Soulblade

Chapter 3: Motley Crew

She nabs the straightened link in midair, snatching it with ease before jamming it into her lock with the kind of confidence that assures me I made the right choice. Humming softly to herself, her face twisted into a tiny frown, tongue peeking out between her lips, she wriggles the length of metal like she can see through her door until something clicks a moment later. With a huge sigh of satisfaction, she firmly pushes her door open, though I wince at the creaking groan of it and even the cocky halfling freezes, tense and wary, until silence lingers long enough it's apparent no one is coming to investigate the sound of her escape.

She prances out into the corridor, little body limber and apparently none the worse for wear. Either it's been some time since her own lesson with the hobgoblin or she's much quicker to bounce back than I am. She pauses to bow to me with the wire still firmly in her grasp. She wiggles it at me before blowing me a kiss. "Good deed done," she says before sliding it into my lock and freeing me a moment later.

I emerge from my cell more carefully than she exited hers, easing the door open to minimize the sound of tortured metal on metal. Mine, apparently, has seen some kind of lubrication recently because it's not nearly as noisy as hers regardless of my caution. She stares up at me when I'm fully free, hands on her hips, dark brown topknot bouncing as she taps one foot on the floor, giant grin on her face. I look up and to the left and right, down the long, darkening hallway in both directions. One end, the exit from the hobgoblin's recent movements, has torches at intervals, a door visible in the distance. The other stretches out into black. No other prisoners in this cell block, then?

"You're not seriously going to leave us behind?" The paladin stands at her door, her face set in fury, hands clenched on her bars so tight her knuckles look like living things crawling under her skin. "Are you?"

"Maybe," the halfling winks up at me, cockiness her normal, I can only guess. "What's in it for us?"

"Your life, when I get my hands on you." The dwarf raises his voice, too loud for my liking. I wince and pivot to shush him with a gesture while I nudge the halfling toward the paladin.

She gapes at me, little face falling, big eyes wide, eyebrows arching into her shorn line of dark bangs. "You're not serious."

"Neither are you," I say, knowing it's true and no longer amused by her teasing. Cute has turned to a push too far. "Now stop being bratty and hurry up. Before the guard comes back."

She grumbles, shoots me a peevish look, but I know she's just doing it for show because she's light on her feet and cheerful when she finally bounces away and begins opening cell doors, whistling faintly. My arm vibrates and I look down to see the letters FH under the BL glow a moment in white. Faithful hero, my beliefs and the code I live by. How odd and yet comforting to have that from my reluctant mind. I look up from my embed-I have a name for it now, for the tattoo, though what an embed is I have no idea

-to find the elf was the halfling's first pick and has joined me, her height a match to mine though she's willowy and thinner boned. The paladin is next, her long, red hair bound at the base of her skull, crimson surcoat torn, one sleeve of her long shirt ripped. I turn as the halfling opens the door on my right, and almost cry out before I catch that instinctive warning more for myself than the others and swallow it.

A troll steps out into the corridor, his massive shoulders brushing the ceiling, head bowed to keep him from hitting it on the rock. He has to turn partially sideways to stand next to us, large hands curved into soft fists, knuckles almost touching the floor. His jaw juts forward, two tusks carved with strange symbols curving upward over his thick upper lip, and matching horns twine around his large, leaf shaped ears, the same etchings visible in the pale ivory. But despite his massiveness and the bulking musculature, the hulking monstrosity of his pale gray skin and the instinctual fear I feel at facing one of his kind, there's a gentleness in his deep, blue eyes, large and sunken into his craggy face, that makes me pause and question my gut reaction.

"Thank you," he says in that same mellow voice, nodding to me, tone careful, words as precise as ever. "I know I don't always instill confidence when I first meet other races, completely understandable considering our history of not playing nice with others." He

could say that again. Troll wars. I've fought his race before, I'm positive of it. Though there was a horse under me at the time, right? And wasn't the troll I fought three or four times the size of this still impressive if unthreatening fellow? A memory, though inaccessible beyond the initial impression, still something I take as a good sign of the possibility of more recovery as the looming figure goes on. "And without my normal accoutrements you could mistake me for a wild troll."

