Fool's Birthright

Myna squinted as a plump raindrop splashed against the bridge of her nose, then pulled her hood farther forward to overhang her brow.

“The weather is turning bad,” Myna said, elbowing Breakaleg. “We can’t stay in the open. Are we going inside now?”

The cleric grunted, not budging—as if his boots were cemented in place even as the increasing drizzle drummed on the waxed canvas of his waterproof greatcoat. He continued to stare at the mouth of the mine, lips moving without a sound like he was listing everything he saw to himself. Before him was the mine entrance, a dozen feet up a huge limestone cliff-face—reachable from the meadow directly below by a crude set of slate steps. Small heaps of rubble were scattered to either side of the steps—some of the heaps were caked together with dirt as if they’d been in place through numerous rainstorms, while others appeared to have been freshly deposited, as if the shards of stone had been brought out the cave recently for some reason. It was obvious the Goblins had altered the mine entrance from how it would have originally appeared, and made the opening much smaller than the interior diameter of the cave itself—undoubtedly to better retain heat inside during cold weather, and to make it easier to shut whenever they wanted. They had erected simple timber supports to reframe the opening, and set it in the cliff with a mortar of clay and bits of rock. It was the Ixians, not the Goblins, who picked such an excellent site in terms of vantage and defensibility, but either way, the Goblins were now the beneficiaries, and Breakaleg couldn’t see a way towards the mine without lookouts seeing him coming a metaphorical mile off.

“There’s nothing more to judge from out here,” Myna said.

“I’m formulating the plan,” Breakaleg snapped, barely glancing at her before he returned his eyes to the old mine entrance with the Goblins’ makeshift reinforcements.

“No, you’re not,” Myna said, crossing her arms. “You’re dallying. We’ve come this far, and you’re afraid to proceed.”

Adan slipped some sort of half-visor onto his head—a bronze semicircle wrapping around the back of his skull, supporting a front appendage which covered his artificial eye. He strode forward onto the open tract of grass before the mine—leaving the cover of trees and beginning to cross the small meadow below the steep limestone in which the entrance was situated. He cut a striking image—a lone figure crossing the grass, shoulders swaddled in a voluminous poncho, silver-gray in the weak morning light filtering through clouds to fall on the hazy landscape.

Myna and Breakaleg exchanged glances.

“That thing he wears looks like an Eyeshade,” Myna said quickly. “Elf tech. They make the energy radiated by living bodies sharply visible. Fighters use them to enhance their sight—for combat. He knows we’re not attacking the Goblins, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” Breakaleg said. He furrowed his brow. “I think so.” He ran through the admittedly few words he’d exchanged with the Elf who had attached himself to their expedition, during the previous day walking, or through the uneasy night they’d all spent around a campfire in the foothills—hoping some threatening clouds on the horizon would hold off in their approach until sometime after dawn. They did not feel, to Breakaleg, like ordinary clouds—as if some relatively small storm system had indeed sneaked past the Sunwaki Mountains from farther north. It had become rather urgent that the travelers get safely underground in the mine.

Myna moved as if about to follow Adan, and Breakaleg grabbed her elbow.

“Wait,” he whispered, “Let him get there first. We’ll find out if the Goblins are hostile or not this way.”

Myna glared at Breakaleg, then yanked her sleeve from his fingers. Leaving the treeline and hurrying after the Elf, Myna caught him in the valley halfway to the mine entrance. Too far away for Breakaleg to hear what words were exchanged, they moved for concealment behind some large boulders. Grumbling, Breakaleg left the trees and followed them…

“Hello!” Breakaleg called, eyes boring into the darkness of the cave entrance. Standing in wan sun himself, his eyes were adjusted for lightvision, not darkvision—so from the outside, the mine was gloomy and mysterious even to a Dwarf. “We are but humble pilgrims of Alitheia, and we happened upon this cave while seeking shelter before the coming storm. Is anyone here?”

“I don’t understand,” Adan began, voice low. “You know this mine is occupied. Why do you act as if we are here by accident?”

“Because,” Breakaleg said, voice just as low, “all we want, for now, is to get inside, see what there is to see, and get out again. It’s all the better if the Goblins have no idea we’re here specifically gathering information about their liar.”

