Underkeeper

The tunnels, fortunately, weren’t as dark as Bernt remembered. Many of the soldiers carried alchemical lights—bottles of glowing liquid—and the passages near the entrance had already been fitted with fixtures that held bigger, brighter versions of the same.

The dungeon was packed with people, all moving in the same direction. Every chamber the army already controlled had been fortified and was loaded with crates of potions, cots for the injured, and healers who sat on them and watched the incoming soldiers tensely—waiting for the action to start.

Bernt swallowed. How many people were going to die in here today? The kobolds had proven themselves to be resourceful and dangerous in these tunnels. And that didn’t even take the dragon into account. The soldiers made light conversation, probably trying to settle their own nerves. More than one nervously checked a crossbow or spear. Bernt and his party were quiet, eyes moving to check for traps they knew the army must have cleared, and that would be too well-hidden to see regardless. But that didn’t matter—they looked anyway.

When they reached dark tunnels beyond the army’s control, Therion and Oren were called to the front. Oren apparently knew where they were—he’d explored the dungeon much more thoroughly than the rest of the party, sneaking around behind kobold patrols while Bernt had been hiding and the others were imprisoned. He would be responsible for keeping them in their assigned search zone. Bernt could have found his way out from here, maybe, but he had no idea where he was in relation to anything inside the dungeon. The place was a maze. Maybe they would find the time to put up some signs later.

One could hope.

After exchanging a few words with the lieutenant, Therion pulled out his wand and cast his trapfinding spell. Oren and one of the soldiers moved ahead of him and began disarming the traps as the rest of the unit followed. It was almost exactly the way that they’d progressed into the dungeon the first time, though thankfully there weren’t quite as many traps. The little bastards probably hadn’t had time to reset them all.

They didn’t travel in a straight line, instead moving in multiple directions, clearing all of the larger tunnels and chambers as they found them. This wasn’t about pushing through to find the dragon—they were here to seize the entire dungeon. That meant the army needed to systematically extend its control without exposing itself to attack from behind or above. Every time they cleared a corridor or a chamber, fresh soldiers were sent in behind them to seize it, light it and sweep it for secret passages while smaller teams went in to explore the smaller branches off the main tunnels. It was very slow going.

Several hours later, they still hadn’t seen a single kobold. Bernt had lost track of time in the dark, but he must have been here half a day already.

“It’s like they just disappeared into thin air,” Elyn commented. They’d stopped for a break in one of the chambers, waiting for reinforcements to catch up and take control of the tunnel behind them. Sitting on the hard ground, she leaned comfortably back against Therion. “It doesn’t make sense. Where would they even go?”

The mage had his eyes closed, probably battling a headache from holding that trapfinding spell for so long. They were approaching the area where the adventurers had been imprisoned. Last time, these tunnels had been teeming with activity. Now, not so much. The kobolds were gone, but it was more than that. The chambers were bare, completely cleared of tools, furniture, food and even trash.

“They probably have a more defensible position somewhere,” Oren replied. “Kobolds like to swarm their enemies. It stands to reason they wouldn’t want to get into a real fight in such tight spaces. Maybe they learned something from those days of getting bottled up in their tiny little breaches.”

“It never stopped them before,” Elyn grumbled, rolling her eyes.

Ignoring them, Bernt focused on his familiar bond to find out how things were going for Jori. To his surprise, she wasn’t too far away. She was bored, following Yarrod through a narrow passageway and trying to ignore the gnome’s vaguely insulting monologue about the merits of allowing goblins to peacefully interact with “proper society.”

Bernt drew back his awareness, feeling lucky he didn’t have to work with the gnome today. He heard boots on stone approaching from behind them.

“Break time’s over!” Lieutenant Rielle called, eliciting a groan from soldiers and adventurers alike as they got up and ready to move.

***

Some time later, a messenger came to take Oren away on an errand of some kind, slowing their progress. Bernt allowed himself a quiet groan of despair as the thief’s back disappeared down the tunnel. This was going to take days.

