Quest to the Kobold Caves Part Three

QUEST TO THE KOBOLD CAVES

A Dungeon Adventure

Part Three

Mediphon, tangled in the net, was dragged through the caves like a rabbit in a sack.  It took nearly a score of kobolds, but they pulled him through the tunnels to a wide chamber where a wall of wooden bars was constructed to block the opening of a bubble-like cul-de-sac.  The kobolds gave up; leaving him in the center of the chamber, then returned the way they came, panting for breath as some of them dragged an arm across their brows.  Three human-sized creatures entered from a second tunnel.

The Cleric looked up at them and saw three hobgoblins:  two had mottled orange skin and stringy gray hair, dressed in loose shirts and leather jerkins.  The third had ruddy red-orange skin and long reddish-brown hair cascading from the lizard skull that was the basis of its weird headpiece.  This one wore a poncho and breeches, and many bracelets and necklaces that rattled with the bones of small animals.

The three of them leaned down, their ugly faces regarding him with evil, yellow eyes.  The one in the red jerkin placed his foot on the prisoner and shook him.  "Hey there!  Why you ugly yoomins come here for?"

Mediphon, still in the net and surrounded by monsters, gulped.  "We…we were sent here."

"By your ugly yoomin king?" the one with the lizard skull accused.

"No!  By a ranger!" the Cleric corrected him.  "A…a sort of guardian of the forest."

The one in the yellow jerkin leaned down and snarled at him.  "We know what a ranger is!"

Mediphon gulped.  "Oh, good.  Well, he asked us to come here and make the kobolds go away."

The one in the red jerkin scratched his chin.  "And what of us?" he asked, waving his clawed hand to indicate the three of them.

The Cleric shook his head.  "He said nothing of you.  We all thought that all you hobgoblins were on the other side of the kingdom."

The one in the red jerkin issued a gravelly chuckle that devolved into a wheeze, and slapped the back of one hand against his comrade with the lizard-skull headpiece.  "There, you see, Horkrist?  The yoomins know nothing!  All goes according to the Chief's plan!"

"Hail Ozbaddin!" the one in the yellow jerkin exclaimed.

Horkrist, the one in the lizard-skull headpiece, wiped away the other's distasteful touch and cast a sideways glance at his two comrades.  "Well he knows now," he growled amid the rattle of bones.  "He must not be allowed to leave here, Razzam."

Razzam snorted through his crooked nose.  "He shall not leave."  He looked at the one in the yellow jerkin.  "Korzadub, place him in the cage with the others, and his companion as well!"

The third hobgoblin nodded in obedience, pulled out his sword and opened the net so the prisoner could crawl out.  Mediphon surrendered his flail and raised his arms.  Korzadub corralled him to the wooden bars just as a door was opened for him by Horkrist. 

Within the cul-de-sac he found ten other prisoners, all humans.  He tugged at his mustache with worry and wondered which of his other companions had been captured.  He was surprised when Korzadub picked up the inert body of Haldraginor from a shadowy corner of the chamber.  The monstrous jailers dumped his body in the cage without care, then bolted the door behind them.

The Holy Man stepped up to the bars and stared at the three hobgoblins.  He couldn’t help but notice the lighter color and pallid complexions of the two in the jerkins.  They seemed unhealthy to him, as though suffering from some disease.  Then, he turned to his fallen friend and began to bless his body with the rites of death.

One of the prisoners approached him, placed a hand upon his shoulder.  Mediphon looked up into the face of a middle-aged farmer.  "He is not dead," the man said.  "It is some foul magic, he cannot move at all.  But he is not dead!"

Mediphon stared down at the prone warrior with awestruck eyes.  "You mean…he is merely paralyzed?"

"Call it what you will," the veteran prisoner told him, "But it should wear off."

"But how…" the Cleric's voice trailed off.

The farmer shrugged and pointed at the hobgoblins. "Those two, and a third one like them.  I do not know how they do it."

Mediphon stared at them curiously, new theories percolating in his head.

"Korzadub!"

At the sound of his name, the one in the yellow jerkin turned.  "Yes, Razzam?"

