With the sun setting, and his love by his side, Wild walked out into the chill evening air and made his way along a well-worn path toward the gnoll dungeon. On the edge of the forest, in plain view, the gnolls had a bonfire reaching its flames up toward the sky while a deep, ground-thudding beat reverberated from them.
After a moment, Wild realized that the beat matched his footsteps. What he didn't notice was that he had fit his motion to that song. As he and Ludmiller drew closer, the melody of the song carried to them. Yowling tones and staccato notes from some kind of wood percussion soon had them both moving more solidly to the beat and coaxed by the rhythm.
As they got close to the gnoll camp, the music halted and a large gnoll stepped out of the group to face the newcomers. "Who are you who would come to our revelry? Do you offer words, music, or dance?"
"I would offer all three, as does my mate." Ludmiller's voice was firm and her eyes locked to those of Forerunner. "We would share stories and tales, songs, and dancing."
"Then come, you are welcome at our fire. Eat, drink, and let's see you dance." Turning her head to the drummers, Forerunner nodded and the beat resumed. "Your mate carries axes. Does he dance with them?"
"We can show you, if you'd wish it." Reaching her hands to the hilts of her daggers, Ludmiller drew the blades free and twirled them in her hands. "Shall we?" she asked, looking into Wild's eyes.
Wild hadn't sparred much with his mate, but his love for her and need to make her smile had his axes practically jump into his hands. Forerunner guided them to a circle where almost thirty gnolls sat around the bonfire. There was enough room between the gnolls and the flames that he realized it had been deliberately left—for them.
The beat of the music had Ludmiller's feet moving in short order, and as she danced around, she came up on Wild with her daggers reaching for him.
Moving to match Ludmiller, and keeping to the same pattern, Wild parried the daggers with an axe and brought his other one around in a momentum-conserving arc toward her throat.
Though the aim wasn't to kill, Ludmiller treated the swing as the deadly threat it would be if they were fighting. She angled herself backwards, shimmered as her invisibility tried to compensate for the fire, and came back on Wild's left side.
Wild turned, an axe already moving to intercept an attack Ludmiller hadn't begun yet. The clash of metal on metal joined the beat, and soon enough there was a recurring rhythm of parries and deflections.
As their dance continued, the gnolls yapped along, matching the rhythm Wild and Ludmiller set. The drums sped up and, eventually, the dance reached its own ending as the tips of Ludmiller's daggers pressed up and against Wild's chest, and Wild's axes kissed the sides of Ludmiller's neck.
Standing there, staring into each other's eyes, they felt a rush of heat at the gnolls' cheers. Sheathing weapons, both melted together into a kiss that drew yips of encouragement. Breaking apart only after they were both satisfied, Wild nonetheless blushed a little at the crowd they had.
Forerunner was excited by the deadly dance. Few enough of her own kin fought with daggers that watching a master of them was a treat. "A good dance! Come, eat and tell us of your deeds."
The gnolls' food, Ludmiller noticed, was almost exclusively red meat. Haunches from several wild animals she recognized (deer, longhorn cows) as well as large puddings that, when she bit into, she realized was mostly fat and chunks of meat baked in some kind of intestine.
Taking a breath after swallowing a particularly chewy bit of her meal, Ludmiller began talking. "Over a year ago now, an army marched here. Seventeen thousand strong, they circled around the city, around our dungeons, and had enough troops still to set up ambushes on the road to the south."
When it came to the invasion of Travis in the early part of the siege, Wild took over the story and spoke of the very polished delving the northerners had done, and how they, as kobolds, had defended it. When he spoke of how the northerners had given up and sealed the dungeon, he leaned back a little. "That meant our only entrance was within the city."
Forerunner felt the story would be completely unbelievable, except she'd seen the dungeon entrance in the city herself. "What about the other dungeon?"
Ludmiller nodded. "Breeze. She had one entrance at the time, the outpost. It had been besieged and there was no way for anyone to reach it unseen." Standing up, she stepped into Wild's shadow and used her skill to melt into the darkness and become invisible. "I was not seen."
The description of sneaking through both encirclements and carrying Breath of Spring into the city to open a new exit thrilled the gnolls. Ludmiller had them hanging on her words, especially when she pivoted to her work after that. Stealing away into the enemy camps, destroying their equipment and killing them—she even drew her weapons and performed some of the attack-dances she'd invented when fighting the northerners.
"And then the walls fell," Wild said. "The northerner army was held back in places, but soon they flooded the streets. We"—he gestured to Ludmiller and then toward the city—"the creatures of the dungeons, did what we could to push them out. Fife stood guard at Breeze's entrance while I guarded our own.
"The fighting was a stalemate. One of the commanders of the northerner army fought Fife in a brutal fight. It was one woman who turned the tide, though."
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
When all the gnolls turned to look at Ludmiller, she shook her head. "A human. One of the city guards. She's so skilled with a rifle that she sent her bullet through the commander's helmet's vision slit. It broke the will of the siege's commander. She organized her army to retreat."
Hearing the story from those who lived it made it all ring true to Forerunner. She nodded her head and, when neither seemed to continue, asked them, "And then goblin dungeon attacked?"
About to toss the last of her sausage into her mouth, Ludmiller nodded. "Yes, but neither of us were involved with that. You will need to ask Pen, the dragon, for that tale."
