Dullahan 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Story - Part Seven (sfw) (Patreon)

Whuuufffff, sorry I'm a bit late with this one. Life got the better of me this week. 

Last time, you voted to tell D that Kravik was there, and this time, we find out a few snippets more about D, discover Ten's true name, and finally, finally get into the mines!! Hope you enjoy it. The poll will be up shortly, and will be open to everyone. 

“It… It was…” ‘nothing’ was on the tip of your tongue, but when you gazed up into D’s baleful, bright green eyes, burning with concern, your lie withered and evaporated to nothing. “It was Kravik,” you confessed, deflating. 

“The goblin?”

You nodded. Suddenly D’s hand on your arm seemed to be the only thing tethering you to the earth, and your knees wobbled. You tipped your head forwards and rested your forehead against his chest. “Oh D… I’m so scared. He… He wasn’t himself. He said he can’t remember what happens to him when he goes to the mines… He… He means everything to me. He’s my best friend. I can’t just sit around here and wait,” you all but wailed. “I have to fix this!”

“Steady,” D rumbled quietly, steering you gently towards a chair and easing you down into it. With a rueful chuckle, he knelt down in front of you and added, “I think you know now what it feels like to me, being here…”

Your eyes went wide and you looked up at him in shock. “You feel this… this… desperate, all the time?”

He nodded and his lips twitched briefly. “We’ll sort it. You, and me, and Ten. I promise.” D began to straighten, and the widening gulf between you suddenly became more than you could bear. Before he stood up, you grabbed his black jacket, its military cut hugging the hard lines of his chest beneath, and you gritted your teeth, fighting to stave off tears. He softened instantly, bringing his palm to your cheek. The skin was cool and smooth, his fingers callused from goodness-knew-how-many years of holding Midnight’s reins. You’d not seen his gruesome whip made of vertebrae since that first night, but you assumed he wielded it with the same skill he seemed to possess for everything else. Now, as he held you with those strong, inhuman hands, you tilted your cheek into his touch and closed your eyes. 

“Thank you, D,” you murmured. 

“You should get some rest. It’s been a long evening for you. Being around the pair of us must be… draining.”

You huffed a humourless laugh. “As long as she can help fix this, I guess Ten’s not so bad…” you said, allowing him to pull you slowly to your feet from the comfortable chair. You slipped your arms around his waist and held him in a brief embrace. This time, he didn’t make any move to hold you in return, at least, not until you squeezed him harder, pressing your face against his rough, woollen coat, heartbeat hammering. You knew you were probably going too far, but somehow you didn’t care. You needed this. You needed him to steady you, and so, without a word, he did.

His palms landed on your back and he stroked you soothingly. His movements were stiff at first, as though he were reluctant to allow himself this luxury, but the longer you held him, the more sincere his gesture became, until he finally swept you up in both arms in a sudden hug. With his ghostly face pressed so close to your cheek that you felt goosebumps from his cold breath, he murmured, “Shh, easy, my brave little human. It’s alright.” He rubbed small circles with his right hand all across your lower back while his left cradled your head. “Go on, go to bed,” he smiled at last, releasing you and turning away. Before he went, however, he took your chin between his thumb and index finger, and tilted your face up. “Promise me you won’t try to get into the mines before Ten and I come back to you.” 

Your brain spun for a moment at the intimacy of his touch, but you saw the sense in his words. There were forces here that were way beyond your control or ken. Magic was something utterly unknown to you, and except for the innate magic of the plants and ingredients that you used in your work as an apothecary, you knew nothing of it. Clenching your jaw for a moment to bite down the rising tide of frustration that swept through you again at the memory of Kravik’s terrified and confused face, you nodded. “I promise.”

D let out a short sigh, as though he really had been worried you’d refuse him, and thumbed a little affectionate gesture over your chin before turning away towards the door. 

Midnight let out a whinny at his reappearance, and you suddenly remembered that you’d been on the way to the root cellar to fetch her a carrot. “Wait!” you yelled after him, just as he stepped into the stirrup and swung himself up into the saddle with a grace that was undeniably extremely attractive. 

