Chapter Eleven
The first few days going into the Riverbend tunnel were eventless, other than them all laughing at young Chureal, who looked like a dwarf with a shrunken head in the armor they’d made her wear. But on the third day, they were moving along, not too concerned about any creatures, when a flock of the bat-like cravens swarmed down from an overhead opening and attacked.
Braxton found the void, but as with the creatures by the lake, fighting these flyers in a dark tunnel in his falcon form didn’t seem smart. He drew his sword, though, and kept Chureal between him and the wall. The void allowed him to sense the creatures when they came too close, and he was able to kill several of them.
Cryelos wasn’t as lucky. He did end a craven or two with his short sword, but he was bitten on the neck not long after the battle began.
A few of the dwarves were bitten, too, but Big H and his hammer, along with some strange fog Chureal created, sent the flock of deadly creatures fleeing ahead of them down the tunnel. Many of them dropped dead as they fled, and the ordeal was ended almost as swiftly as it began.
Chureal used the power of her jewel to heal Cryelos and the two bitten dwarves, but for some reason, the dwarves didn’t recover as well as the elf did. Even though they looked as if they weren’t going to die, they were sick, useless to the group. Risking them further seemed pointless.
The party of ten was reduced to six because Big H decided the two injured fellows needed to be assisted back to safety by two healthy dwarves.
The group had to spend the whole of the next day enduring the smell of a rotting young tungler that apparently died from craven poison and had become their meal. Now, Braxton, Cryelos, Big H, Chureal, and two dwarves from the Digger Clan were huddling outside a cavernous opening in the tunnel that held not one, but two of the giant, hairless, bear-sized tungler moles.
"Well they're not as big as some I've seen," Big H said. He was clearly fighting to hide his fear. It was no use, though. The torch he was holding was shaking in his hand. Cryelos was unnerved as well. The digger dwarf who had been leading the group had thrown his torch in the cavern and quickly ran to the back of the line taking up a position hunched down behind Chureal.
"This cavern has to eventually lead to the surface, doesn't it?" Braxton asked the digger dwarf that hadn't ran.
"I don't think any part of this tunnel goes to the surface," the dwarf shook his head. At least the old maps don't show it.
"How long has it been since anyone has been down here?" asked Cryelos.
"Hundred ninety, maybe two hundred years," the digger answered.
"If there's no way up to the surface, then what do these things eat?" Braxton asked. The two creatures were quickly losing their fear of the flaming intrusion and looked as if they were coming to investigate the sound of their voices, or maybe the group’s scent.
Visibility was bad. No one in the group could tell how large the cavern before them was. It had to be big, though. The sound of flowing water echoed from deep within, and the sound of their talking seemed to be swallowed in its depth. The little light coming from the digger's torch only illuminated an area about thirty paces around it. The bottom of the cavern was littered with spiky stalactites, and they had no idea how high the top reached for the light didn't get anywhere near it. The possibility that there were more than the two tunglers they could see wasn't lost on any of them either.
"I don't know what they eat," the digger said, stepping back into the narrower part of the shaft to join his fellow behind Chureal. "But I know they eat dwarves that get too close, that's for sure. Why don't you use yeer magic and turn one of them into a—" The digger stopped when he found Cobalt's little dragon head glaring at him from Chureal's shoulder. He moved behind his fellow digger and looked to be contemplating the idea of fleeing back up the tunnel.
"Can't you make some light?" Big H asked. "Suclair could. If we could see what else was in there, we might could make a plan worth acting on."
Braxton looked at the two tunglers slowly moving toward them. The one he and Davvy had killed wasn't nearly as big as either of these. That was a good thing, though, because both of these were too large to fit into the shaft they were standing in. He couldn't decide if they were some sort of giant mole or a pink-skinned, hairless bear. They had dagger long claws for digging in front and wide hind feet. The one they’d killed had nasty teeth and looked like a growing cub compared to these.
Bear, or mole, he couldn’t decide. Maybe it was just a crossing of the two. Either way, the group had to do something.
