Chapter 8: 1.8 – Unexpected Depths

Robin took a deep, quiet breath as they paced through the tunnels. The air was the same nearly-temperate chill, so far as he could tell, but Grathilde was charging forward full-speed ahead. Lantha and Ora-Jean advanced, but more slowly, trying to rein in Grathilde as they went.

‘I have been trapped down here for weeks. Weeks! I haven’t gone this long without seeing the sky since I ran away from home. Because I wanted to see what? The sky. Do not get in my way.’

‘We won’t, but you can’t charge in half-cocked. We have to be smart about this. Unless you have some mega-spell that can defeat several dozen winged goblins on their home turf you haven’t told us about?’ Ora-Jean hissed.

The halfling was a pretty sarcastic person. Robin filed that detail away for later. He still needed to get a smile and/or a laugh from her and Lantha.

Before anyone could say anything further, Ora-Jean’s hand shot up. They were here. Slowly, they crept forward, the tunnel around them widening abruptly into a soaring cavern.

The ceiling looked to be at least a hundred feet up. Large stalactites and stalagmites were present around the edges of the cavern, with smaller, often broken, specimens in the centre. There was also a distinct smell to the place, like moody pillows and fermented lockerroom jocks.

‘I thought you said there was fresh air in here,’ Robin said in a low voice, trying not to choke on the scent. 

‘There is,’ Ora-Jean replied, holding her hand out. ‘You can feel the currents move. Look at Grathilde.’

The dwarf, eyes shining, had a hand out in front of her. She wafted it gently to and fro in front of her. Whorls of pale blue light flickered at her fingertips.

‘There’s clear air here. High, fresh mountain air. We can’t be more than a couple hundred feet from it.’

‘At least a hundred of those feet are straight up, though,’ Robin pointed out. ‘Or can you fly us up?’

‘Not yet.’ Grathilde grimaced. ‘We have rope, though.’

‘I don’t know that we have enough to scale that, Grathilde,’ Fiamah said gently. ‘And we certainly couldn’t make the ascent with all of those still roosting here.’ She pointed up.

Robin followed her pointing finger and bit back a curse. There were several dozen green forms hanging from the stalactites above. Winged goblins. They were green like the last band he’d seen, but they also had clawed feet and large wings, black as tar. As he watched, one or two shifted in their sleep, wings rustling gently.

‘That’s, that’s one frelling high ground advantage.’ He said. ‘Though if we’re careful we might be able to kite them in small groups and handle them that way? It’d be risky though.’

‘Kite them?’ Ora-Jean looked to him. ‘I’m not familiar with this term.’

‘Ah, basically, it means draw the attention of a small group and lure them away from the rest. You can defeat a few foes far more easily. Then you repeat as needed until you’ve defeated the whole group.’

‘We can do that! Let’s do that! Then we can scale the cliff and get out of here,’ Grathilde said eagerly.

‘It’s dangerous, though,’ Robin said gently, ‘because if you make a single mistake you can alert the whole group and bring them all down. I don’t think we’re capable of facing that.’

‘We’re not,’ Lantha confirmed, voice like a tomb door slamming. ‘And we can’t risk it.’

‘We have to!’ Grathilde retorted. ‘We’ve been down here too long. We need fresh air, fresh supplies, we need to get back to civilisation and re-equip, we—‘

‘Quiet!’ Fiamah whispered. ‘Look!’

Lantha immediately dimmed her magelight to next-to-nothing. A troupe of two dozen or so goblins had started streaming in through a tunnel across the cavern. They carried torches and baskets. 

‘No wings on these,’ Ora-Jean murmured.

The goblins made their way over toward the sheer side of the cavern that Ora-Jean and Grathilde thought led up to the way out of these caverns. The baskets were settled, one in front of each goblin, and the torches thrust into crannies between the stalagmites. One goblin brought out a rough flute carved from bone and began to whistle on it.

The sound was high and screeching, with only the barest hints of a melody to it. The goblin played a few bars, waited, then repeated himself. Again he stopped and seemed to wait for a response.

These actions repeated themselves several times before there was an answering trill from further up in the cavern. Robin focused on the top of the underground cliff. There was movement up there. More wings.

‘Something’s up there,’ he whispered.

‘Something with wings,’ Lantha confirmed, ‘but I don’t think it’s more winged goblins.’

Her words were confirmed moments later when winged figures began spiralling down through the cavern airs. They were like vast birds, condors maybe, but with the heads and chests of women. Harpies!

They landed near the baskets and began tearing into the food. They shrieked about food and laughed about sating their appetites. Their words were screech and airy cry, and Robin marvelled again at how easily he understood it. The goblins around them began murmuring excitedly and fidgeting with their loincloths. It was becoming increasingly clear just what was going on here.

‘Oh. Oh no.’ Robin grimaced. ‘So that’s where the winged goblins are coming from.’

‘We need to retreat out of hearing range,’ Ora-Jean said with a tightly controlled urgency. ‘We don’t want them to spot us and start singing.’

‘What happens if they start singing?’

‘Their song can ensnare the minds of creatures who hear them,’ the halfling said. ‘Us, they’d eat. You?’ She jerked a thumb toward the goblins. ‘They’d likely have another use for you.’