Rushing to the hatch in the kitchen floor, you scuttled down the three steps into the small space beneath the floorboards and rummaged around in a crate of root vegetables for a suitable carrot. The first one you found was actually pretty massive, but you figured the horse deserved a treat. You doubted D gave her many, despite his obvious fondness for the beast. 

When you reappeared, brandishing the carrot aloft like a war axe, Midnight reared in delight, neighing a deafening whinny as she pawed the ground with a powerful foreleg, and D barely kept his seat. Only through his skill, honed over long years of riding, did he stay mounted, and when Midnight trotted over to you, heedless of his laughing rebuke, he chuckled softly and turned to you, his glowing, ghostly head bright with obvious mirth. “You’re going to spoil this horse rotten, you know?” he said. “She’s already a monstrous brat…”

As Midnight opened her unnervingly wide mouth and revealed all those sharp teeth again, her very un-horse-like tongue slithered out and snatched the entire carrot from your palm. “If you choke on that, don’t expect me to come pounding on your chest,” you scolded her. She had no problems with the carrot, and made alarmingly short work of it before nosing about in your hands for another. “That’s it, I’m afraid, girl,” you said, offering her a conciliatory rub between her eyes, which she seemed to enjoy almost as much as the food. 

Her eyes flared the same bright green as D’s essence, and a question formed itself on your lips before you’d given it much thought. “D, how come her eyes are the same colour as yours, and Ten’s horse’s are the same as hers?”

He seemed surprised by the sudden and rather personal question, but not offended. You continued to rub small circles on Midnight’s inky head, following the whorl of fur between her eyes, while he gave you his answer. “Because we are bound to one another,” he said simply. “My life is bound to hers, and hers to mine. We give each other strength, but the downside of that is that if one of us is hurt, the other is weakened too.” 

“Oh,” you said stupidly. 

He smiled at you, and bid you a goodnight, encouraging the mare to step back out of your cuddling hands with a mere twitch of the reins and an adjustment of his weight. “And please, try not to worry too much between now and the next time we see you. I promise it will not be long.”

You nodded and watched as he galloped off into the night, Midnight’s hooves sparking green on the hard surface of the road. 

Over the next two days, you carried on as usual, treating the goblins who, far from the influence of the crystals in the mine, and with a tincture of St. John’s Wort to ward off the effects of magic, seemed to be making excellent progress. Even Minna, who had been much weaker when she’d been brought in, was bouncing back. You had given D your word that you would not go to the mines, but you had not promised not to do anything, so you chose your moment carefully, and approached Vhorn one day as he turned from his wife’s bedside, letting her sleeping hand fall gently back onto the covers. 

“She’s on the mend,” you said quietly, walking beside the massive orc as he left the infirmary. “Minna is doing well, don’t worry,” you reassured him. “She’ll be right as rain soon.”

He made the kind of noncommittal grunt that anyone would make in the face of a gravely ill loved one, and you sighed. 

“Listen, Vhorn, she was talking about an infestation of cave beetles when she came in, and… well… I got rid of a similar infestation about three or four years ago. I’d like to go down there and fumigate, but I’d need a signed letter from you before I could set foot inside…” and the permission of one scary-ass dullahan lady, but you don’t need to know that. 

Vhorn scratched his beard and nodded. “Sure,” he said, slightly surprised by your unexpected request. “I can bring it by your house later today if you like?”

“Perfect, thank you,” you beamed. 

As the shadows lengthened and the late autumn chill deepened to a more biting cold, you heard boots on your porch and crossed to open the door before Vhorn could knock. To your surprise, Ten stood there. She, however, did not look surprised when you opened the door, and nodded formally at you, muttering your name. 

“Ten,” you chirped nervously. “I wasn’t expecting you yet. Um… do you want to come -” you didn’t finish your question before she was striding in through the open door behind you. “- in…” you finished as she turned around in the small space of your modest living room. Glancing behind you, you saw that the road was empty. “Is… Is D not with you?”

“Justice will be joining me shortly, I’m sure. He heard my summons.” 

