Outside the occasional howling in the night and canopy cat sighting, the next two days of travel passed and left them unmolested. Autumn had still been cagey about how she’d arrived on Etheon, and with Seraphae always present, he didn’t want to push. He had learned that Doran had been missing since before their confrontation with Kael. Either something horrible had happened to him, or he’d joined forces with his once party member. Neither option was particularly ideal.

  About six hours ride into their fourth day, something resembling a structure finally came into view in the distance.

  “Eyes open.” Seraphae’s voice rang through his mind. “We’re approaching the dungeon. It’s been a while since I’ve been out here so it could be repopulated even if Kael hasn’t taken residence.”

  She’d told him it was full of kobolds when her party had taken a contract to clear it out. He’d not physically fought one of the beasts before, but if they were anything like their TTRPG counterparts, Greg had some concerns. The little lizard people were notoriously crafty, always setting traps and ambushes for unsuspecting victims. What was more concerning, was their irrational worship of dragons.

  Seraphae had not mentioned there being a dragon out here, but that would have been a definite way to make him refuse to make the stop. Surely the three of them hadn’t fought a dragon by themselves, though. Right?

  They filed in through the broken gate of an ancient graveyard the forest had long reclaimed. Tree roots broke through the footpath, moss suffocated headstones, and the quiet buzz of bugs overtook the silence.

  Seraphae hopped off her murmox and headed for the mausoleum in the center. It was the only structure in the graveyard other than the outer wall, which had long crumbled, leaving not much more than a few bits of wrought iron and stone sticking from the ground. Moss had taken to it much like the smaller markers of the dead, but the building still stood tall. While there was little architectural beauty to the ten-foot by five-foot building, there was something striking about it still standing while the forest had overtaken everything around it.

  After dismounting, they circled the stone structure, and Seraphae pulled the rotted wood door open slowly. A wave of warm air shot from the door, making his eyes water from the odor. The smell of long rotted fish mixed with ammonia hung thick in the air. Seraphae stepped inside, coving her nose and mouth with a bit of cloth from beneath her leathers, followed by Autumn.

  Greg grumbled but didn’t speak. He shifted his jacket to bury his own nose and mouth in fur before following them inside. On either side of them, urns lined the shelves on the wall. A few of them remained intact, but the sarcophagus on the far end could not claim the same. Its lid, split it two, rested beside it against the wall with fragments of clay and porcelain showered over it. Something left large grooves in the stone box itself as it tore the front half of it away. Shattered rock dotted the floor of the room around the passage dug straight through what had once been someone’s resting place.

  “Should we be concerned about the smell? Or whatever ripped the sarcophagus apart?” Greg asked through their party link.

  “It’s kobolds.” Seraphae looked back at them and placed a finger to her lips. “Their excrement, to be more precise. They come to the surface to dump it so the dwelling doesn’t smell like it.”

  “I thought you cleared them the last time you were here?” Greg asked.

  “We didn’t commit a genocide. They clearly came back.” Seraphae took the first step into the passage leading underground.

  “I fought kobolds in the arena.” Autumn added. “As long as they don’t catch us by surprise, we’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah…not worried about the kobolds.” Greg sounded off into the chat channel, but didn’t expound. If they were coming back to this place, he doubted it was for the luxurious digs. There was something here, and he did not really want to find out what it was.

  Once they’d cleared the first flight of steps down, the smell mercifully faded, leaving them in a barely lit cavern braced by wooden beams. With each step, dirt and rocks crumbled from the walls and ceiling. Suddenly, Seraphae’s previous foray into the dungeon felt far less comforting.

  “What’s the over/under on this place caving in on us?” Greg asked through the chat function. When they didn’t answer he seriously considered turning back. There hadn’t been any indication that Kael even came through here. Unless he’d somehow convinced the kobolds he was their leader. In the end, he kept pushing forward after the two women.

  The chittering started after they cleared the first chamber. The sound was eerily similar to the click of Autumn’s temple-beast’s beak, but obviously coming from multiple creatures. He glanced up at the minimap, hoping for some kind of fog of war style reveal of the dungeon. No such luck.

  Seraphae stopped suddenly and took an exaggerated high knee step. “Tripwire.” She announced through the chat channel as to not disturb the kobolds.

  Greg stepped over the wire after the girls, glancing up at the section of ceiling right above. A crudely constructed wall of spikes set on a basic lever was set to slam down into the corridor wall, pinning whatever poor soul triggered the trap.

  Crafty.

  Check.

  So long as they remained silent, hopefully the nasty little buggers wouldn’t be able to ambush them. The dim torchlight from the walls got a little brighter ahead as light was coming through an empty arch and shining into the hall. Seraphae pressed herself against the wall of earth that led to the opening, Greg and Autumn following suit. She poked her head around to look inside.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “Four of them. Relatively grouped.” She looked over at them as she pulled back from the doorway. “I can pretty confidently take out two before they can call out.”

  “I can take them easy…it won’t be quiet, though.” Autumn sounded into the chat.

  Greg grimaced and shook his head. “I’ll get them. Just count me down.”

  Seraphae nodded and pulled a short bow from thin air. “I’ve got the two on the right.” A silver bowstring formed betweeen her fingers and extended into an arrow that seemed to be made of pure light as she pulled back. “Three….Two…”

  Greg took a couple steps forward to peek around the women and into the room. It was a little brighter than the corridors, but not by much. The kobolds themselves were much as he expected. They were stockier than the lizardfolk of the world, but much shorter on average and with short, thick tails.

