The Dungeon
III. Hidden Dangers


"OK, so now what?"

Ozwik looked at Donovan, then at the others.

"I would suggest we look around for other entrances. If nothing else, we could rappel down the cliff face, and onto that balcony we saw."

Donovan, Prescott, Lotus, and Kasselwort looked distinctly nervous at that.

"Is that the only other option?" Prescott asked. It was the first time Ozwik had heard Prescott talk in a couple of days.

"Don't tell me you're afraid of heights?" Ozwik jibbed.

Prescott looked sullen, and turned away.

"Rappelling down a cliff side might be fine for you big folk, and the dwarf," Kasselwort said, "but I don't know about us small guys."

Thror snorted.

Before Ozwik could reply, Merrik said, "Don't worry. I could cast a Feather Fall on you, and you'd just float down."

The four that looked nervous a moment ago, looked a bit more pleased.

"Well, you'd float down the last fifty feet," Merrik added. "The first couple hundred you'd fall normally."

Ozwik grinned, while their faces fell once more. Every once in a while, the mage could be a funny guy.

"All right," Ozwik announced. "If you don't want to try floating, spread out, and see what else you can find."

Ozwik and Fillga started searching by themselves, and Ozwik noticed who was searching with whom. Ummossia gathered her little flock together; Donovan, Lotus, Prescott, and the quiet one - Wilda, that's her name. Vangar searched by himself. Quillian and Merrik were exploring together, as were Thror and Kasselwort.

Not much time had passed, when much to Ozwik's surprise, Wilda called out.

"Here! I found it!"

Everyone looked at her. She was standing about eighty yards north of the first door they found, pointing at the ground.

First by her side was Donovan, then Lotus. Within a few seconds, everyone was gathered around the battered wooden door set into the remains of the monastery's floor.

"Good job, Wilda!" Vangar said. "Rhadamanthius be praised!"

"And Luminos," Ummossia added.

"Especially Luminos," Wilda said. "It was with his blessing that I saw-"

"Yes, all right," Ummossia said quickly. "No need to belabor the point. The question is, now what do we do with it?"

"Besides open it, you mean?" Ozwik asked pointedly.

"If I may point out," Ummossia said evenly, "we don't know that this door doesn't lead straight into the den of those goblins we fought."

"We fought?" Fillga said quietly.

"She did help, dear," Ozwik said dryly.

"It's not very likely," Merrik responded to Ummossia's question. "The goblin's lair were back that way." He pointed off to the south-east. "About a hundred yards, I'd say. Plus, that door was probably as close to the sun they'd want to get."

"He's right," Thror said. "Goblins will stay as far from sunlight as they can. To be honest, I'm surprised they're this close to the surface."

"Lucky us," Donovan said.

"What were they doing so close to the surface?" Ozwik wondered aloud.

"Some one must've drove them upwards," Fillga said.

"Some one," Merrik added, "or something."

"Well, no matter," Donovan said. "Whether we face Goblins or worse, we have to go onward."

As he spoke, he stepped up to the door, and pulled it open. With a strange look of panic and resignation, Ozwik quickly stepped up, and tried to stop him, but it was too late. Donovan had the door open. So, he simply peered into the opening.

"Thror? Kasselwort? Care to have a look?" He asked.

The two stepped up, and looked in as well.

"Seems safe enough," Donovan said, and started advancing downward.

"Wait!" Ozwik hissed - but it was too late. Down he went. "Damn him! He's going to get us all killed!"

"I will speak to him," Ummossia said, as if granting a great boon.

Grumbling, Ozwik headed after Donovan, saying, "What good will talking to a corpse do?"

Ozwik hadn't gone very far down the stairs, when he heard a crash. Sighing, he quickened his pace, and found Donovan flat on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.

"What happened?" Ozwik snapped. Behind him, he heard the steps of the others, coming down the stairs.

"I don't know," Donovan said, propping himself up. He sounded like a child who just discovered he couldn't fly off the roof by flapping his arms, and couldn't quite understand why. "I was just walking cautiously down the stairs, and then. . ."

"Then you found a trip wire," Ozwik said. He was examining the bottom step, where a thin wire, virtually invisible in this dim light, was strung across the bottom step.

"Lucky there weren't any spikes there," Kasselwort said, pointing to where he landed.

"Spikes?!" Donovan said, alarmed.

"Yep. Properly sharpened, they'd go right through that armor of yours, like it was tin."

