The sun was beginning to dip into the horizon, the sky hinting at the brilliant strokes of orange and red to come, when Kevinar appeared from the bushes, stopping us short of the secret entrance.
“There are two guards, hidden. Ryan, I need you to go invisible before we creep up. Then I’ll point them out so that we might maximize our chances of surprise . . . and success.”
The two of us nodded, and I cast Shadowmeld, blending in with the failing light before moving forward in a careful crawl. Reaching a small overlook, we surveyed the rocky face and small ledge before it, Kevinar pointing and guiding our gazes to a mere slit in the sheer face of the plateau. From there he pointed out two goblin guards, their hunched forms barely distinguishable from the dense underbrush in which they hid.
The guards, oblivious to our presence, were engrossed in a low, grumbling conversation, their coarse voices a guttural rasp in the quiet of the evening. As they talked, Kevinar disappeared from our side, sliding around the enemy in a manner undetectable even by us. I looked to Ike, who motioned for me to slide around as well while he would maintain his vantage point, a rear guard in case of some unsuspecting patrol.
I worked my way around, stopping only when I had good sight on the figures. One guard, squat and bulbous, with skin like mottled leather, lazily leaned against a boulder, his beady eyes barely open. His companion was taller but just as grotesque, some sort of infection riding his forearm and dotting it with whey-colored pustules, almost certainly a painful debuff. This second one fiddled with a crude dagger, tossing it just enough for its blade to catch the dying sunlight in brief glimmers. They were clad in mismatched armor, pieces cobbled together from different sets, likely scavenged from unfortunate victims.
It was obvious to me that they were low level, and it was surprising that they’d been given such a very important task.
Beyond them I also had clearer sight on the entrance. It was a narrow crevice, barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through, hidden by an overhang of rock and shadowed by a thick canopy of leaves. I guess the leaves were unnatural, because the darkness of their green and their survival this far into the chilly fall made no sense otherwise. Images of plastic plants filtered through my mind, and I wondered if such a thing could exist in a magical world. Past the disguise, a faint, eerie glow emanated from within, suggesting the passage led to more than just a natural cave.
From out of nowhere, Kevinar sprang forward, a ghostly figure in the dim light. He moved with the grace of a panther, his hand clamping over the guard’s mouth just as his dagger found its mark. The guard's eyes widened in shock, then dimmed as he slumped to the ground in a silent heap.
I moved to help, but by the time I had made two steps forward, the second goblin lay headless and bloody on the ground beside his friend. Kevinar sighed, a troubled look riding over his face. “That was too easy. Something feels amiss.”
Ike hopped down to join us. “There’s nothing we can do about it. Harric is probably already dead, those runes broken, and Brandosyeus prepping our NPCs for an attack as soon as we can give them word. We push ahead and leave the overthinking to the sages in their libraries.”
I opened my mouth to suggest caution but realized that he was right. It was like Star Wars 3, or 6, however you wanted to number them. Despite the Death Star being a trap, the rebels had to continue because there was no other choice. We were stuck, and we just had to hope that this easy dispatch had been a gift from lady luck.
We turned our attention to the crevice. The glow from within pulsed gently, like the heartbeat of the plateau itself. It beckoned us, promising a quest fulfilled and people saved.
Unfortunately, it was immediately obvious that I was well too big to fit. I shared a look with my comrades. “Maybe I should go around?” I asked.
“There’s no time. Get big and smash,” Ike suggested. Jeldorain perked up inside of me, his eagerness raising goosebumps along my arms.
Kevinar shook his head. “We need to do this in a way that keeps our stealth. A 100 foot tall infernal smashing a hole into the side of this plateau would not benefit us in the slightest. We must pool our thoughts — are there any other possible solutions to our dilemma?”
I opened up my inventory, looking through the items within. Within the gridded boxes, there lay my potions, including my rare assembly from the marketplace so far back. Among the healing, mana, and exertion potions were an Elixir of Night Vision, Elixir of Elemental Resistance, Invisibility Tincture, and a Potion of Giant Strength.
My eyes dwelled on the Potion of Giant Strength in my inventory, its presence like a burning ember. “I have an idea,” I said, Jeldorain’s excitement rising inside of me.
Both Ike and Kevinar turned to me, curiosity etched on their faces. I pulled out the potion, the liquid inside swirling with a promise of untapped power. “This might do the trick.”
Kevinar's eyebrows rose in surprise. “It won’t make you large, but it will make a lot of noise. Are you sure that this is a good idea?”
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I nodded. “It's the only way.”
With a deep breath, I uncorked the potion and downed its contents in one swift gulp. A warmth spread through my body, growing hotter and more intense with each passing second. I could feel my muscles swelling, my senses heightening, an overwhelming surge of power flooding my veins. My mind glazed over, wondering if this was what steroids felt like.
The transformation was rapid. My body expanded, my pecs, biceps, and other major muscle groups quadrupling in size, covered over with large and grotesque veins. I flexed my hands and turned towards the tunnel entrance.
“Stand back,” I warned, my voice an even deeper rumble than usual.
Ike and Kevinar retreated a few steps and I stepped forward, focused on the task at hand. I channeled the newfound strength into my arms. With a controlled but forceful push, I began to widen the tunnel, the rock giving way under my hands like brittle clay.
