“You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” Steve muttered.
“Then let’s find out. Excuse me, Mr. Selwyn? Can you come back here for a moment?”
Steve looked over at the start of the cobbled street and watched Selwyn approach. As soon as the dwarf was standing before the two of them he nervously pulled the tip of his beard from his thick corded belt and began twisting it around a finger.
“Well?”
“We accept,” Cecil informed him.
Selwyn’s eyes darted over to Steve’s and remained there, as though he was waiting for some type of acknowledgment. Steve slowly nodded.
“Fine. We agree. We’ll get your daughter up on a dragon. Question: how do we contact you? Once we get a dragon lined up you’re going to have to get your daughter to the surface.”
“You worry about the dragon and I’ll worry about my daughter. As for contacting me, there’ll be no need. I’ll be watching you. Do we have an accord?”
Steve nodded. Selwyn extended his right arm. Steve reciprocated and they grasped forearms.
“We have an accord.”
Cecil laid his hand on their two clasped arms.
“We will find a way, Mr. Selwyn. For Aislinn’s sake.”
Selwyn cursed and instantly released Steve’s arm to brush at his rapidly filling eyes. A few seconds of silence passed before Selwyn was able to compose himself. For the first time, he smiled.
“Excellent. You’d best be going. You have work to do.”
Steve raised a hand. “Is there another way out? The way down for us is no longer the way back up.”
Selwyn paused a few moments before nodding his head. “You’re going to need a guide. I know just the person.”
****
Several hours later Steve and Cecil finally stopped inside one of the many caverns they had passed through and sat down on the closest rock formation that could loosely be considered a seat. Steve cleared his throat. Loudly.
“Why have you stopped?” their guide inquired as he turned around to see the two of them sitting. There were no traces of gray anywhere in the dwarf’s beard or in his hair, nor were there any wrinkles on his face. Steve found it difficult to guess the dwarf’s age as his bushy beard and moustache obscured all but his eyes and nose. “We must keep moving. We won’t make it Topside at this rate.”
“At this rate we’ll be in here forever,” Steve haughtily informed the dwarf. He crossed his legs at the ankles and tried not to scowl. “Admit it, Jonquil. You have no idea where we’re going, do you?”
The dwarf’s eyes opened a little wider. If he wasn’t mistaken Steve could swear he saw a bead of perspiration trickling down Jonquil’s nose. The dwarf gave a nervous cough.
“I’m not sure I follow, human.”
“I sure as hell don’t want to follow you,” Steve grumpily returned. “We’re walking in circles.”
Cecil sat up straight. “What? Are you sure?”
Steve pointed a flaming hand at one of the stalagmites nearby.
“See that? There’s a black scorch mark on it. I put that there the last time we came through here. I thought this cavern looked familiar once before so I deliberately marked it to see if it turned up again. That means this is the third time we’ve walked through this blasted cave.”
Cecil stared at the black mark for a few seconds before turning to confront their guide with an incredulous look on his face.
“Is he right? Do you not know how to get us out of here?”
“I may have made a wrong turn somewhere,” the dwarf hesitantly admitted.
“Well, let’s just retrace our steps until you see something that is familiar,” Cecil suggested.
“I, er, tried that,” Jonquil reluctantly answered.
“You’re saying we’re lost? Underground, with a dwarf?
“Please don’t tell my father,” Jonquil pleaded.
“Why did Selwyn tell us he knows just the right person then?” Steve demanded. “Jonquil, we don’t have a lot of time. Has your father told you what we have to do?”
“Aye, he told me. You’re trying to help my sister.”
“That’s right. We can’t afford to walk around in circles like we have been doing for the past hour or so.”
“I will find the way out, I promise,” Jonquil vowed. He turned left, waited a few moments, turned right, and finally pointed uncertainly towards the direction they had already gone. Twice. “I’m certain it’s that way.”
Steve wasn’t convinced. “Nuh-uh. Let’s try this.”
