The Quartz Cave
Reed was the first to realize something was amiss.
Having grown up in the slums, he had formed an unshakable habit of waking fitfully through the night. He had seen too many children who slept too deeply end up kidnapped, spirited away by rotten luck to places no one ever returned from. The lingering instinct had him blearily cracking his eyes open to scan his surroundings before letting them drift shut again.
It’s too quiet, he thought.
He found it genuinely bizarre. Reed shared a room with Loty, and Loty was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a quiet roommate. The man snored like a saw tearing through ironwood. More than once, Reed had woken with an overwhelming urge to cave his skull in with a spade. Yet tonight, the room was remarkably, unnervingly silent—and this was after Loty had downed enough cheap ale to drown an ox.
Something's wrong.
Reed opened his eyes again and turned toward Loty’s cot. It was empty. Had he gone to relieve himself? Reed slid a hand over the rough mattress. It was completely cold. He had been gone for quite some time.
"Wait a minute."
The last dregs of sleep vanished instantly, his mind clearing as if he had been doused with freezing water. He shoved the door open and stepped outside into the chilly, dim gloom just before sunrise. The village was deathly still, its inhabitants lost in the deep stupor brought on by the previous night’s celebration.
Reed checked the latrine; there was no one inside. He checked the usual spots Loty might have wandered to, but came up empty. Loty wasn't a local. Unless the man possessed some hidden, irresistible charm that had lured a local maiden into a secret tryst, he wasn't the type to recklessly wander the frontier alone at night.
As Reed cast his eyes over the ground, something caught his attention: a patch of earth that looked slightly damper than the soil around it. To an untrained eye, it was barely noticeable, but to Reed, the unnatural texture stood out like an inkblot. He crouched and prodded the dirt with his toe. A thick, tacky slime adhered to his boot.
Kobold secretions!
It was the venomous slime that carried their notorious paralyzing agent. Without a second thought, Reed bolted toward the watchman on perimeter duty to sound the alarm.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The frantic tolling of the alarm bell tore through the early morning stillness, wrenching the villagers from their sleep and tumbling them out of their homes.
"Ugh, my head... What's all this racket about?"
"What happened?!"
Sure enough, Loty was nowhere among the groggy crowd. Reed’s expression hardened as he stepped forward to explain.
"It appears the kobolds broke in again. And Loty is gone."
"What?!"
"That's impossible! We have the stone wall now!"
The villagers, who had placed absolute faith in the newly finished rampart, broke into a flurry of panicked whispers.
"How could they get over the wall?"
"Forget getting over it—someone’s missing! Is it even possible to haul a grown man over that wall?"
Since no corpse had been found, Loty had clearly been taken alive. Yet the idea of squat, stubby kobolds hoisting an adult human over a sheer stone barricade defied common sense. Amidst the bewildered clamor, a middle-aged man muttered under his breath.
"Did he vanish into thin air, or sink into the dirt...?"
A jolt ran through Reed’s mind.
There was one way. One way to enter and leave the village without ever touching the stone wall.
Reed rushed back to the spot where he had found the slime and examined the surrounding dirt with laser focus. Tuning his senses to the earth, he caught the faint impressions left by claws. A scattered trail of small, uneven footprints emerged. Keeping his focus sharp, he followed the subtle depressions step by step.
The trail did not lead toward the perimeter wall. It ended at a dilapidated storehouse.
Reed recognized its owner immediately.
"My old shed’s been leaning terribly lately, lad. Have pity on a poor old soul and give it a quick once-over, won't you?"
It was the very shed belonging to the shameless old codger who had tried to wheedle free labor out of them. Even then, Reed had noticed that the building was tilted slightly to one side. He pushed inside, his eyes darting across the cluttered interior until they snagged on a large wicker basket sitting unnaturally askew in the corner. He shoved it aside. Behind it yawned an opening in the dirt floor, just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.
"Dammit. Am I an idiot?"
Reed cursed his own short-sightedness. He had been so fixated on the idea that the monsters had climbed the wooden palisade that it had never even occurred to him to inspect the village interior. Preconceptions had blinded him entirely.
"Dear gods..."
"By the heavens..."
The villagers who had hurried in after him stared at the gaping hole in stunned disbelief. Some looked crushed, realizing that the wall they had labored so hard to erect had been rendered completely useless from beneath. Others turned pale with horror at the realization that a subterranean monster tunnel had been sitting right under their feet the entire time.
None of that mattered right now. Anton turned toward Reed, his face grim.
"Their nest must be on the other side of this tunnel. It hasn't been that long, so there's a strong chance Loty is still alive. We have to go after him immediately."
