Chapter 34: Deep Caves

What came first, the chicken or the egg? The question has divided the religious and non-religious peoples for perhaps centuries.

The true answer is simple, as it must be: the chicken.

But the reason is not something as simple as the church thinks…

-An unknown scholar

The smoke had all but disappeared by the time we reached Ren’s house, but what little lingers still burns our nostrils and brings tears to our eyes as I knock on the door.

“Just a minute!” A voice calls from within.

We waited. And waited. If I had a watch, I would be glancing at it impatiently right now. Finally, the door opens and Ren peers out at us. The front of his har is tinged faintly orange, clearly from that same explosion earlier. “You’re back early.” He notes.

I shrug. “We’ve seen the sights. Thought we’d come back and rest for a while.”

“Well, come in then.” Ren motions us inside, and we sit down at the table. As if he has suddenly thought of something, Ren jumps back up and moves off into another room. He returns with some paper, an inkwell and a quill.

As he starts to write, Ren says, “Our meeting with Tuig was a rare event. So rare that it’s worth recording the conversation, while I still remember it.”

“I reckon.” Jakin agrees. “Thing was bloody fast, made some sort of explosion when it ran. What under or on earth was it?”

Ren taps the quill free of excess ink after refilling it from the inkwell. “Our records don’t say, as far as I know. But then again, I never made a particular study of it. All I know for sure is that it’s very old and very fast. If I were to wager a guess, however, I would say that it’s some type of plant monster that happened to be blessed with intelligence. It has been recorded that some plants can live hundreds of years, and with the strength of a monster and the even greater benefit given to monsters if they gain intelligence, who’s to say they couldn’t live for at least a few thousand years?”

Ren frowns. “Then again, I don’t believe there’s ever been a study done on the longevity of monsters, so who can say for sure?”

“Hm.” Jakin grunts. “In other words yeh have no clue. Whatever it is, I hope we don’t end up having to fight it. Don’t think I could keep track of it if it goes that fast.”

“I shouldn’t think so.” Ren hardly looks up as he scratches away at the paper. “I’ve never read or heard of it being hostile.”

Jakin grunts again, then lapses into silence.

“You harvested quite a lot of different herbs earlier. Do you know all of the herbs that grow around here?” Boaz asks.

“That, and then some.” Ren glances at Boaz. “Every herb that has ever passed through this village is detailed in the records. Even those that have only been seen or were simply hearsay have been noted.”

He looks back down to the paper. “I have read them.”

“That sounds like quite an extensive set of records.” I say.

“Our people have been writing the records for millennia. We record everything worth remembering. Some might even argue that a few of the things we record aren’t worth remembering at all.” Ren shrugs. “If you want to have a look, you’ll have to ask Len. He is the keeper of the records.”

I shake my head. “Just curious.”

Finishing his writing, Ren lays his quill down and stands, leaving the page to dry. “I will be returning to my experimentation now. I would rather you not disturb me.”

The next day.

As we venture into the darkness, our only light is the soft purple glow of our torches, not from flame but from a luminescent paste we have slathered on their ends.

I would have preferred to simply use fire magic to light the way, but Ren insists upon using the paste. He says that there are small pockets of flammable gasses at various places throughout the cave system, and although he knows where they are, he would rather not risk utilising a naked flame for light.

It is a reasonable precaution, even if I could probably control my magic so that it wouldn’t burn anything.

We make slow progress as Ren checks every nook and cranny in every cave we pass through for magical herbs. Somewhat helping the gathering is the fact that the alchemical torches give off a constant light, unlike that of fire which flickers constantly.

Our footsteps echo throughout the caves, the only sounds in the slow silence.

Even so, we are at ease: the silence is nowhere near as oppressive as it was in the forest of befuddlement.

This cave system has so many twists and branches that it may as well be a maze. We make our way methodically through each branch, reassured by the marks left on the walls by past explorers, marks which Ren says he can read to find our way back.

I feel inclined to believe him, but all of us are trying to keep track of the way out, just in case.

As we move into another cave, our torches reveal dozens of small forms hanging from the ceiling. When the light shines upon them, the bats immediately take flight. I drop my torch and ready my warhammer, but they simply scatter into other caves and disappear without attacking us.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I reholster my warhammer. Small flying enemies are difficult to deal with in the best of times, let alone when we have so little light and it’s not safe for me to use fire magic. If they were boomer bats… It’s a scary thought.

Could I even do anything in a situation like that?

I ponder the question as we continue exploring. If something as bad as that happens, I need to have a plan ready.

