by Ari Marmell
“Real subtle, Cræosh,” Gork snapped as he entered. “That entry would do a rutting rhinoceros proud. What the hell did you think you were doing?”
The orc shrugged. “Picking the lock.”
“Picking—what?”
“Yeah. Picking the lock. You see it, lying over there on the floor?”
“What's left of it, yes.”
“Well, pick it up.”
Gork wandered off in disgust as the two tardy members of the team finally made their entrance.
Cræosh barely glanced as the doppelganger and the troll joined them in the mysterious little structure. He was too busy examining his surroundings and finding himself vaguely repulsed.
The place couldn't have been more homey, in the most sugarcoated, clichéd sense, if it had been ripped from a human or elven bedtime story. The hut—more of a cottage, really—consisted of a single large space, separated into living room and kitchen only by a hanging curtain. Two small bookcases adorned the main chamber, each containing perhaps half a dozen large tomes. A sleeping cot stood between them, a small heap of blankets piled at the foot. Cursory examination of the kitchen revealed a marble-top counter and a larder well stocked with spices and garnishes, but little in the way of food. A small table, lightly stained with the rings of many a wet mug, sat in a niche beside the door. It was surrounded by six chairs that somehow looked comfortable despite rickety backs and tattered cushions. A trio of larger chairs, plush and well used, sat facing the cheerful fire that crackled away in the fireplace….
Cræosh froze, cursing himself for not making the connection sooner. His senses screamed at him; his hand squeezed the leather of his sword hilt until it creaked.
Jhurpess, smiling contentedly, was muttering something about firewood as he methodically demolished several of the rickety chairs. Gimmol was sniffing each and every one of the spices, a strangely blissful expression on his face, and Fezeill was studying the volumes that lay on the shelves, though his disdainful snort suggested that he'd found nothing of interest.
Gork, however, was methodically checking the walls for hidden surprises, tapping and prodding at the wood, and Katim stood in the center of the room, shoulders hunched, idly fingering the shaft of her axe.
Cræosh gestured quickly to Gork when next the kobold glanced his way, and once the small creature had joined him, they both moved to stand beside the troll.
“You noticed it too,” Cræosh began without preamble.
Katim nodded. “Something is…very wrong. I told you…we should not have…come here.”
The orc nodded. “You might've had a point after all,” he admitted. Then, “What about you, Shorty? You find anything?”
Gork scowled slightly at the—ahem, diminutive—but clearly decided that now was scarcely the time to object. “Not a thing,” he replied, his small snout curled in frustration. “Not that I expected much. The walls are really too thin to be hiding much of anything. Still, this whole place worries me.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I'll tell you, I’m really bothered by that fire.”
Cræosh and Katim nodded in unison. “It took me a minute, too,” the orc said. “Hell, it's such a natural part of the setting, you really don't even register it.” As evidence, he gestured toward their other companions, obliviously going about their little tasks. “But if the fire's still burning…”
“How long until they come back, do you suppose?” the kobold asked.
Katim shrugged. “Could be minutes…or hours. There's no…real way of knowing.”
“But it means we can't waste any more of our time,” Cræosh added. “Okay, listen the fuck up!“
The other squad members straightened as though whipped, and the only sound in the room besides the crackling fire was the reverberating thud of one of Jhurpess's chair legs hitting the floor.
“For those of you who obviously shit their brains out with yesterday's breakfast,” he said, glossing over the fact that it had taken him some minutes to make the same deduction, “we can expect company before too long.”
At the puzzled expressions on the faces of both Jhurpess and Gimmol—although Fezeill looked more embarrassed than anything else—Cræosh added, “The fire's still burning, geniuses.”
The final pair stared as one at the dancing flames.
“Now,” Cræosh said, “you could all keep running around the place like your heads are on fire and your asses are catching, but it's not going to accomplish more than a little extra exercise.
“Or we can shape up, get into something resembling proper military procedure, and search this place from tail to tongue-tip. If there's so much as a termite in the rafters, I want to know exactly where he is, how long he's lived there, and if his daughters are cute. Move!”
