Angela grunted, and the boulder wobbled out of the way. Behind her, Jacob and Dylan cupped a candle, shielding the flame from direct view, having been instructed to avoid ruining the sensitive dwarven infrared vision. Aiden pushed forward, the elf shoving past her in his eagerness to get moving.
“Wait,” she whispered, grabbing him by the wrist. “Never rush through.”
“I can see in infrared just like you,” Aiden said. “Nothing in there.”
“Shh,” Angela put a finger up to the elf boy’s lips. “Listen and wait.”
Aiden rolled his eyes in exasperation, but obeyed. A second passed; then a minute; and still the dwarf held the elf’s wrist in warning, not moving. A faint squelching noise, and a cold ropy appendage slid into view.
“Oh, it’s a cave scavenger,” Aiden said, stepping back to unsheath his sword. “That’ll be worth a lot of XP.”
Angela shook her head. “Fuck no. We’re going the other way.”
“We can totally take it,” Aiden growled out in frustration as Angela pushed the boulder back into place.
“If there’s only one of them, and it doesn’t get lucky, we might beat it. I have dwarven poison resistance and good starting saving throws, so I have a pretty good chance at standing up to it.” Angela poked the elf boy in the chest. “But even if it is alone, it might just paralyze you and drag you off to eat somewhere else I can’t follow. So, no. Let’s explore the other way a bit. I have a feeling that direction can also bring us to the surface. If not, we’ll try this way again and hope it’s moved on.”
Aiden muttered under his breath. Dylan rubbed his head with an exasperated expression. Jacob let out a long breath, taking his hand away from his sword.
***
“I heard flowing water up that way,” Angela said, pointing at a dark hole in the ceiling as she waved a torch. “Most likely, the source of the underwater lake that the goblins set up next to. Which, in turn, should bring us very close to the surface. Now, the tricky part is that I only have two ropes. We might not be able to bring up the cart. Or the donkey.”
Aiden, Jacob, and Dylan stared up at the dark hole in the ceiling.
“Exactly how are we supposed to get up there?” Dylan asked.
“Well,” Angela rubbed her head. “I thought maybe you would lower a rope down to us.”
“And how am I supposed to get up there? I can climb, but not like a spider.” Dylan frowned.
“You’ll have to trust a blind grappling hook. But you’re the lightest one.” Angela touched her hand to Dylan’s shoulder, muttering. Light flared, and Dylan blinked. “Hopefully, that brings you up to a point where you can survive a fall. Don’t worry, we’ll be down here ready to catch you if you fall, and I have healing spells.” Angela hefted the torch, flinging it up into the air. It flickered, nearly going out as it passed through the hole. There was a clatter. Flickering firelight illuminated the distant ceiling of the cavern above.
The first attempt didn’t catch. The third toss seemed to nearly catch on something. The fourth held until the moment Dylan trusted his full weight to it; Aiden caught him, which sent both of them tumbling to the ground. The seventh attempt proved successful. After Dylan reached the top and found that the grappling hook had lodged in a divot barely half an inch deep, he let loose a string of profanity as he described the situation.
“Count your blessings!” Angela called up. “It held on as long as it needed to. That was a damn good grapple if it held long enough for you to get up there.”
Next, Dylan tied a loop of rope around a stalagmite; Jacob and Aiden went up. The dogs, goats, beer barrels, and other small items went up easily enough; but the donkey required considerable persuasion and a pulley system to amplify the strength of the three on top. The empty cart, lighter but more awkward, followed next; and then finally, more than an hour after they’d started, Angela climbed up the rope.
“Now, time to repack everything,” Angela said, pointing at the empty cart and looking over at Jacob and Dylan. “Where’s Aiden?”
“He, uh, decided to go scouting ahead,” Dylan said, pointing at a tunnel.
Angela sighed. “Idiot.” She looked at the pile of stuff by the cart, then at the halfling and human. “And you didn’t stop him?” She shook her head. “New plan. You two load the cart while I start heading that way. I might be able to catch up with him if he’s being careful and moving slowly.”
“I mean, he should be careful,” Jacob said. “He knows that the green-skinned goblins that killed Ava and Elijah are around here somewhere. We were trying to chase them down to here.”
Dylan opened his mouth, then closed it in a guilty frown. “Yeah, that makes sense,” he said, looking away from Jacob.
“Green-skinned goblins? Weird,” Angela said, shaking her head. “I remember them being usually red, orange, or yellow. Well, I’m off. Good luck with the donkey.”
----------------------------------------
“First kill?” The tall goblin asked Liam.
The short goblin’s eyes flew wide as he elbowed his taller companion in the ribs. “Don’t disrespect the great feathered demon!”
Liam panted heavily, staring down at the puddle of flourescent blue vomit gently hissing against the limestone of the cave. “Yeah. First kill,” he said, wiping his mouth with one feathered hand. Was blue vomit normal for deeplings, or whatever kind of deepling he was? Probably.