Donovan touched his armor, as if to make sure there were no holes.

"Wait," Ozwik said. "Look at this. This wire goes up the wall, and over the ceiling. . . Light! I need some light down here!"

"Are you sure you should be yelling like that?" Kasselwort asked.

"If what I think is true, then it doesn't matter."

"And if it isn't?" Kasselwort mumbled to himself.

A moment later, Fillga brought down a lantern for Ozwik.

"Do you have your bulls eye shutter?" Ozwik asked. Fillga pulled one out of her back pack, and Ozwik slid it into place.

A bulls eye shutter went around a lantern, and let the light shine only in one direction, rather than the all around that a lantern normally would enlighten. Ozwik now trained the beam of light on the wire he found at the bottom of the stairs. It was tied to the handrail on the left of the stairs, and led across the stair at about ankle height, and up the wall, and then across the ceiling.

"What's going on down there?" Ummossia yelled.

"Just checking out a trap," Ozwik replied.

"Is Donovan hurt?!" She cried back, sounding a little shrill. She didn't wait for an answer, and came down the all ready crowded stairs.

"I'm all right," Donovan said when he saw Ummossia coming down the stairs.

Kasselwort had gone down to the bottom of the stairs when he first checked out Donovan, and found he was all right. "The only thing he hurt," he now said to Ummossia, "is his pride. He'll be fine."

"Poor baby," she said, now kneeling next to Donovan, having pushed her way past Ozwik and Fillga. "You know I would have used all the healing powers at my command to help you, don't you?"

"Yes, my Priestess," he replied. "I know."

Making gagging motions at Fillga, Ozwik made certain Ummossia couldn't see him. Fillga stifled a giggle, as he moved down the stairs, still keeping his eyes on the wire.

"Where does it go?" Kasselwort asked Ozwik.

"Across the ceiling," he replied, "towards this door." His bulls eye lantern spotlighted the door that was on the south side of the room, the opposite side of the stairs.

"Is it safe to come down?" Some one above yelled. Ozwik wasn't certain, but there was enough petulance in the voice to be Prescott.

"Yes, my dears," Ummossia called back. "It might be a good idea for everyone to come down."

"Sure," Ozwik muttered, "come on down, make a lot of noise, disturb the dust . . . not that there's much to see here."

He paused a moment, and shined the light on the ground. There was a small footprint in the dust. It was smaller than a human's, and looked nothing at all like a human's. It had three toes, and flat feet.

"Kasselwort," he called out. "Come here a moment, will you?"

Kasselwort came over, and Ozwik asked, "What do you make of this?"

Kasselwort needed only a glance to identify it. "Kobolds."

"I thought so," Ozwik added with a smile. On the ranks of threats, Kobolds were towards the bottom, below badgers, wolverines, and wounded kittens. It's not that they weren't dangerous, but they never made any sort of plans. They just hid in their dungeons, and attacked whatever came by. That's when a thought struck his mind.

"Are you sure?" He suddenly asked Kasselwort.

"Eh? Certainly. I've seen enough over the years."

"Could you spot a fake?"

"I should think so," Kasselwort replied. "What's got you worried?"

"Kobolds don't usually set alarms." To this, Kasselwort nodded in understanding.

Cautiously, they both turned towards the door. Ozwik reached out, getting a dagger ready in his left hand - one of the advantages to being ambidextrous - while Kasselwort pulled his short sword out. The others heard their actions, and Fillga, Donovan, and Quillian - who was still at the top of the stairs - also got ready. They had no idea what had Kasselwort and Ozwik worried, but they knew if something had them worried, they'd best get ready.

Ozwik spent a few minutes examining the door for traps. It looked like it had been tampered with, meaning there might be traps, but could find no definite proof of traps. Fillga confirmed his opinion, which only made him feel worse, not better.

The door opened easily. Nothing leaped out to attack. No mattocks swung down to crush them. No traps of any sort sprung.

Carefully, trying to look every way at once and not quite succeeding at it, Ozwik stepped into the room. It was empty, save for some furniture in fairly good condition.

"Looks all right," he said to Kasselwort.

Everyone relaxed a little. Kasselwort stepped into the room with Ozwik and took several deep breaths through his nose.

"Yeah, I noticed that bad smell, too," Ozwik said.

"Not that," Kasselwort replied. "You'd need to be missing your nose to not notice that." He took a couple more sniffs. "No, I smell Kobold in this room. Fresh."

