We ran.

Three in a row. Short duergar warrior in swishing mail with a giant axe in one meaty fist. Athletic orc female in a loin cloth with a kitchen knife in her hands. And me. Tall half-elven figure, legs pumping and a wicked spear swinging alongside, wearing nothing but a pair of blood-spattered pants that fluttered against my legs and swashbuckler boots not designed for running.

I wondered if parents here teach their children not to run with pointy objects.

But there was no time for questions, no energy. My muscles burned from combat, several scrapes and slashes bleeding and pitter-pattering to the floor behind me. A convenient blood trail.

The tunnel mouth gaped suddenly in front, then swallowed us. As the light of the glowing cavern walls disappeared, my vision switched from color to greyscale. Beside me, Aleesi slowed slightly, her hands reaching out like she was making sure she didn’t barrel into anything.

Could orcs see in the dark? I didn’t know. But she seemed to be managing. I stuck close by, to catch her if she stumbled.

And still we ran.

Duergar aren’t built for running. But luckily, neither are goblins. The few glances I threw back after our escape into the tunnels revealed no enemies in sight. But still they followed, piercing war cries bouncing down the halls after us and jacking my heartrate through the roof.

Unlike the worming passageways that had led us to the huge cave above, these ones seemed chiseled from the stone, civilized and intentional in their design. The floor was worn smooth, the turns were made into forks in the passage. The ceilings were tall, arched up above, and wide. Designed for heavy traffic, or built by the hands of builders who were larger than life. I couldn’t tell if the duergar knew where he was going, but Magnuus took each turn without hesitation. We hit a ramp, my feet leaving the floor for a moment in a long bound.

I stumbled, slamming into the wall at a T-junction. I bruised my shoulder, cursed, shoved myself off, kept running. But my momentary hesitation gave me a chance to shoot a look at the woman running alongside me. And her expression, even in the shadowy greyscale darkness, confused me.

Because unless I missed my guess, she looked… Excited.

Abruptly, the walls peeled back around us and we heaved and wheezed into another open space. To be fair, Magnuus heaved and wheezed. Aleesi seemed winded. And me… I was confused. My heart was beating fast, I knew. And my long, pale hair was plastered to the sides of my face with sweat. My feet hurt like the devil, chafed and raw. But for some reason… I felt like I could go on forever.

How long had we been running? Twenty minutes? Thirty? Time blended together in the darkness and the adrenaline and the unremarkable stone tunnels. The echoing screeches of our pursuers had faded, but it might have just been a trick of the rock.

I padded up behind Magnuus. “Why are we stopping?” But as I left the confines of the tunnel mouth and joined him by the heavy stone balustrade, I saw. I saw more stone stairs leading down and another crevasse to be crossed. It was spanned by a stone bridge, flat and narrow, not so big as the one we’d left. This bridge, however, was different from Magnuus’s in two important ways.

First, it was complete. Good.

Second, it was already occupied. Very not good.

They carried torches. And there were a lot of them. Halfway across the bridge, a single file line of dark, hulking figures. I could see glinting weapons in hand, the rough outlines of primitive armor. My human eyes would have been practically sightless, even with the torches. My new eyes could pick out more detail. They were all tall, broad-shouldered, obscenely muscular. Like a pack of Conans with dark skin and pale eyes that glittered with fierce energy.

I wasn’t surprised by their appearance.

Orcs.

Magnuus and I were frozen in place, which only made it more startling when Aleesi sprang forward. She waved her arms over her head, voice breaking the air. A shout of greeting. A dozen heads snapped our way, weapons bristling. Then, looks of confusion. One of the front-runners took several steps forward, sliding a long-hafted hammer from his belt and into one big hand. He called out, raising his torch.

The duergar cursed softly beside me.

I glanced down. His eyes were wide and his expression agitated. He looked over his shoulder, back the way we’d come.

“What is it?”

He scowled darkly. “Fucking savages…” His voice was low, his accent thick with emotion. Anger? Hatred? “For nothing… All for nothing…” I realized, a second later, that it might be fear. The implacable duergar was shaken. Cornered.

Aleesi, meanwhile, had called out in reply. She dashed down the stairs, descending through the darkness toward the circle of light. The other orcs were hastening now, more quickly, arriving on our side of the crevasse as our companion reached the bottom of the stairs.

I hesitated. “What do we do?” Part of me wanted to follow Aleesi, wanted to trust her and the group who seemed known to her. I’d saved her, right? From the spiders. And we’d escaped the duergar fortress together. The young woman slid to a stop, throwing her arms around the massively-built orc in front.

The top of her head came to his mid-chest. Oh crap. He must be big.

Magnuus grumbled into his beard. He shifted his feet. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Then, behind us, the reverberating echo of a screech. The ricocheting noise of clattering weapons and snarling animals. The sounds of pursuit. Growing closer.

“Fuck those things are persistent…” I growled.

“They can smell you.”

“What?!”

