“Safer than angering Johan,” said Flinn, placing the stones back in the box. “Besides, just because we’ll perform Teldir’s incantation doesn’t mean we’ll repeat Teldir’s mistake.”
“And what was that?”
“Sticking around to observe the results,” said Flinn.
“Ha! So we head down, set the stones up around the stiffs, read some magic words, then bolt like a Gnome on fire,” said Benny.
“We’ll also need to draw some diagrams in salt and blood, set a trigger spell, that sort of thing.” The Tinderkin slipped the parcel into a rucksack. “Still, you’ve captured the essence of the plan.”
Benny nodded Flinn’s head. “Seems easy enough.”
“Seems like trouble,” said the bannerman. She wore the red and blue heraldry of a member of the Fourth Tier’s regiment of the city guard, though it was stained with the viscera of a midnight ten-cent beef roll.
“Very suspicious,” said her partner, a Sun Gnome in pristine but otherwise identical livery. He studied the scene before him with dark eyes set in a brick-brown face. He must not have liked what he saw, because the silver mustache beneath his long nose drooped into an extended frown.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” said Duine Poldo. “Is there a problem with his paperwork?”
The Troll snored loudly behind him.
“The paperwork looks all right,” the Human officer reluctantly offered, but her scowl said she wasn’t one to trust appearances.
“NPC papers don’t mean you can sleep in a public street,” said the Sun Gnome.
“He’s sleeping on private property,” Mrs. Hrurk said, loudly enough to be heard from her perch on the stoop. “Those are my steps.”
“So he was trespassing then?” A note of hope sounded in the taller bannerman’s voice, but her face drooped when she saw the expressions Mr. Poldo and Mrs. Hrurk’s wore.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” the Scribkin repeated.
The bannermen scowled and glanced at each other. Poldo suspected they were used to getting their way through a combination of quickly spoken jargon and implicit threats. Yet Poldo was more than familiar enough with the law to see through their jargon, and nobody out-threatens a Troll. He almost pitied the poor guards. It was clear they were looking for the sort of patrol that ended in a mug of coffee and an egg pastry, and instead they were stuck here with only unpleasant options. If they backed down, they’d lose face. If they tried to arrest Thane in this state, they might lose limbs instead.
The Sun Gnome snorted. “Still, we should interview the Troll.”
“Of course,” said Poldo, stepping aside.
The bannermen stared at the recumbent behemoth. Arth didn’t have a proverb about letting sleeping Trolls lie, but the two guards clearly felt such an axiom should exist.
“Someone should take down his name and a statement,” said the Human.
“Someone is welcome to,” said Mrs. Hrurk.
The two bannermen stared at each other expectantly. An awkward silence stretched and twisted in the cold wind.
Eventually the Sun Gnome relented and, with no small amount of trepidation, approached the sleeping Troll. “Sir?” he whispered, nudging the tip of Thane’s finger with the butt of his spear.
Thane’s awakening was a tectonic event, forecast only when his bloodshot eyes snapped open. Arms like tree-trunks slammed the pavers and pushed him upward, and he rose with the force and roar of a mountain growing from colliding continents. “What time is… how long did I sleep?”
Poldo raised his hands in supplication. “Just a few hours,” he said. “But I—”
That was as far as he got. The Gnome may as well have tried to placate an avalanche. With a roar like a rockslide, Thane barreled onto the street and sprinted Ridgeward.
“Someone should go after him,” said the taller bannerman.
“Someone should,” agreed her partner.
“I will,” Poldo harrumphed as he adjusted his coat. “Though I doubt I’ll catch up with him.”
The Sun Gnome shot him a sidelong glance. “Know where he’s going?”
“The Black Fathoms,” breathed Gorm, staring into the gloom.
“It’s almost enough to make you miss the Necropolish,” said Kaitha.
“Aye,” said the Dwarf.
“You miss the deadly traps, the razor-toothed horrors, and the predatory slimes?” Heraldin pointedly pulled an incisor like a dagger from the tatters of his cloak. “Really?”
“I miss knowin’ what I was up against,” said Gorm. “Traps and monsters and evil goo are part of the job. But this is… this is… what in the Pit is this?”
They stood on the edge of a bridge’s sheer drop. The suspended pathway looked to be carved from solid stone with a precise grace that rivaled the Khazad’im’s greatest ancestors. The path led to a walkway circumnavigating a massive pillar, as wide around as a watchtower, that rose from the black depths. The walkway had similar bridges spanning away from it to other pillars, which had similar walkways and ramps branching to yet more of the great towers. Above and below the party, similar networks of paths connected the pillars to each other and the walls of the cave. Some of these trunks were capped with ornate domes, while others had broken off near the top. The great monoliths stretched into the distance, filling a cavern wide and deep enough to fit all of Andarun inside.
All of this was illuminated by a wan, blue light that emanated from somewhere beyond the great pillars, like a moonrise through a titanic forest, a sacred glade for the gods of the earth and stone.
“I’d have thought the Black Fathoms would be… blacker,” said Jynn.