Razzam waved one clawed hand toward the prisoners in the cage.  "These are but two of a larger group, still running loose in our caves.  They must be found and killed.  Take a pack of kobolds and hunt them down!"

Korzadub nodded and saluted in acceptance.  "I shall need more of the potion."

"Of course you will," Horkrist said, his tone flat.  He gave a disinterested gesture toward the second tunnel.  "There is more to be had in my workshop."

Korzadub saluted again, then left.

                                                   *  *  *

Pamblyn wandered the tunnels alone.  She paused, leaned against the rock wall and pulled her helmet from her head.  Straining her ears, she could not hear anything to suggest the kobolds still pursued her.  She was confident that she had lost them. 

With one hand, she pulled a handkerchief from a pouch on her belt and dragged it over her forehead.  She exchanged it for a skin of water, which she held up to her lips and drank from as she accessed the situation.

By her reckoning, it was pretty bad.

True she'd lost the kobolds, but she also lost Mediphon, and the rest of her party as well.  She had witnessed the sudden deaths of Gray Dan and Haldraginor, and had no clue as to the well-being of her remaining companions.  The chances of completing the quest dropped significantly with the dwindling of the party.  She wasn't sure what to do, and desperately wanted a sign.

And then she saw it.  Down the tunnel, amid the flickering light of yet another torch was another Black Pillar. 

With a curious frown, Pamblyn turned and walked toward it, helmet cradled in her arm.  She returned her waterskin as she approached, and ran her hand along the smooth black stone.  With this cursory inspection, she surmised it was identical to the one the party had found earlier:  a simple column which bore no writing, no symbols.  The incongruity of its location was a mystery she was unable to fathom.  

Pamblyn heard the faint clang of metal-on-metal.  Straining her ears, she turned her attention down the ongoing tunnel.  There were grunts and barks, thuds and clangs.  They were the sounds of battle.

As if awaking from a trance, she turned away from the Black Pillar and started down the tunnel.  She took a single step and a spear erupted from the rocky wall beside the Pillar.  Pamblyn jumped at the sudden movement, and let loose a brief startled cry as the spear slammed against the shield she carried.

"Damn kobolds," she muttered as she grabbed the shaft of the spear.  She pulled, but it would not come out of the wall.  She pushed and felt some tension behind the spear, when she released her grip, it sprang forward again. 

She gave the surrounding cave a fleeting glance as she pulled the helmet back onto her head.  Spying no other traps, she rushed down the cavern and turned a corner, sword in hand.

"Kill the Elf!" the orange-red kobold commander ordered; his back to the human warrioress.  Beyond him, six rust-red kobolds charged at Sunthorn with their long knives and short maces.  The Elf parried, dodged, and danced around the midget monsters, deftly deflecting their bevy of blows.

Pamblyn seized the opportunity for a surprise attack of her own and crept up behind the orange-red kobold.  She raised her sword high for the killing blow when a sudden alarm was called out by one of Sunthorn's attackers:  "Watch out, Korzadub!"

The kobold leader side-stepped and Pamblyn's sword came crashing down, the blade biting into the cavern floor.  "Die yoomin!" Korzadub cried and reached out with his bare, scaly hand.

Pamblyn remembered the mysterious killing touch that Haldraginor suffered at the hands of the previous orange kobold, Drang.  With a backhand swing, she slapped the monster's hand away with her sturdy shield.  Korzadub yelped in pain and jumped away.

Sunthorn called out in distress, and Pamblyn charged the throng surrounding him.  A swing of her blade, a swipe with his scimitar, and kobolds fell to the cavern floor. 

"Quick!  This way!" Pamblyn ordered and raced back down the cavern from whence she came.  The Elf slammed his leaf-shaped shield against one canine head and followed her.

"After them, you dogs!" Korzadub bellowed, "Don't let them escape!"  His three remaining kobolds ran in pursuit, and he ran behind them.

