by Stone Thomas
As we neared the mine’s entrance, we heard the sound of pickaxes hitting rock, and the high-pitched jabbering of tiny creatures. Inside, a handful of miners chopped away at rocks that wouldn’t yield to their iron tools while dozens of goblins ran around underfoot.
Cindra went further ahead into the dark while I warned everyone to evacuate. “Arden?” she called. “I think I found where the goblins are coming from.”
“There’s no time for goblins,” I said, “we have to get back.”
“Just let me see if I’m right,” she said. “I saw one little guy pop out from behind this rock.” She heaved the large brown rock to the side, revealing a hole in the wall about a foot wide.
“It’s hollow back there,” one miner said, gathering up his tools. “Where there’s no rock, we stop mining.”
Cindra pulled her quiver and bow from her body and dropped them to the ground. She pressed her face against the rock wall’s hollow opening.
“We really need to go,” I said.
“I can see in the dark,” she replied, “I just want to know what’s back there, that’s all.”
The rock squeezed against her head as she pushed, contorting her slimy shape until she was able to slip her whole head through.
“Oh my,” she said. Her voice was muffled on the other side of that rock wall. “It appears we’re not the only ones worshipping on this site.”
“What do you see?” I asked.
“Goblins,” she said, “food, gold, energems, bones, cogs—”
“Let’s plug up this hole and explore the cave later,” I said.
Cindra pressed her arms against the rock wall for less than a second before she screamed and her whole body shot forward, warping and rippling as she was pulled through the small opening like jello through a straw.
“Cindra!” I yelled, rushing to catch her by the ankle, but not in time. I thrust my arm through the hole in the rock, but I couldn’t feel anything but the rough edges of cavern stone.
“Let go of me!” she yelled from inside. “Stop it! That tickles!”
“Hang on, Cindra!” I yelled. “Megra, we need to blast this hole open and get in there.”
She stepped back. “If this wall is the main support for this end of the mine, even a small explosion could cause the whole thing to implode, with us and Cindra still inside. We can’t do that, not without setting up other supports first.”
“Give me some bombs,” I said.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“I won’t ask you to put yourself at risk, but I’m not leaving Cindra down there. If this mine collapses, so be it. There’s more to the cavern system than this. There are additional underground chambers. They can’t all implode, right?”
“I don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption,” she said. “You know, you tell people you specialize in explosives and people think you’re this reckless devil-may-care type, but it’s not true. I much prefer a calculated approach.
“Besides,” she continued, “I can’t just give you bombs. They’re made of magic from my special bomber class. They’d just explode in your hands.”
“Cindra spent her whole life trapped in this cave,” I said. “I can’t let that happen to her again. We can blast ourselves in, and if we have to, we’ll blast her back out. Are you with me?”
“On these grounds you are my master,” she muttered.
“No,” I said, “not because of some imaginary obligation to me as head priest. You can leave without any repercussion from me. But we’re Cindra’s only hope right now.”
“We’d never have made it out of Landondowns without her,” Megra said. “Okay, here goes.”
I collected Cindra’s quiver and bow while Megra filled her hand with an orb of dark purple magic. She rolled a Blastball along the mine’s stone floor toward the small hole Cindra had disappeared into.
It blinked once. It blinked twice. Then it erupted with a thunderous boom that shook the cave, blasted that tiny hole into a gaping pit, and sent distress fractures through the ceiling and floor. It only took a half-second for the ground to fall away beneath our feet and send us down a rockslide into utter darkness.
Megra just couldn’t resist yelling the whole way down. “I told you this was ill-adviiiiiiiiiiiised!”
+35
The ground collapsed beneath us, carrying us down a sharp forward slope as more rocks crashed from overhead, tumbling against our backs and cracking into our heads. When the rockslide finally came to rest, my head was throbbing and my eyes struggled to find any source of light to adjust to.
“Megra,” I asked, “are you okay?”
“A little scratched up,” she said, “but that’s all. You?”
“Same,” I said.
Tiny hands groped at my legs. I kicked and shook goblins off of me before they could pick what was left in my pockets. They gibbered their high-pitched nonsense as I tested the ground, skittering down the rock slope until the cavern floor was flat and smooth.
Nola?, I asked. I waited, but the only sound was Megra getting to her feet and swatting at goblins. Nola couldn’t hear me down here.
A slow metallic grinding sound percolated in the background. “Do you see that?” I asked. “Some kind of red aura just lit up.”
“It’s so faint,” she said. “It disappears when I look directly at it.”
“Let’s investigate,” I said, feeling my way toward the edge of the cavern. I swept the ground ahead with my spear to get a sense of the terrain. It was smooth, until I tapped on something bumpy ahead.
When I got closer to it, I bent down and placed my hand out. Something smooth sat on the ground, with bumps and ridges. It ended in a fine point on one end, while the other end led straight into the rock wall.
“That aura is getting closer,” Megra said.
She was right. Slowly, what started as an indistinct orb of red light grew larger, brighter, and closer. It bobbed along the ground like some wispy spirit that couldn’t find its way to the afterlife.
