Despite having been outnumbered, they tore through the goblins until not one was left alive. Looking about the room, Grim thought at least twenty of the creatures lay dead.
Sandon stopped his incantation. ‘Ah, well done everyone!’ he enthused. ‘You finished the job before I got a chance to get through my spell. Still, no matter, that means I still have all my energy for later. Some magic users call it mana, others power; but either way, my ability to use magic is limited and the more I cast, the less I can use until I have recovered. There are ways to boost mana—certain items, for example—’
Grim quickly stopped listening to the wizard’s boring speech. How odd that he had decided to start talking like that. Elsewhere, Gurin had taken a seat on a table and was being tended to by Brother Kane. It looked like he had received a knock from a blunt weapon on the forearm. The cleric rubbed a salve into the affected area, muttering a prayer as he did so. Assata and Raya, meanwhile, were searching the room.
‘You don’t expect to find treasure here, do you?’ Og asked them.
‘Not treasure, no,’ said Assata. ‘But there may be other items of use.’
‘Such as this,’ said Raya, holding up a metal key she had found in a desk.
Grim did sometimes wonder why goblins had desks in their rooms. He had never, ever—not once—met one who could read, let alone write.
Raya’s face fell somewhat. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, looking at Dog.
Grim turned his head. Dog was munching on a goblin arm.
‘Sorry,’ Dog said, picking up from the look on the elf’s face that he had done something wrong, even if he wasn’t sure what it was. ‘But fighting a pack of goblins is hungry work.’
Assata looked ready to be sick.
‘Why are you eating that?’ asked the barbarian. ‘I packed your bag full of provisions.’
‘And we ate those on the way.’
‘Ate them all? They were meant to last you the whole trip!’
Three ogre heads focused on the barbarian. Dog barked with laughter. ‘Ha-ha! Good one, Assata! Last us the whole trip, she says!’
DEEPWOOD DUNGEON: LEVEL TWO
They carried out a brief search of the second guardroom, but found nothing of interest, and everyone agreed that it was best to keep moving. They continued down the corridor in the same formation as before, Assata and Gurin leading the way. The adrenaline of battle still pumped around Og-Grim-Dog’s body and it wasn’t easy for Grim to revert to being stealthy. He did his best.
It wasn’t far until the corridor came to an end at a set of marble steps. They spiralled down into a heavier darkness—an underground darkness. Grim could smell the dampness of the dungeon proper.
Forced into single file by the narrow steps, Gurin led them down. Og-Grim-Dog went third, behind Assata. At the back of the group was Raya, ready in case the denizens of the dungeon came at them through a secret door or similar ruse. All was quiet as they descended, however. It seemed that the commotion they had made in the guard rooms had not disturbed those that dwelled in the lower levels.
The stairs ended in an open area plenty large enough for them to gather together. Grim saw that this level was constructed from stone rather than marble. But it still bore the hallmarks of design rather than a natural space. The floor and the walls were smooth and followed straight lines. Two corridors ran off from the stairs, at right angles to one another. Peering as far as he could along each, Grim saw nothing that might indicate which was the better route.
Gurin held his arms up horizontally so that each followed one of the corridors.
‘Assuming these continue to run straight,’ he said, his voice so quiet that Grim had to strain to hear him, ‘which it appears they do, they carve out a rectangular shape to this floor. I would guess that we want to head towards the centre of the rectangle.’
‘So which way?’ Grim asked.
The dwarf shrugged. He took a coin from his pocket.
‘Heads left,’ said Assata.
Gurin flipped the coin and slapped it down onto his hand. He squinted in the darkness. ‘Right,’ he said.
It was the right corridor they took. They crept along, and as they went, they heard noises echoing in the dungeon, their origin hard to place. Bangs and crashes and raised voices.
‘Orcs,’ Grim warned the others.
Doors appeared in both walls of the corridor ahead of them—some with light leaking through, others dark and ominous looking. If the plan was to head to the centre of this level, they should take one in the left-hand wall. But which? Gurin led them past the first. A thought crossed Grim’s mind then, and he found it odd that it hadn’t before. Had the dwarf been here before? The way Gurin talked, he had many years of adventuring behind him. Was it possible that he had never in all those years come to this dungeon? Even if it had been a long time ago, wouldn’t he remember the basic layout?
The dwarf stopped next to one of the doors that had light behind it. He gestured at it, making a fist. The unmistakeable sound of orcs could be heard behind it. It was fighting time again.
Gurin gripped the handle and pushed. The door held firm. Locked.
Raya pushed her way to the door. She took the key she had found from her pocket and placed it into the keyhole. She twisted it and they all heard the unmistakeable click of the locking mechanism. Replacing the key, she took her bow in hand and fitted an arrow to it. She nodded to Assata.
The barbarian opened the door and Raya went through, drawing her bow. The others followed her in. The room looked like a typical living quarter for orcs: they slept and ate in the same place. There was a row of pallets on the floor and a cauldron simmered on top of a smoky fire. Two fat candles burned on the floor next to it. No orcs, though. On the other side of the room a door was wide open and Grim could see that it led out into a large space.
Just as he was looking in that direction, a single orc entered through the door. Perhaps she had come to tend the cauldron. The orc did a double take when it saw the trespassers in its room. Then, it collapsed to the floor with a thud, an elven arrow protruding from its head.
Everyone froze, sure that the noise would have been heard. But no shouts of alarm came. Tentatively, the group began to look about the room. Gurin made his way to the far door, carefully peering out. Grim approached the bubbling cauldron. Dog stirred the contents with a big metal serving spoon before withdrawing it. Politely, he let Og and Grim take a sip before bringing it to his own mouth. The soup tasted of the bones and fat of some creature, hard to say what.
‘Not bad,’ suggested Og.
Gurin waved them over. ‘Not many creatures about,’ he said. ‘We may have struck lucky and come when the orcs of this dungeon are out raiding. That said, the stairs leading down to the next level are in the middle of this square,’ he said, gesturing through the door at the large, open plaza, surrounded by stone-built rooms that opened onto it. ‘Everything on this level will see us when we head for them.’
‘Then perhaps now is my time to contribute,’ said Sandon. ‘In the deserts of Karak-Tar the mystics of the sand tribes developed a form of mind control that protected their people from the giant Slaath worms. They sent a signal from their minds that convinced the worms that all they saw was sand. A psychic camouflage, if you will. I studied in Karak-Tar for three years, learning their ways, perfecting their techniques; but not only that. I developed a method that would allow me to use this form of mind control on other creatures, in different environments. When I am done, we will be able to walk out of here to the stairs without being seen.’