image [https://i.imgur.com/oZWCSso.jpg]
image [https://i.imgur.com/xSrAk43.jpg]
You’re captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.
— Daniel Quinn,
From Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
Over my gaming career, fantasy game worlds have endangered me many times, but I’ve never imperiled one itself. Perhaps that’s why I ignored the mental itch telling me something felt wrong in Miros. Having avenged Charitybelle and destroyed the relic, I expected to be at peace when I awoke. However, the uneasy feeling that I’d forgotten something awaited me on the shoreline of consciousness.
“Patch, psst. Wake up! We got company.”
I opened my eyes and saw Fabulosa cinch her belt around her waist and shimmy down the Dark Room rope. She wore her surcoat and lacy fittings that poked out of her armor, a palette of bright greens with purple accents. Wherever she headed, camouflage wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t in a hurry, so donning my equipment seemed a good idea.
I absently checked my available spells, a habit that had fallen out of practice after my skill ranks came less frequently. The description of my most recently unlocked spell left my socks on.
Power (spell)
Primal Blast (tier 1)
Prerequisites
Compression Sphere, Primal magic rank 21
Cost
40 mana
Cooldown
Once per day
Cast time
Channel
Description
Delivers a 30-degree arc of damage for 1 point per second for every second spent channeling in combat to a maximum of ten times spellcaster’s willpower. Concentration must be maintained to sustain the effect.
If someone could avoid attacks for 10 minutes, they could spray 600 area-of-effect damage. Its terrible cast time required a wall of defenders to pull it off, and wouldn’t such an ensemble suffer its effects? But in that ten minutes, other spells and ranged attacks could do far more damage with even low-level spells. Primal Blast produced only 1 point of damage per second—a terrible output. Second, spells unpaired with melee attacks couldn’t critically hit, so it offered minimal upside. Worse, the spell didn’t scale as the caster ranked up their primal magic.
I liked very little about Primal Blast, so I dismissed it during combat. Still, area-of-effect spells had their place in the game. Fabulosa had a high primal magic rank—perhaps she knew how to use it.
When I exited my bunk, my legs protested from being sore from the overnight march to the relic dungeon. Keeping up with the gnoll pack took its toll, and the subsequent fighting hadn’t helped. Putting on my armor in the proper sequence felt like a jigsaw puzzle. I wasn’t accustomed to being disoriented upon waking. My interface clock revealed we’d only slept for six hours—two short of resetting daily cooldowns and ridding myself of Exhaustion debuffs. Fabulosa wouldn’t have broken our rest if it wasn’t serious, so I hurried. Ignoring my restlessness and subconscious itch, I got up to see what bothered her.
When I reached for my mithril vest, I fumbled it onto the Dark Room floor with a clatter. Fabulosa, in the relic room below, spared no glances at the noise. Visibility, sounds, and spells didn’t carry outside the transdimensional space—as far as I knew, neither did odor.
Fabulosa left before I could ask why. She wasn’t waiting for me, so I surmised a danger below awaited. But she didn’t carry herself in a fighting position. Whatever caught her attention wasn’t combative.
My event log reported the death of several kobolds. Two died of old age from the aging field and three from Fabulosa’s arrows.
I joined my partner in the pearlescent crypt at the bottom of the mysterious dungeon—the room that felt like being inside of a giant seashell. A fine white powder covered the floor, but at least none of it lingered in the air. Thick and thin cracks covered every surface, but the room’s integrity seemed solid. The sea creatures who built it knew their engineering. I just hoped the lizardfolk temple above it remained intact.
Powder from the quake covered everything except five dead kobolds.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Fabulosa ignored the corpses and eyed the fissure in the floor.
I walked to her. “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you about that. It opened when I destroyed the relic. The earth shook, and the ground cracked. That’s how the rats got in.”
Although Winterbyte’s ring of lanterns illuminated the space, the glow stones on Fabulosa’s armor shifted the room’s shadows whenever she moved.
I picked up weird vibes from her. “What’s up?”
Fabulosa shook her head and did not meet my gaze. “I heard kobolds poking around. After two died in the aging field, they freaked out, so I shot them before they blew their whistles.”
“Do you want to check out the fissure?”
“I’m not in the mood for tight spaces. I want to go home, decompress, and get my bearings.” She spoke without apology, conviction, or energy.
Even though our cooldowns hadn’t reset, we could collapse this tunnel with Dig and Compression Spheres. If the kobolds saw the relic gone, they might send out scouts, which could spell more trouble for Hawkhurst.
The kobolds carried no weapons, wore ragged leathers, and had whistles looped around their necks. But the bands of leather around their arms glowed with magic.
Item
Cuffs of Obedience
Rarity
Basic (gray)
Description
Level 5 wrist slot
It seemed strange that a gray item radiated magic. Nor did it make sense that an item with a specific name gave no description. Kobolds had a reputation for subjugating one another, and gnolls enslaved them, so finding them wasn’t altogether surprising. Hard leather gave the bracelets a sturdy feel, but any rat worth their weight in sodium could gnaw through them. Perhaps they wore them voluntarily or held a ceremonial significance.
