Chương 16: Chapter 15

Outskirts of Erem Ishiglob, goblin Captain"Dragim uplikes," he snarled an order at his fellows, sending a wary glare back towards the fading roadway. The sounds of sharpswinging and lizardclaws occasionally punched through the night like gonnefire, followed by tearing flesh and the snarls of the fellows. He turned back to the other three goblins, faces bloodied and eyes shining in the night as they hefted the mansome elf up and drug him away.

Same hiddenlikes employer as usually offered a fat sack of coinlikes to wait in these treesomes and nab the 'elf in wood'. There was a bitsome worry that elflike would just run off with these long legs of his, but he stuck around shouting at the lizardsome lady stabcutting the rest of their boys. They started with five hands, and by the looks of it, they'd be walking away with one. Lizard was big enough that she could killup the rest of them as she was. Not bad, hethinks.

There were goldsome coins in that bag of shinies, and the ladies could use that. Maybe hire some greedsome dwarves to build something nice for the homesuch, maybe get some nice dinners for the littleuns. Mansome elf had cut them up goodlike, going down, got maybe two hands of them before they managed to get him all grabbedlikes. The littleuns back home would be eating good once the corpsewagons came along and scraped them off the stonelikes.

"Heavysome prick," Snagau grumbled out, helmet dented. He shook his head and spat out a tooth as they drug the unconscious target over towards their little cartlike over the hill.

"Easylikes, employer wanted it livingsome," Ishigolb warnliked as they reached the cart and tosshefted the elf up backsides.

"Stinkbombs," Bagash muttered, reaching into the side-boxes and pulling out the orbs in question, setting down to stab them in the ground and fiddling with a flint and metalbit as the rest of theys unlatched the cart and got ready to make off with it. Important to use the stinkbombs after a capturelike, otherwise the snifflizards would just follow them afterwards. He walked around to grab one of the arms of the cart, pulling it up and holding it steady with his side.

Snagau took the other pull-arm, waiting a moment longer for Bagash to finish lighting the fuse and hop on the back of the cart, holding the elf down. As soon as he did, allgoblin started a steady run, cart making clicksome noises as they moved away from the catchsite and towards the pickup place. Off the road aways, towards the naugling pillarlikes and then straight up the mountain until they find a burnedlike clearing of chalkrock.

Click-click-click, as they pulled away from the road and sped along towards the naugling pillar, that was on the northernsome boundaryline, where the old quarries were before the dwarvesomes moved their work somewheres else. He didn't know why, some dwarvesome reason. Behind them, the stinkbomb made the hiss-shush noise and even from here they could smell the rotsome odor.

"Strongbomb, Bagash what's putin that one?" he growled in an impressed fashion, nose recoiling and eyes watering.

"Swampgod," Bagash growled back, using his foot to kick up some more ballsome stuff and prevent it from rolling out of the cart.

"Swampgod?" Lugash grumbled from his position near the back, pushing the cart from behind and occasionally sending a glance back.

"Wherelikes you find a swampgod?"

"Sewer. Was trying to eatlikes everything," Bagash grumblehuffed.

"Dwarfsomes wanted it gone, me and two hands went down to make it deadlikes- put her in bottles. Me and other split the bottles once it was all donesome."

"Hahuh," Snagau responded.

"Whatshe do with em?"

"I made stinkbombs with meshare," Bagash growled.

"He put his dickin emshare. Swampgod ate it." There was a great deal of growlchuckles at that.

"Said it was worthlikes," Bagash continued. The growlchuckles turned into snarl-laughs.

"They stink real damn goodlikes, cover us upright," Ishiglob complimented his fellow's handwork, grunting as the ground started uptilting towards the pickup spot. Many longsome minutes passed as the cart click-click-clicked along the quiet dirt and grass, the sounds of the slashing and killsome lizard long gone behind them until nothing but their boots and breathing remained.