  “One…”

  He vanished from his spot, appearing behind the furthest little lizard man from him and driving Light Drinker through his throat. The second let out the slightest squeak before he spun around the already collapsing body and drove the rapier into one of it’s beady eyes. Greg blinked hard as he flung blood off the end of the blade, and it did something he’d yet to actually see.

  The torches mounted to the walls dimmed as Light Drinker took on a bright orange glow. As it got darker in the room, his ability to see somehow got better. His rapier continued siphoning the light from the room until Autumn’s voice in his head got his attention.

  “Very fancy, but I can’t see.”

  “Oh…sorry,” Greg whispered out loud as he quickly sheathed Light Drinker and the torches flared back to life.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Seraphae said, turning a subtle glare on him. “Keep the chatter to the brain talking, please. Last thing we need is a horde of kobolds cascading down the halls.”

  “Sorry.” Greg grimaced through another apology. As he exited the room, he reached down and touched the two that Seraphae had killed to trigger his auto-loot on them.

  Auto-loot: Enabled

  Looting…

  Added 2x copper obols to your inventory

  Added 4x soiled hide pants to your inventory

  Added 3x rough stone knives to your inventory

  He felt his stomach lurch at the thought of soiled hide pants hanging over his head, but quickly pushed it away as they progressed through the spacious corridor. They continued to clear out the dungeon room by room as quietly as possible. Seraphae proved to be exceptional at spotting traps, maneuvering around or over several pitfalls and pressure plates that could have seriously injured any of them and alerted the dungeon’s occupants simultaneously.

  Greg paused a moment as Seraphae took a peek into the next room. These kobolds were tiny. No more than a foot and a half to two feet tall. Maybe forty pounds if they were lucky. If they’d dug this out…wouldn’t it be smaller?

  “One…”

  Fuck.

  Greg jumped forward to get a look into the room Seraphae had already loosed two arrows into. He activated his volatile step and skewered two kobolds with one swing, only for a high-pitched screech to sound from behind him and a projectile made of light bury into the skull of one of his skewered corpses. He ripped Light Drinker from their little bodies and turned on the kobold behind him who’d already pulled out a little spear and started charging him with a roar.

  This was not ideal.

  Batting the spear to the side with relative ease, Greg drove his rapier through the exposed, scaly torso of the aggressor. Its body collapsed to the floor, and then silence followed.

  No more chittering. No more hissing conversation. Just an uncomfortable quiet.

  At least for a solid ten seconds. Then the screaming started. Earsplitting vibrato echoed through the corridor from what had to be dozens more Kobolds, but behind it was something even more concerning. Barely audible, a voice slightly deeper than the others started to chant.

  “Greg…” Seraphae groaned into his head as she leaned back against the open arch leading into the room.

  “Finally,” Autumn said, lifting the emerald blade from her back that was at least as tall as she was. “I was getting bored.”

  “Sorry…” he apologized as he touched the corpses again on his way out of the room. Greg hadn’t been in a position to really watch Autumn fight the last time they’d met, but as she charged past him down the rough dug hallway, he made several quick observations.

  Muscle had been packed onto her once thin frame. She was by no means as jacked as someone like Maeve, but as she hefted the greatsword up over her shoulder and started to run the bulging muscles became more apparent. A weapon that size should have been a disadvantage in such close quarters, but the ease with which she moved made the short swings and thrusts effective enough against the swarm of little reptilians that flooded out. Whatever she’d been through since he’d been sacrificed and drug across the stars to Etheon had taken the clay of a mild-mannered chef and crafted her into something wild and powerful. Or maybe that’s how she’d always been…he just never noticed.

  “I don’t know what you did to mess that up…” Seraphae stepped up beside him, pulling back on the bow fire arrows down range. “But you’d better fix it before I take my shot.”

  Greg gave her an unscrupulous look before sprinting forward himself, though he suddenly doubted Autumn would need any help. By the time the screeching had stopped, the chanting had grown to a volume that shook the walls around them. As he’d expected, most of the carnage laid around them was from the gleaming emerald blade over Autumn’s shoulder. He noted that it was inexplicably spotless as the three of them approached the end of the corridor and the source of the chanting.

  What had been a shaft easily eight feet wide and as many tall expanded suddenly into twice that to accommodate an outrageously large door. The wood it was made from was dark enough that Greg initially mistook it for obsidian. He pressed his palm to it, the vibrations of the chanting from the next room resonating through the wood into his hand.

  A year ago there would have been no chance in hell he would have walked through these doors. He probably wouldn’t have even come down the stairs to begin with. He took a look to his side where Autumn was already looking back at him, covered in kobold vicera. She jerked her eyebrows upward and gave him what in the situation looked like an absolutely crazed grin.

  He wheeled to the door to keep himself from bursting out in laughter and pushed hard.

  It didn’t budge.

  He pushed again.

  Nothing.

  “Alright, Greg?” Seraphae raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Yeah, door is just a little…” Greg was cut short as Autumn raised a boot and drove it into the center of the door. A thunderous crack sounded from the other side, and the double door lurched open at the seam. “Heavy…” Heat rushed to his cheeks, but he squashed that down to join them in pushing the large doors out to expose the chamber within.

  Several steps led down to an open, domed cavern. Torches circled the room at the base level, but most of the light came from the center of the room. On a raised dais, six kobolds stood in a circle, chanting something in whatever language they spoke.

  A kobold twice their size in shabby red robes stood over a pile of bones far too large to be from one of them. His outstretched arms carried a book and a rod with a crystal at the end that was emanating a blinding white light.

  They took a step down the stairs, and the chanting suddenly stopped.

  The large kobold started to laugh as the bones beneath him shifted.