Chapter 9: The War of Frogs and Mice¶
Prologue - Rust¶
The dead were everywhere when we reached the Old Sycamore.
I know death. The mystery that called me to serve has shown me its face a thousand times—in the battlefield pyres of my youth, in the quiet passing of elders, in the sudden violence that takes the young before their time. Death is not my enemy. It is simply the door at the end of every corridor, waiting patiently for each of us to arrive.
But this... this was different.
Kobold bodies hung from branches like grotesque fruit, strung up by the mitflits as warnings or trophies or perhaps simply for the cruel joy of it. More lay piled at the tree's roots, their scales already dulling in the cold morning air. A war between small creatures, fought with the ferocity that only the desperate can muster.
Dog pressed close to my leg, hackles raised, reading my unease. "I know," I murmured to him. "This feels wrong. All of it."
The others were already discussing tactics, entry points, what manner of creatures we might face below. Practical concerns. Necessary ones. But I could not shake the weight of what lay before us—a conflict born of desperation, fueled by theft and honor and the kind of hatred that grows in cramped, dark places. Mitflits and kobolds, locked in their ancient enmity, and us walking straight into the heart of it.
Life is precious. Even small lives. Even lives spent in darkness beneath a dead tree. I do not know what we will find below, but I know that my calling demands I try to preserve what can be preserved—and give peaceful passage to what cannot.
Easy now. One step at a time.
The Old Sycamore¶
The dead were everywhere when they reached the Old Sycamore.
The tree rose from the landscape like a monument to violence—nearly a hundred feet of blackened wood, long dead, its bark chipped and charred where lightning had struck years before. It stood alone for miles, the only vertical thing in a sea of low scrub, and its branches bore fruit no tree should carry. Kobold corpses swung gently in the morning breeze, strung up as warnings or trophies. Others lay heaped at the roots in festering piles that swarmed with flies. Skin flayed. Bones broken. Bodies arranged with deliberate cruelty.
The war between the mitflits and the Sootscale kobolds had reached its fever pitch, and the party had walked straight into its heart.
Elroy approached the entrance first—a root-shrouded hole at the tree's base that dropped into darkness. He peered down, noting how the tunnel ceiling dropped to barely four feet, how the cramped confines would hamper anyone of ordinary size.
Rust crept forward next, his darkvision piercing what the others could not see. The tunnel ran left and right from the entrance, its floor thick with mud, scattered with strips of cloth and broken arrowheads. He opened his mouth to report—
High-pitched voices erupted from the scrub behind them.
They turned to find themselves surrounded. Squat creatures, barely two feet tall, emerged from concealment—mitflits with warty blue faces, needle-like piranha teeth, and yellow eyes that gleamed with ancient hatred. Each hunting party held leashed giant centipedes that reared and clicked their mandibles as the mitflits released them.
The ambush dissolved into violence almost immediately.
Perry moved first, his crossbow Infernis already rising. He assessed the nearest centipede in a heartbeat, noted the gap between its chitinous plates, and put a bolt through the center of its head. The creature's mandibles kept clicking even as it died. His second shot caught a mitflit in the shoulder.
The wounded mitflit shrieked and lunged at Perry with a curved blade, but Elroy was already moving—stepping between them, taking the slash across his armored forearm instead. The mitflit tried to grab at Perry's leg and sprawled face-first into the mud.
More mitflits pressed in. Darts hissed through the air. Elroy's sword swept out in a clean arc that was meant to brush aside one attacker and instead bisected it entirely. The guardian blinked at the unexpected result, then set his stance and bellowed a challenge at the remaining creatures.
The second centipede struck at Dravyn, mandibles snapping for his throat—but again Elroy interposed himself, his shield catching the venomous bite. The wizard responded with a sharp crack of his staff that split the vermin lengthwise, then followed with lightning that arced between two mitflits. Both collapsed, hearts stopped mid-beat.
Grotdor's contribution was more direct. He called flame to his hands and let it lance outward—a precision strike that reduced one mitflit to ash and sent a firebird screaming through the air to catch another in the throat. The creature gurgled and fell, blood hissing where it met the flames.
The last mitflit died with Perry's bolt through its skull, entering the open mouth and lodging somewhere behind the eyes.
Silence settled over the tree. Four mitflits and two centipedes lay dead in the mud, and the party hadn't even entered the tunnels yet.
The Prank Workshop¶
Perry brewed what elixirs he could, pressing warm tinctures into the hands of those who'd taken wounds. Elroy drank gratefully, watching the shallow cut on his arm close. Grotdor shrugged off his own healing, more interested in examining the mitflits' weapons—crude short swords, dozens of handcrafted darts.
Rust gathered marbles from a pouch on one of the bodies. Two hundred glass spheres, give or take. He did not know what use he might find for them, but they had weight and potential.
Dravyn cast light upon his staff, and the party descended.
