005 – Sneak

***

Nimblesto the goblin ignored my demands to stop. He went right up the ladder anyway. His large, black eyes could see better in the dark than mine. He disappeared into the shadows above me. The expert sneak made no noise climbing to the top of the elevator shaft.

My brain told me to leave him to his thievery and flee the power station. That was the smart thing to do. But my hatred of the wilderness caused me to hesitate. I clung to a small hope that an airship might take me home. A higher window would show me the state of the superstructure and the surrounding country.

I left the coal pot behind, but strapped on my bags. This time I attached the sword sheath to my belt to keep it ready. Having a big murder-knife was better than not having one. I would have to trust Strythe’s instincts to kick in during a violent confrontation. My own fighting skill was nonexistent.

The ladder went up several stories. It passed doors which had been blocked off with wood walls plastered on the outside to make them less obvious. Someone had intentionally concealed this old elevator and converted it to a private passage. At the top, the ladder stopped at another wooden platform. The shaft continued up with no convenient way to climb it. Another door led out.

Nimblesto worked at the door with his knife, sliding the blade through a crack in the door and sawing away at a piece of rope on the other side. He was like a raccoon gnawing his way into someone’s attic, but less cute and more annoying.

“Nimblesto best,” he said as the rope came loose. He thoroughly enjoyed any form of mischief.

We slid the door aside and found ourselves looking at a wide animal pelt pinned to the wall. Either an elephant or an elephant sized monster originally owned it. The hanging skin concealed the door like a grisly curtain. On the other side was another storage room. This one contained more cured hides. There were also rugs, blankets, reams of fabric, and wicker baskets stuffed with random articles of clothing. Moths fluttered wildly around the room.

“Where are we?”

“Trolls kill humans. Chief keep treasure. Chief live top.”

“You call this treasure? It’s more like a laundry.”

The room contained dyed and woven fabric far beyond the monsters’ crafting skills. But the trolls didn’t need much in the way of clothes, so they chucked it all in this room. Goblins must have possessed more fashion sense than other monsters. Nimblesto shed his old rags and claimed some new apparel. He found children’s items in the baskets—which I tried not to think about too much—and donned a coat that fit him. He placed a bright red cap on top of his head. My clothes were filthy, but I didn’t have the patience to rummage through the baskets.

Outside the storage room, a long corridor stretched in both directions. I decided to head toward the outer edge of the power station to get a view from a window. Going the other way would lead back to a higher part of the silo looking down on the feast hall. I did not want to see the trolls or their giant baby statue a second time. The goblin scurried after me.

“Why are you following me again?”

“Human protect Nimblesto.”

“You think I’m going to protect you? Forget about it. I’ve got my own problems.”

“Troll fight human. Nimblesto run, hide, laugh.”

This little pest wanted to get me killed. His only good point was stealth. If we had to hide, I could count on him not making unnecessary noise. If we had to fight… well, at least he was honest about his intentions. Don’t count on any help.

The station’s outer parts had more interesting architecture than the interior or underground complex. The multistory sub-buildings had pillars, buttresses, turrets, domes, arched roofs, gables, stairwells, balconies, windows, and all the other things you would expect in a human habitat. Because the engineers exclusively used mergestone, they built with a chunkier aesthetic than buildings of steel and glass. But the station’s ugly design and heavy material allowed it to withstand the ages intact. It eroded at the same rate as the mountain.

The utility tunnel connected to one of the promenades encircling the whole structure. For the first time since the manaquake, I saw sunlight. It poured into the walkway between a colonnade of stout pillars. But the trolls modified the area with a wall of rubble and mortar to block off the promenade, along with a wooden gate made from sapling trees. They reserved this section for the private use of their chief. We stood outside a sub-building as large as a house.

“Wait a minute. I recognize this place. This is my room.”

“No. Room home chief.”

“Well, it’s true I never actually got to sleep in there.”