Jakin, Boaz and Xiltroth likely wouldn’t be able to do any damage unless the bats got close, in which case it would be unwise to prompt an explosion in the first place. Xiltroth has his wrist mounted crossbow, but in the dark, with his targets moving about so erratically? I doubt he’d be able to get a hit.

Jakin and Boaz might be able to defend themselves in the case of a close-range explosion, but it could be lethal for anyone else, including me.

In which case, our only significant offensive measure would be my magic, annoying though it is. Fire magic is out, and lava magic would be even worse, so earth magic would be my only option.

Simple earth spikes would have the same limitations as Xiltroth’s crossbow…

As I contemplate, we walk through a cave entrance. Beyond it is darkness – our torchlight doesn’t reach the walls in any direction. Taking a few steps inwards, we stop. In front of us is a dark chasm, and a path to our right slopes down into the darkness.

“This looks safe.” Xiltroth remarks sarcastically, peering downwards.

“We best watch our step and stay away from that edge…” Jakin warns.

...Perhaps if I created a cloud of earth, it would force them to land. If they were on the ground, their mobility would be greatly reduced, and our options would expand.

Cautiously, we start making our way down the path.

Every now and again, we find small caves off the side of the path, but there isn’t anything inside them.

We come across yet another cave and, just in case, the others go inside to check. I don’t bother and just wait outside for the twenty seconds or so that they search the cave for. As soon as I see them coming back out, I start walking down the path.

“Wait! I think there’s a –”

The ground crumbles beneath my feet.

“Trap there!” Xiltroth finishes belatedly.

Falling into the abyss, I whip out my dagger with my free hand and slam it into the wall, immediately arresting my descent, only a few meters down.

…This brings back memories.

“Can you let down a rope?” I call up.

“Just a moment.” One of the twins calls back down.

A few seconds later a rope dangles down beside me.

“Grab it.” He says.

Easier said than done when both of my hands are occupied. Slotting the torch into my mouth, I grab the rope, give it a bit of a yank to signal that I’ve got it, pull my knife free from the wall and sheathe it.

There is a very brief feeling of weightlessness until the rope grows taut, and they start hauling me upwards. It doesn’t take long for them to pull me back up to the edge of the path, and I grab their reaching hands as they pull me back up onto solid ground.

“Thanks for that.” I say, rolling my strained shoulder. “I might’ve been able to make it down, but who knows what’s at the bottom… Might not have even been a way back up.”

Jakin nods. “Should be a bit more careful. Next time there might not be a wall for you to latch onto.”

“That part of the path wasn’t naturally weak…” Xiltroth muses. “It looked like it was just a thin layer of rock with a cover of dirt.”

Boaz walks over to the hole in the path and kneels down, bringing his torch close to the ground. “It’s artificial all right. Tool marks. But it’s very rough. This wasn’t professionally done. Thing probably would have collapsed on its own before too long.”

“We’ll have to explore a different part of the caves now, I suppose.” Ren sighs.

I measure the length of the gap with my eyes. “Can’t be longer than a meter, meter and a half? No problem, we can just jump it. Xiltroth, you see anything on the other side we need to watch out for? I don’t want to jump just to fall through the ground again.”

Xiltroth peers over at the other side. “Looks fine.” He picks up a rock and throws it at the ground at the other side of the gap. It bounces off. “Should be fine.”

“I’m not entirely sure this is a wise course of action.” Splutters Ren. “What if one of you falls?”

Shrugging, I say, “Same thing I did.”

“What if I fall?” He clarifies. “I don’t think I am capable of jumping such a gap.”

“No problem.” I say. “You’re light, right?”

Ren looks taken aback. “I suppose I am – wait, what?”

“I think it’s best if you lead the way this time, Xiltroth.” I say.

“Will do.” Taking only a short run-up, Xiltroth jumps over the gap and lands safely on the other side with room to spare. He looks around himself carefully. “Ground is clear.”

“Catch.” Grabbing Ren around his waist, I pick him up – he really is quite light – take quite a few steps back and start to run towards the gap.

“Wait, wait, wait a minute!” Ren stutters. “No need to go to -”

Heaving my arms, I toss him over the gap.

“Extreeeeeeemes!” He shrieks, the sound echoing loudly throughout the cave.

Xiltroth catches Ren and sets him down onto the earth, where he promptly collapses into a sitting position.

“Well, if there was something down there that didn’t know we are here, it does now.” Jakin remarks dryly.

“Alright, make way on the other side, the rest of us need to come over now.” I say.

