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[Lazybones]

Chapter 29


Carzen Zelos was feeling jumpy.

The dragonborn warlord, he was becoming convinced, was insane. But that was the least of their problems, as far as he was concerned.

He hadn’t signed up for this. They’d taken out the slavers, true, though they’d come damned close to buying it at the end there. His leg twinged at the thought, and while the limb had healed fully, he still started to limp sometimes when he put his weight on it, remembering the intensity of the pain. He’d saved the head of the bolt that had punched through his thigh, for some reason; it was in his pouch, wrapped in a swath of cloth.

He was tired of this, all the fighting and blood. At first it had been his father’s stern gaze and hard words imagined in the back of his mind that had kept him here, but somehow that had started to fade in the days since they’d first ventured into the Labyrinth. Now he wasn’t quite sure why he was staying around. The scaly might have some grand notion of the noble mission or somesuch, but Carzen wasn’t one for sacrifice in the name of the cause. Of course, getting out of here was its own problem, as all these underground tunnels and chambers had turned his usually decent sense of direction inside out. He supposed that he could hunt down Jaron and get his help finding the exit, but from what the halfling had said back in the Chamber of Eyes, he wasn’t interested in leaving any time soon either.

He glanced over at Gez, just visible in the shadows on the edge of the glow from the second lamp. The other soldier didn’t say much; he seemed resigned to whatever fate awaited them down here. Of course, he hadn’t been stuck full of arrows like Carzen had.

So why was he staying?

He leaned forward over the ledge, and spat, the glob of spittle glimmering in the light for an instant before it vanished into the darkness below. At least Vhael had picked out a defensible hidey-hole before he’d up and disappeared. He would have much preferred to stay in the comfort of the Hall—odd, to now consider that “comfortable”—but at least here nobody was trying to kill him. Well, almost nobody; there had been a skirmish with a weird dog-thing with long tentacles jutting from its shoulders that had seemed to shift and twist strangely as it moved, but they’d driven it off with missiles before it could maneuver up the thin ledge that led up to their hideout. Carzen was glad for that; he’d thrown a javelin that had hit it (he’d thought) straight between the eyes, but somehow the damned thing had shifted slightly at the last minute, and his spear had gone straight past it.

A slight droning noise drew his attention back toward the cave. Gez had heard it too, he saw, and the soldier fidgeted uncomfortably before turning back out toward the cavern below the ledge. Carzen didn’t blame him. Surina gave him the creeps as well. It wasn’t just having another dragonborn in the group—though he didn’t like that either—but she seemed even stranger than Vhael, if such a thing was possible. He still wasn’t quite clear where Vhael had dug her up, only that she’d appeared as they were leaving the Hall again, heading toward this new temporary lair. She was a warlock, and Carzen had to admit that her magic had really been the reason that odd dog-creature had been driven off yesterday. Vhael seemed to know her, and while he hadn’t bothered to explain the reason for her presence here to a mere soldier like Carzen, he could guess. Whatever was coming, they would need more firepower to deal with it.

She hadn’t spoken much to them, or to Vhael and Gral, for that matter, on the rare occasions that they were around. Instead she spent most of her time sleeping, or doing what she was doing now, muttering quiet chants to her god, Erathis. Carzen had met servants of the Civilized God in Fallcrest, but he’d never met a priest who’d had his mark drawn into their skin in a hundred places, or whose eyes shone with an undisguised light of fanaticism whenever they spoke his name.

There was something else, too, a weird feeling he couldn’t quite place. He sometimes felt she was watching him, even when she lay asleep in her bedroll. It made his skin crawl.

A hiss from Gez drew his attention back. He’d let his mind wander again, and he cursed himself quietly as he took up his javelin and crawled forward to where he could get a clear shot at the path leading up the ledge. But this time there was no monster creeping about, only a soft glow that revealed the approaching forms of Vhael and Gral.

“Took you long enough,” Carzen muttered to himself, acknowledging Vhael’s signal with a curt wave of his hand. The pair made their way up the treacherous path. Carzen and Gez were there to meet them, and Surina appeared suddenly as she often did, materializing silently out of the darkness behind them. Carzen felt a tingle at the base of his neck, and forced himself to ignore it. Gral was carrying several bulging satchels, he saw. “More supplies?” he asked.

“We’re moving out,” Vhael said. “Get your things together.”

The dragonborn started to move into the cave, but Carzen stepped in front of him. “I don’t suppose you’d deign to share the plan with us underlings?”

Vhael’s gaze fixed him for a long few seconds. “The prisoners have been taken to a place known as the Well of Demons. They are held by a tribe of demon-worshipping gnolls, who are planning to sacrifice them in a few days. I’ve arranged for a guide to meet us on the far side of the Hall, near the Road of Lanterns. He will show us the way. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some preparations to make. We depart in ten minutes.”

“Praise be to Erathis,” Surina said, her long tongue sliding along her teeth in a way that made Carzen’s skin crawl. She followed Vhael into the chamber behind the ledge like a puppy.

“Don’t worry, lad,” Gral said. “He knows what he’s doing.” The wizard dropped one of his bags at Carzen’s feet, then followed after his master.

“Oh, now I feel better,” Carzen said. He looked at Gez, who stood there like a statue. His gaze traveled to the path down the ledge, lingered there. Finally, with a sign, he turned and snatched up the heavy pack, and headed back to where he’d left his bedroll and other gear.