Underkeeper

Bernt’s spell broke into the kobold tunnel just a few paces from where the Underkeepers had entered last time. It had been cleared since their raid on the place, but stains and bits of debris still remained as evidence of the battle. The same was true of the large room, once they reached it.

Here, the party slowed down. Bernt could guess why. During their rescue operation, the first tunnel had been thoroughly trapped. Considering what happened to Ed, moving too quickly could easily get someone killed.

While the others waited, Therion and Oren got to work. The arcanist started channeling a trapfinding spell that Bernt had never heard of and slowly walked into a connecting tunnel. One after another, hidden traps revealed themselves with a soft blue glow. At the same time, Oren worked confidently, rapidly dismantling the traps as they appeared.

“Bernt, come up here with me, alright?” Therion called. “It’ll be good to have some more firepower if we get any unexpected resistance. I’ll cover Oren if he runs into trouble, and you’ll attack.”

When they reached the next chamber, however, they found it deserted as well. There was a hearth set into one wall, and a small heap of animal bones and other garbage in one corner. Bernt wondered what was supposed to vent the smoke—he didn’t see a chimney. He knew there were enchantments for that, but he doubted kobolds would have access to them.

Then again, they were apparently the forces of some kind of mysterious dragon-mage…

Bernt was about to walk over to examine the hearth more closely, but the rest of the party hadn’t stopped. Should he ask them to wait?

He looked at the hearth, and back at the group. Furin, who had been walking right behind him a moment before, stopped to see where he was and raised a silent eyebrow at him. No, Bernt decided. He wasn’t here to learn about smoke management anyway.

Bernt hurried to catch up.

There were many traps, one every twenty steps or so. Some were fairly obvious, even without a detection spell, but others were fiendishly well hidden. An elaborate mosaic of geometric patterns that decorated one section of tunnel had pressure triggers hidden among the tiles. Arrow slits—probably for more of those metal bolts—were disguised in a large mural of a dragon breathing toxic gas on an army of gray-skinned dwarves, their flesh melting from their bones.

Occasionally, there would even be two traps right next to each other, with one more obvious than the other. Therion’s spell wasn’t fooled, though. He must have been practicing.

Bernt tried not to feel jealous of the other man’s skill and experience, but it wasn’t easy. Who knows how much more of a mage he could be by now if he’d had the kinds of opportunities Therion had enjoyed over the past few years?

They found two more deserted rooms before they finally ran into resistance.

Oren destroyed another trap mechanism, as he’d done countless times before, when a heavy stone slab fell from the ceiling, crashing to the ground with a boom between the thief and the two mages.

Coughing from the resulting dust cloud, Bernt almost missed it when Oren yelped with surprise.

A dark shape emerged from the haze, resolving into Oren’s shape as it barreled past them and Therion raised a force shield.

“Contact!” Therion shouted, pressing himself to the wall. Belatedly, Bernt raised his wand and stepped to the side as well. Jori squirmed in his bag as she was pressed to the wall a little too hard, and he shifted to give her more room.

As Furin stepped past to take point, a screaming kobold came charging out of nowhere with a shrieking cry, only to crash into the force shield. The impact knocked the wind out of the creature, which bounced back and fell with a groan. Without missing a beat, Therion dropped the shield, allowing Furin to bring his club down on the unfortunate kobold’s head with a sickening wet crunch.

“Bernt, clear the tunnel!” Therion called, and he complied. With a circular motion, he condensed flame into a fireball—the bread and butter of pyromancers everywhere. Three seconds later, he launched it over Furin’s massive shoulder, straight down the tunnel. The spell shot forward, illuminating the tunnel as it went, before barreling into a small group of kobolds.

Shrill voices yelped and then screamed. A moment later, blue light filled the tunnel as Therion sent his magelight out in front of the group. Most of them were still coming, though two of them looked more than a little singed, and one was slowly picking itself up off the ground, crawling back away from the adventurers.

Bernt raised his wand again and tried to raise a fire shield in front of Furin, but his hand was shaking. He botched the spell and nothing happened.

The knot of kobolds reached Furin, who blocked a swing with his shield as he laid about him with his club. Therion cast a spell Bernt had never heard of, making one of the kobolds stumble around as if drunk. Furin knocked it out with a blow to the head two seconds later.

Then music emanated from behind the group—the sound of a flute. Bernt’s hand steadied and he felt something in his chest unclench. He tried the spell again, and this time it worked. Kobolds screeched in pain, jumping back from the narrow barrier of flame. Anyone could pass through it, technically, but it would melt their skin if they tried.

Before this, Bernt had never really understood what a bard was good for in an adventuring group. Officially they “managed morale,” which had always sounded to Bernt like a more complicated way to say they were useless.

Now he thought he understood. He needed to give Elyn more credit.

