Underkeeper

The adventurers quickly looted whatever they could find: the guards’ spears, a butter knife, and a few proper weapons that lay piled against the opposite wall, including Furin’s club—probably trophies. There was no telling where most of their gear had been stashed. They flooded out into the tunnel and overwhelmed a patrol of kobolds, looting their corpses in turn. Then they began checking the other nearby rooms for more prisoners.

There were four parties in their cell block, about twenty people—but there had to be far more adventurers down here. Hopefully they were nearby, because every moment they spent looking was a risk. Bernt’s party followed at the back of the group. He might have broken them all out, but they were the lowest-ranked and weakest party here.

Fearing that an overenthusiastic adventurer might take a swing at her, Bernt tried to coax Jori back into his bag, but found she didn’t fit into the opening anymore. Instead, she climbed up to his shoulder and sat there like a red-eyed gargoyle.

Well, Bernt supposed the cat was out of the bag. Syrah looked at the little imp with open disgust, but said nothing. That was to be expected, though—no priest would happily spend time around a demon. Or someone they thought might be a warlock…

It was the others who surprised him.

Oren peered at Jori, and then nodded at Bernt approvingly.

“People always underestimate the little ones, but they’re vicious little bastards. Ranged attack is really useful for climbers and fliers, too. It melted that smarmy little shit’s face right off.” The thief sighed blissfully at the memory. “Beautiful thing, that.”

Bernt, for his part, was pretty sure he’d be seeing that sorcerer’s melting face in his nightmares from now on.

“Oh, don’t be so morbid, Oren.” Elyn shouldered him aside. “Look at it, it’s so cute!” She reached out and patted the little demon on the head. Jori preened under the attention.

“Her name is Jori,” Bernt told her. “And she likes jerky.”

The little demon’s ears pricked up at that. “Do you have jerky? I’m hungry!”

Elyn flinched in surprise, then squealed in delight. “She talks?” She turned to Jori, now looking a little embarrassed. “You can talk? I didn’t know you could talk!”

Oren stared at her. “She talked right in there, less than three minutes ago!”

Elyn ignored him. As if from nowhere, she produced a slice of sausage. “I have that, want to try?” Faster than Bernt’s eyes could follow, Jori snatched it out of her hand and sniffed at it with clear enjoyment before jumping down to walk with the half-elf, chittering at her happily.

Bernt decided not to question it. It might do her good to make a friend.

That was when Therion clapped him on the shoulder, wearing a more serious expression than usual.

“I’m glad you made it, Bernt. However you did it.”

“Oh…” Bernt said, “That’s not how… well… not exactly.”

Therion waved it off. “Relax, relax. We aren’t going to judge you for doing what you had to. And you wouldn’t be the first mage to make compromises in a difficult situation. My father has told me some… stories.”

He glanced over at Jori, who was now animatedly describing some of her experiences in the dungeon to Elyn. “You’re going to want to register her when we get out, though. Warlocks get a lot of scrutiny, and it’s worse if you actually keep a summoned demon around. You might lose your job.”

Bernt scowled.

“I’m not a warlock!” he said indignantly. “Look, I’ll explain everything when we get out of here, alright?”

“Alright.” The doubt was clear in Therion’s voice. But he didn’t argue, and that was good enough for now. Bernt was more than a little concerned about what Ed would do with the knowledge that he had a bond to a demon, but he absolutely didn’t want to talk about that right now.

Only Furin said nothing, and if he had any opinions about this new development, he kept them to himself.

They checked room after room, killing every kobold they came across. It was quick and brutal. They found another cell block almost immediately, with the exact same layout as theirs. It was guarded by a larger, much more dragon-like kobold than the others in the antechamber. That guard managed to kill one of the other adventurers and injure several others, but their weight of numbers was more than enough in the end—even without proper equipment.

While the clerics healed the injured, Bernt watched one of the other parties handle the actual cell block, its entrance at the back of the room. They couldn’t be sure, but there would likely be another mind sorcerer on the other side. A wiry goblin woman wrenched the door open, and a bulky man holding nothing but a fist-sized rock stepped inside, hand already raised.

Sighting on something, he hurled the rock with incredible force just as a voice spoke from inside. His face went unnaturally slack, but the rock was already in the air. The voice cut off with a pained squawk, and the goblin woman darted past him, face locked into a snarl.

The man’s face went from slack to horrified for a second, but then he shook his head and smiled as a few muted cheers sounded from further inside.

“Clear!” came the goblin’s voice.

“Nice work, Zee,” the man said.

When the prisoners were out of their cells, the antechamber grew so crowded that Bernt found himself and his party pushed back out into the tunnel. Inside, a voice he didn’t recognize shouted for order, and everyone quieted down.

“We all heard the message from the prime party—we can’t run around here searching the entire dungeon. Most of us should make our way out toward the exit as quickly as possible. My party is going to stay, along with any of you who want to volunteer. We’ll go further in to try to find more prisoners and leave a few minutes behind you if all goes well.”

Furin shouldered his club and moved to join them, but both Oren and Elyn grabbed him.

“We’re the weakest party here,” Oren said. “We need to get out. Worov has the situation under control, as much as it can be controlled.”

Elyn made a face as if that were not what she’d been planning to say, but then she nodded.

Furin sighed.

“Fine.”

***

They walked back down the tunnel with Oren in the lead, who marked the way as he walked. He was the only one here who actually knew the layout well enough to guide them, since he’d actually scouted the place out before trying to break his party out. Everyone else had been force-marched through the mazelike tunnels in a random pattern, making it almost impossible for them to stay oriented.