“Ah,” Adan said, nodding, “clever. So—”

An arrow whipped above Breakaleg, its trajectory barely missing him, and thwacked into the shield Adan carried slung on his side. Breakaleg flinched, reflexively pulling back from the mine entrance, as Adan unslung the shield and actively held it in front of himself—not trusting its passive protection and luck to keep him safe a second time.

Myna leapt clear, somersaulting for the cover of rocks. “This way!” she shouted, raising her hand into view, giving Adan and Breakaleg a rallying-point. They sidled off the steps, crossed the grass towards Myna’s rocks, and hunkered down.

A second arrow whizzed out of the cave, glancing off the rocks and snapping. Myna chewed her lip, looking beyond the rocks at the broken arrow lying in some damp lichen and moss, feeling a pulse of choppy wind and drizzly rain against her face.

“I don’t think the Goblins are respecters of Alithia,” Myna said.

Breakaleg cursed quietly to himself. “We must get back to the treeline,” he said. He made a vague gesture towards the sheltering woods they had left to enter the meadow.

An ominous, instinct-born sizzle slunk across the skin of the Dwarf.

A resounding boom shook the rocks as a vibrant, crooked, dog-legged, khopesh-blade of crimson lightning streaked from the sky into the trees, overwhelmingly intense, as bright as a sun, yet lasting only a fraction of a second. Palpable, crackling force surged from the airy crown of a tall sycamore, into its dusty roots—then the tree exploded, disgorging torrents of fire as it threw splinters and cinders in every direction. Breakaleg flinched away, flattening himself against the rock, staring wide-eyed at the new hole in the treeline: even as far away as he was from the lightning-strike, he had felt the sickening heat of it on his brow and cheeks.

Myna’s jaw fell, dazzled eyes fixed on the burning stump of the tree. “The storm is about to arrive,” she said softly. She shook herself, face turning hard as she glanced at Breakaleg. “Coming here was a wonderful idea. I’m glad you thought of it.”

“We can’t go back,” Adan said, grabbing both Myna’s and Breakaleg’s shoulder, “so we have to go forward. I prefer the Goblins to the storm.”

Myna nodded, silently mouthing a countdown from five as Adan drew his scimitar and Breakaleg took his maul in both hands. Myna untucked the bag from her sash, and gingerly unwrapped a wooden shortbow. Taking the string from her pocket, she braced one delicate limb of the bow against her instep and leaned into it, flexing the weapon with her weight before stringing it; she soundlessly reached “One.”

All together, Myna, Adan, and Breakaleg swung themselves around the rocks; a pair of Goblin archers now visibly loitered in the mouth of the cave—rubbernecking at the rocks, crude flatbows in their hands. Their faces registered surprise as the trio broke cover; Myna nocked an arrow and shot in a single motion; the arrow streaked through space, before burying itself in the neck of the nearer Goblin. The stricken archer collapsed, gargling, as the other scrambled to nock an arrow of his own. He was too slow—Adan reached the cave entrance ahead of the others with his long strides, hacking the Goblin’s bow out of his hands even as the hapless archer fidgeted with it. Adan’s sword swung a second time; the Goblin dodged, narrowly evading the swishing bronze as it clove air. Breakaleg swung his maul when the Goblin wheeled nearer to him; changing direction as quickly as a startled hare, the Goblin danced back, letting the heavy weapon arc towards the ground. Myna, Breakaleg, and Adan took the ceded ground and pushed into the cave.

The Goblin turned and scampered for the interior of the mine, vanishing in darkness. There was a thud, followed by a loud stone-on-stone grinding sound echoing from inside the mine. Myna, Breakaleg, and Adan glanced at each other, lips tight, stiffly waiting for whatever that sound preceded. The grinding quickly ended, and as moments flowed past with nothing happening except the rain beyond the mine entrance becoming more violent, they began to breathe again.

“What was that noise?” Myna asked, clearing her throat. Her heartbeat was already less overwhelmingly loud in her own ears, now that the mine had been breached moderately successfully. She reasoned whatever awaited them inside could not possibly be worse than allowing the storm to pass over them without shelter.

