Chapter 10: The War of Frogs and Mice - part 2¶
Prologue - Perry¶
I observed something troubling in the aftermath of our descent beneath the Old Sycamore—a pattern of tactical decisions that defied the careful analysis I had provided beforehand. The evidence was clear: we had positioned ourselves poorly, allowed the party to become divided by a chasm, and subsequently faced a cascade of complications that might have been avoided entirely.
The mitflits, for all their pathetic mewling, had exploited every gap in our formation. Grabbles, their leader, proved far more resilient than his diminutive frame suggested—a hypothesis I had to revise repeatedly as my bolts failed to drop him. And then there was the matter of the climbing loops. I tested them. I assessed the risk. In every conceivable timeline, it seems, Perry Marlowe was destined to fall into that pit.
Curious. The universe rarely demonstrates such mathematical consistency in its cruelty.
Still, we prevailed. Rust’s needles found their mark when it mattered most. Grotdor’s fire swept through their hatchery with satisfying efficiency. Elroy absorbed punishment that would have felled lesser individuals—and several greater ones besides. Even Dravyn, pelted with dung-covered centipede eggs until he resembled something that had crawled from a compost heap, maintained his composure long enough to deliver killing blows.
The Statue of Old Sharptooth is secured. Svetlana’s ring remains elsewhere—with the kobolds, I suspect. The document we recovered is written in Sakvroth, a language none of us can read. More questions than answers, as is typical.
But we are alive, which is more than can be said for Grabbles and his kin. The evidence suggests that counts for something.
The Lower Cavern - Beneath the Old Sycamore¶
The whiptail centipede burned.
Grotdor's flame had found its mark in the final moments of the previous assault, leaving the creature wreathed in guttering fire that consumed its carapace in hungry bites. The beast twisted against the stone floor of the lower cavern, legs churning, and the flames finally sputtered out—but not before leaving the creature diminished, ichor leaking from blackened wounds.
Across the chasm that split the chamber, Rust and Grotdor held their position against Grabbles and his remaining followers. The mitflit leader's malevolent chanting had spread a pall of ill fortune across the battlefield, and even from this distance, Elroy could feel the curse's weight pressing against his sword arm. Dravyn stood beside him, glaive ready, while Perry—still concealed in shadow—tracked targets through the sights of his crossbow.
The centipede struck first. Its mandibles snapped toward Elroy, who caught the attack on his raised shield with a satisfying clang. The creature's tail whipped toward Dravyn, but Elroy shifted his stance, and the guardian's presence forced the blow wide. Denied its prey, the beast undulated backward into a rocky recess, positioning itself beyond easy reach.
On the far side, a phoenix-shaped tongue of flame shot from Grotdor's outstretched hand. It carved a serpentine path through the air, passing through Grabbles, the spellcasting mitflit who sustained the curse, and a third gremlin crouching nearby. All three dove or twisted, but none escaped entirely—each came away scorched, clothes smoking, flesh reddened. Grotdor produced a small vial and drank deeply, and color returned to his pallid cheeks.
Dravyn advanced on the wounded centipede. His glaive swept in a brutal arc, and a section of chitinous plating tore free, spraying thick green ichor across the stretched kobold skins decorating the walls. The creature lunged in response, and Dravyn's blade found its open maw. He drove the point home with killing precision. Legs curled inward. The whiptail's clicking ceased.
Perry emerged from concealment long enough to draw a bead on one of the mitflits. His assessment was clinical—fortitude was their weakness, cold iron their bane. Neither mattered when a bolt punched clean through the creature's eye. The gremlin dropped without a sound.
The surviving mitflit channeled its curse-weaving into a larger radius and darted forward to flank Grotdor alongside Grabbles. A rusty short sword found purchase in Grotdor's side—a shallow cut, but one that drew blood nonetheless. Across the invisible thread of vitality connecting them, Rust felt the echo of that wound and winced.
Elroy hurled a javelin across the canyon. It flew wide. He spent precious reserves of will to try again, pulling back the moment and letting the weapon fly anew—but distance and unfamiliar weight conspired against him. The second throw went no better than the first.
Grabbles saw his opportunity. The mitflit leader abandoned his subordinate and closed on Grotdor with murder in his bulbous eyes. His trident came down in a vicious overhead strike, and luck favored the gremlin—the weapon found the gap where thigh met hip, that sensitive junction where armor offered no protection. Grotdor staggered. Blood sheeted down his leg. Across their mystical bond, Rust absorbed what damage he could, his own vitality draining to sustain his companion. Grabbles struck again, and again the trident found flesh. By the time the mitflit stepped back to survey his handiwork, Grotdor was swaying on his feet.