"Brightnight, luckysome we," Snagau muttered, glaring up at the two moons as he did.

"Made elf notice us quicklike. Musta spied one of us in the treesomes," Lugash grumbled.

"Not lucky or unlucky, just goblins."

"Just goblins hesays," Ishiglob growled, amused.

"Not unlucky hesays." They all had a good growlaugh about that.

"Meetingplace whatits?" Snagau asked.

"Upsomes, looking for a burnsome chalkfield in the old quarrylike," Ishiglob growled.

"Burnsome chalk?" Bagash grumbled.

"Same as the other capsome job three hands back."

"Aye." The boys for that job never ended up coming back, so they were either doing jobs somewhere else or dead.

"Same as." Good chance that they weren't coming back from this job either, in suchcase. Wasn't all bad, the goblintown was getting full anyhows. It was about time they went somewhere else.

"Stupidhill," Lugash snarled, straining to push the cart up the final hill. Ishiglob grumbled, foot occasionally slipping on the rocks as they hauled the capsome cart up and along the sootsome field and then onto a flatish bit that overlooked the rest of the rolling hilllikes behind them. All convenientlike, there was a circle of stones in the center of the charchalk, giving them a good place to bring the capsome elf over to.

The cart made click-click-click noises as it rolled over the little rocks until finally being allowed to stop in the center of the stoneplace. He dropped the pulling-handle and stepped back from the cart, taking steady breaths and glaring around the quarryrock.

"... None heresomes," Lugash grumbled, likewise resting from his pushing and glaring around.

"Who cares?" Mumrash, who hadn't spoke until now, grumbled.

"Elfsomes is here now, job is done."

"Aye." Ishiglob nodded, before jerking his head to the side.

"Dump him out gentlelike and lets get gone." Three of the them jumped up into the back of the cart, slowly moving the elf out before depositing it in the center of the charstone, then pulling the cart away. With the capsome elf delivered to the spot, they got back into position pulling and riding upon the clickcart, and set to moving again. Away from the elf and towards the edge of the quarrylike.

"It's brightlike now," Lugash commented, casting a gaze around.

"Not lighttime yet," Snagau growled with furrowed brows, looking around the same. Ishiglob blinked, before glaring around. Finally, he looked up. Just in time for a pillar of molten rock to fall upon them. There were no bodies left, only ash and charred chalkstone. —??? Mallorn the elf If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He had never gotten drunk enough to have a hangover before, but he imagined it felt very much like how he was currently feeling.

Great amounts of pain all throughout his body, a headache that was almost too 'loud' to think through, and the distinct sensation of being very cold. Curled up and shivering on some hard, and also cold surface. Actually, thinking about it, being cold might be unrelated to having a hangover. There wasn't much reason to associate the two states. Alcohol had a tendency to 'warm' you up, even if just psychologically. Currently he wasn't experiencing any of the warm, just the pain.

Unless he had drunk enough to pass out in an alley or something, they were going to see the dwarves right? Dwarves probably had stone alleys somewhere. He extended a foot out, reaching for the blanket, and found nothing in his immediate vicinity. It was in doing that that he noticed that he was sleeping in the nude, which was a bad way to sleep. People had invented shirts and underwear for a reason, and that was to be nice and warm whenever you were snoring.

He was naked and cold, which meant he needed to wake up and fix both of those things immediately before going back to sleep.

"Gruh… Gehm," he boldly proclaimed, face scrunched up miserably and eyes closed. He flipped over to his side, cracking open his eyes to glare at whatever was around him. Rocks, more rocks, some cool looking stalag-whatevers. He curled up into a ball, vigorously rubbing his limbs to warm himself up before reaching up to rub the sand out of his eyes. A massive yawn came out as he did so, before finally he opened his eyes properly and took a more thorough look around. He was in a fairly spacious cave.