“Right,” you said, swallowing nervously. Gods, but she was tall and intimidating. “Do… Do you want anything to drink?” you asked, before remembering that she was a fae and that if she accepted your gift, she’d be in your power. “Or not. Up to you…” you blurted. 

She turned to regard you then. She had her real head on again, and somehow she seemed more inhuman with it on display like that. Weren’t dullahans supposed to be more vulnerable with their heads on? Why did she parade herself around like that when she was physically weaker? Perhaps nothing truly scared her. That was a thought you didn’t want to dwell on. 

Her skin was ice white, laced with eerie black veins, and her eyes, where D’s were bright and sparkled with an almost secretive amusement, were dark, blood red, and glimmered ominously, as though she knew every secret you had in your soul. Her white blonde hair was loose today, spilling down her back like a sheet of moonlight, and it only made her look more intimidating. The image called to mind images of wild banshees and spectres in the woods who devoured unsuspecting souls…

“Before Justice gets here,” she said bluntly, ignoring your hospitality, “I want to speak to you.”

Suddenly you felt like you were getting a talking-to from some boy’s mother for getting too close to her son. “About what?” you asked, trying not to sound defensive. 

She fixed you with a definite ‘look’, and folded her arms. “I will be frank with you,” she said. “I do not think that it was the unrest which drew Justice to this town.”

You blinked, confused. “But… I thought dullahans were drawn to injustices…?”

“They are. We are,” she amended. “But Justice has no sense for magic. The sort of situations he is drawn to take him to dank, dismal prisons, to people wrongfully accused, to petty cases of hurt and domestic injustices. He is drawn to small knots in the skein of life which need loosening. His work is important only to the few lives which his presence touches.” She took a deep breath before continuing in her earthy alto. “I believe he was drawn instead to you.”

“To me?” you blurted. “What? Why? I’m not… I don’t need… fixing, or whatever… Do I?”

She snorted slightly at that and a ghost of amusement turned her lips up for a moment. “No, child,” she said. “I don’t believe you do. However, Justice has not been the way he is for very long. At least, not long by our standards.” She took a deep breath and then came to the heart of her concerns. “He has never been distracted from his calling by another before.”

“You think I’m such a distraction?” you asked, going hot in the face.

“You might be,” she said frankly. “But he assures me he will not let whatever he feels for you interfere with the situation here. I hope he is strong enough, and that you respect what it is that we are trying to do here enough not to tempt him…”

Swallowing the insult you felt, you said simply, “Of course.”

Ten softened a little at your obvious hurt. “This is his first real test,” she mused, more to herself than to you.

“How… How long has he been a dullahan then?” you asked, a flame of curiosity leaping up inside you like fire blazing up a dry pine tree. You were not about to let the chance to discover more about him pass you by.

Ten’s eyes blazed a violent red for a moment, but she lifted her nose slightly, as though scenting the air around you - an action which made you desperately uncomfortable for a moment - and then she actually smiled. It wasn’t a broad, beaming smile, but it was there, and it was somehow fond. With a little, breathy chuckle, she said, “He is a mere babe by our standards, but no doubt to you, he will seem old. It is almost a hundred years since he was reborn as he is now.”

“What… happened to him?” you asked, the question tumbling out of you before you could stop it. You didn't really even understand why you’d asked it in the first place, but Ten seemed to know exactly what it meant. 

She moved away from you and crossed the room to the back window which looked out onto the dense forest surrounding your cabin. She rested her pale hand on the windowsill and turned her back to you. Ten loosed a great, hollow sigh, and stared blankly out at the dark night beyond. Reflected in the window panes, you watched her face grow infinitely sad. It was the first time you’d seen an emotion that deep on her, and it was almost harder to bear than her habitually fierce scowl. 

“It was terrible,” she said finally. “I will not betray his last human moments to you. That is for him to divulge. Suffice it to say he suffered greatly, and lost everything before he died. Dullahan are not born of happy endings, child,” she said. Then her head twitched slightly and she added, “He comes.”

