense? And we already know the dwarf king was crazy enough to open his tombs and raise his dead to fight for the hold. What sort of fuckery would a guy like that keep in a secret vault?

  “We can bust our asses trying to figure this thing out, and if we open it up, we’ll still have to figure out what we want out of whatever it contains. Or we can leave it behind and keep going. We’ve already found good loot here. We don’t need what’s inside.”

  “You can’t know that,” said Teryn.

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  “Because we didn’t need whatever is in that vault before we knew it was here.” Scars looked from one of his companions to the next. “We have all we need already.”

  Glances flew across the room, usually resulting in self-consciously bowed heads or shuffled feet. For once, no one knew what to say.

  “We can search this room. There’s probably some more loot here. But then we should move on,” said Scars. “We’re looking for a way to open the gate, not buried treasure.”

  “You can really walk away from this?” asked Shady Tooth.

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Because getting hung up on a complicated mystery in the face of certain doom just for the random chance of fortune isn’t what smart people do. It’s what adventurers do.”

  “Oh, that—!” Shady Tooth pointed at him, fighting to articulate her response. “That’s a bullshit comparison. You’re trying to make me prove my hatred of adventurers by saying I’m just like them if I don’t walk away from this.”

  “Is it working?” Scars asked.

  Shady Tooth crossed her arms over her chest. She glared resentfully. “Yes.”

  Chapter Nine

  “So I have a question, and I hope it’s not offensive,” said Teryn.

  The party stopped cold in the hallway. Every other face looked back to the only human in their number. Once again, the dust and debris of the long-dead dwarven outpost seemed to amplify every break in the silence, even when they spoke quietly. “What is it?” asked Scars.

  “Er…never mind,” she replied.

  “Go ahead and ask,” said War Cloud. “We’re waiting.”

  “I feel like you’re all waiting to be offended.”

  “We are,” said Shady Tooth. The bugbear folded her arms across her chest. “So go ahead.”

  The bandit pressed her lips together, taking a deep breath of resolve, or perhaps resignation. “Why are you interested in finding coin?”

  “Because it’s money,” said Shady Tooth.

  “So you use it among your own kind?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?” asked War Cloud.

  “Because it’s minted by humans and dwarves.”

  “Humans and dwarves have claimed most of the good mines for gold and silver,” said Scars. “Every time the goblin folk find one of their own, it turns into a fight. Usually, eventually, the goblin folk lose. Even under the Peace of Clear Skies, human kings demanded control of the one gold mine the orcs possessed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but gold and silver seem to really motivate humans and dwarves.”

  “Sure. That’s not quite what I mean, though. Coin is a human invention. The use of money is a human practice.”

  “And the goblin folk and the rest picked up the practice just like the elves and dwarves,” said Scars. “It makes sense. Why wouldn’t they?”

  “You can find some among the goblin folk who claim their kind invented money, but they are wrong,” added Yargol. “Even the dwarves concede money first came from the first ancient human cultures.”

  “Then if you use money minted by humans and dwarves, isn’t the amount of money you have limited by how much you can take? By raiding and stealing and such?” Her head tilted with a new idea. “And does that mean there would be peace with the goblin folk if they could have their own mines for gold and mint their own coin?”

  Shady Tooth’s big, furry shoulders sagged. “This is only just now occurring to you, isn’t it?”

  “The last bit, yes,” Teryn admitted. “It’s obvious how the king’s crimes against orcs and goblin folk are pushed by money. Humans benefit from all this. What’s a new thought is how far back this goes and how much money plays into older hatred.”

  “Why did you think goblin folk looted coin when they raid?” asked War Cloud.

  “I don�
��t know. Spite. Perhaps they like shiny things. Many say goblin folk take money only because they know the other races value it.” She shrugged. “That seemed silly, but I’ve never had anyone to ask until now. Your kind aren’t welcome in elven lands or dwarven holds. You’ve been outlawed in the south of Theralda—”

  Shady Tooth spat in disgust. “By Dostin, and fuck him,” grunted War Cloud.

  “Agreed. Fuck the king,” Teryn conceded. “Him, the princes, his barons, all of it. But back to my point: you’re outlawed in the south, and shunned north of the mountains. Hunted elsewhere. It’s not like you can spend this cash in human markets, so why…what is it?”

  A half-orc face split into a grin in front of her. “You believe that?” asked Scars. Beside him, War Cloud turned away, chuckling. “You think humans won’t take coin from us?”

  “I know that is not allowed in the south of Theralda,” Teryn said slowly.

  “And everyone follows the law?”

  She frowned. “I’m a bandit. Of course I know people break the law.”

  “Why do you think we worked here? In this dwarven ruin, for a fugitive wizard?”

  “You’re outlawed in the kingdom,” she repeated. “Zuck gave you shelter. You said this is the only place that would take you in. War Cloud said so, anyway. And isn’t the goblin king allied with the wizard? Mierrek? Don’t the goblins follow him?”

  “Only for lack of a better alternative,” grumbled Shady Tooth. “He’s a petty boss, not a true king.”

  “What would make a true goblin king?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll tell you if I ever see one.”

  Teryn huffed. “I could say the same about human kings. And princes.”

  “We worked here,” said Scars. “It’s a job. We got paid. Badly, but we got paid. We got food and a place to sleep, too—and where do you think the food came from?”

  “Not raiding? Or farming your own?” she asked.

  “We did a little raiding and a little hunting. We had a small herd of sheep up above and cave boars below. Not so much with the farming. Bad spot for it. That’s where the lowlanders came in. We didn’t raid for wheat or potatoes. We bought all that.”