Chapter 5: Talentless - Chapter 5

It was obvious that whatever Quill had done to save herself was beyond the means of a mage’s basic mana manipulation. She had done something unique. The others had surely noticed, but had chosen to let it go. Rayden didn't feel as generous. He was dying to know more about her, and this wasn’t something she could easily explain away.

“Of course I do,” Quill said, as haughtily as she could manage in her condition. “I got my Talent two years ago on my twenty-fourth birthday, and have since completed two of the four dungeons required for my first Profundity. I was considered ahead of schedule for nobility, until I left home not long ago.”

Rayden’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. He was stunned by her blunt response. He had expected she was highborn from the beginning, but hearing it was still a shock. Making matters worse, he suddenly recalled a certain joke he had made earlier…

“No fucking way. You are a princess?”

Quill rolled her eyes, stuck out her tongue, and jabbed a finger into his leg.

“Not telling, you prying pauper. If we survive this death-trap, I’ll open up a bit, but that’s enough revelations for now.”

Rayden really wanted to ask what exactly her Talent was, why the hell she was here, who her parents were, and a thousand more impertinent questions…but he got the sense that patience and tact would be rewarded. Instead of interrogating her, he simply offered her his hand.

“Please rise, Lady Quill,” he teased.

“Thanks, oh lowly one,” she said wryly, before poking him again, this time in the stomach.

He could tell she was still a bit shaken up, so he allowed her to get her bearings for a minute or two while they stood in silence.

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell the others,” she said eventually. “I’m sure they’re suspicious as well, but I’d rather talk about it after the dungeon. Plus, it’s not like they aren’t hiding their own Talents as well.”

“I figured they were,” Rayden said flatly.

She put her hands on her hips and bit her lip.

“Weirdly, I think I’ve seen Jim before…”

“At a freak show?”

“Heh, maybe,” she giggled. “Perhaps a court jester who entertained my father.”

“Sounds about right,” Rayden nodded, ignoring the implication. “I won’t tell the others, and…I won’t ask you anything else for now. I appreciate you trusting me.”

“Thank you.”

“And…um,” he added, after a long pause. “The others seemed to have their reasons for entering this dungeon, but you were pretty clear about doing it to help Penrith and its people. I don’t meet a lot of people with that sensibility…so thanks.”

Quill flashed him a faint smile as she bobbed her head.

“I do want to help. I feel for the people here, even the bombastic mayor. My sojourn away from the capital has been…enlightening.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Rayden grinned. “This lowly pauper is pleased to know his prim princess walks amongst the common rabble!”

She scoffed at him, but didn’t seem too bothered.

“You seem like you care about people, Rayden, despite being an ass,” she qualified. “It appears what she said about you was true, all of it, actually…”

“What??”

He stared at her, having no idea who possibly would run in both their circles.

Maybe a barmaid, or an innkeeper, or one of the many town officials he had pissed off, but nobody came to mind. He tried his best not to be memorable. He studied her suddenly red face, enjoying her discomfort but not finding any answers.

“Pay it no mind,” she said dismissively, a bit of her confidence restored at seeing him so interested. “That information is too dangerous to share with the peasantry.”

“Of course,” he bowed obsequiously. “Please forgive this lowly serf.”

They shared a laugh that stretched into companionable silence until Rayden realized he was suddenly at a loss for words. He was sort of gawking at her like an idiot, and that’s when it dawned on him that he might have a bit of a problem.

Quill was…alluring, even in her current condition. Her robes were tattered, and her tawny hair was a wet mess, but that didn’t stop it from nicely framing her soft cheekbones and fair skin. He liked the way her brown eyes softened when she told a joke, and he liked the way they shone with pride when she was serious.

He was…well...probably being a moron more than anything, but also very much enamored.

Just when he realized how long he’d been staring, she caught his gaze. Quill looked directly into his eyes, tilted her head, then slowly curved her lips into a satisfied smile. Rayden turned away with a blush, only to see that Boh was peeking in from the hallway, grinning right at him. He groaned.

“Weren’t you supposed to be scouting?”

The dwarf beamed in response, pleased to have caught them off guard.

“‘Course, that’s what we did, but Ivy sent me back, presuming you wanted to continue. If you’d rather sit down, have a nice picnic, and get to know one another better, please be my guest. Old Boh just wants to be invited!”

Quill rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were still red. However, her stately demeanor returned in full force as she briskly walked by him, firing a potshot at the last moment.

“I might have seen you earlier if you crested four feet.”

“Oh, please, not the height,” he bemoaned. “You can call a dwarf fat, insult his craft, and even refuse his cheer, but don't stomp on his diminutive pride!”

Rayden just laughed as he gave the dwarf a sympathetic pat.

