Underkeeper

“Godsdamned spawn of lizardman whores!” Oren swore in strangled agony as he hobbled back down the tunnel as fast as his legs could carry him, straight toward the sound of oncoming kobolds. This was the fourth secret access tunnel to the main entrance he’d found, and the first one where he hadn’t even made it past the first layer of traps. Now he had three narrow wooden spikes embedded in his intestines. Regardless of that complication, he needed to be the first to reach the upcoming corner.

The sound of footsteps and the yipping Draconic of the kobolds echoed toward him.

“Do you think it’s dead? I hope it’s not a whole group again.”

“Don’t be a coward. If they cut through us, they’ll be stopped by the next patrol.”

Oren reached the corner as they drew near, pressed himself to the inside corner of the tunnel, and covered himself with his elven scout’s cloak, which adapted to the surrounding lighting, color, and texture. He held his breath and tried not to notice the feeling of his stomach acid burning its way through his guts. He shivered a bit at the kobolds’ words. The little shits had practically no instinct for self-preservation, and that was what made them so ridiculously dangerous. It was something about their stupid religion, he knew, but that only made it creepier.

Seven kobolds ran by, and momentum kept them moving along the outside of the curve. Oren waited until the footsteps faded before he reached up to carefully pull out each of the wooden stakes buried in his stomach and ribs. He shivered in disgust on seeing the sticky brown kobold shit still smeared along the coarse wood grain of each one. This would take a proper healing potion.

What an absolute disaster. His entire party was captured or dead, and he was sitting around, burning through his most expensive items with nothing to show for it. For a bunch of kobolds!

It took a minute for his only superior healing potion to purge the wood fragments and… other substances from his closing wounds, and he took the time to reflect on his strategy. There was a system of hidden access tunnels that led to the main exit tunnel, which the kobolds had dug under the city wall a few days ago. Every access tunnel he had tried was guarded by a winged kobold sorcerer and ten fighters. He thought there couldn’t possibly be enough of them to cover every entrance this way, but he had checked three of them and failed to make it that far into the fourth.

Now that his potion was gone, he couldn’t make a gamble like this again. He wouldn’t be able to get word to the guild by himself, and that meant going back for one of the mages. He knew Bernt had escaped the fight, but there was no telling where he was now, if he hadn’t been captured. It would be much easier to find the prison. It was time to see if Therion was still alive.

____

Oren backtracked until he found a moderately sized chamber formed by the intersection of three tunnels.

He didn’t enter right away. There was something wrong here. He couldn’t detect any traps in the room, and that concerned him more than anything. Oren decided to wait back inside the tunnel for the next group of kobolds, covering himself with his cloak again and leaving just a slit to see out of. Hopefully the next patrol would show him how to get through.

It didn’t take long, just a few minutes, before he heard voices again. Squeaky draconic voices. “Oh boy! Auntie Dudru, will we get to fight the gnome? Are the giant humans scary? Can the elves really turn you inside out with a word?”

“Shush now! We’re just going to get some meat for his Fearsomeness. You might see the new prisoners if you peek into the other room, but don’t be too obvious or the All-Watcher will punish you. Maybe if there is a dead human or dwarf, they will share some with us before we go back.”

An adult kobold with polished-looking blue scales stepped into the chamber. She walked a very specific snaking route on the floor that ended with a hop as she entered the opposing tunnel, imitated to perfection by each of the smaller kobolds behind her. At the end was a cute little purple runt with eyes half the size of its face. Oren had always wanted a pet kobold. They were vicious little fuckers.

Hopefully the new prisoners would be what was left of his party. He leapt to a spot on the floor the kobolds had stepped on and mimicked their path, including the little hop at the end, into the next tunnel. Keeping some distance to avoid detection, he tracked the group until they started yapping again, a bit too far away to understand.

He approached slowly and carefully until he reached the entrance to a chamber off to the side and down. The kobolds were further down the tunnel, presumably in another chamber, but this one caught his attention because it had a decently sized fire, a large iron cooking pot, and a rack of severed body parts. One kobold was humming merrily as he stirred the pot while a truly unusual-looking kobold stood to the side, staring into the flames. This kobold, if it could be called one, was massive, easily the size of a human. It stood with folded wings, and the firelight glittered off of its scales and horns as it seemed to brood. It held a staff intricately inscribed with tiny sigils that had been burned in all along the wood.

