SC Book One: Life's Bazaar; Chapter Nine: Descending Into the Hold, Part Two
The tunnel ended in a small bedroom. Dead rats, burnt tindertwigs and bits of broken stone littered the floor. The only furnishings included a cot against the wall to their left and a wooden chest bearing a dented lantern. The lantern was lit, but barely enough light could escape through its shutters to illuminate the room. Which explained how they hadn’t seen the light as the approached the room in the tunnel. Across from the tunnel was another gear door.
Lying on the bed, its breathing slow, slept a skulk wrapped up in a cloak. Dip gripped his sithak, preparing himself for an eventual fight, as Shiore and Wrast shared a look. I wonder if me and Zip look like that when we’re about to cause trouble.
The rest of the group surrounded the elves, preparing to be back up, as Wrast jumped on the bed and grabbed the skulk by the arms. The creature’s eyes flew open, took one look at Wrast and shrieked, bucked on the bed and trying to tear the elf’s grip from him. Shiore stood at the head of the bed and grabbed the skulk’s shoulders, trying to push him back onto the bed. But the creature kicked and wrestled with his arms, trying to break free. He cursed in his language, whatever language that may have been. Dip only assumed by the tone that they were curses.
With practiced ease, Wrast locked the skulk’s legs down with his own, and with Shiore pinning his shoulders, he put his whole weight on the creature’s chest, restraining his arms above his head. This did not stop the tirade of words spewing from his mouth.
Clasping both wrists with one hand, his flesh one, Wrast tore off the leather glove with his teeth to reveal the metal hand. An adamantine blade emerged from the side of the arm, pointing straight at the spot between the skulk’s eyes.
This shut the creature up.
Whoa. Dip’s eyes widened, much as the skulk’s did, although he was positive the new prisoner did not think the blade was as cool as the kender did.
“What language do you speak?” Shiore asked. “Do you speak Common?”
“Trogg…” The creature gulped, his eyes nearly crossed from trying to keep watch on Wrast’s blade. “Trogg speak Common.” His broken Common was rudimentary, with little finesse and a very strong, guttural accent. Dip wondered who had a better grasp on the language, Trogg or Wrast. Something told him the dark skinned shadow man would win that game.
Shiore nodded, her demeanor all business. “Good. Then show us how to get to the Malachite Hold.”
Trogg twisted his wrist, the only movement he could really make, and pointed a shaking finger towards the floor. “Hold below.” He flicked his finger then to the tunnel they just emerged from. “That way.
A line formed from Shiore’s lips. “Show us.”
The skulk named Trogg glanced fearfully at Wrast’s blades and swallowed, a bead of sweat glistening on its - his - gray and hairless temple. He nodded. With his agreement, Shiore turned back to the group. “Let’s tie his hands.”
“Trogg…” The creature croaked and licked his bloodless lips. “Trogg have suggestion.” Curious, Shiore gazed down at the skulk, eyebrow raised and listening. “Elevator guarded by hobgoblins.” The mimic had said hobgoblins had been part of the plot. Dip nodded, pleased he remembered this detail. “Suggest Trogg lead as prisoners. Get through.”
Shiore’s interested expression turned incredulous in a subtle, almost imperceptible eye movement. “And they’re supposed to believe you caught all of us?” Dip snickered at the idea.
Trogg’s eyes shifted nervously. “Trogg not impressive?” His gaze fell on each of them and realization hit him. “Trogg not impressive.”
Dip actually felt bad for the creature, dejected as Wrast bound his hands with a length of rope, then hobbled his legs so he couldn’t run. To feel so helpless, even if Trogg would probably think nothing of slitting their throats while they slept, Dip couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him.
Zip watched Wrast make the last tightening knot in the rope. “Impressive. And without the use of charm person.” Zip deflated a little at that and Dip knew his brother felt disappointed that once again fear and brute force stole his thunder. “Although I like using it,” he added, as if to remind the group for next time.
Shiore tossed her hair over her shoulder, hand on her hips as she eyed Dip’s twin. “Are you saying I wasn’t charming?”
He grinned. “No, you were very charming.”
“I should think so. Well, maybe you could use it to charm the hobgoblins,” she suggested.
