“You look like a mighty goblin king,” Nika giggled while applying the last of my camo makeup to my face.

“Thanks,” I said as I checked her work in my signalling mirror. “You did a great job.”

“Can I help you put your pack on?” she asked, and I nodded as she reached for it.

An hour or so ago, I went through my molle pack and took out the items that I didn’t think I would need in the underdark. Stealth and speed were going to be important on this mission, so I had removed most of the unnecessary items from the pack and I’d gotten the weight down to about thirty pounds.

Nika strapped it on my back, and I tested its weight and my maneuverability by doing a few squats. Happy with the result, I grabbed a spear that I had made, and considered bringing one of the axes. The big axe that I had felled the trees with would come in handy against a larger opponent, but it would be cumbersome to swing. The side axe, on the other hand, was much smaller and considerably lighter, so I settled on that one and strapped it to my molle pack. I didn’t plan on being down in the underdark for an extended period of time, but I brought along two of my MREs just in case of emergencies.

“Don’t forget this!” Nika said as she handed me her underdark grocery list.

“This is a lot of food,” I said as I scanned over the strange items. “Does that say minotaur balls?”

“Oh yes,” she said with a smile and trailed her hand down my chest. “They are a delicacy, and they are known to increase libido.”

“Increase libido?” I asked with a laugh. “We have sex like twice a day, sometimes three times. You are insatiable, aren’t you?”

“I am very satisfied with your performance, Ken Jewell, but soon you will have many wives, and the minotaur balls will be very useful.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that one. It wasn’t every day that your goblin wife reminded you to pick up some underdark Viagra so that you could have sex with other monster women.

Man, I was living the life.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright by yourself?” I asked her before I set out for the cave.

“You worry too much, Ken Jewell. I’m very sneaky and good at hiding, and you’re the strongest man I’ve ever seen. Everything will be perfect.”

“Alright, honey.” I gave her a long kiss and hugged her tight. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Good luck!” she called after me as I hiked across the ridge.

A half hour later, I reached the entrance to the underdark and approached it with caution. There were no signs that monsters had emerged from the cave, so I turned on my flashlight and crept in slowly. Kobold tracks still littered the entrance, but nothing had set off the tripline attached to the deadfall trap, and none of the feather spear traps had been set off either.

Deeper in, I took a minute to check my pitfall trap. I was proud at how well hidden it was. Had I not known it was there, I would have thought nothing of the pile of red moss that covered the sticks. The stuff grew everywhere, and my pitfall trap blended in perfectly.

I headed back down the tunnel and began to map it out with my sharpie and the little book that Nika had stolen from the travelers. I already knew that this tunnel led to the hot spring pool where Nika and I’d first made love. Beyond that, it opened up to a variety of other tunnels that Nika and I had run past during our hasty escape from the kobolds.

Moving further in, I stopped before two such passages. One of them looked familiar, but the other one was littered with the glowing mushrooms that Nika had asked me to get, so I decided to see where that one led as I picked the mushrooms. Nika had asked that I only gather the mushroom caps, and I collected a few dozen by the time I reached the end of the patch.

I had traveled about a half a mile into the tunnel and guessed that I was about two-hundred feet beneath the surface given how the grade mostly moved downward. Once I drew the location of the mushroom patch on my expanding map, I ventured into the next tunnel.

Then I saw all the bones.

They reminded me of the basilisk den I had ventured into on the first day, and I sniffed the air and thought I picked up the faint smell of rotting meat. My first instinct was to turn back, but snake meat was high on Nika’s list, and I didn’t want to let her down. Maybe this den belonged to a smaller snake than the one who’d shed the skin that I had seen before?

That was my hope as I ventured deeper into the increasingly creepy tunnel littered with countless bones.