"I'll try," Braxton said and he sought the void. He picked out the tips of several of the taller stalactites sticking up from the floor and tried to make them glow. To his amazement, they did, the top arm-length of them, anyway.
The vast cavern was blasted in the brilliant light. It was so bright that Cryelos had to look away. The two creatures turned toward the new sources of illumination and started growling, probably thinking there were more intruders.
"They can't see," Big H said excitedly. “Look at them.” He handed Cryelos his torch and stepped in to look around the giant cavern. Cryelos dropped both torches and followed with an arrow nocked in his bow.
To everyone's surprise, Cobalt leapt from Chureal's shoulder and flew into the cavern. She started after him, but Braxton caught the shoulder plate of the dwarven armor she was wearing and held her there at the cavern mouth.
"Slow it down, little one," he said. "There's no telling what else is in there."
"But Cobalt—"
"He will be all right."
Big H pulled his battle axe free, instead of his big war hammer, and started creeping up on one of the giant creatures. The diggers had moved up to the cavern mouth to watch from behind Braxton and Chureal.
The chamber was huge, easily as big as the grand cavern. Off to the left, from the middle of one of its rough, sparkling granite walls, a waterfall spilled forth, cascading into a pool that was mostly hidden by the limestone spikes that seemed to grow right out of the floor. Top of the cavern was so far up that Cobalt looked like a little blue dot flying a slow lazy circle high above them.
"On the count of three," Cryelos whispered to Big H. The elf was braced against the stalactite and ready to loose an arrow into the beast nearest him. Big H nodded his acknowledgment and, together, they counted to three.
Chapter Twelve
The dwarf had to swing up to make the axe catch the tungler's throat, and when he connected, he was showered by a spray of thick, crimson gore. The creature reached out to swipe at him with its claw, but Big H was already running away as fast as his little legs could carry him.
Cryelos's arrow struck the other one right in the eye socket. The beast turned and looked like it was going to lash out at the other tungler, but it stumbled and fell, the elf's arrow lodged deeply in its brain.
The beast Big H had hacked took its time to die and made several blind charges into the stalactites around it. By the way its massive claws shattered the limestone into crumbles, they were all glad that a more equally-sided battle hadn't taken place.
When Big H waded into the large pond-sized pool, the answer to Braxton's question about what the tungler's ate was answered. As the dwarf stood waist deep, washing the blood from his face, a large splash erupted from right behind him. His stumpy legs churned him out of the pond so fast that he appeared to be walking on the water. A moment later, little Cobalt swooped across the pool and snatched a fish that was nearly too big for his little wings to carry. The hungry dragon somehow managed to get its flopping prey to shore and wasted no time tearing into its fresh white meat.
The remaining members of the digger clan said that tungler's were formidable tunnel diggers in their own right. One of them started cutting the front claws off them to make tools out of while the other set up a spot near Braxton's glowing spikes and unrolled their maps to compare what they could see with what was around them.
Three tunnels led away from the cavern. On t
he map, it looked like a smudge formed by a drop of ale more than a cavern, and only one tunnel was represented. The mapped passage led to Riverbend Cavern, which was approximately two more days away.
The two diggers agreed that the other two tunnels had to lead to tungler lairs. Braxton and Cryelos, with Chureal and Cobalt behind them, were going to explore these two new tunnels while Big H stood guard over the diggers. Cryelos had cleverly broken off a piece of the glowing limestone and carried it to light the way.
The first tunnel led to a small cavern that smelled horribly of decaying fish and was littered with small needle-like bones and silvery reflective scales, but otherwise it was empty.
The other, however, led steeply upward for a good long while and came out into another large cavern that’s floor was covered with murky, stinking water that held thousands of fist-sized eggs all resting in damp mossy nests.
Braxton braved his way in, with Cryelos right behind him. Cobalt seemed reluctant to fly into this area, and that made Braxton wary. For a while, he and the elf wandered around the large cavern trying not to step on the eggs. Braxton saw what he hoped was a shaft leading up and away toward where he thought Camberly was, but it dead-ended.
