The tunnel continued to get narrower the further down they went. It had started wide enough that an entire party could walk side by side; now it was barely wide enough for Elijah to fit.
”Are you sure we’re going the right way, Bitter Root?” he asked, ducking his head to avoid an outcropping of rock jutting down from the ceiling.
”Sure, sure, Boss, me can smell greys further down.”
Bitter Bat snorted. “How you be sure they grey? Smell like stinky green goblin to me.”
Bitter Root turned to hit Bat, but a glare from Elijah stopped him. He was already uncomfortable with how tight the passage was getting; he didn’t need the effort of trying to break up their fight.
They came to a circular wooden door set into the stonework. Root tried to shove it open, but it barely budged more than a fraction of an inch. “Door be barred from other side, Boss,” the goblin growled. He sounded as frustrated as Elijah felt. They’d come this far, and a simple wooden door was now threatening to halt their progress entirely.
“Bat, can you teleport to the other side and open it?”
Bitter Bat shook his head. “Me only can poof between where me can see. No can see other side, no can poof there.”
Root chuckled. “Boss, me have other idea. Make Bitter Root go bye bye. Bring back on other side.”
Elijah had to admit that actually sounded like a good plan once he’d figured out exactly what the goblin was trying to say through the broken English. He meant for Elijah to cancel his summoning of Root, then re-summon him on the other side of the door. It wasn’t a bad plan.
Bitter Bat teleported behind him so he could get closer to the door. “Ready?” he asked the goblin, who nodded his head.
“Wait, boss!” Bitter Root yelled as Elijah was about to break the link.
“What is it?”
“Need name new trick. Me like ‘Root Access’ as name.”
Elijah rolled his eyes and cancelled the link, wondering how long the game had been sitting on that pun.
He placed his hand against the wooden door, which upon closer inspection turned out to actually be a round shield, and activated his ‘Bitter Dominion’ spell. At first, it felt like the spell wanted to fail. The code flashed in his eyes, lines about collision states and spell system logic, but he refused to fail. He cleared the code from his vision and tried something else.
His ‘Core Breaker’ ability had allowed him to feel the very code of the game shift through the ground like water earlier. In its most basic form, mana was nothing but game code. Its blue glow and physical form were just an effect of the game engine to make it comprehensible to the rest of the player base.
Reality, magic, even the other entities, including players, that shared this world with him were just code.
He willed the mana, the code of the spell, to act like water. It seeped through the cracks in the wood and coalesced on the other side. The game was fighting him, trying to dissipate it. He pushed more mana through, fighting against the game engine’s logic until there was finally enough present that he felt the connection to Bitter Root snap into existence like a tangible thing.
The sound of metal scraping against stone sounded from the other side of the door before it fell away and clattered onto the ground. On the other side was Bitter Root giving a big toothy grin. “See, Boss?” he chuckled. “Me have smart smart not dumb dumb.”
Elijah pushed himself through the small doorway and patted the goblin on the head. “Yes, very smart.”
On the other side of the door, the passageway opened up again. Further down, Elijah could hear the grey goblins. The voices were calmer than the voices that had filled the passage above the first cavernous chamber.
Elijah was considering cancelling the summon of Bitter Root again, worrying that the goblin would attack the greys on sight.
”Root, I need you to try and remain calm,” he whispered to the creature. “I’m going to send some scout bats ahead to scope out what’s going on. Then we can decide what we’re going to do.”
Bitter Root grumbled but took a step back and leaned against the wall. Elijah assumed that meant Bitter Root agreed with his plan.
Two bats sprang forth from his shadow and flew forward. They blended into the dark corners of the path and flew silently forward. He closed his eyes and focused on their perception. He was getting better at being able to split his focus, but closing his eyes was still so much easier.
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The room they flew into was large and constructed of the same metal as the hinges. It showed its age, with everything above a few feet being covered in a thin veneer of rust. Elijah thought he understood. Everything below that line was an area that the goblins could easily touch, but didn’t care to risk climbing up the walls to touch the higher areas.
He directed his bats not to land. There was no way of knowing whether they would set off whatever magic was being used to shed the rust, but he wasn’t willing to risk it. There were several dozen greys. Mostly the level five basic versions, but there were also a few shamans and several with much larger muscles at level ten. He breathed a sigh of relief; ever since Bitter Root had mentioned it, he’d been worried about running across younglings.
”Few dozen up ahead. Most dangerous thing is the shamans,” he relayed to his familiars.
”How Boss want do this?” asked Bat. Elijah ran through plans in his brain.
He could have the scouts bomb the shamans and tougher goblins, but he was starting to feel bad about asking them to explode themselves. Especially because he still hadn’t given them names. Or maybe it was easier to do so because he hadn’t named them?