Rust raised his hands and spoke words older than prayer. Warmth flowed outward, golden and steady, knitting torn muscle and sealing ruptured vessels. He followed the healing with a whispered blessing, and a faint nimbus settled around Grotdor's shoulders.
Giant Centipede and Grabbles (continued)¶
The second exchange came faster.
Grotdor fled the curse-aura's radius and retaliated with another lance of flame. Grabbles twisted away, but the spellcasting mitflit behind him caught the fire full in the chest. Dravyn finished the creature with a focused burst of cold—frost spread up from its feet, and its skull burst from the thermal shock.
Perry reloaded. He studied the climbing loops spanning the chasm, the crude rope-and-root handholds the mitflits had strung across the gap. He tested one. It seemed solid enough. He began to climb.
The loop tore free.
He fell twenty feet into the pit below, landing hard on ancient stone. His luck, usually reliable, abandoned him entirely—even when he called upon the halfling gift for avoiding misfortune, the second loop failed just as the first had. In every possible timeline, it seemed, Perry Marlowe was destined to fall into that pit.
He hit the ground prone, the wind driven from his lungs. But he was Perry Marlowe, and Perry Marlowe was nothing if not adaptable. He forced time itself to bend, stealing an extra moment from the flow of seconds, and used it to regain his feet.
Elroy readied himself. He could not cross the chasm—not quickly, not while battle raged—but he could wait for the enemy to come to him. He raised his shield and prepared a challenge, waiting for Grabbles to enter range.
The mitflit obliged. Grabbles advanced on Rust and Grotdor, and Elroy's voice boomed across the cavern. The taunt carried the weight of martial authority, forcing the gremlin's attention. When Grabbles attempted to shove Rust toward the pit's edge, Elroy's voice was in his head, breaking his concentration. The shove failed by the narrowest margin.
Rust shaped metal with his mind. Three needles formed from a scrap of iron in his pouch and shot toward Grabbles in a tight cluster. They flew wide—the curse-aura still plagued his aim. He raised a shimmering barrier of force around himself instead, preparing for whatever came next.
Grotdor maneuvered into flanking position and unleashed a blast of raw fire at close range. The flames caught Grabbles across the torso, and for the first time, the mitflit leader looked genuinely wounded.
Dravyn called lightning from somewhere beyond the stone ceiling. A tendril of electricity crashed down on Grabbles, and thunder rolled through the chamber. The mitflit's eyes went wide with pain and fury.
Perry climbed out of the pit. Grabbles saw him emerge and moved to intercept—a shove sent the halfling tumbling backward, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on the edge. He caught a root, held on, and felt the mitflit's trident stab down at him where he hung.
Steel bit into his shoulder. He was bleeding now, badly wounded, clinging to a ledge while a gremlin tried to murder him.
Rust's needles flew again. This time they found their mark.
Three slender projectiles of shaped metal struck Grabbles in rapid succession. Two sheared off the mitflit's ears as they passed. The third punched into his skull between his bulging eyes. President Grabbles, leader of the mitflit warband, toppled backward and lay still.
Aftermath in the The Lower Cavern¶
The cavern fell silent save for the dripping of water and the ragged breathing of wounded adventurers.
Rust looked across the chasm at Dravyn. The wizard was covered in centipede ichor and the residue of his own spells.
The deeper chambers of the mitflit lair remained unexplored. When the company finally crossed the canyon—slowly, carefully, with none of the climbing loops trusted—they found a common room full of terrified survivors. Eight mitflits huddled there, clutching crude weapons, their eyes fixed on the blood-spattered warriors who had just slain their champion.
Perry assessed the room with professional detachment. He devised an approach, calculated angles, and put a bolt through the eye of the nearest gremlin before it could react. The creature fell. Its companions panicked.
Two fled screaming into the darkness. The rest attacked in a desperate, disorganized rush.
Grotdor's fire swept through them. Dravyn's cold claimed another. Elroy's longsword rose and fell with mechanical precision. Within moments, only fleeing gremlins remained, and those were swallowed by the tunnels.
The Mitflit Common Room and Hatchery¶
The hatchery lay deeper still.
Elroy found it first. He pushed through a narrow passage and emerged into a chamber thick with the reek of decay and the wet warmth of incubation. Mounds of dung rose from the stone floor, each one studded with clusters of pale centipede eggs. Steam curled from the organic heaps. Several giant centipedes—smaller than the whiptail but deadly nonetheless—coiled among the egg-mounds, attending their future brood.
And there, at the chamber's heart, stood Quoggy.
The mitflit was larger than Grabbles had been, broader in the shoulder and crueler in the eye. It wore scraps of leather armor festooned with centipede legs and mandibles—trophies from its pets. When it saw Elroy, it began to chant.
The curse fell over them all again.
