Chapter 160: 9.3 – Secrets of Tarin-Tiran

Robin crept carefully into the room, his flesh changed for that of an elf, suffused with grace and dexterity, and his shadow spun around him by illusion into a slowly shifting field of darkness that blended with the  interplay of light and shade all around. Nary a sound slipped from the soft soles of his bare feet, and the stone beneath his toes was cool and eerily smooth.

Flesh on stone. Robin smiled. Brought back memories.

Though at least this time he wasn’t fully naked.

Gis had been there as well. The thought snuffed Robin’s burgeoning good mood like a cold wind snapped out a candle. And the evil old man was, if anything, even more dangerous now.

Focus.

The priest was in the centre of the room, sourly surveying every move that his compatriots made. The two largest brutes, melee specialists by the looks of them, were taking a break it now, search the rubble later, approach. Robin carefully dipped into their minds, as they were likely to put up less resistance that Gis or the caster-types, and were less likely to notice him teasing at the edges of their minds.

They didn’t notice. Robin concentrated. They were definitely looking for something specific. A passageway? Leading to some kind of secret chamber. And in that chamber…

‘Anything?’ Gis snapped.

‘No, sir,’ the smaller of the two brutes answered. ‘Not yet.’

Robin bit back a curse. They were looking for something, but Gis had interrupted the chain of thought before he could get a good sense of what it was.

‘Keep looking,’ Gis said, punctuating his irritation with a sigh. ‘Eyes sharp! The passage must be here somewhere.’

The fighters simply nodded and resumed their destructive search. While their faces were placid, Robin could feel the irritation and resentment simmering in their thoughts, tempered with more than enough fear to ensure that they obeyed Gis’s orders, for all that they also resented the power the priest wielded over them.

They were also entirely focused on finding the hidden passage, with no thoughts straying to the ultimate goal of their search. Robin bit his cheek. He had to put the irritation somewhere, and it wasn’t like he was wearing his own body anyway.

It still fucking hurt.

He was going to have to risk reading the mage, whose eyes glimmered with magical energies as she searched with more esoteric senses, or Gis himself.

Robin decided to start with the mage. Still safer than the priest, though he’d have to move very carefully. He had no idea just how much her enchanted eye might see.

He brought the shroud of shadows close in around his body, minimising the surface are of magic that might possibly betray his presence to the woman in robes. He knew from talking to Drev that magical energies were intense, and it was hard to sense them very far out with enchanted vision. Savra affirmed it was the same for diviners, though the seeress had been a bit smug about just how much further the sight of diviners could pierce than those of dilettantes or initiates of other magical traditions.

Still, Robin knew he could get close enough to try dipping into her mind without being spotted by her mage sight. If he was careful. If he was lucky.

There was a whisper of sound as a pebble beneath his feet shifted. The hobgoblin scouts’ ears twitched. Robin froze.

If he didn’t stupidly give himself away by not paying attention to where he was going.

Or was it something else? Misfortune, perhaps?

Robin felt a twinge in his [Touched by Wild Magic] perk. Was it simple bad luck? The scales balancing out all the times he’d squeaked past disaster?

Or could Silinir somehow sense him thanks to that touch of wild magic on his soul? Had it drawn the dungeon’s full attention?

Whatever the ultimate case, Robin could wrestle with it later. For now he had to deal with some increasingly alert hobgoblin scouts.

Robin twisted his fingers through the gestures of [Lesser Phantasm] and cast the faint sound of stone scraping on stone down the tunnel to his left. Not the one opposite him. And not the one that would lead back to the rest of Robin’s party. Either of those would just be asking for trouble if the scouts were truly suspicious.

The hobgoblins shared a glance. Something passed between them, a flicking of the eyes, and one moved to investigate the tunnel.

The other stayed in the room and began to methodically sweep, moving carefully around the perimeter and sweeping for unseen creatures.

Looking for an invisible monster? Robin dipped into the hobgoblins mind and confirmed that was indeed what the scout suspected.

