Gizmit vanished at some point during the night, which had me actually worried for a moment before Zui said she’d just gone ahead to report back to Sneppit. Apparently we were close enough that it wasn’t much of a hike for an experienced underground scout like Gizmit.
It ended up being not much of one for us, either. A bit less than two hours after we broke camp and doused the fire slimes, our much-expanded troupe came to the first set of tunnel barricades covering access to Sneppit’s base, which was a sturdy-looking but clearly hastily-constructed wall of sheet metal with holes through which arrows were pointed at us.
“Halt!” a reedy voice echoed from behind the blockade. “State the password!”
There ensued the unmistakable smack of a hand impacting a head, complete with the requisite squawk of protest.
“Not the time, Bazno!” a different voice shouted. “Weapons down, team, you all know who this is. One of you mooks help me shove this!”
With an unpleasant screech of metal on stone, a piece of the barricade was pushed outward at an angle by several goblins, creating a gap big enough for us to slip through in single file. As soon as it was opened enough, the goblin leading the effort stepped back and waved at me. She wore the pink-tinted akornin armor of Sneppit’s security force, with a heavy truncheon dangling from a belt loop.
“Welcome back, Lord Seiji. Gizmit came through and said you’d be coming. Sorry about the nonsense, a lot of my colleagues here are in the habit of defusing tension with humor and don’t have a great sense of appropriate timing. This everybody?”
“Yeah, we picked up a few extras, as you can see,” I replied, forcing a calm expression despite my amusement. Honestly, the more I got to know goblins, the more I liked them.
“Yep, Gizmit briefed us.” The guard nodded and stepped aside, shooing her comrades out of the way for us. “Miss Sneppit knows to expect you and everything should be set up. Just follow this tunnel straight, ignore the side branches and you’ll come out right on the tram platform; I think you know the way from there. By the time you get there somebody should be ready to meet you with supplies and whatever else. The boss’ll wanna catch up, I’m sure. Oh, and we should have sleeping places and food sorted out for the new arrivals by now,” she added, leaning to one side to speak past me at the crowd of goblins following. “It’s a little crowded in here these days, but we’re not to the point of starving or stacking on top of each other yet.”
“Thanks, appreciate it,” I said, already stepping forward to clear the path for the rest to follow. The security goblin grinned and thumped her fist against her breastplate, which I assumed must be some kind of salute.
Yoshi and Aster stepped up alongside me as we progressed, which I’ll confess was a bit of a relief because Zui had been getting underfoot quite a bit lately and I found her company…let’s call it vexing. We didn’t have much farther to go from there, but it was a few more minutes before we reached the actual door to Sneppit’s headquarters: a heavy door of solid metal in a thick stone setting, which altogether looked more defensible than the much more temporary barricade behind us. But that was the nice thing about living in a tunnel system, you could expand your defensive perimeter without stretching your forces too thin. Made sense Sneppit preferred not to have any actual fighting right on her actual doorstep if it could be avoided.
This was also guarded, of course, this time with armored security out in front of the doors, but again they were expecting us. It was rather nice to be greeted cheerfully and ushered inside, almost like coming home to North Watch.
I really hoped everyone back there was holding out okay.
As the woman commanding the barricade had told us, the tunnel led straight onto the tram platform I remembered from our arrival yesterday morning. Like yesterday, it was defended, with full squads of armored goblins bearing slingshots and riot shields on the designated ledges which had clearly been designed for that purpose. The place was less generally locked down, though; there were more goblins present who were clearly not security, including an apparent engineering team working over a tram which was currently suspended from the track next to the main platform. There were also various other civilians whose reason for being here was inscrutable to me even as they rushed forward to greet us.
Sneppit herself was present, again perched at the top of the wide and tall flight of stairs, which was just too dramatic not to have been staged. She was conversing with a goblin who had a monocle and a clipboard, but looked up on our arrival. Then pulled down her pink shades to give me a wink over their golden rims.
Yep, I knew what she was angling for.
“Scuze me, Lord Seiji?”
The first of the welcoming party had reached us. In fact, most of them seemed to be milling around at a few meters’ distance, uncertain about getting too close. The exceptions were two men in casual clothes, one of whom did a somewhat awkward Fflyr-style folding hands gesture at me.
“Sorry to get in your way, Dark Lord, but there’s only rumor going around and no one will tell us—”
“Where’s Rizz?” the other burst out. “Is she all right? What happened?”
