Torvald felt rough stone scrape against his back through his tunic as he squeezed down through the narrow gap, pulling a small pack along behind him. It was uncomfortably warm and humid here, and sweat dripped down from his nose as he kicked, trying to find purchase with his feet below. When he found it, he lowered himself down into a natural cave, barely lit by some sort of luminescent fungus that grew on what looked like bits of molted carapace from some sort of gigantic centipede.

  He’d seen a lot of strange things since coming down into the depths – kobolds, giant bugs, worms that burrowed through stone, slimes, venomous toads, and the occasional goblin. About two days ago, he’d started running into Duergar. They were small groups, maybe families, hollow-eyed and skittish. Some were wounded. They ran when they saw him, mostly, disappearing down tunnels the moment he caught sight of them. He didn’t pursue – he was on a mission.

  “Hurry,” the goddess spoke in a voice that only he could hear. “The way is clear.” She was getting impatient. That, or whoever he was coming to save was running out of time.

  A golden waymarker Torvald didn’t know the exact meaning of appeared to his left. It was a glyph, which didn’t help him much – he couldn’t read them. But it was the one Ruzinia always used to light his way and to show him which way to go. There was another one for food, and Ruzinia’s personal symbol, which he knew meant shelter for when she showed him somewhere safe to sleep.

  He’d been hiking, climbing and occasionally crawling through the depths for nearly three weeks now. Much of the food he was led to probably hadn’t technically been meant for human consumption and he wasn’t sure when he’d last laid down. He’d been forced to fight more than once, and his new sword was already chipped. Still, he grinned as he pushed his tired body on, heading toward the light. He felt alive.

  After weeks of uncertainty and silence from his divine benefactor, having her voice back felt like a drink of cool water on a hot day.

  All paladins enjoyed some level of divine guidance and support as the executors of their god’s will. Ruzinians, however, were unique in the degree to which they were managed directly by their goddess. Most gods gave their clerics precepts to follow or ideals to strive toward and granted specific powers and protections to those who served depending on their previous acts of service.

  Ruzinia handed down no such scriptures, and her support had no clear limits. She was with him always, and she would see him succeed so long as he served faithfully. Her temple had no ranks, and no high priests. A lot of the acolytes he’d known back in Halfbridge considered that extremely limiting – it was the only order where one couldn’t rise to any position of authority, and the only one that required its members to subordinate their own agency so completely. Torvald found it freeing, in a roundabout sort of way. He loved the sense of purpose and rightness his calling offered. If a paladin couldn’t trust their own god’s judgment, why would they serve in the first place?

  The rock walls around him smoothed out suddenly, transitioning from a natural cave to what was obviously a carved tunnel that sloped gently downward. With his footing improved, he picked up his pace, the goddess’ sense of urgency driving him on. A few minutes later, he started to hear noises. Distant thumps and screeches echoed up the tunnels. As he approached, the noise began to resolve into guttural squawks, hisses and, buried beneath the noise, shouting and screaming. He’d stumbled on a fight.

  Drawing his sword, he followed Ruzinia’s guiding marker through a carved archway into an empty room and from there through a low steel-plated stone door. He guessed he was looking at the entrance to a duergar settlement. It looked like it had just been abandoned and, a moment later, he saw why. A gray-skinned dwarf lay face-down on top of a red-scaled kobold, his sword buried in the creature’s side. Blood still leaked out from under the pair and Ruzinia’s way marker hovered directly over the sword’s hilt.

  It was hard to tell distance in the echoey tunnels, but Torvald guessed the fight hadn’t moved far from here, yet. He bent down, pulled the sword out of the kobold and gave it an experimental swing before checking it for damage. It had a small nick near the base and it was a little shorter than he was used to, but it was in far better condition than his own. There were even a few runes engraved along the blade. He had no way to tell if those were functional or decorative, but he suspected he was about to find out.

  The next room was empty, and so was the corridor beyond that, though the sounds kept getting louder. He was almost surprised when he finally burst into a room swarming with kobolds. A huge winged specimen, taller than himself, was pounding on a door at the far side with a massive sledgehammer. The door itself was steel reinforced stone like the one he’d passed through earlier. What had started as a stone slab had been reduced to a crumbling mess of stones contained in what amounted to a warped cage of metal. With every strike, more bits of stone crumbled out onto the floor. There were people shouting on the other side, and the wailing of children.

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  The golden symbol glowing on the door was appreciated but, at this point, unnecessary.