He blasted his jhorun through his hands and launched a huge fireball up into the air. He allowed the raging ball of fire to burn itself out, but not before he saw several tendrils of residual smoke reaching out towards the tunnel they were headed towards.
“We have some sort of air current flowing in that direction. Alright Jonquil, you have me convinced. Let’s go.”
Thirty minutes later they emerged into an almost completely spherical cavern devoid of any stalactites or stalagmites. The cavern’s dome, Steve noted, had what looked like elongated narrow dragon scales covering every bit of the curved ceiling. He hadn’t ever seen a cavern with a roof as unique as that.
“I never thought I’d see the day where I meet a dwarf with a worse sense of direction than myself,” Steve quipped as he continued to stare up at the ceiling over their heads. With a shrug he returned his attention to the silent dwarf in their midst. He could see that Jonquil was genuinely embarrassed about getting them lost and refused to look either of them in the eye. Determined to make the dwarf feel better, Steve decided to regale him with just a few of his own experiences. “In my world,” Steve continued, “I have been lost in just about every city I’ve ever visited. I inherited my lousy sense of direction from my mother.”
Cecil cautiously stepped around a large upside down conical rock formation jutting up from the floor before peering appraisingly at Steve.
“Really? You get lost that frequently?”
Steve noticed a subtle shift of Jonquil’s head. The dwarf was listening.
“I’m afraid so. It’s not fun, especially when a loved one always seems to be there to witness it.”
Jonquil’s head visibly cocked to his left as he strained to overhear the conversation.
“What would you do if you were to become lost?” Cecil inquired. “If I were you then I’d never leave the house without a compass.”
“I don’t,” Steve assured him. “And it just so happens my compass has a name. Sarah. She never gets lost in a mall, no matter how big the damn thing, nor does she ever forget where we ended up parking. It’s amazing. It comes in handy, let me tell you.”
“A mall? What’s that?”
“Forget about it. They won’t be invented for a while.”
All three of them paused, mid-step, as they felt a tremor beneath their feet. The ground gave a slight shake, as though it was trying to relieve an itch, before it settled down and moved no more. Steve tapped Jonquil on the shoulder.
“Do you get many earthquakes around here?”
“I do not believe that was a terra tremor,” Jonquil told him, with a frown on his face. “Terra tremors are much more powerful down here and it always causes unfortified rock to flex and crack. That didn’t happen in here.”
“So what exactly was that?” Steve wanted to know. “What would shake this cave like that?”
Jonquil was silent. Steve figured he was trying to remember something important and let the matter drop. Something about this abnormally spherical cavern was bugging him and he wanted to put as much distance as possible between it and them. He nudged Cecil on the arm.
“Come on, let’s go. I don’t like this place.”
“Look at Jonquil!” Cecil hissed at him.
Alarmed, Steve looked over at Jonquil, who still hadn’t moved. He was staring, wide-eyed, up at the cavern’s ceiling.
“Jonquil, let’s clear out. I want to get away from this place.”
; The dwarf didn’t budge. In fact, he hadn’t even blinked.
“Jonquil? What’s going on? Don’t freak out on me. We need to get going, okay?”
Cecil gasped with alarm. Steve reflexively pumped more jhorun into his hands and, as a result, his flames grew hotter and brighter. Cecil pointed a trembling finger up at the ceiling and automatically inched closer to Steve.
“What are you doing? Why are you –”
Cecil took the hand that wasn’t pointing and reached out to gently, but firmly, turn Steve’s head until he, too, was looking up.
“What are we looking at? I don’t… wait. What’s that? Is that… oh, hell no!”
The many overlapping scales covering the entire surface of the cavern’s ceiling were gently swaying back and forth. Then they heard what sounded like quiet groans which, unfortunately, were growing progressively louder.
“Jonquil! What is it? What are those things?”
The dwarf had reached behind his back to pull his single-bladed black battleax free of its holder.
“Tsak! We call them rock biters! There was a rumor that they had a new nest but no one could ever find it.”
