Chapter Thirty-Four - A Dramatic Run

“I’m not angry about the cultivation thing. Sure, it’s unscientific and silly, but I’m not mad. I am a little angry that society hasn’t progressed much at all.”

***

The entrance to the undercity, or at least the entrance Ruolan knew about, was tucked in what must once have been an alleyway. It was between two collapsed walls, a section darkened by a lack of sunlight from directly above.

“Wrench, Hammer, can you grab that?” Ruolan asked as she gestured to a round manhole. It was already partially moved off the hole it covered, a vine rope with knots tied along it dropping down into the darkness below. No doubt left by the goblins.

There was something about the vines that twigged a memory, but they were so scuffed, and tied into such a strangely braided pattern, that I couldn’t quite place them.

The two dwarves Ruolan had pointed to moved the cover back, allowing light to splash down to the bottom of the tunnel some four necrometers down. Far deeper than most basements would be, and beneath the main layer of the Undercity, if I were to guess.

“Yi, you’re going down first,” Ruolan said.

Yi nodded and slid his sword back into its scabbard. It wouldn't be of much help in the tight confines of the tunnel below. The young man grabbed the vine rope and tugged on it a few times. “This thing won’t support that many of us,” he said.

“Get to the bottom, and tell us if it’s clear,” Ruolan said. “We’ll go down one at a time.”

Yi nodded, grabbed onto the vine with both hands, then dropped down and out of sight.

Ruolan turned to the rest of us. “Alright. Hammer, you’re next. Then me, then limpet and our two guests. Wrench, you and Tweezers are coming in last.”

“What about Fang Fang?” the limpet asked. She gestured to her dog who looked up at Ruolan with big dog eyes.

“He stays here,” Ruolan said. “Don’t worry, he can probably handle a few goblins all on his own.”

The limpet nodded, then got to one knee to give her dog some instructions.

A faint whistle sounded from below. Ruolan gestured Hammer forwards, and the dwarf slid her warhammer into a sheath by her hips before going down.

Soon, Ruolan descended, and then it was the turn of our little group. The limpet wasn’t in the best of shapes, but she was young and spry and made it down with little trouble. I took my time descending, my task made somewhat difficult since my shoes weren’t designed for that kind of exercise.

When I reached the bottom I looked up and called out to Alex. “It’s your turn,” I said, pitching my voice so that it wouldn’t echo down the tunnels.

Alex bent over the hole, looked at the vine, looked at his dress, then stepped into the void and came falling down only to land in a crouch at the bottom. “Made it,” he said.

Soon enough, everyone was down, and we gathered together in the rather claustrophobic tunnel. The good thing was that any sewage was long gone. The less optimal fact was that the tunnel was never meant to accommodate people. It was only just tall enough in its middle to support someone standing up, and the footing was precarious at best since the bottom was angled into a sort of trough.

I bent down and ran a finger over the ground. No, it wasn’t built that way. The bricks were worn down into a rough ‘v’ shape. Likely by decades of water flowing past.

“Yi, lights,” Ruolan said as she reached into her little pack and removed a small metallic trinket from a pocket at the back of her belt. I sensed a faint twist of magic and a beam of light shot out the end of the device.

A portable light of sorts? A rather simple enchantment, but surprising to see all the same.

Yi pulled out a similar device and aimed it down the opposite end of the tunnel. “No goblins,” he said.

The limpet finished muttering something, and a small ball of light appeared hovering over her hand. A simple cast of Prestidigitation, but one that cast more light than both enchanted devices.

“Hmm,” Ruolan said as she looked away from the limpet’s light. “Well done, kid. We’re taking the tunnel north, towards the centre of the city.” She started off in that direction, and our previous formation returned, though it was quite a bit tighter now.

The tunnel ran in a mostly straight line. Mostly, because it curved ever so slightly off towards the side, but judging by the way the bricks in the walls jutted out, it wasn’t designed that way.

Tectonic shifts over the years? Or perhaps the collapse of other parts of the Undercity caused this area to move?

Ruolan reached up and tapped a wooden board jutting out of the ceiling. There was a crudely drawn face on it. “Goblins,” she said.

The deeper we moved, the more signs appeared that the area was infested with them. There were discarded bones left along the sides, mostly from smaller mammals and the occasional bird. Some broken tools were left to rot. Mostly poorly made spears, but occasionally we crossed singed wooden stumps that I guessed were once torches.

“They use fire for light,” I said.

“Fools,” Hammer swore.

“Master?” the limpet asked.

It was Wrench that answered. “Smell the air, kid. That sulphur-y stink? There are gases in these tunnels. The sort that would have a proper dwarven engineer evacuating the area. Fire could light it off. You’d have small explosions, but small explosions in contained spaces are a real nightmare, mah.”

“Oh,” the limpet said. “So no fire, got it.”

The tunnel came up onto an intersection ahead, and Ruolan raised a hand for us to slow down. “Shush,” she said.

I focused a little, and could only-just make out the sound of something scratching the dirt up ahead. We stopped some half-dozen necrometers away from the intersection, then watched as a pair of goblins in nothing but loin clothes moved out into the middle of the passage. They had their heads bowed, and were focused on the ground.

One of them looked up and locked eyes on our party.

“Limpet,” Ruolan said. “Tweezers.” The woman herself started to move ahead at a dead sprint.