The sound was a cacophony of cracking stone and grinding earth. I worked quickly, conscious of the potion's time limit. Under my hands, the tunnel expanded, the walls pushed back to create a passage just wide enough for us to pass through.
I continued forward, the potion's strength coursing through me, turning what would have been an impossible task into a manageable one. The potion's effect was like a dance of power and precision, a balance of brute force and careful control.
As the potion's effects began to wane, the cavern entrance came into view, a gaping maw in the heart of the plateau. I stepped back, feeling my muscles shrink back to their normal size, the last of the potion's magic ebbing away.
“That did it,” I breathed, panting.
Kevinar clapped a hand on my shoulder, a grin spreading across his face. “Well done.”
Ike nodded, his eyes scanning the cavern just beyond the newly formed passage. “No guards here either. Looks like we’re getting in just fine.”
Both of them were tense, their stares disbelieving.
You sense anything Jeldorain?
Something magic, yes. But not mortal magic. Elemental, he responded.
As we stepped into the cavern, the air turned still and humid, a light dripping of water echoing through the place from some unseen reservoir. In the far distance there were lights, though not of a brightness that my human eyes would have appreciated. It was a strange fire that lit them, purple laced with red, a variety of fungal stalks and rubbery violet tentacles lacing intricately over a strong wall built half of the way to the cavern roof above.
And between here and there, a lot of stalactite-studded ground beckoned us on our way.
“That’s a lot of places to hide,” Ike groused, surveying the scene before them. “If I were a foul-mouthed Empire soldier, I’d definitely be waiting behind one of those.”
Kevinar smiled. “If you were an Empire soldier, you’d be hidden poorly, gambling with a fellow guard over the few coppers in his purse.”
Jeldorain chortled inside me. If they were here, I have no doubt that I would sense them or that Kevinar would have noticed them. I suspect treachery. Lovely, delicious, ambush-style treachery.
“Jeldorain suggests caution,” I translated to his further amusement. I switched to infravision, but nothing glowed mortal in the dankness of these kingdom lands. “So what we need to do is spread out to cover this cavern from all vantage points. There’s no point in being quiet since anything that might be around would have heard me coming through the secret entrance.”
“It’s definitely not a secret anymore,” Ike said, chuckling. “I wouldn’t doubt if that entrance is bigger than the main one now!”
As if to emphasize the point, a loud crash signaled the end of the cave, leaving them without a point of exit.
“I hope that’s true. I’m out of potions of Giant Strength, and I don’t feel like clubbing my way through any more stone if I can help it.”
We fanned out, keeping in eyesight of each other, before picking our way forward over the rocky floor. The ground was a mix of gravel and sand, as if it had been tilled, dug, and filled with the loosest of detritus, making me wonder if the dwarves hadn’t constructed this whole thing from scratch.
Close, Jeldorain confided. From the feel of this place, an ancient magic was used to hollow it out. I can taste the residue of Earth and Ice. The magical energies involved must have been a sight to behold.
We shared a vision of dwarven clerics in dun-colored vestments tearing holes through the mountain, their crackling magics sifting sand and blasted rock into the flat and easy to build upon terrain.
Think they are still there? I asked him.
He gave me a mental shrug. Beings of elemental and infernal might left the world, mostly, since the times of old. Were forced out. We went to places that better suited us.
An irregularity in the cavern floor brought me out of our conversation, the glimpse of something not gravel, sand or stalactite. Staring, I crouched down, reaching out a hand and turning over the half-buried body of a humanoid sentry. It was hard to tell of what type, since his body had been thoroughly flattened, along with his armor.
A loot box appeared, full of similarly flattened and broken items, and I backed away in alarm.
“Ike, Kevinar, I found something!”
The two of them hurried over, and together we dug through the debris, unearthing six goblin bodies. Three of them had been flattened, but one had a look of frozen horror upon his face, stretched into the rictus of a scream, and the other two were entirely missing their heads. The scene was a chaotic sprawl of debris and rock, with signs of a struggle evident in the scuffed earth and splintered stone.
Kevinar probed at the intact goblin, searching it for obvious wounds. “Nothing ordinary to the worlds under us did this.”
“Jeldorain mentioned a feeling of elemental magic,” I confided.
He nodded, standing up quickly. “Something is moving. We must get to the walls of the city and get inside.”
Ike and I looked at him, his eyes wide open and his face strained in a way we had never seen before.
“NOW!” he yelled, and as we bolted ahead a great sundering noise echoed through the chamber.
As his words echoed in the cavern, a deep rumbling filled the air, growing louder and more menacing. From the shadows emerged a colossal boulder, a sphere behemoth made entirely of rock and earth. Three holes opened in its rockface that I quickly recognized as two eyes and a mouth, and all of them were filled with an eerie glow. A glow that quickly turned as bright as the floodlights in my garage as they blasted out over us.
“NO ESCAPE!” a voice bellowed, its words tearing through our minds and clawing at our souls.
Hells yeah, Jeldorain cheered within, his attention ignited by the monstrosity. I ducked near a particularly tall stalactite, and prepared for combat.