Robin’s eyes stung. The fire was smoky, and for some reason, the size of the room didn’t help. The smoke came right for his eyes. The ropes contorting him into unnatural shapes weren’t helping either. He felt like his chest was two sizes too small.

He had no idea how long it had been when the kobolds dragged Lantha back. Dried blood clung to one corner of her mouth and she hung limp as they dragged her back to the party. They dumped her unceremoniously next to Robin and departed.

There was no sign of the priest.

‘Is she alright?’ Fiamah called softly. ‘I can’t reach her.’

‘Can you heal her if you do?’ Robin asked.

‘Not as much as I should be able to, but a bit.’ There was some serious leashed rage in Fiamah’s voice. ‘Can you push her closer to me?’

‘I’m fine,’ Lantha rasped.

Robin paused mid-wriggle.

‘What happened?’ Fiamah asked.

Good. Robin had been too afraid to ask. He was still a little afraid to hear.

‘What’s the priest after?’ Ora-Jean asked from somewhere behind Fiamah.

‘And why didn’t you snap his neck with your feet or something when you had the chance?’ Grathilde fumbled from behind Robin.

‘Enough,’ Lantha said, before a coughing fit stole the rest of her words. ‘He’s after information. Who we are. Why we’re here. I told him we’re fortune hunters, in the mountains to hunt rare beasts and prospect for precious metals.’

‘You did not tell him I was a miner!’ Grathilde sounded mortally offended.

Robin thought that was kind of missing the point. More interesting was what Lantha was—and wasn’t—saying. She was saying what she told the priest, and she wasn’t saying what their actual purpose here was.

‘And was he stupid enough to buy any of that?’ Robin asked.

Lantha laughed, a creaking sound, dry and mirthless.

Quest Complete! [Laughter is the Best Medicine]

Congratulations! You have elicited not only a smile from each of your new companions but a laugh as well! Nevermind some of them were won on technicalities. Winning is winning in this world, and don’t you forget it! You have moved yourself firmly from threat to tolerated ally.

Reward: 3 ranks which you may assign in any configuration amongst Insight, Expression, or Socialise.

Apparently that counted. Huh. He hadn’t even been trying. Robin quickly dismissed the notification. Lantha was still talking.

‘No, no he was not.’ The elf swallowed a bit, trying to get moisture to her parched throat. ‘But he couldn’t catch me in a lie. Not today, anyway.’

‘Not enough divine favour remaining,’ Robin guessed.

‘Probably.’ Lantha shifted, grimacing, until she found a less uncomfortable position. ‘Which just means he’ll be back. After a night’s sleep. In a day. Whenever it is, he’ll be back, and he’ll have a truth spell with him, primed and ready to go.’ Her eyes flicked to Robin. ‘He also asked about you.’

‘Me?’ A spike of fear stabbed through his heart. ‘Why me?’

‘Because you clearly didn’t show up here with us,’ Lantha said.

‘Because you charged in, naked, and rescued us from a cavern full of kobolds and their orcish chieftain,’ Ora-Jean added.

‘Because—’ Grathilde started to say.

‘I get it! I get the picture!’ Robin’s voice rose.

The others shushed him, and they all fell silent. When none of the kobolds came over to investigate, they slowly relaxed and the conversation resumed.

‘Does he suspect—’ Fiamah asked, before glancing from Robin to Lantha and falling silent.

Lantha gave Robin a measuring glance. Then, surprisingly, she answered.

‘I think he does suspect we were sent here to scout the area and report back, yes.’ She smiled through a split lip. ‘But he’s not as smart as he thinks. The questions he asked told me more about him and what he wants than my answers told him about me.’

Robin hiccuped out a laugh. Looks like Lantha was finally trusting him. And she had more of a sense of mischief to her than he ever would have suspected. He suddenly wondered what her Deception score looked like.

Lantha was coughing. Robin felt a whisper of air flow over him and clear the air around them.

‘Thank you, Grathilde,’ the elf said, ‘but you should conserve your energies.’

The air stopped moving.

‘So who is he and what does he want?’ Robin asked. He had the feeling that each of his companions knew a lot more about things than they had let on so far.

‘His name is Gis. He may be a priest of Urkhan, but his earthly loyalties lie with a wanna-be tyrant called Basgar the Blinder. Basgar has set himself up in a nearby keep, the only safe way through this mountain range for leagues and leagues in any direction.’

Robin was definitely being let in on things now.

‘Our mission was to scout the extent of Basgar’s forces in the area and the tightness of his grip on the keep, and report back. These mountains are riddled with caverns and tunnels. We were scouting several locations as potential supply drops for future conflict with Basgar when a cave-in dropped us further down into the cave system and blocked our way out.’

‘We wandered down here for ages,’ Grathilde added morosely.

‘In any case,’ Lantha continued, ‘we need to find a way to escape as soon as possible. Once Gis has what he wants from us, he’ll have no reason to keep us alive.’ She looked at Robin. ‘What he wants from you, though, I’m not sure. But whatever it is, he wants it badly. Or his god does. And that cannot be good.’

‘I think he’s looking for the shrine I woke up in when the magical mishap brought me here,’ Robin said slowly. ‘His god wants to find it.’

‘Clashes between the gods are no small matter,’ Fiamah said grimly.

‘In any case, if we don’t find a way out of here, and soon, we’ll none of us ever see the sky again.’

They all fell silent after that. Sleep followed soon after.

