Underkeeper

For once, Bernt rose early, well before dawn. While Jori gnawed on some dry jerky under his bed, he downed a quick breakfast, grabbed his bag of holding and strapped on his wand.

He was nervous.

Still, he had a job to do before he met Therion and the rest of the party. Hoping that he wouldn’t stumble across anyone he worked with, he left and made his way through the still-dark city to the Smiths’ Lane, where he found the shaft nearest to the original breach. When he reached it, he couldn’t help but shiver, remembering.

He’d seen what the kobolds did to Yarrod. The small family he guided out of this very shaft last week might never recover from their trauma, and they hadn’t been tortured at all. Would Yarrod ever have a normal life again?

Adventuring meant facing terrors like this regularly. What would that do to Bernt? Would he be the same person when he came out?

What would he be like in ten years?

There weren’t many old adventurers out there. They tended to retire after a decade or so, if they lived that long. When he was younger, he always thought that was just because they were wealthy enough to stop working. Now he doubted that was the only reason.

A chirp broke him out of his reverie. Jori was looking up at him through the grate impatiently, and Bernt opened it with a quick spell using his old wand. This was his dream. He would do great things, and everyone had to start somewhere. Why not a dragon’s lair?

Bernt chuckled to himself, though he wasn’t sure it was actually funny.

Moments later, he stood in front of a mirror-smooth wall of dense stone—the sealed tunnel. It would be foolish to try to open it back up, but it gave him a reference point to help him find the kobold tunnels again.

Moving a few steps to the side, he began casting a tunneling spell—the only proper earth magic he actually knew. He was nearly as bad with earth as he was with arcane force spells, but he’d had a lot of practice with this one. It was an easy way to clear sand and compacted muck from pipes, a spell that slowly pushed dirt and rock away from a particular spot. With practice, the caster could control which direction the rock would go, but that wasn’t needed here. In its most basic form, the spell would compact the rock into the tunnel walls, ensuring the structure’s stability.

Jori sat and watched for a few minutes, eyes shining like those of a cat, before flitting off into the darkness.

After twenty minutes of effort, Bernt collapsed to the ground, sweating. He didn’t remember exactly how deep the original tunnel went, but decided this would be enough preparation at about thirty strides deep. That should cover most of the distance without actually breaking through. He didn’t want to break into the dungeon too early—he needed to go and meet his party first.

When he caught his breath, he silently called out to Jori and returned to street level.

***

Fifteen minutes later, Bernt turned off into a dingy alley down by the docks, not too far from his house.

“There he is!” A voice cut through the darkness. Moments later, a light flared and Bernt saw Therion standing with four other people, an orb of arcane light suspended above and behind him. He was dressed in combat robes reinforced with armor around the torso, and held a thick carved quarterstaff that would probably work just as well as a blunt weapon and a focus. He looked impressive, like a proper adventurer.

Which he was, Bernt supposed.

“Finally! Hey, new guy, why are we meeting in this dingy alleyway?” asked an unnaturally pale young half-elf woman. She wasn’t carrying any weapons, but he saw an expensive-looking silver flute tucked into her belt. A bard, then.

Bernt thought it was bold to go walking around town with something so valuable on display, but it didn’t necessarily mean she was a fool. Besides, he didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with his new party. He opened his mouth to answer, but an older-looking man spoke first.

“Well, Elyn, it’s about stealth. The guard doesn’t come down here, and the gangs don’t like to get involved with entire parties of adventurers. This isn’t exactly legal, you know.”

He used that annoyingly didactic tone that wise elder siblings and upperclassmen everywhere used to lord over their lessers.

The bard, Elyn, narrowed her eyes at him. He ignored her, or maybe he didn’t notice. The man looked… completely ordinary. Like any random worker off the street.

Therion cleared his throat.

“Ahem. Hi, Bernt, nice to see you made it. You’ve met Syrah. Elyn is our bard and Oren here is our thief.”

He turned to the last member of their party, who hadn’t bothered to get involved so far. He was an almost absurdly broad-shouldered man of average height wearing an assortment of fine but mismatched armor. He carried a round shield and a long but slender warhammer with a nasty-looking spike on one end.

“This is Furin, our front-liner.”

Bernt did a double-take at the name, looking more closely at the man’s features, build and wiry beard. By all the gods… the man was a dwarf. Technically, anyway. He must weigh as much as any two humans in the party, and he was probably a hair taller than Bernt.

“Everyone, this is Bernt,” Therion finished.

Bernt gave a little wave and gave them his best professional smile.

