BlaiseCorvin
patreon
Reincarnator RB Dragons, ch 17
🕑 Added 2024-05-16 13:01:10 +0000 UTCKevin traveled a decent distance down the tunnel before seeing anything other than just rocky walls. Once he saw how far the orks were actually hauling rocks and debris, he felt a twinge of sympathy for the amount of work they were doing. Even though they were evil, cultist enemies, the sheer effort they were exerting was noteworthy. He figured it was also pretty lucky that whatever they were digging was so deep underground; otherwise, they might already be finished. He got lucky on the way.
A couple of orks were approaching from the front. One was pushing the mine cart while the other walked ahead. Kevin hid in a small crevice in the rock on the right-hand side, directly underneath a magic light so the shadow would be deepest where he was huddled.
They didn’t see him and he stopped holding his breath.
He crept out of his hiding place after the two enemies had passed and slowly moved up behind the rearmost one. Both ork men were wearing miner outfits, but now that Kevin knew what to look for, he could see bracers and weapons hidden under their clothing. He had no doubt that these two would be switching into a cultist robe once they were done working for the day.
He could tell they didn’t wear the miner clothing all day because it wasn’t covered in prisoner blood.
Kevin's plan at the moment was simple and leaned heavily on a fact that he kept forgetting: when he was polymorphed into a chipmunk, anyone who saw him would just think he was a chipmunk. With that in mind, he suddenly surged forward and, using [Lion Iguana Neurotoxin Venom], bit the back of the rearmost ork's leg. The cultist-turned-miner wasn't armored on his legs, so Kevin's teeth had no real resistance as he easily bit through pants and into flesh.
The ork made a sound of outraged surprise, but Kevin had already moved to the next leg, chomping it just like the first. Then he was running forward in a flash, jumping onto the second ork’s leg as the first one began squawking.
Kevin bit the second ork and then, doing his best angry chipmunk noises, chittered loudly as he ran away down the tunnel. Both orks growled and chased after him, the frontmost ork barking something angrily. Hopefully, it wasn't loud enough for the other orks to hear, but even if they did, all they would likely understand of the situation was that a rabid chipmunk had just bitten two workers.
Kevin had no idea how powerful his venom was, but he was sure that it could kill a couple of orks. Of course, that was unless they had venom or poison resistance, but he had a plan for that too.
He didn't keep running the entire distance to the mouth of the tunnel, which he could have easily done due to his natural athleticism, his chipmunk form, and exceptional stamina. Instead, he slowed down near the kitchen long enough for the wheezing orks to almost catch up before chittering again and keeping out of reach. By this point, both of the envenomed workers had long daggers in their hands. He was half surprised they hadn't thrown them yet. The two orks began shouting something, maybe the names of the cooks inside.
Kevin turned the corner and ran into the kitchen, jumping onto a counter to one side of the door and polymorphing into his goblin form. He drew his sword and prepared to fight, just in case his venom wasn’t working fast enough. He was fairly confident that with his ambush and the fact that the orks only had daggers, he could make short work of them. Not only that, this far from the end of the tunnel, he didn't have to worry as much about any potential reinforcements coming to help these two. In fact, if there were another team near the surface who came back, it might be helpful because he could clear out another two.
As it turned out, his forethought was mostly unnecessary. The first ork ran into the kitchen using almost inertia alone but suddenly fell to the ground, the strength in his legs giving out. The second ork tripped over the first and fell as well, hitting his head on the island in the middle of the kitchen. Kevin jumped down from his counter, skewering the first ork and savagely kicking the second in the back of the head before chopping the back of his neck.
With bodies being assaulted by powerful venom and new, mortal wounds, both orks were down for the count. Neither one of them even made much noise as they died, and Kevin realized that their tongues had swollen.
The entire kitchen was awash with blood. New blood met cooling, sticky blood. It was a mess.
Kevin quickly flicked the blood off of his blade, resheathed his sword, sat on the counter and polymorphed into a chipmunk again before staying completely still, silent, listening. There weren't any sounds of pursuit or alarm.
Now he had a choice.
He was half tempted to move to the entrance of the mine and clear it of any other orks that might still be there. More of them might have left the mine to dump a cart, or some other reason, and could find all the bodies in the kitchen later.
