Being the continuing dramatization of six friends Dungeons and Dragons adventuring…

Click here to read the preceding chapters.

The goblin guard room offered little comfort, but it offered walls, and walls meant survival. The party slept in turns, listening to the distant echoes of the citadel—stone shifting, water dripping, and somewhere far below, something breathing.

When they rose, battered but resolute, they tied a rope across the doors leading back toward Goblinville, cinching them shut to slow pursuit. Then they turned toward the final locked door at the far end of the corridor.

Isledie knelt first. Her picks slipped. Alder tried, teeth clenched, but the lock refused them both.

Farden sighed and flexed, brute strength to the rescue.. again.

He put his shoulder to the heavy iron bound door.

The door burst inward in a storm of splinters and echoes.

And the dragon answered.

Calcryx Unleashed

A white blur surged from the chamber beyond—small, lithe, beautiful and terrible. Calcryx, the white wyrmling, opened her jaws and exhaled winter itself.

The corridor vanished beneath a cone of killing frost.

Farden and Isledie screamed as the cold tore into flesh and bone. Skin numbed instantly, blood freezing in open cuts. The breath stole the air from their lungs and the strength from their limbs.

They staggered back.

Will’s voice cut through the pain, divine words knitting Isledie’s flesh even as frost still clung to her armor. Alder hurled a Sleep spell that washed harmlessly over the dragon like drifting snow.

Calcryx laughed—a sharp, crystalline sound.

Then she saw Meepo. For many months she had dreamt of this reunion. In truth she found her current situation far more to her liking than those years of being the Kobold’s caged pet.

She lunged.

Her claws slashed, missing the kobold by inches. Meepo shrieked and bolted.

Farden headed back with Meepo in tow but Eric slipped back into the dragon’s lair and tried to throw a 4′ square of black cloth over her head.

The Death of Meepo

They fled toward kobold territory, shouting, scrambling, hearts hammering. The dragon pursued, wings scraping stone, claws skittering over rock.

She bit again at Meepo.

Missed.

Luck still favoured the smallest.

Farden scooped the kobold up and ran.

But Calcryx inhaled.

The corridor filled with white.

The blast struck Farden full in the chest—and Meepo in his arms.

The kobold froze instantly.

Not merely dead.

Frozen solid.

Farden staggered through the pit passage, numb and burning, and as he crossed the beam the frozen kobold shattered in his arms, bursting into a hundred glittering shards that clattered across the stone like falling glass.

Farden fell to his knees, staring.

Meepo was gone.

Only ice remained.

He did not speak.

Two Paths, One Fate

Farden and Isledie reached the kobold door and gave the secret knock. It opened, and they vanished inside.

Meanwhile…

Will, Alder, and Eric remained near the dragon’s lair.

Alder used Mage Hand to untie the rope holding the goblin town door. The sound drew Calcryx back at once.

Will stepped forward, voice calm, hands raised.

Eric held up a small dragon statue he had taken from the nest.

“Bad Meepo,” he said solemnly to the statue. “Good dragon.”

He stroked it.

Calcryx swiped at him, claws slicing air.

Eric tossed the statue back into the nest.

Then, heart pounding, he tossed two gold coins after it.

Calcryx blinked.

She tilted her head.

She padded back to the nest, nudged the coins with her snout, then curled around them with a satisfied purr.

Eric exhaled.

“Eric the Dragon Tamer,” he whispered.

The three slipped away.

The Queen’s Wrath

Isledie and Farden stood before Yusdrayl.

Meepo’s death was told in quiet, broken words.

The kobold queen’s eyes burned.

She demanded the dragon returned.

Isledie argued. Farden bowed his head in shame. They begged restraint.

Yusdrayl relented only barely.

Her trust was cracked, not broken.

Steel in the Storeroom

Will, Alder, and Eric took refuge in a goblin storeroom, spiking the door.

It did not hold long.

Two hobgoblins and two goblins smashed through.

Spells flared.

Alder blinded the first hobgoblin, then drove his rapier clean through its chest.

The second followed soon after.

The goblins fled.

A King Falls

The party reunited in the corridor.

Together once more, they advanced toward the goblin throne room.

Durnn awaited them—without his hobgoblin guards, surrounded only by goblins.

Alder challenged him with words.

Farden challenged him with steel.

Durnn agreed.

The duel was brutal but brief.

Within moments, the hobgoblin king was wounded, disarmed, and desperate. Farden allowed him to retrieve his sword.

Then, with one clean strike, Farden took Durnn’s head.

It rolled across the stone and came to rest at Grenl’s feet.

Grenl’s Truth

Grenl stepped forward.

She was not merely a consort.

She was the true leader—the tribe’s wise woman, forced to serve under Durnn’s cruelty.

She thanked the heroes.

Then she warned them.

“The danger is below,” she said. “Belak came twelve years ago. Hooded. Dark. He enslaved us all. He brought the tree from beneath the pit. The tree that feeds on blood. The tree that makes monsters.”

Her voice trembled.

“The Gulthias Tree.”

She looked at them with haunted eyes.

“You have not reached the heart of the Sunless Citadel yet.”