Henry looked at Tony, but the young man just shook his head. “How in the hell does that little sonofabitch survive down here? It’s not just me, right? Like, that’s one weird little dude.”
Tony nodded. “Yeah." He hesitated, then asked, "Uhh, my eyes are heavy. Do you think you could take watch now?”
Henry opened his mouth to reply, but the young adventurer was already curled up into a ball, well on the way to oblivion. After a few moments, he started snoring.
Henry grunted and scooted himself backward until he could put his back against the stone wall. His energy felt seriously drained. I wonder how much worse I’d feel without my endurance or healing abilities? I’d probably be dead.
The thought was grim. He patted his scarred leg while he thought about it.
One thing was clear. He was gimped like crazy with his metal magic locked away. Henry absently reached down and scooped a couple handfuls of stone up out of the solid floor. Then he fashioned a few missiles that looked like stone whiffle balls, hollow inside with plenty of holes. He hoped there wouldn’t be any more fighting, hell, he had actually struggled with this small effort of magic, but it wasn’t in his nature to just sit around, either.
His eyes alighted on the sheath at Tony’s back that held his strange dagger. Henry reached towards the dagger and then thought better of it. Both his brain and his gut were screaming at him that it was a bad idea. If it was an enchanted weapon now, it could only have so many owners. If it was something else...he’d seen how it had instantly killed multiple creatures now. Getting made dead was not on Henry’s to-do list.
Instead, he awkwardly, tentatively reached out again with his Mind Whip, imagining himself extending his awareness.
Now that he knew what to look for, the contact was interesting. Tony’s dagger was like a ball of death magic, feeling like a dark party he listened to through a wall. The longer he maintained the connection, the more Henry felt like he was actually getting a message from the thing, almost like a greeting.
When he felt the dagger reaching out towards him, following his Mind Whip, Henry terminated the connection. His curiosity was piqued, but he was playing with forces he didn’t understand. There was a time to learn how to use his new ability, but while he was exhausted and laid out in a goblin stable now was not that time.
Henry shook his head. The mystery could wait. His pressing concern was his own lack of power, not Tony’s new toy.
He knew what he really needed to do was master his light and dark magic to help offset the loss of his metal magic. Figuring out the simple stuff hadn’t been too difficult, but he had no illusions that actually learning to use his new magic would be easy. It had taken him a while to figure out metal and earth, after all.
Actually...illusion. Hmm. Henry frowned in thought. Something was on the tip of his mind, something he thought Jason might have said before. Light, concealment, lasers...he might be able to bend and manipulate light too, like create illusions and make himself invisible.
Invisibility! That was what he'd been trying to remember! The thought was staggering. Henry imagined if he could make himself invisible. He quickly ran through the short list of starter abilities he got with his light magic but frowned, disappointed. Pretty much all of it was just ways to see, protect his vision, or alter his vision.
Now that was interesting. Henry pursed his lips. What if he used light magic to absorb of all the light, and darkness magic to see in the dark? He didn’t have time to figure out how to do it, but the possibilities were interesting.
No, right now he needed to think of something he could actually figure out how to use that would be useful in his current situation. Henry nodded. It was obvious he needed a bluff.
After running through the list of powers he could learn quickly, and figuring out the natural opposite ability with dark magic, Henry formed a plan. With no realistic alternative, he adopted Jason’s process, sitting quietly and thinking about magic. The whole thing felt alien to him, but he didn’t exactly have power to burn. He also didn’t want to make any displays of power. A bluff only worked if it was a surprise.
He really hoped he wouldn’t need to bluff, but better to be safe than sorry. He wasn’t sure how much real use he’d be in a long fight, as beat up as he was. His abused body needed at least a few full days to rest and recover.
Henry didn’t know how much time had passed before Trask came back, the young goblin’s face unreadable. “You should come with me,” he said. “The leaders will see you now.”
