by Eric Ugland
“That can’t be true,” Shae said, half-hiding her blush.
“It is quite true, my dear. I daresay kobolds have been a long-misunderstood people living in the shadows amongst us. Perhaps we have been too quick to just let them slip around in the fringes of civilization. We should—“
“I think you’re here for a different discussion, though, right?” I asked, interrupting the professor before he could launch into one of his impressive tangents.
“Ah, yes,” Pomeroy said, leaning conspiratorially. “The ruins. Is, I mean, does she--“
I smiled at him, then said, “Shae knows all about the ruins. She was there with me when I first saw them.”
Shae nodded, then frowned. “Are you thinking about going back down there?”
I waggled my hands back and forth. “Maybe?”
“I just remember those things down there,” Shae said. “And that the kobolds aren’t exactly happy be anywhere near them.”
“Have they been in the ruins?” Pomeroy asked, practically on the edge of his seat, bouncing with excitement.
Shae shook her head. “No, not really. They’ve been close, looked over it, but never actually inside it. They’re too worried about, I mean, you should probably just talk to them.”
“I don’t see any here. Are they--“ Pomeroy began, but once again Shae cut him off.
“They’re not super comfortable when it’s busy like this. They prefer to, you know, avoid crowds.”
“Ah, yes, that would make sense. Can I, are they available for a chat?”
Shae looked over at me. “I can’t really go,” she said, “I’m working. But Clyde can take you, if he’s not busy.”
“I’m not,” I said. “Which apartment are they in?”
“Depends who you mean by they.”
“Boris?”
“He usually sleeps in our apartment,” Shae said, “but he’s been playing with the babies a bunch. I’d imagine he’s in the,” she paused to close her eyes, thinking about the apartments, “third floor next door. Non-bakery side.”
“Above the proposed expansion,” I corrected. “Got it. Professor Pomeroy?” I asked, getting to my feet.
“Right now? “ He asked. “We’re going to see them right now?”
“No time like the present.”
It certainly would have been faster to get to the neighboring buildings through the basement tunnels, but I wanted to keep those as a guild secret as long as we could. So we went out through the Heavy Purse’s front door. There was something a little startling about leaving the comfortably loud and warm tavern to step into the chilly twilight outside. People were noticeably subdued outside, pulling their cloaks tighter, hailing carriages or walking quickly away. There was always this sense of foreboding about the night, that it held something dangerous, creepy, evil. The impending night was not at all welcome here, but also, could not be stopped.
And then there was Dunt Pomeroy, who seemed to revel in his happy bubble of oblivion.
“I admit,” he said, “I am nervous. And I’m also very excited. I’m nervous, I’m excited, it’s all mixed up—“
“You need to calm down,” I said. “You’re going to give yourself a panic attack.”
“I just might—“
I grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him to face me. “Are you going to be able to handle this?”
His eyes were wild, but he had a big smile on his face.
“I think yes?” he answered. “It’s just, I’ve been cloistered up in the Enderrun for so many years, and I think I forgot there is a whole other world out here in this city.”
“Aren’t you also supposed to be heading out on some massive archaeological expedition?”
“I, uh, oh, yes. I suppose that will require leaving the Academy.”
“Screw leaving the Academy, Pomeroy. You’re leaving the city. I haven’t even left the city.”
This seemed to give him pause, and the smile left his face.
“I may have made a grave error in accepting this promotion.”
“Not too late to turn it down,” I said.
“But it might have a disastrous impact on my personal progress! I might be demoted. Or fired! Then what would happen? Where would I go? What would I do?”
“I suppose your best-case scenario would be finding some sort of massive set of ruins very close to the city so you could just run the digs and whatnot from the comfort of your office.”
“Oh,” he said, thinking it over, “there is certainly merit to that. Any chance you know of some ruins nearby?”
I clenched my hands tight around his arms, feeling basically no muscle underneath. Though it was hard to ignore my intense desire to smack the man, I just released him and took several steps back, getting myself out of melee range.
“Tell me something, Professor,” I started, “did you put all your attribute points into intelligence?”
“Naturally,” he replied. “It has always been my life goal to be an academic. A researcher.”
“Might want to save the next you get for wisdom.”
“Why is that?”
“Why don’t we go talk to the kobolds about the ruins underneath the city, and then we’ll chat about why you might need a little more wisdom in your life?”
I watched his face screw up into thought, and then a semi-smile bloomed before embarrassment came over him.
“Yes,” he finally said, rather quiet. “That sounds exactly like what we should do.”
I twirled my keys around my finger, walked over to the door, unlocked it, and ushered the good professor inside.
Unlike the other buildings, as soon as I walked inside, there was quite a bit of noise and motion. The kobolds were, well, not everywhere, but there certainly were a lot of them. But as soon as I made it all the way through the door, they all stopped and stared at me.
“Uh, hi,” I said.
