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Race: Draconian

Bloodline Powers: Improved Strength+, Rending, Firebreath+

Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 6, Wind (Noble) 5, Sound (Advanced) 3

Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 4, Current/Flow 4

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Wind carried Barsa and Charook down through the hole in the cave’s ceiling. They wobbled slightly in the air as Samazzar struggled to keep the gale he was forcing upward under control. Too much force and he’d send the goblin and kobold flying. Too little and both of them would fall into the lake, and Samazzar would never hear the end of Barsa’s complaints.

Above, both of the other goblins jumped into the air, tucking their hands around their knees before plummeting past Barsa and Charook. They splashed into the water, surfacing a second or so later to begin swimming to the shore, spears in hand.

Samazzar rolled his eyes, bringing the two former chiefs in for a landing while the remaining goblins yipped and chortled at each other from the lake. He spared a quick glance to make sure that the two of them were safely swimming to shore along with their spears before returning his attention to Barsa, Tarxis and Charook.

He probably shouldn’t have bothered. Both of the pre molt goblins were having the time of their lives, yammering and splashing each other merrily. Silently, Samazzar made a note to have someone dig a pond near the goblin encampment once they started expanding Union City in the spring. Goblins were hardly sanitary creatures, but if they enjoyed swimming, that would at least clean them off enough to help with the inevitable smell.

“Chief,” Barsa said gruffly, nodding at Samazzar. “We’ve finished surveying the upper cavern. How are things down here?”

“I’ve advanced a level in one of my mysteries,” he replied. “Tarxis has made a lot of progress on the mystery of cold, and I suspect he will be ready for a baptism soon. The two of us haven’t explored the milklight grove yet because I suspect that there is some local fauna, and from this distance I can’t really assess whether it will be dangerous or not so I thought it best to wait for the rest of the survey team.”

“Oh goody,” Barsa responded, reaching to his waist and drawing the finely honed pick that Dussok had crafted for him. “A fight. At least that will break some of the boredom of inspecting every boulder and wall of the upper cave. I thought the goblins were going to go mad and start playing spear tag or something.”

“I’ve seen it happen,” Charook supplied helpfully. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. Most of the time they can dodge and the cuts aren’t that deep.”

“As long as you have plenty of healing ointment on hand,” Samazzar said agreeably. “As for the animals in the grove, I’m not sure that it will be a fight. Tarxis and I have been down here munching on dried meat and berries for two days now while you finished up your survey. If they wanted to attack us, they could have done so by now. One of the major reasons I waited to enter the forest was that I wanted to have Barsa’s eye of assessment on hand before we potentially kicked a hornet’s nest. Which reminds me, did you find anything while you searched the upper level?”

Barsa gripped his pick in both hands, thinking for a second before replying.

“There’s a low quality iron vein, so that should solve at least one problem for the city. Really low quality stuff though, unless Dussok spends days refining it, it’ll just break apart in your hands. Still, It’s better than having to constantly melt down the scraps of metal we scavenge from campsites and ruins.”

“I found a bit of copper as well,” Barsa continued. “It’s not anything special but it’s definitely purer than the iron. Other than that, there were a number of smaller caves that opened up off of the big one that had outcroppings of quartz and amethyst.”

“No tin or exotic reagents?” Samazzar asked hopefully. “Quartz and amethyst have their uses as the base for low-tier alchemical solutions so they aren’t entirely useless, but we’re going to have a hard time brewing a potion of heroic deeds or anything like that with such simple ingredients.”

“What did you expect? Barsa asked with a snort. “The cave you found was big, but it’s almost like you expect gold and gemstones to be hiding under every rock. Even a low quality iron deposit on its own is a big deal. Union City has been looking for a source of iron and coal for months. At least for the time being, we can make charcoal. It might be time consuming, but with this the smithy can actually start to make real tools rather than forcing our artisans to rely on scraps of metal tied to wood.”