Another hour later, he was wondering what to cobble together for dinner, assuming their unit would ever be let out of here, when shouts came from up ahead. There was a crack in the air, followed by an odd, sulfurous smell.

“Contact!” roared Rielle, and Bernt watched as one of the soldiers near him turned and sprinted back the way they’d come, dropping his spear. The other soldiers were already pressing forward to stand in a tight formation, spears pointing down the tunnel at the enemy. Furin had somehow managed to insert himself and was standing at the front with his club. Therion was nowhere to be seen, likely trapped on the wrong side of the soldiers. There was some movement on the left, and Bernt heard wood crack and splinter.

Rielle shouted, “Back up!” There was a white flash, maybe a magic missile from Therion, and then the familiar shimmer of a force shield materialized in front of the group. All together, they backed up toward the previous chamber. Another voice, low and gruff, called out a command in a foreign language.

Bernt still couldn’t see, but he knew one thing for certain—that was not a kobold.

As they emerged into the chamber, Rielle started barking orders.

“Barriers on the tunnel! Semicircle, shields front and center! Mages focus on the tunnel, we’ll deal with anything that makes it inside.”

Bernt raised his wand and formed a fire shield just inside the tunnel as the last person came through—it was Therion. He trailed blood from one arm, which he was clutching tightly to his chest.

Fire shield wasn’t a spell he’d practiced since his investiture—but he wasn’t concerned about the effects the change would have. Sure enough, the barrier manifested as a flowing curtain of liquid-looking flames that didn’t flicker so much as they roiled in convective patterns. Bernt wasn’t entirely sure what the effect meant, but it certainly looked much hotter than before, enough to cover Therion’s retreat, surely. A surge of warm pride built in his chest unexpectedly. He’d come a long way in just a few weeks. It felt good, and not just because of the spell. He felt more in control seeing proof of his own progress like this.

Wielding his wand awkwardly in his left hand, Therion raised a force shield at the mouth of the tunnel.

He was just in time. Something came barreling through the fire with a shriek of pain and bounced off of the force shield, right back into the flames. Bernt looked over at the other mage, eyes wide. Had he planned that?

The thing writhed for a moment, but then rolled up to its feet, horribly burned now, but still alive. It was… a demon. Sort of. He looked similar to an armored dwarf, broadly built and with a few smoldering bits of gray hair still clinging to his head. But his eyes glowed with infernal red light, just like Jori’s, and his skin was a dusky gray. Most tellingly, he had a curling set of ram’s horns growing from his skull, and flames rose from his skin.

Little by little, the flames went out, leaving behind rapidly healing skin. He wasn’t immune to fire, then, but he had the same healing ability Jori had.

Rielle tapped Therion on the shoulder.

“Loose!” she barked.

With a loud snap, quarrels shot through the space that had held the shield just a moment before, tearing into the dwarf-demon’s chest and abdomen. Unfortunately, they only had four crossbows.

Roaring something unintelligible, he threw himself forward, apparently enraged more than injured by the thick bits of wood impaling him. There was something very wrong with this creature.

Then another much more natural-looking dwarf dove through the fire, holding a shield out in front of him as if to block the flames while he punched through. That was not how the spell worked, and he hissed in pain as the fire burned his skin and set his beard aflame. But he came through without serious injury—a fire shield was most useful as a deterrent rather than as a way to block a determined enemy’s progress.

When another dwarf came in behind that one and Furin and the soldiers engaged them, Bernt decided the shield had outlived its usefulness.

A fire shield was made up of three components—two temperature barriers and a basic fire conjuration in between, all tied together neatly into a single spellform. Using a trick he’d last used during the Underkeepers’ rescue of Dayle, Yarrod and that family of farmers, he allowed the far temperature barrier to unravel, releasing the heat of the spell into the tunnel beyond in a fire nova. The rest of the spell would fall apart in a few seconds and the heat would dissipate quickly, but it would make the tunnel unbearably hot for a few moments—maybe it would be enough to burn their lungs and eyes.

