The pedestal had been left on the store screen, where Lacey could see her breakfast burrito and the cost in credits. The good news was that the cost was in numbers she could recognize. The bad news was that it was expensive. Lacey flipped the screens, almost getting lost in what she could now read.

“You spent 200 credits on a pot of coffee?” Lacey couldn’t summon the scathing tone she felt like she should have had, especially considering that they had half a million credits to play with. Then again, half a million would go fast if they weren’t careful.

“Not that I wouldn’t spend that gladly each and every morning, but I actually did not,” Colt pushed away from the table. “I drew it.”

“That explains the illustration for it,” Lacey dipped her head to hide a smile.

“It’s not Lacey-level art, but it got us one free pot because I gave it a fur handle,” Colt sloshed a top-off into her cup and brought it to the pedestal so Lacey could have some more, and she almost felt guilty for making fun of his drawing.

Lacey swiped the screen back out of the store and into the map and dropped her burrito. The whole map, save maybe the three opening rooms, were all red like they’d been ransacked.

“I figured you might go to that screen first,” Colt caught her burrito like a pro and handed her the mug of coffee. “Makes me really wish I could have given you that shot of whiskey before you saw that.”

“They got us,” Lacey breathed out, barely resisting wasting their credits by resetting those rooms. “How are we still alive?”

“I was waiting for you before going out there to figure it out, but I’m pretty sure we weren’t raided,” Colt admitted, though Lacey was pretty sure that it had more to do with not wanting to face it. He’d sat there long enough to draw a pot of coffee with a fur handle on it, so he was stalling.

“What makes you so sure?” Lacey asked, taking the burrito back and having trouble taking another bite right away.

“We aren’t dead?” he quipped so that she gave him a glare.

“Somebody took his funny pills this morning,” Lacey bit into her burrito and did her own version of stalling.

“And someone else did not,” Colt countered, almost automatically. “I’d like to say that I spent my time wisely, but I figured if I knew a bunch of shit you didn’t this morning, you’d lose your shit. I decided to let you sleep in since Ginger says it’s only been a day.”

“The dungeon says differently,” Lacey shoved more burrito in her mouth, and then reached for the dagger sheath on the table. To calm herself down, she did the inventory of the room.

Ginger was sweeping, but she appeared to be muttering under her breath. The lights were blue, even with almost all the rooms red on the map. Colt’s sword was strapped onto his belt, but her dagger and sheath had been on the table where she’d left it the night before. They had half a million credits and a pedestal that was understandable. They also had over 1000 notifications, 200 of which were pinned to the top of the dmail list.

Lacey bit down to hold onto the remains of her burrito and set her precious cup of coffee on the table while she shrugged on her cross-chest sheath with the daggers in it. Taking the bite all the way and grabbing the rest of the burrito, she gave Colt a nod and headed for the doorway. She backpedaled to her cup of coffee, then shoved what was left of the burrito into her mouth so that she’d have one hand free for her dagger, not that she was convinced that she could use it.

“Ginger, don’t let anyone in here while we’re gone, okay?” Colt told Ginger, stealing Lacey’s cup and going back for a refill of coffee from the pot on the table. “No one touches this coffee pot on pain of death, got it?”

“Ginger keep out the idjuts,” the little goblin nodded and Lacey wasn’t sure what Colt was thinking. If any of the higher leveled goblins came into the control room, Ginger wasn’t big enough to fight them off. Lacey turned back to watch over her shoulder as they walked out of the room and caught Ginger hiding the coffee pot in a little niche behind her furs.

“I don’t give her enough credit,” Lacey told Colt’s back. Then she ran into the back of him.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

With the skill of someone who had spent a lot of time peeking around Colt’s large form, Lacey shoved by only to stop herself. They both stood and stared.

“How long have we been asleep this time?” Lacey gaped at the room.

The room beyond the control room was usually just a basic goblin lair, though Adam and Eve often used this one because it was so close to their masters. The sleeping furs that Eve had loved at first were shredded. The little cooking fire was scattered like it had been the victim of a bar brawl. Hughe hadn’t done damage like this. He’d only ever done just enough to break the room. This room was splattered with what might have been goblin stew a few years ago. It also stank like they’d been using it as a latrine, which didn’t make any sense since the water cavern was just below with its latrines.

