Rattick led Boltac and Relan deeper into the dungeon. Sometimes they moved through natural caverns with stalactites and stalagmites. Sometimes they walked through abandoned mine works. But as they descended deeper and deeper, the quality of the workmanship changed. When they plunged into the bedrock, the tunnels seemed more organic. More gnawed than carved. It was in one of these strange, unsettling passages that they came to a fork in the passage. Rattick stopped and said nothing.

“Which way do we go?” asked Boltac.

Relan put his hand on his sword hilt. “I say we go right, stout Companions.”

“Left,” hissed Rattick in an immediate and automatic contradiction.

Boltac rolled his eyes.

“We should go right,” Relan said, nodding to himself as if he was just figuring this out for the first time, “because the Right and Good is the… “

From a distance came the sounds of scraping footfalls and hissing grunts. These noises echoed wildly in the strange passages, so it was impossible to know if they were coming from ahead of them or behind. As they listened, the noises became louder.

Relan’s eyes grew wide and he crouched down with a hand on his sword hilt. His gaze shifted quickly from passageway to passageway to passageway, but he could not look at all three directions at once. Boltac shook his head and looked to Rattick.

Rattick said, “Orcs, my Merchant friend. They infest the depths. And they hunger for the fatty flesh of shopkeepers, no doubt.”

Boltac said, “Enh-henh. Let’s keep moving. Quietly.” Then he turned to Relan, “And if it’s possible, don’t do anything too stupid.” He slapped the kid’s hand away from his sword.

“To the right then, because we are for Good,” said Relan, nodding as if the matter were settled.

“For Good?” snorted Rattick. “We are sneaking into a powerful Wizard’s dungeon to steal from him, what’s Good about that? You’ll be no kind of thief at all if you try to be polite about it,” Rattick said.

As the young lad’s face grew red with anger, Boltac stepped between the two of them and asked, “Why do you want to go left?”

Rattick smiled, “I just like the left.”

More guttural utterances echoed through the system of tunnels.

“We can’t stay here,” hissed Rattick, “too dangerous.” Boltac made his decision by shoving through both of them and walking into the left tunnel.

Relan rushed after the Merchant, “But you can’t trust him.”

“I don’t,” said Boltac, “This tunnel leads down, and we needed to make a decision.”

“He is not a Man of Honor,” protested Relan.

“Kid, you don’t know this yet, but Men of Honor aren’t really all that useful. In particular, they make especially bad thieves.”

“He means to lead us into a trap and steal the contents of your precious bag,” Relan said.

“The bag is more precious than the contents… hey, wait a minute. Where is that weasely son-of-a-bitch?” Before they could turn back, they heard the sounds of a scuffle behind them.

“Ah, Gah, ah-Hah!” they heard Rattick say from around the corner. On the wall, they saw grotesque shadows, cast by torchlight, grab at the cowled shadow of Rattick. Boltac and Relan froze at the spectacle before them. There were hisses and grunts, muffled curses and the sound of thudding blows. Rattick cried, “Save yourselves! I will hold them as long as I can!”

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“We should help him,” said Relan.

“En-henh. You think he would help you?” Boltac said, already turning to run. Relan gripped his sword. For a moment, he was trapped there. Torn between the desire to do the right thing, and his certain knowledge that Rattick was an evil man. He watched the shadows tear at each other. Then he turned and ran.

When he caught up with the wheezing, slow-moving Boltac, the Merchant was already struggling under the weight of his brown sack. Boltac looked at Relan and struggled to say, “If you feel raw about it kid, you can try and rescue him later.”

Relan ran ahead, thinking that he was being drawn into danger as the moth is drawn to the candle flame. Yes, maybe this was it. Maybe this was his chance to be Heroic.

The corridor bent at a right angle; Relan skidded to a stop. The stone work was more finished in this part of the cave system. The rough edges had been broken off and, here and there, there was evidence of polishing and brickwork. It gave Relan the impression they were getting somewhere.

He held up a hand so Boltac wouldn’t run past him. But when he looked back he realized how silly the gesture was. Boltac was limping down the corridor, panting heavily and dragging his sack behind him. When he saw that Relan was looking at him, he nodded weakly and raised a hand.

Relan drew his blade carefully, not making a sound. Then he peeked around the corner very slowly. His jaw dropped. He retreated back into the passage.

“Pssst,” Relan said as he waved frantically to Boltac, “Hurry!”

“Ennnnnn-heh,” said Boltac, as he put on all the hurry of which he was capable. By the time he caught up, Boltac was panting so heavily that Relan was afraid it would give them away.

“Shhhhhh!” said Relan.

“Kid. I… ain’t… made… for running,” said Boltac between gasps.

“Look!” Relan commanded. Boltac raised his weary head, and they both peered around the corner. This time it was Boltac’s turn to drop his jaw.

He had thought they were in a large space before, but when he saw the massive passageway around the corner, Boltac realized how wrong he had been. Here, underground, was a thoroughfare wider than any street in Robrecht. It looked to have been hewn from the living rock itself. Large interlocking arches graced the ceiling and descended in a series of columns that punctuated the center of the corridor.

Through this gigantic passage, Orcs walked up and down the angled passage, leading wagons as they traveled. On the far side of the passage, Boltac could see that the tiny hallway they were in continued on. Between them and the other side was a space five wagons wide, filled with Orcs. But these were not the snarling, ravening, bloodthirsty creatures that had descended on Robrecht. These Orcs looked positively… industrious?

“What are they doing?” Boltac wondered aloud.

On one side, a steady stream of Orcs descended in well-gruntled, torch-carrying groups of two or three. Closer to them, the crack of a whip and straining grunts announced the approach of a heavily laden wagon. Boltac and Relan retreated into the shadows of the passage. From the corridor below, a team of four Orcs, yoked like oxen, came into view pulling a crude wagon up the slope behind them.

The wagon was filled with raw ore of some kind. By the light of its foul, pitch-smoldering torches, Boltac and Relan could see that a fifth Orc sat on the cargo with a whip.

Crack! Went the whip. “Horrrrrk!” complained one of the haulers. And the wagon rolled on.

As the back of the wagon disappeared up the passage, Relan said, “If only…”

“Forget it kid, we gotta find another way.”

“But there are so many of them… did you know there would be so many?”

“What, you thought this was going to be easy? I told you we were probably going to be killed. So quit your whining. Let’s go back the way we came.”

“We should go home,” said Relan.

“What happened to the brave Adventurer?” asked Boltac.

“I can’t kill so many. I, I, I, I…”

“C’mere for a minute.”

“Go back? But what if we run into some of those things?” said Relan, fear freezing him on the spot.

“Orcs?”

“Yeah, Orcs.”

“Well, there’s a lot more of them out there than there are behind us.”

Relan swallowed and his face went pale.

“C’mon, cheer up. You’re gonna get another chance to be a Hero. Most likely, more chances than you want.” Boltac turned back. He threw his torch down and stomped it out against the floor. From his sack, he produced the Magic Lamp of Lamptopolis. As he touched the lamp, it began to glow; Relan thought it seemed brighter than before. Boltac drew the shutter on the lamp until only the barest bit of light was spilling out. “Quietly now,” he said.

As they made their way back down the hallway, Boltac spotted a small side passage that had not been visible when they came from the other direction. It was cut into the rock, leading away from the main tunnel at a 45-degree angle.

When he heard the shuffling, hissing noise coming from in front of them, Boltac didn’t have to think twice. He turned towards the small passage saying, “C’mon, this way.”

Relan didn’t argue.