Dwarves came plunging out of the tunnel like water from a spigot, arrested by Furin and the waiting soldiers who hacked, stabbed and shot at them. The first dwarf to make the leap fell to the berserk swings of his own demonic leader, who was trying to literally claw his way forward through the soldiers. He wasn’t making much progress—they were keeping him in check with a combination of shields and spears. At the same time, the wounds they inflicted on the dwarf didn’t seem to matter. He simply healed anything that was done to him in seconds.

The dwarf creature took a step back, seizing the head of a spear to push it to one side as a soldier tried to stab him. The blade cut deeply into his hand, and he growled low in his chest. Then he flung his hand out in an arc, fingers splayed. Brightly burning droplets of blood sprayed out from him, splattering on the soldiers. They flinched back and several screamed as the liquid burned into their skin. Seizing the moment of distraction, the dwarf pushed into their guard.

A soldier went down, then two. Furin lunged in to stop the demon-dwarf, but took a powerful blow to the face that sent him reeling.

The other dwarves started pushing for the gap, and Bernt cast the only spell he could think of.

The demonic dwarf stopped and fell forward, catching himself on his clawed hands with a grunt. His boots sizzled as the leather cooked, but they stuck to the ground. Bernt’s adhesion cantrip worked like a charm.

A soldier rushed in and stabbed down with his spear, faster than should be humanly possible. He caught the creature in the neck, just above the collarbone. Rising, the monster drove the weapon in deep. He slumped, and another soldier followed up with an axe, splitting his skull right between the horns. Only then did Bernt realize neither of the soldiers were from their unit. Reinforcements had finally arrived, and just in time.

A shout went up from the dwarves, and those closest to the tunnel entrance began to retreat back into it. A few made it out, but then another force shield materialized in the tunnel, cutting off their retreat. Two more of the dwarves were cut down before the rest threw down their weapons and held up their hands in surrender. There were five of them still alive, though two looked like they might bleed out in the next few minutes.

One of them said something in a foreign language, and they all sat down, putting their hands on their heads.

He’d never fought other people before. It was weird. Different, somehow. He knew that, in theory, kobolds were intelligent. But… they were monsters. They ate people. He’d never seriously considered killing someone like a dwarf. He knew it could happen, of course, but he hadn’t expected it to feel like this. It seemed wrong, somehow, even though they’d been attacking.

Bernt felt someone grab his shoulder and looked over to find Therion grinning at him.

“That was perfect!” he said. “You stuck him to the ground like a fly on a trap. And with a basic cantrip! I told you your adhesion spells were solid. Remember?”

Bernt nodded at the other mage, feeling a little disoriented. His heart was still pounding with the excitement of the battle. It felt strange that it could be over so fast. But a few of the soldiers were looking his way too, giving him nods of appreciation.

Bernt stood up a little straighter, and breathed in slowly. This was good. He’d done it. He was working with adventurers and the military—and he was pulling his weight.

Syrah pushed forward with a face like a thundercloud. She glared at the dwarves in absolute disgust and said something Bernt didn’t understand. Were they speaking Dwarvish? It didn’t sound like any Dwarvish he’d ever heard before.

One of the dwarves responded, and Syrah lost her mind. She shouted, and Bernt flinched and raised his wand. He barely caught himself before he started launching fire darts into the dwarves. Several of the soldiers started to move on the dwarves, weapons out, but nobody struck. Syrah’s shout resolved into words and then sentences as she began ranting at them in their own language, shaking her finger at them.

“Priest!” Rielle snapped, grabbing her shoulder to shake her. “We have wounded! You can shout at the prisoners later.”

Syrah spun, looking surprised, as though she’d just remembered everyone else was here.

“We should kill them!” she hissed. “They’re Duergar demon-worshippers!”

“That’s not what they said,” Furin butted in. His speech was a bit slurred due to the angry red bruise forming on his jaw, alongside a deep cut that split him open from ear to lip. “They said the warlock was their commanding officer.” He exhaled roughly. “Though… that’s not exactly promising either.”