Two candle marks ago, just after Karl, Timoteo and Serena returned to the camp in the pocket canyon with their kobold captives.

As Serena headed towards the back of the canyon I directed Diogo and Marco to take charge of the captives. Then I had Elis and Rhys bring out the parlay banner to attach to the posts in front of the posts where Diogo and Marco were tying up the captives. Once the parlay banner was set up, I asked Serena how much longer the kobolds would remain unconscious, and she indicated that it would be near the end of the noon candle mark before they woke back up. Since we had some time before they woke up, I called out to the group and said, “Well, not much we can do until they wake, let’s have lunch while we wait.”

We broke out some of remaining ready to eat travel rations, they may not be as tasty as a hot cooked meal, but at least they were filling. We still had another three days worth of rations remaining, assuming none of the others had been snacking on their share, unlikely in a group this experienced. The wizards and sorcerers had done an excellent job with the wall and the defensive enchantments, six paces high, and two paces wide, I have high hopes that it will survive a fair amount of lobbed stones by the ogre. The defensive enchantments would make it difficult for the kobolds and the ogre to get within fifteen paces, hopefully we can manage to make an agreement with our captives, otherwise it is going to be a difficult next few days.

Karl, the watchful scout that he is, ate his lunch whilst standing behind a crenellation on the wall looking out our the forest. Alexio, although he was on the wall as well, ate his lunch whilst sitting behind a crenellation, and only once in a while peeked over the side. Maxim, unlike the rest of us was eating a ration of dried deer jerky as he couldn’t digest much except meat. When I glanced over at him, he gave me this big toothy grin whilst raising the bit of jerky he was eating my way in acknowledgement. I know he does that to me on purpose, I don’t generally have a problem with beastkin but I have just never been able to get past the teeth of the tiger beastkin, their palm length incisors are simply unnerving to me.

This is definitely a character flaw on my part as none of the others seem to have any issues with him, although Maxim doesn’t generally go out of his way to initiate conversations, he doesn’t cause any trouble either. I finished off the last of my trail read lunch, and gathered up the nerve to actually talk with Maxim, instead of at him, I wiped my hands on my trousers and made my way over to him and asked, “may I join you?” He looked up at me smiling another of those grins I have issues with, then waved at a patch of ground, another piece of jerky in his hand and said, “please do, Felipe. Is there something that I can do for you?” I sat where he had indicated, then took a deep breathe to calm my nerves and said, “Maxim, I wanted to apologize to you, I haven’t been the most cordial person in the group, and that is entirely my own fault.”

My fist clenched involuntarily against the knees of my crossed pant legs as I took another deep breath and continued, saying, “it isn’t because of anything about you specifically, I just. I just. I just have a fear of large fangs.” Maxim then started chuckling, this deep throaty chuckle and replied, “Felipe, I appreciate the effort you put into to coming over here and telling me, I do. However, this is one of the worst kept secrets in the group and I have known since we left Campanella.” As I was just starting to realize everyone in the group had been aware of my phobia, Maxim turned and called out, “Diogo, you owe me five silver pieces.” My embarrassment is now complete, if the kobolds or the dungeon kill me at least I wont have to suffer everyone’s ribbing about it all the way back.

I stuffed my embarrassment back into my jacket collar, took yet another deep breath, and said, “well, at least I provided some entertainment for everyone. Maxim, if my phobia starts to affect our interaction again, please come over and let me know. Also, next time there is a betting pool going on, tell me so I can get in on the action.” At this, Maxim grinned yet again, and my poor heart tried to choke me again, he then leaned forward then slapped my shoulder saying, “sure thing Felipe.” And then in a low undertone said, “Diogo and I have another five silver on whether Rhys or Elis kill their mule first on the way back.” Despite my shoulder stinging like Hades, I replied in the same low tone, “five silver on Rhys. Thanks.”

I know that despite my conversation with Maxim I still have a long way to go before I am as comfortable around him and other tiger beastkin as I am around most other beastkin, but at least it was a start. I got up from where I was sitting and walked up the stairs of the wall and joined Karl where he was still standing watch. He sucked his fingers clean, and then half turned toward me and said, “all clear so far. Depending on when the site of our little ambush is discovered the kobolds could start sending out additional scouting parties anytime before dawn. If we are lucky, it will be closer to dawn than not.” I nodded, then said, “thanks Karl. I appreciate it.” I turned and headed back down the wall over to the captives, according to Serena’s estimate, we still had another half candle mark before they would wake, waiting is always hard.