“Hey, kid, wake up,” Henry said, shaking Tony awake. The young man woke with a start, his hand going for his dagger, looking around wildly. Henry felt sad, but proud, the reaction bittersweet. I guess the kid isn’t innocent anymore. He’s a warrior now. Henry was too experienced to feel guilt; he knew Tony had made his own choice. He also knew he’d have to think about the young man differently now, though.
Tony didn’t deserve to be called a kid, not anymore.
After they were both up, Henry said, “Hold on a second. I need to piss.” Trask merely nodded and walked out of the stone building.
“I’ll be out here!” the young goblin called back.
With no more prying eyes, Henry began a series of stretches, pushing his groaning muscles, but not straining them enough to hurt himself again. Tony looked confused, his hand on the top of his pants.
“You can go ahead and piss if you need to, but we don’t know what’s going to happen, and we’ve been laying around. Let’s try to warm up a little bit before we leave, at least stretch. We’re not out of this yet.”
Tony nodded, his eyes growing flinty before the young adventurer turned to do his business with an economy of motion Henry had seen many times among young, battle-hardened soldiers.
Yeah, he’s definitely not just a kid anymore.
***
Aodh walked with Henry through the goblin village again, this time the atmosphere was completely different. Once they'd began following Trask, a handful of goblin warriors had taken up positions around them and a couple of the village guards flanked Trask. The gob-folk were watching again, but this time they seemed a strange mixture of afraid, excited, and some other emotion that Aodh couldn’t identify.
It felt like all their eyes were on him.
Henry stumbled, and Aodh stole a nervous glance at the man. The Delvers LLC leader looked like hell, like he’d fall over again any moment. It was obvious he wasn’t going to be his normal, invulnerable self. Aodh felt determination welling up inside himself, willpower he'd never known he had. Someone had to be strong, and there was no other option. It had to be him.
Their procession marched through the stone village, gob-folk standing in doorways and perching on roofs watching them go by. The group kept heading towards the distant temple, eventually arriving at the foot of the giant, disturbing reliefs carved into the solid rock.
A quartet of guards stood outside the temple and joined the end of their group after they entered. “Hey, so they’re all in here?” asked Henry.
Trask just nodded, the young goblin only looked back briefly. The longer Aodh spent around the goblins, the better he got at reading their body language. He thought Trask was worried and if Trask was worried, that made him worried.
Aodh thought about his dagger and actually felt it with his mind. He could just feel where the dagger was at all times now. The sensation was new, beginning while he’d held watch over the unconscious Henry. At first, the contact had scared him, but in an amazingly short time, he’d accepted it. There was nothing he could do about it, and it didn’t seem to be causing him any harm.
The procession of goblins and the two men followed a large hallway until they came to a set of bronze double doors. Aodh did a double take, realizing that the doors reminded him of the huge doors they’d encountered in the ork dungeon before.
Trask knocked, and the doors opened, revealing a large, square room. A large chair, basically a goblin-sized throne, sat at the far end of the room. An
older goblin male sat upon it, his dark robe stretching over his girth. He picked his sharp teeth with a small bone, glaring at the newcomers.
Shaman Hask stood to one side of the room, some other goblins, mostly women flanking her. She glared at the goblin on the throne. On the other side of the room stood a group of goblin priests wearing robes. Another smaller group of priests clustered near the doors the procession had passed through, and followed them forward. Uh oh, thought Aodh.
He was only a simple farmer, but the situation looked like a group of chickens, gorhis, and sheep all fighting over the same feed.
The goblin on the throne stood up, spreading his arms and saying something in Gholis, clearly a planned speech. Trask translated, “Head Priest Verrk welcomes you to his temple and his hall, fake Voice and defeated enemy demigod. You have truly been worthy adversaries, but I know that the accounts of your deeds are embellished. Especially you, demigod.” Trask paused and said, “He is talking about you, Henry.”
“I got that,” grated Henry, taking a couple steps forward. The surrounding guards didn’t actually level any weapons, but they noticeably shifted, looking uncertain. Aodh eyed the man, noticing him palm one of the strange rocks he’d made from a belt pouch. Aodh shook his head. No, it couldn’t come to that.
