Chapter 10 – Part 4

Orphan heard Grullik’s soft whisper, as the mustachioed half-orc called Delegado. Slipping easily past the gnolls and others, who stood nervously in a defensive box within the cavern, looking around at the shadows. Looking at everything except the two halves of the dead gnoll who had triggered the scything blade that had popped right out of the wall.

Orphan had dodged another such blade while trying to advance to the mouth of a tunnel that he’d hoped would carry echoes of any other creatures.

The passages underground were half-natural and half-carved, although one did not have to be a dwarf to see that the stonework was centuries old, if not millennia. Nonetheless the dust that was there was disturbed. This place had travelers if infrequent ones. Orphan had been trying to find evidence of such travelers when the scything blade had swung down.

The warforged had been faster than the gnoll. But it had come very close.

“No insects come for the blood,” hissed one of the orcs, gesturing to the bisected gnoll. “Evil this place is. Unnatural.”

“Quiet,” K’gah snapped. He said it in orc, as his warriors were not the ones making noise. The orcs grimaced at a gnoll telling them what to do, but they listened.

Orphan listened too. To Grullik and Delegado. Only he could hear them. The two were close by a wall that was clearly made of brick, if a faded, covered with dirt brick. “Right there,” Grullik was saying.

“Humanoid footprint,” grunted Delegado. “Bipedal, maybe 6 feet in height, too hard to tell the type. Doesn’t seem to be wearing footwear.”

“They don’t wear boots,” Grullik hissed. “I have taken Gatekeeper oaths, you know that, right? This is from an Xoriat being. See the way the heals indent forward, rather than backward? And they aren’t the squished gremlin things.”

“Xoriat? Here?” Delegado asked. “They don’t exactly get along with the fiends.”

Nebly suddenly slipped through the box of warriors to stand next to the two half-orc trackers. “There’s a secret door here,” the gnome said, excited. “But see the probing talon marks? The thing that you say bears aberration traits took a while trying to get in!” Nedly’s voice was pitched low, but louder than either half-orc.

And apparently he could hear almost as well as Orphan.

And the little jerk once again was impressing Delegado with an obscure bit of knowledge.

Delegado’s face went hard. No one sane wanted to deal with the aberrations. No one dealt with them very long and stayed sane.

The half-orc swung his head towards Orphan. “I need you, he whispered.

The warforged almost grinned openly.