I gripped the shaft of the spear in my hand as I came to another junction. Two tunnels branched off from the one that I traversed, so I marked them on my map and followed my nose to the one on the left. The scent of death became more pungent down that dark hall, and my flashlight showed me the bones of many hapless creatures. About twenty feet into the tunnel I discovered two human skeletons who looked to have been swallowed whole and digested with their clothes on. They wore rags, and their bags had been reduced to tatters as well, but the loot and the tools that they carried survived the snake’s stomach.

One of the dead men had been carrying a sword, and while the sheath looked to have been partially digested, the blade was unmarred. I slowly pulled the short sword from its sheath and admired the blade. The hilt was smooth ivory bound in leather, and the blade curved slightly like a cutlass.

Happy with the find, I strapped the sword to my belt and went through the rest of the skeletons. I found two gold coins and five silver inside the tattered remains of what had once been a coin purse. Among the bones I found two rings as well. One appeared to be pure gold and held a large ruby. The other was entirely silver and marked with strange runes. I found a gold chain at the feet of one of the skeletons, and when I dusted it off and picked it up I was shocked by its weight. The thick, woven chain reminded me of something that a rapper might have worn, and I stuffed it in my molle pack while imagining all the supplies I could buy with it. A heartbeat later my happy daydreams were disrupted by a sinister hiss, and I froze.

The sound had come from right behind me.

I whipped around and came face to face with the biggest snake head that I had ever seen. It must have been the size of an easy chair, and as I looked into its serpentine green eyes, my body froze. The sudden paralysis scared the hell out of me, and I cursed myself for not remembering that in some fantasy stories basilisks could paralyze their victims with but a glance.

The snake was about twenty feet away, and it surged through the tunnel toward me as I stared helplessly. Panic almost consumed my mind, but then I realized that I’d die down here if I didn’t move.

And if I died, no one would be able to take care of Nika and our baby.

I let out a primal yell and regained control of my body just as the snake was almost on top of me.

Instinct set in, and I spun around to run. As I turned, I thrust the business end of my spear back behind me and felt the tip connect a moment before the giant snake hissed. The weapon was ripped from my grip, and I shot forward like an Olympic sprinter.

The thing sounded like it was right on my heels as I ran, and I knew that, at any moment, its massive fangs would sink into my shoulders. I would promptly be swallowed whole, and that would be the untimely end of clan Jewell.

The cave suddenly opened up into a large den, and I leapt to the right a second before the basilisk struck. I spun in the air, landed among the bones, and brought my M17 to bear. The snake missed me, and its face crashed into a pile of bones. I remembered to avoid the beast’s hypnotic gaze and fired off three shots that tore into the side of its head. But I might as well have been trying to take down a whale shark with a slingshot. The snake didn’t even seem to notice the bullets, and it slowly rose from the pile of bones and turned its malevolent gaze my way.

I avoided eye contact as I scrambled to my feet, ran to my right, and ducked behind a wide stalagmite. Then I traded out my M17 for my side axe and surveyed my surroundings. The den was more than a hundred feet deep and twice as wide. The concave ceiling rose and fell, curving around stalactites that dripped moisture with the slow and steady pace of sand falling through an hourglass.

The basilisk pursued me around the wide stalagmite, but I wasn’t about to go running out into the open. Instead I followed the wide formation all the way back to where I had started and found the snake’s tail. The thing had to be at least thirty feet long, and I heard it sliding around the assorted stalagmites behind me.

I needed a plan, and one quickly came to mind.

I had seen a small nook on my way around the formation, and when I came upon it again, I shouldered inside and lay in wait with my pistol in my off hand. Seconds later, the slowly stalking basilisk approached. It hissed and slithered as its forked tongue tasted the air, and I began to regret my decision to hide in the nook.

When the tongue came into sight, I froze and held my breath as my heartbeat slammed through my temples. The serpentine head emerged next, and I turned my eyes away to stare at the stone in front of me so I wouldn’t get paralyzed again.

Then the snake paused in front of my hiding spot, and I aimed my gun at it as I forced myself to exhale as slowly and softly as I possibly could.

It stayed still for a few moments with its tongue flicking the air, and then it turned away from me and began to move through the tunnel once more.

