The Under-elven army made its way through the Cavern of Convergence with relative quickness, sucking up the members of the parley into itself like sugar into lemonade. Even the stuff from the parley was merged into the Allocations division at the end of the military line. Because Frelanfur hadn’t thought to send our dranth with us when he’d rescued us from the controls room of Chirasniv, the Conductivus graciously allowed Auraus, Dusk, Jason, Heather, Ragar and myself to sit on the last Allocations wagon so that we would not be left. However, he warned us to get off at either at the Shifting Tunnels or if an ambush occurred somewhere before that. Then he swept off to the front of the line. We made our way to the back of the army and told the light grey-skinned male Kobold driving the cart who we were and that we’d been given permission to ride with him. He nodded deferential acknowledgement, and we hauled ourselves up onto the back of the wagon.
“It’s gonna be a long trip,” groused Heather, swinging her feet back and forth over the tail edge of the cart.
“It would be longer if we were walking, nena,” Jason said to her.
“Should we be concerned about monsters?” I asked Dusk, hoping to forestall any argument that might arise. “We already know the Sub-realms are a breeding ground for all things toothy and nasty.”
Dusk looked thoughtful for a moment, but then he shook his head. “Given the size of our, ah, escort to Chirasniv, even the hungriest of monsters would think twice about taking on a group as large as the one we are part of now, I would think.”
“I would not be too sure of that,” said our Kobold driver over his shoulder to us.
“Oh?” Auraus asked him.
“Not every monster down here relies on being savage, big, and dangerous. There are those that rely on numbers, like the Antish, or on luring their prey silently away, like the Deep Wisps. There are others, of course, but what it boils down to is that just because you are travelling with a military expedition does not mean you should let your guard down.”
“What are those monsters you have mentioned?” The Wind-rider asked him with curiosity.
“Antish are a muddy brown, about the size of large Cave bats, have a three piece segmented body with six legs, and have a head that has antenna and these jaw things that stick out from the side of its face, or so I hear,” the Kobold replied.
“Eeeeeew!” said Heather with disgust. “They sound like ants.”
“They probably are,” said Jason. “There are things over here that are just like you find at home except for their size.” Jason grinned at her. “Say, Heather, did Lise and I ever tell you about the time we fought an araña that was about as big as a delivery box truck?”
Heather shuddered. “No, and you don’t have to, either.”
I quirked a smile, remembering that spider fight. It was the first time Arghen had started teaching us how to fight all together without Jason and I knowing about it at first.
“What is the other monster you mentioned, ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, please?” I asked the Kobold.
He looked surprised that I asked nicely. “My name is Fellef, Mistress.”
“Don’t call me that!” I said sharply.
He cringed, and I instantly felt like a heel.
“Sorry, I, I didn’t mean to, to… oh, never mind. I’m just sorry, all right? Call me Lise instead.”
He blinked in surprise at that. When I nodded encouragement, he said cautiously, “All, all right, but only because you wish it, Mi–Lise.” When I didn’t explode in wrath at him using my name, the Kobold went on. “Deep Wisps are far more subtle. They will not actually hurt you, but they can somehow fog your mind and make you follow them. The Wisps will then lead you to a dangerous place, like a pit or a cliff or something that is deep enough to kill you if you fell from it. Once you are dead they will feast on your flesh, but only after it has completely cooled.”
Heather looked nauseated, and I couldn’t blame her. I felt that way myself.
“Is there a way to guard against that?” Jason asked.
“If you see a light bobbing mid-air in the distance, do not keep looking at it. Instead, look away, then look back, and keep doing that rhythm until it goes away.”
“How did you learn this, Fellef?” asked Auraus with curiosity.
“I work in Allocations, Mistress,” Fellef replied. “I hear things from the Duty Scouts who come in to replace damaged equipment from their patrols.”
Hmmmm. I wonder what else the Kobolds and Troglodytes and the others hear? I wondered to myself.
The Wind-rider meanwhile looked embarrassed. “You do not need to call me, or any of us, anything except our names, Fellef.”
He looked uncomfortable at her broad permission as he turned back around on the driver’s seat to face forward again. A quad of Duty Scouts wound around our wagon just then, and we stopped talking until they were gone again.
“At least we aren’t being forgotten back here,” Jason said jokingly.
“That would be the height of irresponsibly if we were,” sniffed Ragar.
Jason sighed. “Ragar, I, oh, never mind,” he said, unconsciously mimicking what I’d said earlier.
“So, we have about a day’s–uh, Lightening’s–journey to get from here to the no longer Shifting Tunnels of Chirasniv,” I said in general. “Isn’t that right, Fellef?”
The Kobold replied, “I do not know. I have never left Chirasniv before.”
I mentally smacked my forehead. Of course he hadn’t. What was I thinking? Just because he heard things about monsters didn’t mean he heard things about geography.
“We are going slower on the wagon than we did on the dranth. I suspect it will be more like two Lightenings,” Dusk stated.
I lay down on the wagon, which wasn’t bumping around too badly, and pillowed my head on my pack. “Well, then, I guess we’ll just have to make the best of it.”
Time passed, but the wagon train never stopped moving, which made me wonder if Dusk’s prediction of closer to two days would be true. We six kept ourselves busy by seeing to our weapons, making the rope knots we would wear to distinguish us to our Kelsavaxian counterparts, eating, talking about ourselves to our companions, napping, and jumping off the wagon to stretch our legs before running to catch up to it so we could jump on again. Fellef was replaced at some point by another Kobold, who replaced by yet a third, who was replaced by Fellef again.
“Hello again,” he said to us as he took the reins.
“Hello, Fellef,” I replied with a yawn, having just recently woken up from a dream of drinking a large, extra strong coffee with sweetened hazelnut creamer in it with a cinnamon bun to go along with it. My mouth watered, and my stomach rumbled in disappointment that I wasn’t going to be eating anything like that any time soon.
Murmurs of greetings came from my companions as well.
“I did some asking around when I was relieved of my shift last Brightening,” he went on, “and found out that we will be reaching the Chirasnivian Shifting Tunnels before this Darkening.”
That made us sit up and take notice.
“We’d better start planning, then,” said Heather.
“Plan for what?” said Jason. “Plans are for when you have an idea of what is going to be going on. We have no clue. All we know is that we’re to get off at the Shifting Tunnels, or earlier if there’s an ambush, and make our way in from there. That’s it. That’s the plan.”
“Lise,” Heather began, turning to me, but I held up a hand.
“Actually, he’s right,” I said. “Everything we could possibly plan for, which isn’t that much, is completely dependent on what the Kelsavaxians do. We are going to have to wing it.”
Auraus raised her eyebrows at that, and I explained that it meant doing whatever seemed right at the time.
“You Humans have quite a variety of expressions of words meaning something other than what they seem,” she said with a smile.
“Yeah, that’s us loco humans,” Jason said.
We rumbled along the corridors that was already semi-familiar to us from our abortive recent mission, but all of a sudden we were jolted to a halt.
“What is going on?” Dusk asked Fellef.
“I do not know,” came the reply. “We have to wait to be told.”
The answer soon came down the line, passed from wagon driver to wagon driver. The scouts who had been sent ahead of the main line were under attack.