Finua

Chapter 2: The Raiding Party

The roar of it all blasted as neutral and inextricable as the strongest gust of wind, until it was no longer a sound but simply the air that I breathed. Right before it hit, I saw Lugoke returning to his usual spot in the square, facing away from me at first, turn back towards my direction with a look of instinctive confusion slightly softening his harsh face. Then the foundations of the earth shuddered.

Pandemonium, of course, in the mine. Through the dust you could see hundreds of swarming goblins rattling around in panic to and fro, some of them running away from the rockslide in self-preservation, some running towards it, in the hopes of confronting whatever it was that caused it. Yusla was among the latter, leading Dewey, who led Nik, past me across the central square and across the land bridge that led to Strain A where the collapse had occurred. Lugoke, on the other hand, was merely looking in that direction, and was glaring defiantly at it from afar. Then his gaze snapped onto me.

"Finua, let's go," he said.

"Might as well," I said, hoisting my pickaxe at the ready and heading with the others towards Strain A.

But he grabbed my arm and pulled me towards Strain C, in the opposite direction.

"We're running away?" I asked him.

"You are running away," he amended, giving my arm another tug.

"Then why are you pulling me?!"

"Because you cannot be put in danger!"

"Come on man, let's go check it out! It looks like the world's fucking ending over there!"

"Ours, perhaps. Someone has arrived."

"Arrived?"

As a matter of fact, now that the tumbling cacophony of the rockslide had settled down a bit, I could indeed hear some shouting and metal from across the cavern.

"Lugoke!" I pulled away from him. "Don't be a party pooper, come with me!"

"I... it's dangerous for you!"

"You fuck off, then!"

I left him, with some disappointment, and turned back the way we came, pickaxe at the ready, towards whatever skirmish had just arisen at the remains of Strain A.

It looked like half of the population of Sh'raitha was there by the time I arrived: they were all huddled together, as if around something I couldn't discern from my position at the edge of the crowd. The wooden infrastructure that we had built across the craggy center of the cavern groaned and cracked with weight as everyone swarmed and churned and filled up the inside of the mountain like walking bees. At this point, the rockslide just looked like another wall. Any mourning or mortal fear was long over. I couldn't find Yusla or his crony, or his crony's crony, but I did find Gahm, who clutched my shoulders in excited fright.

"A traveling party!" he declared, almost shaking me like he was trying to wake me up. "We've captured a band of humans and elves!"

"No way."

"I saw one of them myself! Some kid. Where's Lugoke?"

"I don't know, I left him at Strain C."

"He's not here? Well the Maggot King is going to want him!"

"The Maggot King can figure that out for his own damn self. Looks like it's happening on his doorstep, anyway."

The traveling party, which was of course what everyone was crowded around, was being ushered deeper into the mines, towards the Maggot King's lair, and Gahm pushed into the crowd in his effort to keep up with them. I did my best to follow. We were filling the cavern with the clamor of jeers, threats, chants, howls, cackles, and other such various expressions of bloodlust and excitement. I jogged along as a drop in a river of bodies that flowed across bridges both natural and built, with the Maggot King's beehive-looking little castle hanging up ahead, a trypophilic rock formation hovering rather like an organ inside a giant ribcage, within which he lived. Underlit by a hundred greasy torches, dangling over a half-mile drop deep into the fiery heart of the mountain, it was being swarmed and gathered about by countless goblins awaiting his emergence and subsequent encounter with our new foes. I saw him come out then: him, and all his vast uncomely bulk, rolled out in the face of the hullaballoo like a falling tree that never seemed to land.