Chapter 2

There's a fire down below and you don't want to catch his eye

The situation before us was tense, and I could feel Malachite's hand twitching toward his sword as we stood there in the next chamber. I could feel this because I had my hand on his other arm, in perhaps a vain attempt at calming him. Grekgrek had managed to stand and invite us forward, knocking on the door and saying the savior was here. There was an excited rush on the other side, and we headed through into a cistern, Hanz carrying the still unconscious Uglurk. I had no idea what they would do for him, but they didn't slash his throat out right away so that was something?

Just last night I personally accounted for at least a dozen of these little pests, I thought to myself. If not more. They tried to swarm the wall. I blasted them with wind, tore them off the wall with telekinesis, threw arrows at them. Now we're all just standing here, nice as you please. This situation borders on the absurd, and how are they going to take the death of that other guard? I don't think they've realized he's gone yet.

But it was the mural, painted with stolen paint, that caught all our attention. Directly across from the door was a huge, incomplete picture, being painted by a hobgoblin in a torn and dirty purple robe. Clearly a castoff from a mage of some kind, the figure turned and threw down a brush.

"You see!" he cried, "it is just as I told you!"

A cheer went up from the assembled crowd of hobgoblins, all directed at Snarly, who incidentally was also the main subject of the mural. It was little more than outlines but the direction was clear. He seemed to be standing atop a serpent of some kind, holding aloft a sword in victory over the beast. None of us were present, just him. My eyes slid off the area, it was a bit over the top, and darted around the rest of the room. It was circular, with a hole in the floor that had a funny smell coming from it. Part of the far wall had collapsed, creating a tunnel in that direction, and all over were the no doubt pilfered objects the hobgoblins had collected. It was a mess. My eyes were once again attracted to the mural. What exactly was I looking at? I could hardly believe it. My mind simply did not want to accept it. That this hobgoblin could have supernatural power, had learned to paint, or had chosen Snarly as the subject of the work warred within me for the most absurd idea of the day.

"Finally some recognition," Snarly announced. "Yes yes, calm down everyone. Perhaps you can explain exactly how I'm supposed to accomplish this miracle?"

"I can offer no guidance, savior," said the one in the purple robe as he came over to us. "Only that I have seen your victory. You lead us back to our home and we will sing your praises forever!"

"Home? Where exactly do you come from?"

"We made sure to mark it!" he exclaimed, rushing over to a pile of stuff and digging through it. "So we could go back when the savior slew the great beast. Here, here it is savior, here is our home." He brought out a scrap of a filthy map, marked with an x. We looked it over, it wasn't too far away.

"Start from the beginning, will you?" he commanded.

"Of course, savior. Of course. We were driven out of our home by the monster. I told the tribe this is a thing I knew would come. They said I was crazy, just wanted to seem smart. I told them to ask at the big people town for the savior. They said big people town would just kill us. Decided to attack big people town instead. Take their home. I tried to warn them there were many, many more big people than us, but they didn't listen. We stayed quiet, sneaky sneaky. Found all this on the way! Uh, just laying there, we didn't steal it!"

"Uh huh. Go on."

"I painted this, so all would know the savior. And now here you are! See? See? They said I no see future, I showed them."

There was a general agreement among the tribe this was all true.

"Pity about rest of tribe though."

There was an aura of sadness that swept over the crowd.

What is happening right now? Is that… sympathy, that I'm feeling? It can't be.

"And you think I'm going to fight some huge monster?"

"Yes, yes! Win us back our home! I saw it!"

"How am I going to kill something that huge with these tiny things?" He indicated his daggers.

"Oh, no worries savior! Look, look!" he pointed to the mural. "You have sword!"

"No I don't."

"That's just because I haven't given it to you yet!"

"What?"

But he was already scampering to another pile of junk and lifted out a cloth bundle, which he reverently handed to Snarly. He took it, not exactly enthusiastically, and unwrapped it. What he pulled out was, at least from my limited knowledge of weapons, a fairly fine sword.

"Do you have enough for the rest of the class?" Hanz asked.

Everyone looked at him a moment and went back to staring at Snarly, who was looking the blade over.

"I guess not."

"What is this?" he asked finally.