The astounding thing was, they actually did work out an efficient system. Katim, who could easily reach heights that the others couldn't, took it upon herself to check the ceiling and the uppermost shelves. Cræosh, Fezeill, and (after a great deal of wasted explanation) Jhurpess began moving furniture, searching behind and under things. Gimmol sifted through the books, looking for items hidden within. And Gork…
Unlike everyone else, Gork lingered in the center of the room, head tilted to one side as though lost in thought. Finally, after several minutes—and just as Cræosh was about to yell something really obscene—Gork bent, lifted something off the floor with both hands, and walked over to Jhurpess.
“Here you go,” he said, handing the bugbear the fallen chair leg.
The simian blinked. “Oh. Jhurpess thanks you.”
“Don't thank me. I want you to drop it again. From the same height as before.”
Another blink. “What?”
Gork sighed. “Stand up straight,” he said slowly, “and drop it.”
By now, the odd conversation had attracted some attention, and the others had all wandered over to see what, exactly, the little kobold had in mind.
Now utterly confused, Jhurpess dropped the chair leg. This time, most of the squad finally noticed what Gork had picked up on the first time.
“Hollow,” Katim's voice rumbled at them.
“Sounds like it to me,” Cræosh agreed. “Nice thinking, Shorty.”
Grumble, grumble, Shorty my stony ass, “Thank you,” grumble, grumble, big hulking gorilla, grumble…
“All right kits and cubs,” Cræosh thundered. “Check the floor!”
And check they did, to the best of their individual abilities. Gork and Fezeill went back over the walls, the bookcases, anywhere the architect could have constructed a hidden lever or catch. Katim continued her search of the ceiling. But Gimmol simply stood in the center of the hut looking helpless, and Jhurpess—for whom “subtlety” meant “switch to a smaller club”—had simply begun tearing wooden planks off the floor. Cræosh stood by the door, hands crossed over his chest, supervising (by his definition) or just standing around uselessly (by everybody else's).
And of course, it was Jhurpess and his destructive urges who finally found the hidden chamber. The bugbear had just broken through into a large open space and was about to say something about it when, with a sudden splintering sound that almost drowned out his startled scream, the damaged floor around him gave way completely.
Cræosh blinked once as his hairy companion vanished from sight. In no great hurry, he turned to face the others, who were all staring at the jagged aperture.
“Tell me again,” he asked, “why he's here?”
Gork shrugged his small shoulders. “Well, he did find the room….”
Slowly, making absolutely certain to check the strength of the jagged wood, Cræosh and the others crawled forward and peered into the newly uncovered chamber.
“Jhurpess?” the orc called out. “You okay?”
“Jhurpess not happy!” came the response.
“No shit! Jhurpess not supposed to be happy! Jhurpess just went through the floor!”
Gimmol reached over and tugged on Fezeill's arm. “Is that sort of speech cont
agious?” he asked. “I'd hate to start talking that way.”
“Don't worry,” the doppelganger told him. “If you do, I promise I'll kill you quickly.”
The gremlin shut up.
Cræosh tossed them a brief glare, but his attention remained primarily on the hole. “Are you hurt badly?”
There was a momentary pause. Then, “Jhurpess in pain. But not too bad, Jhurpess thinks.” Another pause. “Cræosh didn't mean for Jhurpess to fall into hole, did Cræosh? Jhurpess was only supposed to find room.”
Brilliant. “That was the plan, Nature-boy. Looks like it sort of fell through, though.” Then, sensing the troll hauling back an arm in preparation to pound him something fierce, he quickly added, “Jhurpess, can you see any stairs or a ladder? Or any other way down?”
“Jhurpess can't see anything. Jhurpess lying in the dark.”
Gork cleared his throat. “If I may?” The others watched as the kobold latched his claws into the thick wood and lowered himself headfirst. For a moment he just hung, sort of an irritable chandelier, and waited for his vision to adjust. Then, finally, “Yeah, there it is. Thick wooden ladder, plain as day. It's about—oh, ten feet to my left.”
