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-- 8/8/6526 --
Aristobulus stepped up to the one door in the refuse chamber. The
last time he had used it, he had run into a pack of kobolds. What would
it be this time?
He opened the door and seven towering humanoids spun to face him.
Reddish-orange faces brightened as they saw a single elf enter the room.
They were well over six feet tall, their hairy hides spilling out of
reinforced black leather armor. Hobgoblins without any doubt. And
hobgoblins absolutely hated elves. But then, so did orcs, goblins, and
most other races. But then, Aristo hated orcs, goblins, and most other
races. And hobgoblins, of course. Couldn't forget hobgoblins. They were
too offensive to be easily forgotten.
Accordingly, Aristo instantly knew himself to be overmatched.
Hobgoblins were strong warriors. It came from being exceedingly
belligerent. The weak ones tended to bite the dust rather early in life.
An interesting variation on evolution. He might ordinarily be able to
take on a few of them, but seven were too many. Still, he had an idea for
reducing the odds. He cast his spell of sleep and watched with mixed
satisfaction as six of them dropped to the floor. Doesn't that figure?
The seventh hobgoblin wavered for a moment, considering whether to
attack or flee. With a hobgoblin, is was never a hard decision to make.
The hobgoblin bellowed a war cry and charged, catching Ari's thrown dagger
in his hairy hide. What was it they say about wounded animals? Ari
ignored the hobgoblin's roar of anger. However, it was not so easy to
ignore the flanged-mace arcing towards his head, but the clumsy assault
was easily dodged. The elf thrust his shortsword into his opponent's
broad chest. The hobgoblin staggered a couple of paces before dying.
Their seldom-used brains always were slow at grasping otherwise blatantly
obvious facts.
Ari looked down at the sleeping hobgoblins. How cute. Just like
pigs in a mire. And almost as smelly. They completely hated elves, and
would likely attempt to chase him down if he were to let them live. But
he felt like neither slitting their throats nor waking them one at a time
for some practice with his swordsmanship. Then he had a better idea than
simply killing them. Using their belts, he bound their arms tightly
behind them. That should take them some time to free themselves.
Besides, someone else might stumble upon them beforehand and finish the
job for him.
Exiting via the door next to the one to the rubbish room, Aristo
found himself in a large room containing nothing of note. He selected one
of the other three doors at random and made his way to a four-way
intersection. Examining the righthand one, he came to another boring
little room. There was only one door exiting it. A grin flitted at his
lips. Now, where might it go?
Peeking through the door, he saw six hobgoblins struggling to free
themselves from their bonds. Aristo called out hello and gave them a
cheery wave. They redoubled their efforts and spouted out some flaming
curses at him. Hmm, he would have to remember some of those oaths. He
chuckled at them, inspiring them to grow even more infuriated. Ari
returned to the intersection and quickly took another tunnel. It would
not take them long to free themselves now. He chuckled again. Once they
were finally free, he could add a bit of spice to his explorations as he
led them on some wild hunts. He had no doubt as to his ability to guide
the hobgoblins in confusing circles.
This tunnel led to a second four-way intersection, where again he
took the one on right, only to find it dead-ended. Or did it? A brief
check revealed a secret door opening into a large chamber with five walls.
How dull, he had already been in this place before. As a result, he
returned to the intersection and tried a different tunnel, which brought
him into a massive chamber. Whatever is had once been used for, he could
certainly not determine.
A number of blustering roars reverberated down the tunnel behind him,
followed by a roughly slammed door. Ah, the hobgoblins must finally be
free. Now the fun could begin. Unless, of course, they were totally
inept at tracking people. It would not surprise him. They would, as
likely as not, only find him if it were detrimental to him, rather than
amusing. He rushed into one of the doors in opposite wall, stumbling onto
yet another four-way intersection. Decisions, decisions.
This time he went left, passing by a short tunnel terminating at a
door, as it was obviously the other door exiting that huge chamber. He
pressed on to a second huge chamber, whereupon he drew out his trusty
blades. He could make out the warm shapes of a number of diminutive forms
cowering amongst the rubble strewn about the room. He knew not what they
were, as they were scantly more than a foot tall, with contorted, lumpy
bodies.
He had not the opportunity to regard them further, as once they
perceived him to be alone they charged en masse. This was becoming
tiresome. Were there no creatures down here that were not violent towards
him? Of course not. They would have been killed off long ago. Isn't
evolution wonderful?
Aristo dodged a salvo of their darts. Then they attacked him with
knives and nets. They might be many, but their puny forms were most
easily splattered over the floor with sword, dagger, and foot. Their
lumpy, disgusting forms were really quite fragile. In moments, the few
remaining ones with intact bodies fled up the passage. So fragile, and
yet so aggressive. Were there no intelligent opponents in this place?