Therion started lobbing magic missiles through the fire shield, and soon all of the kobolds were down. Bernt dropped the shield, and Furin moved in, calmly prodding the bodies with his club one after another until he suddenly brought it down with a sharp crack when he found a live one. The burned kobold that had been crawling away before was nowhere to be found.

Bernt was amazed at how well the fight had gone. He’d known in theory, but this was a powerful illustration of what a well-organized party of trained adventurers could do. Though these creatures weren’t tough in small numbers, he couldn’t imagine that even trained soldiers would have fared much better than the kobolds, facing down Therion’s party.

In the silence that followed the fight, Bernt heard Syrah singing a prayer. Only then did he realize that Oren had been injured. He was sitting against the tunnel wall with a bloody hand pressed to his side. Syrah was with him, presumably performing a healing ritual.

Bernt didn’t know what kind it was specifically—he didn’t know much about religion, and he certainly didn’t know anything about dwarven gods. He did know that priests had to have some sliver of attention from their chosen deity to actually perform any kind of magic. That meant even simple acolytes could theoretically access immense power in extraordinary circumstances, but not reliably. Bernt cringed at the thought. He couldn’t imagine having to rely on someone’s favor every time he wanted to do anything—no matter how powerful.

Still, it was clearly working. Oren was already breathing easier.

“Thanks,” he said into the silence, voice rasping slightly. “I would’ve hated to waste a healing potion on a pack of kobolds. Still can’t believe that little shit got me.”

“You alright?” Furin asked, speaking for the first time since Bernt had met him. He had a strange accent—almost as if the vowels were trying to climb down the back of his throat.

“Fine, old friend. Just fine!” The thief regained a bit of his prior cheer. “Let’s see what they had on them!”

As it turned out, they weren’t carrying much. A few coins, some low-quality beetle-carapace armor that would only fit a kobold, a few short spears, and a rather nice jeweled dagger that immediately disappeared into one of Oren’s pockets.

“That’s odd,” Syrah said, examining a body. Oren grunted contemplatively and a few of the others nodded, looking around.

“What is?” Bernt asked. “What’s going on?”

“It’s the kobolds,” Syrah explained. “They’re barely carrying any valuables. Where are the gems and the gold?”

Bernt shrugged. “They’re all the way out here, near the edge of their territory. Maybe they’re just poor? You can’t expect everyone to be rich, right?”

Oren scoffed at that and Syrah gave him a skeptical look, but it was Elyn who eventually explained.

“Kobold societies are primitive. They don’t really have proper social classes, or ‘poor people.’ Besides, they’re all miners. This is like finding a farmer starving in his own fields. It doesn’t make sense.”

Bernt didn’t know what to say. Did that mean that there wouldn’t be any treasure further in? He could feel his heart sink in his chest. This was supposed to be his chance. An opportunity to start his life, his real life, early.

What were they supposed to do now? Could they sell the weapons, maybe? There was some decent steel there, right? What were those worth?

He sighed to himself. They needed to find where the dragon kept its books—or maybe where kobold sorcerers learned their own magics. He knew that other races, especially fey and draconic races, used magic a bit differently than he was used to, but that could be even more interesting than conventional spells or records of orthodox magecraft. It would be valuable, he was sure. And who knows what he might learn?

They continued down the tunnel, working their way through traps. Soon, they started finding intersections with other tunnels, and Oren marked the path they came from by scratching a lopsided circle into the ceiling at each juncture. They were hard to spot if you weren’t looking for them—or looking up at all.

The number of traps they found decreased as they went, until finally the tunnels seemed completely clear. Fifteen minutes later, they still hadn’t run into any further resistance.

Oren stopped, holding up a hand to the others.

“I hate this,” he whispered warily. “This whole thing stinks. I saw one of those kobolds get away before. There’s no way in all the hells that they don’t know we’re here. So where are they?”

Syrah nodded. “He’s right, it’s suspicious. We should turn around, see what the other parties are saying about the dungeon. We can always go back in when we know more.”

“No!’ Therion insisted. “If we wait too long, all of the good stuff will already be cleared out. The kobolds might even retreat once the dragon is killed, if they’re smart. For a young dragon, I doubt it’ll take them longer than a few weeks to corner and kill it.”

Bernt was relieved that Therion wanted to continue—if they left now, he seriously doubted they would bring him along the next time. Therion could open the way just as well as him, now that they all knew where it was.

Elyn sighed. “So, what? We haven’t even seen anything really dangerous yet. I think we should look around a bit more, at least…”

Furin shrugged, apparently not caring either way.

It took Bernt a moment to realize that everyone was now looking at him.

“Oh! Uh… I’d like to keep going. I can’t afford to miss this opportunity, and it just… doesn’t seem that dangerous?” He said the last part like a question, unsure of himself.

“Hmph.” Oren turned to continue leading the group forward. “People always say that just before they end up gutted in an alley.”