Underkeeper

Bernt found Jori cowering at the bottom of the tunnel, right next to what he assumed was the illusory wall that led out into the lower level. Every few seconds, distant cracking and booming sounds echoed through the tunnels, and the little imp flinched each time, ducking as if looking for cover.

“Come on,” Bernt said, “we need to get moving. You need to show me where the prisoners are.” Orders from a high-ranked geomancer didn’t change the fact that he wasn’t making it out of here by himself. Besides, the message had said something about “containment.” That didn’t sound like anyone would be sending dungeon rescue missions in the near future. He needed to find the others and get them out.

Jori looked up at him with wide eyes, her wings folded in close to her body. She was terrified.

“Too much,” Jori whimpered. “I can feel it. We will die.”

That didn’t make any sense.

“You can feel it?” Bernt asked. They didn’t have time for this. “Jori, we need to go or we are going to get killed. The ceiling might come down on us at any moment.”

She didn’t move.

He waited another moment. Then Bernt picked her up and carried her out into the tunnel.

“Which way?” he asked, looking around as he set her down. She stumbled a little, but stood up, coming back to herself. The tunnel was a mess. There was a fire burning in the distance, and rubble littered several sections. He could even see a few steel bolts lying around.

Good. The shaking earth had tripped many of the traps set into the walls. Maybe he wouldn’t get himself killed before he even reached the prisoners. There wasn’t time to do this quietly, and they couldn’t afford to get bogged down either. He would have to move as quickly as possible and hope that word wouldn’t reach defenders quickly enough for them to intercept him before he reached the jail.

“Come on!” Jori hissed, running off down the tunnel. She must have picked up on what he was thinking.

At first, nothing happened. He ran by several rooms, most of which were empty. Once, he caught a glimpse of a kobold through an open doorway, but its back was turned to him. Just when he was starting to think this might be easier than he’d thought, loud yipping sounded behind him. Bernt looked over his shoulder and saw a guard standing in the tunnel maybe twenty steps behind him, shouting in alarm. Here and there, others began stepping out of rooms and side passages, looking for the source of the commotion.

Concentrating on their bond as well as he could, Bernt visualized what he wanted Jori to do and tried to push the thought at her. Hopefully, she would understand, but he was worried. He’d never used the familiar bond this way before—to communicate complex ideas.

Bernt whipped his wand around and started blasting fire darts back at the enemy, attacking blindly as he ran. He needed to slow them down. It couldn’t be much farther, could it? If he could find the time to plug the tunnel with a fire shield, it would stop his pursuers—but he didn’t think he could. It was a complex spell, and they were bare seconds behind him.

Rounding a bend in the tunnel, Bernt caught sight of Jori, who was hanging from the ceiling as she peered through a doorway up ahead on his left. With most of his focus dedicated to casting fire darts, Bernt barely noticed another kobold step out of a door right in front of him, blocking his way. Before either of them could react, he barreled into the creature, and both of them went down in a tangle. The kobold let out a strangled squawk, and Bernt rolled off as quickly as he could. He threw a look over his shoulder as he scrambled forward to resume his flight.

The creature was still laid out on the ground, groaning and looking around in confusion. It wasn’t armed, nor wearing armor. Clearly not any kind of fighter. Maybe it was a clerk of some kind?

Did kobolds have clerks?

It didn’t matter. He saw three kobolds pursuing him, and he was sure there would be more soon. A few steps ahead of him, Jori swung herself down through the door and into the chamber on his left. There was a startled shout and a woosh, then Bernt was through.

He found himself in a large antechamber with an empty table in the middle and weapons heaped on one side. On the other was a heavy door, with two armored kobolds standing in front of it. One of them was screaming in pain, trying to put out the hellfire that clung to its arm. Most of the flame was rapidly burning through the door, but some had splashed on the creature. The other kobold tried to stab Jori, but she dodged back easily.

Starting with the uninjured one, Bernt cast two fire darts in quick succession. The first didn’t penetrate the kobold’s armor, but the second struck it in the face and burned right through the creature’s cheek. It shrieked in agony, and Jori seized the opportunity. She pounced up onto its head, sinking the razor-sharp claws of her hands and feet into its eyes and neck. The scream was cut short as she pierced its throat.

In the meantime, Bernt rushed the other kobold, which was now trying to pour water from a canteen over the reeking sulfuric fire still consuming its flesh—but it couldn’t get the stopper out with just one hand.

At point-blank range, his next fire dart left a charred hole in the creature’s skull—gore spurted out with a gruesome flatulent noise as its brains boiled.

The entire fight took only a few seconds. Bernt never stopped running and slowed only to kick at the remains of the door before rushing through, Jori right behind him. Throwing a look over his shoulder, he saw one of the pursuing kobolds standing in the doorway, rooted in place and staring in horror at the dead guards.

***

When the human rushed into the cell block through the burning door, Rula was ready, hands raised. Her awakened dragon blood gave her influence over mortal minds. Fingers dancing, she tugged on imaginary strings, manipulating her target’s perception and emotions. The movements weren’t necessary, but she found they made it easier to visualize what she was doing.

Almost immediately, the young human man relaxed and slowed down, looking around. He smiled, clearly relieved to have found his friends.

“Hi, guys!” he called to the other prisoners in the surface language, waving at them. “Just give me a second. I’ll have you out of there soon. Get ready for a fight! There’s going to be a lot of them out there.”

“There’s no need,” Rula responded, using the same language. “They are safe here.”