The tunnels beneath the sycamore were everything the entrance had promised: cramped, muddy, claustrophobic. Those of medium build found themselves stooping, ducking, moving with awkward care as root-choked ceilings scraped at their shoulders. Only Rust and Perry moved freely, their smaller frames suited to warrens designed by tiny hands.
The first chamber they entered was a workshop of sorts. Two mitflits crouched at benches covered in tools and scrap, each wearing a mechanical contraption strapped to its wrist—catapults fashioned from bone and cloth and salvaged wood. Perry tried speaking to them in the language of the fey.
They did not understand. They looked at each other, shrugged, and opened fire.
Glass marbles exploded from the wrist-rockets, scattering across the floor and sending Elroy stumbling. Dravyn caught a faceful and nearly went down. The mitflits cackled and retreated deeper into their workshop, hiding among roots and shadows.
Elroy did not let them hide for long.
He advanced despite the treacherous footing, shield forward, blade ready. The first mitflit—older than the surface guards, craftier—tried to duck away. Elroy's sword took its ear off on the first swing and its arm on the second. The creature collapsed in a spray of dark blood, and the party earned a moment of collective pride for the guardian's valor.
The second mitflit lasted only slightly longer. Grotdor's fire found it cowering behind a workbench. The first blast incinerated its weapon, set its clothes ablaze, turned its hair to cinders. The second blast finished the job. The creature's lungs burst from the sudden change in temperature, and it fell without another sound.
Rust searched the workshop afterward but found only prank supplies—string and bones, snare components, jars of moldy turnips. The mitflits built their cruelty from garbage and spite.
The Chamber of Torment¶
The Chamber of Torment earned its name.
It reeked of rot and mold and blood, an egg-shaped cavern with pale roots writhing across its walls like exposed veins. Six mitflits stood within, bloody daggers in hand, gathered around their victims. Four kobolds hung bound to the walls. Three had stopped moving entirely—their torture complete, their scales dull with death. The fourth, a dark-scaled creature with desperate yellow eyes, saw the heroes enter and began to scream.
Dravyn understood. The kobold was begging in Draconic, promises of treasure spilling from its bloodied lips.
The mitflits turned. One of them—clearly different from the others, its movements touched by something arcane—dropped its trousers in a grotesque display and began to chant. Elroy felt something clawing at his will, trying to cloud his thoughts, but he shook free through sheer stubborn defiance.
Then he swept his sword through the nearest mitflit. He'd meant to knock it aside. Instead, the blade passed through it like butter, and the creature fell in two pieces.
Dog finally found his courage, lunging at another of the torturers, but Rust was already moving. The goblin oracle spread his arms and sang.
It was not a pleasant sound. Concordant choir—voices of the beyond channeled through a mortal throat, a dissonant harmony that shattered eardrums and ruptured organs. Five mitflits caught the edge of that terrible song. Two of them simply fell over, clutching their heads as blood poured from their ears. One vomited and collapsed. The others staggered, weakened.
Grotdor's flame finished one. Dravyn's lightning finished two more. The last torturer's heart stopped mid-beat, its body hitting the floor alongside its companion's in perfect synchronization.
The dark-scaled kobold fell to his knees, kissing boots, weeping with gratitude.
His name was Mikmek.
Mikmek the Kobold¶
Through Dravyn's translation, the story came together. Mikmek's people lived to the south, across the river, in a cave where shiny metal lined the walls. The Sootscale kobolds, they called themselves. And the mitflits had stolen their most sacred treasure: a statue of their god Sharptooth.
This was the third such theft. The new shaman—a purple-skinned creature named Tartuk who could work miracles—had sent Mikmek and others to retrieve it. The others now decorated the sycamore's branches.
The party gave Mikmek a short sword. He swore undying loyalty in return.
The Chasm¶
They found the chasm.
A deep fissure split the tunnel—twenty feet down, perhaps twice as wide, tangled with roots that the mitflits had rigged with climbing loops. The passage continued on the far side, and somewhere in the darkness below, Dravyn's light caught the glint of too many eyes.
Something massive lay coiled in that pit.
The argument began almost immediately.
Grotdor studied the gap with a calculating eye. He could cross it—his burning jet could carry him over in a heartbeat, chase down the retreating mitflits they'd spotted fleeing north. Elroy suggested climbing back up through the tunnels they'd come from, circling around to intercept the mitflits from above.
Perry disagreed. They should stay put, he argued. Use this choke point. Lure enemies to them rather than scattering across unknown ground. There was something in that chasm, something big, and crossing it meant fighting on two fronts.
But conviction had taken hold of Grotdor. He moved to the edge of the gap, flame already gathering at his hands.
And Elroy was already striding back toward the upper passages.
Perry's voice carried an edge of frustration as he warned against splitting up. The first person through would be alone up there. They needed to stay together. If they all retreated back up, someone would be isolated. This was a bad idea—
Grotdor ignited.