“I still wanted more than just some semi precious gems and a little bit of copper,” Samazzar replied with a bone deep sigh. “That’s barely enough for me to get started on my hoard. Who ever heard of a dragon with a hoard with nothing but cheap jewelry.”

“Don’t worry Magus Samazzar,” Charook said soothingly. “I’m sure your hoard will have the grandest cheap jewelry of any dragon in these mountains. You have my utmost faith.”

Samazzar broke into a smile.

“There we go, Barsa,” he said happily. “That’s exactly how you soothe a dragon’s flagging morale when he’s having a bad day. You should take notes from Charook.”

The kobold glanced at the goblin practitioner and back at Samazzar before crossing his arms and tapping a foot on the rocky ground.

“I think your morale might be a little too high at the moment,” he replied dryly. “Now, you said you were waiting for Charook and me to inspect the milklights. What’s the plan? You’re perfectly capable of burning down the entire grove on your own, I don’t know what you need us for.”

Samazzar turned toward the forest of oversized mushrooms, waving with a hand for the rest of his group to follow. Goorku and Zapnik splashed each other a couple of times before noticing that the rest of the group had started to move on.

“The plan,” Samazzar responded, “is that I keep an eye on a couple suspicious bulges that have been moving over the last day or so. None of them are fast, but they have been crawling around the milklights so there’s no question that they’re alive. I need Barsa to keep an eye on them. His appraising eye ability will hopefully let us know whether they’re a threat or not. After all, the deep tunnels have their fair share of scavengers and predators, but there are herbivores living down here too. If we’re lucky, we might find some new herd animals for the city.”

Barsa cocked his head to the side, pursing his lips as he looked at the mass of glowing mushrooms. Ultimately, he shrugged.

“I suppose the milklights are probably enough to solve our food problem on their own,” Barsa mused. “They’re blander than oatmeal in a sea of beige, but at least they taste better than the rats. Of course, if we can find something else to toss in the stew pot while we’re down here, so much the better.”

Goorku and Zapnik yammered back and forth for a second before nodding at the same time. Then, they slipped their spears under an arm before clapping their hands together and beginning to chant the word ‘better’ over and over again. Samazzar ignored them. Like many things regarding goblinkind, actually understanding what was happening probably wouldn’t do much other than fray his already weakened sanity.

As they walked closer to the mushrooms, Samazzar stretched his senses to the limit. Heat was still borderline useless, but his improved hearing and sense of the wind let him focus on the thirty suspicious lumps. Not all of them were moving, but the sound of steady chewing as mandibles munched away at the milklight gills gave his targets away.

Silently, he pointed at the three nearest animals. Their group couldn’t see them yet, but that didn’t stop them from preparing ahead of time. Barsa gripped his pick tightly, the knuckles of both of his claws whitening as the blood drained from them. Charook pulled a handful of something from his pack, sifting through the objects in his left palm before selecting one to hold between his index finger and thumb. The two other goblins wandered back and forth, bone spears resting on their shoulders while they yipped and gibbered to each other. And Tarxis? He cowered behind all of them, ranging back as far as the kobold thought possible while still remaining with the rest of the group.

Samazzar felt a smile tug at his face. Normally he might chastise his apprentice, but the little rascal had worked hard. He still complained every day about being forced into the ice cold water, but at the same time, he woke up around the same time as Samazzar ready to study, and tried his hardest under the waterfall.

One of the misshapen lumps on the milklight’s stopped moving. At the same time, the sound of chewing became fractionally quieter. Samazzar raised a clawed hand, calling his convoy to a halt.

Before he could open his mouth to say something, a high pitched screech, barely audible to the rest of the party but as loud and clear as a church bell to Samazzar, echoed through the cavern. A half dozen moths, each twice the size of a kobold, zipped into the air above the mushroom grove.

Their wings were beautiful, violet with iridescent shimmers that hinted at a full rainbow of colors around their extremities. Each gentle flap was like a small hurricane twisting the wind into a knot and propelling them through the air with astounding force.