All the kobolds gathered around me, looking up at my face, and smiling.
“Is, uh, Boris around?” I asked.
There was a wide variety of ages represented around me, and a quick count confirmed there were more than two dozen.
“No Boris, huh?”
Pomeroy leaned over to me. “Is this normal behavior?”
“Normal and kobolds don’t often occupy the same space,” I whispered back. Then I switched over to speaking kobold. “Guys, this is a friend. He wants to meet you all, learn about you, that sort of a thing. Do you mind being nice to him? Maybe showing him how kobolds live?”
All the eyes shifted to Pomeroy in a rather stunning display of synchronicity. Enough so that Pomeroy took a step back.
Then, the kobolds started rattling off their names in quick succession, some of them stepping forward, reaching their hands out in a vague approximation of an arm shake.
“I didn’t know you speak the language,” Pomeroy said, doing his best to greet all the kobolds surrounding him.
“Ive got a few surprises,” I replied.
“I would say you do.”
“I’m going to take a look around for Boris, see if I can get a better angle on the ruins.”
Pomeroy barely registered me. He was sitting down on the stairs, already trying to speak with the kobolds. They seemed happy enough to engage with him, despite their inability to say much. I walked through the little lobby until I got to the door leading to the basement. What I saw happening below was amazing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The kobolds were smaller creatures, certainly compared to humans or elves. So they didn’t really need the same space as we did. In the short time they’d had access to the basement, they’d already turned it into something that seemed like it was meant to be the set of some morning television show with puppets. There were two levels of what looked to be very small sleeping chambers, maybe even apartments, a large lamppost that was definitely stolen from some street corner above, and even what looked like a small shop with a variety of goods laid out, watched over by a keen-eyed kobold wea
ring a little hat at a jaunty angle.
Naturally, as above, as soon as I entered, all action stopped, and all eyes turned to me.
“Good evening,” I said, in kobold. “Just looking for Boris.”
One of the older kobolds pushed through the relative crowd until he was standing in front of me.
“Clyde Hatchett,” he said with a slight deferential bow of his head, “I regret to say that Boris is not here.”
“Oh,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”
“He lives in the other building,” the old kobold said.
“There’s a connection, though, right?”
The kobold nodded.
“Can you show me the way?”
The older kobold nodded, and then snapped his claws together. A smaller kobold with reddish scales who was wearing a pot lid as a breastplate stepped forward.
“This is Sotrogth,” the older kobold said. ”She will escort you through the tunnel.”
“I don’t need an escort through the tunnel,” I said. “It’s—“
“She will escort you.”
Sotrogth grabbed my hand with hers, which felt hot. Her nails, or talons, were a bit sharp.
“This way,” she said.
It was a quick trip down to the next level of the basement, which was basically the same as the first level, with a pseudo-apartment building being constructed. On one side of the basement, there was something that looked like a park. Obviously in miniature. Instead of grass, there was moss growing, but there were even things that looked like trees, or like roots, maybe. But they had leaves. Small, not very green, but still leaves. And, like on the first floor, the kobolds had liberated a street lamp from somewhere above, and installed it in the basement. This one was amidst the park, but did a pretty good job of illuminating the whole area.
“You should put some benches in the park,” I mentioned to Sotrogth.
“Park?” she asked.
“The green space there,” I said, pointing.
She looked where I pointed and grunted. Then we continued on.
The subbasement seemed bigger than either the basement or the first floor, and while my initial impulse was to point out that the kobolds were busy digging out into the surrounding area despite being told not to, I didn’t want to be the asshole to accuse them of that. Still, I made a note to ask Shae to ask them if they were, indeed, embellishing on the subbasement. Because that could have some rather disastrous consequences for all of us living above ground.
Sotrogth took me through what I’d consider an alley, and then to a heavy door that looked liked it had been built by combining several pieces of disparate metals. Almost like someone had taken a bunch of manhole covers plus the side panel of a broken washing machine and welded them together.
“How did you guys do this?” I asked, pointing to the weld line.
“Do what?” Sotrogth asked.
“Join the metal like this?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know.”
It obviously took quite a bit of effort to get the big door open, and it creaked somewhat perilously on its hinges. On the other side was a round tunnel that was just large enough for me to walk upright in, though my hair brushed along the ceiling. Which was all stone. They’d done a pretty good work building a strong-seeming tunnel with a mixture of carving out of the stone and adding in some masonry. There were even a few small glowing stones embedded in the ceiling and the sides of the tunnel, providing a surprisingly even glow with no real shadows.
As soon as we were both inside the tunnel, my escort pulled the heavy door shut behind us.
I expected the tunnel to have a bit of a curve to it, considering the Heavy Purse building was in between the two subbasements. But it went a different way than I expected. I paused at the apex of the curve, and looked from one heavy door to the other, trying to triangulate where I was in relation to the buildings upstairs. I was reasonably confident that if I went straight up, I’d come out in the back alley. It felt totally haphazard — I definitely needed to talk to Shae about the kobolds.