"Yeah? Well," Ozwik gestured at the ceiling and desk. "That wire goes through the wall, and across the ceiling. See? It's connected to that small pouch up there. Hey, Fillga!," he suddenly called out.

"What?" She called back.

"Do me a favor, and pluck that wire."

She did as asked, and at about the same time, the pouch jingled.

"Coins," Kasselwort said. "It's an alarm."

"Sounds more like a hobgoblin trick," Ozwik said. "You sure you can only smell Kobold?"

"The nose knows!" Kasselwort said in Gnomish, then repeated it in common when he saw Ozwik didn't understand.

"Wait a minute!"

Fillga's voice rang out from outside the room. Ozwik and Kasselwort quickly looked outside, and saw Donovan standing in front of a door on their right - the east side of the room. Ozwik also got his first good look at the room. It was roughly square, about forty feet on a side, with the staircase taking up most of the northern part of the room. Besides the room he was in on the south, and the door to the east, he spotted a door under the stairs.

"What are you doing, Donovan?" Kasselwort asked.

"Exploring," he said simply. "Isn't that what we're suppose to be doing? Trying to find the artifact?"

"True," Ozwik said. "But wouldn't you like to be alive when you find it?"

Donovan jerked his hand away from the knob as if he suddenly realized it was a snake.

"Everyone, listen to me," Ozwik said. He saw everyone was more or less in the room. Ummossia and her priests were in the room proper, along with Thror. The rest were standing on the stairs, watching and waiting. He had their attention.

"Something's going on here, something I can't quite figure out," Ozwik continued. "There was an elaborate alarm set up at the base of the stairs that Donovan set off, and signs that there are Kobolds here."

"Kobolds?!" Thror growled. Dwarves and Kobolds went together about as well as Dwarves and Goblins. Or for that matter, Dwarves and any sort of demi-human.

"Kobolds?" Merrik asked, his voice hiding laughter. "Why worry then?"

"If there's a hoard of Kobolds here," Thror said, "then you will know why you should worry. One or two or three kobolds are not much to worry about, ‘tis true, but if you get a whole family of them, then they're very dangerous indeed!"

"But, Thror," Ozwik said, "I understood Kobolds to not be very imaginative. Have you ever heard of them setting alarms or traps before?"

"Traps, aye," he replied. "They are clever enough to do some simple pit traps." He sighed. "Alarms, however, there's something new and different. I haven't heard of that before. It may be, there are some hobgoblins about, teaching them."

Ozwik nodded, thinking. Then he looked at Fillga. "I think you and I better check all the doors, just in case. Everyone else, treat everything as dangerous until we know otherwise."

Fillga nodded, and started moving down the stairs.

"I can double-check you two, if you'd like," Kasselwort said.

Ozwik looked at him. He said it casually, as if just simply offering to help. But there was something else in the way he said it made him look carefully.

"You've got such skills?" he asked quietly.

"I've picked up a thing or two in my time," he replied casually.

Ozwik chuckled. "And all this time, I just thought you were a typical Gnomish mage."

"I am," he said with startling insistence. "But who says that's all I have to know? In a hundred years, one picks things up."

Ozwik chuckled again, and said, "Sure, double check us. The more eyes the better, as they say." He didn't add that was a saying at his old Thieves Guild, from ten years ago. "Of course," he suddenly added, "everyone else will know what I know - or at least suspect."

Kasselwort shrugged, an oddly human gesture. "So? Let them. If they don't trust me by now, they never will."

Ozwik could only nod in agreement at that. The next few minutes were spent with the three of them carefully examining the remaining two doors. If anyone took special notice that Kasselwort was now helping the spies, they said nothing, although Thror did look slightly astonished at the sight, while unseen by everyone, Ummossia eyes narrowed at the revelation.

Ten minutes later, the three conferred, and agreed the doors were safe.

"I guess the question is," Merrik said once the announcement was made, "which way to go?"

"Well, there's just the desk in that room," Ozwik said, pointing at the room on the south.

"And that bad smell is coming from that door," Kasselwort said, pointing to the door on the east side.

"That leaves the door under the stairs," Donovan said.

"Wait a minute," Merrik said. "Did you say there was a desk in the room?"

"Er, yes," Ozwik said. "Just a plain desk."

"An old desk?"

"Well, no, it looked to be in fairly good condition. In fact. . ." Ozwik stopped as he realized what he was saying. "In fact, it looked to be in very good condition."

