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  Sira pulled Braeleigh away as Caspian growled softly, responding to the ranger’s clenched fists and indignant tone. “Easy, girl. No one cares how we got it. It’s just a matter of delivering goods and taking our payment.”

  “Our 600 gold,” Zeeto clarified.

  Previn shook his head, greasy hair flopping with the motion. “400.”

  “550,” Zeeto countered without hesitation. “If not for us, there wouldn’t be a shipment at any price.”

  The Talis Guild negotiator at the table raised an eyebrow, but it didn’t appear as if anyone but Gary noticed. He didn’t even roll a Perception check since he was explicitly watching for it. The rest… he couldn’t tell if they even bothered getting a roll.

  Previn tapped a finger to his temple for a moment before answering. “Got me an idea. Always short manpower up here. Broke through to an old dwarven shaft a few weeks back; ain’t got enough hands to excavate it, but odds are there’s more left in them old mines than my new ones. Been selling stakes for enterprising individuals such as yourselves to strike it rich.”

  “Nope,” Sira replied. “Gonna step right in and put the ‘nope’ on that one. We’re here to do a job, collect our fee, and deliver the proceeds back to our employer.”

  Zeeto held out a hand. “Hold on. Let’s hear him out.”

  “Been selling stakes for 2,000 gold apiece,” Previn continued. “But since cash is short right now, maybe I can cut you a deal. The pipeweed for a stake in the dwarven mines.”

  “But thy remuneration is destined for our patron’s purse,” Beldrak pointed out. “Without such, this venture should prove a costly travail.”

  These interplays were the meat of Gary’s love for role-playing. He’d offered the party a bag of magic beans for their payment—and Arguile’s—and here they stood debating the merits.

  “I’m a business man,” Previn said. “It’d come with papers and whatnot. You wouldn’t be out with nothing, and who knows what might be down there. Gold, gems, old dwarfy crafted stuff. I’d keep it all for myself… except on account of this gimpy knee I’ve got and no manpower to hire out for extra diggers.”

  “We shouldn’t take anything sight unseen,” Gary suggested, acting the instigator. “I mean, who’s to say it’s really dwarf-made mines down there and not old goblin digging. For all we know, it’s knot-holed timbers and bits of twine supporting the digging.”

  “It ain’t,” Previn said, thrusting his prominent lower jaw out even farther. “It’s dwarf-made, or I’m an elf.”

  Braeleigh scrunched her nose. “Not even if you were the last one…”

  Shaking his head, Zeeto wagged a finger. “No deal. We don’t sign anything without seeing it for ourselves.”

  “We came for gold,” Sira said. “Five hundred gold, to be exact. We should take it and head back.”

  “I’ll give you 450,” Previn reiterated. “Ain’t got the 500 at the moment if I was inclined. And I ain’t, neither. It’s 450 or barter for a stake.”

  “Betwixt a natty pair of choices, we find us pinned,” Beldrak said. “To crawl with poor pennies back to our benefactor and lay his tribute from our own meager pockets or delve like beardsmen to the earthy bowels and test fate’s kiss upon our fortunes.”

  Zeeto sighed. “Well, when you put it that way…”

  “We should at least look, right?” Braeleigh asked.

  “You won’t be disappointed,” Previn assured them with a curt nod.

  And so it was that Gary, Beldrak, Sira, Braeleigh, and Zeeto followed the half-orc mine operator into the shaft that had his partner’s name excised from the sign.

  They left behind them the man whose murderous deed had landed them in jail and an operative responsible for selling Arguile’s stolen shipment. And they hadn’t stayed long enough to encounter the mysterious stranger…

  Or had they?

  “Previn!” an imperious voice called out from the entrance to the cave. “I’ve come to see the owner of this sorry excuse for a settlement!”

  Gary stopped short. The others, including the half-orc leading the way, pulled up and turned to regard the one who’d bellowed from down the row of tents.

  He wasn’t especially tall, nor well muscled, but the way the stranger carried himself brooked no ignoring. The clothes the human wore were of fine make but mild disrepair as if from long travels and little washing. The heavy ermine cloak he wore carried more trail dust than its original black. His hair was long and greasy black. A bellows fog puffed with his every breath in long gouts that suggested a breathless haste in his ascent up the mountain trail. The only sign of armament was a longsword sheathed at his hip in a scabbard of ancient design.