”Think we can take all of them on by ourselves, or should I summon Dryad for backup?”
”No need, tree boy. We kill greys no problem. Tree boy just steal kill.” Root answered, and Elijah had to agree. The more he killed, the more experience he got; he didn’t earn any from his familiar’s kills.
”Alright, you two focus on the weak ones. I’m going to teleport onto the shamans and take them out quickly.”
The two familiars rushed around the corner and into the room without a second thought. Their voices echoed through the tunnel as they shouted their ‘war cries’ into the air. Elijah channeled his bats and teleported, focusing on the location of the shamans he saw through his scouts.
The teleport dropped him right behind them as they turned to face the oncoming threat of his familiars. These shamans weren’t like the ones in the first room. Those had been too worried about finishing their spell and then trying to control the fire golem to put up much of a fight. These, however, were much more invested in fighting back.
As Elijah made himself known with a slice against one’s back, the rest turned to face him, immediately realizing he was the bigger threat. They turned their magic on him, and he quickly realized his mistake. Electricity crackled through his body as one cast some sort of lightning spell, another cast a flame blast that hit him square in the chest and sent him sprawling backwards.
There were too many mages for him to take on by himself, and he had to duck behind an iron pillar as the spells came raining down on him. He realized his mistake too late. He heard another lightning spell fly through the air, striking the pillar and electrifying it. The electricity struck him through the iron, locking up his muscles and causing him to bite his tongue. A hum filled the room even as the electricity faded around him. A strange silver light flooded the room from behind him.
He expected some kind of massive spell attack, but looking through the eyes of the bats he realized that the hum and glow weren’t coming from the shamans. They were coming from the pillar behind him. It lit up with intricate runes spreading out from where the shaman’s lightning must have hit it. Rust flaked down as the entire pillar lit up.
The glowing iron replaced the last of the rust, and a deep rumbling vibrated the floor. He risked a peek and saw that a heavy vault door was slowly lowering down from the ceiling, cutting off the exit back up to the rest of the tunnel complex. Goblins were disengaging from his familiars and scrambling to make their way out before they were trapped inside; even some shamans and brutes were wrestling with their weaker brethren.
One shaman, possibly the one that had activated the pillar in the first place, sent another lightning bolt forth. Elijah barely got enough distance between himself and the pillar not to be shocked, but it still caused the hairs on the back of his arms and neck to stand on end. Obviously, the shaman had hoped that if the first one had activated whatever this was, that a second one would deactivate it. He was wrong. More runes lit up across the ceiling, showering rust down on everyone still in the room, and the massive door sped up.
The large door slammed shut, and the runes flickered off at the same time the torches around the room went out. The entire room fell into an inky blackness that left Elijah completely blind. He closed his eyes—however unnecessary that seemed in the pitch black—and tried the perception of the bats.
It was no good; they were blind as well in the lightless room. They had excellent low-light vision; he’d seen so multiple times, but they still needed some level of light in order to see. When he focused his senses on their hearing, he could tell that they were echolocating, but his own mind couldn’t comprehend turning that sound into anything useful.
He ordered them to return to him and perch upon his shoulders. Elijah might not be able to see, but they may be able to alert him to the presence of any enemies.
He stood and started slowly moving in the direction where he sensed Bitter Root and Bat. With any luck, they could sense him as well and wouldn’t attack him when he got close. Though part of him wasn’t willing to bet that Root wouldn’t attack him for the sake of it and claim ignorance.
The room lit up for a moment as a shaman cast another lightning bolt at the pillar. It was just for a fraction of a second, but the bright flash illuminated the room. One shaman and a few greys were still present. He could hear the greys moving towards his position. He readied himself for a vicious fight in the dark when he heard a quiet yet commanding voice.
”Stand down, my brothers. We are trapped, and spilling the interlopers’ blood won’t fix anything. Though they may prove helpful in our quest for escape.”
Elijah stopped in his tracks. Other than himself and his familiars, there was nobody else in this room besides the greys. Was one of them intelligent enough to speak in proper English? That would be a far cry from anything he’d seen from their society thus far.
“My name is Elijah. I am an adventurer. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”
”My name is Snik, head shaman of the Grey Mountain tribe,” the voice answered.
Somewhere to Elijah’s left, he heard Bitter Root scoff. “Dumb dumb greys not even name like proper gobs.”
Elijah severed his connection to his familiars. He was curious how this would play out and didn’t want Bitter Root’s casual racism to ruin it before it even began. “My apologies. My companion can be a bit crude sometimes. I’ve cancelled his summoning for now.”
He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake leaving himself alone in this room with a handful of goblins who had been aggressive towards him just moments before.
