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The one thing which became apparent about Taal’s Keep rather quickly, was the immense system of tunnels webbing through its foundations, continuing untold miles into the heart of the mountain it sat on.
It had been abandoned for long. That meant snotlings. There were ways to remedy this, of course, many of which Bardin could advise about, and did. But it took time, and while that time passed, it meant stolen food, not to mention the occasional stinking little gifts which, if you weren’t careful where you trod, would end up under your boot.
And the ruckus at night. Oh the ruckus. Snotlings considered themselves rather cunning and sneaky, this self-image entirely undisturbed by the fact that, on any given heist to the food storage, they invariably failed to contain their self-satisfaction, and ended up chattering excitedly to each other. If they didn’t get into arguments about the spoils, there and then.
It was not that clearing them out was hard. It was more that it took time, they ruined your sleep, and, whenever you did clear one pack out, the next night a new one would have appeared. There didn’t seem to be any end to them.
Olesya probably could have warded them off while Bardin located all the tunnels and sealed them up. But, when inquired about that option, the hag just snickered, in a manner suggesting she derived way too much entertainment out of something or other. She then pulled her fingers until the joints clicked, which made your shoulders tense all up. The attempts to enlist her help quickly ceased.
As far as Kerillian was concerned, it all came to a head on the night she caught the little bastards shamelessly dragging an entire sack of turnips through the main hall.
She had stayed up late maintaining her bow, waxing down the wood and polishing it up, twining linden bast into new string and all the other little tasks required to keep the weapon in the best working condition. The sun had gone down and the moon had risen as she continued the work, offering whispered prayers for the moonlight to imbue the bow with Lileath’s blessing. It was late night before she was satisfied, and put away her weapons, dead tired. She washed in the rain water barrel by the wall and decided that something to eat would be in order, before she gave in to sleep.
So she had headed towards the food stores, crossing through the main hall on her way.
And there she had encountered the little critters, struggling with the sack of turnips, which would have been manageable for them if they had perhaps been a bit better at working together.
She stopped, surprised. At first the internal argument continued in front of her. Then one snotling discovered the audience, and squealed in fright.
The company descended into panicked chatter, looking and scurrying about for a quick way out.
At this point Kerillian made a crucial mistake: with long, angry strides she went up to them, bent down, and grabbed the sack.
As if on cue, the lot of them charged, with abandon.
It wasn’t that they were any real danger, but they had nasty, yellow little teeth, they were ferocious, she was tired, and there were somewhere between twelve and fifteen of them. One managed to climb all the way up and proceeded to yank at her hair rather painfully, scolding her all the while. She screamed in frustration and rage.
What happened next quickly became a bit of a blur, but looking back, the waystalker would later term it the eruption.
“I have just about had it up to here with you cretins!”
Kerillian could not say why the exclamation made her drop to the ground like a stone, but she was glad she did.
The wall to the right of her exploded. Rock and debris rained into the big circular chamber.
In a new, gaping hole now connecting the Bright wizard’s chamber to the hall, stood said wizard, in her shift, the mouthpiece of her pipe solidly secured between her right set of molars.
As Kerillian drop-rolled, the wave of flame broke directly over her nose, the stink of burnt snotling and turnip mingling with what she hoped was not her own eyebrows.
Over the roar of flames she perceived, dimly, a stream of complaints concerning such diverse topics as the sleep of decent folk, the time said decent folk were going to have to get up in the morning, as well as mangy greenskins, the roasting of. All interspersed with some impressively ripe swearing.
The waystalker scrambled out of the way, tore another critter out of her hair, and became upright just in time to see that the wizard’s shift had now caught fire. Sienna stopped casting. Instead, she picked up the nearest heavy object from her desk, jumped through the hole, and went to town on the one remaining snotling.
The object in question turned out to be a cast iron frying pan. There was still a bit of scrambled egg left in it, but that was soon, well, remedied.
Kerillian was not a person often inclined to praise, be it out loud or in the privacy of her own mind. But she couldn’t help but find it rather impressive that Sienna’s teeth kept the pipe lodged firm as in a wrench, throughout.
The last snotling died ignobly, decorated in scrambled egg.