“Cindra!” I yelled. My voice bounced off the rock walls, causing a wave of tiny goblins to start up their gibbering again. If Cindra answered, I couldn’t hear her.
The wall curved as I continued tracing it, until I had shifted away from that strange aura’s view. Razortooth’s pole swept across a pile of pebbles and sent them rolling across the floor. As I kept feeling ahead with my spear, the pile became a mound.
Metal struck against metal deep within the cavern as the sound of a machine kicked into gear. Either Vix was trying again with the control tower, sending a ripple of grinding cogs through the hill, or these goblins had a machine of their own down here.
“Megra,” I asked, “what would happen if you rolled a force bomb ahead of us?”
“It would knock down anyone standing in its path,” she said, “in another burst of dark purple magic. You’ve seen that in action before.”
“But it was daylight in Landondowns when I saw that last,” I said. “Would the magic give us enough light to see by?”
“Maybe for a split second,” she said. “I could give it a shot, but if we provoke the goblins — or whatever else lives down here — we may be sorry for it.”
“Be ready,” I said. “It may come to that.”
As I rounded the underground chamber, I found the path to the next room. There was a break in the rock wall ahead. Through that gap, I saw the red aura again, bobbing toward us.
I stood there, unsure whether we should proceed toward it. It stopped moving forward, though its radiance only increased.
Then the shrieking started. From deep within the cavern, the sound of hundreds of goblins chirping and jabbering rose to a quick crescendo. Small hands groped at my legs, climbed my back, clung to my arms. Megra struggled against the same onslaught of tiny attackers.
I thrashed my spear, but didn’t connect with an enemy I couldn’t see. They weighed down my weapon hand and pushed me from behind, toward that glowing red light.
“Meg
ra,” I said, “it may be time.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “These creatures are pushy, but so far not hurting me.”
“Or me,” I said, “but we don’t have time to see where this leads. We need to break free, charge toward the light ahead and find Cindra. Duul’s cretins will be here any second. We’re needed up top, and we need Cindra now.”
“Okay,” Megra said. “One.” An orb of light grew in her hand. I could make out the rough outline of her fingers as she summoned a force bomb. “Two.” I resisted forces pushing me forward, waiting for that purple magic to detonate and fling them from my body. I held my eyes wide, ready to take in every detail from the split-second of purple light that might provide some clue as to what this underground world really looked like. “Th—”
“Stop!” I yelled.
The whole room lit with faint yellow-orange light, casting long flickering shadows toward us from well behind the red aura’s source. Somewhere, a fire was lit.
The source of the red aura was clear now. It was a goblin woman, too short to reach even my knee. The curves of her figure were hard to make out in the faint light, her dark green skin blending into the surrounding shadows. Earrings lined one ear from its long drooping lobe to its floppy pointed tip. She held an iron staff in one hand and a ball of red light in the other.
Goblins continued to push me and Megra from behind until we had no choice but to climb forward, through the opening that led away from the front chamber and deeper into the tunnel. I stole a glance backward and saw what I had felt earlier along the ground. It was a bone, or a series of bones, shaped like the tail of some enormous creature. That tail led to a solid rock wall, where it ended.
Littering the ground in that entry chamber were small rocks that looked golden, silver, and bronze. They sat in piles, except for the silvery rocks which I must have brushed aside with my spear. There was also a small pile of fruits and vegetables sitting next to the bone tail, and a few odds and ends tucked into it.
The purple magic fizzled and disappeared from Megra’s hand. As we got closer to the small goblin woman, she stared at us and spoke in a language too squeaky and quick to make any sense of. She stood there, yelling her little words while we progressed slowly toward her.
“Are these goblins all naked?” Megra asked.
I glanced down at the goblins hugging my limbs and clutching my vest. Cracked leathery skin pressed against my clothing and my bare arms. “Yes,” I said. “Even the old saggy ones.”
“What do you want with us?” I yelled. The goblin woman’s hands moved wildly as she spoke. Then, giving up, she turned and headed deeper into the cave.
I stopped pushing back against the goblins and just started walking, hunching slightly to avoid hitting my head on the low cave ceiling. The next room had another bone structure in it, this one like a large skeletal claw, its wrist was half embedded in the rock. Larger piles of shining rocks and food sat here.
“They won’t hurt you,” Cindra called from deeper in the cave. Her voice was barely audible over the sound of cogs grinding against each other. I wanted to run toward her, but the weight of two dozen goblin hangers-on didn’t allow it.
“Are you alright?” I yelled.
“Fine,” she said. “They have a temple here, or maybe shrine is a better word.”
When they led us to the deepest chamber of the mine, we rounded a corner and found Cindra. She stood, holding a lit torch next to the largest of the bones we had seen. It was a skull, with two long horns sticking out of a wide sheet of skeletal forehead. Two large holes sat where eyes should be.
A weird metal contraption sat against one wall, with gears that pumped long strips of metal deep into a hole in the rock. At odd intervals, a metal cup would rise from the depths, tip over, spill out a small rock, and then follow a metal chain back down into the ground.