Although the tension in the camp was higher than normal, it wasn’t enough to prevent casual conversation. Diogo was ribbing me that it had taken as long as it had to get up the nerve to actually talk with Maxim, when the largest of the captive kobolds stirred. I joined Elis and Rhys in walking over to the posts where we had the kobolds tied up, not that I expected to be of much immediate use, but at least I wouldn’t have to hear news second hand. It was almost painful to listen to the broken exchange between the gnomes and the kobolds, fortunately for my ears, most of the dialogue on the part of the kobolds was from the leader of the captive trio. After almost the better part of half a candle mark, Rhy turned to me and said, “Well, it looks like we lucked out, get this kobold some parchment and some charcoal and Alesandro can take over translating from there.” I just about sighed in relief, it was obvious the gnomes were trying their best, but frankly that wasn’t really good enough to get us the concession we needed to complete our mission. I pointed to the lead kobold with my chin whilst I looked over at Diogo, then I turned and called out, “Alesandro, it is your lucky day, get some parchment and a charcoal stick, we are going to need your translation skills a bit earlier than expected.”

It took a few moments of rummaging around in his pack, but Alesandro brought over a small sheaf of parchment and, a charcoal drawing stick. Diogo untied the kobold whilst I kept an arrow knocked on my bow, after a short bout of angry sibilants and some wrist wringing, the kobold took hold of the proffered drawing stick and a piece of parchment. The kobold wrote out several sentences with a surprisingly deft clear hand, before stopping and holding out the parchment to Diogo who was the only one of us remaining in arms reach of him. As Diogo passed the parchment over to Alesandro, I caught a short glimpse of the neat distinct angular markings, looking somewhat like a form of tally counting, but with horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines.

Alesandro held the parchment in one hand as he started to gesture with the other hand murmuring his spell of written intent, a small magic circle briefly shone in the air over the parchment before Alesandro started to translate what the kobold had written. Alesandro took a breath and spoke, saying, “You captured us. You have a parlay banner, but, no one to speak about the parlay. What do you low-landers really want?” Alesandro turned and started to ask me how we should respond, when we all heard Serena cry out, “Felipe !” Followed by the sound of stone shattering.

Diogo unsheathed one of his blades holding it to the kobolds neck as the rest of us focused our attention towards the back of the pocket canyon where Serena had been resting after partaking in the excursion this morning. Unlike before where the canyon wall was plain and unmarked, there was now a worked opening in the back canyon wall, about two paces beyond where Serena had setup her bedroll. This opening was rectangular, about one and half paces while and about two thirds of a pace tall, within there was a panel of what appeared to be perfectly clear glass covering what appeared to be a perfectly smooth black stone backing. Below the panel, there was what seemed to be a drawer of some kind with a small pull handle in the middle of the face of the drawer.

I, Diogo, the kobold, Elis, Rhys, Alesandro, Maxim, Raquel, Timoteo and Serena all approached this opening. Myself with some trepidation, as I realized this panel was much like one of the ones described by Timoteo and Dimitri during their initial report to us, although this one appeared to be a bit larger than what they had mentioned. As we gathered, the panel flashed to a pure white light, then clear, perfectly regular black text started to appear on this bright white background, flowing from the upper left corner straight across towards the upper right. Given how close all of us were, a dungeon normally couldn’t change anything at all, and I think I heard all of us gasp as we realized Timoteo and Dimitri hadn’t been exaggerating in the least. I somewhat nervously turned to Alesandro and swallowed, probably louder than I would have liked, and said, “Well, it looks like we didn’t need to go to the dungeon for you to use your skills, it came to us. So, could you please translate that?”

As Alesandro came to the fore of our group, Maxim asked Timoteo, “how do you suppose the dungeon is writing those letters?” Raquel asked Serena, “Is that magic of some kind?” Timoteo replied to Maxim, “I have no idea.” Serena shook her head as she replied to Raquel, “Whatever it is, there is no magic involved. The reason I cried out before was that I noticed the dungeon removing its presence from this area before the stone covering collapsed.” As I overheard Serena’s response, I realized that she had a fairly big blind spot in her sensitivity, if the magic in something is inert and she isn’t actively looking for it, she could very well overlook it. The fact that the dungeon removed its presence before the cover fell to the ground was also disturbing, how did it make the cover fall.

Whilst I was pondering this, Alesandro started his incantation, causing Serena to wince, and pull back from the group a bit. A few moments later he finished and started to translate what the dungeon had written, saying “The dungeon says, Welcome, good people. I see you have noticed my dispute with the members of the tribe camped out in front of the entrance that elf among you visited previously.” Well, the good news is that the dungeon isn’t demanding things right out of the gate, and it obviously recognized Timoteo and that he was an elf. That the dungeon didn’t name the tribe in front of the entrance as a kobold tribe is interesting and unusual, does the dungeon not know what kobolds are. Something, to ponder on later I suppose, I tapped Alesandro on the shoulder and asked for a piece of parchment and the charcoal drawing stick.