Giving a loud laugh at the reply, Forerunner said, "I will do that. It was a mighty battle, befitting of a strong dungeon and its creatures. Our sister is hunting in the goblin den with your warriors now. I'm sure she'll return with many new stories."
----------------------------------------
Trolls weren't really an issue anymore. Fife enjoyed the fights, sure, but with her new strength and size she was batting aside their huge weapons and delivering devastating wounds against them—and if any dared to show signs of rot or spores, she would exhale her flames and cleanse them.
This troll, though, looked like more of a challenge. It towered above Fife, had a pair of the dirtiest old cleavers she'd ever seen, and had skin so thick and muscles so dense her blade had trouble cutting through it. When she, again, managed to block and parry its weapons, instead of trying another ineffective stab into its chest—she tossed her sword to her offhand, drew the revolver at her side, and shot three adamantine rounds through the troll's chest and another three into its head.
She had her gun back in its holster and her sword ready, but Fife needn't have bothered. The troll wobbled on its feet and a swift kick sent it falling backward. "Second time. We're almost to the bottom, so hopefully they won't bring this guy back before we're done."
"Bored?" Katelyn asked.
Cleaning her sword, Fife nodded. "A bit. This place isn't much of a challenge at all now we don't have to worry about the rot in here." With her sword cleaned, she sheathed it and drew her pistol to reload it. Tilting the handle down over a bag, she hit the casing ejector and all six spent steel casings popped out.
"You're welcome." Katelyn tapped her staff on the stone floor of the cave to cancel the spell she'd set in motion at the far end of the room. Her eyes drifted to the big gnoll again, and though she was covered in evidence of her violence, the rot didn't seem to affect her.
Walking over to Fife and Katelyn, the gnoll in question dipped her head a little toward both. Having seen them fight, she had a new respect for the pair. "Next floor?"
Thinking about it, the dungeon had fallen into a repetitive pattern. Troll floor, orc floor, swarm floor. Fife nodded. "You should have a lot of orcs to fight, possibly the orc boss again."
Licking her lips, the gnoll beamed in delight before starting a little chuckle. The noise built as her eyes dilated, and turning, she loosed a stuttering full-throated laugh that followed her as she charged deeper into the dungeon.
Katelyn let her own mirth channel into her staff, cinders and ash falling from it as the whole thing flared with red light. "She seems happy. Should we keep going and see if she can stop herself after one floor?"
"Honestly, Kate, I don't care if she clears all the way to the bottom. The only thing I don't want her to kill is the heart." Fife stopped to think a moment, then let out a laugh that was only a pale echo of the gnoll's own. "We should probably double-time it if she's not sitting in the boss room of the next floor."
----------------------------------------
The train moved slow. Not so slow that it could be outrun by a horse, but certainly slow enough the driver could see if there was damage to the track—which is why he saw where a rail had been removed. His hand latched onto the brake, pulling it on while easing the throttle back to neutral.
"You see one?" the footman asked.
"Yeah. Send a flare and shunt those crystals into the array, William." Working the controls, the driver had the pistons start working again, but this time they were driving the wheels backward. He yanked a small lever and dumped all his sand on the track to improve traction.
Meanwhile, the footman loaded a small bag of powder into the flare tube mounted to the side of the locomotive's cab, ensured the end of it was aimed away from their roof, and then dropped a large yellow ball in. "Sending it," he said, and channeled a little magic into the bottom of the tube.
The thwoomp of the mortar charge sending the flare into the sky was almost drowned out by the locomotive working hard to build up speed in reverse.
Behind them, another flare shot into the sky—green.
"That's some good news, at least. Now we won't plow into them." Handling the controls, the driver nursed the engine to get the most speed and acceleration he could get without depriving the boiler too much. Beside him, the footman was busy slotting crystals into a gold mana focusing array.
Their mission only had one part left to it: get back and report where the break in the line was. With their engine accelerating backwards, the pair in the lead engine were nonetheless straining to hear the distinct sound of gunfire—or worse, cannon fire—but it never came.
----------------------------------------
Stewart waited in the dungeon. It was less a confusing and potentially dangerous magical piece of landscape, and far more a person—one of his most important vassals right now. "Anything yet?" That didn't mean he wouldn't be anxious.
The train trip should have concluded today. Stephan should be in the eastern duchy city of Polfay. It was, like West Reaches and Hearthhome, the central hub of its own arm of the kingdom. He had resolved to wait the entire day to step out into the eastern city and reassure it that all was well.
"Still nothing. I don't get a notification until Stephan tries to open the entrance." Travis missed being able to pace. Right now would have been a great time to wear a path into a rug.
After waiting impatiently for five more minutes, Stewart asked, "Is Elanor delving?"
"No. She's sparring. One of the northerner warriors is training her in sword craft. We didn't have time before, with her coming to the capital, to have her trained in much besides a gun, a shield, and a spear. That, and Hilda asked if we had any tasks for her group. I suggested training any guards that wanted to learn skills with a longsword. Elanor was the first to jump at it." Travis was about to continue talking about her training, but he got the popup everyone had been waiting for. "Here it comes."
The new entrance was smaller than the existing ones only because it was fresh. Travis reached out into the new city and felt like an angry bear was coming for him. "Please! I don't want to invade. I'm doing this on behalf of the King!"
Available at: https://www.royalroad.com/profile/220350/fictions
This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.