Stunned, you turned and made your way to the door, still mulling over the snippets of D’s life that Ten had given you as you stepped out onto the porch to see him cantering up the road. The moment she spotted you, Midnight tossed her head and whinnied again, prancing around mid-stride and throwing D about like a sack of apples in the saddle. He reined her in and swung down off her back, grinning, landing catlike on the road beside you. You stared in amazement at him: he too wore his physical head that night. The way he looked took your breath for a moment. 

The deep, smooth texture of his slate grey skin gave a wonderfully graceful counterpoint to the glowing of the spidery markings across his cheeks and disappearing down out of sight beneath his high collar. His eyes, which should have been creepy with their black sclera and silver-white irises, were like pools of light you could easily drown yourself in. D carelessly dropped Midnight’s reins to the dust and came to stand before you, every line of his body sharp and playful somehow. You saw the points of his elongated canines and the frankly adorable dimples in his grey cheeks, and found yourself laughing with joy to see him again, and looking so bright and happy. 

“You’re in a good mood,” you smiled. Seeing him like this, ebullient and full of life, it was hard to imagine him as a creature who had suffered. And yet, you called to mind the gruff, distrustful fae you had first encountered not so long ago in the glen as you’d debated whether to pick up his head or not. Fresh, too, in your mind was the grief on his face when he had wanted to kiss you - and more - and found himself torn between desire and duty. 

“I’m well,” he said, interrupting your thoughts. “Ten has made some significant progress.”

“Yeah,” you said, turning and giving Midnight a little rub on her nose, which she seemed to appreciate. “I wasn’t expecting her to show up today…”

“She’s here already?” he asked, tripping on the stairs up to the porch. He clutched at the support beam of the little veranda covering, and straightened himself. 

“You’re as surprised as I am then…?” you laughed, and his cheeks darkened in a slate grey blush. 

He chuckled, embarrassed, and said, “Well, she did say she’d join me at your house. I just thought she’d be a little longer. I… I wanted to get here first…” he mumbled. 

Ten appeared in the doorway, shaking her head slowly from side to side and grinning wolfishly. “Ah, little pup,” she chastised him fondly. “You will never be faster or stronger than me. I taught you everything you know, remember?”

“Yes, Ten,” he smiled goodnaturedly. “Have you told her yet?”

Ten shook her head, long hair swaying. “Come inside, both of you, and I will tell her. And Justice?” she added. 

“Yes?”

“Your horse is in plain sight on the road. Unless you’ve learned to cast a glamour, you’d better banish her.”

“Oh,” he said, turning sharply and waving his hand, muttering something in a language you didn’t understand. With a disgruntled snort, Midnight evaporated, and D turned back to find you watching him. He had seemed to shrink a little under Ten’s words about his lack of magic, as though he were somehow less for not being able to wield it. You still wondered why that was, but perhaps that was just the way he was, as some folk are tone-deaf or colourblind. 

As Ten and D strode into your living room, you tried not to laugh at how weird it was to have two fae standing in your little apothecary’s hut. “I tried to be polite earlier and offer Ten some refreshments, but that was before I remembered that dullahans are a kind of fae, and fae don’t like accepting food, so I think I actually ended up embarrassing myself and making you uncomfortable,” you gabbled awkwardly, speaking the last words while looking at Ten. “I’m sorry. I just… didn’t want to seem rude.”

“No, I’m sorry, child,” she said to you, her shoulders slackening. “I… I find it difficult to relate to humans. But you are generous and kind, and…” Her gaze swivelled fleetingly to D at that moment, and you watched a flicker of uncertainty pass over her handsome face. “Anyway, there are things we must discuss with you.”

“Please,” you smiled, gesturing to the chairs near the fire. “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll bring some brandy over, and we can make a fair trade of it for some more information on the mine. How does that seem?”

D’s eyes glittered playfully, and he grinned at you. “Sounds perfect. Do you need a hand?”

“Sure,” you said.

As it turned out, Ten’s research into the crystal had taken place back in the fae realm, where magic was more stable and controllable, and she had had a craftsman create some kind of device which used the magic of the crystals themselves to nullify the effects they gave off. 

