Chương 97: Penicillium - Chapter Six

Chapter Six"What was that?" Grace hissed.

"Later," George said. He took two deep breaths, then dove back under. I was too busy treading water to care for the moment. I swam to what passed for a shore in the nearly cave-dark room, then I just stayed there and panted. A squirming around my neck was followed by little coughs, and I hurried to pull Sir Nibbles free. He was hiccuping between little coughs. I cradled him close, thumb massaging his chest. That had been... closer than I would have liked. By a long shot.

I wasn't exactly risk-averse at the best of times, but I think I'd come close enough to dying there that I wasn't ready for more.

"Hey, come on," Phillipe whispered as he came closer. He placed his hands under my arms and gently raised me up, as if it took no effort at all. For a fleeting moment I remembered Dada. I remembered being safe when he hugged me, and when he twirled me around and around. I almost reached out to Phillipe, but I refrained and kept my composure.

"Are you okay?" he whispered. I nodded, and that was that. This wasn't a world where anyone lingered on their feelings. That kind of thing was too expensive for the likes of us. The water broke again maybe a minute later while I was still tending to Sir Nibbles. Cavendish and Tyro came out, the latter sucking in lungfuls of air while wiping his face. George came up a moment later, pulling three lengths of rope out with him.

The trap-finder reached a rock and undid two of those, then he looped them around with quick, efficient motions.

"How much have we cleared?" Cavendish asked, his voice so low I barely heard it.

"To the middle," Nathan said.

"Let's move on, then," he replied. We did as he said and moved into a corridor that started at the end of the room. It was wide, but zig-zagged enough that we couldn't see the end. William was waiting by the middle, crossbow out and aiming down the rest of the path.

"Someone care to explain what happened back there?" Cavendish asked, turning to Grace and George.

"Rope just.. Ran out," Grace said.

"Thought me and Ginger over here were dead." Cavendish turned to George, brows knit together.

"And you?" George raised the ends of two of his ropes, the shorter ones, the one that had snapped apart. The end was obviously frayed.

"Told you we'd need new equipment soon, boss."

"We almost lost two members because you cheaped out, Jack?" Phillipe asked. He was keeping his voice low, but there was a growl to it that made me shiver. I hugged Sir Nibbles closer, and the badger crawled up my neck. Then he bit my earlobe, though it was almost affectionate, in a painful way. Cavendish groaned.

"Fuck. You're right, that's on me. George, when we're out, we're going over every last tool we have. I don't want this happening again." George nodded, and that was that. The mistake would be fixed, life went on. It was almost nice, in one way. In the before there would have been a whole investigation, and then that would have led nowhere but a lot of words would have been spilled for nothing. Here they just cut right past the bullshit because a couple of lives weren't worth that much.

I stood there in the dark, dripping all over and feeling rather cold.

"Here," Phillipe said as he handed me back my stuff. My backpack was ballooned out at the bottom, but the water within was dripping out through the material. My satchel was worse. I knelt down with both and tipped them down, letting the water within flow out. I had the impression it would take hours to dry, and if I was anyone else, I'd worry about mould. Cavendish gave us all a couple of minutes to wring out our clothes and get our gear in order, as long as we did it quietly.

Tyro dropped something at some point and got a heap of ugly looks from everyone on the team. We had just snuck past what was supposed to be a goblin's den. The entire point of the shortcut was avoiding that, and having to fight them now anyway would have been just insulting. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Next room's tricky," George said.

"We gas it and run. Then it's through one of the longest, meanest corridors in the dungeon." He grinned.

"My time to shine!" On arriving near the end of the tunnel, Cavendish suggested that we all cover our mouths, then his team pulled on bandanas which were already soaking wet. Phillipe, Tyro and I pulled on gas-masks, though mine, I noted with pride, was the most elaborate and well-made of the lot. Grace gave me a look, but she couldn't see the smugness through the rubber covering most of my face or the twin pieces of glass over my eyes.

I'd bought this thing specifically because it covered the upper half of my face and especially my eyes, even if they tended to fog up a little after a couple of minutes.

"Alright, everyone grab hold of the next person's hands. We'll move single file. If you feel the person behind you letting go, do the same for the person ahead. We can fight through this room, we just don't want to bother," Cavendish said. Then he pulled out a canister from his backpack and opened it to reveal two brown sticks with cloth tabs on the ends. Grenades? I imagined that there might be a few used for that kind of thing down here.

These looked like smoke bombs, paper-wrapped tubes with something that created lots of smoke when burned.

"I'll head in first," Cavendish said. He pulled a tab on one of the bombs then flung it down the last bit of the tunnel and into the room beyond. Almost immediately there were grunts and squeaks, then panicked shouting from within. They were speaking.

"Fire! Fire!"

"Smoke!"

"Fire! Burning fire!" William holding out his hand was enough for me to refocus on the here and now, and I grabbed hold of it, then of Tyro's hand. We started walking. I didn't get to see much of the room we passed through the haze of grey-black smoke and through my mask's goggles, but it seemed better lit than most, with a small fire in its centre and some terrible makeshift tents at the back. Little green figures were running around in a panic, though most stayed away from our end of the room.

And then we were in a long, narrow tunnel, and the smoke stayed behind us. George stepped up and cleared the area with a few grunts and we let go of each other's hands.

"Move everyone a little deeper in," Cavendish said. He stayed behind as we pushed into the passage. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see him pull the tab on his second grenade and let it fall to the ground. That would obscure the tunnel's start. If anything wanted to chase us, it would need to wade through that smokescreern and the one in the room first. Clever. The others tugged their bandanas down and I pulled my mask off. I was getting pretty constant reminders that breathing fresh air was nice lately.

Sir Nibbles poked his head out from inside my shirt where he'd hidden his very wet, very coarse body. The next bit, as it turned out, was nothing but traps. There were a few obvious pitfall holes that you didn't need a trap-finding ability to spot, a few cheap wires across the ground at ankle height, and one spot had a ledge with a wooden board that had a dozen fist-sized stones on it. The ledge was propped up by a board which had a cord tied to it. George hooked the rope and the rocks came tumbling down.

I think those might have hurt if they hit someone in the calf, but they weren't very impressive as far as traps went.

"This is all goblin stuff," Tyro said to me. I nodded.

"I figured. It doesn't look... well-built."

"They don't do well-built," he said with a chuckle.

"Have you ever seen the domesticated ones? Barely able to boil water with a lit stove and a full kettle."

"We have a few," William said.

"At home. They dust the floors and clean, mostly. Couldn't empty a boot if the instructions were on the heel."

"Uh-huh," I said. I'd keep my tongue in check about that for now, but it seemed as if I hadn't finished discovering all the messed up shit this world had to offer. It took a while, and once we crossed a path to our left without entering it, but eventually we reached the end of the tunnel.

"No choice here," Cavendish said.

"We're going to have to fight our way past this point."