Calista stared at the painting a moment longer. She wasn’t sure she liked this old woman, but then again, what choice did she have? She turned to Lefty. “What makes you think we can trust her?”

The mage shrugged, “She’s a woman trapped in a painting. She’s obviously in distress and we’re meant to help her.”

Calista gave Lefty a stern look. “I think we have different comfort levels with distressed women. That is not some maiden being held by an evil wizard. That is a crabby old woman who insulted me several times.”

“That was the best part, actually.”

“Excuse me?”

Lefty grinned. “Again? Or just this once?”

Calista let out a sigh of exasperation. “If this gets us killed, I’m leaving you here when I resurrect.”

Lefty drew himself up. “You just don’t like the fact that you’re not the one who is really in charge here.”

“I never said that,” Calista replied.

“You didn’t need to,” Lefty said.

Calista shook her head as she turned her focus to the squeaky voices she could hear down the hallway. It sounded like a heated debate. With a last glance at the painting, she sheathed her sword and said to Lefty, “Okay, you stay here and I’ll go get these keys.”

She slipped into stealth and began to creep her way down the hallway. As she got closer, the high pitched squeaks and squawks got clearer, so she activated her [Languages] skill to see if she could understand them. In an instant, the voices came to her in English.

“Gentlemen, what we need to focus on here is the fact that we have received reports of an interloper somewhere within the dungeon.”

“And what I am saying is that this report came from the dragon, who we know to have suspect stats in wisdom and common sense.”

“It is not the dragon’s stats that are suspect, it is her perception of reality.”

“But if there is an interloper …”

As the conversation paused, Calista reached an open doorway and peered inside. Three kobolds were gathered around a wooden table. Two wore mismatched armor, one dressed in a leather jerkin and the other with a steel half helm in the shape of a skull, while the third wore a black robe.

The black robes spoke next. “If there is an interloper, it just outsmarted a dragon. What does Severin think a bunch of us kobolds are going to do about it?”

The skull growled back. “Is that where we are? Are we so cowardly that we would cower in the corner while a threat like this is lurking about our home?”

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There was a silence as the other kobold officers looked at each other awkwardly.

“Well?” The skull snapped.

“Well, I think we should open this up to a committee.” The robes said.

“Agreed.” said the jerkin.

The skull threw his claws in the aid. “We are the committee!”

The kobold in the robes was haughty. “Then we should open the matter up.”

“What have we been doing!” The skull cried.

“Arguing,” the jerkin said.

“Exactly,” the black robes added. “You need to calm down so we can approach this rationally.”

This launched the skull into a rant about fools and cowards which, upon hearing it, presented an opportunity for Calista to drop down on all fours and crawl into the room. As the skull continued to rant, she kept one eye on the table where a small committee stood as she made her way to the corner of the room. Here she stopped. Above her were a series of hooks, one of which held a ring of keys. She glanced back at the kobolds to make certain they were still arguing and then, in one smooth motion, rose up and grabbed the keys. Placing them in her inventory, she crawled back toward the door.

The skull was still ranting. “If you two weren’t so useless, our tribe would actually have something resembling pride in being the children of dragons! I swear by the scales of the All-Mother that our tribe has almost as many female fighters as we do males because of you two!”

Nearing the doorway, Calista sped up just a bit, but as she did so, a foot from the door, a warning flashed on her H.U.D and her heart sank into her stomach when a squeaky voice cried out, “Hey! Who is that?”

She turned back to see the black robed kobold’s jaw hanging open as he pointed at her. Behind him, the other two kobolds drew their weapons.

She tried to think of something clever to say, but all that came out was, “Ah, bugger.”

She sprang to her feet as two tiny war cries sounded behind her. Breaking into a run, she reached for her belt pouch and tossed a tiny ball of powder at the floor as a loud bang was followed by a blinding flash. Cries of anger and surprise followed as she emerged from the smoke at a sprint.

“Subtonium abjuris tonalityne.”

She reached the curve just as Lefty finished his spell. There was a crackle of magic and she watched as a wall of stone began to rise up from the floor. The wall was waist high as she dove over it and landed in a roll. A half-second later, the wall reached the ceiling, cutting off their tiny pursuers.

“Did you get the keys?” Lefty asked.

Lying on her back, Calista held up the ring of keys and waved them like a child with a prize.

“Good. Now hang on just a second …”

Calista dusted herself off and counted the keys. Three. And two of them were completely rusted. The only good one was a plain brass key. Above her, Lefty made a couple more hand gestures as the air sparkled.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Just an enchantment against scrying magic,” he said. “You made enough noise that I thought I’d cast something just to be safe.”

She nodded her approval as she picked herself up and then they took off at a jog. They passed the painting of the old woman and then descended down the passage to the storeroom. It was just as they had left it, covered in gore with the corpse of the mimic lying in the middle of the floor. Calista gave the dead mimic a kick as she walked by. Then they both began searching the walls for anything that looked like it could trigger a hidden passage.

The mage lifted a sack of flour. “So, since I like estimating how long I have to live, how long do you figure it will take the kobold brain trust to rally the troops and bring them here?”

Calista began searching through a shelf of onions. “The old woman said they found this mess, but they apparently didn’t have the brains to check the next hallway. So who knows. Is there anything you can put in front of the doors?”

“I can do you one better,” Lefty said as he walked over to the barracks door, pressed his palm to the wood, and muttered a quick incantation. He then returned to the other door and did the same. “There, that should hold them at least until someone comes along with a decent ‘Disenchant’ spell.”

Calista nodded her approval as she searched the top shelf. “By the way, I think this brass key I pilfered is one of the five we’re looking for.”

“Nice!” Lefty exclaimed. “That’s the first one now, right?”

“Maybe, I’m not. I have a pair of small silver keys I found before I met you, but I can’t be sure if that’s one or not.”

Lefty examined a crate of vegetables, “So possibly three, possibly none. I suppose we’ll just have to figure it out as we go.”

“I suppose so,” Calista agreed as she moved away from the shelves to the ale. Tipping back a barrel, she noticed a small wire attached to its bottom. Tipping it further, she heard something click, and then a section of the storeroom shelves shifted and slid open.

“Well look at that,” she said.