Running down the hallway brought us to a room with a sturdy metal door that was set into the stone walls. Dirk prepared to kick it when Vreek grabbed his should and waved a finger at him. Vreek reached out, put a hand on the handle, and gave it a turn.

I heard Dirk groan as Vreek turned back and smiled as the door pushed open, leading us into a room that must be for royalty.

Ornate rugs, furniture, bookshelves, and more seemed to fill up most of the room. Armor stood on stands made for dwarves. Hammers and staffs were the weapons of choice here, along with a few axes. Large windows let light in from the one wall that must lead to the outside.

“Think we can make it out of here through those?” Dirk asked as he went over and glanced out the glass panes.

A few seconds later, I saw him lean back and shake his head no.

“It's like a half-mile drop,” he stated with a sigh. “It is a great view, but I don’t see any way to use them.”

Turk and Vreek had secured the lock on the metal door and were dragging furniture and other items to block it.

“We don’t have time to worry about that right now,” Turk shouted as I heard the first banging on the door from the hallway. “We need to get as much stuff as possible to block this while we look for a secret exit!”

I knew Turk was right. If this was the royal part, there had to be some exit designed to let the family escape if something happened like this. Glancing around, I realized there were multiple rooms off this main one, and then I saw the portrait on the wall.

Hanging high above two sets of armor was a painted portrait of the king we had just killed and two smaller men. As I started to look around the room, I turned back and realized that one of those men was actually a dwarven woman! Her eyes were softer, and her beard seemed to have been painted in a gentler way also. They had added the curves of a woman to her, and I realized what we had been missing.

“His wife and son have fled already!”

Vreek and Dirk stopped tossing stuff into the growing pile and turned to look at the picture I pointed at.

“There has to be a way out!” I declared. “Turk, you and Dirk focus on finding the hidden exit. Vreek and I will keep piling things at the door.”

Turk and Dirk each ran off to one of the other rooms that were connected via ornate wooden doors. As they ran off, Vreek and I continued grabbing the furniture and armor sets and piled them on the mountain, Turk had already started. It was already taller than me and blocked most of the doorway completely, but the banging from the other side was getting louder. Soon they would either use magic, explosives, or a battering ram.

“Nice work back there with the King,” Vreek suddenly informed me after he dumped a wooden table on the pile. “I was impressed with your quick thinking on how to avoid that problem his hammer created.”

I laughed and nodded as I threw a chair on the pile.

“You did pretty well yourself. Getting him to release that hammer by striking his arm was a good move.”

Vreek groaned and spat on the ground.

“I actually missed where I was aiming because of the impact of your attack, but it still did what it needed to. Had I been smart, I would have aimed for his face like Dirk did.”

We started laughing as we retrieved another item from the room to use for the barricade.

“Something must be wrong if Dirk made the best attack out of all of us,” I joked.

Vreek nodded.

“How you feel right now, it is always like this. The power that you possess?”

Laughing, I shook my head and stopped looking for items for the pile. We had almost stripped the room bare.

“While we are stronger and faster than you, this power you probably feel right now is much more than we typically feel. Right now, I’m not tired or worried about getting hurt like I might normally be. Had we had a heart like this when we fought inside the labyrinth, I am certain we could have easily defeated the four bosses and moved to the next floor.”

Vreek gazed around the room and shook his head and I could see something was bothering him.

“What are you thinking?

Vreek laughed as he motioned around the room.

“What would we give for this much armor and weapons that we just used for decoration in our homes? What would the goblins do if we had the kind of armor and weapons the dwarves, elves, or humans have? We just cut down hundred of their warriors, outfitted in the best gear, and now we are hiding in a room, using their decorations to keep them from us.”

Vreek paused and pointed at the door where the peel of metal on metal was getting louder and shaking the bricks it was attached to.

“Why should we run? We defeated their king! What else can they throw at us that we cannot overcome?”

Stolen story; please report.

I saw the fire burning in Vreek’s eyes. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I could tell he was a changed goblin. The power of Naydras or the item from Bob had given him a different view of things.

“I hear what you are saying, but we could die here from starvation. They could wall us in, and we could die a horrible and slow death,” I stated as I paused and pointed at the windows. “They might find a way to drop explosives or something else through the windows or perhaps the fireplace behind me. This is not a fight we should take. That is what you would tell me!”

Vreek glared at me, and we stood there in a staring match while the dwarves attempted to break down the door to the royal family's bedroom.

Finally, he broke eye contact with me and huffed in frustration as he grabbed a small piece of metal and threw it at one of the tapestries hanging near the fireplace. It clanged off the tapestry and the stone wall, but the sound it made when it hit was off.

“Throw that again, but at a wall not covered by the tapestry,” I ordered as I walked over to the fireplace and the tapestry he had hit.