“Depends. Trogg, how many hobgoblins guard the elevator?”
“F-four.”
Sighing audibly, Zip shook his head. “I might be able to charm one, but no more than that.”
Shiore nodded. “So we fight them.”
Dip grinned broadly, shouldering his weapon eagerly. “Shall we then?”
With Trogg in the lead, and with Wrast directly behind holding the end of the rope like a leash - making Dip snicker at the image of the elf taking his pet skulk out for a walk - they headed back through the tunnel into the welcome room. Wrast frowned darkly as Trogg climbed the stairs leading back to Ghelve’s Locks. At the platform where the stairs turned left and continued up, he stopped. He felt the wall with his hands until he pushed a notch hidden within the rock. A secret door opened up leading into a hallway. Dip’s insides did a happy dance.
Shiore shook her head. “We could have searched forever and never found it.”
Wrast gave Trogg a nudge with the sole of his foot to get him moving into the passage.
A little like the secret hall Nardakk found in the mask room, the passage had no discernable exits besides the one they just opened. Although it, too, held dust covering the walls and floors. That’s where the similarity ended. This hall continued only about twenty feet before it met another wall, half as long as the other. No murals had been painted on the walls, either.
But unless Trogg was betraying them, there must be another way out of the hall. Still leading, the skulk entered the passage first, crossing the length to rap three times on the wall.
Growling, Wrast tugged on his reigns. “What doing?” the elf asked in his broken Common.
“Trap,” Trogg explained. He pointed to his feet. “Pit.” Wrast knelt where the skulk pointed, tracing what Dip assumed was the edge of the pit trap Trogg spoke of. “Not want fall in pit. Knock to have pit locked.”
Scowling, Wrast spit out something in Elven. Obviously he was not pleased with Trogg’s actions.
After a moment, they heard the click of something locked into place. Trogg’s whole body relaxed in relief, the pit trap having been disarmed. He pressed the hidden button for the secret door to reveal itself then threw himself behind Wrast as it scraped open.
The elf barked something at Trogg that Dip assumed to be along the line of coward or “Get in there!” His attention - and indeed all of their attentions - shifted upon hearing angry cries insinuating death from inside the room. Four hobgoblins, ugly, squish faced creatures, the taller, uglier cousins to goblins, charged toward Wrast across the wood planked floor, each wielding long swords or javelins and small steel shields.
Issuing a war cry of his own, Wrast charged into the room to meet their enemies. Dip opened his mouth to suggest a plan of action, but the rest of the group leapt into the fray without giving him a chance. Maybe it was because they were so much taller than him, but they didn’t even notice he’d wanted to speak. But it would have been easier to pick them off in the narrower hallway. It seemed his friends were too eager to join the fight to think about strategy.
With Wrast and Shiore engaged with one hobgoblin and Nardakk shooting his spear at another, and Ayame up in the air shooting, Dip opted to string his yothak. From a quiver at the side of his pack, he removed an arrow and sent it hurtling toward one of the hobgoblins at the back of the room. “Hey! Over here, you squished nosed bat face!” he taunted, attempting to distract the hobgoblins from throwing their spears at Ayame.
A giant whirlwind cone of rainbow colors swirled into being and surrounded the two goblinoids. Dip watched as the dizzying array of pigments caused the hobgoblin’s eyes to spin. The one finally collapsed to the floor while the other blinked and shook off the effects. Glancing quickly to the side of the room, Dip saw his brother, fingers splayed out in front of him with a look of great concentration directed toward where the vortex of color had been, the spell winking out as quickly as it came.
“He’s gayifying them!” Ayame laughed.
Seeing his friend down, the still standing hobgoblin turned his focus on Zip. Not this time! Dip would not let what happened the day before happen again to his brother. Now that there was only one hobgoblin alert and on his own, Dip charged with his yothak, leaping over the rolling head of one of the hobgoblins either Wrast or Shiore was engaged with. The lone hobgoblin stared at the small kender, unbelieving that this diminutive creature could do anything to him. He blocked with his shield and went to swing with his javelin, but Dip’s reach was longer, and below the range of the small shield. He swept the long shaft of the weapon behind the hobgoblin’s legs and twisted his grip to stab at him as he tripped and stumbled backward, not expecting such a strong attack.