Glad to see them gone, Ari glanced around this large chamber. He
noted a door in one wall. The hobgoblins should be somewhere behind him,
so now was no time to pause to admire the scenery. Ari tugged open the
door, expecting the worst. What he found was a stairwell leading
downwards.
His eyes took on an avid look. Finally! A way down into the deeper
reaches of these caverns! Casting aside any thoughts of games with the
hobgoblins, Aristo ventured down those stairs. He felt certain that these
would prove to be a gateway to greater enlightenment than had the last set
of stairs.
This stairway descended some ways before leveling out into a
corridor. There was a door on his right, and a second farther on. Aristo
listened to these new surroundings, but all was quiet here. It was a
nice, refreshing silence carrying no trace of the presence of others.
Most assuredly an incorrect impression.
Opening the first door, Aristo was struck by a wall of reek. He
immediately regretted even touching that door. Entering, he noted a pair
of dead humanoids and three more skeletons laying in the awkward positions
which spoke of death in battle. The corpses had been here some time as
was evident from their ripe smell. The skeletons had obviously been here
longer. He was unable to determine race of any of them, since the corpses
were too decomposed and as for the skeletons, he had never bothered to
study the anatomy of humanoid skeletal structure.
As he was looking down upon a evilly grinning skeletal face, the hand
of the skeleton suddenly moved with a dry rattling, powered by no earthly
sinew. The bony hand reached out, clutching at Ari's foot. Ari kicked
the hand away, jumping back and almost stumbling over a second skeleton as
it was climbing to its fleshless feet. Disbelief of this unnerving event
overwhelmed Ari long enough for the three acursed skeletons to close in
around him. True, he had heard of undead and animated corpses, yet he had
never seen one in the flesh, so to speak.
A pair of deathly cold hands grasped for him. Ari could feel his
defensive wards collapsing as he twisted away from the clutches of the
animated skeleton. He swung his dagger viciously, but it only glanced off
of a hollow ribcage without more than chipping the dried bones. Of
course, they had no flesh for his blades to slice into, thus his sword and
dagger would have little effect upon them. Or wouldn't they?
Aristobulus swung his silvered sword parallel to ground with so much
force that it fractured the spine of one skeleton, whose remains were sent
clattering over the stone floor. With the bones no longer in contact with
one another, the magic animating the skeleton should dissipate -- assuming
Ari remembered his arcane lore correctly. But the time was not for him to
dwell upon it as one of the remaining skeletons cracked Aristo on the
backside with a scabbarded sword, making Ari glad the skeleton lacked the
brains to unsheathe the weapon.
Spinning around, the grey elf struck the skeleton in the side of the
head with his sword. The vacant skull of the animated skeleton was
knocked across the room to shatter against the wall. The remaining bones
lost their cohesion and clattered to the floor in a small pile as the
spell of animation was broken. Aristo repeated the maneuver on the last
skeleton, reducing it to a pile of dry bones.
Seeing that the skeletons were no longer moving, Aristo kicked their
bones across the floor to make sure they stayed that way. Repulsed by the
thick scent of death, Aristo made a hasty exit via the other door in the
room. It opened onto a narrow corridor that took him to a fair-sized
chamber, where a pair of humanoids over eight feet tall charged at him out
of opposite corners.
Aristo cursed his ill luck. He was sick of mindless fights, yet had
no choice about this one. As with most of his life, he had little or no
say over what happened to him. Once again philosophical thoughts were
driven from his mind as for the untold time Aristo received a battle
wound: the broadsword of the leading humanoid sliced into Ari's forearm.
Ari's returned the payment with interest, and the humanoid dropped to his
knees, clutching at the entrails spilling from his abdomen. Aristo
hamstrung the other one before severing his throat when he fell off his
feet.
Aristo tied a bandage around the shallow gash in his forearm. It was
a good thing he carried plenty of bandages and healing salve, but then his
overwhelming propensity for getting wounded in the most unlikely of
circumstances had inspired him to do so when preparing for his final
voyage. And alas, these tunnels could hardly be considered "the most
unlikely of circumstances" when he was getting carved up by every other
idiot with a sword.
Hurriedly departing the room to be away from the smell of death,
Aristobulus advanced into another huge room. No one jumped him this time,
surprisingly enough. This room was even more empty than most. Who had
designed this place? What deranged mentality had conceived of these many
twisted passages and empty chambers serving no purpose that Aristo was
able to divine.
Many of the chambers in this place seemed to have no real function.