One of his ears flicked as he took it in. There were a few fancy looking magical-glowy rocks hanging from various lanterns illuminating the large cave. He was currently in the middle of a-"Holy shit," he muttered, repeating one of the curses in Mannish that Rayne had been polite enough to teach him. He pushed himself up, taking in the cave more thoroughly.

There was the occasional sign of intelligent work in the design, flooring mostly smoothed out and rough stairs hewn out of the living rock leading up and down along the various immense terraces of the cave proper. There was an exit, far above him and currently causing his chills, for the air of some distant mountain blew into the cave through there and fell down upon his current position on the second shelf. What was more striking, was the next shelf of rock down.

There were immense piles of treasure and assorted valuables cluttering the ground and crowded around the stalag- the spikes of rock that came out of the floor. Those things. He couldn't remember through this headache. Gold and silver coins, cups, brooches, piles of jewels, bits of jewelry, banners, tapestries, encrusted mirrors and chests, swords, axes, spears, and all manner of other precious things filled the floor of the second shelf. It felt warmer below, and he heard the sound of gentle waterflow.

He stared at the hoard of treasure for a few long moments, mystified, before his ears dropped and he frowned.

"This is a dragon's cave, isn't it?" he asked aloud, tone unimpressed. He pulled back from the ledge of the cave.

"Some dragon's cave and as soon as I touch anything I'm going to get eaten as a 'thief' or something, because that's how these stories always go. Maybe I'll doom my kingdom in the process." The echoes of his voice in the cave told him that saying that aloud was probably a bad idea, but now that he had already done so, there wasn't any point in hiding himself further. If there was a dragon in this cave, it had already heard him well enough at this point.

He huffed, rubbing his arms and glancing back up to the cave-entrance. It was downright unpleasantly cold, from what he could feel. This made little sense, because it was supposed to be the middle of summer right now and thus nice and warm. He let out a long sigh, walking over to the start of the carved stairs that led up and out of the cave. Each step on the chilly stone was awful and he wouldn't recommend doing the same anytime soon. Eventually, he reached the entrance of the cave, and frowned.

This was a spectacular view over the mountains, and he could see the giant stone-carved Erem sitting atop his mountain from here. The issue was, that he was behind many other mountains, and his elf-eyes also let him see a number of forested and rocky valleys in between mountains between him and it. He was going to Erem, how the hell was he in a dragon's cave all the way over here? The last thing he remembered was-"Those fuckers kidnapped me," he muttered, face scrunched up in a deeply irritated manner.

"I was right fucking there- and they kidnapped me." A gust of air blew along the mountains and crashed into him, the cold wind cutting straight through his skin and into the bone, driving out any heat from it. He gave a massive shiver, pulling back to stand slightly behind a large rock and glaring out to the world. He was naked, which meant they had stripped him of his belongings. Quickly he sniffed himself, just to check to see if they had pissed on him or anything foul. … He smelled like sweat and soot.

Nothing too unpleasant, then. Another gust shattered his resolve to stay at the cave-entrance, and he quickly retreated away from the light and cold and into the warm and dark of what was clearly a dragon-cave. He didn't have any evidence of that beyond the hoard of gold though, so it was possible it was some other form of treasure-guarding monster that was about to kill and eat him. If he tried traveling like this, naked in that mountain cold, he'd probably freeze to death.

He would die, and not only that- he would feel downright unpleasant the entire time that he's dying. So he had a choice here: die slowly of exposure, or risk the cave for supplies to leave with and potentially die quickly from some monster. He sighed, glancing at the cave entrance again. When he thought of it like that, it wasn't really a choice at all, was it? Why did he have to talk aloud earlier? He could've tried a stealthy approach. Oh, that's right.

He reached up to touch his forehead, gingerly feeling for the bruises. He was suffering head trauma right now. No wonder he was making poor decisions, he was compromised.