“Just because I’m small,” he grunted as he shifted his stance to attack again and grinned wickedly, “doesn’t mean I’m not dangerous.” His next attack knocked the shield from his enemy’s hand, the butt end of the yothak smashing into the hobgoblin’s kidney. Dip then followed through on the momentum of his attack, spinning around and sending the blade of his weapon through the small of the hobgoblin’s back. The pig faced man made a sound like he was about to vomit, but only blood came spewing out. Along with his guts as the yothak punched straight through the creature’s torso. “That’s mine,” the warrior said and tore the weapon back out, the hobgoblin dead before the last squick of the yothak as it pulled free. The corpse crashed to the wooden floor, splattering blood as it did.
Panting hard, Dip took a look around the room. Nardakk was retrieving his thrown spear. Ayame had landed and was collecting any intact arrows while Shiore and Wrast checked to make sure their hobgoblins were dead. Nona cooed worriedly from the hallway, Zip only a few feet away where he cast his spell. No one had anything more than a few scratches and blood that was mostly their enemies on them. Dip sighed with relief.
The battle done, the kender warrior examined the room they were in. Of all the rooms in the complex, this was the only one they found, besides the forest room, that had floor of anything other than stone. After walking part way around four of the eight walls, he thought he understood what was going on. Taut iron chains looped over eight enormous pulleys bolted to the fifteen foot high ceiling. That explained how Ayame had been able to rain death from above as easily as she had. One end of each chain was fastened to a corner of the wooden floor - a floor that he quickly realized was not really a floor as it did not meet flush to the stone walls. The other end of the chains dropped through a hole in what he presumed what actually a platform - an elevator platform! - connected to something far below. Set into the one wall was an iron panel with an iron lever jutting from it. Another gear door stood closed in the wall catty corner from the secret passage they entered.
Someone grunted near where Dip stood. The spell Zip cast was wearing off, the hobgoblin groggily getting up from his prone position. Shiore hefted her ax and strode with purpose across the room, holding out her weapon at the hobgoblin’s ugly face. The creature staggering and blinked, still a little dazed. “Surrender!” she ordered.
Nardakk spoke in a guttural language, something that sounded like hocking a loogie. It made Dip miss his friends back home and the spit contests they used to have. The hobgoblin reacted to Nardakk’s words and fell to one knee before Shiore, speaking the same guttural language back at the orc. “He says he surrenders.”
“Goblinoid?” Ayame asked. The orc shaman nodded.
Trogg, almost forgotten at this point, spoke up, pointing to the iron lever in the wall. “Knob there take you down.”
Shiore swung her ax to point level at Trogg. “You’re coming with us.”
The skulk seemed to shake even more violently. “Trogg no help! He not know Hold.”
She glared at him a few extra moments, letting the skulk continue to shake. Then she signed and lowered her ax. “I suppose he’d just slow us down.”
Zip kicked the body of the closest hobgoblin, the one still attached to its head. “We should probably remove the bodies.” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think we want to ride down with them.”
“Agreed,” Ayame said, purposefully not looking in the direction of the decapitated hobgoblin.
They began moving the bodies. Dip’s fingers closed around a leather pouch tied to his kill’s belt. Absently he tucked it into his own pouch, then tugged at the leather vest he wore and dragged him across the floor.
Ayame asked as he passed her, “Did you need help with that?” Although he knew by her expression that she only asked out of kindness.
“Nope, I’m stronger than I look.” Indeed, he was able to drag his body across the room almost as easily as Nardakk with his. Although halfway across, Shiore came over and gave him a helping hand.
Once the dead hobgoblins and the last surviving hobgoblin had been brought into the passageway, they all gathered at the center of the platform while Wrast hit the lever to take them down.
“Trogg,” Shiore called out as the chains began to creak into action. “Is there any immediate danger upon arriving below that we should know about?”
Trogg shook his head. “Not that Trogg knows.”
With that, they left Trogg, the hobgoblins, and Jzadirune above them as they descended into the Malachite Hold.