‘Right.’ Robin went green. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘We can’t! We’re so close!’ Grathilde was almost frantic. ‘I can’t go back down into those cramped, choking tunnels! I just can’t. We can take them. They’re clearly distracted. We should strike now!’

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‘Can you silence their song?’ Lantha asked harshly. ‘Do you have a store of beeswax you haven’t shared? No? Then we skip this fight and try to find another way out.’

‘Fine,’ Grathilde snapped, ‘but not before I gather some power. If we’re this close, I want some air to carry me through the rest of this nightmare.’

‘Grathilde! No! It’s too risky—‘ Fiamah whispered.

It was too late. Grathilde’s hands flickered with pale blue light. Robin fancied he could see her gathering cloud-like wisps of power to herself. The air in the room suddenly shifted, a breeze blowing towards them instead of the cool stillness of cave air. 

Robin wasn’t the only one to notice, either. In the cave, a shrieking went up from the harpies. They could feel the air currents shifting.

‘Uh, I think they noticed,’ Robin said. ‘Maybe we should get going.’

‘Just a few more seconds,’ Grathilde insisted. ‘I need more.’

‘We’re going. Now.’ Lantha grabbed Grathilde by the arm and hauled on the dwarf. 

Grathilde didn’t budge. Her feet might as well have been part of the stone of the cave floor. Robin swore and tried to throw the illusion of stone over the tunnel mouth where they stood. He failed. The illusion flickered out, stretched too thin. Wrapping himself in stone was one thing but his [Lesser Phantasm] couldn’t stretch much beyond arm’s length. 

Fiamah and Ora-Jean joined Lantha on tugging at Grathilde. The dwarf’s eyes, now glowing sky blue, were fixed on the wisps of power she gathered from the air. If he wanted to help, there wasn’t any room for him to barrel in.

Robin fixed his attention back on the harpies and goblin. The harpies were fluttering their wings, trying to catch the shifting air currents. They hadn’t spotted the group in the tunnel yet, but they would soon. Unless he distracted them.

‘Sisters!’ He cast the words out in the tongue of the harpies using [Lesser Phantasm], ‘we are betrayed! The goblins have stoppered their ears with wax! It’s a trap!’

He tried to match the tone of one of the voices he’d heard earlier and prayed to Rhyth that his Deception skill was up to the job. 

The harpies began to shriek madly. Three of them began to lash out at the goblins with their talons. The goblins howled back and tried to scramble away. 

‘No! Sisters! Deception! Someone has stolen my voice!’

It was the harpy he’d tried to impersonate. Frell. Well, he’d cast the whole area into confusion for now. 

Behind him, Lantha and the others had managed to pry Grathilde off the stone and were carrying her away. They were all moving far too slowly. 

‘Sisters! There! Movement in the tunnel.’

Too late by half.

‘Run! Run run run! They’ve spotted us,’ he yelled. 

They dumped Grathilde to the ground. The blue light around her had completely faded, but she looked dreamy and a bit dazed. Robin grabbed her arm and urged her along.

Behind them the harpies shrieked, commanding the goblins to follow, to kill, and to return with the heads as tribute. 

‘I think they’re pissed at us,’ Robin yelled. ‘The goblins are coming after us.’

‘You see as well as an elf,’ Ora-Jean swore, ‘here they come!’

‘Back to a fork in the tunnels. I’ll try to throw them off our trail.’ The beginnings of an idea—two, really—leapt into Robin’s mind, courtesy of the last time he’d played a low-level character with his D&D group. 

They ran, pelting down the tunnel with the howls of the goblins nipping at their heels. Lantha darted ahead, her magelight shining, Ora-Jean and Fiamah close behind. Robin attempted to shove Grathilde ahead of him to get her to run faster.

‘I can’t believe I have to waste my power already,’ she complained, but her feet lightened and she began to dart gracefully over the stone.

Robin ran, his feet bruising against the uneven stone. What he wouldn’t give for a solid pair of cross trainers right now! Still, the bloodthirsty howls of the little green monsters behind him was more than enough motivation to keep moving. 

Proficiency Unlocked: Athletics.

He dismissed the notification immediately. He needed to keep one eye fixed on Lantha’s magelight dancing ahead, the glimmering white of starlight. The other he kept on the lookout for the upcoming fork in the tunnel. It shouldn’t be too much furth—there!

Robin twisted his hand through two quick instances of [Lesser Phantasm] in a row. The first conjured a replica of Lantha’s dancing magelight, speeding down the tunnel he didn’t plan to take. The second he set to a three-second delay and programmed with the sound of feet slapping wildly on stone.

If he was lucky, the goblins were far enough behind that they’d fall for his diversion. He didn’t dare stop running to look behind him to check and see. He threw up a prayer to Rhyth and hoped for the best. 

He was a little early on the cast. He was done with both several seconds before he made it to the fork the others had taken. He put his head down and ran. He needed to get out of sight as fast as he could.

Behind him, he heard a confused yowl go up. Yes! Robin darted ahead, gaining on the magelight in front of him now that half his attention wasn’t on spellcasting.

The sound behind him got quieter but not by enough. There was still the sound of hoots and battle cries. They were quieter, though they didn’t sound too much further away. Frell. They must have split up at the fork!

At least half of the goblins were still hot on their heels!

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