"Wait... You're going down there to rescue him yourself, Meister?"
Reed watched in surprise as Anton hefted his massive stonemason's hammer. A Meister was a master craftsman of peerless skill and a core pillar of the Stonemasons' Union. Coldly speaking, a single Anton was worth far more than a hundred apprentices like Loty. To see such a prominent figure personally throw himself into mortal danger was shocking.
Anton’s gaze did not waver.
"A brother was taken by magical beasts. I won't stand by and do nothing. Even if the worst has happened, we bring back his body."
The moment someone joined the union, they became brothers. Aiding a brother in peril was not an option; it was an absolute duty. Seeing the solemn resolve in Anton's weathered features, Reed gave a dumbfounded nod.
The creed that all union members are brothers... it wasn't just empty talk!
A strange, warm prickle stirred in Reed's chest. For the first time in his life, he truly felt what it meant to belong to an organization that had his back. He made up his mind on the spot. Apart from his guild duty, he had developed a genuine soft spot for the bumbling, hard-working Loty.
Anton then turned his imposing glare upon the hired mercenaries.
"I trust you men will be coming along. Protecting us is your job, is it not?"
The mercenaries traded uneasy glances.
"W-Well, that's true, but... crawling into a monster's den wasn't in our contract."
It was a grey area. Keeping the stonemasons safe was indeed their assignment, and if Loty died, the contract would be marked as a failure. However, plunging into an underground warren crawling with vicious beasts was an entirely different beast. Their fee had not accounted for subterranean combat.
Anton wasted no time haggling.
"We'll pay an additional hazard bonus. There's no time to draft an amendment, but everyone here will serve as witness."
"Phew... Fine, so be it," the mercenary leader sighed. "We're in."
"We'll come along as well," the village militia captain chimed in. "Filling in the hole is easy enough, but as long as those kobolds live beneath us, this will just happen again."
From the village, the militia captain and a local hunter volunteered to join the foray. The captain was a retired mercenary with ample combat experience under his belt. With that, a seven-man rescue party was assembled: Reed, Anton, three mercenaries, and the two villagers.
With Loty's life hanging in the balance, there was no time to dawdle. Having gathered only the bare essentials, the group gripped their weapons and slipped down into the earthen shaft.
Anton gripped his trusty stonemason’s hammer, while Reed carried a sturdy spade and a hefty rucksack. The rucksack was packed to the brim with fine soil.
Kobolds make their nests in caves, Reed reasoned. Deep underground, there might only be bare rock and no workable earth at all.
The pack weighed heavily on his shoulders, but knowing it was his lifeline, it felt like nothing at all.
Reed lowered himself into the hole. Sliding smoothly down the opening, he found a cramped tunnel that forced them to crouch as they moved. Fortunately, the mercenaries had lit their torches in advance, keeping the oppressive dark at bay.
"Move quickly. Stay sharp."
With a mercenary bearing a shield and torch at the point, the party pressed forward. The kobold tunnel stretched far longer than anticipated, winding endlessly through the subterranean gloom. Reed, bringing up the rear, glanced back over his shoulder to gauge how far they had traveled. The entrance was long gone, swallowed by the suffocating blackness that reclaimed every inch the faint torchlight vacated. The tunnel felt less like a passage and more like the gullet of some colossal subterranean beast.
And we're marching straight into its stomach, Reed thought, an unsettling knot tightening in his chest.
He wasn't the only one feeling the squeeze of the claustrophobic dark. One of the mercenaries muttered, half to himself and half to break the heavy silence.
"Bloody hell. How deep did these runts dig?"
The militia captain offered a dry chuckle.
"They live their entire lives clawing through rock. There's even a theory that the paralytic venom in their claws is meant to numb their own fingers so it doesn't hurt when they scrape against stone. Is it any wonder they dig so well?"
As an old sellsword, the captain was surprisingly knowledgeable about frontier fauna. His casual remarks did much to dispel the gloom. Intrigued, Reed spoke up from behind.
"Do kobolds usually raid human settlements like this?"
The captain shook his head.
"Hardly ever. They hate coming out into the open air. Usually, they subsist on cavern bugs and small rodents. Unless they're on the absolute brink of starvation, they don't dare touch humans."
"Then this pack must be starving?"
"Most likely."
"That makes no sense, then."
The murmuring ceased, several men glancing back at Reed.
"Think about it," Reed continued. "If they were starving to death, why bother kidnapping someone alive and dragging them all the way back here? Why not tear him apart and eat him on the spot?"
