The Year of Wild Magic

(1372 DR)

Shadows shifted in the curving passageway. Marissa blinked hard to help her eyes adjust as she and her companions followed Yurz through the twisting bowels of the mountain. She watched the goblin's bulbous head bob quickly up and down as he walked, experiencing a rush of guilt whenever he turned and cast an adoring gaze her way. Though she knew Yurz, like all of his kind, was cruel, cunning, and evil by nature, the druid always disliked overpowering the will of another creature-no matter how depraved it might be. Still, Rashemen's need beat like a war drum within her, swift and steady, its deep-noted call resonating through bone and tissue, replacing even the measured pulse of her own heart. Marissa knew that she would sacrifice far more than her own moral comfort to slake the land's need-and the thought frightened her.

Thankfully, her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden shift in the tunnel. Borovazk, Taenaran, and Roberc stood around Yurz, who sniffed the air carefully. From her vantage point, the druid could see that the trail they followed turned sharply to the left, revealing a ragged break in the tunnel wall before them. She could see an uneven passage sloping upward beyond the break, but it soon moved outside the range of her elf vision. A chill breeze blew down from the newly revealed passage.

"Passage must lead to surface," Borovazk exclaimed as he, too, inhaled the fresh airflow. "Borovazk smell snow and ice."

Yurz nodded quickly. "Oh yes," he hissed, "man-thing speak truth. This passage run out to mountain trail, then into village by man-castle."

"Then let's not delay," Roberc spoke up, his hand resting upon Cavan's broad back. "The sooner we get to the citadel, the sooner we can finish up this gods-blasted mission." He turned to Marissa and cast her a look of undisguised longing. "I haven't found myself on the tail end of a drunken binge in quite some time."

"No, no, no," Yurz replied. "We no follow mountain trail. Village empty except for goblin spies. See us coming. They not understand why Pretty Lady and friends need to see Big Chief." The goblin stamped his foot, a sight so like that of a little child that Marissa found herself stifling a laugh, despite the seriousness of their situation. "We follow this path," Yurz continued, pointing to the left, where the trail they had been following turned sharply. "Soon we get to underlevels of the man-castle. Yurz take you to see Big Chief. There be big feast. We all eat until we fall asleep."

The thought of spending an evening feasting with a tribe of goblins did little for Marissa's appetite, and she could see by the looks on her companions' faces that they felt similarly.

"I still think we should chance the mountain trail," Roberc said. "It seems far safer to me than traipsing through the warrens of a goblin tribe." Led by a goblin. Marissa could hear the halfling's unspoken reproach.

"It is a matter of trust," Taenaran said in Elvish, which he so rarely spoke.

Marissa nodded once to acknowledge the half-elf's words, but she said nothing. So much had happened to her since coming to Rashemen, events that had changed her in ways she was still discovering. For so long, her relationship with Taenaran had been based on mutual need, a desire to drown out the hurts of the heart with each other's presence. Now she needed-no, wanted- something else besides comfort.

Marissa knew Taenaran understood that on some level he was barely aware of, knew that he experienced it as a distance between them-for she felt it as well. Their current situation had provided them with little time to explore this new dynamic, so the druid chose her words carefully, for she did not want to drive a deeper wedge between them than already existed.

"I trust our new-found friend, Taenaran," she replied to the half-elf in their native tongue and watched as his eyes flashed once, only to be replaced by the calm, flat gaze that signaled his withdrawal behind walls so steep she had never managed to scale them. Their mission drove her onward, however, and so she had little time to worry over what her words might have done to Taenaran. Instead, she turned to the rest of her companions and said, "We should follow Yurz's lead. He has guided us well so far."

Which was the truth, she thought. Despite her initial apprehension about the depth of Yurz's enchanted devotion, the druid had found herself relaxing ever so slightly with each twist and turn of the passage. Not only had Yurz proven a knowledgeable guide, steering them clear of several dangerous sections of tunnel and carefully leading them through a cavern littered with piercers, but the bespelled creature had also helped them elude three goblin patrols. In each case Yurz had cocked his head to the side, listening, then had hastily ushered the group down a small side tunnel as a noisy band of goblins tramped through the main tunnel.

"Besides," she continued, "we might have a greater chance of bypassing the traitor's defenses if we come up from below the citadel."

She watched as the others nodded in reluctant agreement, even, she was relieved to see, Taenaran. "I don't like it," the half-elf said, "but I can clearly see the wisdom in it." He reached out and gave Marissa's shoulder a squeeze. "I trust you," he finished in Elvish. Marissa fought back tears as she watched the half-elf turn and gather his gear.

"Great," Roberc muttered, once again mounting Cavan, "that's just great. I've always wanted to spend my time skulking around goblin tunnels. It's so much better than just about anything else I could think of."

"Wonderful, little friend," Borovazk responded, clapping the halfling heartily on his back. "Now you will get your chance, eh?"

Marissa's tears turned to laughter as the halfling fighter's curse-laden response echoed in the tunnel. Wiping the moisture from her eyes, she turned to follow Yurz down the passageway.

Within her, the war drum thrummed to its implacable pulse.

Taen stood silently in the darkness, listening. The caverns and tunnels running through the depths of the Sunrise Mountains held a rhythm and a life all their own. Within their twisting shafts and dripping grottos untouched by natural light, the half-elf could hear the echoing drip of water falling into still, deep pools; the trickle and flow of underground streams plunging mindlessly along their paths; the clattering of dirt and rock sliding down cavern walls, thrown by the subtle shifting of the earth all around them; and most of all, Taen could sense the movement of hidden creatures slithering, crawling, and running through the darkness.

He'd journeyed into enough dungeons and underground lairs to become familiar with the pulse of life beneath the earth, but he had never grown used to feeling like an intruder, an unwanted visitor from another plane of existence. To him, the darkness had a hundred eyes, each one peering at him from within the shadowy depths of the subterranean night.

"Where are they?" Roberc whispered from somewhere nearby, nearly causing Taen to jump.

The half-elf and his companions all huddled in the darkness, waiting for Borovazk and Yurz to return from scouting the tunnel ahead. Taen had extinguished his arcane light, not wanting to take a chance that its illumination would attract unwanted attention, so they waited beneath a blanket of night, relying upon Cavan's sense of smell and their own instincts to ward them against any danger.

"They will return soon enough," Marissa replied softly from somewhere to Taen's left.

The half-elf hoped so. Though they hadn't stopped too long ago, the group's constant skulking through the lower caverns of the citadel was beginning to wear upon his nerves. The fingers of his left hand twitched slightly, moving unbidden in the patterns of an offensive spell he found himself eager to use. Such thoughts, he knew, were not helpful when engaged in a mission of infiltration, but they were his nonetheless. It wasn't as if he regularly found himself following the lead of an enchanted goblin into the belly of a mountain, the half-elf reasoned-though that thought brought a wave of resentment spilling over him.