The chief’s abode was barred from the other side, which suggested someone waited inside to open it. That or the building had another secret passage. A huge kettle drum sat just in front of the door, and transom window above let in fresh air. The window was just large enough for a child to fit through. Nimblesto demanded I lift him up to my shoulders. He peered through the window for a minute and then squirmed his way in. From the inside, he slid the bar out of the way and opened the door.

The chief redecorated according to its trollish tastes. Splotchy red paint coated the walls. Piles of animal furs served as furniture. Iron tripods held oil lamps. Animal skulls adorned a wooden chair. An adobe fire pit smoldered in the center of the room, with greasy chicken bones mixed in with the ashes. Wickerwork grilles covered the windows, and heavy curtains kept out the cold mountain air. A dozen swords hung from the walls, no two the same, along with a collection of pole weapons. The people of this era were very creative with their instruments of murder.

Nimblesto scrounged through the place, looking for items to steal. I had no interest in this garbage. I raced to a window to get a look outside. My former suite faced the river and gave a commanding view of the valley below the mountain.

The passing millennia had not been good to the wilderness. The mountain was denuded of vegetation. The once endless forests shrank to irregular patches of trees separated by broad grasslands and scrub brush. Black, red, and orange vegetation mixed into the green. The river had shifted course and now overflowed its banks into sickly swamps teeming with insects. A colony of albino xlobats flitted through the air, the last rays of the sun shining through their transparent, skeletal wings.

It wasn’t just the monsters in the power station, all life had mutated into weird new forms. The whole biosphere had rearranged itself. Who knew what hideous beasts prowled in those forests? The wolves, lions, and bears could be unthinkably dangerous predators, en par with long extinct dinosaurs.

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I did not want to go camping out there.

“Nimblesto? Is there a steel tower at the top of this place?”

“Steel no tower. Rock tower.”

He looked at me as though I were an idiot for suggesting such a thing. All the metal in the underground complex corroded, so a tower exposed to wind and rain could not survive. It collapsed long ago. That meant airships had no place to dock, not that anyone would fly to a remote, nonfunctional power station taken over by monsters. Air travel was out of the question. So my escape path went overland, down the mountain and through the tangled hinterlands.

“Human hide!” Nimblesto whisper shouted. He zipped under a pile of tiger-striped furs.

I did not hesitate. The goblin had better sight and hearing than me. As a small prey animal, he knew when to hide or flee from the bigger creatures. I threw myself behind a large chest in the corner of the room.

For a moment the room was quiet. Then a pair of obese female trolls emerged from one of the other chambers. They wore only a few strips of fabric lost in their rolling layers of body fat. Both females had distended bellies, making them look pregnant, but it was hard to tell for sure. One troll grunted to the other in their inhuman language. It waddled to the door and saw the security bar laying on the floor. I gripped the hilt of my sword. These were some of the few opponents who couldn’t beat me in a fight, although the idea of attacking two expectant monster moms disgusted me.

The two trolls did not suspect intruders. They moved as fast as their stubby legs could carry them to what had originally been a room with a bath. We could hear them snarling in the bath, but only Nimblesto knew stray bits of the troll language.

I peeked out from my hiding spot. The coast was clear. The trolls were busy. As I prepared to run for the exit, a voice came from the other room.

“Don’t come near me, you freaks, or I’ll crack your necks!”

The trolls had a human in there. An angry one. The two trolls returned to the suite, apparently satisfied that their prisoner had not escaped. They replaced the security bar and waddled back to their bedroom.

Nimblesto and I emerged from our hiding places. I stuck my head up from the chest. He popped out of the pile of furs. It was a good thing those fat trolls hadn’t decided to sit down, or they would have crushed him flat. We tiptoed through the Chief’s abode toward where it kept the human captive.

The bathroom had become a jail. Iron bars sealed the windows and a cage door secured the cell. This door also had a bar holding it shut, but one much sturdier than the one at the front entrance. A log stripped of bark rested in a pair of hooks on either side of the cell’s door.

Malisent sat alone in the cage. She had lost her plate armor, and the tight fitting clothing formerly worn under her armor was now in tatters. She used strips of the fabric to craft a makeshift sling and wrap it tightly around her right arm.