I thanked my lucky stars, took a deep breath, and then sprang from my hiding place. The monster hadn’t expected my attack, and I landed right on his back a good three feet behind his head and buried my axe in the rear part of his skull.

The beast reeled back when my axe cut into it, and I was thrown free by the strength of its thrashing. I rolled to the side and thought it was going to try to bite me, but it smashed its head on a low hanging stalactite instead. The formation shattered and rained down on the snake as I ducked back into my nook. The collapse of the stalactite kicked up a cloud of dust and debris, and the basilisk hissed and thrashed.

I hadn’t managed to hurt it much, but I had sure as hell pissed it off.

The snake couldn’t get to me in that small space without once again going around the stalagmite, and when its tail disappeared from view through the dust cloud, I leapt from my hiding place and hurriedly climbed up the formation. I managed to climb about ten feet before the basilisk’s head appeared in the tunnel below me. It instantly slithered toward my previous hiding place and thrust its head in, so I unsheathed the short sword and leapt from my perch. My attack was aimed true, and I landed on the basilisk’s head and drove the sword right through its head. The snake shrieked loud enough to shake the rock formations, and I was suddenly riding it like a bull.

Whoops.

I held on to the hilt of my sword for dear life with my left hand and hacked into the snake’s right eye with my side axe until it became a bloody pulp. The beast reeled back in an attempt to smash me into the walls of the cave, but I slid down its back as its head slammed into the wall ten feet above me. Blood poured from the creature’s eye socket like a shower as I rolled off its back and onto my pack, and then I jumped to my feet and ran toward its tail. I was a bit surprised that the monster wasn’t dead from my stab to its brain, so I continued my run past its thrashing tail and made for my dropped spear.

The basilisk’s menacing hiss resonated through the den as bones crunched beneath my big boots. I skidded into the main tunnel and found my spear laying on the floor. Behind me, the telltale sound of the basilisk slithering across the floor echoed. I guessed it was right on my heels, so I dove for my spear and came up in a roll with the weapon in my hand.

Had I been but a moment later, and I would have been dead.

The basilisk struck as I slammed the butt of the spear into a nook, and I braced my arms for the impact.

Its mouth was open wide, and teeth as long as swords came toward me, but my spear sunk deep into the roof of the beast’s mouth, and it stopped less than a foot from engulfing me.

Then I shoved the barrel of my M17 into its uninjured cereal bowl sized eye and pulled the trigger.

Blood, brain, and bone exploded out the back of the creature’s skull. The basilisk teetered, swayed from side to side, and then fell with a colossal boom to the tunnel floor.

“Fuck yeah!” I gasped after my heart had stopped racing. “Look at you now, you scaly bitch!”

I kicked the basilisk in the head and proceeded to retrieve my short sword. It took some doing, but I finally got it free from the snake’s skull. Over the next half hour, I carved out a big chunk of basilisk meat and wrapped it up in my poncho. The slab weighed about twenty pounds, and I knew that Nika would be delighted.

After procuring the meat, I decided to take the snake’s fangs. They were almost three feet long, and would come in handy as weapons or for booby traps. The fangs turned out to be stronger than I thought, but eventually I broke them off at the base with a big rock and strapped them to my pack.

After notating the location of the basilisk den on my little map, I looted the rest of the skeletons in the den. There were a surprising number of what I thought were dwarven carcases. They wore strong metal armor, but none of it would fit me or Nika, so I focused on their weapons. There were a variety of axes and hatchets, so I took the ones I liked best and put them in my molle pack. The dwarves were blinged out like Hollywood pop stars, and I happily looted gold rings and necklaces holding rubies and shimmering diamonds. I didn’t know a lot about the local money markets, but I knew I had a small fortune on my hands.

And I was going to need a small fortune if I wanted to start building an empire.