  Before he could decide how best to approach the problem, two of the nearest kobolds noticed him and, without hesitation, threw themselves at him bodily. He ducked to the side to avoid one, putting him directly into the path of the other, sword extended. Too late to dodge, the kobold impaled himself on its point just as the weapon began to glow with golden light. The creature coughed roughly and swiped at him with a knife, but Torvald had already released his weapon and moved forward, sweeping low into the crowd with his Duergar sword.

  The weapon parted kobold scales like they weren’t there, severing a leg from one and wounding two others. They went down screeching and Torvald bulled forward, striking out viciously as he avoided counterattacks. It felt easy to anticipate where they would strike, to arrange it so their attacks would foul one anothers’ movements and to slip through even as he wounded and killed one kobold after another.

  It wasn’t easy, of course. It was impossible. At least, it was for someone who was fighting fairly. Torvald fought with divine guidance and the outcome was never in question, despite his burning muscles and the fact that he was laboring for breath like an overworked plow horse. Kobolds threw themselves at him and they missed, landed on each other, or found the edge of his blade. He moved as if performing a choreographed dance to which he’d already memorized the steps. Unlike most sorts of opponents, though, the kobolds didn’t flee when they realized they were losing. If anything, they grew frenzied, throwing themselves at him with no regard for coordination or tactics. It worked, sort of. By the time he reached the giant winged kobold, he could clearly see the frightened face of a Duergar man hiding behind the door. Blood ran down his face from a cut on his forehead.

  The creature turned, swinging its enormous hammer ponderously at Torvald, who stepped to the side and then leaned back to avoid the snapping jaws that followed, stumbling back half a step. He’d been fighting for only a minute, but he’d already been exhausted before he arrived. He needed to end this fight quickly.

  The monster kobold bellowed at an ear-splitting volume and those who remained of its smaller kin, most of whom were already injured, retreated. Realizing that the hammer was too ponderous a weapon, it flung the thing at the paladin and charged.

  Torvald sidestepped again and lunged, burying the tip of the sword precisely in the creature’s knee even as it put its weight on the leg. It fell forward with a cry, and he pulled the sword back and swung it around, catching it in the back of the neck and severing its spine before it could turn to swipe at him. Only as he wrenched the sword back out did Torvald realize that the glow had intensified, filling the room with its brilliance. Words sprang to his lips unbidden and rang through the room at an unnatural volume in a language he shouldn’t have been able to understand.

  “Begone, stunted spawn of the makers, or come and taste the fate of the faithless! Flee, lest the goddess contests your emperor’s claim upon your souls. None who strike at those she shelters shall enter the Mines, nor see again the light of the forge or the glint of precious stone or metal.”

  The kobolds, some of whom had already been moving to re-enter the fight, faltered. They looked at each other warily. Two near the doors snuck out, then another one. Then they broke, scrambling – and in some cases limping – for the tunnels. Torvald had no idea why those words should have broken their unnatural morale, but he was too tired to question it. He tried to wipe his sword off on one of the giant kobold’s wings, but it didn’t work very well. Kobolds didn’t wear clothes, and didn’t have any other sort of cloth on them, either. Resignedly, he hunted for a clean spot on his tunic and used that. He’d been sprayed with gore regardless, and would start to stink soon if he didn’t find somewhere to wash both himself and his clothes. Sheathing the sword, he stepped up to the door and peered inside.

  “Are you alright? Ehm… do any of you speak Beseri?”

  The Duergar man he’d seen before stared at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. He was clutching a spear as though he had no idea what to do with it. The room – some sort of armory by the looks of it – was packed with people. A young girl tried to peek around him to see why the noise had stopped, and he held her back with one hand, nearly fumbling his weapon with the other. There was movement off to one side, and a bent, elderly human man pushed through the crowd to wave at Torvald. He wore a long, white robe stained with dirt at the hems and what was probably blood on the chest and arms.

  “Hello, brother!” he called in a slow, Kallrixian drawl. “I’d like to say I’ve gotten used to the goddess’ dramatic sense of timing over the years, but that would be a lie. I’m truly relieved to see your face.”

  “You called out for rescue?” Torvald asked dumbly. “What are you doing all the way down here?”

  Why was a priest of Ruzinia in a Duergar settlement? They didn’t worship gods at all, as far as Torvald knew, least of all a foreign goddess from the surface.

  “No, no. They did,” he gestured to the people around him, smiling like a proud father. “I’m just here to help – same as you. I bring new souls to the shelter of Her hand.”