Yierie laid a variety of magical runes over our group. Most of them were too advanced or complicated for me to grasp at a glance. But she patiently explained them to me as she cast them. “This one hides our scent and any stray sounds we may make. Do not try shouting or clambering about under the latter’s effects. Enough noise and the spell will end.” She wove a new series of runes and said, “These are intended to ward against Shaman magics, though nothing I possess is as strong as your natural protections.” She motioned to the Maidens Three — it had become their official title — and to Garaghan. “The elves will have some natural resistance to the Shaman’s magic. Alaric and Tia will not.”
Alaric nodded and laid his metallic arm on the bare sword on his side. “I will stay near them then, to protect them and to avoid the Shaman’s spells.”
“Good,” Yierie pointed to Tia. “What do you do if we become separated?”
Tia bit her lip, flicked her eyes over to me, and nodded. “Find one of the dragons and have them take me home.” She looked over at me and amended, “I mean to the plane-city.”
“Very good.” Yierie turned and faced the large iron door that blocked off a significant portion of the sound from the goblins.
We’d been killing every patrol and guard group we encountered on the way. As a result, the bulk of the goblin forces did not know we were here. When we came upon this door, Garaghan and Yierie had commenced their last minute preparations. I wanted to know where the goblins had come by a massive iron door like this, but I’d held my tongue. Such questions would keep for later.
Yierie nodded at the rest of us and braced her right foot against a stone outcropping in the floor. “We begin!”
One pressed her shoulder into mine as Yierie’s limbs glowed with a crimson light. Her tall, wiry frame coiled like a viper and sprang into the door. As usual, I barely saw her sword arc through the air. All I could see was a red semi-circle as she sliced the door in half. Two more impossibly swift strikes tore through the iron as if it were paper and the door collapsed. Yierie adjusted her stance and wove a rune in the air over the shards of the iron door. They glowed as screams erupted from deeper in the hallways.
The pile of iron burst forth and several of the screams turned to gurgles. Garaghan followed her, his hands moving in quick flashes of rune fire as he did. White and black bolts rose up from his back and launched themselves into the hall. I hopped on my heels as Two and Three followed him, their own rune magics flashing out with destructive fury.
Alaric led our small group while One followed behind me. No spells burst from her hands, but her head swiveled on her neck as if scanning for the slightest sight of goblin incursion or dangers. A blade in hand and his free hand wrapped around Roo, Alaric cut an imposing figure in the darkness.
The door Yierie had destroyed opened into a wide cavern, about a dozen goblins still scurried about this chamber. Most of them fled our combined magical and martial assault. A few took up crude arms and ran for us with howls on their lips. Yierie and Garghan parted to let Two and Three advance to handle those goblins while they aimed their magics at the stragglers.
Once the room had been cleared, we burst though the next heavy iron door with the same slicing and subsequent explosive force. I felt like a war correspondent or nurse; without a weapon or magic to fight off our enemies, all I could do was cradle Tia and watch.
The battle was a slaughter for a solid ten minutes. We cleared chamber after chamber of goblins, driving the bulk of them away from us as we did. I could only guess at the purpose of most of the rooms we purged. The goblins had little furnishings or decorations to distinguish their purposes. Most of them held a few tools and scraps of leather or bundles of metal wire that made it look like the goblins crafted something here.
With the others driving forward in haste, I did not have a chance to stop and examine the goblin facilities or investigate the purpose they’d set their rooms to. Nor did I have much chance to rush forward behind Alaric. I did note that each chamber held more and more goblins, as if we approached a concentration of them.
My theory was confirmed as Yierie blew the door from the fourth room we cleansed. A massive, round cavern sat before us with a good deal more small rock formations on the ground than most of the previous rooms. They might have been tables and this place a feasting hall. Meat hung from the sides of the room, meat who’s provenance I deliberately ignored. It could have been anything I assured myself as I looked away.
Hundreds of goblins gathered in this room and lurked behind the low tables. As soon as we entered a wall of arrows and crossbow bolts buzzed at us. Yierie and the others hopped back next to me, their swords held at the ready as the wall crashed into us.
My barrier rose. Only after it deflected the missiles had I considered the possibility it might not work after what the dragon spirit had done to me. Despite my previous injury, the barrier rose and did not give me so much as a headache.
Goblins shouted in dismay, growling and hissing in their strange tongue as they abandoned their ranged weapons and clambered over the tables. A wet, guttural roar shook the room and stopped the advancing goblins in their tracks. An ogre with thickly corded muscles smashed two goblins out of his way and advanced from the shadows. He shook his head like a wolf and roared at the goblins a second time.
