The Birthday in the Dark
The mountain face held more caves than any map had noted. The party picked their way along the base of it in the thin morning light, counting openings, trying to read which ones looked inhabited and which ones just looked dangerous.
They heard the first cave before they reached it.
Singing — several voices, all different songs, all simultaneously at maximum volume. Torchlight flickered from the opening. The smell of roasted meat and spilled drink drifted out with the warmth of too many bodies in one place.
Cylia stopped at the entrance. "Goblins," she said.
"A lot of them," Arya said.
"They're celebrating something," Elaazar observed.
The guard at the entrance confirmed this: a goblin barely elbow-height, wearing a paper hat at a precarious angle, holding a torch with the serious purpose of someone performing an important function. He squinted at the three of them.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
Arya spoke Goblin. She told him they were guests. Here for the celebration. Wouldn't dream of missing it.
The guard stared at them. Made his calculation. Stood aside.
The goblin chief's birthday was being observed with the absolute commitment of a community that had decided this was the most important thing happening in the mountain today. Torches lined every surface. A fight was happening in one corner that had either started as a game or was about to become one. There were approximately thirty goblins between the entrance and the back wall, most of them already well past sober.
The chief was identifiable by the two paper hats.
The party moved through the celebration with the care of people who were significantly larger than the average guest and did not want to step on anyone. Goblins pressed food and cups on them with the indiscriminate generosity of creatures who believed everyone at a party was invited. Elaazar ate something roasted that was surprisingly good. Arya accepted a cup, looked into it, and set it down quietly.
Cylia found the drum.
It was sitting against a wall near the back, the chief's personal instrument, apparently, given the way a few goblins nearby watched it being picked up with a combination of alarm and reverence. Cylia played a beat. Just a beat — testing the sound, calibrating to the room.
The nearest goblins went from alarmed to delighted in about three seconds.
Elaazar, reading the room, began to dance. He had not been asked. He made a decision and committed to it, which is all dancing requires. Arya watched this with an expression that weighed the social necessity against everything in her nature that resisted it, then joined in because the alternative was being conspicuous.
The goblins lost their minds with happiness. The celebration reached a new register.
In the back of the cave, tied to a support post with the resigned patience of someone who had been there long enough to observe that goblins mostly forgot about their prisoners when distracted, was a dwarf.
Short and broad-shouldered, braids that had seen better days, watching the dancing with an expression that was impossible to read. She registered the party immediately — the wrong height, the wrong kind of deliberateness — and said nothing while the goblins were watching.
When Cylia drifted close enough, the dwarf spoke in a low voice without moving her mouth much: "Vinx. Dwarf. Looking for family heirlooms stolen by this lot. And extremely interested in leaving."
While the music peaked and the goblins spun in circles and a fight broke out near the front that drew the attention of everyone in that direction, Arya spotted a sack near the central pile of the chief's things — heavy, tied at the top, with the angular contents of objects rather than supplies. She picked it up and moved it to the back of the cave with the smooth naturalness of someone who had done nothing unusual.
Vinx looked at the sack. Opened it. Checked the contents. Closed it. "That's them," she said quietly, with a restraint that barely contained the relief.
Cylia cut her free.
They walked out during the next loud musical moment, with Vinx and the sack, and nobody looked their way.
The second cave held Hogdag.
The ogre was in the back, sitting with the bored patience of a creature that hired himself out to whoever was currently paying and was currently between employers. He was large enough that the cave felt proportionate around him, which says something about the cave. He looked at the party, at Vinx, at the treasure they'd brought as a hiring fee.
The negotiation was practical and brief. He was in.
The third cave was the wrong choice and the only choice, because the elf's tracks led here and the necrotic marks on their skin were ticking.
The owlbears were just inside — two of them, and they had opinions about the new arrivals that they communicated through direct action. Hogdag went forward without being asked, because that was why he was there, and the fight was brutal in the way of all fights where one side has four hundred pounds and no interest in restraint.
The last owlbear went down. So did Hogdag.
He had been hired for the caves and had done what he was hired for. Elaazar said something over him that was brief and genuine. They went forward.
Oozes guarding a side chamber — dispatched. More treasure recovered. A sloping corridor upward led them to a room full of cultists, six of them, who looked up from their work when the party entered.
They were wearing the robes.
The cultists looked at the robes, looked at the party's faces, and made a calculation. The calculation held. The party moved through without a fight.
Beyond the room was a crypt. And in the center of the crypt, a sarcophagus.
They should have left it. Knowing what they now knew about the cult, about ancient things sealed in stone, about what happens when you open things that were sealed for a reason — they should have left it.
They opened it.
The spirit that came out had been the last great leader of the Cult of Chaos, entombed here as a guardian, a weapon, a thing to be unleashed on anyone who found their way this deep. It was very old and very angry and had been in that box for a long time.
The fight was the worst they'd had. Worse than the bandits on the road, worse than the hermit's hut, worse than everything in between. The spirit didn't bleed and didn't tire and didn't negotiate. At a certain point the numbers were very simple: they were losing.
Elaazar reached for the deepest thing he had.
Divine Spark. The covenant between a cleric and his god, expressed as pure force. The spirit froze — incapacitated, suspended, held in a stasis that was already beginning to fade.
"Go," Elaazar said.
They ran. Vinx was the fastest of them, which was surprising and somehow felt right. They came out of the cave into cold night air and kept moving until the entrance was safely behind them.
They sat down in the dark and breathed.
"We're coming back," Cylia said, after a while.
"Yes," Arya said. "But with more than this."
Next episode: A freshly hatched copper dragon doesn't know his name yet — and only one person can fix that.