Steve groaned. “Oh, lucky us. Whoopee. We found a nest of bugs.”
“They aren’t bugs,” Jonquil clarified. “They’re tsak. This isn’t good.”
“Their ‘sack’?” Steve repeated, certain he had misheard the Jonquil’s description. “As in find one and throw them in it or that’s the location they need to be kicked?”
Jonquil stared at him.
“What?”
“What about their sack?”
“No, they are tsak. They’re vertebrates that have adapted to living in deep subterranean caves over thousands of years.”
Steve looked up at the curved dome over their heads. Each “scale” had inched away from its neighbor, which had the unfortunate effect of making the roof look like it was being stretched in all directions. Each scale then split right down the middle. A thin, nearly translucent wing formed out of each half of the ‘scale’ and began lightly flapping in place. In a matter of seconds there were so many flapping wings on the ceiling that Steve could feel the air being blown downwards.
Steve snorted and waved a hand in front of his face. Tsak apparently didn’t care too much for personal hygiene. He studied the sea of flapping wings and shook his head in amazement. There were so many!
“What can you tell us about these things?” Steve asked the dwarf. “Why do you call them ‘rock biters’? Do they bite the rocks? Are they dangerous?”
“They eat the rock,” the dwarf clarified, still not taking his eyes off the gently undulating ceiling.
“They eat the rock? Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they? So let me venture a guess. These things are as dangerous as they look?”
“Aye.”
“Venomous?”
“Aye.”
“Think it’s time to leave yet?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Are we screwed?”
“Are we what?”
“Sorry. Let me try that again. Is all hope lost?”
“Only if we are discovered.”
“What? What does that mean? They’re all moving when they weren’t a few minutes ago. Clearly they know we’re here.”
“The terra tremor must have awoken them. Start moving towards the exit over there. We may get out of here with our lives after all.”
A scraping noise, as if two heavy rocks were being ground together, sounded from behind them. As one, the two humans and the lone dwarf turned to look at the conical rock formation they had passed moments earlier. A rock biter had just emerged from the tip of the cone and was facing their way, affording Steve and Cecil with their first clear look of a tsak.
Steve shook his head in disgust. It was an ugly thing, he decided. Its narrow black body was being propped up by its two wings, which it was using as arms. It had a flat squished face with a tiny slit for a nose, no eyes he could see, and an unnaturally large mouth with jaws full of razor sharp teeth. It leered at them from its vantage point on top of the rock formation. To Steve the creature looked as though it was a cross between an earthworm and a bat.
“How’s their eyesight?” Steve asked as he absentmindedly began searching his clothing for additional power crystals. He sighed. No mimets. He had forgotten he didn’t have Mythrin with him, nor its scabbard with the extra mimet pouches sewn in.
“Nonexistant,” Jonquil told him. “Do you see how small and narrow the face is? It’s our belief that there simply wasn’t any room for eyes.”
“You’re telling me it’s blind?”
Jonquil shrugged. “We believe so. Do you see the head moving erratically from the left to the right? It’s picking up scent particles from the air. It’s trying to find us.”
“Did it come from within those rocks? Does that mean it’s hollow?”
The dwarf nodded.
“Aye. That’s their nest. Their young are kept below ground, where there are fewer predators.”
Steve started inching away from the conical mound of rocks. Now that he knew it was the nest’s main entrance he wanted to put as much distance as possible between he and it. Cecil matched his movements step for step and together they moved further away. Steve grabbed Jonquil’s arm as soon as he was close enough and pulled the dwarf along with them.
“I don’t care what they are, we are leaving,” Steve told the dwarf. “Get ready to run!”
The tsak, evidently hearing them, scuttled down the cone and as soon as it touched the ground it headed straight towards them at an unhurried pace. Steve stared at the weird bat shaped creature as it nonchalantly got its bearings, turned to face the three of them, and ambled straight towards them as though it had nothing better to do.