Fire roared from his hands and feet as he rocketed across the chasm, landing on the far side in a wash of heat and scattered sparks. He was alone now, cut off from the others by twenty feet of vertical stone and whatever lurked below.
Elroy was already gone, climbing back toward the upper tunnels to flank.
Perry stood at the edge of the chasm, watching his carefully maintained tactical position disintegrate, and did the only thing he could: threw a smoke ball at his feet and vanished into the concealing cloud.
Mistakes were Made¶
Rust went next. Someone had to help Grotdor—the kineticist was over there alone with at least two mitflits and their mounted leader approaching. The goblin moved to the climbing loops, reached for a handhold—
The root tore free in his grip.
He fell.
Twenty feet straight down, the rigged foothold coming apart in his hands, his desperate grab at the edge ripping away another false loop. He hit the bottom hard, the impact driving the breath from his lungs and leaving him prone in the mud.
And then the eyes opened.
All of them.
Red and gleaming in the darkness, arranged along a segmented body that had to be twenty-five feet long. The giant whiptail centipede uncoiled from its resting place at the chasm's north end, mandibles clicking, its long tail already rising like a serpent preparing to strike.
Rust scrambled to his feet. Somewhere above, he heard Perry shout something—a warning, maybe, or a curse.
It was chaos.¶
The Giant Centipede and Grabble’s War Room¶
What followed was chaos.
On the far side of the chasm, Grotdor faced the mitflit war leader—an ancient, knobby creature named Grabbles who rode a giant tick called Tickleback. The tick's barbed proboscis found purchase in Grotdor's leg, attaching like a lamprey and beginning to drain blood. Grabbles jabbed with a trident that missed more than it hit, but the damage was done—Grotdor was pinned, anchored to his attackers, fighting for his life.
In the chasm below, the whiptail centipede surged toward Dravyn, who had been watching from a ledge above. The wizard scrambled back, calling warnings to the others, but Mikmek saw an opportunity—
The little kobold charged.
He'd been so eager to prove himself, so desperate to show his worth to his rescuers. He clutched his shortsword and ran straight at the centipede, probably imagining himself a hero, probably not understanding how outmatched he truly was.
The centipede's tail moved like a whip crack.
Mikmek's head separated from his body. It spun in the air, trailing a spiral of blood, and landed with wet finality on the spike of Dravyn's staff. The kobold's body took two more steps on momentum alone before crumpling into the mud.
His eyes stared up at Dravyn from the staff. Accusing. Betrayed.
Above them all, Elroy heard the sounds of disaster unfolding and turned back. Perry emerged from his smoke cloud to put a bolt through a retreating mitflit's ear, then watched helplessly as the battle fractured further.
But the party was not dead yet.
Rust, despite his fall and the massive centipede bearing down on him, found his footing. He reached across the spiritual connection he'd forged with Grotdor—a life link, oracle's magic, the kind that let him share in his ally's pain and healing alike. He could feel Grotdor weakening, could feel the tick draining blood, but he could also give the kineticist just a little more time.
And he could fight.
His needle darts struck true, punching through chitinous plates. His discordant choir rose again, the awful goblin singing that made eardrums bleed and hearts seize. Enemies fell.
Grotdor dragged himself and his attached parasites across the cavern floor, every step halved by the tick's weight, but still moving. He called fire to his hands and slammed it into Tickleback's bloated body. The tick shuddered, its stolen blood boiling inside it—but somehow it held on, somehow it kept drinking.
Dravyn sent waves of dehydration through the centipede's body, withering it from within. Perry's bolts found vital joints. Elroy returned to the fray, his shield raised, his taunts drawing the centipede's attention.
It was Rust who ended Tickleback.
His needle darts struck the gorged tick at its most vulnerable moment, and it burst like overripe fruit. All the blood it had stolen from Grotdor exploded from its back in a crimson spray, and Grabbles tumbled from his dead mount with a shriek of dismay.
The battle broke off still unresolved.
On the east side of the chasm, Grotdor stood wounded and bloody, Grabbles' trident still threatening, at least one mitflit circling for another strike. The life link pulsed between him and Rust—a tether of shared vitality that had kept the kineticist standing when he should have fallen.
On the west side, the giant whiptail centipede still lived, still burned with persistent fire, still lashed its tail at anyone who came too close. Elroy held its attention while Perry fired from concealment and Dravyn shaped the battlefield with his magic.
In the chasm between them, Mikmek's headless corpse lay in the mud. His quest unfulfilled. His sacred statue still in mitflit hands.
And Dog waited in the upper passages, uncertain which way to run.
Perry had been right, of course. Splitting the party had transformed a manageable tactical situation into a multi-front crisis. They had survived—so far—through luck, through life-link magic, through the timely death of Tickleback.
But the lesson was written in blood on the cavern floor.
Some mistakes could not be unmade.