“You have the gall of a giant, Boh.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

Before Rayden could escape, the mischievous dwarf pointed at Quill and gave him a demonstrative thumbs-up. He wisely chose to ignore the gesture before the dwarf moved on to anything less appropriate.

Entering the hallway, he was surprised to find the castle’s corridors a complete mess. There were scuff marks all over the walls where decorations had been stripped off, and big piles of mixed-up rubble scattered against them. The floor was dusty, cracked, and often covered in reddish-brown stains.

There was a good deal of art amongst the clutter, and Rayden began to notice a disturbing theme: whoever had owned this castle, fictional or not, really, really, hated goblins—and not just as a pesky nuisance, but with religious fervor.

This was macabrely illustrated by an overturned oil painting that depicted a family of humans smiling as they whipped a group of kneeling goblins. The joy on the humans’ faces was zealous and exaggerated, a bizarre caricature of slavery and cruelty. Ironically, as he and Boh progressed through the castle, they began to find mutilated human corpses stacked onto the pillaged piles of relics.

“Those were all here before,” Boh clarified. “We killed a goblin or two on our way, but haven’t seen anything else alive.”

“How disturbing,” Rayden said slowly. “It’s like we’re in a goblin’s revenge fantasy.”

The dwarf nodded solemnly before taking a long drink from his flagon. When his cup lowered, a mischievous smile crept onto his face.

“Doesn’t look good for you, my human friend. Good thing they’ve no quarrel with dwarves!”

“And how do you know that?” Rayden laughed, eyeing the flagon suspiciously.

“Because dwarves are just goblins with beards. At least that’s what my former lover used to say.”

Rayden chuckled, finding the description apt based on his limited experience. He’d only known one dwarf.

“That’s a good one.”

“Heh, I’ll drink that.”

And he did. Based on man’s prodigious intake, he had a feeling the flagon was enchanted. However, he didn’t bother wasting time bringing it up. About a minute later, they entered a small rectangular chamber where the others were milling about.

Ivy put a finger to her lips as soon as he walked in.

“Recovered?” She asked in a hushed whisper.

Rayden cycled his mana before answering, and was pleased to find he was sufficiently topped up. He had heard that dungeons had extremely high-density mana, but was experiencing it for the first time.

“I’m good.”

“Good,” she nodded briskly. “The next room is a large dining hall. No way around it, only through it. It’s filled with at least twenty goblins, and some of them have human weapons and armor. We can handle it, but be wary.”

Not too bad, he thought, before realizing that he would have normally been daunted by that many cretins. The unusual power of this group had warped his expectations.

“We were thinking you could get us started, again, Rayden,” Jim said excitedly. “Captain Ivy, bold Boh, and yours truly–Jim the magnificent–will take the vanguard while you and Quill attack from the rear.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Rayden has noticed that Jim had a habit of never breaking eye contact when he was excited, and sometimes it bordered on disquieting.

“I hope that’s not too boring, friend!”

“Fine by me,” Rayden replied.

He glanced at Quill, careful not to stare for too long, and was pleased to see her nodding in agreement. He wasn’t going to complain about working with the powerful mage he was attracted to. Boh looked like he was going to make a joke, but opted for another drink instead.

He was about to ask if the dwarf could fight drunk, but thought better of it. Firstly, he had probably been drunk during the first goblin go-around. Second, Rayden had learned that there was nothing drunks loved more than bragging about how much better they were at doing things drunk.

Ivy, their hawkish captain, slowly scanned their faces, apparently judging for herself if her minions were ready for battle.

“Any questions?” She asked.

Her dutiful students quietly shook their heads no.

“Alright, let’s begin.”

Rayden took a deep breath, then pulled out his bow and ran his hand down its frame. It was time to take revenge for the xenophobic humans who once ruled this dreary fortress. Uh, justice?

With Rayden leading, they crept through the tunnel-like room, sticking close to the walls and out of sight of the open doorway. As they approached the dining room, the shrieks and snorts of cavorting goblins masked their footsteps. It sounded like the merry troglodytes were having a celebration. The poor little creatures had no idea a band of Attuned exterminators was about to crash their party.

After reaching the edge of the room, Rayden took a quick peek inside. It was massive, with ceilings twice as high as the corridor they had come in from, and long rectangular tables that could easily seat forty human men.

Somewhere between twenty and thirty goblins were tightly packed into a single table, feasting like heathens on disgustingly thick cuts of meat. Most of the little bastards had to stand on the benches lining the table just to reach their meal.

The largest of the creatures had the privilege of wearing pieces of human armor, often equipped in strange applications, like a helmet worn as a shirt and a breastplate tied around scrawny legs like a metal kilt. It seemed that practicality had been abandoned in favor of big, shiny iron trophies.

“They’re playing dress up!” Jim whispered. “How quaint.”

Rayden smiled at the joke, but he found the entire dungeon unnerving. If he thought about any of it too much, too many uncomfortable questions came to mind.