"It's yours! We didn't steal it!" Groglorg insisted, eyes darting around the room. Everyone seemed to be not looking at him for some reason.

Well you clearly didn't make it so where did it come from then? Just fell out of the sky, did it?

"Uh, Malachite? Orchid?" He held it up.

Malachite took it up and looked it over. While far too small for him, it did seem perfectly sized for Snarly and the blade gleamed as if it had never been used. One curious feature was the inclusion of what seemed to be a glass vial running most of the length of the blade, in the blood grove. Some sort of liquid sloshed inside as he tipped it back and forth. Running a thumb along the edge he nodded. "It's a real sword."

"And it's magical," I added, feeling magic radiating from it. "I'll need some time to study it of course but this is a genuine magical item. Fabricated or imbued I can't tell yet. It seems the name of the blade is Viperfang." I tapped the writing on it. "In case you were interested." You know how much a thing like this would be worth? It must be stolen. This hobgoblin must have some supernatural power, probably stole it from someone using that power to know how and avoid getting caught. Great, they won't let such a thing remain lost for long, they'll have a mage track it down and then we're going to be holding the bag explaining how it came to our possession. Super looking forward to that.

"Yes, yes, the sword can kill the monster!" Groglorg insisted.

"So why didn't you use it?" Snarly asked.

"Us?" The hobgoblin backpedaled. "We can't face the creature, only the savior can use the sword and lead us back to our home in victory!"

"Which is me!"

"That's right!"

"Then I won't let you down."

Another cheer went up.

"Do you even know how to use a sword?" Malachite asked, passing it back to him. "It's a lot different from those daggers you use."

"Orchid can help."

He looked at me. "It's true. My spell may more than double your competence in wielding a blade but it can just as easily make him a fair swordsman even if he's only used daggers all his life. I just worry about that glass, who makes a single use sword?" Clearly the sword is supposed to be thrust into the beast you're fighting, which breaks the glass, dumping the poison into the wound. An interesting delivery method but tricky to use properly.

"It does seem rather fragile," Hanz agreed. "Don't bump it against anything while carrying it."

"Someone that really wants something dead, and doesn't mind replacing the major component of it after it's been used," Malachite figured.

"How do we know they didn't make it?" Snarly asked, turning back to the hobgoblins. "Are you all messing around with poison? The people up there," he pointed, "are starting to notice you know?"

"You mean the water?" he asked. He pointed to another bundle on the ground, it seemed to be a dead hobgoblin. "Water was bad when we got here. Some drank, got sick. That one died. Tribe almost gone. Need home back. We leave for home right now?"

"You'll have to wait," he told them.

"Awwwwww!"

"We need to take care of the town first. And we need some plan to sneak you out of here. Maybe disguise magic, a few at a time. You trust your vision, right?"

"Of course!" Groglorg drew himself up to his full height.

"Then trust it will happen at the proper time. We take care of this first, then we leave and fight some gigantic snake monster or whatever it is."

"Yay!"

Yaaaay…

One crisis at a time was my motto, so we took a look around the area to see what we could discover. Snarly was lowered via rope down into the cistern, but returned saying he couldn't see anything but yucky water down there. Our new "friends" the hobgoblins said they often heard noises coming from the crack which Hanz said sounded mechanical in nature. They didn't need the spell to understand sound effects, after all, which they referred to as a "reverse C3-PO situation" leaving us all wondering what they were talking about.

"So, about that water!" they pressed on. "This rope seems structurally sound enough, allow me to probe beneath the surface and see if I can spot something."

"You're on your own," I warned. "I could go down there but if the water is contaminated, it'll still get in my eyes and such."

"Agreed, best to not risk your delicate, organic, organs. Not to worry, if the water is contaminated it's not likely anything alive will bother me. And I can perhaps deal with anything mechanical that may be leaking. At least to drag it closer to the edge here so you can lift it out with your magic."

"Fair enough."

They left their bow and pack, but did activate one of my spell tokens for light. Malachite slowly lowered them down and we waited while they looked around. They got to the end of the rope, then were pulled back up by Malachite.

"You're filthy!" I announced. Some sort of black gunk was sticking to their casing, not dripping off with the water.