The human turned to the door, waving his wand in a weaving, circular pattern until a shimmering barrier materialized over the entrance. Then he turned back to Rula, still smiling.

“That’s great! I was really worried—there’s an elder dragon out there, you know?” He stopped and frowned for a moment, but then his face lit up as if he’d just worked something out.

“Hey, you’re a kobold, right? Do you think you can talk to it for us? Maybe we can all get out of here!”

“Oh, for the gods’ sake,” grumbled the sneaky human who had killed Kekri as he rolled his eyes. The others just sat there, watching silently. They knew there was nothing they could do here.

Rula chuckled at him, but trailed off when she heard a strange hissing noise from above. She looked up and met the hellish red gaze of a small, bat-winged demon snarling at her with razor teeth.

Were the humans working with the deep dwarves? It couldn’t be…

She raised her hands toward it, but she knew it was no use. The alien minds of demons were naturally immune to mortal influence. As hellfire filled her vision, she closed her eyes and consoled herself with the knowledge that she was a part of something greater. The Great One’s grand purpose was as inevitable as the tides of the Midnight Sea.

***

Bernt watched in horror as Jori’s attack melted the face right off of the friendly kobold as she hissed at it angrily.

“Jori! Why did you do that?!” he demanded incredulously. “That kobold might have been able to help us.”

Jori just stared at him, but he plainly felt her emotions coming through the bond. Inwardly, she was rolling her eyes.

“Kobold guards prison. Guards are enemies,” she explained helpfully, dropping to the floor. “I kill bad lizard!”

By now, they had the attention of everyone within earshot, and several started talking at once.

“Is that Bernt?” Therion’s voice cut through the murmur. “Why is there a demon here?”

A sizzling sound and a shriek cut that conversation short before it could begin, and Bernt had never been quite so thankful to be attacked before. He rushed over to the corpse of the kobold, which wore practically nothing except a belt and a few bits of jewelry, and pulled a ring of keys off its hip.

Several kobolds were talking on the other side of his fire shield. The first one had pulled back after burning itself on it, but sooner or later, they would just force their way through. It wasn’t a physical barrier, and he hadn’t had time to make it so hot it could kill anything. At best, they would suffer burns on their exposed skin and go blind if they were stupid enough to keep their eyes open.

But the beauty of fire magic was that burns hurt. It would take them a while to decide that accepting the pain was their only good option—unless they had their own mage or sorcerer. By then, his group would be ready.

He hoped, anyway.

“The demon is friendly,” Bernt said as he fumbled, trying to find the right key. “Don’t attack her.”

There were four cells in all, designed to hold different kinds of prisoners. The one nearest to the door was for spellcasters and contained Therion among several adventurers Bernt hadn’t met—two other humans, a dwarf and a goblin. It was probably warded with expensive enchantments to suppress magic, which would make it incredibly difficult to cast spells of any kind without a powerful focus.

The middle two cells were heavily reinforced, but seemed otherwise mundane to Bernt’s senses. Furin and Oren shared a cell with several other tough-looking people. One, a dwarf, had a glowing gemstone eye and an arm that looked like it had been carved from stone. Was he an artificer of some kind? Bernt had heard of them, but he didn’t know there were any in Halfbridge.

At the end, he found a cell for priests and bards, and he paused at the sight that greeted him. They were the only ones fully restrained—gagged and chained to the walls in a manner that had to be incredibly uncomfortable. Priests couldn’t be allowed to speak any prayers or perform any rituals. No prison could survive the wrath of a god, and while clerics could rarely get that kind of attention from their deity, it wasn’t worth the risk. Bards, on the other hand, had to be completely silenced to prevent them from using their abilities to manipulate minds.

While a bard had difficulty influencing someone who was actively resisting, they could still, for example, charm passing animals—a skill some bards specialized in. Delania the Plaguebringer famously used this tactic to break out of a dungeon a century ago, first using a rat to recover the keys from a guard and then unleashing thousands of spiders, insects, rats and snakes on her captor’s household, killing the baron and his family and blighting their crops. She did so much damage that the entire barony fell to a goblin raid a few years later.

Opening the door, Bernt then entered and moved straight to Syrah, trying to find the key to unlock her cuffs. Fortunately, it only took a second. They would need healers soon, he was sure.

Other former prisoners were already in the room freeing their respective party members when he finished, so he stepped out of the cell in time to see one of the spellcasters dispel his fire shield. The dwarf did it without using a focus, guiding her mana with her bare hands and humming a tune as she did so. There were many techniques to help mages visualize mana flows and sharpen their focus—though those were mostly pointless when using a proper focus.

It was situations like this that justified the years of practice young mages spent learning to cast unaided.

As the shield dropped, the dwarf artificer, Oren, and a bulky human dove through the door, driving the kobolds back and making room for everyone else as they went pouring into the antechamber.

The kobolds went down in seconds, despite the fact that the adventurers weren’t even armed—simply relatively powerful, being around rank 4 or 5. Most would have unnaturally enhanced their bodies, making them difficult opponents in any situation. Besides that, kobolds were smaller, and there just weren’t very many of them out there yet.

Bernt felt something in his chest unclench, seeing them go. He’d done it. The prisoners were free, and this wasn’t just his problem anymore. The others could deliver the message just as well as him, and they could get him out of here.

The walls shook again—a little more violently than before—and dust fell from cracks in the ceiling.

They’d make it. Just as long as the dragon didn’t decide to get in their way.