“I get that, Gary. I want to make sure my family is safe too. The problem is that if I did that, you and all of your families would be stuck here, with the trolls.” Drew shrugged softly, “I need to be here, this is my duty. Just like you need to stay here and protect these people so that I can go rescue your families. I won’t be able to fight as well as I need to if I have to keep worrying about if they’re safe or not.” He let the three teens think about his words for a moment. “Besides, I need someone to be in charge here. You’re the only one I can trust to do that, the only one who helped in that fight. Stay here and I’ll get your families back, I promise.”
Drew immediately wanted to take those words back. He had no idea if those kids’ families were even still alive, and he had just promised them he would bring them back. There was no way that wasn’t going to come back to bite him. He tried to cover the wince he wanted to display with a tight-lipped smile before turning away from the kids.
“Alright team, let’s get going. We’re burning daylight,” Drew said, and everyone drifted over to him. He turned back to Gary, “Alright Gary, you’re in charge here. Make sure everyone stays safe. If we’re not back in a couple of hours, head up that tunnel.” He pointed at the exit tunnel, “Head east to the soccer field. You’ll find the rest of our group there.” When Gary gave him a quick nod of understanding, he looked at the rest of his group. Daryl seemed eager to leave, while Sarah and Trista looked nervous. Robbi didn’t look nervous, but he held a white-knuckled grip on his longsword. Wait, longsword? Wasn’t it a katana earlier? Drew shook his head, and cast refreshing rain on the group, giving the kids the benefit as well.
One blonde girl in the corner started to complain about getting her hair wet, but everyone else seemed to take it in stride and enjoy the cool rain. When the rain finished, everyone looked ready for action and Drew mentally kicked himself for not casting it earlier. He took a moment to recast all his buffs and let Sarah do the same, then they were back down the tunnel.
Daryl walked invisibly ahead of the group, the rest of them trailing along behind him. Drew tried to use mana sight, but the brightness of the nearby ley lines made his eyes hurt if he used it for more than a few seconds at a time.
They walked down the tunnel, passing the room where all the kids had been kept. As they progressed, they passed several more rooms full of empty cages. There was enough room for hundreds of people. Where were they? How big was this pit they were going to? Why did the trolls need so many of them?
The trip down the tunnel was filled with that same tense silence that Drew was beginning to associate with dungeon dives. That had never been in any of the books or games he used to enjoy. His shoulders itched from the tension. After what seemed an eternity, the silence was broken by the sound of shouting and digging ahead of them. Daryl appeared, holding a finger to his lips.
“They’re just ahead. There’s room for one person to get a look at everything, but you’ll have to be careful.” The group nodded and by silent agreement Drew went first to get an idea of what was ahead. Drew hoped that Daryl’s telepathy would be able to project images soon; that would be highly helpful.
The entrance was wide, a strange, almost organic looking substance framing the door and webbed across the ceiling. Whatever it was, it clearly had great structural support. The pit was massive, looking to be several hundred feet across and nearly a hundred feet down, dug in a spiral until it reached a strange shiny blue metallic structure. A massive gate was partly visible on the building, almost entirely excavated at this point, although there was clearly significantly more of the structure still buried. A quick pulse of mana sight told him that the ley node for the building was housed in that structure.
Hundreds of humans were digging to expand the pit. Trolls walked among them using long, thin whips and shouted curses to hurry the work along. It was exactly like some dark age period piece, to a level of similarity that made Drew wonder if he hadn’t fallen into some video production. There were only about twenty trolls, but that was more than enough to keep everyone in line if none of these people had offensive xatherite or the will to use them. He almost missed the ledge near the top of the pit in his survey, which was at least twenty feet above the spiral down. The troll shaman he’d seen sacrificing people a few days ago was pacing across its surface.
The cold indifference on its face sent a chill down Drew’s spine. He backed out the way he came. When he got back to the group, he described the room to everyone else. “I need to take out that shaman before he can escape again. I’d like to try to sneak as close as I can and then I’ll blink step up to him. While I’m doing that, you should be able to free some of the prisoners and take up a defensive position near the entrance. The trolls are spread out enough that they shouldn’t be able to come at you more than a couple at a time.”
“After I kill the shaman, I’ll snipe the trolls from the high ground. I didn’t see a way up there, so they’ll have to jump if they want to get up. Should be easy enough if they come after me.” Left unspoken was, of course, the issue with how long it was going to take him to kill the Shaman. When he’d fought Chakri, it had taken him a few minutes of wearing the orc down, but he had more spells at his disposal now and they were much more powerful. He should be able to alpha strike the boss to death if he opened with everything he had.
They went back and forth on some of the various ideas, trying to find a better way to eliminate the shaman and the threat his elevated position presented. They briefly discussed alternative objectives; the structure at the bottom of the pit was clearly important to the trolls, but it would be easier to secure after they’d cleared the room. The discussion only lasted a few minutes and by the end, everyone was convinced the original proposal was the most likely to succeed.
They all crept back towards the entrance to the pit, Drew leading the way. After he passed the gateway, he crouched low, trying to hide behind the mounds of dirt that were piled haphazardly around the upper rim. The others followed in after him, and once they were in position Drew began creeping forward. He would have to travel about sixty feet before he would be close enough to blink step up to the shaman.
Moving from cover to cover, he made it about halfway before a troll turned right as he was moving between two piles of dirt. They made eye contact for a split-second before the troll bellowed a scream of anger. Immediately the report of a gun echoed throughout the room, and a line of fire traced from near the entrance into the troll’s chest, carving away green skin as it burned the beast.
Drew cast acid arrow and shocking acid arrow, targeting four more trolls to weaken them as he started running full speed towards the shaman. More gunshots and lines of fire exploded throughout the room, Trista’s skill in action. The narrow confines and echoing nature of the room made Drew’s ears ring a little louder with each report. Sarah was going to have to treat all of them for tinnitus after this.
About halfway to his target, a troll jumped in front of him. Without thinking he launched a lightning bolt, which sent the troll crashing down a level of the pit. Drew hoped he didn’t land on a human. Five ragged breaths later he was close enough to trigger blink step.
It took him half a second to reorient himself. When he did, he launched his full complement of spells at the shaman. Blasts of superheated plasma balls and shards of ice struck a shadowy shield around the shaman, followed by a bolt of lightning and two cones, one of pure frost and the other of sticky frostfire that clung to the shield and kept burning.
Drew was pushed backward by the force of the explosion, losing his footing and saving himself from falling off the ledge by a last-second grab for a big rock. Luckily the Shaman wasn’t completely un-phased by the alpha strike. He had been pushed back as well against the wall, the shield around him now visibly leaking black umbral energy. He quickly cast another spell while Drew struggled to stand up. The shield seemed to recover some of its shape, becoming more solid.