Breakaleg frowned. The ambient sunlight bleeding into the mine was getting weaker by the moment, with clouds overspreading the humid hillside like a blanket smothering a fire, so his eyes were adjusting to darkness. More of the interior of the mine was being revealed to him as his pupils widened and widened—his eyes becoming virtually jet black. He saw, fifty or so feet ahead, that the stone floor dropped away.

“That was the noise,” Breakaleg said, lowering his maul and pointing with one hand farther into the passage ahead. Myna followed the gesture and looked in the direction he pointed.

“The floor collapsed?” she asked, voice tense.

“No,” Breakaleg said, “it’s a pitfall trap. The Ixians were very clever with building mechanical things. I’ve heard of trapdoors like this, placed at the entrance of their dwellings to open underneath invaders as they tried to—to—invade. Obviously this one still works, and the Goblins know how to operate it.”

Myna took a few cautious steps and stared at the rectangular pit ahead, easily thirty feet long and stretching from wall to wall across the passageway. “How do we bypass it?”

“I’d be willing to bet there’s a lever in there to activate the mechanism,” Breakaleg said, pointing at an alcove recessed in the passage wall, on the far side of the pit.

“A lever?” Myna echoed.

“Yes,” Breakaleg said, nodding.

“On the other side of the pit? Exactly where we can’t reach?”

Breakaleg frowned. “Yes.”

The cleric looked around, trying to keep the uncertainty off his face as he hoped to find something which would spark an idea.

“You two might feel this is sufficient shelter,” Adan piped up, “but I would like to be farther underground before the storm passes directly over us.”

“You’re welcome to jump into the pit,” Breakaleg grumbled. Then, “Wait! I have an idea! Give me a rope.”

Myna rooted in her satchel, looking for a length of rough-spun jute rope they had brought with them. She handed the coil to Breakaleg. The cleric quickly tied a bowline knot at one end of the rope, making himself a simple lasso. He moved towards the edge of the pit with small, careful steps. 

“If I can throw this over the lever…” Breakaleg said, trailing off and beginning to wind up for a throw, twirling the rope with a circular motion of his wrist. He threw the rope at the alcove across the pit; the lasso bumped into the passage wall and fell limply to the floor. Grumbling, Breakaleg began to draw on the line—dragging the knot back towards himself until it first fell into the pit, then returned to his side. Even before he began winding up for a second throw, Breakaleg had realized that the angle from the edge of the pit, into the alcove, made his idea impracticable.

“That won’t work,” Myna said. She nodded into the dark. “I see some shards of stone debris scattered on the far side of the pit.”

“I see that, too,” Breakaleg said, giving her a puzzled look, the rope hanging listlessly from his hand.

“Throw the lasso over one,” Myna said.

•••

Myna blinked in the glare of the morning sun as she stepped out of an alleyway, her platinum-blonde hair stirring as the breeze moved across it. She took a stem of grass from between her teeth and held it in her hand contemplatively, looking up into the blue sky and listening to the familiar sounds of Kingsholm coming to life around her. Laundry was getting hung on lines; workmen were being loud to wake themselves up, as they began digging holes for the posts of a new deck on the general store; a wiry horse drawing a trap rattled past, spoked wheels as high as a man’s waist creaking like old trees in stiff wind. The air was still dewy and not yet hot, the scent of honeysuckle mixing with the petrichor left from last night’s drizzle; cloying, earthy air as refreshing as the first sip of a parsley julep (one assumed—though Myna had never tasted a julep.)

“What’s wrong?” a voice called.

Myna’s eyes snapped open, and the pleasant memory she’d used to calm herself evaporated—cold reality pouring into her senses once again. She felt the pull of gravity upon her hair and the loose folds of her cloak, lengthening them towards the pit beneath her like the fronds of a weeping willow. Her muscles tightened, and she clung to the rough rope with both sweaty hands.

“Why did you stop?” Breakaleg called across the fifteen-or-so feet of open, dark space which now separated them.

“Just catching my breath,” Myna shot back.

“Don’t,” Breakaleg said. “The rock at the other end of the line could give way at any moment. It’s also very possible the Goblins will come, see what you’re doing, and hack the rope down. This is all extremely precarious.”