The duergar looked up at me, face slashed by his deep frown. “Didn’t you see? Those are no ordinary grimmlin. Something happened. They are touched by chaos. They can smell you, the… outsider. From another plane. Undying. And it drives them mad with hunger.” His voice was low and cold and terse, like he was restraining himself from saying more, louder, angrier.

I made an executive decision. Survival, in the end, is often about choosing the least dangerous alternative between two frightening options. Green-skinned tribe of bodybuilder barbarians was an easy choice over the ravening horde of twisted monsters.

And besides, Webster liked Aleesi, didn’t he? The microgriffon had landed, scrabbling briefly with his tiny claws on the stone parapet before drawing his feet beneath him and looking down. His eyes glinted, reflecting the torchlight. That had to count for something.

I swallowed, hefted my spear. “I’m going down,” I told Magnuus. “Hope you come with.” Then, I jogged down the stairs after the orc woman. Behind me, the duergar swore again, fiercely.

My eyes were still adjusting to the flickering torchlight as I approached, willing my spear to disappear and holding my empty hands out wide. “Hello!” I called, doubting they’d understand but hoping my voice was pitched with the appropriate note of Please I’d prefer if you didn’t kill me.

The tense bunching up of the group and their raised weapons indicated appropriate caution, but none of the warriors broke ranks — or tried to break me — as I arrived inside the wavering perimeter of illumination. Aleesi stood in front, with the fighter she’d greeted. Her expression was tense but not angry, her eyes shining feverishly. She gestured urgently for me to come closer, saying something in her language.

I heard the gentle clatter of claws that meant Webster had swooped in beside me, and the cat-sized microgriffon followed me into the light. It was intimidating to approach, but I steeled myself and put one foot in front of the other. Up close, the warriors were all at least half a foot taller than me, with physiques almost cartoonishly proportioned. They had heavy features, jutting jaws with longer versions of the curving lower canines that I’d first noticed on Aleesi. Their arms were big around as my thighs and their legs were like tree trunks. They looked quite different from the smaller, slighter female. Especially by contrast, the girl’s features were finer, more delicate, her proportions smoother and more… human.

Now, though, her face was tight with worry. She glanced past me, up into the dark, like she was looking for our third companion.

I shook my head. We couldn’t worry about the duergar. He was in or he was out, but for now he was on his own. Racism can be a bitch like that. “We don’t have time,” I said urgently. I pointed back the way we’d arrived, stabbing my finger toward the tunnel. “They’re coming!”

The girl didn’t understand my words, but she obviously understood my meaning. She turned to her protector, who loomed large behind her shoulder. The hammer in his hand was long and heavy. It looked more than capable of crushing my skull, and the owner had an expression like he hadn’t decided whether or not to use it. A hand on one bulging bicep and a few soft, gentle words from Aleesi made him grunt and scowl up into the darkness as well, sniffing his broad, flat nose.

Can they smell the goblins? I wondered. Magnuus’s story last night had made it sound like the orcs and goblins and spiders had all come together with the sole purpose of screwing over the duergar race. But if the orcs’ obvious discomfort was genuine then it seemed the groups were less friendly than I’d been led to believe.

I wondered what this group was. Some sort of hunting party? They seemed too heavily armored. A war band? But going where…? And how did they know the young orc woman?

I hesitated a few feet away. My eyes went from Aleesi’s blue orbs to the dark, harsh expression of the warriors around her. I swallowed again. “So…” I said. “How are we going to do this?”

The girl paused, glanced past me again, then said something to the warrior. He scowled at me, shook his head. Uh-oh. She seemed to consider, then proposed something else. The orc stared down at me.

After a long, silent second, he jerked a quick nod, then turned. He shoved the handle of the hammer back into his belt, which seemed like a good thing, then strode through the rest of the party. The young woman gestured for me to follow, murmuring in the kind of soothing voice you use with a frightened animal.

That was great for my ego.

I had taken half a dozen steps into the group when my spidey senses tingled. Fuck.

My reflexes were fast, faster than they’d ever been as a human. But the gigantic bicep that snaked under my chin was thick as a python and felt three times as strong. I struggled, feet kicking. I tried to headbutt behind me, and I felt a solid thud as my skull connected with a mound of muscle.

No reaction. The huge orc behind me probably didn’t even feel it.

What! Why? No! My thoughts jumbled as I wheezed out a soft cry. Strangely, I felt soft fingertips then, brushing down the side of my cheek, pushing wild hair from my eyes. I blinked. My sight began to blur.

Was that Aleesi’s face?

Of course, that was when a helpful notification obscured my darkening vision. I no longer had the presence of mind to brush it away.

Warning! You cannot breathe!

Without an air supply, you will begin to suffocate.

No shit…

That was my last thought before darkness closed in around my vision. The last thing I heard, though, before my senses left me, was a gruff voice calling out in angry Dwarvish.

“Don’t touch my elf, you heathens!”