Taken aback, I froze for a second, staring down at their worried expressions, before it clicked.
“Oh! You guys must be the husbands.”
The pair exchanged a loaded glance and one of them grimaced.
“Yeah, that’s us. Same old story.”
“Rizz is fine, or was last I saw her,” I explained. “She split off from the group to rally the other Judges.”
“She did?” Husband #2’s expression sharpened. “You musta found something really bad in that place if she not only took a side but believes the rest will, too.”
I instinctively hesitated, but this was not a secret, after all. We wanted the word to spread as far and as fast as possible.
“The Spirit in there had been corrupted into a Void altar. The Goblin King has been trafficking with devils, and his best friend Hoy is an actual Void witch. It took the Hero and I both to drive him off, and we didn’t manage to take him out. All these folks were actually with him, until he started slaughtering them just to make a point.”
The Misters Rizz winced in what looked like well-practiced unison.
“Is Rhoka okay? She’s still with Rizz, right?”
“Did…she give you any message for us?”
“Yes, yes, and…uh, no. Sorry.”
“Typical,” the first one said sourly, prompting the other to drape a comforting arm around his shoulders. It occurred to me that if this conversation was going to carry on much longer I should probably get their names.
“Hey, you know our girl. Brusque and focused is a good sign. If she’d sent us a personal message it would mean she didn’t think she’d be coming back from this one. Thanks, Lord Seiji. And, uh, sorry to bother you over personal business.”
“Hey, man, no worries. I completely understand.”
They retreated to the rest of the hovering goblins, still arm-in-arm.
“Y’know, after everything we’ve been over lately,” Yoshi muttered barely above a whisper, “it feels weird that the middle-aged goblin lady is the only one who’s gotten the harem ending so far.”
I had to crack a grin at that in spite of myself. “I dunno, something about that seems oddly representative of our whole isekai experience.”
“Maybe it’s the coat. I should get a coat like hers. Trench coats are badass.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of a cool hat, too.”
“All right, all right, you’ve seen the Champions, they’re very impressive.” Miss Sneppit arrived at the base of the stairs and immediately began shooing the onlookers forward by sheer force of personality. Somehow, Zui had already darted over to hover behind the pink-clad boss goblin and was whispering in her ear even as she shepherded the crowd. “You can tell your grandkids all about it. Right now, nobody’s gettin’ paid to sightsee. Yo, new faces! I’m Sneppit, and this is my place. Consider yourselves welcome here for the duration of this crisis. This is Mazin, he’ll getcha squared away. We got a space cleared out for everybody to crash in and rations are bein’ prepared. No compensation needed, you’re on my hospitality for now. I won’t swear by the comfort but this ain’t an inn, and with any luck we won’t be in this mess for long. Mazin’ll introduce you to the rest of these folks to sort out any other needs you’ve got an’ settle how you can pitch in.”
Sneppit’s people were efficient, you had to give them that. Mazin took over crowd-herding duty and was immediately sorting and delegating. The goblins we’d brought in from Hoy’s group mostly looked tired and glad somebody was taking charge, but a few looked back at me questioningly as they were led away.
“Everybody should be safe here for now,” I reassured them. “My people have a spot arranged here in the complex, and I can attest Miss Sneppit provides well for all the basic necessities. All of you, feel free to visit our quarters, I’ll make sure you’re welcome. Any of the guards can point you there.”
That seemed to do the trick, for now at least.
“Between Gizmit and Zui I think I know the high points, but we need to have a sit-down first thing,” Sneppit declared. “Get everybody on the same page and lay out our next steps. We got some news here to catch you guys up on, too. First, though, can I borrow you for a private word, Lord Seiji?”
I glanced at Yoshi, who shrugged.
“Sure, I’m all yours.”
She smirked at the wording, just long enough to make her point felt. “Swell. Zui, show the Hero back to the conference room and see the rest of this gang to their resting place.”
“Maizo should come along, too,” Zui said. “He’s got intel to share.”
“Sounds good, get it done,” Sneppit said briskly. “Over here, if you please, m’lord.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
I nodded a temporary farewell to Aster and the others and followed her past the engineering crew over to some kind of crane apparatus at the far edge. Sneppit grabbed a lever that was half the length of her body and, with a grunt of effort, pulled it into position. This disengaged some kind of brake system, causing a clever windmill contraption atop the machine to begin spinning in the steady breeze that funneled through the tram tunnel. With none of its other gears engaged, this appeared to achieve nothing except to create a constant grinding noise.