  “Who the bleeding axe blades are you?” Previn bellowed back, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. “I’m Previn, and if you don’t like my mining camp, you can go right ahead and evict yourself.”

  “I’m looking for a man named Nethel,” the stranger said as he drew near. Each pace was swift and sure. If there was any concern about approaching the burly half-orc and the five armed adventurers at his side, the stranger concealed it utterly. Contempt was his armor, and he wore it like a tournament jouster. “I chase a rumor that has placed him hereabouts.”

  “I’m a miner,” Previn said as if that were any sort of answer. “I dig in the mountain. I pay others to dig it for me. And in between, I drink, smoke, and sleep. If any of my boys has an old name he ain’t shared, that’s his business, but I know ‘em all, and none’s ever called himself Nethel in earshot of me.”

  Zeeto cupped a hand to his mouth and spoke aside to Gary. “Who’s this grease stain?”

  The stranger paused and released the flap of the tent he had peered inside. His eyes snapped toward Zeeto with a look that promised fire. “I am Kurgath. Should you discover Nethel, seek me out with his whereabouts and you’ll be well rewarded.”

  With a look that came from a database admin, Sira made a simple request. “Can you quantify that?”

  “What hast this Nethel done, pray thee, to earn thy enmity?” Beldrak added.

  Kurgath scowled more shrewdly at Sira’s request than Beldrak’s demand for cause behind his pursuit of justice. “Ten thousand gold I can begrudge for the recovery of what the swine thief stole from me.”

  “You’re a pig farmer?” Zeeto asked incredulously.

  Kurgath bared teeth—perfect and white—in a snarl. “No! Nethel is the swine in question, and he’s robbed me of far more than mere livestock. If I find him in this camp and none reporting his presence, I’ll take my payment in blood!”

  With that, the strange traveler stormed down the row of tents, throwing back the flaps and sticking his head inside one by one. Previn tried, at first, to object, but Gary’s friends kept their voices more closely guarded.

  When Kurgath’s one-man stampede drew to a close with a parting threat and promise of gold before descending the mountain trail once more, Zeeto broke the silence with a clearing of his throat.

  “Can we get on with this? Let’s go check out our new mining claim.”

  11

  If Gary was any kind of expert on fantasy-world mining—and he was—then this was a shabby example of human excavation. Previn’s Mine showed every indication of proper planning, from layout to the gentle consistency of its downward grade, but its execution had been left in the hands of itinerant laborers and fugitives willing to live in the primitive conditions Previn and his now-departed partner had provided. The floor was broken and gouged, the walls uneven, and the support beams of questionable practical value.

  Had he not designed the manual elevator himself, Gary would have been concerned that the rickety, rope-and-pulley contraption wouldn’t have supported their weight—or its own for that matter. In the real world, he’d never have set foot in such a machine. But here in his dream, he was more curious what death beheld than worried over shoddy workmanship.

  Death in a workplace safety accident just wasn’t thematically appropriate.

 
; Gary’s only sense of self-preservation came from a combination of old habit and a worry that if he awakened from this dream he might never find his way back. Thus, when the others hesitated and held back, Gary was the first to climb aboard, hopping on the slightly swaying floor to show that it was safe for more than just his own meager weight.

  “Don’t be fraidycats,” Zeeto said as second passenger. “Feels plenty safe.”

  “The oak must not allow the shrub to cast its shadow overhead,” Beldrak said before murmuring a prayer and stepping aboard.

  Caspian barked and bounded, prompting Braeleigh to follow. “Careful! You fit between the safety bars!”

  “I’ll wait up here,” Sira said, folding her arms.

  Braeleigh grabbed the cleric and hauled her in. “Don’t split the party. I got a stern talking to from my grandnephew before heading off for a life of adventure. That was rule number one. Well, actually, it might have been more like rule six of seven. I think number one might actually have been to always set a watch for sleeping in the wilderness, but this is an important rule too.”

