Gob came to, and opened his eyes painfully and slowly. He immediately wished he hadn't, and closed them again. He felt sick. His head pounded like the White Orc was smashing his hammer against it. He opened his eyes once more just to make sure that wasn't what was happening. It wasn't. It was a migraine, which was arguably worse because there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He could see, blurrily. That was something. He couldn't move though. He thought if he moved he would puke. He thought if he didn't move he would puke too. He puked.

He had puked over the edge of a stone table he was lying on. Around the rim of the table, around him, were faintly pulsating red and orange runes that looked like glowing molten lava. Apart from their glow, the room was dark. It was cool and still, and silent and smelt like damp. He couldn't remember how he got here. He wasn't sure he wanted to remember. He had been reaching through the cosmos. Hadn't he? He'd seen each edge of existence. He thought. The world would never look the same again... Wait, no... he hadn't been floating in space, he'd been floating in webs... there had been eerie giant spiders--

He tensed and looked around himself quickly, checking for spiders. Doing anything quickly was a bad idea. He puked again.

There were no spiders he could see, but his head still pounded like he'd been hit by… da booz! He drank the booze. All the booze. And then he'd swelled up... no he'd exploded! Kaboom, just like Leőn had said... like he was made of dynamite. Then… well then it was hazy. Wait, where was Kylie and Leőn and the White Orc?

It started to come back in broken pieces. He'd eaten something... what? He was pretty sure he'd puked something too. A lot of something. He'd battled the spider... had he?

He really couldn't remember.

There was a low

Rassssppppp!

of stone on stone.

Had he triggered a trap?! He dove off the table and onto the floor. His head pounded and he felt woozy. His vision swam and doubled and he puked again, although this time it was more of a dry retch as there was nothing left to puke out. There was something very, very off in his stomach.

The rasp wasn't a trap, it was just a door opening. A short square person waddled in, a person who was as wide as he was tall. Probably wider, with the outrageous amount of clothing and treasure he was wearing. Kylie was flying next to him, the White Orc and Leőn were behind him. They looked... lik sumfin iz rong? They all looked very serious. Very concerned. Very... worried. Tense. What were they so worried about? They were alive at least. Didn't he pluck them from the... exi..exi-stential... sub-realities? He still wasn't sure.

The overdressed square person, the dwarf, looked very complicated. He was all covered in thick brown leather and shiny armor that reminded Gob uncomfortably of the shiny metal of the blades in the tunnel of doom.

swishting! he heard in his head. His head throbbed and pounded some more.

The dwarf also had lots and lots of sparkly, intricate decorative chains and coloured gems layered thickly around his neck and arms and waist. He tinkled and clanked as he moved. Over the top of the jewellery was a thick furry cloak made out of an entire dead animal, and on top of it all, a shiny decorative hat that looked like he had a golden castle on his head.

Gob sat up slowly, grasping both sides of his head. How it pounded! He groaned at Kylie, ignoring the Dwarf “kylz iz der sum meet? i iz soo hungree.”

“Ah… Gob," she replied, very carefully and nervously. Uncharacteristically formal. "We are all so glad you are awake. May I introduce King Jâred Thunderguard. He'd like to talk with you. He insisted in coming in person. Right now." Gob felt like he was missing something.

"i tork layta." he groaned, "i drank al da booz an mi hed iz poundin sooo bad. an i keep pukin evywer." he pointed at his multiple vomits.

"i fink i kil to much spidas an mibby i eet dem to. spida iz no good. i juz need sum meet."

Kylie looked distraught, and glanced worriedly at the Dwarf King.

HO!HO!HO! HAW! HO!

King Jâred laughed a booming belly laugh, holding his belly as he did, his jewellery jingling, and causing Gob to collapse to the floor again squeezing his head in his hands again.

“Booze and fighting and vomiting and feasting! Ho!Ho! A Warrior after my own heart!” he boomed “I've got to admit I've never feasted with a Troll before... to be honest I've only ever chopped their heads off!” he looked around him and laughed as if he'd just made a great joke and was expecting everyone to join in. Leőn was where the King couldn't see him, and rolled his eyes. Kylie visibly cringed. Gob said nothing, he still hadn't really worked out what was happening yet. The King pounded on regardless,

“But today's an exception young Troll, because I find myself in your debt, a rare position for me to be in. As do your friends here, might I add. If not for your courage and good old-fashioned brawn, they wouldn't be here today, and many of my own people, even some of my own brethren, would not now be avenged and at rest. YOU have slain the hidden enemy who has haunted our mines for longer than I care to admit, and with it's demise we can return to a sense of normality in my great Dwarven Kingdom Under Thunderguard!"