“Thanks for telling me that,” Myna called, and again began dragging herself forward. Her bent knees were slung over the line, trailing behind her as she slowly, hand over hand, pulled herself along. One end of the line was secure in Adan’s vast hands, the Elf holding it firmly, feet braced. Myna had no concern about the line slipping on that end. But at the opposite end—with the bowline simply thrown over a shard of stone and pulled tight—Myna could not help but imagine the knot coming undone and dropping her into the pit as she made the ill-advised effort to climb across…

Myna swung her legs off the rope the moment solid ground was within reach, and stood for a moment, heart returning to a normal rhythm. “I made it,” she called across the pit after a pause.

“Wonderful,” Breakaleg called in return. “It’s fortunate you’re as small and wispy as you are.” If his face showed the comment was good-humored, Myna couldn’t see it.

“I’m taller than you are,” Myna called. She was unable to see by Breakaleg’s expression how the comment landed. She could only discern the mismatched outlines of the Dwarf and Elf standing side-by-side on the far edge of the pit. They were little more than thirty feet away—but it had become pitch dark in the mine, and the dim figures would have been totally invisible to a Human. “Now go to the lever—close the pit,” Breakaleg called.

Myna refrained from replying to the unnecessary instruction, and headed for the alcove. Reaching the lever, she saw immediately that while the bones of the mechanism were Ixian, it had been reclaimed from desuetude by Goblins and they had not only repaired and maintained it, but had very much made it their own. The original wooden handle had been replaced with a crude sinew wrap. The chiseled stone housing at the base of the lever was decorated with ghastly charcoal art. Whatever was being used to grease the gears and wheels beneath the lever filled the alcove with a pungent, rancid smell that made Myna’s eyes water. Crinkling her nose, she grabbed the lever in both hands, pushing with all her weight until the inertia was overcome and it toggled to the other side of its centerline with a dull thud. Gears rattled on their axes as teeth enmeshed. A flywheel at the side of the lever housing began to turn. A low, heavy grinding noise—exactly like she’d heard before—echoed through the passage. 

Moments later, Adan and Breakaleg stepped into view outside Myna’s alcove. “It worked,” Breakaleg began. Myna wasn’t sure if his impressed tone was owing to the skill she’d shown in pulling it off, or the fact that the antique mechanism still functioned at all.

“Evidently,” Myna said.

An angry chorus of chittering voices reverberated from deeper in the mine. Torchlight began to bleed around a twist in the stone walls.

Myna chewed her lip, hairs bristling on the nape of her neck. “So,” she said, “how about them Goblins, eh?”

Breakaleg stared at the point of light, the faint glimmer like an overwhelming starburst to his black orbs of eyes, fully acclimated to dark. “They must have heard the pit close,” Breakaleg stammered, “and know we defeated the obstacle.”

Myna, Breakaleg, and Adan saw too many Goblins to count at a glance round a curve in the passage several dozen feet ahead, running in a mass, shoulder to shoulder—with three or four Hobgoblins twice the height of their companions mixed into the dense group. Torches, pickaxes, and bronze daggers waved above red and purple horns. Snarling angrily in their own language and a pidgin of Common, the Hobgoblins shouted loud commands and encouragement at the others. 

Breakaleg whirled towards Myna, face pale. “Stay here with the lever—open the trap underneath them as Adan and I draw them towards the mine entrance!”

Myna shook her head furiously. “You mean stay here so they’re occupied with killing me while you escape from the mine?”

Adan clutched his scimitar, grimly facing the onrushing throng—apparently not surprised to find himself dying in a forlorn last stand.

“I would never try to use you like that!” Breakaleg said, grabbing Myna by the shoulders and looking into her face, believing the words for at least as long as it took to say them. “You’re a sneaky thief—this sort of thing is what you’re best at! Hide in the alcove and they’ll rush right past you!”

