“Catacombs?” Skyeyes asked softly when their two scouts returned.

Shade nodded. “Quickclaw and I examined the rest of the temple. There's nothing up here. No bodies, no loot. If I had to guess, thieves were probably bold enough to ransack this part, but the areas below are worse.”

Merdon sighed and rubbed his face. “Of course,” he complained. “Nothing like looking for treasure in a cave full of corpses.”

“It could be worse,” Shade told him. “At least with catacombs we know they're reinforced.”

“Thanks,” the knight replied dryly as he moved away from the fire to sleep. Shade wasn't bothered by his response, though Sarel looked worried.

“We'll have to tread carefully,” the assassin said to the others. “We didn't go down the stairs so there's no telling what's waiting for us down there.”

Red frowned. “If you didn't go down, how do you know they're catacombs?”

“I threw a rock and listened to the echo,” Shade shrugged. “You get a different sound from a dead-end compared to open space.”

The mage continued feeling skeptical but didn't exactly have a way to test it herself. She shrugged and went about preparing to sleep instead of debating it. Trusting Shade was easier than not since she had no reason to lie to them. Sarel, Red noted, seemed impressed with the test the assassin described, likely adding it to her repertoire of thieving skills. Skyeyes seemed similarly pleased, which made Red's frown deepen.

As she stepped away from the campfire, she called to the priest, “Skyeyes, you coming?” The white-scaled kobold looked back at her and nodded, swiftly getting up to follow.

With everyone gone, Shade and Sarel were free to slip away into the darkness to continue the thief's training. Shade was no slouch in toughening her up. She made it abundantly clear that for an assassin to be caught in the middle of their attempt was far from a thief's. A burglar could run away, disappear into the night and try again elsewhere. It was a setback, weeks of planning would go wasted, but they could recover. An assassin had to finish their job. They couldn't leave and come back later. The guards would be more alert, security worsened, traps set, and the target possibly moved to another location entirely. Which meant an assassin that was caught would have to fight their way through to the target. Something Shade had done on multiple occasions when she started.

So she emulated those against Sarel, fighting with the kind of brutal efficiency that guards were known for. Although, she was much faster than any human. Her strikes were faster but weaker as a result of her size, and the danger was minimized due to the lack of weapons. She couldn't exactly threaten her ally's life, but she could make her regret fighting. Time and again Sarel was thrown to the ground, jabbed, kicked, thrown onto the hard stone. It made an hour seem like eternity. After two, the blue-scaled kobold could hardly stand herself up, and Shade offered a hand to help.

“Let's see if you learn anything from that,” she said with a smile, helping Sarel back to their camp.

Sarel groaned but nodded in agreement. She was sore all over and was glad she had taken the last watch for the night. The sleep would be good for her muscles, and scales, and everything else. As long as the training helped, and didn't impede them on their adventure, she was glad to be bruised and battered once and a while. It also had the side effect of being a terrific sleep aid. As soon as she was laying on her bedroll, the kobold passed out, like her body had been waiting for that moment she would relax.

The next morning was cold despite the fire. Merdon poked his head out the door and into a snowstorm that blocked his vision of the cliffs they had used to reach the temple. He shuddered and shut the barely functional wooden door and turned back to the kobolds to give them the news. Shade slyly remarked, “In that case, it's good we're going underground, hmm? Away from the storm.” Merdon frowned at her joke and grabbed his pack.

He figured it was better to take all of their things and leave as little trace behind as possible. After all, they had no idea if some other adventurer would come through seeking shelter from the snow. Shade guided them across the empty hall, which looked much different in the daylight, towards the door to the catacombs. They carefully moved over wreckage of tables, chairs, pews, and assorted items like candle holders, and of course the glass from the windows, as they traveled through the room. Merdon paused at the center and looked around at the cracked stone and dilapidated statues along the walls. There was no telling who was worshiped in this place in the ages past. The statues were weathered and worn down to smoothness in most places, a sign of the time the temple had stood.

He started along again quickly, his heavy footfalls only momentarily muffled by a tattered rug that had once lined the floor up to the dais at the far end of the room. Behind that dais was their destination. A simple wooden door with a ring for a handle. Shade gripped and pulled with all of her might, groaning as the door popped open again, much like the night before. It made Merdon wince. The doorway was pressing in on the door, collapsing.

“Best leave this open,” Shade said about it, looking it over. “Sure we could get it back open when we come up, but why slow us down?” She smiled back at them and then descended down the stairs, Red following behind her with a claw full of fire.

Skyeyes glanced back at Merdon before proceeding down the stairs with the other two. The knight sighed softly and looked down into the now lightened abyss. Red's flame shown the walls to be bricked, which was good, it implied the same structural stability that Shade had mentioned before. However, the stairs went down a very long way, he could see that already, at least further down than a couple floors. He set his jaw and took the first step, and then another, with Sarel bringing up the rear. As they caught up to the others at the bottom, Red burning some cobwebs out of their way, Sarel whispered encouraging words to her mate.