Then as they were returning to the opening where Chureal and Cobalt were watching wide-eyed and waiting, Cryelos accidentally stepped on a pile of the eggs, and they crunched under his boot.
If anyone had a question about what kind of eggs they were, it was answered then. The whole ceiling exploded into a flurry of flapping craven wings. Luckily, the light of the limestone seemed to disorient them.
Chureal made another cloud of whatever noxious stuff she had before, and none of the enraged things pursued the group when they fled.
As soon as they made it back into the cavern where Big H was having to forcefully keep the two digger dwarfs from fleeing, they reported their findings. Hastily, and with professional precision, the two diggers collapsed the tunnel opening leading to the craven nest, sealing their access to the group, hopefully for good.
After the dust from the falling rocks settled, Braxton cornered one of the diggers. "How deep under the surface are we? We walked uphill for a long time in there, and the cavern full of craven eggs was at least another one hundred feet high." He pointed upwards, "This cavern is at least twice that."
"I'd say weer bout five hundred feet below the topsoil," one of the diggers said looking at his companion for reassurance. "Maybe six, but no more." The other nodded.
"Couldn’t it all cave in on us?" Braxton asked in amazement.
"Weer in a granite fissure covered by a sedimentary limestone layer, as you can see." The digger pointed to the tree-sized stalactites sticking up from the floor as if that should explain everything. "Only an earthquake or an angered elemental could bring it down on us."
This wasn't very comforting to Braxton, but he didn't let it bother him. They went about gathering their things so they could continue. All they had to do now was get to Riverbend Cavern and back and the diggers would feel safe enough to begin tunneling a strategic approach to Camberly for a surprise attack.
Another day and a half passed in which they seemed to be moving slowly and steadily uphill. Braxton waited and waited for the magical light he'd made to fade away, but when he realized his glowing chunk of limestone wasn't going to lose its intensity any time soon, he began talking to Chureal about the magic of the jewel.
The little girl stunned him by turning a piece of what Big H called shale into a piece of blood crystal. A torrent of ideas came flooding through Braxton's brain then. While the diggers discussed the unmapped branch of tunnel ahead of them, he felt more confident than he ever had that Pharark could be tricked and killed.
He tried several times to turn something into blood crystal, but his excitement and the myriad of ideas that were forming in his brain wouldn't allow him to concentrate. Chureal, however, had no problem doing it and proved it twice more on different types of stone.
"Hey, Chureal," Cryelos asked curiously after she made him an apple from a pebble. "If you were able to shrink Cobalt like you did, couldn't you have made him bigger so that he could carry us all on his back?"
Braxton rolled his eyes at the stupefied expression on her face. Obviously, that would have been far easier than trekking through the swamp in the snow, back before they’d found the dwarven underground, and by the look on her face, even she thought she might have been able to do it. Big H shook his head and laughed at them all. The sound made them forget Chureal's mistake, for Braxton and Cryelos hadn't heard their friend laugh like that since they were back on the Luck of the Little.
It was a good sound to hear.
Taerak's words echoed through Braxton's head as they laughed at themselves. "The jewel will guide you to where you need to be." This only added to Braxton's sudden confidence. Since they still had the demon’s summoning stone, and now the ability, at least Chureal's ability, to turn ordinary rock into blood crystal, he was certain that the idea dancing around on the tip of his tongue would soon solidify.
The diggers determined that one of the tunnels had been dug upwards toward the surface as a vent shaft to allow fresh air down into the long tunnel. The other tunnel stayed about a hundred feet below the surface so that it could eventually pass underneath the Vasting River. A torch was lit and carried a good way up the rising tunnel and, sure enough, a flow of air that caused the flames to flicker presented itself.