“Little trick I like to use,” she said, not raising her voice. Standing this close I could hear her fine, but the mechanical sounds would probably make anything we said indistinct a few meters away. “Dunno how useful it’ll be for you up top, but down here I got heavy machinery and a buncha mooks with big ears. Privacy’s like any other resource in Kzidnak: you want some, you gotta get inventive.”
“I am always impressed by just how inventive goblins are,” I said frankly.
Sneppit gave me a bright smile, but then her expression sobered. “So, I’ll be brief, this is just a quick detail check before the meeting. Does the Hero know you’re based outta North Watch, and if not, do you want him to?”
That brought me up short, both because it was a pertinent question that I had somehow not even considered yet, and because of the implications of her asking this right now.
“Hang on. Did something—?”
“The short answer is your people are fine, and seems they’ve been doing you proud. I figure we’ll go over the longer version at the full meeting. I hate repeating myself.”
The breath I’d been briefly holding escaped, and I nodded. “Okay, yeah. Thanks. As for North Watch… To my knowledge, there’s no reason he would know that. I’m…” I had to pause, thinking quickly but carefully. “I don’t think Yoshi would currently do me much harm with that info, and offering it as a gesture of trust might actually help advance the project I discussed with you. But, there are those friends of his.”
Sneppit nodded seriously. “The elf is an unconscionable waste of cranial fluid, but I dunno if I like how sharp that priestess is. The alchemist, too, you always gotta watch out for the quiet ones.”
“Yeah, they’ve been canny enough not to reveal Yoshi’s the Hero because of what would obviously happen if the political powers up there found out. While that does suggest a capacity for discretion, it also makes me hesitant to hand them a lever. Especially one that’s planted under my ass. Let’s…play it subtle for now.”
“You got it, no names or details in front of Team Hero. Speaking of that, while I gotcha over here, how’s that project going?”
“Better than I could have imagined,” I said frankly. “I can safely say the boy’s whole view of the world has been rocked. I think the core of the matter might be already settled, but if we can end this whole mess with him having a few goblins he thinks of as friends or at least allies, that should be the best anti-Hero measure Kzidnak could hope for. It’ll start driving a wedge between him and the Convocation, too.”
“You do good work, Lord Seiji,” she said with a distinctly flirtatious wink. “You work this from your end and I will from mine, and by the time we meet in the middle we’ll be running this whole island. We make a good team. All right, let’s not keep the staff waiting.”
“Lead on, boss lady.”
As I followed her back up the stairs, I pondered the advisability of revealing my…little issue to Sneppit. So far she hadn’t done anything brazenly sexual enough to trigger a flashback, but I could see her building up to it. The real question was what course of action would gently dissuade her without jeopardizing our partnership, or worse…
Well, allies we might be, but every instinct I had screamed at me not to let Sneppit know I had any exploitable weakness.
----------------------------------------
“I’ve just got the broad strokes, but it’s enough to change the whole game,” Sneppit said minutes later once she was at the head of the conference table and the rest of us around it. The composition of the group was mostly the same as before, right down to Zui at her note-taking desk in the back, but this time with the addition of Gizmit and Maizo. The various union reps were back, not a one of whose names I remembered. They were still out of their depth and staying quiet, so hopefully I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself over it. “Devils and Void magic, what an absolute cock-up this is. You guys have anything else we should know about before we start laying out strategies?”
“Maizo?” I asked, turning to him. “What were you able to dig up?”
“The biggest news I think is that Jadrak’s organization is very much a crackable shell,” Maizo reported. “It’s half-cracked already. Working with secondhand reports like that, hard numbers and percentages are things I was just not able to get—wouldn’t have been even if our adoptees were a representative sample, which itself is a long shot. But, after speaking with everybody I can confidently say the Goblin King’s followers have deep currents of disloyalty. The core of ‘em are absolute fanatics, of course, but they’ve also press-ganged a lot of people who’re just trying to survive this insanity and didn’t get far enough away in time. It’s not just the unwilling recruits; with the way things’ve been going, even the less-committed early volunteers are starting to have regrets about this whole business.”