“Everything is fine, verakt. We won't be down here longer than the day, and the tunnels have stood for much longer than that.”

She was right, or at least she had a point. They weren't to be down there long. Just enough for them to find this orc shield and abscond. The thought became less comforting as he stepped to the bottom and looked in both directions. It was like a maze. Both sides were open leading to more corridors with a very musty smell pervading the entire area. The scent alone made Merdon cough and wipe his face, almost nauseating. He shook his head and looked at Shade.

The assassin had fashioned a crude torch and taken some of Red's fire for herself. “We have two directions, but I'm guessing they meet up again at some point,” she said quietly, though her voice still echoed. “It would be silly for them to make both sides lead to a dead end.”

“But not improbable,” Red pointed out.

“We'll be careful,” Shade promised with a smirk. “We have to be. Remember, watch out for traps. It doesn't look like too many people bothered coming down here.” She stepped around the left corner and pointed. The others followed to see.

A skeleton stood, pinned against a wall with a crossbow bolt right around where its heart would have been. The bolt was the only thing holding the remains up, though it was only a rib cage and skull. The legs and arms had fallen into a pile under it, and the sight caused a shiver to run up Sarel's back, and make Skyeyes gag.

“Traps,” Shade said again, “Be very careful of them. Watch out for pressure plates, runes, anything that looks even slightly off, or even something that looks too uniform.”

Red sighed, “So be wary of everything. Right.” She was irritated. The others couldn't make fire, and it wasn't like they packed more torches. Unless they found some down there with them, she and Shade were on light duty.

Their pace was abysmally slow. Every few feet they stopped to disarm something or rip up a rune etched tile. Once and a while they encountered a room full of caskets or wrapped up bodies that needed to be searched through, only to discover nothing. Their prize was around, somewhere, they just needed to find it, and remain sane while they searched. It was a tense plodding, hoping that Shade and Sarel had found and disabled every trap as they passed through an area. Would they be safe if they needed to double back? Questions like that hung in Merdon's mind while they moved. Each new hallway was a new kind of stress that mounted steadily. So, it wasn't all that difficult for him to see where Red was coming from when she turned a corner and suddenly darted into a room on her own. Merdon, in the middle of the pack, followed her due to the speed of her movement, concerned for her safety. Skyeyes was just a moment too slow, and the two trap experts were busy enough to notice their absence a minute too late.

“Got it!” Red shouted as she pulled a shield from a pile of bones that were much larger than a human's.

Shade stared, tense and alert as she noticed the two were outside of the safe area they had cleared. Her fears came to light as a slab of stone dropped at the entrance and sealed Red inside the room with Merdon. The knight whipped around and inspected the now closed door. He didn't see a mechanism to open it. His next idea was to lift it back up himself, but the base was stuck inside the ground. There was no opening for his fingers to fit into. Red frowned as she looked back.

“What was that?” she asked, anger rising in her voice.

“We set something off,” Merdon said with a huff as he stood again and stepped back. “I think we're stuck in here.”

Red walked over, pushed the shield into Merdon's hands, and started channeling. She focused on the door and attempted to raise it herself, only for her spell to completely lack a target. “The stone is repelling my magic,” she said largely to herself.

“Which was why Verist couldn't teleport here, but we could wander around with your fire,” Merdon guessed. “The stone prevents magic aimed at it.”

Red cursed and scraped her claw along the stone, doing nothing to either of them. “What do we do now?” she asked, looking around the room.

Merdon walked over to the door and tried to shout through it. “Shade, can you hear us?!” Curiously, he put his ear to the door to listen. He heard a lot of scuffling around, but no words. It was muffled and impossible to make out. “We might just be stuck,” he said to Red.

The mage's blood started to simmer. “This is your fault,” she said out loud, and directly to him for the first time. “If you didn't break your shield we wouldn't be here.”

“Grot's the one that attacked us,” Merdon pointed out as he moved over and sat on the ground. It was better than standing around for no reason.

“Who decided to go to the orc lands?”

Merdon looked confused at that. “We all did remember?”

“You and Verist did,” she told him. “We kobolds had barely any input in there at all.”

“So what would you have changed?” Merdon challenged her.

Red was fuming. “Besides that,” she changed the subject, “What were you doing following me in here? You probably stepped on the trap, wherever that is.”

Merdon raised a brow. “That's a good point,” he admitted, looking at the floor, starting to scour it slowly. “Where is the trap?” he asked no one in particular. “Pressure plate, rune...” He wasn't seeing it. Maybe it was outside.

“What are you doing?” Red nearly shouted.

Merdon looked back at her and said, “Looking for the trap. Maybe there's a way to unactivate it, or whatever. Open the door.”