The limpet moved her hands in a quick flurry of motion while muttering the incantation to Frostbite.

One of the goblins stumbled back, its breath catching while icy tendrils rushed across its skin.

And then half a dozen tweezers thudded into its body as a brace thrown by Tweezers landed.

The other goblin, seeing its partner rushing off the mortal coil, and Ruolan rushing towards her, bolted.

Ruolan arrived at the intersection just as it ran off to the side, squealing loud enough to wake the dead. The cultivator disappeared for a moment, then the squealing went quiet.

“Oops,” the limpet said.

“Hardly your fault,” I said. “No one gave you a firing order, or told you which target to hit first. It's the kind of thing that you’d learn over time in an experienced party.”

“Happens,” Tweezers said as he walked by. “I’m gonna get my tools.”

The party moved up to the intersection, meeting Ruolan who was in the process of cleaning off the end of her cane. “I heard more of them deeper down the tunnel,” she said. “We need to get moving. They ran off, but I think some of them might have seen me. They’ll sound the alarm.”

As if mocking her, a distant clanging sounded out through the tunnels, metal beating on metal. “That’s no good,” Alex said.

Ruolan pointed off to our left. “Down that way,” she said. “If we’re lucky they’ll split up along these three paths and we won’t be running onto all of them.”

“We’ll be leaving prints,” the limpet said with a gesture behind us where we were, indeed, leaving prints in the mud.

“Then let’s leave them quickly. Come on. Same formation. Go!”

The distant clamour of angry goblins finding their dead comrades pushed the group into moving faster down the tunnels. By all means, we should have been far faster than the goblins, but there were a few issues slowing the group down.

Soon after moving into the tunnel Ruolan indicated we arrived at a partial cave in and had to slip through a hope one at a time. Then, when we arrived at a fork in the path, we ended up faced with a dead-end and had to back up and use the other passage in the hopes that it would eventually reconnect to the right tunnel.

By the time ten minutes passed in the tight, poorly-lit confines of the tunnels, with only the flickering light of the limpet’s Prestidigitation and the two cultivator’s bouncing lights to illuminate the path, we were running with the fastest goblins right on our tail.

Ruolan pointed out ahead. There was a small barricade blocking the bottom half of the tunnel ahead, made of bits of wood and masonry stacked up to knee-height. “We stand on the other side of that. Dwarves form a front line with me and Yi. Rangers at the back.”

We jumped over the barricade and immediately turned around.

Two dozen goblins were coming right at us. Their weapons, wooden spears, the occasion knife made from a sharpened piece of iron, and even some basic bows, didn’t look like much. In fact, I was certain that they would all die terribly dull deaths very soon.

The problem was the hundreds of other goblins behind this vanguard.

“We take these out, then keep moving,” Ruolan said. “We can’t afford to be bogged down.”

“Mah, I know, I know,” Wrench said. He moved up to the edge of the barricade and swung his wrench just as the first goblin leapt over the top. The heavy metal tool crunched as it caved in the goblin’s head.

The limpet fired a Chill Touch into the face of a goblin archer, sending it off the top of the barricade just as Tweezer’s thrown tweezer sliced the string off another’s bow and made the weapon snap apart in the goblin’s hand.

Ruolan and Yi, both taller and longer-limbed than all the others, made short work of the goblins jumping up to take the group down from above while Hammer and Wrench used the barricade as cover from which to wind up massive blows with their respective weapons.

The problem for the goblins was that they were too feeble to do much more than endure one hit from their adversaries, and too dumb to turn around and come up with a better plan.

“We’re clear!” Ruolan said as soon as the last went down. “Let’s move.”

We started running again, the limpet stuttering her way through a recast of Prestidigitation.

How many spells had she cast? Two earlier, then the light, then another at the intersection, and now four more at the barricade. Eight cantrips in a row, with some sustained over a decently long period, all of that under some stress.

She was doing pretty well.

The main body of goblins behind us caught up to their vanguard and hollered and screamed their anger.

“We need to hurry!” Yi said.

“Ay, we’re hurrying already, you moron!” Hammer shot back.

With skidding feet, we arrived at a T-junction only to run right into a patrol of goblins. Six in all.

Ruolan was quick to act, slashing the head off one and slapping the feet out from another with her cane.

Yi didn’t have time to remove his sword from its sheath, so he resorted to kicking another down.

The draves, Hammer and Wrench, found themselves facing off against a trio of surprised but angry goblins.

Two went down from heavy swings, but a third stabbed forwards with its spear and caught Wrench in the gut, the pointy wooden tip digging through the dwarf’s gambeson.

“Ch-Chill Touch!”

A ghastly hand grabbed the goblin by the throat and threw him back, yanking the spear from Wrench’s stomach. Tweezer jumped on it, finishing it off with a flurry.

“Are you alright?” Ruolan asked.

“Mah, got worse at the forge from being clumsy,” Wrench said as he tugged his gambeson down over the wound.

“You’re always clumsy,” Hammer said.

“Oh, piss off you beardless old hag. We running some more, or are we staying here to die?”

Ruolan looked down the dark depths of the tunnel. “We still have some running to do,” she said.

So we continued moving.

I, for one, was having quite a bit of fun with all of the drama going on.

***