Samazzar’s eyes widened.

“Nox Moths! You cannot breathe in any of the air that they’ve touched. We need to bring them down quickly or they will be laying their eggs in our senseless bodies before the sun rises outside!”

Goorku and Zapnik didn’t hesitate, tossing their spears into the air with as much force as their rubbery bodies could muster. Samazzar caught the bone weapons with the wind, accelerating them toward one of the moths.

It flapped its wings once, generating a small tempest of twisted wind that rushed toward the oncoming attack. Samazzar gritted his teeth, reaching out with his focus to wrap his willpower over the tiny storm.

The bloodline magic felt like a tangle of threads, wind flowing and twisting together in barely in an impossible pattern. Somehow, the pressure and currents didn’t clash together, instead each layer amplified and protected the magic below it.

There was nothing natural about the phenomenon, but Samazzar didn’t have the time to study it in depth. His mind tore into the pulsating sphere of wind, ripping through the first layer of captive wind currents and boring a hole through the magic that protected the second set of intertwining threads.

Wind clashed against wind, exploding outward and forcefully merging the second and third layer of the tiny storm. They erupted in a secondary blast, almost half again as powerful as the first. From there, it was hard to follow what happened.

Twisting threads of opposing magical energy merged together, creating a blast of wind that battered all six of the moths, tossing them through the air like leaves floating on a raging river. One of the goblin spears was tossed aside with contemptuous ease, but Samazzar managed to solidify his will around the other, guiding it through the storm and changing its course slightly.

The weapon cut through the wind, striking the moth in the center of its thorax. It punched through the animal’s delicate flesh, sending a spray of violet blood spraying into the air on the opposite side.

Charook was hardly idle. He tossed the item he was holding into the air. A goblin’s molar.

In a flash it narrowed and stretched, transforming into a needle of bone, a half pace long and almost too narrow to see without the aid of the mysteries. It darted through the air, barely even touching the rampaging wind due to its miniscule profile.

Its tiny size didn’t mean much when it hit the second moth, puncturing one of the creature’s oversized eyes before shattering into a cloud of razor sharp bone as the moth’s presence disrupted the magic that had held the attack together. The shrapnel tore apart the monster’s face, transforming it into a mess of destroyed flesh and purple ichor in the blink of an eye.

Another moth flapped its wings, creating a rampaging ball of twisting wind energy that it lobbed toward Goorku and Zapnik. The magic didn’t move terribly fast, it was nowhere near as quick as an arrow, but easily as fast as a kobold or a goblin sprinting.

Barsa was stuck on the ground, helpless as he clutched his pick. Tarxis on the other hand sprang forward, running from his position at the rear of their group as he tracked the ball of wind current through the mysteries.

Samazzar took a step toward his apprentice to help him only for a pair of the moths to swoop downward, forcing him to turn his attention back to the attacking animals. Shimmering lavender dust drifted from their wings. A quick flap generated a swift air current that sent the sparkling poison wafting toward him.

He clenched his jaw, flapping his own wings in turn to generate a gust of wind that Samazzar amplified with the mysteries. The air currents collided and for a second, the purple dust hung in limbo, suspended above the creatures on the ground.

Tarxis dove, grabbing hold of Goorku and Zapnik and bringing the two of them to the ground just as the tempest flew through the space they had been occupying, striking the ground some five paces behind them. It exploded, an airburst ripping through Samazzar’s formation. He managed to keep his feet, but Barsa, Tarxis and the two goblins were both sent flying a pace or two through the air.

The blast of air broke the stalemate, sending the dust up toward the cavern’s dark ceiling. A half second later, a second molar javelin pierced another moth, shattering the moment it hit the monster and ravaging its brittle exoskeleton.

Charook staggered, their breath coming ragged and sweat pouring down their lumpy face. It was clear that the goblin shaman was at their limit, but their party had already brought down half of the nox moths.