"What an intelligent observation, Rasil. Truly, a prodigious mind," he growled quietly to himself, ears pulled back as he slowly descended the next set of hewn stairs down into the marginally warmer air, treasure, and presumably great terrible beastie after his flesh.

"They should erect statues of you in the central square, right as you are, cock and balls flapping in the breeze so everyone can see how magnificent you are." With that final round of muttering, and ears constantly twitching in the anticipation of hearing something - anything - in the cave, he reached the beginning of the treasure pile. Stretching from one cave wall to the other, the pile was immense and rather impossible to simply avoid touching.

There were scant enough scattered coins for the floor to be visible but not scant enough to avoid stepping on them as he walked.

"... This place really needs to be organized," he grumbled.

"Boxes or something, or get everything stacked up in neater piles at least. It's just a pile right now."

"What's all this gold even doing for you right now? Sitting around doing nothing?" he started to complain in earnest, making a tentative step forwards and carefully listening for any growls aimed his way for physically interacting with the hoard. After hearing nothing, he continued stepping forwards, complaining to no one the entire time." You're not investing this into anything? Any businesses or land to tax? No, just leaving it sitting around gathering dust-" He waved an irritated hand.

"It's not even in a dry place, I can hear the water! All of this is going to be suffering humidity damage if you leave it here!" He waggled his hands and rolled his eyes, a good rant helping to clear his various frustrations.

"Oooh what if I put a spell on it- you know you wouldn't have to do that if you had stored it in a dry place to begin with! You're just adding to the storage costs for no reason!" He stopped in front of a fluffy tapestry, hanging from one of the giant rock spikes. It had a very clever depiction of a dragon on it, a great black shape with a clearly broken horn, covered in various swirls made of harshly angled lines. The whole picture was woven in red and gold, and menaced with purples.

He was already well into the 'going to get killed' zone, so he was a bit beyond the point of caring. Currently he was cold, and that was all he really cared about. He reached forwards and tugged the tapestry off the wall, wrapping it around his neck and shoulders like the large fluffy parka it was clearly meant to be. Slightly bewarmed by his new wrapping, he kept walking through the piles of treasures until he got to the back of the cave.

There was another shelf below, which contained something that looked like a pantry. The sound of the underground water was clearer there, and the temperature higher, so he proceeded down the next flight of stone stairs. It was indeed a sort of pantry, or a kitchen region, mostly filled with a great number of preserved meats. Beef, mutton, pork, venison, fish, and so on. Smoked, salted, potted, pied, and so on. There were jars of honey and bags of salt and rice and several other nonperishable foodthings.

He walked past most of it, not bothering to look. He was more irritated than hungry at the moment. The next shelf down wasn't a shelf at all, but instead what looked and felt like an underground hotspring, delightfully warm and humid and probably causing an immense amount of damage to the hoard above over time. He raised his arms and spread his legs, taking in the warm updraft for several long moments, letting it banish the cold in his limbs and ease his headache.

At the moment, it seemed like there was no one here. That was pretty good for him. Hopefully whoever ordered his kidnapping was some beautiful lonely woman desperate for company and not goblins intent on offering him as a virgin sacrifice to some dreadful monster.

"Heh, if they wanted a virgin sacrifice, I don't count anymore," he chuckled to himself, a smug and satisfied half-grin on his face.

"A shame." Hot breath on his back and legs made him freeze in place.

"I was looking forward to that, little- foul-mouthed- elfling." He forced himself to remain calm, swallowing his heart down into his chest again and slowly turning around. Sure enough, his first guess had been right. That was, indeed, a dragon. Immense and red-gold scaled and snakelike and glaring down at him, hot huffs of breath crashing against his entire body like the cold mountain air at the entrance. The breath stank of sweet-rot, like fermented fruit juice, and the eyes shone purple in the dark.

It used to have two horns, clearly, but one had been shattered and broken off, leaving an ugly asymmetry to the creature looking at him like he was dinner. He honestly deserved a medal for guessing that one.