Nimblesto snickered at Malisent’s misfortune despite the fact he was in the same state an hour before. “Chief cage human. Human weak, stupid, slow.”

“Hey. Malisent,” I whispered.

“Novice! Where have you been?” She jumped to her feet and came to the bars of the cell.

“In the basement. Where you abandoned me. Remember?”

“We’ve no time for reminiscing. Hurry and open this cage before the chief returns.”

“Are you kidding? I can’t lift this thing.” The log was two and half meters long and half a meter thick. It must have weighed a ton. The ends butted against the walls, which prevented it from sliding out to the side. It had to be lifted straight up.

“You weakling. I’d do it myself it I weren’t injured.”

“What happened to you, anyway? How’d you wind up in here?”

“On the way to the exit, the dungeon’s guardian caught up to us. It broke my arm as we fled. The monster couldn’t follow us out, but the troll chief waited for us in ambush. I was in no shape to fight. Veylien and Greeth abandoned me, the villains, and left me to be captured by the tribe of trolls.”

“Hmm… ‘Either keep up or get left behind’ right?”

“Ha. That rule only applies to faceless minions like you, not important people. We don’t waste time or resources on novices until they make a name for themselves.” Malisent noticed I had on one of the lost haversacks. “You found our supplies! Good. Did you find my medicine pouch? I need a pill to heal myself.”

“You’ll need more than a couple aspirin for that broken arm,” I said. “All I found was this bag and some squished people, no medicine.”

“Damnation. It’ll take a week to recover at this rate. And I’ve no time to lose. The chief will sacrifice me to his devil god’s idol at the end of their victory celebration.”

“Sacrifice. Devil. God. Idol. Drawing blanks here, lady. You wouldn’t happen to have an encyclopedia I could borrow?” I asked her. The two languages had a lot of holes where they did not overlap. Either a word lacked a definition in my mind’s dictionary, or a concept lacked a word.

“Hell, Strythe. You’ve lost your wits. I’m telling you he plans to toss me in a bonfire in front of that big clay statue. And there’s nothing more humiliating for a witch than getting burned at the stake.”

“Prisoner stupid! Humans talk, talk, talk. Nimblesto find treasure.” The little monster left the room, no longer interested in what the humans did. He didn’t have much of an attention span.

“Why do you have that disgusting beast with you?” Malisent said.

“I don’t know. He just sort of showed up. But the goblin’s got a point. There’s nothing I can do to help you in this situation.”

Malisent reached out with her good arm and grabbed me by the collar. She yanked me against the iron bars and brought her face close to mine.

“Listen, you vile piece of trash. You might not remember it, but I’m your superior officer. On this mission, you follow my orders. Don’t even think about quitting. Without me, you’ll never get home. Do you want to cross the wastelands alone? Or fight off the monsters?”

“Fine. Fine. You win. But I can’t break you out right now—not without a plan and some tools. Wait here and I’ll be back later.”

“Hardly. I don’t trust you to not run off. Take Orma with you.” A black snake slithered out of Malisent’s bandaged arm and flicked its tongue at me.

“Gah! Is that thing poisonous?”

“Very.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Too bad.”

“Sorry, I’m allergic to snake venom. And hissing.”

“She won’t bite unless you deserve it. Orma will keep watch over you. Don’t let anything happen to her, novice, or it’ll be your head.”

The snake slid through the bars and crawled up my chest. She coiled loosely around my neck. I didn’t know what good a snake would do either of us. Malisent released my collar, and I stumbled back from the cell.

“Great. Is that all? Or do you have any more wild animals to fling at me?”

“The troll’s feast lasts through the night. The ritual will take place at the full moon. You only have to a few hours until midnight. Work fast.”

“Right. I’ll be back soonish.”

I went back to the suite, where Nimblesto searched through the chieftain’s belongings. The two fat trolls napped in the next room over. Somehow, I had to arrange a jailbreak without waking anyone up.