They scrambled back to their defenses and took their bows back in hand. At that, a second ogre exploded from a heap of offal and meat, rising covered in blood and viscera. It was thinner than the first, but unlike his unarmed counterpart, he held a pair of curved blades in each hand and wove them in a complex dance as he stepped toward us.
Garaghan held out his hand as if offering Yierie her choice of opponents. She rolled her eyes and shot toward the thinner ogre. At the same time a sickening yellow wall sprang up before her. I screamed as she passed through it. It shattered as she did, but her movements seemed languid and heavy now.
Two pointed into the shadows and I caught a glimpse of a scale-wearing goblin who’s hands waved through the air. It shook a series of bone and sinew fetishes toward us that resembled a children’s mobile. Lights flickered among the bones and string as another ugly yellow barrier appeared before Garaghan.
Unlike Yierie, he sliced through the magic without pausing or letting the effect touch his skin. As a result, he moved just as swiftly through the room as before. Two pointed at Three and shot away from our group. Three and Alaric stood shoulder to shoulder as another wave of missiles showered over us. Again, my own magic stopped them before they found their targets.
As soon as that wave passed, Three bolted away, sprinting for the clusters of goblins taking pot shots at us from cover.
Yellow bolts of magic sprang from what could only be a shaman and unerringly headed for Two. She spun in air and cut the two bolts away with her blade. It’s azure sheen tore the bolts apart midair and the move hardly slowed her advance toward the shaman.
It hissed in frustration at her as it motioned to a series of lager, armored goblins. None of these were the size of the ogres, but they advanced as a unit through the cavern.
My attention was split four ways now, between Garaghan, Yierie, Two and Three. Sensei tore into his ogre with ruthless efficiency. The massive beast hardly had a chance to raise its arms to smash him before both fell to the ground. He roared in pain and frustration as Garaghan slit this throat. Three tumbled and danced among the goblin archers, ending their assault on us as she blazed through their ranks. Her swings, as with the battle above, took out two or three little goblins with each blow.
Two jumped over the line of armored goblins and cut the shaman down before it could work its fourth magic, turning as she did to face off with its protectors. They trembled in their armor as they parried her attacks and fell under her ferocity.
Yierie struggled the most with her opponent. Slowed as she was, she fought on the back foot from the beginning. The thin ogre was swift and without her incredible speed, it sidestepped her attacks and darted in with precision. Even her rune magic was slower than normal so she had trouble completing a casting.
I shouted at Alaric to help her, he looked back at me and at One, who nodded and held her ground. With One here, I felt confident Tia and I would be safe. My sister didn’t so much as squirm watching the battle unfold. This couldn’t be good for her, to watch such butchery, but we had precious little alternative to bringing her.
Alaric wove through sporadic arrow fire, the remaining archers had given up on firing at me and One. A few times, he swept his arm through the bolts and knocked them out of the air before they met their mark. As he neared Yierie’s fight, he shouted in Elven, “on your left.” The strange part was that he ran up on her right.
At the last second, he slammed his right leg into the ground and Yierie danced off into the same direction. They switched positions and Alaric caught the ogre unaware, scoring a wicked slice along its arm. Green blood flowed freely as the ogre screamed. It sounded like a human noise, rage fueled and desperate. Flecks of spittle appeared at the corners of the ogre’s mouth as it entered a berserk fury.
Though Alaric managed several more successful strikes, the ogre seemed to speed up. It bashed through Yirie’s defenses, throwing sparks off of her coppery armor in the process. Alaric sprang into the ogre’s guard and stabbed, but the monster caught the tip of his blade and sneered at him. It brought its other hand across Alaric’s front and for a moment, I was sure he’d have his throat slit. But as with the attack aimed at Yierie, the ogre’s dagger whined against metal. Alaric had released his sword to the ogre and raised his arm to protect himself.
At the end of the whine, which had been drawn out more than I expected, the ogre stopped shouting or moving in general. Alaric retched as he took a step back from the ogre and it slid down to the ground in front of him.
The others had already joined Three in clearing the smaller goblins from the chamber. They shot into bolt holes and out though the large doorway that led from this chamber. Garaghan and the others stooped over their knees and panted rather than pursue the goblins further.
Yierie approached her father as if she walked through the bottom of the ocean and he smirked at her. When he’d caught his breath, he laughed behind his hand as Yierie extended an arm and hand in a rude gesture.
After a few seconds’ mirth, he closed with her and wove his hands in an intricate rune I recognized as a magic dispelling rune. A faint yellow glow that had attached itself to her faded as Garaghan completed his rune casting.
“Was that the shaman?” I asked as I ran forward to meet them.