With renewed confidence, I set out to gather the remainder of the items on Nika’s list. I found the lizards that she had told me about in a cave not far from the basilisk den. They were the size of iguanas and surprisingly fast, but I managed to kill four of them. Nika was only interested in the brains, so I cut off their heads and added them to my loot. Next I located the white lichen that she had mentioned, then shaved it off the stones that it grew on and filled one of my molle pack pockets with the flecks.

As I explored new passages and strange new caverns, I came across a small underground pond teeming with life. The glowing crystals grew here as well, illuminating the body of water and making it practically translucent. The pond glowed like something out of a dream, and in it I could see strange new fish and eels swimming about, along with turtles and frogs and weird-looking bipedal creatures with fish heads.

At the shore, I gathered tadpoles for Nika and stuffed them in a zipper pocket. There were more mushrooms here, so I grabbed those along with the moss.

The creatures with fish heads looked annoyed by my presence, but they didn’t really move toward me. They were only about two feet tall, but their razor-sharp teeth and the claws at the ends of their webbed fingers told me that they could be trouble, so I left them and their little pool behind and ventured back the way I had come.

My map was getting pretty big, and I was starting to feel a lot more comfortable in the underdark, so I decided to spend only another hour there before heading back to the surface.

I doubled back to the fork in the tunnel near the basilisk den and took one of the tunnels that I hadn’t explored yet. This one was also riddled with the glowing crystal formations that lent a soft glow to the mineral rich walls. I was reminded of my idea to see if the crystals could charge my flashlight batteries and broke one off with a rock. The crystal was about six inches long and glowed with soft blue light like a mystical wand from a fantasy game. The thing continued to glow even after it was separated from its main body, so I stashed it in my pack and kept going.

Soon, I came to a giant underground cavern that seemed to have no end. I walked out on a wide sheet of stone, and twenty feet from the tunnel, it dropped off into pure darkness. Stalactites and stalagmites grew here as well, some more than one hundred feet high or hanging so far into the chasm that their tips were impossible to see. To my right, the shelf stopped abruptly, but to my left, it continued around an expanse of stone. I carefully explored the crumbling edge, and then I heard distant voices.

I froze and whipped my head left, right, up, and down, but I couldn’t see anyone or anything coming. The voices drew closer, however, and soon they sounded like they were right on top of me. Or under me.

I moved to the ledge and dared a peek over the side. I saw the creatures then as they moved along another shelf about twenty feet below me. There were three of them, and they wore some sort of scaled leather and carried mean-looking spears and torches. Their green skin reminded me of Nika’s, only rougher.

They were goblins, and boy, were they all sorts of ugly.

I held my breath partially because I wanted to be as quiet as possible, but also because they smelled like boiled cabbage and mildew. The acrid stink burned my nostrils, and I thanked the heavens that Nika hadn’t inherited her people’s rank odor.

“Let’s take a break,” one of the goblins said. His voice was nasal and high pitched, and he sounded like he had a mouth full of marbles, but I could still make out his words.

“No breaks. You too lazy, Urgog,” the tallest of the three said annoyedly. “I plan on finding the ugly girl and getting the reward. You go back if you want, more treasure for Cucka and me.”

“Yeah, more treasure,” chortled the short, fat goblin beside him, presumably Cucka.

“Aw, shut up, Cucka,” Urgog yelled and kicked him in the ass from behind.

A fight broke out, and I watched as the two goblins rolled around and tried to choke the life out of one another. I was about to slink back from the ledge when the leader suddenly yelled at his partners.

“Knock it off, you two morons. Save your strength for finding princess Nikagekokarra!”

I froze.

“She didn't come this way anyhow,” Urgog said as he finally let Cucka get up.

“You don’t know what I know, because you’re a moron who only thinks of food,” the leader told him.

“Oh yeah, what do you know?” Urgog asked. “Why are you searching here when every other group is looking in the saltwater caverns?”

“If you must know,” the leader began, “I trapped a kobold a few days ago who told me that he and a war party had chased an ugly goblin woman into these caves.”