“In isolation, that’d be the best news I’ve heard all week,” Sneppit said gravely, “but the big news changes the whole character of it. Sounds like Jadrak’s organization is going to start tearing itself apart as soon as he loses momentum, but unlike my previous assessment, that is no longer a win condition for us. We’re dealing with at least one Void witch, probably two, a bunch of loyalist sorcerers and a fucking devil. As soon as Jadrak starts getting desperate, he’ll start pulling absolute chaos out of his ass and handling it with less and less precision. Aside from all the indiscriminate death and property damage that’ll cause, I’m not sure any defenses we got’ll hold out against…well, that.”
“I agree that attack remains our better option, distressing as that is,” I said. “Anything else of note, Maizo?”
“Yeah, actually. We already learned firsthand that Jadrak’s company like their explosives, and according to the buzz I gathered, they’ve got plenty more. But, the kinds they’ve got and the way they can be deployed are somewhat limited.” He leaned forward over the table, grinning smugly as he continued. “Seems they weren’t able to bring along the alchemical or metalworking facilities they’d need to manufacture explosive slingshot ammo. In fact, what they had was what they sent with the strike force to take out the Dark Lord. Which means, while there’s very little of that shit left, it’s ours now. So if we push forward, we’ll still be dealing with mining explosives and people who know how to use ‘em, but that’s way more likely to take the form of traps than grenades bein’ flung at us.”
“Seems like they should be able to make up for that,” Yoshi said, frowning. “How hard can it be to make an explosive throwable?”
“You can throw anything,” Gizmit answered with a hint of disdain. “Crafting ammunition that will reliably explode on impact and not while you’re transporting it is a whole other beast. If demolitions work was that simple, everybody would have slingshot grenades.”
“Now that’s some good news, finally,” Sneppit said. “Thanks, Maizo, glad to have you on the team. On our end, we’ve gleaned a couple updates on the situation in Kzidnak that you guys missed out on while you were off raiding. The first and worst part is that Jadrak’s people have locked down Fallencourt. They control the city itself and every access in and out. As expected, they blew up my tram rail as far from the station as they have effective control, as well as the other lines heading through there,” she added with a bitter grimace, “so we no longer have an easy path right into their territory.”
“Okay…sorry if I’m interrupting, but that gives me an idea,” Yoshi said, wearing a pensive frown. “Doesn’t that seem like something we can take advantage of, in combination with what Maizo found out? Like, I remember the city itself—it’s big, and it’s a maze of tunnels and bridges and stuff. And we know Jadrak’s struggling to hang onto his followers’ loyalty. Seems like we could take the opportunity to start a kind of…counter-insurgency in the middle of his domain. Right?”
“Giz?” Sneppit turned toward her spy, raising an eyebrow.
Gizmit was already shaking her head. “It’s a pretty good thought, but not something we’re in a position to act on. Yeah, you’re right, the conditions are so perfect for a rebellion against Jadrak that it’s basically inevitable even if we don’t do anything. The problems are our available resources and the time frame. I’m the best we’ve got at that kinda work, and I am not up to the task. Somebody stealthy enough to get into the heart of Jadrak’s territory and skilled enough in both military matters and politics to put together a resistance on the extremely tight deadline we’ve got before this all blows up, which is days at most… Well, we’re talkin’ about a professional operative of the kind major governments field. So unless you’ve got a Lancoral Gray Guard or Savin shadow scout in your back pocket, and a way to make ‘em behave, that’s not a path we can pursue.”
“Damn,” he muttered, sinking back in his chair. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, kid,” Sneppit said with a smile. “You got good ideas; keep ‘em comin’, even if they don’t all work out. That’s how we eventually come to one that’ll work.”
I kept my mouth shut, suddenly grappling with the worry that I now knew exactly where my mysterious dark elf stalker had disappeared to and it was basically my nightmare scenario. They were fine and useful while shooting my enemies with arrows; if that fucking idiot started trying to do their idea of politics again it would be a disaster. Jadrak’s uprising was a far bigger hornets’ nest than the cat tribe.