Myna grimaced, trying for a half second to think of a better plan, but finding that her mind was jammed like an overwound clock as the Goblins drew closer. “Alright,” she blurted. “Go!” She shoved Breakaleg in the direction of the mine entrance, starting him on his way. The cleric tugged the fighter’s sleeve and the two of them bounded back in the direction they had come, screaming taunts in offensive imitations of Goblin voices to reverberate in the tunnel. Myna pressed herself against the back wall of the alcove, hoping against hope the incoming Goblins were too focused on the other two leaving to see that she had stayed behind, then crouched behind the housing of the lever, holding her breath. 

She heard the chaotic tramp of disorganized feet, as the Goblins and Hobgoblins surged past the alcove, not slowing, barreling in the direction of Adan and Breakaleg. Myna blinked, letting out a puff of air—almost visible in the rank atmosphere of the alcove. It’s going well so far, she thought. Taking no time to marvel, she got to her feet; she grabbed the lever, stretched to her limit to peek out of the alcove without letting go of it, and watched the Goblins approach the closed trapdoor.

The moment came. She took a breath, winced at the smell, and pulled the lever.

The pit opened under the Goblins—the dull sound of grinding stone being overpowered by the shrieks exploding from a cloud of warty falling bodies. A loud splash told of water—some pond, or subterranean river—at the bottom of the pit. Myna shoved the lever the opposite way—the trapdoor ground back to a closed position. Silence descended again on the passageway; the Goblins were utterly gone. 

•••

A handful of Elves splintered from the larger group and approached the cabin, their amber-colored eyes narrow and their mouths like hyphens. The old, wrinkly Elf inside the cabin pressed his stoic face to the windowpane and gave them a long, deploring look. The brief silence was punctuated by the angry barking of the old Elf’s dog, somewhere inside the cabin. The old one moved from the window to the door, cracked it, and called out to the advancing Elves in a loud voice. 

“Not doing yourselves any favors, coming here,” he said. “Change your minds now, and I’ll send you home with your lives. That’s as good an offer as you’ve got coming, given what you’re trying here. I suggest you take it.”

The leader of the group stepped forward. He cracked his neck with a jerk of his head, and let out a sigh—a sound like wind moaning through a broken lantern.

He leveled yellow eyes on the old one, and spoke with a voice more mellow and refined than anyone would imagine coming from such a scarred, frightening visage. “The risk,” he said, “of losing one's life has to be weighed against the value of the cause. All of us at Paragon have done that, and judged that the cause of aiding our race in this moment of dire need is worth the risk to ourselves. Feel the fever on your skin. The power of the metal cannot be denied or dismissed, or left here to languish for another century. You have seen it. You know what it is. It’s time for a new wave of moral correction to wash across this once-proud land, and what you’re hiding here will instigate it.”

“Swiftcry represents a godly power,” the old Elf said, “that’s true. It has the ability to wrestle this world into submission and drag it screaming into a new age, sure. But if you think you can use it for your own purposes, then you’re even dumber than those maniacs who tried to take it in the first place. At least they knew the thing had an irrepressible will of its own.”

The old Elf was quite sure the younger Elf wouldn’t understand what he was being told, but he was surer still the younger Elf would never understand it if he didn’t at least try to tell him.

The younger one grinned. “Death is no deterrent for the children of the Elnaril. Is it for you?”

He showed just how much good-faith he had brought to the parley by nodding to the Elf on his left. That ruffian charged the door without any further prompting, brandishing his saber in a threatening motion. Then the door burst open. Like a huge and fabulous dove, the old Elf swept onto the porch, his oiled trench coat billowing around him. A shotgun had materialized in his hands seemingly from nowhere.

“The Triad’s Successors,” the old Elf screamed, “send our best wishes for your new world!” His first shot caught the incoming Elf squarely in the chest as he ascended the front steps. The blast at such close range carried him off his feet, and he slammed onto his back at the bottom of the steps, rolling across the dirt. He made a noise in his throat, but did nothing else. The stillness that followed lasted the length of a deep breath; when it broke, it was not just the parley group of five that rushed towards the cabin, but the entire force of forty or fifty—a choir of screams erupted as they surged forward, sabers waving, a front of smoke pushing ahead of them as rifles coughed. The banisters of the porch threw splinters; a windowpane shattered; the old Elf ducked behind the doorframe as the wooden trim split just above his head, a lead ball embedding itself deep in the weathered grain.