“How do you know it was the princess?”

“The kobold said she was as ugly as a mermaid,” the leader explained.

“Meh, you can’t trust those stinky kobolds,” Urgog said. “They’ll say anything to be set free.”

“You have a better idea?” the leader challenged, and when Urgog said nothing, the leader nodded with finality. “Good, then shut up and keep walking.”

The group looked like they were climbing up the ledge, and I saw that the lip ended up on a path that would wind around toward me. I was going to need to get out of here, so I slowly crawled away from the cavern and didn’t stand up to start jogging until I was completely sure that I was out of earshot.

Nika was a goblin princess? Why hadn’t she told me? The revelation made me realize how much danger we were really in. If there was a hefty reward for Nika, then there must have been dozens, maybe hundreds of similar groups searching for her.

My heart hammered in my chest as I hurried toward the tunnel that would lead me back to the exit, but then I stopped when I realized that I couldn’t escape yet. The leader of the goblin party on the ledge below me had information that seemed to have been a secret, and if I let them go now, I ran the risk of them telling others about Nika. If Nika’s father somehow learned that Nika survived in the sunlight from the kobolds, he might begin sending war parties to the surface to find her.

I couldn’t risk that.

I went back to the left ridge and spied the goblins. As I expected, they were about two hundred yards away and climbing up the rock face to my shelf. I waited to make sure that they were indeed headed my way and then crept back from the outcropping of rock and waited. The goblins were between three and five feet tall, with the leader being the tallest, and there were three of them, so I intended on taking out at least one of them immediately. They carried only spears from what I had seen, but the weapons looked pretty solid, and I had no idea if they laced them with some kind of poison or not. I could have used my M17 and dispatched them all easily, but I didn’t want to use any more bullets if I didn’t have to, and I needed the leader alive to interrogate.

Right about then I wished I had brought the kobold net, but that was still being used as a hammock down by the river. With no time to set up a trap, I grabbed a big rock that was about forty pounds and moved to the stone facet beside the spot where they would come around the narrow ridge. I knew that the leader would emerge first, and it meant that I would have to time my throw just right.

I hid behind an outcropping of jutting rock beside the ridge about five feet away from the corner and waited.

The seconds ticked by slowly as the goblins approached, and the adrenaline began to seep into my system. Their acrid taint burned my nostrils, and I wondered how Nika had ever lived with the ugly beasts.

Then they stopped.

“You smell that?” the leader asked hesitantly.

“I don’t smell nothing,” Cucka said.

“Smells like... like nasty human!” Urgog cried.

“Shut up!” the leader hissed, and I took a deep breath as I shifted the heavy rock in my hands.

“Cucka,” the leader whispered. “You go on around that corner and see if the way’s clear.”

“And if it ain’t?” the buffoon asked.

“If it ain’t, then that’s what you report, now go on and get!” The sound of a foot finding an ass echoed through the cavern, and shuffling feet began to sound on the ridge.

A moment later, a blank-faced Cucka rounded the corner with his fat green belly leading the way.

Then his eyes opened wide when he saw me.

“Catch!” I whispered as I tossed him the heavy stone. The startled goblin dropped his spear, caught the stone, stumbled back because of its weight, and then lost his balance. He fell off the ledge as he shrieked, and the scream lasted for almost five seconds.

Then it abruptly ended with a splat sound.

“Cucka, you idiot, what you doing down there?” It was Urgog, and he sounded more annoyed than upset.

“He’s bleeding to death on the rocks, you dummy,” the leader said. “Did you see what happened?”

“I didn’t see nothing but Cucka falling.”

“Go on and check things out,” the leader commanded.

“What you mean?” Another foot to the ass echoed, and Urgog groaned miserably. “Fine! Fine! I’ll go! Stop kicking me!”

When he came around the corner rubbing his ass, I planted one of my new axes in his head. He stopped dead, his eyes crossed to focus on the blade embedded in his forehead, and then he dropped like a rock.