“The other piece of news I have for you is better,” Sneppit continued, shooting me a grin. “Jadrak made a push at the tunnel entrance the Dark Lord took into Kzidnak and was apparently very surprised to find it fully staffed by his followers and heavily fortified. We haven’t managed to actually get in contact with your people, Lord Seiji—they’re on high alert and also there’s a lot of Jadrak’s goons between them and us. But I had my own scouts find out what they could, and it seems they’ve turned that tunnel entrance into a death trap. Wasted a whole mess of Goblin King partisans trying to take it before they eventually backed off. That’s great news for us, and not just because it means Lord Seiji’s people are okay: it’s a major threat way too close to Jadrak’s current center of power for his comfort, and something he has no choice but to keep forces assigned to hold because for all he knows, the Dark Lord can launch a major offensive right into Fallencourt at any time.”
“Not just for all he knows,” I mused, “I actually can do that. I’d have to find a way to get through that blockade and contact my people, though…”
“Way faster to go around,” Maizo opined. “There are a lotta surface exits, Jadrak can’t possibly control ‘em all. We can get a message to your allies pretty easy.”
I tensed for a moment, but he didn’t mention North Watch. Either Sneppit had caught his ear during the few minutes it’d taken us to set up the meeting, or Maizo was just professionally discreet.
“We need a plan and a way to coordinate that attack with our own first,” I said quickly into the ensuing pause. “Charging in without a plan will just get a lot of people killed. They don’t even know what they’re up against.”
“That’ll factor into whatever plan we settle on,” Sneppit said. “I’ll draft a message for your approval, Lord Seiji, and we’ll send it to the surface to get to your people from the other side. Meanwhile, I’ve put together something for you that I think lays out the situation pretty clearly. Zui, maps.”
Zui smoothly rose from her writing desk, picking up a couple of large rolls of paper and bringing them forward to unfurl across the conference table. I couldn’t help but notice that she did this smoothly and silently, with zero backtalk or eye-rolling, despite the fact that Sneppit spoke to her far more curtly than I ever did. I guess you get certain privileges when it’s your signature on all the paychecks.
“These are for reference,” Sneppit explained as her assistant/hairstylist spread out the maps in front of us. “I’ve got a map of our tram lines, with new notations showing which ones are still serviceable—Jadrak hasn’t bothered sabotaging the ones that don’t lead right into his own business, at least so far. After Gizmit brought her report last night I also put together this second one: it shows the positions of every underground Spirit on Dount.”
“The Spirits?” I frowned. “You think they’ll go for them as well? Do they even do anything that’d be useful for a campaign of conquest?”
“Debatable at best, but that’s not the point. Jadrak has backed himself into a corner and now that he’s put himself on your shit list his only possible source of help is his devil friend. And devils make the worst friends; they don’t do anything for free. He and Hoy only have the two souls between them to barter with, and I’m betting those bargains were made long before this Goblin King business started. That means there’s only one other thing they can offer their devil in exchange for more favors.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“But that’s good, though,” said Yoshi. “It means we know where they’ll be going.”
“Exactly!” Sneppit pointed at him. “Jadrak’s survival depends on keeping his little crusade moving forward. He has to placate his people by attacking the humans of Dount, and he has to placate his devil by corrupting more Spirits. So while we can’t predict exactly what forces will be sent to which objectives, we know the next steps he has to take: he’ll be launching a major offensive at Lord Seiji’s defenses, and he will go for every Spirit within reach.”
“And with every passing hour, his task gets harder,” Gizmit added. “Even the Judges can’t do anything against a Void witch—they’ll be disadvantaged against Jadrak’s pet sorcerers, for that matter. But what they can do, and what Rizz will have them doing as soon as she can gather them up, is laying groundwork. Getting in position, organizing resistance, putting people and resources in place to back up the Dark Lord when he makes his move. Furthermore, Rizz—any of the Judges, in fact—are shrewd enough to put all this together for themselves, and they know their way around Kzidnak without the need for maps. Jadrak has the initiative right now, but everywhere we go, we will begin to find support. More and more the longer this carries on.”
“That means Jadrak will be getting more desperate and therefore more dangerous right up until the end,” I murmured.
“It does,” Gizmit said gravely.
“But it also means this is far from hopeless,” Yoshi added. “From the look of it… It’s obvious what we have to do next. We just need to plan how.”
“You said it,” I agreed. “Jadrak will be most careful with his own safety—something tells me I know exactly who’s going to get sent to handle the Spirits. And that’ll be our job. What do you think, Yoshi? Ready for round two?”
“We didn’t blow that bastard Hoy up nearly hard enough last time,” he growled. “Time to fix that.”