Kevin decided to go deeper into the mine. If he encountered angry reinforcements howling for blood, he definitely preferred that it would be two or maybe four of them versus the rest of the orks deeper in the mine.
Time seemed to advance faster, and Kevin moved quickly as he backtracked down the tunnel to where he had stopped earlier. That point ended up being about halfway to the end. At some point, the mined tunnel met a natural cave system that had been widened at points.
He could tell he was getting near the digging area when he could hear the sound of picks, labor, and guttural ork voices.
Kevin could speak the modern ork language at an intermediate level. What these orks were speaking was an ancient, likely obscure, dirty-sounding language.
At about the same time Kevin heard the voices, the natural cave ended. From that point to where he was now, there were thick, well-constructed supports for a series of tunnels. None of the side tunnels extended very far; he could see to the end of them.
This had truly been a mining operation in the past. However, as he moved forward, he noticed that the tunnel supports began to grow increasingly more shoddy. They were created with thinner wood, and the angles of the supports were less precise. The workmanship of the digging itself continued to grow worse too as Kevin moved forward until he saw where these orks had been working.
It looked like they’d dug about one hundred yards or so of fresh, new tunnel past the point Kevin was currently crouching. At the end of the tunnel, they’d begun digging sideways in a somewhat random manner. He could understand why when he crept forward and peered deeper into the hand-dug cavern that the orks had been creating. It began on the same level as the mine shaft but then descended further, creating a large, roughly boxy room.
Most of the orks were working, filling carts and talking low amongst themselves. Standing proudly among all the dirt and sediment was an ancient looking bit of stonework that extended into the group. The orks were uncovering something that looked like the edge of a temple. All the relief carvings and runic scripts in the ancient stonework made Kevin's skin crawl.
He understood what he was looking at to be an ancient structure dedicated to a dark god—one of the really nasty dark gods, based on his visceral reaction. Although Kevin was not a paladin or an accomplished mage, he was the Champion of a god, and that gave him a few senses beyond the norm.
Nearby, next to the wall, hung five lanterns. Kevin immediately understood why. If any of the mage lights went out, it would be helpful to have a mundane lantern for the workers to light so they wouldn't have to fumble around in the dark. This was one problem with magic lights; it could be difficult to tell when they were going to run out of power unless one had a friendly mage around to constantly test it.
Kevin really didn't want to enter the deep chamber and start fighting. The orks would be enoug of a problem without any help, but he also noticed a few crossbows hung on the dirt walls, presumably to grab if they needed to run to the entrance to defend it. Unfortunately, crossbows were exceptional at killing both chipmunk-sized Kevin and human or goblin-sized Kevin.
There really was a lot of orks, too, about a dozen. It had also taken a few minutes for the two he had bitten to succumb to their venom. Actually, it might have taken more time than that, since he had stabbed them to death.
He was beginning to suspect that his venom had a greater effect the longer it lingered. That meant it was very powerful to kill with, but not good to incapacitate with.
Running in Leroy Jenkins-style, with no plan, was probably not the best thing to do. But he definitely needed to do something quickly. If he didn't take action soon, it was only a matter of time until the orks were alerted that they had an intruder. And even if Kevin were comfortable leaving the remaining cultists to their devices, which he was not, merely leaving the mine with the goblins would probably just be a great way for these orks to catch up with him and the very vulnerable escapees.
Another reason he didn’t want to run into the ork-made chamber was because the construction of the supports in the tunnel, and the base of the chamber were flimsy-looking. They were just pieces of wood nailed together, with very little bracing or support. Some were even made of raw tree branches from the forest outside the mine. Some of the supports looked like a swift kick from a full-grown man could topple any one of them.
That gave Kevin a great idea.
So far while dealing with the orks, he had used plans with two parts, so if one part failed, the other would be a backup. That had been working so well, he didn’t see any reason to change it. So after checking the tunnel he had come down to make sure no orks were coming from that direction, he polymorphed into his muscular human Goldemere form. Then he took down and lit one nearby lantern using his dragon life kill, [spark].
[Spark] could not be used offensively, but like the name implied, it functioned almost the same as an earth lighter on the tip of his finger. After lighting one lamp, Kevin lit the rest. Then he unscrewed the cap on the oil reservoirs for all of them before throwing them as hard as he could into the group of orks below.
