Chapter 18 - Part 4

Delegado awoke to Thomas shaking him lightly. The half-orc opened his eyes to see the inhuman, luminescent gaze of the daelkyr half-blood staring at him, and the blinking, ozone-smelling eye of the stormstalk. Thomas had a finger upraised by his lips for silence, which was the only thing that kept Delegado from issuing a series of obscenities. As the half-orc quickly came awake he heard the clashing of bodies and the pained sounds of the dying from far down the tunnels.

“What time is it?” Delegado asked in the faintest of whispers as he lifted his bow and quiver. He’d slept with them in hand, if the catnaps that he and Thomas had been taking in alternating bits could be called sleep.

“I suspect that it’s just past dawn,” Thomas said, just as quietly. “Seventeenth of Sypheros.”

“I don’t need the date, I’d have known if I slept an entire day,” Delegado grunted, breaking out enchanted oil to recoat his bow. Unfortunately this one was not an oil that blessed his weapon. They had run out of those.

“Right,” Thomas said, exhaling with great tension. “You hear that? Two groups of fiends fighting, maybe three.”

“Sounds like a good thing,” Delegado whispered. He figured that there were two groups, each composed of about thirty demons.

“You know how you mentioned yesterday that we keep fighting idiots and mindless things?” Thomas reminded him.

“Yeah,” Delegado said. “What’s your point?”

“You have more experience with tactical movement than me,” Thomas said. “I’m just someone who’s used to surviving. Tell me again what you said, please.”

Delegado frowned a bit, then rubbed his eyes. He was pretty sure that Thomas wasn’t being insecure or prickly with him anymore, more likely due to the many hours they had spent fighting side-by-side over the last few days than anything else. “I don’t know if it means anything,” the half-orc said. “But this whole setup is funny. That demon that spotted your scrying, he was pretty tough. High-level magic, teleport to anywhere he wanted to, but he’s assigned to watch a piece of dirt in the middle of nowhere? Then take the tunnels. Some work, yeah, but mostly random stuff done in tubes, by Sovereign Host knows what, like over the past few centuries someone has been trying to get lucky and find something by stumbling across it. The final piece that doesn’t fit is the high level of security in terms of numbers. We’ve killed near two hundred minor demons. The key word is minor. They’ve all been animals, like those wolf-shapes, mindless like those half-melted things, or easily cowed little nothings like those hopping things that were at the entrance or those hunchedbacked squat things with the longspears we ran into. All of this work, but done on the quiet, and done with demonic soldiers that will hardly be missed, and are too dumb to know anything if they’re interrogated.”

“You don’t think this is simply a hive?” Thomas noted.

“No,” Delegado said, shaking his head. “I know finding. Someone found something, and they want it hidden. We stumbled onto it, and we’re trying to get Orphan out of it. He’s down there, I felt him not three hours ago. But we keep hitting reinforcements.”

“And now the reinforcements are hitting other reinforcements,” Thomas said, gesturing to the battle. “I think you’re right, about your assessment I mean. It tastes something like two great cult leaders of the Dragon Below trying to fight over some pool of lava that they consider to be sacred.”

“I hate getting sidetracked,” Delegado grumbled. “How much inventory have we used in the past three days?”

“Almost all our potions and oils, and three-quarters of my scrolls,” Thomas said. “I’ve got plenty of spells that create food and water for the horses, and some more of those prestidigitation spells to keep cleaning up the manure.”

“That’s very important,” Delegado noted dryly. One of the mounts whinnied softly as if in protest.

Thomas laughed very softly. “Did you see the look on that winged thing’s face when I froze its wings so that it couldn’t fly?”

Delegado grinned. “You’ve got style, Thomas, I’ll give you that.” Then he and the daelkyr half-blood tensed as they heard the sounds of battle subside. “Somebody won,” the half-orc muttered.

They heard feet moving and orders barked in some horrible language that sounded like nails drawn across slate. Footsteps began to fan outwards, some coming towards their magically carved cave. Something began to sniff loudly.

“Somebody did indeed,” Thomas said, gripping his greataxe and getting ready to charge.