Sotrogth took a strange, twisty dagger out of her belt, and then inserted it into a hole I hadn’t seen in the door. It was a key. A lot like the sort of key you’d find at a highway gas station.
Once again, my guide struggled to push the door open. This time, I reached over her and added a little of my own muscle. It was actually a bit challenging, and I was surprised, debating whether it was because of shoddy hinges or because it was such a quality door. Hard to tell.
On the other side of the door, in the subbasement under the bakery, there were no buildings going up. This was more of a freeform area, with lots of small, well, nests would probably be the best way to describe them. Little sleeping areas made out of blankets, pillows, sacks, and anything reasonably soft. And looking across the kobolds here, they all seemed much younger than the ones across the tunnel. I noticed workbenches all along one wall, most covered with a myriad of projects in various states of completion. What I did not see was Boris. Or kobold babies. Maybe Shae had given me bad directions, or—
“Boris!” yelled out my escort.
A kobold at one of the workbenches turned around. Then, every kobold was looking at me.
A smile spread across Boris’s face. He waved.
“Clyde Hatchett,” he called out. “It is good to be seeing you.”
I turned to thank my escort, but she had already disappeared.
“You are wanting something?” Boris asked, but this time he was right next to me.
I jumped back a little.
“Yes,” I said, happy to have a smidge of personal space. “I was, uh, there’s someone I’d like to introduce to you, someone who is interested in visiting those ruins we went to under the city. If, uh, you know, you’d be willing to go back there.”
His smile vanished. “I would prefer not going there again.”
“But would you be willing to go if I went with you?”
“I do not know,” he said. “It is very scary there.”
“I know, but—“
“I will think on it,” he said, nodding. Then he closed his eyes.
“Are you thinking on it now?” I asked.
He opened a single eye to look at me.
“Yes,” he said.
“Can you come and meet this guy?”
“Who is guy?”
“A friend of mine.”
“In our guild?”
“No,” I said, “not yet. But who knows?”
“I would hope you would know if he is in the guild.”
“I do know. He’s not. But I suppose he might be.”
“And he wants to visit the ruins?”
“Yes. And he’d like to meet you.”
“Me?”
“Yep. Boris the kobold.”
“That is me.”
“And that’s who he wants to meet.”
“But why?”
“Because I told him about you.”
“Clyde Hatchett, you have told others about me?”
“I have.”
He gave me a slight smile, then stepped forward and hugged me.
“I see Shae do,” he said, face pressed up against my stomach and looking up at me in a rather awkward way. “Is good for me too?”
“Uh, sure,” I said, not exactly certain on what to say to that. “That’s great.”
He let me out of his embrace, and took a big step back. “I will meet this friend.”
“Okay,” I said. “Can we go back through the tunnel?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As it turned out, no, we could not. Apparently Boris didn’t have access to the same set of keys, so he was locked out. We had to go up and around until we went through the front door of building three. Which was a confusing way to think of it because the Heavy Purse would be building one, the bakery building two, and the expansion building three. And yet, going around the corner would make building three come first, then one, then two. We needed to name th
e buildings.
In any case, we went into the building that would eventually hold the Heavy Purse expansion, where the bulk of kobold housing was. And, coincidentally, where Professor Dunt Pomeroy was holding court over a group of kobolds. The little dragon-like creatures sat in rapt attention all the way up the stairs, almost like they were watching a lecture. And Pomeroy sure was lecturing, albeit with the help of a translator. In this case, a very green kobold that was one of the shortest fully-grown kobolds I’d seen.
“... so you see,” Pomeroy was saying, “there’s really no way to know how long there have been inhabitants in this area of the world, because there have been so many cataclysms over time. We only have written records covering the past two thousand years, and—“
He noticed we had come in behind him.
“Oh, Master Hatchett,” he said. “You have returned. I daresay, you never mentioned that these are such curious creatures. They want to know so much about the world around them, and I swear it seems like no one has ever told them a damn thing. Shame, really.”
“Seems like they found their man,” I replied.
“Who?” he asked, then realized who I meant. “There’s really no possible way I could do that, no with, well, I suppose if I’m not going to be teaching this semester, then perhaps, but that doesn’t seem really feasible, because… well, maybe I could. It should be something I will think on.”
Boris came around me, and extended and arm. “I am Boris,” he said. “You have been told of me.”
“Boris?” Pomeroy repeated, then looked over at me.
I nodded, doing my best to indicate that he should go along with it.
“Why are you nodding at me?” Pomeroy asked.
Boris looked over at me, one scaled eyebrow ridge going up.
“This is Boris,” I said. “I told you about him.”
“Really?” he asked, and then he peered at Boris, as if a very close inspection might clear things up for the man. “I apologize, young kobold, I don’t recall you.”