After returning to the split, they all followed the lower passage together and found that it dead-ended just as the maps showed. Apparently, tunglers or flocks of craven, or some other mishap, had caused construction to stop instantly, for an old hammer and chisel and several shovels lay discarded by an overturned wheelbarrow long forgotten when the diggers abandoned the shaft.
One of the two diggers corrected the assumption that the shaft had been abandoned when he told the tale of the workers never being seen again and were assumed to have been eaten. Braxton figured they at least had a chance to get back to the shaft that had airflow because only a small tungler could have gotten through these areas. He figured more than likely tales told by heavily drunken dwarves had been passed on, and a more reasonable outcome had taken place. In fact, he remembered a story from Master Finn about a few dwarves found wandering around Narvoza a few hundred years ago. He thought it might have been the first time the Narvozians found out they existed, but Braxton kept his opinion to himself. The diggers were skittish, but proud, and hurting their feelings or their pride wouldn't help anything.
They decided to go all the way back to where the tunnel split before making a camp. None of them liked the idea of being in a dead-end shaft, especially sleeping in one. Cryelos and Chureal both said they wanted to breath the fresh air, though Braxton hadn't been able to tell the difference between the air in the dead-end or that of any of the other tunnels. After smelling the rotting tungler, and the cave full of fish decay, it was all fresh air to him. They ate dried beef and sipped from the last of Big H's brandy flask. Cryelos had the first watch, followed by Big H, and then Braxton.
The diggers had secretly been deemed unreliable and likely to abandon the others, and Chureal was likely to fall asleep. So, while the dwarves drank, Cryelos skipped the brandy. Braxton took a few sips, but as soon as Chureal and Cobalt were curled up and asleep, he found the solitude of the void and began trying to turn things into blood crystal.
He tried and tried but never could. He finally gave up and let himself drift into slumber.
Sometime after Cryelos woke Big H for his watch, Cobalt crept away from Chureal and silently went in search for food. Naturally his keen senses led him to the upward shaft that brought in fresh air. With it, another faint smell drifted down to him, a smell that only an animal could detect. It was the smell of meat, distant but distinct. And the hungry young dragon's appetite wouldn't let him ignore it any longer. Without a sound, he left the group and not even the highly alert, wide awake Big H saw or heard him go.
&n
bsp; Once he was in the tunnel, away from the glowing limestone, Cobalt took a few minutes to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He leapt into flight and followed his sharp sense of smell. It took him a while of flying to reach the tunnel's mouth. It opened up in a jumble of large rocks that he had to wiggle and squirm through with his wings folded in tight. When he came out the other side, he was suddenly assaulted with another smell. It was one he was not familiar with but recognized it immediately as bad and dangerous.
Now, under the bright yellow moonlight, he carefully studied the position of the rocks around him, and when he leapt into flight, he circled the pile several times to mark it before venturing away.
Immediately, he noticed the ground was covered in snow. Several dozen campfires were burning nearby in the icy cold night, and once he located the river, barely a hundred paces from the pile of rocks where he’d emerged, he noticed the fires were on both sides of the water’s flow. And on the far side sat what looked like a city made of ice.
He followed the smell of meat and found the carcass of a cow that had been very crudely discarded into a mushy red snowdrift. The shrunken dragon landed and ate his fill of the recently killed animal, and then leapt back into the night sky. He found several of the dangerous smelling creatures sitting around a large fire and circled close. After finding a place to land, he crept through the muddy snow to listen in on their conversation.
They spoke with grunts and barks, except for a few who used crudely formed common words. It didn't matter, for he easily understood the meanings of their primal conversation. They were wood trolls, very unhappy to be stuck out in the open in the snow.
Cobalt leapt back into the air and quickly found his rock pile. He squirmed his way back down into the shaft and was happy to be out of the cold air. He took the time to warm himself, then he flew back down the passage and was glad to find that Lord Braxton was the one awake and watching. He landed at Braxton's feet and startled the man from his trance-like state. Braxton greeted him with a smile and caressed his scales for a moment, but Cobalt drew his attention.
Demon of Destruction Page 7