The tall goblin gave the short goblin a quizzical look, then clapped Liam on the back. “We celebrate!”
“No, no,” Liam said. “They could have reinforcements. We need to block the tunnel.”
“It’s too big,” the small goblin said.
“Does it narrow further down?” Liam asked.
The short goblin shook his head. “It meets the river in a medium-sized cavern, and from there they could go anywhere under the mountain.”
Liam sighed, looking over at the dead and wounded. The fallen half-elf that he suspected of being his grandmother had been moved over with the fallen goblins. Unlike the fallen dark elves, she wasn’t being stripped of her armor. He wasn’t quite sure if that meant she was still alive, and he wasn’t ready to find out. His stomach folded over at the thought of going to look. “Give me a few minutes with my spellbook to get ready,” he said. “And then let’s go down to that cavern and see if we can at least tell which way that they went. Maybe we’ll be able to rig up some kind of trap.”
“Brave feathered demon,” the tall goblin said, smiling broadly. “Make first kill, eager for second kill.”
----------------------------------------
Aiden ducked his head, but the pommel of his sword caught on the low ceiling. Cursing under his breath, he unstrapped his shoulder harness, crawling forward on one hand and two knees as he cradled the two-handed sword in one arm. Not that there’s enough room to swing it, he thought to himself grimly, crawling faster as he heard the sound of running water.
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Then the ceiling went away. He looked up; a pair of warm-blooded figures with pointed ears looked back down at him from a dozen yards away. Elves! Great, I’ve met up with more of the good guys, he thought to himself. Then one shouted, pulled out a small crossbow, and fired, the bolt glancing off Aiden’s mail.
Aiden pushed his sword forward and somersaulted forward, drawing the blade out of its sheath and off the ground in a smooth practiced motion that he could never have imagined pulling off in his previous life.
The elf with the crossbow was already gone, fled; the second elf had drawn sword and dagger and was moving forward to strike. Unfortunately for the second elf, Aiden’s blade had better reach, and the tip crunched through the enemy elf’s mail first, rings bursting as both elves lunged towards each other. The back of the enemy elf’s mail tented as the blade slowly emerged out the other side, and the enemy elf’s blades clattered to the ground a second after the tip of his sword weakly tapped the mail on Aiden’s chest.
Aiden raised his leg, shoving the enemy elf off his blade with a push-kick and paused, listening. He couldn’t hear anything other than the running water. He knelt at the side of the fallen enemy elf, taking a couple of minutes to systematically strip the dead elf of potentially valuable possessions – armor, sword, dagger, a second dagger, belt pouch, cloak, boots… the boots fit surprisingly well… some jerky.
He chewed the jerky, washing it down with a mouthful of water, and kicked the fallen elf. “Fucking traitor elf,” he said, then leaned back against the cavern wall, closing his eyes for just one moment to relax.
Aiden has defeated a dark elf (650 XP). Aiden has recovered 84 silver pennies in value of treasure from the dark elf (84 XP). For defeating 2 hit dice of enemies, Aiden has also earned 20 bonus warrior XP. For exceptional attributes, Aiden has earned 75 bonus warrior XP.
Status:
Hit points:
3/4
Armor class:
5
XP:
2235/2000
Aiden has leveled up! Rolling 1d10 additional hit points… Aiden has gained 10 hit points.
STR
17
Class
Fighter
Saves
Normal
DEX
13
Level
2
Death
14
CON
9
THAC0
19
Wand
16
INT
8
XP
2235
Polymorph
15
WIS
7
Next level
4000
Breath Weapon
17
CHA
13
Max hp:
14
Spell
17
Updated status:
Hit points:
13/14
Armor class:
5
XP:
2235/4000
“Fucking ding!” Aiden shouted, pumping his arm, then continued more quietly, muttering to himself. “I may have gotten cheated out of XP for that blue-haired ogre and that crazy fucking dwarven cleric, but look who’s made it to level fucking two now anyway! About time!”
----------------------------------------
Liam took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m ready,” he said, taking one last glance at the still but warm form of the half-elf at the other end of the cavern. The bodies of the dark elves had begun to cool; if that was his grandmother, then his grandmother was still alive. Hopefully, she’d survive whatever poison the dark elves used on their little crossbows.
Hopefully. Maybe this time, his new party mate would survive. And if it really was his grandmother, she would know what to do. Ava had been reincarnated as a mighty ogre, but she hadn’t known what to do and had died to one deadly strike of an elf’s two-handed sword. Elijah and Jacob were probably dead at the hands of those same murderous adventurers; Elijah had been outnumbered, and Jacob, further down the stream, had been in no condition to fight.
The tall goblin led the way down the tunnel, flanged mace in hand, and Liam followed. Then he heard a voice echo up the tunnel, from not too far away.
“Fucking ding!” The voice sounded strangely familiar; Liam couldn't place a name to it, but he felt certain he'd heard it before.