There was movement on the other side of the gallery, but otherwise the room was empty. He darted to the nearest pillar and squatted down to look around. To his amazement, the leather strap had disappeared. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t imagining it, but it really was gone. Well, that explained why the door hadn’t been opened!
The next thing he had to do was figure out where his friends were being kept. This sort of complex almost certainly had a dungeon area, so he had to locate the path down. To make sure he could find the hidden door again, he scuffed the pillar with his boot, leaving a black streak across it. Nodding at a job well done, he silently padded along the wall. He didn’t really have a plan other than to go down, and he had to start somewhere. When he reached the room’s corner, he scanned the length of the wall and was pleased to find just a single archway leading out of it. Checking for any kobolds as he went, he dashed to the archway and peeked around the corner. He immediately ducked his head back at what he saw: two kobolds standing sentry at the base of a stairway. He assumed that this was the pathway back to the surface.
He retraced his steps along the wall, stopping when he got to the pillar with his scuff mark on it. The wall was blank, but after a few moments of feeling around it with his hand, he came across the strap he had used to close the door. As soon as he touched it, it popped back into view, and he could see the faint outline of the seam between the door and the wall. He smiled, then continued along the wall. After several steps he turned back and discovered that the illusion had returned. Good stuff, he thought. Wouldn’t stand up to a serious search by a professional like him, but it obviously did the trick against less experienced investigation.
The other wall also had only a single archway, which he approached with caution. If this was the path down to the dungeons, it might also be guarded. Peeking around the corner, he was pleased to discover the stairs headed down and there were no guards. Perhaps the ones assigned were just lazy and had wandered off. With kobolds that wasn’t out of the question. To satisfy a pestering curiosity, Chuck continued past the arch to see what the fourth wall held. Yet another arch, again unguarded, led to a tunnel with several branches visible from where he stood. The living chambers, he figured. He returned to the descending staircase.
The stairs spiraled downward, and the irregularly spaced torches flickered ominously against the walls. Chuck drew Jimmy’s dagger and held it in front of him, though he wasn’t sure just how much help it would be if he came across one of the kobolds. Even if he were able to dispatch one, it would almost certainly raise the alarm, and experience indicated that even the party couldn’t defeat an entire tribe’s worth at once. He thought back to TJ’s James Bond story and shrugged. Either it would work or it wouldn’t. No one could say he didn’t give it his best.
At the bottom of the stairs was a single door, presumably locked. Sitting in a chair in front of the door was a kobold, his chin resting peacefully on his chest as he snored. A ring of keys dangled from the sleeping guard’s belt. Chuck shook his head at his stupid luck and considered the options: He could try to kill the guard with his knife, but that could be messy and noisy, two things he didn’t want in case another happened to come down the stairs. Unfortunately, he had left his poisons in the bag upstairs, in retrospect a horrible decision. Going back wasn’t an option—who knew when the guards might be changed, or when this one would wake up.
He quickly made up his mind, and stepped carefully toward the guard. A brief inspection of the door revealed that it was, in fact, locked, so he needed to either pick it or swipe the keys. Years of picking pockets on the streets of Westmarch made the decision an easy one. A light swipe with a dagger separated the thong that connected the key ring to the guard’s belt. With keys in hand, Chuck quickly unlatched the door, slipped through, and closed it behind him. If the guard woke up, nothing would immediately seem amiss.
As he had hoped, it was, in fact, the prison. A long line of wooden doors stretched down either side of the corridor, each with a barred window to observe the prisoners. There was just a single torch to his side, leaving the farthest cells in gloomy near darkness. It felt damp, as befitted a dungeon, though that might have just been his imagination. After closing his eyes for a few moments to improve his dark vision, he left the torch burning by the door and moved down the row of cells, peeking between the bars for signs of his friends. The first several on either side were empty, but when he reached the fourth one, he was glad that he had left the torch behind and was moving quietly. The cell was inhabited by a kobold. Chuck reflected that it was possible the prisoner was some dual-scimitar-wielding kobold ranger who had forsaken his family and his heritage. More likely it was some rabble-rouser who had irritated the chief and been thrown down here instead of getting skewered. That sort of prisoner would see him not as an opportunity for escape but as an opportunity to get himself back in his boss’s good graces. Chuck continued down the hall.
The very last two cells held his friends. The one on the left had Stu, Jimmy, and Allison in it, and TJ was across the hall by himself. He nodded at the arrangement. TJ, a spellcaster, would be bound with his hands behind his back and with a gag in his mouth to keep him from using magic to escape. There was no reason why the archer and the swordsman shouldn’t be together, particularly if the bars were as strong as their dwarven heritage suggested. The kobolds wouldn’t have known that Allison had her own magical powers, since she didn’t exhibit them during the fight. He hoped she had been able to heal the boys from the vicious wounds they received during the skirmish. The fact that Stu was alive at all—let alone conscious—after the beating he took suggested that she had. The key ring only had two keys on it, one for the door to the outside and hopefully one to open all the cell doors. He put the key in the lock to the threesome’s cell and turned, pleased that it remained silent. Before he opened the door, he called out softly, “Psst.” The last thing he wanted was to be ambushed by Jimmy’s fists.
Not receiving an answer, he repeated louder: “Psst!” Still nothing. Frustrated, he called out softly, “Hey, Jimmy. It’s me!”
Silence.
Shaking his head, Chuck opened the door and stuck his head in. “Hello? Are you guys paying attention? C’mon, I’m trying to rescue you!”
Three figures jumped to their feet in alarm, and the largest one moved protectively in front of the other two, fists clenched. “Who’s there? Aren’t you a little short to be a kobold?”
“Geez. It’s me, Jimmy.”
“C’mon. Come get some if you want it.” Jimmy didn’t sound very sure of himself.
“Hello? Am I just talking to myself right now?” Chuck crept farther into the cell so they could see he was the one who had opened the door, but he immediately had to dodge backward to avoid the fist swung at his head. The blow was clumsy, as if Allison’s healing hadn’t been sufficient to get him back up to fighting snuff, and he easily avoided it. Chuck stepped forward to use the larger man’s inertia to trip him, and Jimmy landed face-first with a grunt. Stu and Allison were clearly still feeling the effects of the beating they had taken and were simply cowering in the back.
Chuck took two more steps forward, and Allison gave a little gasp of surprise and said, “Chuck! Is that you? Why don’t you say anything?”
“I did!”