It was a grim observation, but razor-sharp. A famished beast has no reason to burden itself with live prey over a long distance. Even if they had dragged him into the tunnel, they would have started feeding the moment they were out of sight.
The captain chewed on Reed’s words before letting out a gruff laugh.
"Hah! Put that way, you have a point. Sharp mind, Mage. I suppose that's why you study magic."
"No, it's nothing like that..." Reed scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "Maybe they have an unusually strong sense of pack loyalty. Or perhaps they're taking food back to feed their young."
"Whatever the case, never assume anything when it comes to magical beasts in the Demonic Borderlands," the captain said, his voice lowering with gravity. "Out here, the most bizarre, ungodly things crawl out of the dark. Scholars claim some ancient energy woven into the land warps them, birthing what they call Aberrant Variants... Oh."
The cramped dirt tunnel abruptly opened up.
Before them lay a massive natural cavern. Jagged spires of opaque, milky quartz jutted from the walls and ceiling like jagged fangs, with occasional clusters of translucent crystal catching the torchlight.
The captain let out a low whistle.
"A quartz vein... We must have reached the base of the back mountain. To think a deposit this rich was sitting right beneath us."
Traces of kobold habitation littered the quartz cavern. Foul-smelling piles of droppings, gnawed animal carcasses, and scattered bones covered the floor. Among them were yellowed human bones. Reed flinched at the sight, but breathed an inward sigh of relief upon noticing the heavy layer of dust and decay coating them. They were ancient. At the very least, they didn't belong to Loty.
The party fell completely silent, weapons raised and eyes scanning the cavern. Fortunately, the ceiling was high enough for them to stand upright, and the chamber branched into wide, navigable paths.
As they advanced, the denizens of the deep finally caught their scent.
"Skreeee!"
"Kiiik!"
"There the little bastards are," one mercenary growled.
"Form up! They're coming!"
From the cavern's depths, a swarm of wrinkled, rodent-headed creatures came scurrying on all fours. The three shield-bearing mercenaries snapped their tall shields together, locking into a tight front. Behind them, the hunter cocked his wooden crossbow and drew a bead on the front rank, while the captain drew his arming sword, angling it between the shields.
Normally, any beast or man would hesitate when charging headlong into a bristling wall of steel. It was pure instinct to shrink from cold iron.
The kobolds, however, showed no such hesitation.
They charged with wild abandon. Ten? Twenty? In the flickering light, their exact numbers were hard to pin down, but their manic momentum was terrifying. If a horde that size slammed into a three-man shield wall at full tilt, the line would buckle in seconds.
It was Reed’s turn to act.
He unbuckled his rucksack and dropped to one knee, pressing his palm against the cavern floor. The rich, loose soil from his pack surged outward like an undulating serpent, darting across the stone floor beneath the charging pack before coalescing into small, solid hands of earth.
"Skriek?!"
The small earthen hands clamped firmly around the ankles of the lead kobolds. Running at full sprint, the creatures tripped violently, crashing headfirst into the hard rock and tumbling into the pack behind them. Those following closely tripped over the fallen, creating a tangled, rolling pileup of shrieking bodies.
With a single, measured spell, Reed had cleanly severed the momentum of their charge. The vanguard that had already cleared the hazard continued on, completely unaware that their rear guard had collapsed.
"Splendid work, Mage!"
"Brace... Hold the line!"
Crash!
The remaining front-runners slammed harmlessly into the locked shields. The mercenaries stood firm, barely budging, leaving the disoriented kobolds reeling. The hunter didn't miss his chance, squeezing the trigger of his crossbow.
Thwip! Thwack!
A bolt drilled straight through a kobold’s skull. The captain thrust his sword through the seam between two shields, running another through the throat, while Anton raised his massive hammer with arms corded with thick muscle and brought it crashing down. It was a hammer meant to shatter granite; against brittle bone and flesh, the kobold's head caved in like an overripe melon.
Only then did the remaining kobolds realize something had gone disastrously wrong. Their strategy relied on swarming the enemy while the first wave absorbed the blows, overwhelming them with sheer mass. Yet their reinforcements were nowhere to be seen. A surviving kobold glanced back in bewilderment, only to see its brethren sprawling across the floor, frantically struggling to untangle themselves.
"Skree...?"
Before the creature could process the absurd sight, Anton’s hammer came crashing down from above, obliterating it instantly.
