“Most Battalion One be made died,” said the biggest goblin with a grunt. At this, there was a gentle rattling amongst said battalion.
Before Amma could express whatever fearful sentiment she was about to, Damien announced loudly, “Oh, nonsense. Fall back, all of you. Just let me take care of it.”
Amma’s hand wrapped around his arm again, and she was shaking her head, but she should have known that touch only emboldened him.
“It will be fine,” he assured her even as the entire cavern took to quaking again, the sound drowning out his own thoughts it was suddenly so loud.
“I will escort Master, Mistress,” said Katz in his miserable way, and something hard hit Damien’s chest, a pan thrust upward, an offering from one of the goblins.
Damien spun his new weapon by the handle. “You see? I am more than adequately equipped.”
“Dat’s a brave concubine,” Skoob whispered, and the armored goblins agreed.
Amma managed to nod, calling back the goblins to gather around her like a hoard of chicks to their mother hen. “Be careful,” she said, voice so heavy it practically held him to the spot. A few short hours with the goblins had certainly gotten to her, but she needn’t be afraid of whatever this clearly minor inconvenience was, not that he minded the opportunity to do just a bit of showing off.
“Big Spicy shall be defeated, Your Majesty.” Damien bowedwithin the bounds of his insufficient attire. “And then perhaps you will see fit to reward me.”
That made her blush, a much better state to leave her in than fear, and he turned for one of the pathways out and downward, readjusting the swath of fabric just in case.
Katz at his side, Damien sauntered around the stone wall silently thanks to being unburdened by his clothes or boots. It was significantly warmer there, odd for the wide, open space, but the thinning of the veil that ran through the mountains likely extended to this one. He clicked his tongue—Zagadoth’s occlusion crystal shard could have potentially benefited from the energy here, but then again, it was perhaps a lucky thing he couldn’t speak with his father.
He swung the pan he’d been given, testing its heft and gripping it tighter, annoyed with just the thought of the demon lord. He’d never really been this upset with him, though he wasn’t even sure of the reason—it was that lack of a reason, that missing truth, that was at the crux of the problem.
Hey, Champ, I got a little job for you! Nope, nothing huge, I’m just gonna need you to spend every waking moment of your life collecting nigh-impossible-to-find ingredients and learning life-altering magics to free my stupid, trapped-in-a-stone ass. What did I do to get in here? Don’t worry about that, Kiddo! And why can’t your mom help? I’ll explain that to you when you’re older, Son, just do exactly as I say, and everything will be fiiiiine.
Well, Damienwasolder, but he’d never gotten that explanation, though he supposed twenty-seven was no different than seven to a thousands-of-years-old demon. Everything, however, was certainly not fine, nor had it ever really been, he’d just ignored the fact he knew next to nothing about his mother. Things had been easier that way, but neverfine.
The smell of brimstone tickled at Damien’s nostrils as hecrept deeper into the cavern, replacing his tangential brood with intrigue. Shafts of light shone down into the cave through cracks above, broken and hazy in the darkness. The space went on well above his head, many stories, high enough for an entire flock of those harpies to have the upper wing. Perhaps that was what the goblins feared—a ginger-winged harpy who had decided to torment their little clan.
But harpies didn’t smell like eternal death, and they didn’t exactly rumble either. His eyes roved over the shadowed ground before him. It could be yet another angry pit, he supposed, and that would be right on theme. But he had none of the looming dread or nauseating fatigue of his previous encounters with that bottomless crater of destruction.
No, this fear the goblins had, this Big Spicy, was most likely an animal of sorts that came slithering through the tunnels for them if they did not strike upon hearing it wake. He knew of large worms, eyeless and mostly mouth, that tunneled and surfaced with little regard for what fell into their maw. Or, if the veil to the infernal plane were thinner here, an abyssal hound could have gnawed its way through, gotten stuck, and was now marking its territory all over the cavern. Acidic urine could account for the spiciness, and the size too, relative to a minikin goblin. If the thing were small enough, Damien could just banish it, and if it were larger, he could injure it first and then cast a longer, ritualistic banishment, so he handed the pan off to Katz, opting to pull out his dagger instead.
But there wasnothing.
He’d come to stand before a shaft of light in the huge space’s middle, Katz beside him. The ground rose up in stony columns, but nothing seemed to hide behind them. Shadows were cast in crevasses and around corners, but nothing moved within.
The only point of interest was a small pile of junk, metal things, wooden things, and bits of cloth. He went to inspectit and found it was actually just the tip of a much larger accumulation that filled a sharply sloping basin. A graveyard of disused and ruined objects lay before him, and he crossed his arms, finally deciding it was worth the effort to cast for the blood of other creatures.
The cavern was huge, and there were many goblins infesting the rest of the mountain’s innards to muddy his senses, but once he identified Amma and Katz with his spell, there was something else, something infernal tickling at the back of his head.
He squinted down at the scattering of broken tools, their state even worse than those in use by the goblins as armor as if they’d been chewed up and spit out, looking a bit, well…if he squinted, they actually looked a bitburnt.
“Master!” Katz’s voice was quick for the first time. Damien turned just as the imp gave him a surprisingly strong shove, sending him to the ground. He slid backward down the pile of ruined miscellany, and there was a gust of wind overhead so strong that he could not stand back up. Katz, however, was not so lucky, perched on the ledge above as a thick tendril sailed through the darkness and collided with the comparably tiny imp.
Katz’s body was launched into the air, and Damien was petrified, watching as a snout materialized from the shadows, leathery skin pulling back to reveal fangs as long as Damien’s arm and a blackened gullet he could disappear down in one gulp. A scaled tail snapped through the air, flipping Katz into the height of the cavern. The moment passed too quickly for Damien to have even sliced into his skin had he not been frozen in fear, but he did catch the look on the imp’s face as he descended toward the toothy maw that positioned itself below him.
The imp smiled, probably for the first time in his entire existence, and then was swallowed whole by an infernal dragon.
“Oh, fuck.”
Damien bolted.Thathad been the infernal tickle to Damien’sspell,thatwas what rumbled the entire mountain with its waking,thatwas Big Spicy. And the goblins were absolutely right to be afraid.
Never had Damien run so fast, though it was easier without the weight of leathers and buckles and boots. Armor or no, there was little that survived dragon fire, but it wasn’t just the fear of a crispy death that had made him flee. There was a primal memory that came with reptilian, winged creatures—ridden, specifically, by scorned women—that was wedged so deeply into the base of his brain, he could only retreat instead of stand his ground and fight. He might have been ashamed of such a fear if it were of something ridiculous, but as far as things to be fearful of went, dragons were easily the most acceptable.
The great menace’s growl vibrated up through his feet and into his gut, and he dared a peek over his shoulder as he fled. The dragon was just coughing up the pan Katz had been given and spat it into the hoard of chewed-up garbage. Then it turned the slivers of its pupils on the blood mage.
Damien’s heart slammed into his ribs as he dodged between stalagmites to try and confuse the beast. He pulled the dagger across his chest in a messy, frantic wound and sheathed it, smearing the blood in his other hand and casting blindly behind him. He could only hope the wall of shadows would distract it as he took a sharp turn and darted away.