Liquid sprayed everywhere from the lanterns. Glass broke. It was a moment of confusion, where the working orks turned to see broken lamps and glance around at each other, their minds trying to catch up with all the unexpected ne stimulus. None of them even shouted.
Before scattered the oil had even been lit by one of the lamps, Kevin dashed forward and kicked one of the supports further down the tunnel and inside the large side chamber. Just like he had imagined, the support snapped and tumbled forward. As he darted ahead and kicked another support, Kevin reflected on the fact that this was probably not the safest ambush plan he had ever come up with. If the tunnel collapsed on top of him right now, he would be a dead piece of hamburger.
That's a cheery thought.
Some of the orks caught fire. As they all began to yell in pain or confusion, the sound was deafening. Some of them spotted him and pointed, even while beating the fire off of their clothing, Kevin worked his way back to the tunnel, kicking as many supports as he could. Collapsing this end of the tunnel was important–even if it happened after the orks left or were dead. Whatever ancient structure they were uncovering needed to be buried again. Kevin instinctively felt very strongly about this.
He was almost done collapsing most of the supports. Although there were still pools of fire burning down below, about half the orks were starting to climb towards him with murderous intent. One of them had almost finished cocking a crossbow.
As he left the more open area and rounded the corner into the tunnel, Kevin spared an upward glance at the ceiling, hoping to see it tremble at least. Nothing was happening.
I guess we'll move to plan B, he thought. About forty yards away, polymorphed into a chipmunk and darted into a crevice that he had seen earlier and prepared to hide. Now his plan was to wait for the orks to run past him before biting as many of them as he could and running away again. There were enough little clefts and hiding places in the rocky halls after they realized what was happening, they would have to move much slower. And Kevin was confident in the fact that he would be able to think of something else to hit them with after that to even the odds.
He heard the angry, shouting orks getting closer. By this time, he could even smell the burned clothing.
A few of them had been wearing light pieces of armor, and ironically, they were probably the ones that had been most injured by the fire. Any metal would be red-hot. Kevin was sure of it now: they were speaking an unfamiliar language. He didn't know exactly what they were saying, but whatever it was, it wasn't happy. He braced himself to see the first ork when suddenly it felt like a god picked up the world and shook it. A second later, a burst of air and dust slammed down the hallway like a sneeze.
Kevin realized what was happening almost immediately and didn't wait around to watch. He took off out of his hiding place and ran as fast as he could down the tunnel back the way he’d originally come.
If there was any chain reaction from the cave-in, he didn't want to be caught in it. He kept running, at least feww hundred yards back down the tunnel.
He stopped when he was nearing the beginning of the natural cave system that the man made tunnels connected with. The rumbling had subsided by this point, so cautiously but quickly, he scampered back to see the damage of the cave-in.
His murderous plan had worked almost perfectly. At was was now the end of the tunnel, there was a solid wall of earth and stone. Five living orks stood in the mine tunnel, standing and staring at the destruction. One of them, clad in a robe, was yelling and waving his arms. Two were sitting on the ground, looking dazed. One was leaning against the wall, and the last had severe burns on one side of his face and was the only one to see Kevin coming.
But Kevin was currently a chipmunk.
The ork who saw him barely paid attention and began saying something to one of his fellows before Kevin chopped at his ankle. He yelled in surprise and alarm. The ork reached down to grab him, but Kevin was already past, biting the leg of the ork leaning against the wall. Then he hopped onto the shoulder of a sitting ork, bit his neck,and jumped down to the ground, The burned ork took a swing at him that missed, hitting his companion in the back of the head. Kevin bit the arm of the second sitting ork.
He had almost exhausted [Lion Iguana Neurotoxin Venom], His jaws and cheeks ached.
The last ork, the one in the robe, turned and surprised Kevin with his reaction. Instead of startlement or confusion, the ork snarled, eyes narrowed in hate, and began chanting something. Darkness gathered in the air. Kevin could feel the danger of the ominous magic but continued forward anyway. He jumped and bit the ork right below the kneecap before springboarding off of his enemy's leg to run down the tunnel. He sprinted for all he was worth. Darkness followed him.