“No way,” you breathed, watching as she drew out an amulet from a pocket. In the centre of it, a rough crystal nestled securely in a chunky bezel setting which was itself carved with runes. Geometric lines crossed the rest of the octangular amulet, criss-crossing each other at seemingly irregular intervals. 

She nodded. “I want you to wear this when you go into the mines. It will protect you from any harmful effects of the crystal, and its influence reaches out around you in a small circle too. All we have to do now is get you in…”

As if fate itself was knocking on your door, a polite but heavy knock rang on the wood, and all three of you jumped. Ten simply vanished where she sat, but D could not, so he sat very still and grinned at you. “Answer it,” he whispered. “It’s alright. They won’t notice me.”

Striding to the door and smoothing down your clothes, you took one last glance back at your living room and gasped - it seemed completely empty apart from you. Shaking your head and smiling at the mysterious and mischievous fae-magic of dullahans, you opened the door to see the huge, orcish overseer of the mines standing awkwardly on your porch with a piece of parchment in his massive hands. “Here,” Vhorn said without preamble. “I have the signed document for you.”

“Thanks, Vhorn,” you said, taking it from him. 

“No, thank you,” he insisted, scratching the back of his head. 

“Vhorn, don’t worry,” you said, reaching out and touching his bare forearm. It was chilly from the night air outside, and as your warm palm connected with his muscular arm, he seemed to relax a little. 

He took a deep breath and tried out a smile, though it didn’t stick. “I… I went to see her after supper,” he said. “I’ve never seen her so weak…” He shuddered visibly. 

Squeezing your fingers reassuringly, you smiled. “She’ll pull through, Vhorn. Goblins are tough critters…”

He smirked at that, nodding. “Aye. That they are.”

“The best thing you can do for her right now is stay strong and carry on, alright?” 

The big orc nodded again. “I’ll try.”

“That’s more than enough. Get some rest, and thank you for this,” you said, indicating the sheaf of paper in your hand.

Once Vhorn had retreated back down the stairs and was walking disconsolately down the road, his colossal shoulders hunched, his heels scuffing in the dirt, you closed the door on the chilly night, and turned around just as the two dullahans reappeared with a rippling of the air around them. 

“What was that about?” Ten barked, holding out her hand for the piece of paper. Her talons glinted like polished ivory in the firelight, and the sight of them nudged your heart rate up a little.

“This?” you asked, crossing the room back to her and offering her the document before taking a seat beside D. “My permission to get into the mines,” you said. 

Ten’s red eyes widened in surprise, and she actually seemed impressed. D caught your eye and winked proudly at you, but said nothing while Ten scanned the lines in silence. 

“Impressive,” she murmured when she had finished. “Are there really cave beetles down there?”

You shrugged. “Minna, the last goblin to be brought into the infirmary, was raving about an infestation. I figured I could get down there and investigate, maybe even fumigate if I find them, and have a poke around on the pretence of looking for beetle eggs or something.”

“Nice work,” D grinned.

They didn’t stay long after that. Ten gave you some more advice about the crystals, and D sat quietly, rarely taking his eyes off you. Ten told you everything she could think of that would be useful, and made you promise not to take any unnecessary risks, especially since neither of them could get in. 

“Do you want me to have a look at the entrance and see if I can -?” you began, but both dullahans sat up straight in alarm.

“No,” they both barked at once. 

“No,” D continued, glancing at Ten, who nodded in ascent, letting him speak. “If the mayor suspects that the seal has been tampered with, she might get jumpy, and do something drastic. This is purely a trip to find out what’s going on down there.” He grabbed your hand suddenly in his and squeezed gently. His skin was cool as ever, but there was a fervour to the gesture that spoke of the warmth of his feelings for you. “Please, be careful…” he hissed.

You would have kissed him then, had Ten not been there. As it was, you simply smiled back up into those inhuman eyes and nodded a silent promise. “I’ll go tomorrow morning,” you said, and another flicker of pain crossed his face. “D?”