“Is that an energem?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “as are these.” I followed Cindra’s gaze to a small pile of medium-sized energems. They were arranged next to the largest piles of gold, silver, and what I took to be copper sitting before that massive skull as if it were an offering.
“And all this food,” Megra said. So this is where the stolen food ended up. The goblins hadn’t eaten it, they were offering it to the long-dead remains of a fossilized creature.
I handed Cindra the gear she had left behind, then I opened the expansion pack Yurip had given me and started shoveling the food inside, one armful at a time. Apples, squash, corn, and other produce rolled into the bag and disappeared into its depths without adding weight to the pack itself.
“They took torches, pickaxes, weapons,” Cindra said. “They’ve been hoarding everything down here. Along with your special compass.”
She was right. My compass sat atop a pile of gold as if it were the crown jewel of their collection. I took out my map and saw that this was the last chamber my compass had traveled through. We were in a round rock chamber, next to but not connected with a small square room. I zoomed out just a bit. It looked like the temple’s basement room with the stone-spike meditation beds.
“They want us to worship the dragon with them,” Cindra said.
“What makes them think it’s a dragon?” Megra asked.
“Nothing makes them think it isn’t,” Cindra said. “That’s as far as I’ve been able to understand these creatures. They’re not dangerous, just sticky-fingered.”
I bent down to collect the compass. I lifted it from the pile of other sundry items the goblins had stolen. The goblins began to shriek and beat their fists against the floor. A few others scurried forward with rocks in their hands. They started throwing them at us with all of their strength.
“Oh,” Cindra said. “Sticky-fingered and protective.”
“Ow!” I yelled as a rock hit me in the face. “We need to get out of here. Megra, this wall should connect us to the temple. Can you try blowing the wall?”
“The walls here never seemed interested in that,” Cindra said. “Her mileage may vary.”
“You saw what happened last time we tried bombs down here,” she said. “Ow!”
“What other choice do we have?” I asked. “Ow! Cut it out, would you?”
“I’ve already tried Flirting,” Cindra said. “I offered to let one of them sink inside my voluptuous green body and swim in my warm shallows. That turned out to be more terrifying than alluring. I may need a boost to that skill when we’re through here.”
“I suppose,” Megra said, “if the temple walls are sturdy, and there are support columns inside that bear the weight of the hill already, blasting this portion of the wall won’t cause too much structural damage. Okay, here goes.”
She lit up a purple orb in her fist. “One… Two… Three!”
We stepped away from the rock wall as the bomb detonated. The goblins scurried backward while the wall collapsed in front of us. We climbed over the chunks of brown stone in a mad dash to escape the mine and get back inside the temple.
I had been right. We climbed over broken rock and landed on the sharp stone spikes that formed the entire floor.
I lay there for a moment, my heart racing and my lungs pumping air in and out of my body in quick thrusts. Megra and Cindra lay by my side.
“Cindra,” I said, “you’re sinking.”
“Oh,” she said. “Slime and spikes don’t mix.” She held onto the smooth sides of a pair of spires by her and stopped her slow slide toward the bottom of the spike pit.
The first goblin to come through the opening was the woman with the iron staff. She yelled and screamed from her angry face, but her expression began to soften as she stood there, her bare green feet resting on the tips of stone spikes.
I felt myself calm as well. These meditation beds, they seemed to hold a power within them, the same way that the recovery beds offered healing. I opened my skillmeister menu for a moment and watched as I gained a bonus to my Resolve. One point, then another, before the increase stopped improving
.
The goblin woman continued to rant while more goblins approached from behind her. I thought every third word or so made sense. She wasn’t speaking gibberish, she was just speaking way, way too quickly.
“Ma’am,” I said. “Please slow down so I can understand you.” She paused for a moment, but her speech was still too rapid when she started up again.
Still, she had tried. That meant that she wasn’t just some rodent-like pest infesting our settlement. She was capable of more than a donkey or a twolf or a ram would be.
“Perhaps I could skillmeister you and add to your Resolve so we could discuss this mix-up.”
She cocked her head to the side. Then she nodded vigorously.
“Great,” I said. “Keep talking while I work.”
I improved her Resolve once, twice, six times before her speech slowed to an intelligible rate.
“You destroyed our temple!” she yelled. “You desecrated the offerings we made to the lord of the rocks! One day he will rise from the rock and bring us into glory!”
“Mayblin,” I said, learning her name from her skillmeister window, “I’m sorry for our intrusion. Your people took one of mine and we had to rescue her.”
“She would have been a perfect offering to the lord of the rocks if she didn’t move and talk so much,” the goblin woman said. “We thought she was an emerald come to life. Goblins have simple but powerful imaginations.”
“What you called the lord of the rocks?” I said. “Those are only the bones of some long lost creature that met a bad end. If you’re looking for spiritual guidance, I can bring you to the goddess Nola.”
Mayblin’s faintly glowing red magic ceased, as did the sound of gears and cogs grinding away in the mines.
“A real goddess?” she asked. “I’ve heard the stories about your gods and goddesses, they don’t take goblins as subjects. They cast us out.”
“Subjects isn’t the right word,” I said. “Snacks is a little closer, but let’s settle on followers. That’s nicely in between.”