The barking of the dog somewhere in the cabin turned frantic as feet thundered up the front steps of the porch; other raiders climbed over the railing, like corsairs boarding a ship; they heading for the door and windows simultaneously, an overwhelming assault swarming the cabin all at once.

Roaring a defiant laugh of fear and despair, the old Elf rushed for the fireplace of rough-hewn stones. He reached for one of the stones, with nothing to recommend it to the notice of an uninitiated observer. He grabbed it, pulled it free, and a groan ran through the structure of the cabin. The deadfall tripped, heavy wooden beams collapsed across the doorway; the Elves below had barely enough time to scream in dismay as the front of the building was spontaneously demolished, and they were crushed like beetles under a boot. Others were scrambling over the fallen beams and the dead Elves before the dust had settled; they were not deterred, and showed on their faces that they had no remorse, no sympathy for the friends whose backs they charged over. The old Elf watched them come, spilling into the front room of the cabin—shadows against the open view of the woods now in place of what had been the front wall.

The dog, closed behind the bedroom door, was whimpering. The old Elf thought about that morning, when he had been out hunting on the mountainside, and had seen the strangers on the dirt path that snaked up from town. He had known they were coming to his cabin; there was nothing else on that road. And he had guessed why. They wouldn’t be the first to come looking for what he had spent the long years of his life guarding; but he had a sinking feeling they would be the last…

He had closed the dog in the bedroom so it would be safe as he saw the strangers away. Now, thinking about what might happen to the dog, after he was gone, was what gave the old Elf the sharpest pang—as he dropped to a crouch, bracing the shotgun against his shoulder, and firing into the thicket of churning legs moving towards him. The blast at thigh-height knocked down a fan-shaped wedge of the Elves, but others trampled them without hesitation, closing on the old one. 

The leader of the raiders moved at an oblique angle, avoiding the second shotgun blast as it tore down another fraction of the group. He unsheathed a long knife and slashed at the back of the old Elf’s head.

Blood splattered the warped floorboards, as iridescent as oil droplets on water. 

The old Elf rose from his crouch in a reflexive movement and, drawing back with a ragged gasp, dropped to the floor. His hands jerked. The muffled whimpering of the dog turned to a long, mournful howl.

•••

The passageway, several hundred feet past the entrance, began to slope steadily downwards, with shallow steps carved into the stone in portions to provide footing where the declivity was most steep. The center of the tunnel was clear, evidently where a railway for a minecart had once been—but the rails had probably been made from an Ixian alloy, and thus picked apart by visitors to the ruins over the centuries, leaving no trace except a smooth tract down the middle of the floor. The tunnel moved in an increasingly snaky fashion as it progressed, following veins of ore which had been in the hillside at one time, but had long since been exhausted. Breakaleg, Myna, and Adan continued to creep along, listening intently for any more Goblins. Signs of the tribe’s habitation in the mine were plentiful: the walls of the passage were lavishly decorated with charcoal drawings; torches, some lit, some not, were affixed to the rough rock; every small nook or alcove held bedding of some description, whether straw or heaps of dirty fabric; the remains of fire-pits dotted the floor occasionally, with animal bones and fish scales scattered near them, buzzing with flies. The walls closest to the fire pits were blackened, with white spots where fragments of seared stone had chipped off. The Goblins didn’t seem to have noticed the correlation between burning fires inside the cave and damaging the walls, nor taken the obvious remedial step of moving their cooking outside. It also, fortunately, seemed the throng which had fallen into the pit had comprised every Goblin in the place—but the trio of delvers remained on edge, constantly expecting to be surprised.

Presently, Myna glanced into a chamber opening off the side of the main passage, beyond a large, diagonal fracture in the stone. Inside, the well-lit walls were devoid of the Goblins’ charcoal art. She realized she must be seeing a part of the mine which had only been revealed recently by the partial collapse of what had seemed before to be a solid wall. The chamber had no doubt been concealed by one of the Ixians’ famous hidden doors, until a tremor shook the Seven Hills and cracked the stone itself, exposing the space beyond to (somewhat) fresh air for the first time in centuries.