“It was a shaman, there are certainly more.” Garaghan swung his blade to free it of the blood and made a sour face as he surveyed the chamber. “This was harder than I expected. But there were also fewer goblins.”
“What do you mean?”
Yierie answered my question. “He means that these were better equipped and more skilled than we anticipated. In a normal warren, this would have been the last fight. But listen.”
Everyone fell silent and the unmistakable chattering and growling of goblins reached our ears. “How many more are there?” I broke the silence with my question first.
Yierie’s face darkened. “I do not know.”
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We battled against goblins for almost thirty uninterrupted minutes after that. Once we left the larger chamber, we began a relentless hallway assault. The ogres were too large to fight effectively in such tight spaces, which was a revelation I had only fifteen minutes into our battle without seeing them.
The shaman had no such limitations and did not mind slaying their fellows to get at us. Green and yellow bolts slammed against my shield as we moved slowly through the tunnels. It was after one such barrage of magic that the first series of rear attacks occurred. Without One nearby, the sneaky, red-bandana wearing goblins would have murdered me without me even noticing. I only realized I’d been attacked when one of them screamed. It was the third such goblin One dispatched at our rear.
After that, the goblins alternated their angles of approach, sometimes hitting us from the front directly and sometimes from One’s position. I’d been amazed at the skills the other elves demonstrated. But One was something else entirely.
Three leapt and rolled, Two danced and spun, but One simple killed. She merged the strongest elements of her other two compatriot’s attacks into a bloody thorough killer. She’d abandoned her long curved sword for a set of double-bladed daggers. Despite my unusual upbringing, I had no name for the weapons One used in the tunnels. A hilt separated her blades from each other. The tips of both blades curved back toward her as they stretched out from the hilt. Tornadoes had to stress themselves to destroy as much as effectively as One did in those tunnels.
Alaric had also abandoned his blade in favor of his arm. There in the tunnels I learned just how useful his artificial arm was. It could sprout spikes or blades at Alaric’s mental command. He could make it grow or shrink, or he could expand the sides into the shape of a small shield, like a buckler. Melting through transformations, Alaric swung his arm through the goblins and decimated their number.
As with the battle above, we struggled over the mass of bodies. Goblins littered the floors, some of them only feigning death as they’d open their eyes and scrabbled at us with blades or bare claws. The elves never fell for the ruse, always intercepting the goblins before they managed to hurt anyone. But each little actor beast got a little closer to hamstringing one of us they laid in wait to kill.
At the end of our thirty-minute murder spree, we hadn’t killed a single ogre or goblin shaman. The fact made my skin crawl as we slipped into a side chamber to rest. Yierie checked the walls, ceiling and floor for small tunnels as Garaghan wove a magical barrier over the entrance. It looked thin and faint compared to most of his runic creations. But the black wall worked. Two little goblins with daggers in hand strode by the barrier without so much as turning their heads.
“We only have a few minutes. Take some time to rest.” Garaghan produced a flask and passed it around to the group.
It was some kind of honeyed fruit juice I’d never tasted before. A single sip of the cool liquid banished the reek of death from my nostrils and swept away the sense of despair that had slowed my movements. The others stood up straighter as well as they sipped from the flask. Garaghan drank last, closing his eyes and tilting the container back for a tiny drop of the contents.
Yierie stretched her back and neck. “Why haven’t we reached the end of this place yet?”
Garaghan raised his hands in a shrug. “I do not know. Perhaps there are far more than we anticipated.”
One raised her hand. “Or there is some strategist guiding their movements, right?”
Father and daughter blanched at the question. Garaghan motioned to One with the flask held loosely in his hands. “That possibility seems quite likely now that you mention it.”
“What would lead goblins?”
Garaghan and Yierie shuddered. “A Goblin Lord or one of their so-called nobility.”
“What’s that?”
“It happens when enough of them gather in one place. Some mutate like the ogres and shaman. And of those, the successful and/or strong ones can grow into something more.” Yierie stared at Garaghan’s barrier as she answered my question. “I would rather have the dragons with us if we choose to face a goblin noble.”
Garaghan snorted and returned his flask to his point. “Me as well, but this is not our decision to make, leader.” With the last word he turned to face me and I could feel the color escape from my cheeks.
“I…” I searched the faces of the others in the small room with me. They all stared at me as if they wanted me to answer their questions. Pointing to Garaghan and Yierie, I tried to keep my voice from sounding petulant as I said, “what do you two think? Can we go get the dragons?”
Garaghan shook his head and pointed to the tunnels. “If we weren’t so far in, maybe. But no. I would rather have the dragons, but we can’t. The real decision for you is whether we leave this place behind us and return to the Orchid.”