The young adventurer held up a hand and spoke, “I want to know why I am a fake Voice. Why am I not the real Voice? I challenge this.” Trask began translating, and after he was done, the priests behind Aodh hissed. The priests near Head Priest Verrk muttered.
Aodh had no idea what the Voice of Memory was. He should have asked Trask on the way back to the village after Henry had passed out, but he’d been worried about the newly rescued warriors attacking them. He could only see one way to resolve the current situation without a massive fight. He had to improvise.
Aodh spared a glance for Shaman Hask, but she resolutely stared at the opposite wall, her jaw clenched. Verrk responded, and Trask translated again. Trask said, “Head Priest Verrk says he rejects your identity as the Voice because you are Fideli, and Memory would never task a non-Gob-folk as the Voice. Plus, instead of traveling with a demigod of violence, you are paired with a tired Terran. Head Priest has rejected accounts of your companion's power and believes all the Gob-folk to recently die were done in through trickery.
“Lastly, Head Priest Verrk rejects that you, the Voice, killed the Devourer. He believes there is more trickery at play, evidenced by the fact that the fake demigod is a priest of Dolos, the deceiver!”
After Trask stopped talking, Verrk dramatically pointed at Henry’s arm where rips in his clothing displayed the purple triangle of Dolos engraved into his flesh.
Uh oh, this is bad, Aodh frantically thought.
The surrounding guards and warriors began edging closer, some of them showing their teeth. The atmosphere grew incredibly tense. Before Aodh could speak, Henry barked, “He wants to see a demigod, I’ll show him one!”
Henry’s skin lit up; the brilliance made even more startling in the dim lighting of the goblin village. Patterns and lines of darkness crawled over his skin, and his face was masked in shadow. “How about this motherfuckers!?” Henry yelled.
Aodh only goggled for a second. He appreciated what Henry was trying to do, but he knew it probably wouldn’t be enough. Goblins only respected power. While the gob-folk were equal parts dazed and distracted, Aodh ran forward, his legs pumping like blessed steel springs. None of the goblins near Verrk registered his presence until it was too late.
The young man snarled, jumping up and drawing his mysterious dagger in midair. He landed on the new High Priest and held his weapon up in the air dramatically. What was the name of the goblin god? Memory. Aodh said aloud what seemed appropriate for the moment, “You will never be remembered. Be forgotten!”
He slammed his dagger home. The weapon flashed black, and the old goblin’s eyes instantly lost their light. Aodh withdrew the blade from the late head priest’s corpse and blinked. The dagger was still black, an inky black so deep, it almost seemed to suck in the light. Its form seemed to move like water.
Aodh spun around, and every goblin in the room stared at the black dagger. Slowly at first, then with growing speed, the priests fell to their knees, then the rest of the goblins followed suit. In only moments, Henry was the only figure still standing.
The young adventurer opened his mouth, but nothing came out. What had he done? Suddenly, the connection with his dagger pulsed, and he heard a voice in the back of his mind. It was faint, and very obviously alien. “Hello, partner,” it whispered.
Aodh's eyes grew wild as he met Henry’s confused but relieved gaze. Meanwhile, Aodh’s heart felt like it’d dropped to the floor. His stomach pulsed, and he reflexively pushed for his magic, opting for a quick spike of power instead of a slow burn. What the hell is going on?
“Feed me more,” sighed the dagger.
Goblin Secrets
Henry sat in a child-sized goblin chair, watching in exhausted amusement as Tony fumbled his way through taking spiritual control of the Gobskull tribe. It seemed the new adventurer had scared the living beejesus out of all the priests. They had interpreted everything he’d done as fulfilling their prophesies.
The priest caste currently had Tony cornered, using Trask to translate as they asked him questions about Memory, their god of death. They were also busy inducting him as the official Voice of Memory and the de facto high priest. Tony looked flabbergasted and completely out of his depth. Henry chuckled. He knew it was a dick move to laugh, but there was nothing he could do to help, either.