They were just past the first cell block when they heard an ear-shatteringly loud crack. The world shook even more powerfully than before, and the ceiling disappeared up ahead in a shower of falling rocks and dust.

The sounds of the ongoing fight, which had been noticeable only as distant roars, vibrations and the occasional booming sound before, was now clear as day. So, for that matter, was their view.

In front of them, the tunnel was just gone, replaced by a few feet of rubble. They were looking up and out of a huge hole with sheer stone walls. Ahead and above them, standing at the rim of that hole was a gnome wearing brown robes intricately embroidered with white and gold thread. In front of him stood an impossibly smooth wall of stone, reaching up and up into the darkness. As they watched, he raised his staff and began rapidly sketching in the air. A gigantic rune appeared etched into the stone above. Then thousands upon thousands of other runes emerged from the rock, radiating outward from the primary rune in a dizzying fractal pattern.

Bernt realized his jaw was hanging open, and he snapped it shut. He had no idea how a mage would even begin to cast a spell of that size or complexity. Both the amount of mana and the control required beggared the imagination, never mind even visualizing the spell to begin with.

That would be the prime party’s mage, then.

Bernt recognized that primary rune, at least. He’d been passable at abjuration, but never considered pursuing it. It had always seemed boring. Why specialize in containment and nullification when you could just burn your enemies to cinders?

The spell finished forming and lit up with a blinding light, just in time for something behind that wall to strike it with a huge boom that stole his breath and nearly ruptured his eardrums. He was starting to understand why someone might opt for protective magics over simple firepower.

“Oh gods, you’re still here?” the gnome called down to them. A moment later, he ran down a set of stairs that formed in front of him as he descended, followed by a bedraggled-looking bearded elf. Both had the glazed, haunted look of people in shock. The elf was covered in blood, though he didn’t look injured.

Up above, the huge primary rune flickered and the stone wall cracked under another strike.

The gnome beckoned them urgently and called out, voice tinged with dismay, “You should be halfway to the entrance by now!” Then, more quietly, he went on, “Oh gods, they’re dead. Did you see it? It’s too late. The guild—we need to go.”

“Never mind that!” interjected a dwarf Bernt didn’t recognize. “The tunnel mouth is right over there. Mind opening it back up so we can leave?” He looked up at the damaged wall. “And where is the rest of your party?”

“They’re gone. Not coming. We did our best—we did!” The gnome waved his bare hand behind him, and the rubble melted away in seconds, like snow in the summer sun. Bernt noted with some surprise that he wasn’t even looking in the direction of his spell.

He didn’t know what adventuring rank this mage had, but he was a fully augmented geomancer and a skilled abjurer at least. That would make him a magister, possibly even an archmage, depending on whether he had his abjuration augmentation finished.

Above, another thunderclap heralded an impact that made the wall sag inward. It was supported only by the reinforcing network of runes, entire sections of which had already gone dark under the strain. A gigantic clawed hand, covered in amethyst scales, had torn clear through the wall. Bernt stared at it in shock. He’d known it would be big. All dragons were, but this…

“Come on!” the gnome shouted, waving them toward the open tunnel ahead. The group rushed forward as the stone shifted above them, the ceiling reforming as the powerful mage worked to close it up and block the dragon’s view of them.

As they rushed down the tunnel, Bernt couldn’t get the sight of the dragon’s enormous claws out of his head. It wasn’t just their size, or their gemstone scales, one of which would probably be worth more than he’d earn in the rest of his life. No, it was the dragon’s index claw. It had been carved with familiar patterns at an enormous scale, the channels filled with bright-purple enamel—most likely enchanted.

The dragon had turned its own claw into an impossibly large and complex arcane focus. Bernt had heard rumors of exotic wizards who used tattoos as a type of investiture, but he had never considered that someone might be able to turn a body part into a focus. The revelation seemed profound, somehow, though he couldn’t think of any immediate use for it. Still, he resolved to consider the implications more deeply once he got out of this place.

Spurred on by kobolds shouting in the distance in their yapping language, Bernt hurried to keep up.

***

Conperion huffed out a sigh as he settled back down onto the ground.

Finally. If they’d been any slower about escaping, he would have had to kill them all and scrap the entire plan.

And the prisoners… He didn’t strictly need for any of them to make it out, and he’d already written them off—but this was a welcome surprise. A few more survivors would help to provoke the desired response. His forces didn’t want to look too strong. Then the manlings might decide to evacuate the city, and that would ruin… well, everything.

Raising a clawed hand, he traced a quick pattern into the air. The unsolicited new wall in his lair disintegrated into sand, burying the bodies of the foolish manlings who had decided to try to ambush him. They would start to smell soon, but it wouldn’t matter for long.

He cleared a bit of sand to reveal a small grotto and reached inside to retrieve a small clawful of kobold bones. He focused his mind on the threads of fate, both those already woven and those still finding their place in the pattern, nudged by the day’s events. Then he cast them down onto the sand, and leaned in, studying how they lay.

It wasn’t just about the constellations they formed. It mattered which kinds of bones lay where, and even more detail could be gleaned if he knew who each specific bone had belonged to. He didn’t, of course. This was good enough.

So, he decided after a moment, was what he read in the bones.

“Guril, attend me,” he said, voice resonating throughout the massive chamber.

“Great One!” a tiny voice called from the mouth of a small tunnel at his feet. The kobold, barely as tall as his claw was long, was kneeling with his face pressed to the stone.

“Clean up any remaining intruders, and get the interesting ones down to the scribes for interrogation. Kill the boring ones. Then withdraw all secondary forces from the front lines down below. We proceed as planned.”

The kobold looked up, eyes alight with excitement.

“At once, Great One!”