The King bowed, an obviously uncomfortable maneuver for him. His decorative chains tinkled and scraped on the floor.

“My deepest thanks to you. We have called a great feast on your honour. There will be meat! And barrels and barrels of the finest Dwarven booze, from the finest Dwarven BrewWrights in the Realm! There may even be vomiting and the odd causal battle!”

This Dwarf King was a bit over the top. Gob still said nothing.

The King, still bowed, looked around himself awkwardly. The White Orc shuffled his feet. Leőn smirked. Kylie said unto the awkward silence,

“Gob thanks you, your Majesty. I am sure he is overwhelmed by your unexpected presence while still in grave recovery, or he would no doubt accept the honour you bestow on him personally.” she said the last bit through gritted teeth, glaring at Gob as she did.

Gob shrugged, as the King straightened up and looked at Kylie.

“Yes, undoubtedly! He needs meat after all!” He turned for the door with a flourish, “What fortuitous times we live in! Our Kingdom has never been stronger, what with the removal of two evil scourges from among us... no doubt you would have heard the stories! Recently the ancient and fiendish Vampire Count Xander Von Nachtzahn was delivered back into our protection after my own Grandfather imprisoned him more than two hundred years ago! He must have got bored and tried to escape his confinement at last! HoHo! Lucky us Dwarves are clever with our traps, eh!? 'Traps on traps' as my Master Trap Wright Rubikas always goes on about, 'Traps on traps on traps'!"

Kylie and Gob exchanged a shocked glance.

”We will see you at the feast troll-hero! Ho! By the thunder, if my ancestors heard me say such a thing they would smite me where I stand...” and with that, and some tinkling, clanking, jingling and shuffling, he was gone.

“Gob!” Kylie flew up close to him and looked into his eyes with concern “are you really alright?”

“wot hapin?” Gob asked

Leőn smiled mischieviously "What do you remember happening?!”

“der woz a big twinkly spida wiv kliky bits” he tapped his teeth “an it keep comin BOO! in mi face BOO! in mi face. an it say it spida babees woz gonna suk out yor sols.”

“Yes that's about right." Kylie answered him, "It was a very rare and very powerful ethereal phase spider, and it seems that it's been terrorising the Dwarf Kingdom for some time. The King had lost a lot of excellent Dwarf Warrior Champions to it, and his southern mines have essentially been under seige. That King, in fact the whole Dwarf Kingdom of Thunderguard, owes you a big favour!”

“wot happin to spida?”

“HA HA HA!” Leőn burst out laughing “Do you really remember nothing?! That's gold!”

The White Orc sat next to Gob on the table “You drank the rest of the flask i gave you?”

Gob nodded.

"And you can't remember anything after?

Leőn was vibrating and smirking. Gob had forgotten how annoying he was. Maybe he should have left that one wherever he'd found him. Where had he found him? He couldn't really remember now. His Mind and his Spirit felt like they had stretched as much us his body. He felt spaced out. But he didn't know how to describe it. Maybe it was indescribable. He still felt sick.

"i had a weerd dreem. i fink it woz a dreem. i woz reechin frew da starz in da uni-vers. i don no how to say da werds. krunch sed hello."

"Trippy!" said Leőn

The Orc gave him a funny look. “Interesting… well whatever it might have been Gob, all three of us, as well as a few surviving Dwarf Warriors, were powerfully bound up in that spider's ethereal web cocoons. She was a powerful creature, neither I nor Leőn could defeat her. Even with all our strongest magic we didn't stand a chance against her speed and phasing, and once trapped we were all powerless to do anything but watch you and Kylie run straight into the trap too. But what you did was incredible! We heard you talking to her, learning her weakness, taunting her into attacking you so you could Toast to Krunch! It was masterful! You grew massive too, at a guess, size 80.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“atey!” said Gob surprised. He didn't even know that number, but it was bigger than all the numbers he did know. "dat big!"

“You sure were Gob!” said Kylie

"She bit you then," continued the White Orc, "and she should have been capable of draining your SPIRIT entirely. Her attack negates almost all physical armour, constitution and toughness. But she just couldn't get through your hide... it was rock solid and must have been extremely thick, but more than that it just entirely debuffed her. It actually repelled her from you when she struck, and she and her webs started phasing unpredictably, flickering in and out of whatever voids she had them woven through."

