Chapter 68: Human Zoo II

  Everyone sat in relative silence in the prison-pit chamber. The ceiling dripped in places, stone slick with moss and glowing fungus. It wasn’t cold, exactly but it smelled like wet rock, mold, and kobold cooking grease. None of it improved anyone’s mood.

  Garret sat against one of the walls, he threw a bone across the chamber. It clattered and bounced off the opposite wall, landing near Devon’s boots.

  “That’s five times,” Devon muttered, not looking up from the small aether crystal that he was fiddling with. “If the next one hits me, I’m feeding you to the next intact glyph enchantment that I’m able to complete.”

  “Relax, tech-goblin,” Garret said, sliding his arms behind his head. “I’m keeping myself sharp. Practicing ricochet angles.”

  Allie sat nearby with her knees hugged to her chest, eyes flicking between them. “You’ve hit the wall at the same angle five times, and every time you mutter, ‘damn, just short.’ You're not learning anything.”

  Garret shrugged. “Practice is about consistency.”

  “Practice is about improvement,” Devon snapped. “Consistently failing is still failing.”

  Peter chuckled softly from the edge of the pit, where he sat with his back against the sheer slope. “God, I missed group detention. Feels just like Catholic school, only with fewer nuns and more fungus.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Kate from across the chamber. She stood against the wall opposite Peter and the slope, her arms crossed. “We’re unarmed, unsupervised, and half-starved. I’ve had better spa days.”

  “You’ve had spa days?” Lance asked, raising a brow.

  “I make time,” Kate replied dryly. “A real leader understands the importance of relaxation and recovery time.”

  “Sure,” Holly muttered, pacing nearby. “Spa day while Alex is probably dead, awesome.”

  That shut everyone up for a moment. Their eyes flickered between Holly, and each other. Everyone was stressed. They had been waiting in the same chamber for the past two days and have yet to hear anything about Alex’s fate. Even Tom-Tom said that the other kobolds didn’t tell him anything.

  Lance glanced at her. “He’s not dead.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “He’s Alex.” Lance said it like it was supposed to mean something unshakeable. And somehow, it did.

  Tom-Tom was curled up near one of the torch sconces, his tail twitching irritably. “He’s not dead,” the kobold said matter-of-factly, chin resting on his knees. “If he were, the Black-Den would’ve screamed.”

  Holly turned to him, eyes stern, face set in grim resolution. “Explain.”

  Tom-Tom blinked. “When challenger dies in Den, it echoes. Magic remembers pain. Even the walls wail. It’s old magic. Angry magic.”

  “Sounds comforting,” Eric said from where he sat near the center of chamber, pocking at the smoldering fire. He hadn’t moved much since they were thrown in here.“But it makes sense. The magic of this place would react to something like that, no? The loss of a great man felt by the world?”

  “Glad someone else understands kobold esoteric metaphysics,” Devon mumbled.

  Oblivious to sarcasm, Tom-Tom beamed. “Thank you!” He clapped his hands and thumped his tail in excitement. Cole chuckled as the little lizard bumped in to him, as he sat nearby.

  Allie stood, brushing dirt from her pants. “Look, sitting around bickering’s not gonna be helping anything. If we want to get out of this, we need a plan. Not that we have anything to work with except...” she gestured at Devon, “whatever the hell that is.”

  Devon held up the little metal panel in his hands, the aether crystal he completed earlier now slotted into it. “Scavenged from the light sconces. Not much power, but I’ve got a pulse relay. If I can boost the power, maybe I can trigger a sympathetic reaction with the kobold rune-locks. Think of it like a glyph radio.” Everyone stared.

  Garret blinked. “I understood exactly none of that, but if it gets us out, I’ll kiss you on the mouth.”

  Devon turned slightly red. “No, no thank you.”

  “I didn’t say you could say no.”

  Allie snorted and sat beside Devon. “Need help?”

  He handed her a twisted bit of copper wire wrapped around flat rock with sigils etched into one side. “Hold that steady.”

  Lance, quiet until now, finally spoke from beside Peter. “If we do get out, what’s our move? We go after Alex? Or do we regroup, find better weapons, better leverage?”

  “We go after him,” Holly said immediately.

  “No,” Kate said, at the same time. “We retreat and reassess. We're down a combatant and in a hostile zone. Charging into unknown territory again would be idiotic.”

  “We’re already in a pit, Kate,” Holly snapped. “What are they going to do, double arrest us?”

  “I’m just saying, maybe we take a breath before another suicide mission.”

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  “He’s one of ours.” Lance’s voice was low, firm. “We don’t leave him.”

  Peter nodded. “The rule’s always been the same. No one left behind. We are all one squad now, one group. Together on Team-Worldstrider.”

  Even Zach stirred at this, his usual silence broken. “He fought for all of us when it mattered. He’s still out there, then we should also fight for him.” Everyone looked at Zach. It was rare that he ever talked, so he must really have meant it.