At first, there was quite some distance between him and the shadow, but it began to speed up. Kevin grew seriously concerned when it was only about ten feet behind him, keeping up no matter how fast he ran.
If not for his chipmunk form and [Beastly Stamina], he might have faltered by this point. Whether the shadow could kill him or do something worse, he did not want to find out.
Luckily, before he quite made back to the kitchen, the shadow stopped advancing. Kevin looked back to verify that it wasn't pursuing him anymore but didn't quit running until he made it to the goblin prisoners.
Part of him wanted to go back and ensure he’d killed the orks–maybe even loot anything of value, but he had plenty of money in his pack that he’d stowed outside the mine, and knowing that at least one of the orks was some sort of dark mage changed things. After all, even if all five of the surviving orks had already died from Kevin's venom, the mage might have cursed the end of the tunnel or the area in darkness, or left some other nasty surprise. Kevin knew he was stronger than the average goblin in this world, but everything he'd already done so far in this mine had been extremely dangerous and foolhardy. Going back now would practically be asking for something terrible to happen.
Suddenly, a screen popped up in his vision, one whose like he had not seen in a long time. He blinked as he read it before dismissing the screen. It was something he could deal with later. Right now, the priority was getting the captives out of the tunnels.
Kevin polymorphed into his original dream goblin body.
He knocked on the door and hurriedly got out, "It's me, Kevin."
The goblins inside opened the door for him and he stepped aside. The oldest goblin fearfully asked, "Are we leaving?”
“Yes. But we need to leave now. Like, right now." He looked past them and asked, "What about the humans? Did they wake up?"
The oldest goblin answered again, "The wounded one succumbed to her injuries and died. The other woke up for a tiny bit after that and was able to talk to us, but then he died too."
"I see," said Kevin. He tried to spot anything in the goblin's face that might give away a lie, but he had an absolute poker face. In truth, the two humans truly had been in bad shape, and it was probably better off they were dead. But Kevin thought it was awfully suspicious that both of them had passed in the amount of time it took him to leave the dungeon area and return.
What is done is done. At least…maybe he could get out of here and tell their families about their deaths to bring them closure.
He asked, "Did you get their names?" All the goblins nodded. The youngest female goblin said, "I memorized all their names, and the names of the goblins that died too." She held out a hand. "Here, these are the necklaces that the people who just died had on. The man we talked to told us to take this back to Clearmine with us and tell one of his relatives what had happened to him.
“Perfect,” he muttered. Kevin took the two necklaces from the goblin's outstretched hand and glanced at the grisly, bloody remains in the other cells. "What about all the dead?"
The goblin shook her head. "We've already seen the orks search their bodies, and we checked the jailkeeper's room. He didn't have anything of interest or value. The other orks must have taken it to their dig site."
"Lovely," sighed Kevin. "Well, the dig site is under about a million tons of dirt now, so hopefully, these necklaces and memories will be enough for the murdered to stay unforgotten. Anyway, we don't have any time left, let's go." Underlining his words with actions, he turned and led the way out of the mine.
The black cloud that had been chasing him earlier was still a worry.
"Oh, thank the green gods," exclaimed the oldest goblin at the entrance of the tunnel. "No more orks! I was half expecting there to be more here!" He showed Kevin the rock in his hand, held like a weapon. "I'm not letting them take me again."
"Well, let's get the hell out of here and make sure that they can't, then," said Kevin. He eyeballed a fresh group of tracks and wondered if another couple orks was actually out dumping a minecart or something. But two more of them was probably a force he could deal with. And now that he was back in the open, Branch would be able to warn him of any approaching enemies like that. He took a brief detour to collect his pack and then began leading the surviving goblins east.
The first pond that the group found reduced all of the escaped prisoners to animals as they greedily slurped the water. Kevin watched them and felt a fresh wave of sympathy. These people had been through hell. He decided that even if they had actually killed at least one or even both of the human prisoners, he couldn't exactly hold it against them. With baggage like they carried now, they probably would have been either terrified or resigned that they would never escape. What would I have done in their situation? he wondered to himself. The thought brought back terrible memories that he usually kept carefully repressed, so he entirely cleared his mind.
When he was done recentering himself, all that remained was a strong desire to ensure these prisoners made it to safety and could restart their lives. Sometimes that's all anyone could hope for.