The wizard finally groaned, that odd mixture of pain and ecstasy, and stopped. She came to rest on her knees, eyes closed and sitting back to cool off in the night air, pipe now in one hand and the frying pan resting in her lap, which, Kerillian felt, was on the whole rather fortunate. Because by now the noise had drawn not only Lohner, but also the final three of the Ubersreik Five, among them the self-proclaimed leadership.
Kerillian wondered where he’d been stalking about until now. He hadn’t been sleeping, that was clear. Overall it seemed that, to Saltzpyre, Stalking About was the order of the day, or more accurately the night. Sleep was a thing that happened to other people. People of lesser will, no doubt.
The newcomers beheld the scene.
“Aw Gods.” Lohner did an about face, and left again.
The witchhunter however, seemed unconcerned by the charred remains of turnip and snotling covering the floor, though he granted them a cursory glance. His investigation ground to a halt at Fuegonasus, still sitting in a sated, lazy glow, the air around her shimmering with dissipating heat.
He glared at her, tunneling in on her face even more than usual. Then he gestured at the gaping hole in the wall.
“What,” he queried, very very slowly, “is that.”
The amount of forced calm was frankly a bit disconcerting, the waystalker thought. She was reasonably sure that she knew what was the cause of it. Best not dwell on it right now.
The wizard, still in a haze, absentmindedly swatted at a few pieces of smoldering fabric. Kerillian kept deadpan, but she saw Kruber wince, and envied him a bit.
“Tha’sa crack inna wall, Hunter”, Sienna slurred, glaring back at her accuser. “D’you not have ey… es...d’you not have eye ?”
She lifted the frying pan and gestured brazenly at the wall with it.
Kruber had now found a particularly interesting piece of floor which he was studying intently.
The Witchhunter, however, was all razor focus. He seemed more and more like a man prepared to kill. The general threat level was rapidly approaching lethal. An urgent de-escalation of the situation was urgently needed.
Urgently so.
As always, Bardin saved them all.
“Looks like our wee problem got solved for now,” he observed, prodding a boot at the charred remains covering the hall.
“As for the wall,” he shook his head in regret. “Umgak architecture, that’s what it is, Grimgi. Can’t handle basic usage. Nowt else to be expected from such lack of craftsmanship.”
Kerillian briskly picked up the lead laid out by the dwarf. “Wizard,” she said. “Ye need to vent a bit more. It reeks of sulphur in here. Let’s go outside.”
Saltzpyre blinked, like the voices were a piece of unexpected mooring line slapping him across the face. One would hope, at least, that it was mooring.
“Right.” He pushed the word out between gnashed teeth, a quite impressive effort.
Then he broke off the staring contest and turned, pointedly, back to the smoking remains on the floor. Bardin let out a long breath, Kruber following suit as inaudibly as humanly possible. Lohner reappeared with a wheelbarrow, a shovel and a broom, and set to work. Olesya, for all this time, had not deigned to make an appearance, and Kerillian was somewhat grateful for that.
Sienna obediently plodded outside behind her, examining the pipe mournfully - it seemed to have burned through somewhat.
“I’ll cut ye a new one, wizard,” Kerillian offered, and was surprised to find that she meant it. The human mage had gotten her out of…. a bit of an embarrassing pickle. And, she noted, was wisely refraining from commenting on it now.
“Ye did well, Sienna. Never mind the wall, the keep is huge. We have plenty of space, if it comes to that.”
“Tell that to the hunter,” the wizard glowered. “Staring daggers at me he was, like I’d wronged him something fierce.”
Kerillian cleared her throat. Then she gestured, wordlessly.
Sienna looked down.
“....Oh.”
The elf handed her a blanket.
As it turned out, the nights following the incident passed in blessed silence. Sienna’s eruption seemed to have finally dissuaded any new would-be larder brigands from pushing their luck. Snotlings, while undeniably stupid, weren’t daft. The mountain itself, they reckoned, had come alive and spewed flames and sulfur. Their genetic memory recognised that. Such a mountain was no longer a good place to live, and dig tunnels in.
Bardin was left to complete the remaining repairs in peace.
The hole in the wall, on the other hand, remained. Sienna had taken to using it as a front door. This bothered the witchhunter, but then Kerillian suspected that that was probably the main motivation behind the wizard’s decision anyway.
The whole song and dance made the waystalker almost miss the snotlings. At least they knew that they liked turnips, and wasted no time in procuring some.