Where did any of this come from? Was it randomly generated or personally designed? If it was the latter, was there a point to these bizarre humans versus goblins themes, or was it just a sick mind’s idea of fun? Was any of this real, or was it all an elaborate simulacrum built by unfathomably powerful magic?

Having finally been through a gate, Rayden understood why nobody in the kingdom could agree on their origin.

“Rayden,” Ivy said impatiently.

“Sorry,” he replied, lightly tapping his face to focus.

He gripped his bow, banished his errant thoughts, and prepared to kill.

“Here goes.”

Rayden entered the room with his bow drawn, carefully sneaking forward on the balls of his feet. The room smelled like burnt meat and filth, but he forced himself not to gag. He was almost in range.

Thankfully, the goblins were so wrapped up in their revelry that not a single one looked his way. Finally in position, he grabbed an arrow and pulled it against the string, beginning to cycle mana into his arm muscles.

He waited until his arm was trembling with strength, then an arrow flew across the room and blasted straight through the spine of an unsuspecting goblin. The dead creature fell onto the table, hitting its head against a plate with a loud bonk.

“Nice shot,” he heard Quill murmur as she pulled up next to him.

He swelled with pride as their three companions stormed into the room. The incensed creatures had just turned their ugly heads toward them when his second arrow shot through another one’s forehead. A crossbow bolt pierced another, just as a lance of mana obliterated one more.

“It’s time to fuck some goblins!” A charging Boh shouted.

Rayden hoped the dwarf had merely forgotten a word, but had no time to ask. The madness had begun in earnest. The remaining goblins swarmed like a disturbed anthill, screeching with rage as they charged into battle.

Jim, Boh, and Ivy intercepted the majority, but the little gremlins were hard to keep track of. Rayden fired one more arrow before he noticed two slippery bastards rushing towards him with rage in their beady black eyes. One was dressed in a leather tunic, while the other wore nothing but a shabby loincloth.

“I got it,” he grunted to Quill.

He switched to his daggers and began to sprint, attempting to overtake the nearly naked lecher before their kin could flank. Mana pumped into his legs and burned into his muscles, doubling his normal speed.

The goblin brandished its sword, but not in time. It hadn’t expected a human cannonball to launch into its chest. Rayden used the unfortunate monster to cushion his fall, smashing it into the ground in a sickening crunch of bones.

He almost felt bad, witnessing true terror in the goblin’s eyes right before he blinded them with a pair of plunging daggers.

One down.

He turned to his left and saw a mace barreling down on his head. Rayden rolled out of the way, causing the violent little runt to stumble and smash the empty air. He quickly jabbed a dagger into its flank in reprisal, but unfortunately, the blade was blunted by its leather tunic.

It hopped back with a screech, screaming what he assumed were goblin obscenities to the arrogant human who had dared spill its blood. The poor bastard was raging, but if it survived the next five seconds, it was going to be even angrier.

Rayden feinted like he was going to use his daggers, then kicked up into the creature's crotch so hard he punted it in the air. The goblin hit the ground like a sack of stones, incapacitated and probably embarrassed. He wasn’t an expert in goblin anatomy, but he ventured that regardless of its sex, the poor writhing creature would never go on to have children. A dagger through its forehead guaranteed as much.

Both stragglers slain, Rayden surveyed the carnage as he switched back to his bow. Quill was safe, firing potshots when she could. Boh was alternating between punching goblins in the face and sending them flying with his warhammer. Jim was treating his longsword like a rapier, glibly darting in and out of his victim's range like he was making up a dance.

He turned to Ivy just in time to see her clobber two goblins together like she was wringing out a sponge.

What a monster.

Things were just about cleaned up.

Until they weren’t.

Rayden heard a muffled roar, then a hulking green brute smashed into the room in a spray of dust and stone. When the rubble cleared, a musclebound monster stood sniffing the air, standing nearly six feet tall, with an ugly goblinoid head covered in bulging veins and topped with long bony antlers. It had two red holes for eyes, no visible nose or mouth, and was tucking its pointed chin eerily deep into the thick folds of its neck.

Rayden was pretty sure the beast was a spriggan, a monster he had heard of but never seen. They were supposed to be completely blind, but have terrific hearing and a keen sense of smell.

“Be careful,” Quill yelled behind him. “Those brutes are strong. If it gets to us, that thing can easily rip us in half…”

“Should we run?”

“Hmm. No, I think the five of us can kill it.”

He glanced at the mage and saw her sweaty face hardened with resolve. If she believed they could do it, that was good enough for him.

“Attack!” Ivy screamed, having pummeled the final goblin while the rest of them gawked.

Jim struck first, firing a crossbow bolt directly into its powerful calf. He drew blood, but didn’t penetrate very deep. Rayden followed up by pinning an arrow into the creature's shoulder, but had the same problem. Its tightly woven muscles were natural armor.