Vreek moved to recover the piece that had bounced from the impact against the wall and threw it about ten feet over from the section that had just hit. The sound of metal and the stone was different.

“DIRK! TURK! Get in here!”

Half a minute later, both boys were running back into the main room and looking at me as I tore off the tapestry from the ceiling where it was attached.

“This wall is different than the rest, I think it may be what we are looking for!” I exclaimed.

Turk came over and started banging on the wall as he put his ear against it. He moved a few bricks over from the fireplace and then about four feet to the left.

“It’s a door, or there is at least a tunnel behind it,” he affirmed. “Let's move back and open up this cracker jack box!”

Vreek looked at me and rolled his eyes.

“Another thing from your world?”

I smiled and nodded as we moved to the other side of the room.

Turk had already taken his bow off his back and was charging up a shot.

“Don’t kill us,” Dirk pleaded as he covered his face and balls with his hands.

Laughing, Turk let the bolt fly. The impact of the bolt sent bricks flying across the room. A few managed to make it to us, but everyone was able to dodge them with the power of Naydras heart still flowing through us.

There behind the dust cloud and rubble was indeed a tunnel, heading somewhere down from this room.

“We ready?” Dirk asked with a grin.

Drawing my sword, I nodded and motioned to the metal door and the sound that had stopped after Turk’s explosive shot.

“We need to hurry, just in case they realize we found the entrance.”

I found myself thankful that we were going down instead of up. We had already covered at least four hundred steps, and it felt like there would be no end in sight. The weirdest part in all this was that as we ran, torches along the walls ahead of us would light up and then go dark after we had run past them. I could only begin to imagine what kind of magic this was and the possibility of traps and more that might be triggered the same way.

Time stretched on, and after about six hundred steps, we came to a flat section of tunnel that ran in a straight line. I could feel a breeze coming at us and had to take this as a good sign. There had to be an exit somewhere for this breeze to be coming at us.

As we ran, I realized I heard some noise starting to get louder also.

“Water?” I shouted as we ran.

Glancing back, I saw Turk nodding his head yes.

“I hope we don’t have to swim, or Vreek is going to die!” Dirk shouted from behind me.

I knew Vreek was not happy about that comment, but it gave us all a small laugh as we picked up the pace, anxious to see what lay before us.

Ten more minutes of running had turned that slight breeze into a misty wind that echoed with loud, thunderous sounds of water falling from what must be some waterfall or other powerful section of water on rocks.

“Two and a half miles!” Turk yelled from behind me.

“Two and a half miles what?” I hollered back.

“We have run two miles since we got in this tunnel! We are running a four-mile pace!”

I started to ask how he knew that but knew better than to question his ability on this. He must be tracking something, figuring out the size of a brick or whatever.

I couldn’t believe we were running a world-record pace through a tunnel underneath a dwarven castle. It seemed the craziest thought to have as we ran for our life, trying to escape.

Two minutes later, we saw the water. We were only a few hundred yards from it, but there was a rushing downpour over the entrance to the tunnel. The thing that set all this apart was the door that was open at the end of the tunnel just before the water.

I glanced at Turk and the rest and motioned to it, as it was almost impossible to shout and still be heard over the noise of the rushing water.

Turk held up his two fingers and motioned toward the door.

The queen and her son. They must have escaped out here at some point when the drums started.

Nodding, I kept my sword out and felt the water that had drifted in and started covering the floor. It was cool on our feet as we dashed across the last of the tunnel and got to the door. Swinging it all the way open, I saw that the door looked like a real rock on the outside portion. I assumed that one would be hard-pressed to know this was here if they were not supposed to know of its existence.

Two paths went down from the doorway.

I felt Turk tap me on my shoulder, pointing to the right and motioning for us to go that way.

I hugged the wall and tried to make sure I had a solid footing on the ground, not slipping off into the water that rushed down into what I could only imagine would be a painful death.

After about two hundred or so yards of hugging the stone and the carved-out path, Turk motioned to the other side of the cavern we were moving along. I could barely see them, but I knew Turk could.

“The mother and son!” he shouted in my ear over the still crashing noise of the water. “What do you want me to do?”

I frowned. I was thinking of Nomot and the possible agreement we had. If those two lived, he would have a harder time assuming the throne, and with everything on the line, it only left one choice.

I motioned with my thumb along my neck.

Turk nodded and pulled out his bow. We watched as he gathered power for a bit, and the bolt turned that dark blue color. Turk put his bow on his back and motioned for me to go the moment he sent it.

When he released it, I watched it streak across the open span of easily three hundred yards. I couldn’t move, I had to watch. As the bolt traveled, I saw it would strike true. It impacted where they were walking, blowing chunks off the wall, the stair, and sending both bodies over the edge.

Sighing, I nodded, and we continued down the path. One more obstacle out of our way to regain our people's home.