Yierie pointed to her dad and nodded.
“Then I think we should stay. We’ve started this and I don’t want to stop before we’re done.” A pit of lava raged in my belly as I spoke. I didn’t want to stop, but I didn’t want anyone in my group hurt either.
As I worried over whether I made the correct decision, Tia pumped her fist and shouted, “we’re gonna win! Yay!”
The others chuckled at her as they hefted their weapons and stood up. I approached Garaghan and Yierie. “We can’t like, contact the dragons or something?”
Yierie shook her head, answering for both of them. “My father shouldn’t have mentioned it. There’s nothing we can do to gather our draconic allies at this point. Not without leaving and tracking them down. After the Evernight, they could sleep for days, even weeks.”
“Oh. But they flew off crazily?” I waved my hands in the air in front of me and shook my head. “Never mind, it’s not important. So Goblin Nobles?”
“Yes,” Garaghan sighed, “They are almost as rare as Human Ancients like yourself. Powerful, intelligent, and dangerous…”
I cut him off. “I want solutions, not their biographies.”
Yierie laughed, raising her hand too slowly to cover her mouth. Garaghan gave me a smirk. “I deserve that.” He rolled his shoulders as he kicked away from the stone he’d been leaning against. “Most of the time, they are just like the ogres or shaman, only more so. They do not have any special defenses or powers because they are as varied as the People.”
“Sounds like we’re after nothing more than an up-jumped goblin.” I looked back at the black screen between our room and the tunnels. “Why’d you want the dragons so much?”
“Because they would make clearing the tunnels trivial. And because few things are immune to dragon fire. It’s a good way to snip any flower bud, no matter how plagued.” Garaghan anticipated my next questions. “As to what we do about the noble, I think the best plan for now is to follow the horde of goblins. The one thing we can be confident about with respect to Goblin Nobles is that they will defend their territory violently and tenaciously. I doubt the noble will flee with its kin, even if we were to press it unto death.”
“I guess that’s good.” I bit my lip. “But cornered things tend to be crazy and unpredictable, right?”
Both Yierie and Garaghan nodded their heads wearily.
I clapped my hands and mustered the group together at Garaghan’s wall. We peered out through the black screen and found the tunnels clear of goblins. Garaghan dropped the screen and we filed out in our usual order.
This leg of our trek felt fresh, like our whole group had managed a nap and a filling meal. Only the streaks of blood and gore spread on the elves’ armor belied that impression.
As if the goblins had been listening to our hushed discussion, they made themselves scarce. Before, the tunnels had been choked with the little beasts. But now, the tunnels echoed with an eery, empty ring. Our group held their tongues, even the humans strained their ears for signs of massing goblins. We slipped unmolested through two more large cavernous chambers without encountering a single goblin.
Both rooms had been stripped of their contents. Fresh scrape marks on the floor along with spattered blood proclaimed the goblins’ recent activities. Whatever they’d dragged from the room had been important to them, but for all we knew it was one of their leaders’ beds.
As we finished searching the third room, empty like the other two, a banging took up in the walls and floors. Rhythmic and pulsing, the beat traveled up my feet and into my jaw. The Maidens Three exchanged nervous glances and Garaghan squinted into the darkness.
With a flourish, he cast a set of runes in the air. They flashed into life and faded away abruptly. “Well shit.” Garaghan pressed his finger into his palm. “Yierie, can you cast?”
My stomach flipped as Yierie wove a simple rune in the air. As with her father’s rune, it flared into life with an unexpected light and then vanished. “No, something is blocking the magic.”
Garaghan swore eloquently for thirty full seconds. He looked over at me. “We can be fairly certain the noble is a caster of some kind.”
“What does that mean for us?”
He shook his head. “It means we really need our dragons.” Garaghan sighed at himself and muttered quietly. When he raised his gaze again, he said, “It means we won’t have much in the way of magical support. There are ways to get around this and we should distribute them now.”
Waving us over into a small bend in the tunnel, Garaghan opened his pouch and drew out an impossibly large rack of glass vials. They tinkled in their rack as he set them on the floor. Kneeling down, Garaghan plucked vials from woven metal cages and passed them to everyone in the group. “This will help with the Evernight.” Once the whole group had their vial with the dark blue liquid within, he plucked several more vials from his rack that contained a mercury-like silver fluid. “And this will dispel most hostile magical effects harmlessly for the user.” His rack was much lighter than when he’d removed it from the pouch. “I will say when to drink the first potion. Drink the second when or if you are targeted by enemy spells.”
“Will my magic work?” I posed the question once Garaghan had deposited his potion rack back in place.