Merrik came down the stairs, and strode into the room, Ozwik and Fillga right behind him. They looked at the desk, cautiously checking it out for any sort of traps, and then opened the drawers. It was empty. There were, however several wooden boxes in the corner. These were also empty.

"Nothing," Merrik said. "I suppose that would be too much to hope for."

"My old teacher used to say," Fillga said, standing near the door and looking around, "if something is in a room, it has a use."

There was a slight pause, then Merrik said, "What the hell does that mean?"

Smiling, Fillga stepped over to the desk, and said, "If you have a desk that stores nothing, it must have some purpose. Kasselwort!"

Kasselwort poked his head into the room. "Yes?"

"How tall is a kobold?"

The giants are three and a half feet tall," he replied.

"Exactly," she said, looking at the boxes. She then lithely hopped on the desk. She was now tall enough to reach the ceiling.

"What are you-?" Ozwik started to ask, but became silent as soon as he saw her reach up, and push up a part of the ceiling.

"Escape route number one," she said.

"Number one?" Merrik asked.

"Any good observation room has more than one escape route." She paused a moment, then pushed open the trap door all the way and look out. Sunlight spilled down around her. "Or maybe this is an attack route."

"Attack?" Ozwik asked. "These are kobolds, you know."

"Just because they're small, doesn't mean they aren't dangerous," Fillga replied. "They could look up through here, and see how many - if any - people were above ground. Or maybe even plan to attack from the rear while another group attacked the front."

"That's a little advanced for kobolds," Kasselwort said.

"Mmm, you could be right," Fillga said. She hopped off the desk, letting the trap door slam shut. Then she started looking around the floor.

After a moment, she called out, "Quillian."

Moving almost silently, he strode in, a questioning look on his face.

"I know we've made a mess of the room, but could you look around, and see if you could spot any non-humanoid footprints?"

"Like, Kobold, for example?" He said as he bent to his work.

"I think we've already been over this room, Fillga," Ozwik answered, feeling slightly amazed. He had never seen her taken complete charge like this before.

"Why, my dear," she said, an expression of mock surprise on her face. "Didn't you know Quillian is a ranger? We should have let him check this room first, but there's nothing we can do about that now."

"What do you hope to find?" Ozwik asked, ignoring the hint.

"Footprints would be nice," Fillga said. "I don't think the occupants went up, so they must have slipped out some other way. Their footprints might show us the way."

"What makes you think there were any occupants?" Merrik asked.

"Obviously," Ozwik jumped in, "if they had some kind of alarm set up here, there would have to be some one to listen to it."

Merrik considered, then nodded his head.

"Here's one," Quillian said suddenly. "It's only a partial, but it's heading towards this wall." He was standing near the rear of the room, facing the east wall.

Ozwik stepped over, and started tapping the wall. "It might be hollow here," he said.

"Dear," Fillga said, stepping to the wall, and causing Quillian to move out of the way. "Kobolds are smaller than that."

She crouched down, and felt the wall. She stopped at a point about two feet above the floor, and pressed a section of the wall. A small door popped open.

"I don't think we're going to fit in there," Ozwik said, looking at the small door.

"Maybe I could," Kasselwort said. "And Thror."

He sounds oddly hopeful, Ozwik thought. Does he want to go in after them?

"I don't think that would be a good idea," Fillga said. "It's very narrow in there. You could easily become trapped."

"Besides," Merrik said, "there's another door to the east just outside here."

"Yes, with the bad smell," Kasselwort said. "More garbage, I shouldn't wonder."

"I think we should try that door under the stairs, first," Ozwik said.

"Oh? Why?" Merrik asked.

"The door to the east is too obvious," he replied. "The door under the stairs might lead the same way, without any trouble."

"And why do we want to go bother these kobolds?"

Everyone in the room turned to the source of the voice. Ummossia stood just outside the doorway, and looked in at everybody.

"Well?" She said after a moment. "Any particular reason?"

"It's not so much that we want to bother these kobolds," Ozwik said. "It's just that the artifact is not here, so it must be elsewhere. And to get elsewhere, we have to go either through those goblins, who seem quite upset now that we've killed a few of them, or through these kobolds."

There was a brief silence as Ummossia considered this.

"I'd rather not bother anyone," Ozwik added. "If you know of a different route, I'd like to hear it."

She frowned, though whether it was in thought or the sarcasm, Ozwik couldn't tell.

"The door under the stairs, then," she said, imperiously.

Ozwik sighed. "Right. Let's take a look, then."


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