Where were the furnishings? Many rooms had at most a scattering of
useless and broken items that often had not been touched by living hands
in countless aeons. The only furnishings he had seen thus far were to be
found in the dwellings of gangs of creatures. So that must be where all
the interesting stuff was. All of these empty places must be serving as a
no-man's-land between the inhabited regions, buffer zones between
competing factions of inhabitants. He must try to find some of the more
interesting inhabited regions. There he would be able to root out
information pertinent to his quest and learn more of these tunnels.
The door opposite Aristo led into a much smaller room. He turned
aside from the two doors before him and took the corridor to one side.
This conducted him to a four-way junction. Selecting the one on his
right, Aristo strode along, passing by a side-tunnel. He continued until
the tunnel opened up into a long hall. It was very wide, with a line of
columns down center, possibly to support the expansive ceiling stretching
off past the range of his infravision.
Some distance down the passage, Aristo came to a wide stream
splitting the hall in half. Even from here, he could not make out the end
of the hall. Examining the stream, he could tell that the water was
moving fast, implying that it must be fairly deep. There was a fissure in
either wall and in part of the ceiling. It might have been caused by an
earthquake, or perchance an irritated mage of exceptional powers. The
fissure had also destroyed two of the columns supporting the ceiling. Not
a trace of them remained except for the strangely-shaped stalactites
growing from the fractured ceiling.
He could not see into the water with his infravision -- the water
absorbed heat much too readily for his eyes to see into it and thus make
out any detail of the stream bed. He was not going to tax his luck in
wading across. He had had too much experience with his luck to be that
stupid. Aristo lived by a simple rule: if anything could go wrong, it
most assuredly would do so when it was most inconvenient for him.
Besides, he espied a water-logged raft on the opposite bank. Of
course it was on the opposite bank. But it had at least not sunk... yet.
He eyed the raft for a few seconds. It looked none too solid -- but then
that was to be expected. He paused to refill his depleted waterskins.
The water tasted of minerals, nevertheless it was otherwise clean and
refreshing. He imagined that under normal light the stream would probably
be crystal clear.
The elf freed his whip from his belt. This could be tricky. Still
and all, it should be possible. He scrutinized the raft some more. Not
much to lash onto. However, the planks of the raft were nowhere near
close to being even. Moving to the very edge of the stream, he determined
his whip was just barely long enough to reach the raft. It took a couple
of tries, nevertheless he was able to catch one of the more irregular
planks with the weighted tip of his whip. He pulled at his whip gently
since he was stretched as far as he dared without falling in. The raft
was resisting his efforts. He was beginning to worry that it might be
secured in place when the raft finally drifted out into the swift water,
Ari stepped away from the stream, reeling in his prize.
Up close, the raft looked even more unsturdy, little more than a
lash-up job to get someone across. He just hoped it did not fall apart
under his weight. Stepping onto the raft, he found it almost could not
support him. It sank under his weight until most of the raft was under
the surface of the water, and was thus hidden from his infravision,
preventing him from being able to see whether or not the planks were
breaking up.
Gingerly he picked up the pole on the raft -- trying not to do
anything that would inspire the raft to break up under him -- and pushed
off from the bank. He propelled his way across the stream with the long
pole. It was a good thing he had not tried to wade across: the water
would have been well over his head in a couple places and the water was
indeed very swift. He reached the other bank before the raft drifted too
far downstream towards the fissure in the wall. He quickly moved to solid
ground -- he always had hated deep water. He pulled the raft back up onto
the dry stone floor, so it would remain here should he have any further
need of it. He was surprised the ruddy thing had even held together as he
examined it once it was out of the water and thus fully revealed to his
elven eyes.
Glad to be done with the water crossing, Aristo strolled on down the
hall. Though the hall was large enough for giants, Aristo suspected it to
have been delved out by dwarves or gnomes, whose thoughts always spanned
greater dimensions than their own small frames. The hall eventually
narrowed down to the size of the normal tunnels Ari was used to traveling
in. He came to a door on his left. Farther along he could see the tunnel
opened up into some sort of chamber.
Passing by the door, he proceeded to the opening at the end of the
tunnel. Peeking into the chamber, he was surprised to see five crab-like
humanoids laying in the room, the likes of which he had never before seen
nor heard about. Their body heat indicated them to be alive, so they must
be resting. Shouldn't want to disturb them, now would we? Aristobulus
back-pedalled to the door. There was no need for any more unnecessary
fighting. And those crabmen looked none too friendly.
The door admitted him into a semi-circular room. An arch was set in
the curved wall opposite him. Except for the sounds of some small insects
scurrying about, Aristo was alone in this room. A change of pace from
getting assaulted, but it did nothing to reveal to Aristo the wisdoms said
to be hidden down here.
He stepped into the passage beyond the arch, noting a door on his
left. He could hear some muffled voices through the door. What have we
here? Aristo pushed the door open enough to make out what the voices were
saying...