In that initial clash, nearly a third of the pack was wiped out. The kobolds in the rear finally scrambled back to their feet and rushed forward in desperation, but the momentum was lost. Individual kobolds possessed very little combat ability. Their poisoned claws and venomous bite were completely useless against heavy ironwood shields and tempered steel. Having lost their numbers and their charge, they were little more than vermin waiting to be culled.
With the mercenaries hacking methodically and Reed offering precise magical interference to disrupt their footing, the remaining beasts were slaughtered with clinical ease. The skirmish was over almost anticlimactically.
Why were they this weak? Reed thought, glancing around the blood-spattered cavern.
The floor was littered with grotesque little corpses, the stench of copper and bile thick in the stagnant air.
"Kiiik...?"
"Skre-e-e..."
The few survivors finally lost their nerve, screeching in terror as they turned tail and fled deeper into the cave system. The hunter raised his crossbow to pick them off, but the captain raised a hand, stopping him.
"Hold your fire! Follow them—they'll lead us straight to where they took our man. Move out!"
The captain took the lead, the mercenaries following in close formation.
"Whew. Honestly, those runts were bizarrely fragile," one mercenary commented, wiping black blood from his blade. "I know the Mage supported us brilliantly, and kobolds aren't tough to begin with, but still..."
"Look at the carcasses," another pointed out. "They're skin and bones. Every last one of them was starved half to death."
Reed took a closer look at the dead creatures. It was true. Their ribs protruded starkly against leathery skin, their limbs emaciated. They looked thoroughly malnourished.
Was raiding the village really just a desperate bid for food?
If that was the case, the odds of Loty still drawing breath were tragically slim. Just as that grim realization settled over them, the fleeing kobolds ducked through a low archway. The party hurried after them and emerged into an enormous subterranean cavern.
In the center of the vast chamber lay a towering mound of gathered provender: withered roots, wild berries, half-rotted animal carcasses... and right in the middle of it all sat Loty. He was alive, but shuddering uncontrollably, his limbs locked tight by paralytic venom.
Loty’s tear-streaked eyes met Reed’s across the cavern. He trembled violently, tears of relief welling in his eyes, but Reed couldn't bring himself to take a single step forward.
The mercenaries froze dead in their tracks, their breath catching in their throats.
"Holy shit... What in the hell is that?"
Seated right beside Loty was an absolute monstrosity.
It was a kobold, but it towered easily three meters tall. More shocking still, thick, jagged crusts of transparent quartz erupted from its hide, wrapping around its massive frame like a suit of jagged crystalline plate armor.
The Crystal Kobold was currently gorging itself, chewing frantically through the pile of food. The sheer volume it had consumed was staggering; a small hill of gnawed bones surrounded its massive haunches.
"Skree! Skreeee!"
The fleeing kobolds scurried up to the behemoth, screeching in high, desperate pitches. Were they warning their alpha of the intruders? Or were they begging it to avenge their fallen kin? The cries sounded so pathetic they bordered on supplication.
The Crystal Kobold cast a dull, heavy gaze down at the trembling runt before reaching out with a massive, clawed hand and snatching it up.
"Skriek?!"
Unclamping its massive jaws, the monster shoved the living kobold headfirst into its maw.
Crunch! Crack! Crunch!
Wet, sickening sounds echoed off the crystalline walls as it pulverized its own kin, swallowing the mangled mess whole before letting out a thunderous, foul-smelling belch.
Urp—!
Yet devouring a scrawny, starved subordinate barely scratched the surface of its insatiable hunger. Maintaining a body of that sheer mass required an astronomical amount of energy. Its gaze drifted to the prize its underlings had dragged in earlier: the human.
The Crystal Kobold was fond of human meat. Compared to other prey, they were lean and lacked substantial fat, but they made for a rare delicacy. The chew was quite exquisite.
It had hoped to save this choice morsel for later, but its gnawing stomach could no longer bear the agony of hunger. A dull spark of appetite ignited in its clouded, yellowed eyes. It turned its massive, crystal-encrusted head to seize Loty—
Only to lock eyes with Reed, who was already halfway across the cavern floor, tiptoeing away with Loty slung over his back.
"..."
"..."
A dead, suffocating silence fell over the chamber.
Reed forced an awkward, strained smile.
"...Hey there?"
"SKREEEEEEEAAARRRGH!!!"
With an earth-shattering bellow of pure, unadulterated fury, the colossal beast lashed out, sweeping its crystalline talons straight toward Reed's head.
Yet in that split second, staring up at the terrifying, armored behemoth bearing down on him, an entirely absurd thought flashed through Reed’s pragmatic mind:
If I offer this massive bastard up as a sacrifice... what kind of reward will Ur bestow upon me?