After getting the parchment and the drawing stick from Alesandro, I pondered for a moment before writing, “Yes, we noticed your dispute with the kobold tribe. What is your intention ? What was your reason in seeking us out yourself ? Why did you not send your summoned companion to discuss matters with the kobolds or ourselves ?” After I finished writing this down, I looked at the brightly lit panel before me and said what I had written to the panel, feeling more than slightly foolish. As the text on the panel didn’t change, I handed the parchment over to Alesandro and asked him, “well, can you try and translate that to the dungeon?” Alesandro took the parchment in hand and like he had done several times today so far, started his incantation.

Several moments after Alesandro finished his spell, several lines of text appeared on the panel below the initial message in quick succession. Alesandro sighed, and under his breath murmured “this is going to be a long day,” before starting his spell once again. Another few moments and Alesandro started to translate the new text, sounding disappointed, and given what he translated that was completely understandable. It seemed that the translation of the text I had given to Alesandro had failed, and the dungeon still had no idea of what we were saying. Despite that, the dungeon indicated that it wanted to learn our language, and directed us to write various things down and say them to the panel. I decided that I should leave this in Alesandro’s hands and asked Diogo to return the kobold to the post with the others, whilst the others returned to what they had been doing. I stayed by Alesandro to answer any questions he might have, and to provide at least some moral support.

A candle mark and a half later, my feet were aching, and my resolve to stay by Alesandro was waning. Hundreds of words had been translated to the dungeon, and the text displayed on the panel was now a broken mix of our language and its own, the grammar was still that of whatever language the dungeon spoke, but a surprisingly large amount of progress had been made. I turned to face Alesandro and could tell from the sweat on his brow that he was just about at his limit, I took hold of his shoulder, and said to him, “take a break, the dungeon won’t be able to fully learn our language in a day without magic, no matter how much effort you put into it.” A nod and a sigh from him indicated his agreement with me, then he managed to get across the idea that he needed a break to the dungeon, and followed me to the front of the camp, near the wall.

The others seeing as we had finally taken a break, gathered nearby to listen to what we had to say. Despite my standing by his side the entire time, the flow of translation was mind numbing to me as such, after the first half candle mark, my attention had wandered and the only real impression I had of the dungeon was that it had perfect recall. When the others asked us about the dungeon, I apologized to Alesandro and asked that he be the one to tell everyone about the session with the dungeon. Alesandro clapped one of his thighs and took a slug of water from his water bag before clearing his throat and started by saying, “well, this certainly isn’t the usual dungeon. This dungeon, as far as I can tell, might not even be from Patria.”

That last statement even surprised me, and I had been there with him, so I asked, “Why do you think that Alesandro? It isn’t like it said anything specifically along those lines when it was getting its vocabulary lesson.” Alesandro turned to me as he continued to speak loudly enough for the group to hear, “it was the dungeons choices of what words to learn after the first few rounds of basics that led me to think that. Why else bother to ask questions about the sun and the moons, and how many days there are in a year. If the dungeon was even somewhat like others it wouldn’t need to ask that, it would already know that there are 351 days in a year. Also, do you remember that odd question, how do we measure our day. I would think that given how common the use of the candle mark is, anyone from any of the major continents would know that there are ten daylight candle marks and ten night candle marks per day. In some ways despite the dungeon learning our language faster than I would have believed possible, it only brings more questions than answers.”

A candle mark ago, in the kobold village in front of the entrance to James’s dungeon.

I clutched the handle of my cane as I sat on a large stone before the remains of the main cook fire. My ear holes had only stopped ringing a short while before noon, the scales on my tail ached, our ogre still hadn’t woken up yet, and I hadn’t seen Ssylasss since this morning. I reached out with my cane and tapped one of the youngsters running past and asked, “have you seen Ssylasss since noon?” The youngster, visibly swallowed before answering, “No, elder. I haven’t seen him.” This was beginning to get worrisome, my tail curled involuntarily for a moment, then I ordered him, “Go find Sselsdons, have him gather five scout teams and search for Ssylasss’s team, we may have enemies about.” The youngster half bowed, tail flicking nervously before saying, “Yes, elder.” Then scampering off on his errand. I could feel a tension in the air, the dungeon is unhappy, but not enough to kill us, now Ssylasss’s team vanishing, something will happen soon, we’ll have to prepare.