Several heads swiveled in that direction. “The fireplace,” Fezeill muttered.
Cræosh nodded. “Obvious as a mama halfling's tits. Wonder why I didn't think of it?”
“Maybe,” Katim rasped at him, “it's because…you aren't remotely as smart…as you think you are.”
“And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”
The troll's snout wrinkled in an obvious parody of confusion. “Why are you…asking me? I’m…not supposed to be…the smart one.”
“I hate to interrupt this little spat,” Fezeill interjected, “but if I may remind the both of you…?”
Cræosh nodded. “Right. Katim, you wanna go douse the fire?”
The troll paused a moment longer, and then, with a shift of posture that could only be described as a mental shrug, she strode to the brick fireplace. A brief examination, and then she simply lifted the large iron cauldron that sat beside the hearth and upended it onto the flames. They swiftly sputtered and died, and the temperature in the cottage fell rapidly. Curiosity writ across his bugbear face, the doppelganger wandered over to examine the area beneath the charred logs.
“Good,” Cræosh acknowledged, and then redirected his gaze back toward the kobold legs protruding from the pit. “Hey, Shorty!”
Grumble. “Yes, oh ponderous one?”
“Can you see the catch from where you are?”
“Hold on…Okay, I see it. It's a primitive lock, really. Hatchling's play. Shouldn't take me—”
There was a sudden click.
“—or Fezeill,” he continued, his tone chilly as the frosted windows, “more than a few seconds.” He hauled himself back up to the floor. “You might want to let the shifter go first,” he informed the others. “In case the ladder's rigged.”
Fezeill smiled a tight little smile and proceeded through the hatch that had been hidden beneath the logs.
His safe trip to the cold dirt below proved that the ladder was not, in fact, rigged or trapped as Gork had feared (hoped?). The others followed, and though the rungs creaked alarmingly beneath Cræosh's weight, the entire squad managed the descent intact. Gork, his footing sure even in the murk, made his way to the fallen bugbear and retrieved several of the chair legs that had set the whole chain of events in motion. He brought them straight back to Cræosh, who, after a few false starts with flint and steel and a bit of oil, finally transformed one into a makeshift torch. The others looked around, at last able to see what, until now, only the kobold's superior night vision had discerned.
A pair of tables lurked in a far corner of the chamber, as distant from the ladder as the walls would permit. Both were draped with sheets, and it didn't take sight like Gork's or Katim's to note that something lay beneath each of those makeshift covers.
As the squad shuffled nearer, other details made themselves evident. The wall beside the tables held a large wooden rack, and upon that rack sat tools so twisted that even Cræosh shuddered to think what they might be for. Serrated saws and needle-tipped probes, curled lengths of wire and jagged pliers—and, perhaps most disturbing of all, a few simple knives and scalpels stored beside several lengths of tubing and a sewing kit.
“I would love…to meet the owner of…this hut,” Katim whispered—although, given the limited range of her voice, her whispers really weren't all that different from her normal speech.
Cræosh found himself rather disturbed at the gleam in her eyes as she studied the implements.
But while the troll might have been fascinated, the others, even the normally unflappable doppelganger, found themselves ever more anxious to leave. Still…
“What,” Gimmol asked, his voice far from steady, “do you suppose is under the sheets?”
Cræosh winced, though none of the others were in a position to see it. He had just about decided to simply pick up the bugbear—who lay sniveling in the corner, and should probably have been their first priority—and get the fuck out. But the damn gremlin had gone and asked the question aloud, and now the orc's pride wouldn't allow him to leave without checking.
Making a mental note to beat the snot out of Gimmol at the first opportunity, Cræosh plastered a confident smirk across his face. “Well, let's find out, shall we?” Then, before any of his more reluctant allies could even think about stopping him, he grabbed one sheet in each meaty fist and yanked.