Ren shuffles back towards the wall and Xiltroth takes a few steps backwards, apparently ready to assist anyone else if need be.

All of us make the jump without much difficulty, despite our heavy armour and weaponry; the gap isn’t particularly large, after all.

“I wish you could at least have let me have a few moments to resolve myself.” Ren sighs heavily.

I shrug. “Doubt it would have helped much.” I motion to Xiltroth to take the lead.

We continue down the path. Even now, the side caves are completely empty, but I still wait for Xiltroth to check ahead before moving on. Jakin was right, next time I might not be so lucky.

When we reach the bottom, it almost comes as a surprise. By now, we must be quite deep underground.

The ground here is lit very, very dimly by some sort of luminous moss. More important, however, are the multitudes of short, bipedal reptilians heading towards us. What little clothing they have is tattered and worn, but all of them are wielding makeshift weaponry made from bones, stone and animal hides.

“Kobolds?” Ren remarks, confused. “There should be mostly armoured moles down here, not kobolds. Something must have happened to switch the relationships between the races or eliminate the moles entirely. It is probable that these kobolds are more dangerous than they appear.”

I grunt and swing my warhammer heavily, sending a few kobolds crashing to the ground with their scales broken and their chests crushed. “They don’t feel dangerous. There’s just a lot of them.” I swing my hammer again.

“There’s a group coming from behind us!” Xiltroth exclaims.

“You and Jakin defend the rear, the path’s only wide enough for two people to fight anyway!” I reply, swinging my hammer in another wide arc.

Because of the kobolds in front of me, I can’t turn to check on the situation, but a moment later I hear the sounds of fighting from behind me.

Despite their numbers, the kobolds seem to be at a severe disadvantage: their scales aren’t thick enough to offer significant protection against my or Boaz’s blows, and their weapons and strength are insufficient to make much more than a dent on our armour.

It doesn’t take long for about a dozen bodies to pile up at the foot of the path, but despite that they don’t seem to have any intentions of letting up and continue to charge towards us all the same.

This continues for a while, the pile of bodies only growing in size.

The kobolds are much smaller than me, enough that I can easily see over the heads of the ones in front of me to the ones behind them, and to the ones behind the ones behind them. Which is why I was able to see when a group of kobolds move off to my left… towards the edge of the path.

“Some coming from the side!” I warn.

“I’ve got it!” Xiltroth replies from behind me.

Despite the attack on three fronts, the battle is relatively stable.

After another minute or so of fighting, they begin to retreat, as if their earlier dogged determination to throw themselves at us was a lie.

Breathing somewhat heavily, I watch cautiously as the kobolds disappear into tunnels in the walls.

Seeing that the kobolds have gone, Ren quickly trots down the path, steps gingerly around all the scaled corpses and starts to pry some of the luminescent moss free of the soil and stone.

Eyeing the dimly glowing tunnels warily, I step down myself, still holding my warhammer at the ready. “We best stick to the edges. There are tunnels in almost every direction here… too easy to get surrounded.”

The others nod, and we make our way around the side of the cave until we reach the first tunnel. The entrance is empty, and so we venture down the pathway.

Every ten to twenty meters, Xiltroth spots some sort of trap. Some are blindingly obvious, such as simple bear traps that are just set on the ground – and likely wouldn’t do any damage even if we did step on them – while others are more well-hidden, such as the pitfall traps.

Xiltroth seems to be somewhat annoyed at the traps. They’re so crude that rather than disarming them, all he really has to do is poke them with his staff or give them a kick to break them apart.

After a short while, we reach the end of the tunnel, which comes out above the path we were on earlier. This must be how they ambushed us earlier.

We retrace our steps and move along to the second tunnel. This one looks more promising: the tunnel is lined with smaller caves strewn with various bones, hides and the occasional piece of cloth. Evidently, this is their residential area, although none of them appear to be here now.

But again, there is nothing at the end of the tunnel, so we turn back to try yet another tunnel.

As we exit the tunnel, I feel something hit my helmet, hard enough for it to be somewhat painful. I look around and see a kobold next to me, standing up as if from a crouch.

Where had it come from?

Well, either way it was dead. It’s too close for me to swing my hammer, so I punch it in the face instead, my gauntleted fist knocking it to the ground before I crush its chest with my boot. Then I get hit on the head again.

Punching this kobold even harder, I look up. “They’re climbing down the damn walls!”