“The pedestal’s last message was all I read before opting to draw some coffee,” Colt answered. “It was a notice that said we were being roused from progression sleep after the maximum of five years.”

“That’s a lot of words to not explain anything,” Lacey complained, running her hand through her hair, glad that she’d finished her burrito. This was nauseating.

The worst of it was that there were several hulking goblin shapes in the dim area. Lacey might have thought they were dead except that they made an awful noise that might have been snores. The only light was a sickly clump of moss in one corner and what looked like a hat of glowing feathers on what could only be Adam. The other goblins in the room resembled the elite guard as much as Adam looked like what Lacey and Colt remembered of him. The main difference was that the bulk that the leveling goblins had been adding to their chest size had shifted down to their guts.

“What the hell?” Lacey breathed out; her nose scrunched up against the stench.

“Ginger not clean this,” the little goblin sniffed from behind them, her tongue clucking.

“Is this why the rooms have gone red on the pedestal?” Lacey whispered, more to keep from breathing in than to not wake the goblins.

“This room worse than river room,” Ginger huffed out. “Eve in river room.”

The doorway to the river room was barricaded with what looked like some combination of cave supports, trap parts, and limestone blocks like the ones used to make stairways between levels. They had to walk back through the control room to use their entrance to the river cavern. Colt didn’t say anything, and that worried Lacey. He was normally quick with a bit of wit or banter, but he was getting a little red along the back of his ears. This did not bode well.

It was clear that the goblins hadn’t been attacked. The elite squad was little more than sitting ducks to anyone with half a weapon. Adam was safe and sound, and fat, with his gut awkwardly covered by beetle shells, some of which glowed and some of which did not. Lacey followed Colt down their spiral staircase only to stop again at the bottom of the stairwell, the door propped open on a very different kind of chaos.

Eve stood hip-deep in one of the pools as several smaller goblins cast fire bolts at the rocks around her. The result was a warm bath of sorts, but Eve was not bathing. They had obviously walked in on a ritual of some sort. The walls of the room, which had been rich with glowing moss before, were now much dimmer, the moss an odd purple color that somehow pulsed eerily. The Chicker, now fully grown, lay next to one of the further pools of chilly water. The stripes along the tiger body were glowing with the same kind of bioluminescence as the moss along the walls. The feathers all over the head of the beast also glowed, as did its eyes and beak. There was a huge bowl next to it of what could have been a mash of glowing worms and beetles. It wasn’t chained or leashed or even penned by more than pools of water that surrounded it, but it stayed put, almost as if it didn’t like the water.

These goblins also sported feathers, though they didn’t glow and they weren’t worked into hats or headdresses. These feathers were stuck through body piercings that reminded Lacey of a mosh pit at a punk rock concert. It was obvious that both types of feathers could only have come from the hapless Chicker. Nothing but it could have provided them.

“What is she doing?” Lacey thought she was talking to herself, but Ginger had followed them down.

“Ginger told Eve that masters wake,” Ginger shrugged narrow shoulders. “Eve then start ritual to thank gods for masters waking.”

“Where are the rest of the worker goblins?” Colt finally spoke up, but his voice was low enough to not be heard over the rushing river.

“Ginger not know,” our only remaining sane goblin replied. “Not see any other goblins since Ginger woke up.”

“Please tell me they didn’t eat each other,” Lacey jumped to some macabre horror.

Eve spun in a circle, a lot like an odd version of spin the bottle where she was the bottle and her attendants were the unfortunate victims. Eve’s voice cackled eerily in the glowing cave, so high pitched that the Chicker buried its head under tiger paws. When Eve stopped spinning, she would fire off a bolt of fire that ricocheted off the nearest wall and back into the water, or worse into one of the goblins circling her. The result was a plop of purple moss to the floor of the cavern or a singed goblin.

Ginger gave a shudder at Lacey’s suggestion and refused to enter the cave behind them. The Chicker gave a wild shake of its head and feathers flew all over. At the moment of molting, the attendant goblins rushed to the Chicker and picked up the wads of non-glowing feathers even as Eve was squealing in an ear-piercing yodel. The goblins darted back away from the Chicker and Eve stopped the howling squawk. The poor Chicker was missing half a dozen feathers and looked like a sickly bird head on a majestically amazing glowing black and white tiger body.

“Masters!” Eve was shouting as her attendants rushed over with their prizes.