He sighed and began to caress your hand gently with his thumb. “Remember I told you that dullahans don’t do well in sunlight?” he asked. “It weakens us. We can’t survive long…”

“I’ll be alright,” you said. “I’ll be careful. And you can come here tomorrow evening after sunset, and I’ll tell you both everything I’ve learned.”

Ten stood up abruptly and made her way towards the door. She opened it and stared out into the night. “Come, Justice. Let the girl rest before tomorrow. I have one more task for us tonight.”

He nodded and squeezed your fingers once more before releasing them and standing. 

Looking up at him with a smile, you reached your hand tentatively for his cheek. “It’s nice to see you like this for a change,” you said as your palm came to rest on his cool skin. 

The greenish-white lines on his face pulsed brightly at the contact, and he sucked in a short breath, eyes fluttering closed for an instant. “We came straight here,” he said in a rasping voice. “And I had it with me… I was looking for a new place to keep it,” he said with a wry look at you. It was odd to hear him talk about his head as though it were an inanimate object or something.

“Ah, yeah,” you said awkwardly. “Sorry about that.”

To your surprise, Ten barked a laugh, and spoke from the open door. “It’s good practice to move our heads more than once a century. The little whelp just lucky it was you who found his head, and not some mage who could have taken control of him…”

Chastened, D’s gaze fell to to bore a hole floor. 

You could leave it here with me. The thought struck you out of the blue, but you bit the words back. Instead, you took his hand again and smiled. “You take care too, alright?” 

“I’ll be here at sunset tomorrow,” he said, and he stooped to press his lips to your forehead before striding straight out through the open door. At the bottom of the stairs, he simply vanished without looking back, rippling the way Midnight had done.

Your eyes moved apprehensively to Ten, who stood watching the spot where he’d vanished. “Is he alright?” you asked. 

She took a moment to reply, but when she did, her voice was oddly quiet and gentle. “His feelings for you run much deeper than I realised,” she said. 

“Is that a problem?” you asked, trying not to sound rude. 

She turned her head sharply to regard you, pinning you there with her blood red stare. “No,” she said slowly, pensively. “I don’t think so.” Then her lips quirked into a lopsided smile and she stared even more intently at your face. “My, but you’re a fierce one, aren’t you? Not brash or loud about it, but you’re…” a word died on the end of her tongue, and she replaced it with a bitter laugh. “Listen, child, I will give you a gift.”

“What?” you asked, taken aback. “But the amulet…”

“That is not a gift,” she said. “That is simply a tool to accomplish our shared goal. No, I will give you a gift to help you in your endeavour. There is much power in knowing a name, and I would like to gift you with the power behind my name.”

“Ten,” you breathed. “You don’t have to…” You’d had your suspicions about her name, but nothing solid. 

“I know that,” she practically snarled, taking half a step towards you, away from the open door. 

You shrank back half a pace, but then stood firm. 

“There it is,” she said, her eyes glowing.

“There’s what?” you asked, voice trembling though you fought to keep it steady. 

She stared down at you from her full height and surprised you by taking your face in both her cold hands. “Tenacity,” she said, enunciating the consonants with the delicate sharpness of a stiletto. As she spoke the word, a tingling ran all the way down your body in a ripple of goosebumps. The crystal amulet around your neck flared at the presence of her own magic, but other than that it showed no reaction. 

“There,” she said, sounding somewhat shaky herself. “Now you have the power of my name to aid your own tenacious spirit.”

The room was spinning slightly, as if the world tilted on a new axis. “Thank you,” you croaked. 

She smiled, and vanished on the spot. 

Whether it was the aftereffects of Tenacity’s ‘gift’, or of the brandy you’d all shared, you slept like the dead that night, waking perhaps an hour or two after dawn. With all your implements and ingredients readied for your task in the mine, you set off through the trees, deliberately passing by the clearing where you had first uncovered D’s head. The ground around the roots of the tree had been disturbed, and as you peered into the hole, you saw that the chest had been removed. It made you somehow sad to know that it was your fault his head no longer had a safe resting place, but you forced your mind to focus again, rising and turning your steps back towards the path that led to the mines. 