It would have to be enough. Samazzar clenched his hand into a fist, curving around the gust of air created by the previous explosion and slamming it into the backs of the remaining moths.

They faltered, trying to flap their wings but failing to find any purchase as Samazzar’s sudden burst of willpower drove them to the ground. Two of them died instantly, their fragile bodies crunching against the stone and leaking purple ichor. The last one managed to turn slightly, its left wing bearing the brunt of the fall, breaking but preserving the animal’s life.

Samazzar dropped to one knee, panting for breath. His control of the mysteries was greater than any one moth, but six was far beyond his limits. Even with three, he had only managed to overpower them because the animals didn’t expect him to suddenly twist the existing air currents into a surprise attack.

It felt like he had just woken up from a deep sleep. His vision was a touch blurry and his body was heavy, responding a half second later to any command he sent it. Samazzar struggled to his feet, fixing his eyes on the final nox moth, determined to end the fight before the animal found a way to turn the situation around.

He didn’t need to bother. Barsa’s pick crunched into the side of the moth’s head, killing it in one swift, sure blow. The kobold looked back at him, a mixed expression on his tiny face.

“Those creatures were dangerous,” Barsa said simply. “I can’t explain it, but the sense of threat I got from them was more than any bear or wolf that I’ve ever seen. The only things that have sent more fear down my spine are you and your siblings.”

Samazzar nodded, strength slowly filtering back into his body as he recovered from overexerting himself against the moths. From the corner of his eyes, he watched the two immature goblins pick up Tarxis, yipping happily as they brushed dust and gravel off of the befuddled kobold.

“They are dangerous,” Samazzar replied. “Nox moths have some of the most advanced bloodlines of any insect. They are blessed by both the mystery of wind and poison. I have only heard of them infesting the deepest of forests, and the elves don’t share many secrets from those areas. Some alchemists at great cost have been able to buy their corpses to study, and all I know for sure is that their bodies are treasure troves. Their ichor is useful for potions of speed and dexterity as well as serving as a base component for some of the more stable elixir formulas, their wings can be ground up into a powerful hallucinogenic sleep powder, and their lungs carry some hints of the mystery of wind.”

“We would do well to collect every fragment of their corpses,” Samazzar continued, nodding toward the dead bugs, “each leg, mandible and eyeball will make Union City stronger once our alchemists have a chance to study the bodies.”

“So that is why you didn’t use the mystery of fire,” Barsa replied thoughtfully. “Even if your mastery of flames is a bit stronger than your control over wind, it would mangle the corpses too much for later use.”

“Yes,” Samazzar responded, walking eagerly toward the milklight grove. “Their wings are highly flammable, and I likely could have crippled them in one attack if I used my fire, but that would’ve harmed our people in the long run. Still, their bodies aren’t the most important outcome of our excursion.”

Charook joined Barsa, cocking their head to the side.

“You made them sound incredibly useful, what could be more valuable than the nox moth corpses, Magus Samazzar?” The goblin asked, confused.

Samazzar didn’t reply, instead pushing one of the milklight mushrooms aside. At the base of the fungus’ stalk was a large caterpillar, black with long purple stripes along its back, munching happily away at its blue, glowing meal.

“Nightsilk,” Samazzar replied, breath catching in his throat. “One of the world’s strongest materials by weight. It isn’t hard, so it’s no good for armor, but it ignores heat, cold, poison, and acid, and a strand of it pulled by someone strong can lift a kobold into the air.”

“The elves make a fortune selling a small amount of it,” he continued, beaming as he turned back to the rest of his group. “I’m sure they use most of the nightsilk for themselves. Not a whole lot is known about the substance, but the ancient sects are clear. The only source of nightsilk is the cocoons of domesticated nox moths. We have a lot of work to do before we can safely raise the moths, but once we do, Union City will finally have a resource worth trading for.”