Kylie couldn't hold back the story any more and cut in on the White Orc excitedly, “And after she bit you, you just reached right over and swallowed her egg sac! And then she went BALLISTIC, and started throwing everything she had at you, she was blasting you with intense ethereal energy webs... like she was literally throwing interdimensional antimatter into you, and you know what you said?!”

Gob shook his head.

Kylie mimicked Gobs gruff tone as best she could “MI TUMMY HERTS!” she laughed, “and then you puked all over her! I never saw anything like it, and I hope I never see anything like it again! It was like you puked out an ocean! It was DISGUSTING. It was EPIC! Then she screamed and flung herself at you and you grabbed her in your claws and you were like "SPIDAS IZ YUK" and then YOU ATE HER! And it took two bites because she was wriggling and stabbing at your face with her legs and fangs even as you stuffed her in your mouth and then when you bit down she IMPLODED into a black hole! An actual black hole was IN YOUR MOUTH, and all you did...” Kylie took a breath because she was talking so fast, “all you did… was BURP!”

They all laughed the harder as Gob put his hand on his tummy “i woz rite. spidas IZ yuk. i not lik eet spiders. i git sor tummy”

“Yes! Yes!” she said through tears, “You puked! A LOT!”

As they calmed down, the White Orc spoke again, “But really Gob, that was powerful magic she had spun. Our souls would have ended up as food for her brood, the very Spirit sucked out of us. We owe you our lives. Thank you."

Even Leőn inclined his head in acknowledgement.

“Hey!” said Kylie again, “also, after you puked you even remembered to find her leftovers and loot her! I was impressed AND totally grossed out at the same time. It was horrible. I didn’t see what you found though. Have a look in your inventory, see what you got!”

Gob reached down and pulled out his scroll.

Loot:

+1phasecore +1antimattergland +1invisibleoddity

“Hmmm.” said the White Orc. I’ll have to do some research on these. They’re unusual items. You better leave them in your inventory, they look like they might be dangerous out of storage."

"A phasecore?!" said Leőn incredulously, "That's the organ that she used to straddle multiple planes. It's almost impossible to find one, and it's probably worth more than the Dwarf Kingdom to buy one! We should probably keep that quiet."

"i find good treza!" said Gob, pleased. Leőn rolled his eyes.

"You're a lost cause" he sighed

"but i find yoo!"

Gob's headache was easing and he'd had a chance to look around him now. His tummy still ached.

"wot iz dis?” he waved around them at the dark room and the glowing rune table.

“Its a replenishment table” answered the White Orc. The runes help to channel replenishing energy to help the Body, Mind and Spirit heal faster if they’re depleted. You were very depleted, you’ve been in here two days. Without the bed I’ve no doubt it would have been much much longer… and after swallowing some of the most powerful ethereal magic I’ve ever seen I’ve no doubt you have a cracking headache.” Gob nodded.

“Well some food will help with that. Come on, we have a feast to attend!”

"wate, wot he meen dat he haz find ze cont kylz?"

Her eyes widened as she remembered, "The Count must have been right when he was worried about the Dwarves having a backup plan! They must have had some sort of trap on the trap so if the Count did try to escape, somehow that they couldn't conceive of, that he would be transferred somewhere else... maybe somewhere here!"

"i gonna ask da king" said Gob.

"Whoa!" said Kylie, "I do NOT think you should do that. Let's just go to the feast and I'll see what I can find out a little more indirectly than that. Leave it to me Gob, I promised I'd help him too, so I will."

"Who's this Count?" asked Leőn.

Kylie quietly filled him in on the story as the party was escorted to the feasting hall by two squat Warriors who treated them with the utmost respect, which, Leőn pointed out to Gob after Kylie had finished the story, was ‘very uncharacteristic’ for Dwarf Warriors.

The passages from Gob's recovery cell were very similar to the passages through the trap rooms, plain and square and built of large cut stones. Cleaner though. Immaculate in fact. However they soon passed out of the passages into a wide open, chaotic public space.

There were Dwarves milling around everywhere, and behind the hustle and bustle was a stunning, multi tiered, underground city. Gob could look up and down, but he couldn't see any sky, and he couldn't see any ground. They appeared to be in another gigantic cavern, but a cavern that made Goblin Town look tame by comparison. Where Goblin Town had been on a single level, this underground city reached up and down into darkness in irregular tiers built into the stone, joined to each other by strong bridges of engineered stonework, some level, others sloping or stepping up or down between the tiers. On each tier were collections of sturdy carved-stone buildings, all lit brightly from their windows and along their streets with glowing gaslights so that the tiers of the City looked like warm clusters of an idyllic civilisation floating in the cool of a summer's evening.