The stench shambled across the intervening distance and embraced them all like long-lost relatives. Cræosh choked, Gimmol deposited his breakfast all over the floor with a revolting splatter—the effects of which actually improved the room's bouquet—and even the troll gagged. It was impossible that they hadn't noticed the foul, rotting odor before, impossible that the sheets could have smothered such a potent reek. Nevertheless, it had been completely hidden from even the troll's senses—an unnatural phenomenon that did nothing to improve either their confidence or their nausea.
One arm held defensively across his face, as though the stench might be warded off through determination and brute strength, Cræosh leaned over the leftmost table.
Why the fuck didn't I listen to Katim and stay the hell away from this hut?
Each table held a single corpse, face twisted in the throes of agony even Cræosh had never seen. One was an elf: young, not quite an adult, with chestnut hair and a road map of scars along his slender arms. Most goblins found elves hideous enough to begin with, but something about this one—his color, perhaps, or the vaguely puffy quality to his flesh—made him even worse. The other was a doppelganger, and if they had thought Fezeill's true form ugly, this one, with its shallow wounds and sunken features, was absolutely nauseating.
But while the wounds inflicted upon each were obviously painful, what pushed this beyond the pale as far as Cræosh was concerned was the tubing. Someone had connected the elf and the doppelganger with a series of hoses, running through a sequence of bellows and pumps. And suddenly the bloated, sickly skin of the elf, and the sunken, shriveled flesh of the doppelganger, made a sort of horrid sense.
It wasn't the torture itself that disturbed the orc to the core of his being—hell, he didn't know the doppelganger, and as far as the elf was concerned, he only wished he'd been here to listen to the screams. It was the thought of the twisted, cold-blooded mind that could have devised such a setup that worried him. Cræosh didn't think it probable that such a person would take kindly to trespassers, and he had absolutely no desire to find himself strapped to a table and sharing bodily fluids with Katim or Fezeill.
“Katim,” he said hoarsely, “grab Jhurpess.” Immediately, the troll's long strides carried her to the bugbear, whom she casually lifted to his feet with one hand. She did not, Cræosh couldn't help but note, take the time to berate him for ordering her about. It seemed that even Katim didn't care to stay any longer.
But Cræosh himself, despite his misgivings, remained morbidly fascinated by the tableau. Without conscious thought, he found himself reaching toward the elf. He wasn't certain what he intended to accomplish; perhaps nothing more than confirming, for his own sake, the reality of the twisted torture. The others fell into a deathly hush, their attentions fixed on the orc's fingers as they drew closer, closer…
The elf's hand twitched.
Five screams echoed from the underground chamber. Only Katim remained silent, though her grip on the bugbear had tightened so much that he might've been wailing in as much pain as terror. Those shrieks were swiftly followed by the sound of the world's smallest stampede as Gork, Gimmol, and Fezeill dashed for the ladder. Jhurpess would have joined them, had the troll not held him with an iron fist.
Cræosh had retreated from the table—but he, like Katim, was unwilling to leave this thing at their backs. He gestured shallowly at the troll and received a nod in return. Katim casually shoved the bugbear behind her and drew her terrible axe. Cræosh hefted his own weapon, and the pair of them moved to either side of the table.
And then Gork, whose vantage halfway up the ladder offered a view unavailable to the others, burst out laughing.
Attention torn between the abomination on the table and their obviously insane ally, the orc and the troll tried hard to watch both directions at once. The hysterical kobold was clearly having trouble breathing, and his sides heaved so hard that he would have fallen had not Fezeill—who was directly beneath him and most certainly did not want a kobold landing on his head—reached up with a lanky bugbear arm to steady his small companion.
Trying to keep watch on the sort-of-dead elf, Cræosh stepped nearer the creaking, overcrowded ladder. “And just what the fuck is so amusing about this?”
The kobold broke into all-new hysterics. But this time, he retained sufficient strength and presence of mind to point.
Katim and the orc both followed his shaking finger back to the elf's hand. The hand that had moved, despite all sense and all natural laws. The hand…