I removed the cuff and the whistles. Maybe the dwarves might know more.
The bow Fabulosa carried gave her +5 damage. Including her strength bonus, she could almost one-shot kobolds. I appreciated her quick trigger finger. With all the drums and whistles on the surface, we didn’t want to call any more attention to ourselves. If the kobolds tried to pawn the relic on the orcs, they might panic if they saw it missing. I didn’t understand kobold motives or politics, but if anything led to our settlement’s discovery, it would become Pandora’s box, one we’d never be able to close.
The wounds on the kobolds looked strange. “How did you kill these guys? Are these arrow wounds?”
“I used the Returning Arrow. I retrieved it from Winterbyte’s things.” Fabulosa tossed the sack containing Winterbyte’s belongings at my feet.
Pilfering the celestial core from the relic preoccupied my thoughts so much I’d forgotten to comb through Winterbyte’s other goodies. New magic items might come in handy if we explored the fissure.
I spotted a tiny crossbow without a string. It measured almost half a foot long, looking appropriate for cherubs in an 18th-century painting. “Aw, that’s a cute little item.”
Item
Light Crossbow
Rarity
Rare (yellow)
Description
Level 30 wrist slot
Item use—Every 30 seconds, Light Crossbow creates an imbued Arcane Missile 5 ranks higher than caster’s arcane magic rank.
The name’s double meaning hadn’t escaped me. I adjusted its straps around my forearm. The miniature device felt like an oversized watch. It looked silly, but the coolness of shooting glowing Arcane Missiles for free damage outweighed anything else. It only required a mental trigger, and I could carry another weapon while using it.
After targeting a corpse, a glowing bolt appeared in the flight groove.
The gadget did not impress Fabulosa. Unable to use arcane magic, she preferred the meat-and-potatoes approach of primal damage and combat mechanics.
“Do you mind if I take this? It’s perfect for me.”
Fabulosa shrugged and looked away.
I didn’t understand the grouchy behavior. Usually, we congratulated each other when we got a new weapon. Fabulosa had become quite the archery snob since Yula taught her hunting skills. She had the gnoll’s strength bow, the bow Yula taught her to make, and my Divine Bow. Perhaps she missed Hawkhurst, something I would have never thought possible, given how much time she spent with Yula in the wilderness. Either way, it wasn’t an opportune time to ask for my Divine Bow back. Besides, I didn’t need its intelligence boost with the relic gone. Maybe she could use it to track monsters on patrol.
It puzzled me to see Fabulosa incurious about a dungeon. I could have poked her gamer’s pride or sense of adventure, but she wasn’t in a playful mood.
I peered into the crack using Creeper’s infravision. “I want to see if this crack has something we need to worry about. We can collapse it and go home if it’s not worth exploring.” Instead of waiting for more noncommittal grunts, I climbed down without asking for an opinion. If she didn’t want to follow, that was her decision.
I lowered myself into the fissure. Creeper’s infravision worked better for navigation because kobolds were sensitive to bright light sources like Presence. Moving and seeing things from the tip of my spear disoriented me, and the fine white dust made surfaces slippery, so I climbed down with care. Silence reigned in the crevasse, so I could hear Fabulosa following behind. It encouraged me to descend further.
The space tightened as we climbed but opened into a hollowed-out tunnel. I dropped into it. The curved corridor looked like something dug it out long ago because its earthen surfaces felt dry. The hallway looked like the work of kobolds, and I crawled on my hands and knees. Fabulosa wouldn’t like it, but I pressed on.
“I’m going to see where this goes.” Making sure Fabulosa wasn’t too far behind, I followed the curved tunnel until I reached a window overlooking another room. Poking my spear into it revealed a cavity larger than a grain silo.
When I spotted Fabulosa’s glow stones drawing near, I withdrew Creeper and let my pupils adjust to the light. At first, I mistook the window frames for heavy logs. Kobolds hewed them from roots, not tree limbs, forming a spiraling lattice supporting the chamber’s walls. The rootwork buttressing reached the silo’s floor, framing cubbyholes between each rib. The hollows provided sleeping bunks for at least a hundred kobolds. Toddler-sized artifacts and unkempt leathers littered the sleeping cavities. Dim candles illuminated the floor almost a hundred feet down. Kobolds needed a little light to see. Who knew?
The settlement manager in me envied the accommodations. We’d needed at least half a dozen roundhouses to match this. How many kobolds lived under the mountain if their dormitories held so many?
I leaned into the window to see if the game’s interface counted the kobold city as a foreign settlement. It did, which meant our double-damage Aggression bonus kicked in. Underground, the game maps stopped drawing, but it labeled the location—Upper Northeast Panopticon. Piecing together pan and optic suggested the room’s primary function involved seeing everything, but it begged the question—why?
A raised platform jutted from the floor’s center like a watchtower. It didn’t look like a prison, as no bars covered the cubbyholes, but the location’s name, Panopticon, suggested someone monitored its tenants. It made no sense to me why anyone would want to watch a bunch of mangy kobolds in their home territory, but there it was.