Indeed, the kobolds are climbing down from the path above in attempt to ambush us. But it’s useless: they just can’t make it through our armour. Perhaps they could hurt Xiltroth, but his hearing and sight is the best out of all of us, and he’s the least likely to fall prey to a surprise attack.

“Alright, back into the tunnel.” I growl. “Let’s see how these flanking obsessed morons like it when they only have a single avenue of attack.”

We retreated a few meters into the tunnel. Now they could only attack from the front, and they clearly didn’t like it, because they immediately cleared out again.

“For goodness sake…” I sigh. “Can their leader just come on out so we can clean his clock and be done with it?”

“Wish it were always that simple.” Jakin agrees.

“They went into that tunnel.” Xiltroth says, pointing. “Let’s follow them and get this over with.”

So we do, venturing into the tunnel Xiltroth indicated. We aren’t used to this back and forward kind of fight, and it’s just annoying seeing our enemies run away constantly.

This tunnel is unlike the other two in that there is another cave at the end of it.

“Back!” Xiltroth shouts.

Without question, I immediately leap backwards, narrowly avoiding a cascade of large rocks that slammed down in front of the entrance.

…That one would’ve caused more than a slight bump.

We shift the rocks out of the way and enter once again, this time without the trap. Waiting for us are maybe twenty kobolds, plus something sitting in a roughly hewn stone chair at the rear that looks similarly reptilian, but human sized, perhaps even larger.

They attack us on sight, so we reciprocate the action and begin to decimate what remains of their population. Boaz and Jakin are easily able to pierce through the kobolds’ scales with their picks and defend themselves at the same time, while Xiltroth is expertly thrusting and spinning his staff into the more vulnerable points, crushing throats and breaking limbs with similar ease. I, of course, am ignoring all finesse by simply smashing them really hard with my warhammer, using wide, sweeping swings to keep the area around me clear.

As for Ren? He’s standing nervously by the tunnel entrance, sincerely hoping that no kobolds are going to come up behind him. It doesn’t take us long to clean the floor with them, with the sole exception of the large one.

When we approach, he stands from his chair, allowing us to have a better view of him. In general terms his features are similar to the kobolds, but while their scales are thin and dull, this one has thick, bright golden scales that look almost like armour plating. Two sharp horns protrude from the back of his head, making him look almost draconic.

He opens his mouth, but no words come forth, only a low growl.

“Lizard!” Xiltroth shouted.

That confuses me. He is reptilian, but it’s a bit odd to call him a lizard. I glance sidewards at Xiltroth, only to see him rolling out of the way of a massive lizard, perhaps about as tall as a kobold and twice as long as a human is high. Its neck appears oddly wrinkled, even with the scales.

“Jakin, Boaz, you take the lizard man, I’ll help Xiltroth with the lizard.” I say, already dashing towards the massive reptilian beast.

Swinging my hammer, I twist my feet and torso so as to push the force of my charge into my hammer as I drive it towards the big lizard. I feel the impact crack one or two of its bones and plenty of scales, but I can tell that it’s willing and able to fight on as it whips around to face me.

I swing my hammer at it again, bashing its head to one side, but by the feel of it not doing much more than superficial damage.

It lunges at me with its mouth wide open, and I slip my left hand up the haft of my warhammer to use it to block the attack, but just before its attack reaches me it rears back, growling in pain.

Xiltroth has jumped onto its back and stabbed it in the eye with his dagger, half blinding it.

Utilising its distractedness, I raise my hammer overhead and pull it back down, hitting the lizard on the head, pulling it down with my hammer head and smashing it against the ground. Something breaks in its head, and it doesn’t move again.

Breathing heavily from the exertion of that last blow, I momentarily rest my hammer against the ground and look over to the twins.

The lizard man looks to be in bad shape, with blood oozing from several smashed portions of scales all over his torso, while the twins look perfectly fine. Even as I watch, the lizard man darts in one direction and slashes his claws towards Boaz, who just adjusts his shield slightly. There is an odd screeching sound as his claws rake against the shield, but no damage is done and a moment later he stumbles as Jakin hits him with his pick.

As I and Xiltroth step over to surround him even further, his eyes grow desperate and he starts clawing with reckless abandon. But to no avail.

He fell quickly under our combined efforts.

Jakin slips his shield off his arm, turns it around and winces. The lizard man’s attacks have left several deep scratches on its surface. Although none of them have torn holes in it, it is still significant damage. Boaz’s shield has fared no better.

Still, the kobolds have been defeated.

We continued exploring for a few hours more, finding little of note and no dangerous monsters, before heading back up to the surface once more.