"So it seems."

"I hope this works. Hygiene!" I cast, touching them. It did seem to work, the gunk was blasted off them, vanishing into the air. "Take that, gunk!"

"I would almost say I feel refreshed. Ah, my lower joint is now 2% more responsive." They wiggled their knee back and forth. "Must have been a bit of accumulation there."

"Anyway, did you see anything down there?" Malachite asked.

"Vibrations, machinery sounds, the water got more and more filthy as I went along, and several pipes leading to or from the area. But nothing that indicates the source of the problem. I will either have to forgo the safety of the rope to penetrate further, or explore the area beyond the crack in our usual formation."

"Humm, penetrate further..." Malachite muttered, looking at me. "Or explore the area beyond the crack? Humm… You have a preference Orchid?"

"Not now!" I playfully smacked him in the arm.

He just grinned at me. "What? They said it, not me!"

"My apologies for using such a crude phrasing, it was certainly not my intent to leave any openings for double entendres."

"I still don't know what she's upset about," Malachite protested. "It was all perfectly innocent. Maybe your translation magic is acting up?"

Boys. "Let's stick together. Come on."

The hobgoblins wished us luck and we headed past the crack in the wall, and towards the sound of the machinery beyond. Deeper in the walls changed from simply being a crack in the earth to smoothed walls, finally a corridor with doorways, rocks spilling out like rooms beyond filling in and spilling out past their doors. At the end of the hallway was a clear door we could open and we stepped through. Flickering lights met our eyes, this was clearly an entrance to some kind of facility because three mechanical forms stood by a door. One which I recognized, the same type of guard we had seen at the temple of the eclipse. The two at the edges were different, they had legs, and were struggling to get up. The one with the treads rolled forward, surprising us, how it had lasted so long without any support was beyond me. Then it spoke.

"Garble garble garble," it said.

"They're your people," Malachite told them. "You're up."

Hanz stepped forward and said something to them in some ancient language. They seemed to understand it at least.

"Garble garble garble."

"Whath it thaying?" Snarly asked, leaning towards me.

"Sorry, when we left that room my translation magic ended, as we didn't need to talk to them anymore," I apologized. "Magic, am I right?"

"They want to take us into custody," Hanz reported.

"Oh, oh, we know someone really good at getting out of that!" Malachite raised my hand.

"Sure, let's take a tour of the place," I agreed. "We can always use violence later."

"Rather than shooting our way in? Mix it up a little?" Hanz asked. They turned back to the security bot. "Yes, yes, stop counting we surrender all right?" They changed languages again and repeated their statement.

The bots took us down the hall and to the right, there were more forces in the halls and a hallway to the left. The door almost didn't open, there was a very nasty gear gnashing sound from within that made Hanz seem to wince as we listened, but finally it was open enough to let us through. This area also had two security bots, the leg type, and the tread one went over to a panel and started to do something. Half the room was collapsed, it was a miracle the station the robot went to was intact and working as well as it was. There was a moment of silence. Hanz asked it something and listened to the reply.

"Okay, it's waiting for additional security personal," they told us. "Three guesses how long that's going to take."

"More tan a few minuths?" Snarly guessed.

"A lot more than that."

"What's that noise?" Malachite asked, looking around. "Oh, it stopped!"

Hanz looked back the way we came. "Door didn't close. I guess the mechanism finally gave up. Poor things, this place has been forgotten a long time."

Well, the security forces hassling us isn't helping. "Can you read any of that?" I gestured to the panel the robot was still waiting next to.

"I can indeed. This is, as we suspected, a water treatment plant. Most of it is in the red, I'm honestly surprised anything works after so long. Incidentally, if we wished to exercise the violence option once more I doubt these units would put up much of a fight. Their systems must have degraded almost to the point of uselessness. Firing their weapons even once may deplete them totally."

"It would only take once, I've seen your weapon," Malachite countered. "I would probably be fine but what about the others?" He indicated Snarly and myself. "One lucky shot and..."

"This statement is true. There is not zero risk."

"It's your risk to take," he told me.