Pamblyn ran back to the Black Pillar and screeched to a halt.  Sunthorn turned and leveled his scimitar at the onrushing kobolds.  A few quick swings with their flashing blades and the kobolds were dead.  Korzadub, madness glowing in his eyes, jumped over the kobold corpses and grabbed Pamblyn's shield.

The warrior woman shrieked in surprise, turned toward the spear that still jutted out from the rock wall and charged.  Korzadub jerked as he was skewered, a cry of pain only gurgled in his throat.  Pamblyn pulled away from him and he fell off her shield with no resistance, and landed on his feet.  He looked down at the head of the spear thrust through his torso, looked up at the pair of adventurers, then his body slumped with death.

The Elf and the Warrioress both sighed in relief.  They leaned against the cavern wall, and stared at the impaled kobold and the Black Pillar beside it as they regained their breath.

"It is good to see you," Sunthorn said at last.  "I feared the worst for all of you."

"Likewise," Pamblyn replied.  "I lost Mediphon in the caves; I fear he may have been captured."

The Elf nodded gravely.  "I lost Padrelle in the pit.  It seems she will torment Gray Dan for all eternity."

The Warrioress harrumphed.  "So much for being unkillable."  Then they both stared in muted wonder as a light flashed by Korzadub's doglike head.

A spark appeared in the air above the impaled kobold's shoulder.  Sparks burst in the thin air, obscuring the corpse with flashes of light and brief clouds of smoke.  Little burning embers appeared from nowhere, flew from the body, fell away and burned out before reaching the ground.  Streams of smoke marked the path of each spark, and quickly dissipated.  Then the brief spectacle was finished, the kobold body was gone, the larger corpse of a man-sized monster was impaled on the spear in its place.

"He's not a kobold at all!" Pamblyn exclaimed, "He's a hobgoblin!"

Sunthorn regarded the new body with one raised eyebrow.  "A rather sickly-looking hobgoblin.  His skin has a pallor, it should be a darker red, and his hair is gray.  There is something…wrong with this hobgoblin."

"But these are supposed to be kobolds, what was he doing here?" Pamblyn asked as she approached the body for a closer inspection.

"Don't you mean 'what are they doing here'?" Sunthorn asked.

Pamblyn's face snapped toward him and she stared for a moment with a puzzled expression.  Then realization exploded on her face.  "The other orange kobold!  Drang!  How many more of them are there?  What are they doing here?"

Sunthorn rubbed his chin.  "Perhaps they were driven out," he suggested.  "They could be infected, or diseased, or cursed…then driven out of Ozbaddin's horde.  And now they've taken over this pack of kobolds."

Pamblyn let out a thoughtful hum as she considered the theory.  "We need to know for sure," she said, "I wonder if he has any clues on him."  With a grimace on her face, she proceeded to check the pockets in the yellow jerkin and the pouches on Korzadub's belt.  She found a handful of silver and copper coins, a flint and stone used to light campfires and torches, a partially eaten rat, and two earthenware vials.  She pulled out the stopper of one vial and took an exploratory sniff.

"Healing potion?" Sunthorn asked.

The Warrioress shook her head.  "It doesn't smell like a healing potion to me."  She passed the vial to the Elf and pulled the stopper from the remaining vial.

Sunthorn sniffed at the bottle.  "I'm not sure," he said, "but it may be a polymorph potion.  This could be what gives them the shape of kobolds."

Pamblyn took another whiff and sneered in distaste.  "I suppose there's only one way to know for sure?"

The Elf nodded.  "To drink them, yes."

Pamblyn sighed.  "Well, it will certainly be easier to travel the cave-complex if we aren't attacked every few feet…and we may learn what happened to the others."

Sunthorn nodded in agreement and held his vial up as though proposing a toast.  "Shall we, then?"

Pamblyn clinked her vial against his, then they both drank.  Each of them was engulfed in sparks and smoke.  Once the magic had taken effect, they looked at one another's canine snouts and horned heads.  Then they looked down at their own scaly, clawed hands.  Pamblyn gasped with amazement.  "It worked!"

Sunthorn raised one eyebrow on his now-canine head.  "Indeed," he said, "Let's go see what we can see."

To Be Continued...