“This has to be it,” Myna said, glancing back at Breakaleg. “If the Goblins found a new vein of gold in this mine, I’m sure it is in here.” She scrambled over the crumbled remains of the wall at the point where it was lowest. Breakaleg and Adan followed—more filled with greedy eagerness and general trepidation, respectively.

Pivoting on their heels and looking all around the chamber, they took in a fairly large, open space. Torches mounted on the walls provided light, making it obvious the Goblins had been toiling here until the moment they rallied as a group to charge out at the intruders. To the east side of the room, the marginally flat floor dropped off into a messy, rubbly crevasse. The wall to that side was concave—the raw stone in the process of being actively mined. Catching Breakaleg’s eye, tiny metallic flecks sparkled in the scarred stone; the vein of gold seemed to be minuscule, but it was there. A few bronze pickaxes with crudely-fitted wooden shafts had been dropped haphazardly amidst the debris and gravel.

Half buried in rock-chips and dust, something large was crammed in the crevasse, the exposed portion rounded and smooth like the carapace of a beetle, with the greenish-bluish patina of old copper.

To the north side of the room, a stone archway led into a confined passage which quickly bent and proceeded out of sight.

“There it is!” Breakaleg said, gesturing at the flecks of gold in the east wall. “This mine is indeed productive!”

Myna walked cautiously towards the crevasse, proceeding until the floor dropped away before her toes at the ragged edge. “What is that?” She pointed at the hulking shape below, only a portion of it sticking from the debris. It was too dirty to recognize what it was made from, and too oddly shaped for her to even guess what it might be.

“Well,” Breakaleg said, “this was an Ixian mine. That is probably some kind of Ixian mining equipment.” As he spoke, the import of what he was saying dawned on him. His eyes widened, despite the mild discomfort that caused as his sight continued to adjust to the brighter torchlight in the chamber. “That’s a piece of Ixian mining equipment!” Breakaleg reiterated. Adan drew a sharp breath, swept up in the cleric’s obvious excitement. “The Goblins were too uninformed to know what they had found—but it is probably made of enough Ixian alloy to fill several casks with ingots, and worth considerably more than the gold!”

Suddenly as spritely as a child, Breakaleg scrambled down the rubbly side of the crevasse, quickly reaching the exposed portion of the hulking, patinated shape. He began pulling chunks of stone away with his gloved hands.

“Help me!” he called, glancing over his shoulder at Myna and Adan on the edge of the crevasse. Adan hastened to follow him, scrambling down and joining the manic effort to dig.

Myna crossed her arms, splitting her attention between watching them and glancing at the archway in the north wall. “Hey!” she snapped at Breakaleg and Adan, after a pause. “Would you two help me finish exploring this place before you start showing your flanks to dark doorways? Or is the goal here to draw any remaining Goblins out of hiding by looking so, so vulnerable to an ambush?”

Breakaleg hesitated with a chunk of stone in his hands, blinking. He dropped the stone, letting it clatter down the acclivity of the pile, and shot Adan a reproving look. “Why is a street urchin making better tactical decisions than a trained fighter?” he asked.

“You’re the one who called me down to help you,” Adan grumbled, turning away, to begin scrambling up to the edge of the crevasse. 

Beyond the archway in the north wall was a passageway, leading to a dark chamber which appeared to have been a sleeping area for Ixian workers who lived in the mine. It had clearly been sealed off from the Goblins until very recently—because they hadn’t used it, when it would have been a much more appealing sleeping area than their grottos and alcoves in the mine-shaft itself. Crossing the chamber, Myna and the others paused at an archway in the west wall, stealthy, attentive, ears straining. They heard a low murmur of voices emanating from the far end of a narrow corridor.

“Additional Goblins?” Breakaleg whispered, leaning against the side of the archway and meeting Myna’s eye.

Myna glanced at Adan. “Is Elf hearing actually as sharp as it’s claimed to be?”

Adan shrugged. “I can tell you these are indeed Goblins, Oracle. There are three of them speaking.”

Myna nodded tersely. “I have an idea,” she said. She steadied herself with a breath, and walked through the archway into the corridor.