I looked around. Three 'units' in here, one right outside the door, one further down the corridor that could get here fairly quickly especially as the door was now stuck open. There was no cover in this room, and really what was to be gained by smashing this place up? A stray bolt could hit that panel severing our only link to somewhat understanding this place. "Gather around, let's just head 'up,'" I decided. "I doubt they'll understand magic but I'll step us up quickly."

"Right."

They put a hand on me and I gathered ambient mana. "Step!" I commanded, the magic rushing out of my core and into the others. The units didn't get a chance to even say anything and we were looking "down" on them from the astral. The one unit we had been dealing with swiveled a bit, said something, and rolled back down the corridor.

"Totally degraded," Hanz sighed. "It basically forget we were ever there. Object permanence maybe? Look into it?"

"I could make us invisible, and you could do yourself," I offered. "If you wanted to drop back down and poke at that console a bit."

They shook their head. "I would not know any command codes for the system, besides it seems to be running some kind of diagnostic, one that will probably never finish. We know the place is degraded, I don't need this station to tell me that."

"Very well. Let's see what else this place has to offer."

"Agreed."

We headed south, past more collapsed rooms and flickering, barely visible display stations. We even found some shelves of smaller robots, possibly a recharging station for repair units, long since degraded and falling apart. Hanz stood and stared at them.

"Sorry," I told them. "Perhaps when we get a minute we can come back here, put together at least one working one from the parts of the others?"

"I am not emotional about it," they insisted. "Let us press on."

Kind of sound it though?

We found a large holding area in the next room, basically just a huge metal tube sunk into the floor, which was filled with water. The railing around it was falling apart, but Hanz stepped up to the side and peered down into the depths.

"Strange," they finally decided. "This water seems clear. The contaminant must be seeping in from elsewhere. If my calculations are correct this is where I would have emerged, had I continued on previously. The flow of the water must be away from this location."

"If it's a leak from some old machine," Malachite reasoned, "we have to find that machine. We haven't really found anything like a pump. The water must come here from somewhere, even if it's just passively now because the machine broke."

"Agreed. The water level would not be so high otherwise. Let us take that passageway there and carry on." They pointed, around the side was another door, so we nodded and headed over there. This hallway was partly collapsed, and Malachite, in the lead, gasped. "What in the world?"

"What ith it?" Snarly asked, peaking around them.

"Skeletons! And more of those slime things."

"Undead?" I gasped. "That's odd. I might have accepted the odd ghost, some worker here dedicated to their task that died when the moon came but skeletons like this have to be made. I don't understand how they would have come here."

"Regardless, they're here now. Come on. No, wait!" Malachite held up a hand. "Let me scout ahead, just in case. I have a bad feeling."

"You always have bad feeling," Hanz intoned. "But reconnaissance is important."

"Hold still then, I'll make you invisible," I told him. "Unless you just want to go, Hanz?"

"With a magical means at our disposal, let us take that option," they agreed. "No need to stress my systems in such a way."

"Fair enough." I put the magic on Malachite and he vanished. We waited. A few minutes later he reappeared.

"It's as I thought," he reported. "The pumping area is just ahead. Lots of pipes and machinery. But you'll never guess who else I saw."

"The ghost of Hendrix?" Hanz asked.

"Who? No, our buddies the elemental demons. Not ice ones, of course. The darkness ones. Between here and the pumping station are five skeletons, five slimes, six elemental demons, and one ugly looking thing that was mostly legs and face, I swear it was actually sniffing me out in the astral. It perked up when I got near. Took a quick look around though, I think they're causing this on purpose. The demon things, I mean. There was all this black gunk around the pipes. It didn't look natural, like a big blob of poison was leaching into the pipe. It was like they put it there."

"Did you just call me blob?" Hanz asked.

"No, I said the pipe had a blob on it!"

"Ah, that makes more sense. How far away?"

"Just a few meters. Everything will come running if we make some kind of stink in the area."

Let's avoid throwing Snarly in there in that case. Not that any of us are any better at the moment.

"We will need a plan," Hanz decided. "Perhaps you can give us more details about the coming terrain and we can come up with something?"

"Okay. This passageway curves around and goes downwards, probably so it's near the tank on the other side..."