Shaman Hask sat next to Henry. In heavily accented Luda she muttered, “Much change now. Much moving around.”
Henry thought he understood. “You need to cement your new power now that Tony basically just handed you the entire tribe, eh?”
“Yes,” Hask replied, confirming Henry’s suspicion she could understand Luda better than speak it.
“How do you know the Luda language in the first place, much less Trask? He speaks it fluently.”
Hask grimaced. “Trade. Close town. Trade with Terrans. Gob-folk give stone, metals, cave plants. Terrans give food, animals, bronze. Some have to talk to trade.”
“That makes sense.” Henry thought out loud, “So we need to get out of here quickly probably so you can do your thing. That works just fine for us. We need to get going too, probably to this town you mentioned. I need to get a message to my friends. Actually, do you have any gold?”
“No. No need gold,” Hask said, shaking her head. The movement made her ornate clothing click as it shifted. “Trade all away.”
Henry sighed. Of course not, that would have been too easy. “So what’s the catch? Why are we still here? You haven’t just given us the Dolos loot and send us on our way yet, there has to be a reason why.”
“Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Waiting for pain in the leg. Pain in head? Pain in neck?” Hask grimaced as she tried to find the right expression.
“A pain in the ass?”
“That is working,” said Hask. “Sister of Trask, niece of me. Gob-folk shaman being trained but not for Gobskulls. Need to see larger world.”
“In other words, you want to get rid of her. What do we get out of it?”
“Voice is important. If I believe or not believe not matters. Gob-folk believe. Cannot let Voice die with animals close.”
Henry looked up for a moment in thought, putting the pieces together. He knew if he was less cynical and less used to military and hospital politics, he might not have understood. However, he said, “Tony has to stay alive for the priests here to keep believing in him and keep the Head Priest position in his honor, huh? So you can’t let him die now, at least not close enough to the town that others will know.”
Shaman Hask nodded, no shame visible on her inhuman face. “Niece of me is named Rekkla. She can help through forest, help not get eat by animals.”
“By animals you
mean monsters?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I get it. Good talk, but if it’s all the same to you, I want to get the hell out of here. We can get all the Dolos stuff while we wait for this Rekkla. I’m tired of sitting around.”
“So you say. Let us prepare.”
Henry grunted and stood up, hiding his slight wobble. He absent mindedly patted his leg while he watched Shaman Hask issue orders to her kin. It was time to get Tony, get the loot, and get the fuck out of dodge.
Henry never knew he could hate caves so much.
***
Trask, Shaman Hask, a few of Hask’s administrators, a handful of priests, and a couple guards made up the entire group of gob-folk as Henry and Tony traveled deeper into the bowels of the temple.
Henry was glad they hadn’t had to fight the entire village. He still thought it was weird that the freed goblin warriors weren’t trying to kill him, but Shaman Hask really did seem to wield great power over her people, especially without the priesthood opposing her anymore. If it had come down to a fight, Henry wasn’t sure he and Tony would have survived, but even if they had, he would not have wanted to explore this big assed temple.
Finding the loot in this dungeon would have taken longer than clearing it in the first place.
Eventually, after a few more twists and turns down identical looking stone hallways, the procession came to another set of bronze double doors. Shaman Hask pressed her hand to the wall and tapped it in a complex pattern. Henry’s slightly enhanced hearing caught the sound of gears turning and mechanisms obviously disengaging.
She just disarmed traps, he thought with a chill. The whole hallway was probably rigged. This dungeon was definitely more dangerous than Yanbei Cavern had been. Henry would make sure to remember this information.
Next, Hask pressed her hand on another nondescript place on the wall, tapped again, and the huge doors slowly swung open. The entire group moved forward, and the gob-folk leader grated, “Anything you not take, warriors will dump in the forest outside.”
Delvers LLC: Adventure Capital Page 10