  Beldrak operated the hand crank that spooled out rope, lowering the lift car inch by creaking inch. The darkness loomed below.

  “If you find a spot to your liking, it’s all yours,” Previn called down after them, voice echoing from untold depths below them. “Only two stakes been sold, and they’re marked clear as diamond.”

  Sira closed her eyes, barely visible in the gloom. “Sevius, light our way.”

  Holding her mace aloft with the head now aglow, Sira became their lantern bearer.

  “See?” Braeleigh said with a hug for Sira. “We all need each other. Well, I can see in the dark pretty well, but I’m sure everyone else is, like, super happy to have magic light.”

  “Just don’t go getting blood all over it,” Gary joked. “Or we’ll be in the dark again.”

  Beldrak fixed a curious look on Gary. “Wherefore wouldst thou suggest such a happenstance?”

  Gary glanced around and realized all eyes were on him. The lift car had stopped descending. “What? We’re adventurers.”

  “That doesn’t mean there are going to be monsters around every corner,” Sira said in a scolding tone.

  Braeleigh ruffled his hair. “Gary’s just being paranoid. It’s probably because he’s so useless in a fight. He’s got that sort of ‘save me, I’m too pretty to fight,’ thing going on, except he’s not exactly pretty. He’s just got that sort of je ne sais quoi about him.”

  “What’s that mean?” Zeeto asked.

  “I can’t really say,” Braeleigh replied.

  “Then why’d you said it?”

  “No, that’s what it means. It’s elvish.”

  Gary snorted softly. He’d never planned for elvish to be French, but he’d never not planned it. Katie had just hijacked his world-building.

  “You think that’s funny?” Sira asked. “She thinks you’re too much of a damsel in distress to defend yourself.”

  “Just lower us, Beldrak,” Gary said wearily. “I’m not gonna knock Leigh for being accurate. But I’m probably not paranoid. Adventuring life is trading safety for riches. The least heroic thing we could have done was take Previn’s low-ball offer and slog back to Durrotek. You can all feel it, too, can’t you?”

  The lift lurched as Beldrak worked the crank.

  “Hell, yeah,” Zeeto said. “I was never walking away with short coin on that deal. I’d have drawn steel first.”

  “Admittedly, I didn’t come north to be a delivery girl,” Sira said. “The Path of Piety is wasted on mundane commerce.”

  “I don’t want to meet my first real live elf in eighty years and have to tell him I help humans suck smoke clouds up their lungs,” Braeleigh added.

  Beldrak was silent. His hands kept the pulley crank turning.

  “How about you, jumbo?” Zeeto asked. “Would you have settled and gone back for table scraps?”

  “The balance scales taunt me,” Beldrak said. “To the one plate, piled with duty, our benefactor hath enjoined us return with gold of certain quantity, and we five did swear. Across the balance, the other plate holds honor, and there be little honor to be found in the work of mules and asses. I must confess, when the balance tipped, and honor won the day, ’twas mine own thumb pressing down the side where honor wept for joy.”

  Zeeto shook his head. “I’m never visiting the far south. It is just so much work listening to you.”

  It wasn’t long before the lift car clanged to solid rock, its echo ringing up the pitch dark shaft. They’d bickered and chatted the whole way down, not once wondering what monsters might inhabit such a shaft. It would have been iconic to have gargoyles or bats or some such flying nuisances attack while the party was trapped and one wholly occupied with their safe travels.

  But not one of them worried openly about it. Gary missed the gaming table at times like that. He couldn’t imagine such an eventuality going unremarked.

  “Hey, at least nothing attacked us on the way down,” Zeeto said with a slap on Gary’s backside. “Right, Mr. Damsel?”

  The others chuckled at his expense. Gary raised an eyebrow and waited by the lift car.

  With a crash and clatter, a pulley slammed into the metal cage, trailing with it all the rope from high above.

  “Oh, shit!” Sira said, putting the first piece of the puzzle together in an instant.

  Braeleigh rushed over. Caspian took hold of the rope in his jaws and shook it like this was a game. “Excuse me!” the ranger called up the shaft, her melodic voice’s echo a choir of angels. “The rope fell. A little help, maybe?”

