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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 4698543" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks, Richard!Is it just me, or has the SH forum gotten real quiet of late? I'm still seeing new stories posted, but it seems to be taking much longer for threads to drop down the page lately. I remember where I could go a few days without a post and end up at the bottom of the page. * * * * * Chapter 8Carzen swallowed at the thought of the weight of all of the stone piled on top of them.  This tunnel, a broad avenue cut into the side of the mountain like a knife, lined with bricks the size of a man’s forearm, looked as though it had existed unaltered for centuries, but for the warrior, that was little consolation.  Men were not meant to come into these deep places under the world.  That was the province of dwarves, orcs, and other creatures of darkness, and he was happy to leave it to them. The eerie features of the tunnel did not reassure him.  The entrance, a black opening that gaped in the surface of a cliff at the summit of the Khel Vale, had been flanked by a pair of massive statues, fearsome minotaurs bearing great axes and depicted in suits of armor that flowed oddly over their huge bodies.  Those had been imposing enough, but they had been much preferable to the vividly imagined carvings of demonic figures that marked the tunnel proper at regular intervals.  There was light, as well, green flames that sprang from copper lanterns that were positioned in niches every fifty paces or so, their radiance adding to the unreality of the place.  Gez had asked about these, how they were kept fueled, and the dwarf wizard had indicated that they were magic, burning endlessly without intervention.  The answer had not pleased Carzen.  He had grown up around magic, what with his brother and sister both studying the Art since childhood, but he had never been able to grasp it, and he profoundly mistrusted things that he could not himself touch with his hands.   Things like his sword, which he frequently touched with his hand, seizing the hilt, or idly toying with the fittings of the scabbard.  He was not a coward; he’d proven that in the battle with the wyvern.  But Carzen Zelos was quick to judge things that did not fit into his perception of how the world should work.  And this dragonborn, Vhael, was quickly moving out of that favored category in the young man’s mind.  The company moved single file, even though the tunnel, stretching nearly thirty feet across, could have accommodated all of them had they chosen to walk side-by-side.  There was little conversation; words spoken here carried oddly off the brick walls, and occasionally distant echoes filtered back to them, noises that they could not identify, let alone gauge their source.  Only that idiot halfling—the mentally defective one—seemed comfortable in these surroundings, peering around with wide eyes like some yokel that had been invited into Moonstone Keep on a feastday.  He had even clambered onto one of the demon statues, crawling over it like a child, ignoring all of their warnings until finally Vhael had barked a command.  At least he listened to the dragonborn.  Gez muttered something under his breath, probably an invocation to one of his alien gods.  Carzen had interacted little with the Issandrian before the wyvern ambush; although the man had been a guardsman at Fallcrest for almost two years, he’d said maybe ten words to him before he’d been picked for this mission.  Before his father had picked him.  Lord Zelos had not deigned to provide his son with insights as to his reasoning, so Carzen had had to make the best of things.  At least he’d known the others that had been chosen better, and in fact had got along well enough with Ladren and Chaffin, both of whom had been players of dragonshard.  Now that he was an officer he couldn’t take their money, but it was still fun to drink and tell stories in the company of good men. Except now that they were dead, all of them.  And he was stuck with an Issandrian, a pair of halflings, a dwarf, and a dictatorial dragonborn who still thought he was a general in the great wars.  Wars that had ended before Carzen had even been born.  He forced himself to meet Gez’s eyes and make a reassuring smile.  Issandrians were known for their quick fingers—one watched their purse closely when around them—and their limited habits of personal hygiene, but at least the man was still one of them, a man of Fallcrest even if a foreigner by birth.  It wouldn’t hurt to have an ally if things came to a head with the dragonborn. Even as the thought passed through his mind, the scaly raised a hand, calling a stop.  Carzen moved forward enough to see that the halfling scout was coming back; he was a slippery one, disappearing quickly from view when he didn’t want to be seen.  He reported quietly to the scaly.  Carzen came closer, but Vhael didn’t elect to share what he’d learned, and merely gestured them forward, the halfling moving ahead again to take the lead.  The nobleman clenched his teeth in frustration, and glanced at Gez, rolling his eyes in exaggerated fashion with a nod of his head at the dragonborn’s back.  The Issandrian grinned, but he held an arrow fitted to the string of his bow as they continued their movement down the tunnel. They came to what the halfling had found a few minutes later.  The stink alerted them first, although there wasn’t much of whatever had caused it left, just some bones, bits of fur, and some bloodstains on the faded bricks.  There was another side-tunnel here, one of several they’d passed since they’d set out on this fool’s errand.  Vhael knelt beside some of the remains, carefully examining the debris, and the marks upon the floor nearby.  The halfling came up holding something—a broken piece of arrow, not much except for a bit of wood and fletching.  Vhael accepted it as though it were the most important thing in the world, and he nodded to himself as he rose.  He showed it to the wizard, who said, “Hobgoblin make.”Carzen let out an exasperated sigh.  “It’s just a piece of arrow… we don’t know how long it’s been down here, or whether it was used by the raiders, our raiders.  What does that prove?”“The tracks are fairly recent,” the halfling scout said.  “As are those bodies.  I’m not sure what they were…”“Kruthik, unless I miss my guess,” the dwarf interjected. The halfling nodded, although Carzen had never heard of them.  The scout went on, “A group stopped here, after the battle.  At least one of them was seriously injured, but he left under his own power.”“How can you know that?” Carzen asked, but he could sense that he was losing the argument; all the others were looking at him, even Gez nodding along with the halfling’s words. The scout pointed to a spot along the wall a few paces back.  “There’s some bloodstains there, enough to indicate that whoever left them was in pretty bad shape.  Scratches where metal—probably armor, or the haft of a weapon—scraped against the wall.  If the body had been picked up, or dragged, there would likely be signs, and there certainly would have been a blood trail.  I think that it was a group of raiders, a pretty good-sized party, and that they had prisoners with them.  Some of the footmarks are too close together to have been left by hobgoblins.”Another problem with the halfling’s logic occurred to Carzen, but this time he held his tongue.  He looked at Vhael, who looked down the tunnel ahead, thoughtful, a faint rumbling coming from deep inside his chest.  “We move out,” he finally said.</blockquote>

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