This did not seem like a fight Oren wanted, and he would have walked away, but there was also a heavy door at the opposite end, the first he had seen in this entire place—and a pile of equipment that included Furin’s club. A good rogue had his means, and if this was the time to cash out some of his investments for the sake of survival—and maybe a fat reward from Therion’s parents—then he could live with it.

He crept back up the tunnel to find a good nook where he could hide for a while and pulled out a slim wooden box. With a flick of his dagger, he pricked the back of his forearm and pressed the blood to the wood. Then he opened the lid. Inside was a shadow, if a shadow could be a three-dimensional object. It was a broken-off stinger as long as his hand with an ethereal sac still protruding from the blunt end. He carefully picked it up at the sac end, stuck the box back in his pocket, and hid himself in his cloak to wait out the other group of kobolds. He would need to pick his moment.

***

Snolo loved his job. He took a deep sniff of his elf stew and sighed in contentment. With the mushrooms from the lower caverns, a bit of adventurer hardtack and a generous stack of delicious surface herbs, this would likely be the finest meal he had ever served. Kekri was upset that four of his sorcerers had died today after Conperion had denied her request for permission to strengthen the defensive patrols. Anyone else would have felt no shame at being unable to fathom the wisdom of the Great Lord, but Kekri had always been special—and she’d always been hard on herself as a result. This meal would make her forget about that, though, he was sure.

Snolo turned to the large kobold and bowed low. “Your Gloriousness, dinner is served. I believe you will be very pleased.” He came up from his bow and froze.

At the far side of the hall, where Kekri’s shadow stretched along the wall, a human hand came swiftly and smoothly out of nowhere and jabbed a spike of… darkness… into the flickering shape. The dragon-blooded sorcerer gasped and seized. As the hand squeezed the spike, Kekri groaned with wide eyes that didn’t seem to see him anymore.

He froze in horror and caught just a glint of metal and a brief pressure on his forehead before nothingness claimed him.

***

Oren planted his boot firmly on the cook’s face as he wrenched the knife free on the third try. He couldn’t believe neither of them had made a sound. There had been time for it, but surprise could do that, he supposed.

The fancy draconic-looking kobold finally had some valuables, too. A thick golden chain, silver earrings, gaudy bracelets with sapphires in them, and even a tiara studded with emeralds. It wouldn’t be enough to pay for the shadow-corrupted manticore spike, but it was still pretty good.

He wrapped the items in cloth to keep them from clanking and put them in his loot bag. Then he pulled out his picks and went to the door, only to find that it was closed with a simple deadbolt.

He hesitated again. Too easy. He was pretty sure there weren’t any traps out here, though…

If there were kobolds guarding the other side, he would have to fight them fairly. That would not be optimal. Would they really have more after that sorcerer, though? Hm…

Oren had to risk it. He held his best dagger in one hand and his throwing knife in the other, and then quickly slid open the deadbolt and yanked the door open.

Directly across from him, he saw iron bars and Therion’s surprised face staring back at him.

Relief flooded him for a moment, before he heard movement to the right. In front of the right-hand cells, there was a kobold waving with its fingers and looking at him with a wide grin.

Clearly he was very friendly.

“Hello, my friend. Welcome to our special little group!” it yipped gently. Wow, what a relief to finally find a friendly kobold.

“Hey guys, I didn’t know there were friendly kobolds in here!” He turned left, where Therion held his face in both hands and Furin’s blood-matted face was fixed into a dark scowl.

“You daft goblin-shite-eating idiot, that’s a spell!”

That greatly confused Oren. There was no way his old kobold friend would cast a spell on him. What was his name? Why didn’t he know his friend’s name?

“Here, why don’t you drink this and take a nap.” The kobold held out a little clay vial.

A gift! What a nice thing to do. He was so tired after all that running, he could sleep anywhere at this point. He grabbed it, broke the little clay seal, and swallowed the liquid. It burned a bit in his throat, but pleasantly so, and it really made the ground feel a lot more comfortable. How had he ended up on the ground?

Mmmh, it just wasn’t important anymore.