"Which you're not," I say.

"Druid, second class," he says. "Vosh Troljedur, at your service."

"If we could save the introductions for later," the dwarf snaps, now free and glaring at the halfling who thumbs her little nose at him. He looks up at me, rolls his dark eyes, heavy brown beard unkempt and bristling over the dirty front of his pale brown tunic.

"Agreed." The paladin looks past me and then turns to the exit. "We need to check the other cells for possible weapons."

"As if our hobgoblin host would leave anything valuable behind," the elf murmurs, but she sounds less judging and more practical about it. And I agree with her. Still, if there is a chance, we can't turn it up.

"It's just us," the halfling says but she's already looking herself, peeking inside each closed and barred doorway while the rest of us ease forward, letting her lead. It feels wrong to me for her to take the front, and yet that configuration makes sense so I shove down my protective surge and stay close enough I can guard her from harm if need be. Though what I'm going to use to do the guarding with is beyond me.

I need to figure out how to connect what I instinctively know and what I don't remember with my reality before it gets me into too much trouble.

I eye one of the torches in its bracket as I duck past, the flames welcome warmth near my face, dispelling the damp briefly, brave, dancing fire a beacon in this inhospitable place. Could be used as a weapon in a pinch, a club of ash and sparks better than nothing. I'd much rather a sword or dagger at this point, but beggars can't be choosers.

"Here." I join the halfling to find a cell with an occupant stretched out on the narrow bench carved from the wall. No movement, no breath and I'm positive before she even reaches out to pull the cloth from the face what she'll find. A grinning skull greets her

efforts, making her squeak faintly and jump, though she releases a nervous laugh and smiles at me over her shoulder like she's honestly having the time of her life.

"Better him than us, yes?"

I shrug, ease past her, poking at the remains, though it's just rags and bones and nothing else of interest or use from what I can see. I do feel vaguely guilty over disturbing the dead, but he's not here to argue with my investigation so I retreat and silently wish him well as I exit into the corridor.

"Nothing then?" The elf doesn't seem surprised, the paladin grim about it.

"I'd say that's a no from what we've seen so far," I say. "And that's good enough for me." I gesture at the exit door, now closer to us. Enough that I'm nervous we could have a visitor at any moment, an unexpected return of our hobgoblin jailer. While some of us could duck into a cell and hide if the guard came back, the troll is going to have difficulty maneuvering that fast and his exposure means we're all at risk. Though the thought does cross my mind a single hobgoblin will be in for a very bad time if he chooses to appear just now.

Enough the idea of his death by crushing force under the troll's large foot makes me grin at the imagined sound of his final splat.

"Here, handsome." The halfling presses something into my hand and I look down to find she's given me a sharpened piece of bone. I almost shudder from it, until my fingers close around it like they know exactly what to do with it even if my sensibilities are disgusted. "Don't ever say Blossom Riverbend doesn't look after her friends."

"Are we friends?" I can't help smiling at her. She shrugs. "If you're nice to me."

I should be horrified to hold someone's remains in my hand and anticipate using it as a weapon, but it makes me feel more secure so I shrug off any reticence and gesture to the exit.

"Should be" seems to be a term I'm going to have to discard if I'm planning to escape this place.

Instead, I focus on here and now and our next step and am rewarded with a confident surge of my own good humor. "Shall we see what's on the other side of that door?"

They don't answer, they don't have to. Because what's on the other side of the door chooses that exact moment to show its ugly face. The hobgoblin doesn't notice us at first, hands full of bucket handles, two in each grubby fist, eyes down on the floor as it turns and kicks the door shut behind it. When it spins around again, it finally looks up. Freezes. Gapes. For a comically long time, it feels like, as if waiting for something to happen, for things to revert to normal.

Not that it matters what the hobgoblin is doing, ultimately. In fact, it can stare as long as it wants, for all the good it will do. I'm already running toward it on feet that move of their own accord, body called to battle like my mind isn't connected to it. The bone knife feels right, gripped tightly in my hand, the embed in my arm tingling and glowing red when I close the distance between me and my target and pounce.

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