Elroy charged. Centipedes swarmed him from every direction, mandibles snapping, legs churning. He caught their attacks on his shield, deflected their bites with practiced ease, and bellowed challenges that echoed off the stone walls.
The others arrived in stages. Dravyn first, moving to flank the creatures threatening Elroy. Perry next, his crossbow singing. Grotdor and Rust brought up the rear, flame and healing ready.
One centipede wrapped itself around Elroy, coils tightening, mandibles seeking his throat. He fought against the grip, unable to break free—until Grotdor's flame carved through the chamber in a serpentine path, burning everything in its wake.
The centipede holding Elroy died in the fire. Two mitflits perished where they stood. The remaining gremlins scattered, screaming.
Elroy broke free, brought his longsword around, and cleaved the nearest centipede in half. A critical strike dropped a second. He turned his attention to Quoggy, banging his sword against his shield in challenge.
But the hatchery keeper had resources the others lacked. Quoggy's blade found Elroy's side once, twice, three times—the final blow a vicious critical that shattered the leather straps holding Elroy's shield to his arm. The steel disk clattered to the ground, broken and useless.
Rust moved without thinking. He placed his hands on Elroy's shoulders and willed vitality to flow, accepting the cost to his own life force. Warmth spread through the guardian's battered frame. Then the goblin turned to Dravyn, whose own wounds had accumulated throughout the descent, and made strange gestures—the first time any of them had seen him manipulate the scales of fate so directly.
Grotdor raised his hand. Fire erupted from the stone floor in a roaring column, consuming one egg-mound entirely and catching three gremlins in its radius. Two died instantly, their screams cut short. The third survived only because some impossible luck had carried it through.
The column remained, a pillar of flame that transformed the dung-heap into hazardous terrain and filled the chamber with the stench of burning eggs.
Dravyn finished the survivors. Bolts of pure force shot from his fingertips, one for each remaining mitflit. They dropped without ceremony. Only the final centipede remained—a stubborn beast that refused to die despite the wounds it had accumulated.
It lunged at Elroy three times in quick succession. Each attack went wide, the last so badly aimed that the beast's instincts seemed to have deserted it entirely. Elroy stood firm, swaying slightly from blood loss but unbowed.
Dravyn raised his glaive. The centipede twisted to face him, mandibles clicking. He brought the blade down across its segmented neck.
The creature's head rolled across the stone floor and came to rest against a smoldering egg-mound.
Aftermath and Downtime¶
Silence settled over the hatchery like a shroud.
Elroy surveyed the carnage—dead centipedes, dead gremlins, burning dung—and managed a tired smile. The company had won. The mitflit lair beneath the Old Sycamore was cleared. Grabbles and Quoggy were dead, their centipede pets exterminated, their eggs incinerated.
Dog appeared from a western passage, having found his own way through the tunnels. The wolf trotted to Rust's side and pressed his muzzle against the goblin's hand. Rust scratched behind his ears without looking away from the battlefield.
They searched the lair in the hours that followed. The Statue of Old Sharptooth—sacred icon of the Sootscale kobolds, depicting a fiendish devil-creature with reptilian features—they found in Grabbles' possession. A document written on animal hide in Sakvroth script went into Perry's pack for later translation. Coins and flint spearheads, stolen from the kobolds, joined the party's treasury. A silver ring, clearly valuable but clearly not Svetlana's wedding band, added itself to the collection.
The ring they sought was not here. The kobolds must have it still.
Perry spent a full day repairing Elroy's shield while the others rested. His hands were sure on the metal, and by the time he finished, the disk was whole again—better than new, if anything.
Travel to the Shrike River and Nettles Crossing¶
They left the Old Sycamore behind and traveled east, then south, toward the Shrike River. Grotdor navigated by the sun and by instinct, leading them through the Greenbelt's forests and clearings without incident.
Nettles Crossing waited at the water's edge.
The undead revenant rose from the current as they approached—Davik Nettles, the drowned ferryman, his distinctive pink mohawk plastered to his skull by river water. He watched them for a long moment, recognition flickering in his dead eyes. These were not the murderers he sought. These were allies, or at least not enemies.
He sank back beneath the surface without a word.
Perry assessed the ford. The river ran swift but shallow here, and with proper guidance, the cart could make it across. He studied the currents, identified the safest path, and directed Grotdor with calm precision. The crossing succeeded without incident.
On the southern bank, new territory spread before them. The Sootscale kobolds laired somewhere in this direction, and with them, Tartuk the purple prophet—and Svetlana's wedding ring.
The war of frogs and mice had claimed its first major victory. But the deeper questions remained unanswered: what Tartuk wanted, why the mitflits had possessed kobold holy relics, what secrets the Sakvroth document contained.
The Greenbelt grew marginally safer. The work continued.