“Hi, everyone. It’s nice to meet you,” he said. “I’m looking forward to working with you all.”

He waited for a response, but they all continued to stare at him expectantly.

“Alright. If you turn around, you’ll notice a sewer access shaft over to the right.” He walked over and hauled the heavy covering off with practiced ease. The familiar smell of the sewers wafted up, and Elyn took a step back.

“The original breach is over by Smiths’ Lane, but that whole area is too well patrolled. We can’t risk the guards seeing a bunch of random adventurers climbing down into the sewers.” He smiled at the group, showing his teeth. “So, we’ll go in right here.”

***

“This isn’t what I had in mind when you said the entrance was underground,” Elyn complained as they trudged toward their destination. She was vainly trying to keep the vile sludge from splashing onto her clothes.

Therion shrugged. “I told you the Underkeepers found it. Where did you think we were going?” He plowed through the waters without a care, like Bernt himself did. They could easily clean their clothes with magic, and they would do so for the others as well. “Besides, we’re adventurers! The whole point is going where others wouldn’t!”

“Do you smell this place?” she snapped at him. “Am I the only one with a functioning nose in here?”

Syrah snorted at her. “Oh, shut up. If you had it so bad, you wouldn’t be gabbing so much.” She shuddered. “I can practically taste it.”

With Syrah being barely half the other woman’s height, the muck hadn’t just splashed onto her legs. She was nearly covered in it. Seeing her, Bernt actually felt a bit bad. He also wondered how Yarrod managed to work down here at all—the gnome was quite a bit shorter than even Syrah. Some of the larger tunnels had walkways on the sides, but many were just like this.

“It’s not far now,” he reassured them.

Sure enough, they reached the mostly completed tunnel just a few minutes later.

As they entered, Bernt turned to close up the tunnel entrance behind them, standing at the very back to ensure that no one would be able to see out. As he did, he sent a quick impression to Jori, who silently darted in just as he began casting and dove into his bag, curling up tightly. Living creatures couldn’t be drawn into the dimensional space inside the bag.

Hopefully, no one would notice how full it looked now.

When Bernt turned around, he saw that Therion was already busily casting spells to clean everyone off.

He noticed, with a bit of jealousy, that the other mage’s cleaning spell was quite a bit more advanced than his. Rather than just killing the smell, it removed the filth in its entirety, leaving their clothes pristine. It was probably a spell he’d learned at the Mages’ Guild Library—or from a private tutor. Therion didn’t comment on the stains that marked Bernt’s own robes, which he appreciated.

Bernt moved through the group to the front, readying his wand for the tunneling spell that would get them through the rest of the way.

“Hold on a second,” Therion said right behind him. Bernt tensed.

“What?” Were they going to try to back out of their deal, now that they knew where to go? Bernt tried not to look nervous, but he began to sweat.

“You need some protective equipment if you really want to go in there,” Therion told him, face serious. “It’s going to be dangerous in there, even for us.”

This was it. Therion was trying to talk him into turning back. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to just rely on them to share whatever they found. They’d never show him the truly great finds.

“You need at least a proper shield charm and a good healing potion to keep you alive long enough for us to bail you out,” Therion went on. “You can pay me back when we’re out, but you need to take this, alright?”

Bernt looked at the proffered items without reaching for them. He knew he should take them, but he didn’t want to. The shield charm was a runed metal bracelet inlaid with gold.

“I’ve got a protective amulet…” he said after a moment.

Therion looked at him doubtfully. Finally, he sighed and pushed the healing potion into his hand. “The potion, then. Come on. We can’t afford to let you get killed. I certainly don’t want to explain to the City Guard or your boss how you ended up dead inside a dungeon.”

After another moment of hesitation, Bernt took it and put it in his bag. He did need a healing potion.

“Thanks,” he said quietly.

Embarrassingly, the others were watching the interaction with some interest. Oren looked like he was about to say something insulting, but stopped when Furin shook his head at him slightly. Elyn was watching him with a mixture of pity and disgust. Only Syrah seemed completely unconcerned. She was muttering a prayer to herself holding a silver aspergillum, and winked at him. Then she flicked it in his direction, spraying him with a bit of holy water. He felt that magic of some kind was at work, but sacred rites didn’t work like anything a mage could sense or understand.

It made him feel… safer, somehow. Less fearful. His heartbeat slowed a little, and he took a deep breath, mind calming and focus sharpening.

As she turned to bless the others, he got to work breaking open the rest of the way into the dungeon.