“We wouldn't be dealing with this if it wasn't for you, do you understand that?” the mage finally shouted, directly in Merdon's face. “It's your shield we're looking to fix so you can fight a war that's only coming because of your kind!”

Merdon had enough. “What is your deal lately, Red?” he asked, starting to get heated himself. “You've had this attitude ever since you came back from meeting the kobolds. I didn't want to bring it up more than what Skyeyes has shared, but, by the gods, what is wrong?”

She glared at him and replied, “What's wrong is that every single decision that has been made since we met Verist was made by you and her. Decisions about my kind, and Quickclaw is just ready to bounce along with them, and Skyeyes is too much of a coward to disagree. It's slavery of a different kind but still the same in the end. We don't have a choice.”

“No one's making you follow the plan,” Merdon shouted back, at last infuriated with her assertion. “You can leave any time you please, Red. The same goes for Skyeyes and Quickclaw. None of you have to go along with this fight, but you all decided to because you know it beats the alternatives.”

“So it's still coercion,” she told him through her teeth. “We don't have a choice but to listen to you humans. What's going to change if we keep living in Avant with a human government?”

Merdon breathed out sharply, steadying himself. “I don't know, I don't have the answers. That's part of where freedom comes from, Red. Not knowing what's going to happen or how to deal with something. The door's open, metaphorically, to tackle things however you see fit. If you don't like what we're doing, go find your own way of doing it. When we're done you can go find somewhere else to live, maybe with the orcs, I don't know.”

Red rolled her eyes. “And the kobolds leave their homes, their villages, everything they've built, behind. Exile, so much better.”

“What's your idea then?” Merdon shook his head. “Genocide? Wipe out all the humans. That certainly makes you better than them.”

The mage's eyes flashed and she swung with her claw that had just been holding fire. It was a slap, but there was still flame in her palm. The sparks and embers were dazzling as her hand connected with his cheek, just to the side of his eye. Like a firework going off on top of him, blinding his sight with yellow and reds before leaving Merdon in the dark. The heat alone caused him to flinch and close his eyes, shouting in pain as he felt his skin sizzle. It took only that long for Red to realize what she'd done. Her hand recoiled and she covered her mouth in fear. She was afraid to relight the room, to look at what she'd done. The smell told a story all its own and inevitably compelled her to hold a flame out again to see.

The left side of Merdon's face was burned. It wasn't the worst, many lived with much more debilitating injuries, but they weren't caused by a friend. The heat didn't scorch his entire cheek, only the part in the middle was hot enough for that. His eyes were untouched, his vision would be fine, but the space in front of his sideburns, down on his cheek, was already an angry red color, shiny and smooth. He could feel it, oblong and maybe taking up a quarter of the left side. It hurt, still burning, and he imagined it would blister for sure. Still, it was intense and he couldn't stop himself from reaching up and rubbing it. The size was almost as large as his own palm, only a little smaller all around, and he noticed an extension going up causing the oval shape. Red's fingers, the base of them at least.

“I'm sorry,” Red whispered. “I didn't... I was just...” She tried to slap him, not burn him.

“It's fine,” Merdon grunted, opening his eyes slowly, testing his vision. “I can still see, that's what matters.”

“Your face though,” she said softly. He would probably get a scar out of that.

“It'll be fine,” Merdon said again. “We can find Skyeyes, he'll take care of it.” Of course, they had a priest. Red sighed softly as she remembered that.

“Right,” she said, confidence returning. “How do we get out of here?”

Merdon stood up and started looking around the room, Red trailing behind him silently. She didn't want to do that again, she didn't mean to hurt him like that.

The knight tapped on the wall furthest from the door. “Try your magic here,” he said calmly. “Push hard.”

Red nodded and extinguished her flame. She held out her hands and pushed with all the force she could muster. The wall made a noise, so she pushed harder. With a grunt of effort, the wall gave. Stone tumbled down suddenly, filling the halls with a cacophony of rocks rolling over and off each other. The knight hefted the shield they had found up in his hand and looked it over, now that they were free. It shined the way most enchanted items did. If it wasn't what they were looking for, it would be good enough. He didn't want to stay under the mountain any longer.

“Come on,” he said to Red as he stepped through the hole in the wall. “Let's find the others. Carefully. Let's not trigger another trap.”

Red followed him through that hole and held up the flame again so they could see. “I'm sorry,” she said as they started to walk.

“It's okay, Red,” Merdon said again. He seemed a little distant. “I shouldn't have pushed you like that. You aren't like those slavers, you aren't. I know you wouldn't think something like that.”

Red bit her lip as they walked. She had though. For a few moments, now and then, she wondered what it would be like to live in a world without humans. Moments where she forgot about Merdon, the human that had risked his life to save her from Verist, from the slavers in Ardmach, to get her memory back. She knew he was a good person, yet she exploded on him. Her anger had finally gotten the better of her, and she had to live with that consequence staring her in the face every time he looked at her.