“I believe it should.” He looked back down the hall and then at Alaric. “And your arm should function without a problem, as will our swords.”
I’d suspected the elven blades were magical in some way, it was nice to have confirmation of my suspicion. “Then we should be fine, right?”
None of the others shared my optimism, not that I was being sincere.
The thrumming from a mass of goblins did not stop. It wormed its way into my skull and between my eye sockets. Every beat felt like a gust of wind pushing me back the way I’d come. The others staggered and I began to doubt my decision to continue down the halls. No one fell, but the weight of the drumbeat slowed us down, made us set hands against the warm stone to steady ourselves.
More and more, dark thoughts bored into my skull. If not for the damage the dragon spirit had done to me, I would have dropped into the void and examined myself in an instant. It was too much for me, it was too much for all of us. By the time I was ready to collapse and surrender to the horrific sound, we’d stopped before a doorway.
Unlike the other iron doors, this one had runes and images carved across its surface. Runes danced and swam along the borders making my head pound as I stared at them. They had been chiseled carefully into the metal with an expert hand. The crude drawings, most of them featuring a misshapen figure with a topknot looming over a series of squat stick people, were scratched into the metal by inexpert hands. None of those primitive scratchings touched the runes or even the border, as if the goblin vandals had known better than to mar the craftsmanship of the border.
“What do you think?” My head swung up in surprise at Garaghan’s question. But he’d addressed it to Yierie, who chewed the side of her mouth and glowered at the runes.
“I cannot be sure, but I believe these are dwarf-make.”
One snorted at Yierie’s declaration. “Dwarves hate goblins more than elves.”
The way she phrased it, I couldn’t tell if she meant the dwarven hatred was directed at elves and goblins or they shared the elven hatred of the little beasts. I didn’t ask her to clarify.
Tia grumbled wordlessly and leaned forward almost out of my arms as she slapped the border and the runes thereon. A small wave rippled across the metal’s surface and for an instant the runes shone with a pure silvery light. Then they melted off of the iron door like so much water.
“What in the hell, Tia?”
She looked up at me with a proud smile. “I fixed it. And don’t swear so much, Harriet…” with that, her eyes blinked and she set her head against my shoulder and passed out.
I shouted at her as the elves around me took up defensive positions. Ignoring the danger of the drumbeat in my skull and the dragon’s assault, I threw myself into the void.
Hooks shot into my skin, into my very nerves. Each of them had been coated with the hottest chili powder known to man and each of them burned with the heat of a forge fire. Every time before that, the void had been a featureless black plane of nothingness. But now it had an orange tint to the world. Flames licked at my eyes, flickering in time with the beat in my ears. I fell to my knees in the real world and hands clasped around my shoulders to keep me standing.
There in my arms, Tia looked up at me and smiled beatifically. “You’re not supposed to be here, you’ll get hurt.” Her body and soul shone with a silvery light in the void, as if she were one of the few places the orange cast could not reach. She held a tiny hand up and poked me in the cheek. “I can feel her nearby. You have to tell her how you feel, it’s the only way.”
A prick of power threaded its way from Tia’s finger into my body. Thunder clapped between the drumbeats of the goblins and I rocked out of the void in an instant. With that, the red hot pokers in my flesh had vanished and my headache faded a tiny fraction. Tia shifted in my arms and murmured incoherently.
Yierie had a flask of amber liquid in her hand and was tipping it into my mouth as I opened my eyes. “Drink, Harriet, this will help you.”
I didn’t resist. This tasted like peppermint and cherries. The flavors were not quite at odds, but they were hardly complements. As I swallowed the liquid, a warmth spread through my body quite unlike the fires of the hooks in my flesh. The last bit of pain faded from my as the warmth suffused my being.
“What is that stuff?”
“Juice from the Fruit of the Tree of Life.” Yierie capped it and returned the bottle to her side. “We have to use it sparingly, but it should have eased the pain.”
“How did you know?”
Alaric’s eyes showed mostly whites. “Because you started wailing. I’m surprised the goblins didn’t try to overwhelm us right then.”
Garaghan tapped the iron door. “They are waiting for us. Their master will not let them ruin its surprise.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes. “Are you better? Can you carry your sister?” Awe shown from his eyes as his gaze flicked to her. It made me almost as nervous as the beating of the goblin drums.
“Yeah, let’s kill this dick.”
Garaghan smiled and motioned to Yierie and then toward the door. She braced herself as before and said, “I won’t be able to use the iron fragments as shot, so be careful crossing the threshold.”
Yierie waited for nods from the others as she sprang forward and cut down the door. I leapt over the shards of the door into the next room, unprepared for what I would find there.