***

Before falling asleep, Robin had pulled up his interface and invested his quest reward ranks, 2 in Insight and 1 in Socialise. He’d already maxed Expression in the hopes it would aid with his [Cutting Words], and Insight might come in handy trying to suss out Gis’ motivations.

Socialise. Well, he just hated the idea of having a zero in anything. He liked playing skill monkeys, Jacks-of-all-Trades. And the ranks were placement-limited anyway.

The kobolds brought them scraps of rancid meat and clearly resented giving them even that. Robin guessed Gis had left them with orders. Between the quality of the meat, the whole being held prisoners thing, and the likely threat of imminent death, however, Robin had trouble giving the priest any credit for that bare minimum of effort.

‘Tell me about truth spells,’ he asked when the kobolds had vanished from hearing once again. ‘It’s not a magic I’ve encountered in person before. How do they know someone is lying? And can they be fooled? Truth can be a pretty subjective thing, after all.’

Fiamah paused to consider. If she had any reservations about telling him how the things worked, and potentially undercutting her own spell’s usefulness to her in the future, she didn’t show it.

‘There are almost as many truth spells as there are gods,’ the cleric said, ‘though most of them follow a similar structure. Usually there is some kind of outward manifestation when the spell is invoked. Mine, for example, causes the subject to glow. If they speak true, the glow becomes gold; if they lie, it turns red.’

‘But does it read intent? Or the truth of the words themselves, somehow?’ Robin was angling, trying to find any useful loopholes or boundaries.

‘I am not sure.’ Fiamah thought. ‘Possibly both. I was warned at the temple that it is not foolproof, and that half-truths or evasions could, if delivered skilfully enough, slip past the spell. Well, past the cleric invoking it.’ She slipped him a stern glare. ‘I was trained extensively in ferreting out such prevarications.’

‘Well, hopefully whatever priest school Gis went to wasn’t as rigorous.’

That won him a wry laugh. Robin grinned, in spite of their circumstances. He finally felt like he had allies in this world, beyond a Lost God who barely said anything to him. Honestly, a guy’s feelings could get hurt.

The elevation in his mood dropped sharply as a group of kobolds appeared, hissing to one another in their reptilian language.

‘Priest wants the man-one now!’

‘Grab ropes! Hold tight!’

‘Drag him! Drag him! Is too heavy to carry!’

The kobolds seized Robin in their sharp little claws and dragged him roughly across the ground. He put up just enough struggle to save face. He needed to conserve his energy for Gis.

They dragged him out of the main cavern and into a smaller room, presumably the North Chamber, whatever that was. There was little sign of the room’s original purpose left. Trash clogged the corners, mostly dust and fragments of stone.

A low stone bench, crudely assembled out of three rough blocks of unshaped rock, sat on one side of the room. A fine wooden chair with a dusty velvet cushion was placed opposite.

The kobolds muscled Robin into a sitting position on the bench and lashed him into place with more ropes.

‘Tight! Tighter! He must not escape!’

There were red stains dotted on the floor beneath his feet. Robin’s heart kicked into a higher gear. He was not at all temperamentally suited to withstanding torture. Magic, he might be able to trick. If Gis started cutting into him, though—Robin shuddered.

That earned him a blow from the nearest kobold.

‘No. Move.’ This time the words were in what Robin was beginning to think of as the common tongue. ‘No. Move.’

‘Hit me again and I’ll drop you with three words about your scale maintenance,’ Robin said politely in German. He held as still as he could. Larger battle, Robin. Larger battles.

Once he was trussed up to their satisfaction, the kobolds left him alone in the chamber. Little brats didn’t even ask him his safe word before they left.

‘It’s shawarmageddon,’ he yelled after them.

He was left alone in the dark with naught but his thoughts for company. It would probably have worked better as a pre-interrogation tactic if he wasn’t able to see in the dark.

Robin relaxed his arms. He had flexed them as he was being bound to the stone bench. He had a bit of wriggle room. Not enough to slip out, but he didn’t have a plan for escape even if he did. He tried for a small firefly with [Lesser Phantasm] to see if he could cast.

He managed it, but it was painful, and he failed two tries out of three. Before he could make another attempt, he caught the sound of approaching footsteps. Leather on stone, not claws.

Robin slumped into the picture of despondency right before Gis entered the room. He didn’t have to fake blinking in the sudden brightness when Gis summoned an aggressively red magelight.

‘The mysterious vagabond,’ Gis said.

His voice slithered up Robin’s spine and into his ears. Robin tried to remain sitting stoically, but his heart leapt up another gear.

‘My Lord is very interested in you, and in what you might know,’ the priest continued. ‘Travellers come across so many unexpected places in the journeys, I find.’

Oh yeah. He definitely wanted that shrine. Well, Robin wouldn’t give it to him. Probably.

The priest pulled out a dagger and began cleaning his nails with it.

Ok. Maybe. Maybe Robin wouldn’t tell him. Robin was suddenly sweating in the cool, underground air.

‘Well, let’s get started, shall we?’ The priest reached up and lifted the patch covering his left eye.

Robin flinched back from the ragged hollow. He expected only shadows, but two pinpoints of amber light flared in the socket. Something moved in the shadows pooled in that empty eye socket.

What the frell? Robin froze in horrified fascination. The flicker of movement came again. He learned forward in spite of himself, compelled by some unseen force…

…and a snake slithered out of the empty socket in the priest’s skull. Its tongue flashed out of its mouth. Flick. Flick. Flick.

‘It fearsss, massster,’ the snake said, ‘I can tassste it.’

The harp strings that were Robin’s nerves snapped, and he began screaming.

Gis laughed.