Steve sighed. He didn’t like doing this but then again, Jonquil had said it was venomous. It was either it or them. His right hand blazed brighter as he readied his jhorun. Just before it could take a bite of fresh human, or dwarf, he blasted the creature with a bolt of fire. The rock biter shriveled and smoked as it burned. The pungent stench was overpowering.
“Killing bugs is one thing,” Steve announced with a frown, “but these are mammals. I don’t like this.”
Cecil tapped his arm to get his attention.
“It’s better them than us,” Cecil told him, mirroring his own thoughts. “You are my new best friend. Consider me your shadow until we are well away from this wretched place.”
Steve turned to look behind him. “In that case, I’m only going to say this once. If I start running you’d best keep up.”
Several more tsaks emerged from within the nest. Both of the thin black creatures calmly climbed down to the cavern’s rocky floor and headed towards them. Steve blasted them both.
The rock biters on the ceiling, who had been continuing to fan out in order for each of the creatures to extend their wings, ceased their flapping. Startled by the absence of the foul smelling draft from above, Steve and the others looked up. One by one, almost in military precision, the tsak dropped down from the ceiling and began buzzing around the cavern. At the rate they were dropping, Steve calculated, they’d have no more than fifteen seconds before there’d be so many tsaks in the air that they’d be unable to see.
Steve noticed movement in his peripheral vision and instantly dropped to the ground but not before a dozen of the creatures passed harmlessly over his head. An instant later he stumbled forward, as if someone had shoved him from behind. The problem was both Cecil and Jonquil were in front of him, not behind. What had happened?
Steve turned his head to look behind him when he saw a large shield strapped to his back. His shape-changing weapon, the nohrstaf, had switched from club to shield moments before a tsak had collided with it. Steve scowled at the madly flapping creatures flying through the air. His desire to not harm a mammal vanished as his sense of self-preservation kicked in. He felt his hands tingle like mad. Apparently his jhorun agreed.
“Head
for the closest exit!” Steve shouted to the others as he blasted out a wall of fire and held it in place. Jonquil took Cecil’s arm and pulled him across the cavern. Once they had made it to safety Steve pumped extra jhorun into his pyrotechnical barrier to keep it nice and hot in the hopes it would act as a deterrent for the swarming rock biters. He had felt several more thumps as apparently the tsak kept ramming his back and coming into contact with the nohrstaf-shield.
Unfortunately, the wall of flames wasn’t successful in making the advancing monsters stop. In fact, they didn’t even slow down as they approached the blistering hot wall of flames. Nearly three dozen of the ugly creatures flew right through the fire wall and were instantly reduced to ash. Another dozen or so then tried to attack from above. They would have been successful had Steve not increased the size of the flaming barrier and arced it to cover their heads.
Ash rained down on them from above. Cecil fanned the air and pulled his shirt up and over his nose. Steve and Jonquil did the same. Jonquil tapped the large shield strapped to Steve’s back.
“Where did you get this?”
“It’s a long story,” Steve answered as he brought down several more of the flying tsak.
“You didn’t have it before,” Jonquil pointed out as he swung his axe like a club and smashed several of the smelly creatures into a nearby stalagmite.
“Not too bright, are they?” Steve called back as he watched another wave of the creatures approach.
“Steve, get out of there!” Cecil shouted at him. “You don’t want these things to touch you!”
“Relax. Their bodies are too fragile. They can’t make it through the fire alive, although the morons keep trying.”
“You’re forgetting about those that were on the ceiling!” Cecil shouted back. “Look up there! They’re up to something!”
Steve risked a glance behind him. Jonquil had just joined Cecil on the far side of the cavern. Good. Then he looked up. Several of the tsaks that were still on the ceiling had started gnawing at the stony surface they were clinging to, gouging out large chunks of stone in the process. As soon as each tsak had accumulated a large enough piece of stone they simply let it go, allowing it to fall to the floor.
A Portal for Your Thoughts Page 22