  Coming up to her side, Zeeto examined the loose end of the rope. “Not fell. Cut.” He held out the loose end. “Too clean for it to have frayed.”

  A thin slip of paper floated down lazily, like a leaf on an autumn afternoon. It was a playing card. Gary stepped in to pick it up and held it out for all to see by the light of Sira’s mace. It was the ace of diamonds, and the backside showed the Talis logo just like the packs Zeeto had pilfered.

  “There’s a note written on it,” Gary reported. “To whom it may concern: No hard feelings. Let’s call it even. Hope there’s a back door.”

  “Holy hell,” Sira said with annoyance. “We left some Talis lackeys up there, and they stranded us.”

  “Might be that I could ascend the rough-cut shaft,” Beldrak suggested. “Should I taketh with me yonder coil of rope, I might retrieve thee trapped here the umbral depths.”

  “Or… you could get stabbed to death by the Talis guys up there and tossed back down,” Zeeto stated bluntly.

  “Yeah,” Gary said. “Not sure that plan’s got legs. We’ve got plenty of exploring to do down here. Maybe we ought to look around.”

  As they started down the rough-hewn corridors, clustered in the feeble glow of Sevius’s grace, a knot clenched in Gary’s gut.

  The floor rumbled.

  “Guys?” Sira asked. “What was that?”

  d20: 4 + (DEX -1) = 3

  Gary had just rolled for Initiative.

  12

  “Moleants!” Gary shouted as the dog-sized creatures burrowed up from all around them. The rough rocky floor was like loose soil to the iron-mandible mammals. Bristle-furred bodies boiled up from the stone propelled by chitinous legs.

  Name: Moleant Hit Points: 5 Damage: 1d4+1

  Gary found himself penned in as two came out of the ground behind him at the back of the formation. At his back, his companions had weapons out and began hacking away at the subterranean beasts.

  By sound alone, he caught the crunch of broadsword upon furry carapace, the twang of bowstring, the snarl of juvenile wolf. The shadows swirled and shook as Sira wielded their light source as the mace it had been forged to be.

  There were times for music, and there were times for bashing moleants with a rapier. Lucky dodging and the creatures own ineptitude at attacking allowed Gary to evade two pincer bites until the latter time arrived.

>   Drawing steel, he gripped the short, basket hilt of his weapon and swung it in a downward chop like an angry golfer abusing his club.

  d20: 19 + (To Hit +1) + (Strength -2) = 18

  His rapier connected. A wild, errant swing and an unfortunate dodge by the creature combined in the beast stepping right into the blow.

  1d6: 4 + (Strength -2) = 2

  These little bastards only had five freaking hit points, and Gary hadn’t shaved off half of them. “I so need to get to the gym,” he muttered.

  “Maybe use the pointy end,” Zeeto suggested over his shoulder.

  Braeleigh yelped as she took a hit. Pincers scratched along Beldrak’s armor. Gary backed against the paladin as the two he faced closed in.

  “Don’t let them flank you,” Gary warned. “They’re animals but not dumb. They’ve got a hive mind. They’ll work together.”

  “I’d feel better hearing one of those songs right about now,” Braeleigh called out, pain clear in her voice.

  Why not? There was nothing in the rules about bardic music being instrumental only. What could Gary come up with on the fly, a cappella?

  “Come, cheer up, my lads, ’tis for glory we fight. We’re stuck, yet we’re brave, in this land without light. To honor we call you, as warriors not wimps. We’ll get our revenge on that half-orcish pimp.”

  Inspire: +2 To Hit

  To Gary’s mild surprise, he found his own spirits lifting as well. He was feeling positively upbeat about their chances of fighting off this swarm of minor pests.

  Right up until the two in front of him bit him in succession.

  Damage Taken: 3 (sharp)

  Damage Taken: 2 (sharp)

  Wonderful. That was his allotment of first-level starting hit points right there. Now he was down to whatever he’d rolled at level 2.

  Continuing with a second go-round of the verse before, he struck back, taking Zeeto’s advice and trying to use the rapier properly. While it didn’t make any difference as far as game rules, it did feel right wielding it like a fencer and not a barbarian.