Vhorn was not outside when you arrived at the small building you remembered from your last visit. Instead, a town watchman stood sentry, and demanded to know what you were doing there. You were more than grateful for your flash of inspiration the previous day, and pulled out the document signed by Vhorn. The watchman looked it over with a suspicious degree of caution, but apparently couldn’t find any fault with it, and waved you into the mines, cautioning you not to get lost, and to take an enclosed lantern with you. 

The steady clink-clink-clink of pickaxes resonated through the dark, glistening rock, and as you stepped into the shadow-bound tunnel, your skin prickled with the cold. You’d come prepared, with extra layers and a warm shawl, but still, the dark, damp misery of the place began to seep into you almost immediately. Contrary to what you’d promised the dullahans, you did pause a moment beneath the lintel of the entrance, but all you saw was a faintly golden glimmer up in the far corners, which could have been little more than shiny rock reflecting the glimmer of your lantern’s flickering light. 

Not wishing to delay, you wound your way down the ever-sloping main tunnel until your feet faltered in the dimness. Just ahead of you, sitting on a pile of timbers, was Kravik. He held a pickax limply in his long fingers, and he was barefoot, staring blankly at the floor. 

“Krav?” you whispered, darting forwards. He didn’t look up as you approached, but when you touched his shoulder, he leapt almost out of his skin in surprise. 

You stared in horror at his face. He was shrunken and half-starved, mottled with blueish powder, and his hands were covered in sores and stained blue-black with his own blood. 

“Krav?” you repeated, kneeling down in front of him, still with your arm on his ragged, torn shirt. “Kravik, it’s me…”

He blinked his big, black eyes, and in the light of your lantern, you saw that eerie blue light in their depths again. This time, however, it flickered and went out. When it did, he blinked and looked around him, and then croaked your name in confusion. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” you smiled. “Welcome back…”

“How… How long…?” he asked, voice gritty and throat dry. 

You held out your waterskin to him and he drank it gratefully, wincing as it came into contact with the bloody blisters on his hands. He drained it dry. “Do you remember coming to see me a couple of nights ago?” you asked gently. 

He squinted. “I… I think so…” he said. “Gods, it’s all so vague… Why… What’s happening to me?”

“It’s not just you, Kravik,” you said, glad to see that spark of life returning to him. Then you remembered the amulet which you wore beneath your clothes. It was countering whatever effect the crystals and dust all over his skin was having on him, and you sighed out with relief. “I need to find out what’s going on down here,” you whispered urgently.

“It’s more than silver that’s being dug up here,” he said gravely, his eyes going down to his empty hands. 

“You mean the crystals?”

He nodded. “It’s called ‘phorosnykum’.” 

“Never heard of it,” you said.

“You wouldn’t,” he said. 

You frowned. “How do you know about it?”

He looked so tired as he sat there, but he sucked in a breath and said, “I don’t know why I can tell you this now, but the mayor came down here a month or so ago and spoke to all of us, only the goblins though. She said the phoros is a material that grants some kind of power to mages. It’s really rare, and I… I think it ‘stills’ the minds of goblins and other stone-born creatures.” His eyes flickered up to meet yours briefly. “Hence the enslavement… I think it makes us sick after a while though.”

You sat there, reeling for a long moment. “Why is she doing it? For more power for herself?” That seemed too petty a cause to go to all this trouble, to inflict all this suffering. “What can we do? Can we destroy it?”

He shook his head. “It’s indestructible. You can’t carve it, you can’t shape it, you can’t even polish it…”

“Then…” you floundered.

“We could bring the tunnels with the ‘phoros’ veins down on themselves…” he said. “There are stacks of powder kegs for excavation in the powder stores…”

“We’d have to evacuate the mines first,” you said. 

Kravik hopped down off the pile of timber and drew himself up to his full height. He was skinny and starved and utterly exhausted, but a new light was shining in his eyes. “Let me come with you,” he said fiercely. 

You pushed yourself upright too and adjusted the basket on your arm to give yourself time to think. He was the next thing to keeling over. “Krav,” you began, but he growled softly, a little sound in his rasping throat like a terrier who’s scented a rat. “I don’t know how good an idea this is…”

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