We got into position in the pumping room. My role was, naturally, the most important but at the same time the most questionable. Naturally I didn't want to blast apart the gunk on the pipes with wind or fire because that might burst the pipes. They were probably weakened enough if some kind of acid or poison was simply dripping through them. Meanwhile I needed time to work and then get everyone back into the astral. So my first attempt was simply going to be my hygiene spell, on the pipes. This would of course attract attention because of the projection of the spell from my mana core lighting the place up. Would it even work? Would the magic consider this "black gunk" as Malachite called it contamination enough to simply be vanished into whatever it was that the spell turned dirt and such into? I had no idea, and we didn't want to go back and forth again to further alert the darkness elementals to get me a look at it. But if the elemental demons were distracted, say by the weird creature Malachite described running off because they smelled something down the corridor, I would have room to work. So they got into position some distance from me, Malachite no doubt grumbling about how he still didn't like it.

"You didn't forget about my summons, did you?" I asked before we had left, and both became visible again. He jumped and went for his sword, then sheepishly relaxed. They both shook their heads and went invisible again.

"I sort of did. They are pretty new."

"Not a problem. I'll be fine. My invisibility won't break because I'm not casting on a creature, so I should have plenty of time to try things if the cleaning spell doesn't work. If you hear me yowling like a wet cat though, the pipe burst and we'll need to get out of there pretty quick. I'll need to touch you all, remember, so you come to me. I'm too slow to come to you."

"Right."

So Hanz and Snarly were invisible on their own, meaning I only had to focus on myself and Malachite. I got into position as quickly as I could, skirting the room the long way to get to the pipes. Thankfully the creature had "taken the bait" as it were, and I was pretty sure the darkness elementals had followed it. Showtime. I dropped the dimensional step spell and drew upon ambient mana. The hygiene spell was touch based, so I just touched my little finger into the gunk to minimize contact. "Cleanse!" I cast, and for once the fates were with us. The pipe cleaned up nicely, though of course water did start spraying out of it. I cast repair on that one and moved to the next. Repeating this twice more I heard a voice.

"Orchid, it's heading your way!"

I whirled, and the strange creature was slugging towards me. While it had legs, of a sort, it seemed to be made of that same gunky stuff on the pipes, and I had to wonder if this wasn't some kind of elemental filth demon or something. Despite how gooey it was, and it did leave a trail of slime behind it, the thing moved pretty fast. I had a choice to make; try and take it on with my summons in the usual fashion, or take a pretty big risk. I took the risk, casting and holding the spell. It leapt upon me, and I released it just as the bulk of it hit me and started to wrap around me.

"Cleanse!" I cleaned myself off, and the creature gave a startled yip and vanished. "Take that! Weaponized cleaning magic!" Who would have thought? Man I could go for a cinnamon bun right now. Yeah, nice, hot, cinnamon bun.

"Are you okay?" Malachite shouted, the others hot on his heels.

"Fine!" I shouted back, and started casting again. Let's get out of here.

"Grabbed a bomb," Hanz told me, brandishing a square looking device. "Not sure why it was just sorta left in that passageway, I can't see elemental demons building something like this."

"Bomb?" I asked.

"Yeah, you know, goes boom? Kills ya? Anyway, what are they doing now?"

The darkness demons had skidded to a halt, looked around, and headed back out again. We followed at a distance and they seemed to talk with the others who had not been as fast. Another moment and they vanished again. The skeletons nearby crumbled, and we all shared a look.

"What was that all about?" they asked.

"I really couldn't tell you," I admitted. So it was them. What a slow way of doing things. How did they even find this place? Did they think no one would come looking when their water went bad? How dumb do they think we are? So many questions.

"I'm jes glad they're gonth," Snarly added.

In the end we looted the place, not finding much. Hanz found some writing on the walls they said was interesting and they would share with us later. Snarly stuffed a complete skeleton in their pack for some reason, and Malachite found a sword like 'plasma cutter' at least according to Hanz we could play around with later, if it still worked. The guard robots were still active in the upper section, so we didn't yet bother with trying to take them out. We just headed back to the sewers and out. We had a sword to look over and some sort of monster worm to destroy. For some hobgoblins.

It's a crazy old life.