Worse, the hob’s focus on finding a hidden enemy meant there was no hint as to what Gis and his party were actually looking for here in the deeps of Tarin-Tiran.

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Robin moved slowly, carefully, in a spiral, threading his way amongst the destruction and suspicion to come to rest in a nook behind the hobgoblin, in an area the scout had already searched. It wasn’t a perfect hiding place, but it would take the pressure off.

There was no hope for it. he would have to risk reading Gis’s mind. Even if he had to try and lean on his [Touch of Wild Magic] the hopes of gaining a small advantage in piercing the evil old man’s mental resistance.

And he managed it! Rob in slipped into Gis’s mind like a fop into a sewer. Slowly, resentfully, and cringing at the filth all around him.

The surface layer of Gis’s thoughts was all emotion: impatience, irritation, lust for power, and the desire to hold something in his hands.

That had to be it! Robin tried to follow that thread, the desire for a thing. That had to lead to what it was they were really looking for!

And it did. For one brief moment, Robin saw what it was Gis sought. It was a crown of black iron, roughly wrought and pitted, with what looked to be crude runes stamped into the circumference and filled with blood red enamel.

A flash of a face. Melusk? What did the politician have to do with this crown?

A sense of reverence. Urkhan? There was a sense of respect, reverence, even, for the crown. Religious regalia? A divine artefact of some kind?

Robin longed to know more, but any further knowledge was held more deeply within Gis’s mind, beyond the reach of his spell. The only way to get at it would be to ask questions, to pull it to the surface.

The bard briefly contemplated using [Lesser Phantasm] to try and replicate one of Gis’s other party members’ voices, asking a leading question. It would get him a snippet more information as Gis’s mind reacted, before suspicion shut everything down.

But it would be only a snippet, and then Gis would be warned. He would know someone was here, someone who suspected what he was after. That would make him infinitely more dangerous in a second.

Even as it was, suspicion was rising in Gis’s mind. the old priest shook his head in irritation and squinted in to the shadows.

‘There’s something here,’ he snapped.

There was a ripple of force in Gis’s mind and Robin fell back into the wall with a gasp, his mind reeling from the backlash of the priest’s iron will.

‘Find it!’ Gis repeated.

Robin winced and began moving slowly and carefully away from where he had hid. There was no way the scout hadn’t heard that gasp, and would be zeroing in on the area.

Being able to fly would come in really handy right now. Robin cursed himself for not assuming the form of a winged elf. That would have served his stealth purposes just as well, though his flight would be clumsy, and cost him a great deal in terms of magical energies.

But then, the sound of his wings might give him away anyway.

Though that gave him an idea.

Robin quickly twisted his hands through the gestures of [Lesser Phantasm] and the sound of wings moving across the cavern and away from himself softly whispered though the cavern. The bastards immediately refocused, allowing the bard to fall back toward the tunnel that would lead him back to his party.

As he did so, he got a better look at the damage Gis’s party had caused already. Rock was cracked and broken, mosaic pieces scattered wildly all over the room. It would take a great deal of time or some very efficient uses of magic to sort that out and restore it. Some of the runic structures exposed by the search were also deliberately defaced with chisel marks and cracks from blunt weaponry.

What a mess.

Robin’s lips tightened into a thin line. There was no way they could allow this to continue! The bastards would do so much damage they’d never be able to repair the place! They’d fail Nilsiir’s quest almost before they’d even begun!

He needed to get Gis and company away from here, quickly repair the place, and then fall back. Nilsiir could control the area, and keep the evil old man from finding the passageway he sought.

The longer Gis was kept away from that crown, the better.

Robin longed to know what it was, what it did, but that was a mystery for later. Now was a time for action. For dealing with the immediately problem.

He sent a thread of will through [Visual Phantasm], losing the protection of his illusory shadows but trusting in the shield of actual darkness to keep him safe. He needed to signal the rest of his party. They were going to have to take steps.

Plan C. Come in hot, be ready to fall back fast.

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