And now, the big green brute was pissed off.

The creature’s head folded back and up, revealing a gaping hole carved down its long, muscular neck. A thick pink tongue lolled out of its loggia mouth, flitting in between a jagged staircase of hideous white teeth.

It charged, barreling towards Jim with its antlers raised. It was fast, probably as fast as Rayden empowered, if not quicker. His next arrow missed, but Ivy picked up the slack by punching the beast in its flank and knocking it off balance. Boh swooped in afterward, smacking his hammer into the staggered spriggan’s back.

The beast swayed for a moment, but didn’t fall. A gurgling roar erupted from its stitched mouth as it swatted Boh into a table, then immediately twisted and shoulder tackled Ivy to the ground. Two thick fists hung in the air, poised to smash down onto their green-haired captain.

Rayden’s hand almost faltered in the pressure of the moment, but he managed to guide the arrow into place and fire.

This time, he nailed it right in its deformed mouth, giving Quill enough time to blast it in the chest. The monster reeled back, only for Jim to swipe at the back of its neck with his sword.

He struck true, but not straight through, allowing the monster to grotesquely turn its half-severed head and attempt to plunge an antler through Jim’s heart.

Ivy leapt to the rescue, her impressive muscles flexing as she threw an uppercut punch so strong she knocked the Spriggan’s partially attached head clean off. Rayden wasn’t positive, but it looked like her gauntlets had glowed just before impact.

The creature stood like a headless scarecrow for a second, blood gurgling out of a freshly cleaved stump, then dropped to the floor, finished.

Just like that, they had won.

“Fucking hell,” Rayden gasped, his hands still shaking.

He looked around, wary of any further surprises, but saw nothing else moving except for his comrades. Boh, Ivy, and Jim were standing around the spriggan, examining the corpse in between jagged breaths.

“That was well dispatched,” Quill declared, using her staff as a walking stick as she walked over to him. “Good shooting.”

“Same to you,” he replied. “Is an unknown sea monster and a spriggan normal for a gray gate?”

“No…but dungeons can be strange…”

She paused for a second, carefully considering her words.

“It, or some entity, may have accounted for our prowess. It’s difficult to say.”

Rayden wasn’t sure if that was her proprietary way of saying she had no fucking idea, but he decided not to follow up. Together, they made their way over to the others, surveying the gristly scene as they walked. The goblin’s feast had turned into a bloody massacre.

“There they are,” Boh hummed at them, seemingly having already recovered his good mood. “That was a nice surprise, ay? I nearly soiled my pants when I saw that thing's mouth.”

Jim, covered in blood, clapped the dwarf on the shoulder before Rayden could respond.

“Quite the rush, indeed.”

“You know, I think the humans would be proud of us,” Boh grinned. “And so am I. A little goblin genocide does a dwarf good. The spriggan was just a cherry on top.”

“An excellent sentiment, Boh. We committed quite the atrocity today, at least from the goblin perspective, yes?”

“That we did!”

Ivy looked at the jovial pair with pity, but Rayden appreciated the levity. It was hard for him to look at Ivy and Jim without recalling the brief moments he believed they were going to die. It was also amusing that his prophecy was already coming true; Jim and Boh had been suddenly united by their love of murder. Some things just transcended racial divides.

The eccentric dandy and his new murderous dwarf brother-in-arms turned to Quill, each sporting a wide grin.

“Say, fair maiden Quill, do you think our brutality will be passed down across goblin generations?” Jim asked. “I’ve always wanted to be infamous!”

“Aye, humans are nothing. They’ll learn to hate dwarves and elves instead,” Boh boasted.

“Unlikely,” the redhead grunted back. “I think you would have had to leave one of these poor sods alive.”

“Ah, good point,” Jim conceded, looking genuinely disheartened.

Having immediately moved on, Boh pointed his stein at Quill, and Rayden knew nothing but trouble was about to leave his lips.

“Hey Quilly, is it just me, or did you miss a few shots because you were staring at your ranger-friend over here, eh?”

Rayden was afraid the dwarf was about to be vaporized, but Quill just turned her head and glared.

“Boh, do you drink so much because you know a woman will never love you?”

“That’s about half the reason,” he shrugged. “The other half is because I like the taste.”

Rayden noticed Ivy’s stare before the others and did his best to look serious and attentive. The imperious woman cut an intimidating figure surrounded by a circle of flattened goblin corpses and a headless spriggan.

“You fought well, and your timely assistance was appreciated,” she said, dipping her in a slight bow. “But, please focus.”

She pointed at the only perceptible exit, a small doorway opposite where they had entered.

“We are not finished, and it’s likely that something stronger than a spriggan awaits us. Please prepare yourselves.”