Nine seconds.
“It’s coming!” Donut screamed, her voice more terrified than I ever heard. She leaped to my shoulder.
Eight seconds.
In front of us, the rage elemental emerged from the billowing smoke of the hall. It was a beast from hell, huge. Terrifying. A length of chain was still attached to its back leg. To my surprise, the monster’s health was in the red. Barely in the red, but it had been more hurt than I expected. It saw us, and it paused.
Five seconds.
It bellowed, long and hard.
I looked up, for the first time, and I realized the ceiling of this chamber, like the borough boss room on the floor above, was very, very high. If it cast Reverse Gravity now…
Three seconds.
It charged.
Two seconds.
“Stay with me,” I said.
It passed the threshold of the room, and the moment its six legs hit the floor, it started to slide on the oil slick. It barely seemed to notice. It roared as it rocketed toward us, forward fingers ready to slash. I remembered what it did to Yolanda, unraveling her.
We disappeared, reappearing about 500 feet away, down the hall. A horrific, indignant shriek filled the dungeon, followed by the distinctive whoosh of a big-ass explosion. I hit the ground and covered Donut, but it was okay. The bomb was deep in the hole when it went off, and we were far away.
A moment passed. I watched the minimap, looking for signs that the monster had survived.
The dot was gone. Absolute silence followed. My stomach heaved, an aftereffect of the sudden teleportation.
Relief washed over me. I sat down right there on the floor. My heart, which had been oddly calm throughout, was now a jackhammer. My arms felt numb, tingling with the overdose of adrenaline. My entire body trembled.
A moment later, Donut cried in outrage. “We didn’t get any experience! Carl, you broke the game!”
“We didn’t get any experience because we’re not the ones who killed it.”
“What?” Donut said. “I don’t understand.”
I remembered what Rory, the goblin shamanka had told us. It’d only been a few days ago, but it felt like a lifetime. If we climb down the stairs, we die. You get halfway down, and your body just dissolves. I’ve seen it myself.
Mordecai had said something similar once, too. Mobs who dared to attempt to descend didn’t teleport away. They died. We’d tricked the monster into the hole. Once it was in there, the dungeon followed its own rules, and it dissolved the elemental.
Unfortunately, the system didn’t look too kindly on what we’d done. We hadn’t been awarded experience for the kill. I’d received a couple achievements, but not many.
But that was okay. We were still alive. I took in the mass of red grub dots and Xs littering the map. I felt as if I’d been awake for two days straight. I groaned, pulling myself to my feet. We still had a lot of work to do.
Carclass="underline" Brandon. Get your people to the stairs. Do it now. The way is safe, but it won’t be for long.
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I still had plenty of moonshine left, and Donut and I spent the hour torching all the pupae in the large room. I looked up at the map. There was no way we could get to them all. We were going to have to hightail it out of here.
With the unfortunate destruction of the chopper, our travel options were now limited. I had enough crap in my massive inventory to probably build another one, but I didn’t know what I was doing with the boiler part of the mechanism. Hopefully we could find another set of goblins to help us. Or better yet, find something more reliable.
About forty minutes after we killed the elemental, the tattered remains of Meadow Lark entered the chamber. Brandon, Chris, and Imani had built a second, less elegant transportation system. There were 36 residents left, and they were piled into three separate shopping-cart-like contraptions, built with chopper wheels and hunks of wood. Chris and Imani pushed the two larger “people buckets” as Brandon called them. This time, both of them strained with the effort. Brandon, whose strength was nowhere near the other’s, also awkwardly pushed a group of six people into the room.
“We didn’t need your directions,” Brandon said. “There’s a long trail of scorched hallway that leads directly to this hole.” He paused. “There are a lot of those chrysalis things out there. You sure you don’t just want to come with us?”
“I’m sure,” I said. I looked into the smoking hole. “Do me a favor, though, and pick up anything you find down there. There probably isn’t much left.”
He nodded. I reached out to shake his hand, and he pulled me into a hug. “You two take care of yourselves, okay?”
I grinned. “You do the same.”
I said my goodbyes to Chris and Imani. I found Donut on the lap of Mrs. McGibbons, purring away.
“Barry?” she asked as I walked up. “Barry, where are we?”
“We’re in the dungeon, Mrs. McGibbons. It’s me, Carl. You’re going down to the next floor.”
She looked at me, her eyes registering confusion. Once again, I felt a wave of doubt wash over me. Was this the right thing? What else could we do?
“The dungeon?” she asked. “Like a sex thing?”
“I don’t know if I’m ever going to see you again,” I said, kneeling down. She sat in the people bucket, looking about, eyes wide. “I wanted to say goodbye.”
She reached up and touched my cheek. At that moment, she looked every day of her 99 years. Her hands were worryingly cold. “We should have had children, Barry. I wish I hadn’t talked you into working so hard.”
I grasped her hand. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” I remembered my mom saying the same thing to me the day she had left. It had been a lie then, and it was a lie now.
“I think I’ve had too much to drink,” she said. “Or I’m having another one of those acid flashbacks. This cat keeps talking to me.”
I smiled. “Goodbye, Mrs. McGibbons.”
Imani was the last to go down the ramp. It’d gone quickly. She waved, unsmiling at us. I waved back, and we turned away.
“Do you think we’ll ever see them again?” Donut asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
We angled toward the quadrant with the kobolds, killing all the grubs and burning all the pupae we passed. Earlier, I had noted a safe room deep in the kobold quadrant, along the back side of the area. We would grind our way toward it and try to get a nap before we had to do this next interview.
Hopefully the hornet monsters, when they hatched, would remain in their area.
Kobold Rider – Level 5
Here’s an interesting fact. The DNA of a kobold and the DNA of a chihuahua are almost identical. That should tell you almost everything you need to know about these yappy little assholes.
Small, angry, think they are bigger than they really are, there is nothing more terrifying than a pack of these little bastards charging at you across the battlefield, at least in their own minds. But don’t underestimate them, either. They are fearless, they are intelligent, and they bite first, ask questions later.
Their mounts, the Danger Dingoes, should probably worry you.
The last time I’d played Dungeons and Dragons had been aboard the USCGC Stratton. I remembered kobolds as little, lizard-like monsters. In the game I’d played, the dungeon master had them as minions of a small dragon. Here, they were different. They, indeed, looked like goddamned armored chihuahuas. They were about the same size as the barking little dogs, but they stood upright and wore chainmail armor that seemed to be made out of beer can tabs. Each wore tiny metal caps with a spike on them.