The level they were on was a wide square space filled with markets, and although it wasn't as chaotic and ramshackle as the markets at Goblin Town, it was still busy, with all sorts of figures shopping or hurrying by. In addition to the bridges and ramps that criss-crossed each other around them and over them, contraptions that looked like oversized wheels turned slowly with Dwarves and funny little creatures scrambling over them busily hoisting elevator cages up and down between the tiers.

Gob could hear the bangs and clangs from glowing black smithies, as well as the recognisable tavern style of laughter and raucous singing from more than one direction.

There were rails with metal carts being pushed along them, uptier and downtier, and each tier was amply wide enough for foot and even vehicle traffic in addition to the rail carts. A wagon full of barrels trundled past them, being pulled by the most gigantic cow like creature Gob had ever seen with two Dwarves driving it on.

Gob caught the smell of roasting meat wafting past and it his tummy rumble again. There was also a strong, hot metallic sting rising through the air from the molten ore that was constantly being pushed through the great glowing forges of the lower tiers.

In addition to the Dwarves in the market, there were smaller things scurrying around at ground level, even shorter than Gob, but with skinny little bodies and heads that looked like they were far too big. They had oversized bulging eyes which many of them covered with goggles. They wore complicated machine like helmets and belts, with strange little cogs ticking on them. There was something very disproportionate about them. They were odd. And not in an endearing way.

"wot doz liddl fings?" Gob asked Kylie

"Ugh.. gnomes." said Leőn with even more scorn than when he said the word 'Dwarves', "They're basically just goblins but more socially acceptable. They like engineering and magic fungi."

"Gnomes," corrected Kylie, "here at least, are very respectable, if slightly odd, maybe maniacal, maintainers of the Dwarven machinery."

"They do the dirty work." whispered Leőn, "and they're even uglier than trolls."

"den dey stil look betta dan elfs" Gob whispered back.

Their escorts ushered them into a large, sturdy elevator cage which rose and rose up the tiers, stopping at an elaborately decorated square. Across the square in front of them, two massive doors opening into the Dwarf King's hall were thrown wide. As they approached, they were presented with a mindblowing scene. While Gob could acknowledge that they must still be underground, the ceiling of the hall was vaulted far, far above them. So far as to seemingly vanish into bright white light. Whereas the vaulted roof of Goblin Town had disappeared into darkness, there were no dirty cauldrons of fire here discharging smoke into the inky black. This hall was lit brightly, brighter the higher you looked. It felt...

"Heavenly..." sighed Kylie dreamily.

The walls were of gargantuan blocks of stone, dressed to minute perfection, and covered by carved reliefs inlaid with shiny coloured metals. The murals depicted Dwarves in Mighty battle, Dwarves mining and crafting, Dwarves building, Dwarves doing… everything, each of them accompanied by detailed inscriptions in the distinct angular Dwarven script, each letter as tall as a fully grown Dwarf, none of which Gob could understand, but a marvel all the same. If the Dwarf City outside had been idyllic, this hall seemed transcendent.

“how dis hall so big if dwarf iz so liddle?” Gob asked no one in particular. The Dwarf Warriors who were escorting them grimaced at each other.

Leőn, a cheeky smile already in his face would have answered, but Kylie made sure to interject first. “Have you ever seen stonework like it Gob?”

He shook his head.

“Well that's why. The Dwarves are the greatest StoneWrights in the realm. They make it this grand because they can. Because they're the only ones who can.”

The Dwarf escort seemed satisfied with this. Gob even thought they puffed up their chests, which he took to mean they were happy with what she said.

“It's going to be a long night” he heard Kylie whisper to the White Orc. The White Orc nodded. He was an Orc in a Dwarf stronghold. He was going to need to mind his manners himself.

Gob decided Dwarves must like to be told things they agreed with. Maybe that wasn't just Dwarves...

i rememba dat, he thought.

+1awareness emergent:persuasion emergent:diplomacy

"Oh!" said Kylie, "That was interesting! You should probably mute those again for now. It isn't polite to play with your stats at the dinner table."

"wot 'po-lite'?"

"It's manners, Gob. I've mentioned it a few times now..."

"i iz trol. i don git mannas"

"Don't play dumb with me Gob, if you get diplomacy, then you get manners!"

i iz gonna need to werk on mi per-sway-shun, he thought as their escorts showed them to their places at the longest feasting table Gob had ever seen.