I turned and ran as quick as I could down the stairs, which in and of itself was a mistake. I didn’t want to get shot by the bolts. I had completely forgotten to grab one of the crossbows before, and now it was too late. Add into that they were shooting at me.

The reason the sprint down the stairs was a mistake; happened to be that the dungeon wanted to test traps. The traps would have gotten me if I hadn’t been running without looking where I was going but walking. As it was, my frantic pace seemed to set off the traps but clear through the area, they were guarding.

I had more fire traps heating the room, another one of those swinging mace traps, and even the classic dart trap. Fortunately, I was stumbling as I tripped over a loose rock which caused my hand to hit a tripwire, and the pit trap just inches in front of me fell away.

I had somehow run through a trapped area and tripped right in front of a tiger pit. I wasn’t sure how all of this worked, but I felt like someone wanted to keep me safe. Either that or all of this was a warning that I shouldn’t just run through the place, killing everything.

Dave had told me that I should be facing gremlins here, which meant that all of these traps were from the dungeon and not from the gremlins. After all, they couldn’t even build a decent spear.

“Okay, let’s slow down and make sure that when we get to the gremlins we’re not dead from the traps.” I said as I was catching my breath a little.

Over the past two days, I had started back on all of my physical training that I could figure out how to do in the safe room. I didn’t want to be sucking wind in the middle of a fight just because I hadn’t done my jumping jacks the day before.

I slowly edged my way around the pit trap. While it was large, it didn’t take the entire width of the passage. Once again, showing that the dungeon, while dangerous, wasn’t needlessly trying to kill me.

When we passed the pitfall, the floor changed again. No longer was I on even the broken but the cut stone floor. We were now moving along a natural cave. There were small stalactites hanging from the ceiling and some stalagmites rising from the ground.

The torches that had been my illumination all stopped. Not even the occasional one replacing them was a lichen that gave a soft glow, much like how my spell would provide. I could see the walls but had to move carefully to ensure I didn’t trip.

As we moved forward, my tension kept clipping up. I knew there were monsters around here, but I didn’t know where or how many. Add in my inability to see correctly, and I was dealing with stress getting close to the level I was at while under siege.

Blink had her own problems; she couldn’t move along the walls as she wanted. They were rounded and smooth, almost like plastic. She just couldn’t find a good place to grip and so was walking on the ground, which wasn’t where she liked to be. She was, however, letting me take the lead. Likely so that she could still use me as bait.

As we approached came around an S bend in the tunnel, the room opened up. There was now a large open cave with several fires spread around it in front of us. I crouched down and spent time looking at each of the fires trying to see if there was anyone in the lights.

I was crouched low watching when I felt Blink rub up on my leg as she passed by. I might be trying to figure out how to make my attack, but that didn’t mean that my assassin bonded was going to let me wait too long.

I unslung my bow and knocked an arrow. My best bet was to creep forward and try to kill one of the gremlins from the shadows. So I chose to head right to the closest fire, where there were at least three gremlins.

As I was creeping forward, I got an image from Blink. She was watching the same fire but from the other side. “Fives,” she sent to me as the picture she was sent my way showed their locations.

Five wouldn’t be a problem. They were gremlins, and we could kill lots of them in a fight. The question was if the rest would come at me. The other thing that was kind of nagging me was when did Blink learn to count? I knew that her intelligence was moving up, but things like counting were not smartness but rather a learning thing.

I shared back to her, “I will take the close one with an arrow and then if they react you pounce. If not I will try another one.”

I drew the string taught in my kneeling position and let fly one of my few arrows. I watched the silhouette of a sitting gremlin freeze up and then fall over. The ones around it didn’t even seem to notice.

I prepared a second shot and saw that it made contact and killed the target as well. So the combination of the bow and the ice arrows was giving me one-shot kills, which was a very nice way to move forward.

I went to take a third shot when the furthest away goblin noticed that there was a problem. He stood and started to look around; right when he was opening his mouth to yell, Blink closed it for him. She was liquid death as she took out the last three before I was able to lose my next arrow.

“Hunt easy,” she sent to me as she faded away from the dead.

I moved slowly up to the corpses and retrieved my two arrows. Again, Blink was correct; this was easy for us. My arrows were dropping them one by one, and she was able to kill them incredibly fast.

When I looted the gremlins, I got a ball of twine from two of them and a torch. The other two didn’t have anything at all. So I dropped all the junk into my pack. I didn’t know right now what I might need, and since the bag was empty, it wouldn’t hurt to grab it all.

We moved to the next one and did a repeat without any hitch. There wasn’t much that could go wrong, or so I thought. On the fourth one, I missed my shot, and my arrow killed a gremlin from the front on the other side of the fire. Which let the other eight at the fire see what was going on.

Those eight all stood quickly while screaming their heads off. As they screamed, Blinked moved in, but unlike in games where the screaming might only draw monsters from close by. These screams created even more, calls in response, and I saw movement from all of the fires around the room.

I yelled over to Blink, “Back to the tunnel!” Then I raced back to the tunnel and ran back into about ten feet. Just a moment later, I felt Blink come barreling into the tunnel, I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her presence.

“Yous goods baits. Me hunt. FUN,” Blink sent to me as I felt her move back out of the tunnel and toward the left.

It was only moments before I saw the gremlins come running into the tunnel. I was just far enough in that when they clumped to enter, I had room to shoot. Unfortunately, I only had 4 arrows as the other was still in the chest of the accidental kill.

I had my first arrow drawn before they got to the entrance. As the first was there, I loosed my arrow and pulled another one from my quiver. I didn’t have to truly aim as there were enough coming through the opening that unless luck hated me, I was going to hit.

As I saw my second arrow fly, I turned my focus to my third. They were just about upon me, and this would be my last if I didn’t back up. So, back I went as the third arrow went out. My fourth and final arrow I drew from my quiver and fumbled the knocking. The arrow slipped my grasp, and so I scrambled to grab it.

I caught the arrow just as the gremlins were in stabling range and so backed up and dropped both the bow and the arrow. Then, I drew my sword and watched the gremlin that was about to claw me trip in the string of the bow and go down. It was that trip that gave me just the time to get both my sword and my hatchet out.

While I had thought about drawing my dagger, I wanted to clear as many of these guys as fast as I could, and so with my hatchet now level 3, it was doing between 4 and 6 normal damage per swing and 3 magical. So each one of these, even in my off-hand, if I landed a blow, I should be able to kill the gremlin.

As I was starting up my skill of Gremlin Death Dance, I got an image from Blink that reminded me of school kids running to recess. They were pushing and shoving, each trying to outrace the others to get to the most dangerous thing out there. In this case, I was the merry-go-round.

With sword in my right hand and hatchet in my left, I let myself go into my skill. It was the only way that I saw myself making it through this.