  Kate looked around, eyes narrowing. But when she spoke again, it wasn’t sharp. Instead, her voice was just… tired. “I don’t want him dead either. But wanting doesn’t mean surviving. We went running about those tunnels once before and still ended up right back here.”

  Tom-Tom stood suddenly. “If you wish to follow your friend into the Den, I will guide you. Once.”

  They all suddenly turned to the little lizard. Even Holly, who appeared to be the biggest proponent of breaking out just a minute ago, had an uneasy look on her face in response to the kobold’s statement. All the other human faces in the room were just as perplexed.

  “Once?” Garret echoed.

  Tom-Tom nodded. “The tunnels are sacred. The Den chooses who walks them. I will not anger it twice.”

  “We’ll only need once,” said Holly, her voice back to being confident now. “Because when we go in… we’re not leaving without him.”

  Henry stood now, and nodded once. A silent agreement. There was a pulse of quiet after that, everyone understanding, in their own way, that things had shifted. They weren’t just a collection of individuals looking out for their own survival. Not anymore.

  Peter cracked his knuckles. “Well, I guess it’s settled then.”

  “Yep,” Garret added. “Okay then, dungeon jailbreak at dawn. Someone paint that on a flag.”

  “I think that everyone here is forgetting something.” Eric stepped forward at this point. All eyes locked on to him as he raised his hands in supplication. “There’s the Chieftain for one. Not to mention the other Adept Tier mages and warriors that they have. There’s no way we can fight them, even Alex was handed his ass when he tried.”

  A pause hung in the air like a weight suspended on a string that was pulled far too tight.

  Cole, quiet up to now, exhaled through his nose and leaned forward. “Then we don’t fight them. At least, we don’t fight them head-on.” All eyes flickered to him. It was rather typical of Cole. Thinking ahead, as always. “We sneak. We cut through the dark corners they don’t expect. In and out. We are all soldiers are we not?”

  “Cool,” Allie muttered from the side, rubbing the temple on her right side. “Love that plan. I’ll just magic us up some invisibility cloaks and a teleport scroll while we’re at it.”

  “You’re a medic, not a miracle worker,” Garret said, flopping down beside her and tossing her a half-cracked joke of a smile.

  “I am a miracle worker,” she muttered. “I just charge a steep price.”

  Tom-Tom cleared his throat, or tried to, though the sound came out more like a wet kazoo-like noise instead. He stood up on a small rock near the wall, tail twitching. “No path is safe,” he said, solemn as any earthly priest. “But I know one. Only sometimes eats people.”

  Holly blinked. “...Sometimes?”

  “Not recently, ” Tom-Tom offered, like that made it better. “Besides. Den likes ambition. Might even open wider for you.”

  “Wonderful,” Kate said, arms folded. “We’re betting on kobold tunnels and monster whimsy. I feel so reassured.”

  “You want reassurance?” Lance said. “We’ve got each other. We’re bruised, half-magicless, and mostly underfed, but we’re stubborn as hell.”

  Garret raised his fist. “Worldstrider resilience, baby.”

  Peter chuckled nearby, soft and dry. “We’ve had worse odds.”

  “No, we haven’t,” Zach said. Everyone looked at him. He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to.

  Eric pinched the bridge of his nose. “We can’t just go off adrenaline and loyalty. We need a plan. Something that actually gives us a chance.”

  “We have one,” Devon said suddenly. He hadn’t moved from his corner, but his fingers had been twitching throughout, working on his glyphcrafting nonstop. He began scribbling glyph shapes with a bit of chalk on the floor with one hand while he held his creation in the other. “I’ve been mapping the lock runes above the gate. They match the frequency markers from my array panel and—”

  “In common-speech, please,” Peter said.

  Devon sighed. “I can maybe open a side door.”

  “See? Plans,” Cole said. “We’ve got a lockpicking rogue, a tunnel-guide, a medic, and half a dozen bruisers with nothing left to lose.”

  Kate exhaled hard. Her posture softened, but just a little. She was being worn down, but there was still stubbornness in her eyes. “Still feels like madness.”

  Holly stepped forward. Her expression was fiery now. “If it were you in there, we’d still be talking about a way to save you. Why do I feel like I’m the only one who remembers what it means to have someone’s back?”

  Eric grunted and met her gaze. Kate looked from Holly, to Eric and back again. Something passed between the two women, an understanding, maybe even guilt. Then she nodded. “You’re right.”

  Zach gave a single grunt of approval. That might’ve been his version of a hug. Then a long pause followed. No one seemed to have any more complaints or opposition.

  “We move,” Henry said quietly. Not a suggestion, just an encouraging statement.

  “I swear to god,” Kate muttered, rubbing her eyes, “we’re going to die in a mad kobold funhouse because of what, friendship and delusion?”

  Peter clapped her lightly on the back as he passed. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”