The leader of the group roared and charged around the corner as I yanked the axe from the goblin’s head. I pulled my short sword from its sheath as I back pedaled, and the goblin leader leapt over his fallen brother. He charged me with wild thrusts of his spear, and since the weapon gave him a better reach than me, I was forced to leap back some more.

“Die, stinking human, die!” the leader barked.

He lunged forward with a strike meant to skewer my liver, but I slapped the strike aside with my sword and stepped into his guard. My axe came down as his other arm came up, and I buried the blade in his thick forearm. I thought that would have been the end of the fight, since I’d pretty much cut off his arm, but he surprised me by switching his grip on the spear to his other hand so he could continue to attack me with his one good arm.

I leaned back like a limbo champion and rolled away as he stabbed the air above me. The goblin was already pulling back for another strike, and I twisted out of the way as the spear tip hit the stone where I had just been an instant before.

The axe was still buried in the goblin’s arm, but he seemed not to notice as he thrust his spearhead toward me. I rolled twice, sprang up with my sword in hand, twisted my body away from a thrust he aimed at my stomach, and then chopped the spear in half with my shortsword.

“Tell your gods that it was Fezzyderg who sent you to hell!” the goblin roared as he tossed aside the useless weapon and pulled my axe out of his arm.

I slapped aside the axe and tried to stab him with my sword. He spun out of the way and then swept the axe up high to take off my head. I ducked beneath the blow, danced to the right, and chopped off his hand at the wrist when he moved to swing again.

This time, he felt it.

Blood spurted from the wound and painted the floor dark red as he screamed. Then I slapped the axe out of his remaining hand and slammed the pummel of my sword into his face. His nose cracked as he fell, and a heartbeat later I stood over him with the tip of my sword at his throat.

“You lose, Fez,” I said.

“It’s Fezzyderg, you human filth!”

“Sorry, Fuzzyturd. Listen. I need to know what else that kobold told you about the princess.”

“Go mate with a bugbear!” he screamed.

I kicked him in the side of the head. “I’m going to get the information out of you one way or another, Fez, so you might as well start singing now.”

“Eat minotaur shit!”

I dragged him to his feet, headbutted him, and then slammed him against the stone wall.

“What else did the kobold tell you?”

“He told me…” the goblin began.

“What? What did he say about the princess?”

“He told me that you fornicate with your mother!” Fezzyderg screamed.

I punched him in the face about a half a dozen times and let him drop to the floor. Then I took my rope out of my pack and tied it to a jutting stone. I tied the other end to Fezzyderg’s feet and dragged him toward the ledge.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked groggily.

“I’m going to throw you off this ledge--”

“Okay, I’ll talk!” he screamed. “The dirty kobold said that he chased an ugly goblin into these caves. He said they had her cornered, but then a human showed up and slaughtered most of them.”

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing. I swear!”

“You’re lying! Spit it out!” I urged.

“He, he said that later he went back with others and chased the princess and the man out of a cave and into the daylight.”

Prickles crept up my spine. “What happened to the princess after that?” I asked.

“He said that she didn’t burn. Somehow, she didn’t burn,” Fezzyderg said.

“Have you told anyone else about this? Did anyone else hear the kobold’s confession?”

“No, it was only me there, and I didn’t tell no one. I didn’t believe him! Monsters can’t go out into the sunlight!”

“Hmm,” I said as I continued to haul him toward the edge.

“You going to let me go now, human scum?” Fezzyderg asked, and his voice was lined with fear.

“Nope,” I said as I cut the rope around his ankles. Then I tossed him over the side of the cliff. He screamed something unintelligible as he fell, and then I heard another splat when his body hit the ground.

I found his severed hand and tossed it over the edge along with his broken spear. Then I did the same with Urgog’s body before I picked up my axe and hightailed it out of there. It had been a really successful exploration, but now I needed to get back to Nika and tell her what I had learned.

I also needed to ask if her father really was the king, and if he was going to send his army after her.